I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. This is a rare and unusual way to be spending a fine summer morning. I think of mid-summer. I remember back 45 years, 50 years. Just to say that is completely incredible that I can remember back so far that the working of my life has been such that it extends back that far and that the memories are so sharp.

[01:15]

I'm not saying they're accurate, but they're sharp. They're clear and they have this powerful tone and resonance in my body and mind. And what I would do on days like that, my grandfather had a boat. Boat was kind of, it was a big boat. It was about the size of this Zendo probably. And he lived in it in the summer. It wasn't as wide as this zendo. But it was very well made, like this zendo. And he lived on it in the summers, a place on Long Island called Port Washington, which was a little ways from where I lived.

[02:25]

And I really loved to spend My summers, the days, I would go out there for a few days at a time or a week at a time and live with him and my grandmother on their boat and just sort of wake up on the water and go to sleep on the water with the sound of the waves kind of lapping against the side of the boat. and feel very peaceful, perhaps the most peaceful that I've ever felt and the most secure. Secure in love and secure in comfort and secure within the whole holding of nature and the environment. And then my days I would spend either on that boat, like we polished the floors here.

[03:28]

I had to wash all the teak and all the woodwork and then touch up the varnish and do my chores. And then I had a little outboard motor boat that I would go off alone with by myself for hours at a time and kind of zoom around this kind of large area of Manhasset Bay and pretend I was a racer, you know, a speedboat racer, zooming all around. It was just a wonderful world of fantasy, but with water and sky and land all coming together, it was a wonderful moment, wonderful moments as a child. I think about that a couple weeks ago, Sojin gave a talk and in the question and answer, Melody was somehow mentioned that she felt she was a member of this, the Church of Water, and I thought,

[04:45]

Oh, I'm in that church too. There's something so healing about it, something that we attune to the flowing of it, the constant flowing. But it's also this really deep, ancient feeling in my own body. So think about that on summer days. And it's not of a different piece with just the The settledness that I felt coming in here this morning and just sitting down and doing Sazen and seeing all of us in here doing this together is very relaxing and comforting. activity of peace.

[05:53]

It's all of a peace, P-I-E-C-E, but it's also the activity of peace, the doing of peace. So this morning I wanted to talk a little about a fascicle of Dogens and how that applies to our lives and our our Zazen practice, and hopefully leave some time for discussion. In the practice period, we were studying, and Sojin was teaching and lecturing on Genjo Koan. And that's another philosophical fascicle that that's also always appealed to me, that seems to go hand in hand with that. Actually, there's two that go together.

[06:58]

This one that I want to talk about a little bit is called Zenki. And Zenki translates variously. It translates as undivided activity or all function. Or Thomas Cleary, in his playful way, translates it as, the whole works. Some ambiguity there about whether works is a noun or a verb. And the translation that I want to work from is Dr. Abe and Norman Waddell's, and they translate it as total dynamic working. And it usually, it's often paired with, it's a short fascicle and it's paired with this other fascicle called Shoji, which is birth and death.

[08:00]

And because like Genjo Kōan, it talks about birth and death. I thought I would read you two, just two passages, an opening passage and then one towards the middle and talk about that a little bit and then maybe hopefully leave time for discussion. So this is from Zenki. In the culmination of its quest, The great way of all Buddhas is emancipation and realization. Emancipation means that life emancipates life and that death emancipates death. For this reason, there's deliverance from birth and death and immersion in birth and death.

[09:05]

Both are the great way totally culminated. Realization is life. Life is realization. Then a little later, resonating with my memories of boats, which also comes up in Genjokon, life is like a man riding a boat. Aboard the boat, he uses a sail. He takes the tiller. He pulls the boat along. Yet the boat carries him. And without the boat, he is not there. By riding in the boat, he makes it a boat. You must concentrate yourself to studying and penetrating this very time. At this time, All is the world of the boat.

[10:08]

The heavens, the water, the shore, all become the boat's time, and they are not the same as time which is not the boat. It is for this reason that life is what I make to exist, and I is what life makes me. In boarding the boat, one's body and mind and the entire surrounding environment are all the boat's dynamic working. Both the entire earth and all space are the boat's dynamic working. The I that is living, the life that is I, is just like this. So it's just a wonderful passage, I think. And it's kind of all perspective.

