Thank you. It's nice to be here with everybody, all the familiar and new faces. So, and thanks Today I want to speak about a fascicle of Dogen. Mel and I have been studying together for the past year or so. It's kind of in a new phase, this phase, phase of a relationship, and the fascicle I'm going to talk about is the fascicle on face-to-face transmission. and I checked with him first about whether what he thought about whether it would be a good idea for me to share this and he encouraged me to do it so I decided to go ahead and do it.

[01:47]

So this fascicle is about the intimate face-to-face relationship between a teacher and a student but also the intimate face-to-face relationship among students and among teachers. And the faces that our relationships go through. So that's why the play on the word of face and face. And we've practiced together here for a long time, many of us, and our relationships have gone through many different faces and the relationship of a teacher and a student goes through different faces. And we all have an ordinary face and a Buddha face. So this fascicle is called face-to-face transmission.

[02:57]

And it's one of the more accessible ones, actually, despite the title of Dogen's text from the Moon in a Dew Drop. And so in Japanese, the title is Menju. And Menju means something flowing together or merging. or something merging together. So it's how teacher and student, or how in relationships we merge, and there's something passing through us in that merging. And at the same time, in the teacher-student relationship, we have very strong