[11:16]

It keeps moving back and forth. So I want to go back to the beginning of this. In the culmination of its quest, the great way of all Buddhas is emancipation and realization. So this is an interesting question. In the culmination of its quest, whose quest is this? Does this mean it implies that the great way has its own quest and seeking? That the universe itself is one inquiring mind, one questing mind that we participate in. So the great way of all Buddhas is emancipation and realization. So emancipation, the way that translates, and I have about four or five different translations, emancipation is

[12:20]

Letting go. The roots of the words are the same as Dogen said when he was enlightened, when he said, body and mind dropped away. It's this emancipation, it's this dropping away. So the great way of all Buddhas is letting go and realization, insight into reality, seeing reality. So these are two functions that come up together. And this is the constant work of Zazen is this work of letting go. This is something that we can allow ourselves to do. We can allow ourselves to let go and we can allow ourselves to be let go of. But we have to make some effort.

[13:26]

So emancipation means that life emancipates life and that death emancipates death. This is really resonant with those passages, which I'm sure that many of you remember from Genjo Koan. And it gets kind of sticky. Life emancipates life. What does that mean? I think what it means in this context is where everything is alive, you can't distinguish something called life. where everything is dying, you can't distinguish something called death. This is why the whole context of this is total dynamic working. When you're doing one thing completely, there's nothing outside that thing, that activity, and so you no longer can even call it that activity.

[14:30]

I realize that this is kind of, This is thick going and perhaps a bit abstract. And I think we have to explore it more. So anyway, emancipation means that life emancipates life and that death emancipates death. For this reason, there is deliverance from birth and death and immersion in birth and death. Deliverance from it means what I was saying, that if there's nothing beyond it, then you can no longer call it that activity. And yet, there's immersion in it. Yet, that's what we're doing. And birth and death here are shorthand for anything that we do. whether it's sitting zazen or driving a car or eating, washing dishes, cleaning the altar, talking to a friend, any activity has this nature of birth or life.

[15:47]

Sometimes it's translated, sometimes the same word is translated as life and death. These are just shorthand for the activities and it points to their nature where they arise and they fall away. So then he says, both are the great way totally culminated. Now this sentence is, the words for totally culminated is, a matter of various translations, and it took a while to dig around. The Great Way totally culminated in Japanese. I think it's gujin daido. It's a little more to the point.

[16:49]

It's what Dogen, well, it translates literally as the Daido is great way and Gujin is total exertion. That means, so totally culminated is a little obscure. Total exertion, I think we get that. This is particularly relevant on the day of Seshin, when the effort is just to really exert ourselves and to do our practice completely. Total exertion means doing something completely. And when you do something completely, in Dogen's way of thinking, the part and whole come up together. What's revealed and what's concealed come up together.

[17:50]

There's an expression that Dogen uses called the whole being of emptiness leaping out of itself. So total exertion is the, total exertion is the secret, is the secret method of emancipation realization. And this goes back to Dogen's, at least the mythical question that he brought to his teachers when he was a boy. if everything is Buddha nature, if everything is already awake, then why do we have to practice?" And his Tendai teacher said, oh, I think you should go to talk to somebody in a Zen school because they know about this.

[18:59]

But that's our practice. Our practice is this practice of total exertion. total concentration on one activity at a time, doing that fully. And within that activity is the whole function of the universe. And this is what Dogen means by Zenki, by this total dynamic working. So in order to let go, we have to exert ourselves completely, whatever that means. And it doesn't necessarily mean that we exert ourselves completely in the process of letting go. It means that whatever we're doing, we allow

[20:05]

we allow it to be done fully. And when we do that, then things let go of us. So in our Zazen, the nature of Shikantaza in Zazen is to include every thought or feeling that arises, but not to stick to it. So if I'm feeling cranky or if I'm feeling tired, that's part of my zazen at that instant. But I try to allow that whatever feeling or sensation or thought, I allow it to move through. I allow it to have a very short lifespan. And I don't hold on to it so that it will not hold on to me. And total exertion is, in that context, I think, is to keep in mind that process of zazen.

[21:23]

So that's like not thinking is an activity. we have to make some effort in it. And the whole way that we sit is effortful. You know, you can go to some other Zazen, some other Buddhist traditions, and they're not necessarily, they're putting effort into other things. They're not necessarily putting effort into, say, their posture, or Not necessarily doing everything slowly and mindfully, which itself can be total exertion, but there's an idea behind this practice also of putting energy into things. If we invest energy in an activity in this process of total exertion, then that energy is returned to us.

[22:26]

It energizes, it moves us. So life is like, this implies that life is like a man riding a boat. Aboard the boat, he uses a sail, he takes the tiller, he pulls the boat along, yet the boat carries him. And without the boat, he's not there. By riding in the boat, he makes it a boat. You must concentrate yourself to studying and penetrating this very time. At this time, all is the world of the boat. The heavens, the water, the shore, all become the boat's time, and they are not the same as time which is not the boat. It is for this reason that life is what I make to exist, and I is what life makes me."

[23:28]

So this is interesting. Dogen uses metaphor of the boat in other places, and I think it's a common metaphor in the Buddhist world. In Genjo Koan, he talks about how when we enter a boat and go out in the ocean, what we see. You know, it's the passage that follows the line where he says, when dharma fills body and mind, I realize that something is missing. And what he's saying is when we go out in the water, we see that the ocean appears round. And that's how it looks to us from that perspective. But from a fish's perspective, it looks quite different. Or from a bird's perspective, it looks different. It's just how we see it at that time, which is partial. And he uses this in other places, he uses metaphors of boat.

[24:39]

But it's interesting, because he uses it, usually in Buddhism, you know, in kind of like basic Buddhism, or early Buddhism, the metaphor that you would, that would apply to the boat is, the raft is not the shore. You know, applying to the teachings as the raft, And the shore is the shore of nirvana or the shore of awakening. So, you know, you would use this boat to get across to the other side. And in Mahayana practice, really, we're not going anywhere. You know, we ride in the boat because it's fun to get in the boat. And because the boat actually is the shore. And the shore is the boat.

[25:42]

And the shore is the shore. And any other permutation you can think of. The boat is not in way he's talking about it, particularly here, the boat is not a means of transportation. The boat is our life at that very moment. The boat is this zendo, or this ark. The boat is our body. The boat is our whole life. And there's no place to go. So if you think of the boat as your body, you can't separate your life and your mind from your body. It's really much as he says here that Aboard the boat, he uses a sail, he takes the tiller, he pulls the boat along.

[26:54]

Yet the boat carries him, and without the boat, he is not there. Without your body, you're not there. And without you being there, your body is lifeless. So this applies to our whole life. We are making each other. We're making ourselves out of our activities. If we, you know, if we stay at home and watch television all day, there's no exertion in that. There's no energy that's being given. There's just energy being broadcast to us and taken in. And so we're not alive. But if we sit here upright, and we breathe, and we do walking meditation, and we eat the wonderful meals that we have, then in each moment, we're fully alive, whether we like it or not.

[28:14]

It may not, even in those moments when you think, you know, I'd really rather be someplace else right now, or I wish he would stop talking so that I could get back to Zazen, which is more pleasurable than this thick stuff that I'm hearing. Even in that like or dislike, we are completely alive. and we have the opportunity to wake up completely. This is the challenge of this practice. It can't be done unless we include everything that we're feeling or thinking. The moment that we exclude something, then then we close off avenues, we close off the possibility of waking up because we're denying a part of ourselves.

[29:27]

We're denying a way of being completely alive. You know, it's like, well, I like this whole boat, you know, except for, uh, you know, that part of the mainsail that's got a hole in it or a stain or, you know, except for that oar lock, you know, or whatever, you know, the feel of the rudder. I don't like the way this rudder feels. At that point, it doesn't matter because if you want to actually sail the boat effectively, you have to use the sails, you have to use the rudder, you have to use whatever tools whatever is available to make something work. And to be caught in the moment of, in a moment of judgment or a moment of not liking, then we're gonna miss

[30:33]

the necessary moment of sailing the boat, of living our life. And this is, you know, this is really difficult practice because our lives are difficult. The world that we live in is difficult. The circumstances of it are unimaginably difficult and in some places mindlessly violent. And yet this is what we've been given to work with. And each of these activities is what Dogen is talking about as total dynamic working. Is the whole universe working together, every moment that we experience or every moment that anybody is experiencing.

[31:43]

And that in itself is beyond liking or disliking. It's beyond what seems right or wrong or good or bad, which is not to say that We neglect to make efforts to do what's wholesome, but it's just that each, that moment after moment is being presented fully, shiningly, brightly, even in all of its difficulty. Our birth is like that, our death is like that, and every moment in between. And so the real question for us is how are we going to live? How are we going to live in each period of Zazen, each moment of Zazen? Zazen is the, over time, when you really take it in, Zazen becomes both the model and the mechanism of our life.

[32:59]

It teaches us how to enact this total exertion, how to enact it in a way that doesn't, that gives us energy in our lives, that gives us a settledness and a freedom. Going back to the beginning, that's interesting. I mean, I didn't notice that until this morning. in the culmination of its quest." It's a great way of all Buddhists, isn't it? Well, it's translated differently in different places, but I like this, in the culmination of its quest. So it's like the You know, the universe is doing its zazen and it's offering us, it's making its great inquiry into the meaning of life. And it's offering us itself that same quest.

[34:03]

Because we're not separate from it. So we're all riding in this boat. And hopefully we can enjoy it. We can enjoy it today. We can enjoy the boat ride of our life. But we don't enjoy it passively. We enjoy it by actually taking part in it, by rowing, sailing, participating. And in this, in the context, of our practice, this is something that we do together. We do it as part, each of us as a part, and we do it as one whole. Today, we are the galley slaves. Everybody has an oar. And tomorrow morning, there'll be a new shift of people rowing this boat.

[35:15]

But really, we have this vast, we have this community that does this. This is something that we share together. This is an understanding that we have together. And so we do this together. And so it's not lonely work. in that respect. It's not the kind of practice where we go and we sit in our cave in our single little kayak and have to row up the Mississippi River by ourselves. We're never alone in this. And that's the gift of this practice. It's not that it doesn't feel lonely sometimes, and it's not that we don't have our physical and mental aches and pains, but that we're in this all together is an enormous relief and a great gift.

[36:26]

You consider how many people that you know even feel like they're rowing alone. And that's just a perception. Really, none of us are rowing alone. There's one great community, one great sangha of beings. And yet, unless we let go, unless there's a bit of emancipation, there's not going to be the realization that we're actually not alone. And so the very essence of that pain is just to feel alone and isolated. So I think that's what drives us. It's like some, whether it's an articulated understanding or just our natural human mammalian sense, we come here on this really beautiful Sunday summer morning to do this wonderful pointless activity of rowing this boat that's not going anywhere.

[37:50]

It's really incredible. So I hope you enjoy it today. I'm going to stop there. Questions or comments are invited. Ross. Yeah, well, it's interesting what you say about...

[39:26]

I think the way you describe going to Brooklyn, I mean, it's like, that's the same thing. That's totally the same thing. So instead of waves lapping against the wooden hull, you have subway wheels kind of rolling on the, screeching on the metal rails. But really, there's no difference. The difference, you know, what you experience, that comfort, is that's exactly the same thing. It's like, oh, my grandparents, they were sleeping right in the next cabin. I felt surrounded by love. How it applies here is, that's a really good question. That's the question. That's the $64 question, is that, You know, if we had a really wholesome upbringing as children, then we know what love is.

[40:31]

We know what safety is. Some people don't have that. Some people don't grow up in those circumstances. And so the wounds are very deep. It's very difficult for them to find it as adults. But if we have some taste of it as children, then we can try to bring that into our lives here. And I don't exactly know how to do it. The challenge is always to, how to deal with the places where you feel unsafe. you know, where one wants to cry out, me, me, I hurt.

[41:36]

Nobody's seeing that or taking care of it. What am I going to do? And this is the challenge. This is why we have to do this practice is because this, This habit of falling back on self is so, that's strong too. Can we fall back on the arms, into the arms of the Sangha? Can we trust that? Can we trust that they're gonna hold us and not drop us or hold us and not push us away? Can I not push them away, push other people away? Can I embrace them rather than divide from them? I don't know. I mean, I think this is really, this is the koan of community life, what you've raised.

[42:40]

And where we divide, then we're dividing ourselves from this awakening of total dynamic working. where we turn towards it and embrace it, then we allow that working fully to manifest in ourself. It's a little abstract, but. I think what comes to me, as you just said, really, there's no security. This is the difficulty. There is no security. There's no sense of it.

[43:41]

Right. From moment to moment, that's why Dogen is talking about, this fascicle really talks about time. From moment to moment, complete security. But in our lives, things go away. If you look at it long run, There isn't. And so the security that the Buddha is talking about is security from moment to moment and recognizing that that's what arises and that you can be free in each moment even though we lose our abilities to walk, we lose our abilities to talk, you know, our bodies get frail, the ones we love pass away, all of this, you know, these things let go of us. So I think so long as we're attached to security, then we're really in a tough spot. Yeah. Kathy.

[44:43]

I think that is the issue, because I think that when you're talking, the situation you're talking about, you as a child are receiving security, but your grandparents are providing it. But I would venture to say that they didn't feel secure. but they're providing it to you. And let's say they get older and older, then you can provide it to them. So I think there's a difference between female security, well, like I said, providing it or receiving it. Right. Also, you know, I just, by virtue of, to make the point of some kind of transparency here, these things are relative as well, that compared to my house, my home with my parents, with my grandparents is where I felt safe. So there's a comparison, it's like, oh, I'm out of there, you know, and I didn't think that, but it's just like, I can just relax into the moment of being, of unconditional love in that sense, whereas at home, the conditions were not so easy.

[46:00]

And I think a lot of children feel that, too. But, right, it was being given. And I wasn't putting any impediments in the way of receiving. Sue? I wondered, too, if the relation is to sitting. I mean, it seems to me that that kind of experience in childhood is, in a way, without time. It happened a lot that there is no time, there's no tomorrow, there's no getting older or dying, there's just enjoying the endless summer. And it's sort of the timelessness of when we sit and saw that. Yeah, I think that that's right, that really if I remember back, there was time. You know, I mean, I knew, oh, I have to go home the next day. You know, I could be out thoroughly enjoying myself and still simultaneously have an awareness of time. But in each moment, there was, I had the opportunity of freedom and I could turn towards the freedom instead of turning towards what was missing.

[47:15]

So, and I think that is the opportunity of Zazen. I agree. You talk, obviously, a lot about exertion and the exertion of rowing or taking a sail up or down. But it seems to me there's exertion of turning and there's exertion of being turned. I think the exertion of being turned is just letting go. It's not fighting it. Not resisting. That's where there's exertion. You know, it's like... And... I need to study this more, actually. I just discovered this a couple days ago. I think he talks about this notion of guzhen, of total exertion, in a number of different fascicles.

[48:23]

I need to investigate it more. you might say, in terms of being turned, there's the exertion of, okay, this is what's happening. And that takes some, that itself takes not necessarily a physical effort, but a mental effort to say, okay, and not resist it. There's some effort that has to be made of not holding onto things. I'm going to allow this to happen and see where it goes. I'm going to allow myself to be turned even though it's scary. So that may be where, but I'll have to study on this. Maria, did you? Well, I was thinking that probably what you're talking about, you could also talk about in terms of self and no self. That when you're in,

[49:24]

scared and feels insecure. And when you move into that sense of no-self, there's nothing to protect. I think that's right. And Dogen is pointing at the non-separation of that self and no-self, of the little self and big self, that they are all part of this amazing arising of total dynamic working. So it's not like, well, this is the good part, this is the small-minded part. But actually, if we really, if we can only awaken to it, it's all our whole life. Both the clinging and the letting go. Maybe one more. It feels to me like turning and being turned happens in every moment.

[50:31]

That's birth and death. And that total exertion is turning and being turned in every moment. That this is happening is an exertion. You can't. I mean, I think that's right. And not only can't you have one without the other, but I think the point of total exertion, like the point of Zazen, is you have to apply yourself to your life, you know, even though you don't know how to do it. You also don't know how not to do it. So we have to apply ourselves. That's why there's this, you know, we talk about that's right effort, you know, in the Eightfold Path. We have to apply, we have to meet it with energy. We have to meet it with, you know,

[51:36]

this inquiring impulse, this questing impulse, and do it with energy. It's why we try not to do anything in a thoughtless, half-assed way in here, even though some of us are half-assed all the way. But if you do, if you're completely half-assed, You know, then you're a Zen master. But none of us are even completely half-assed. That's what's really pathetic. So, thank you very much.

[52:14]

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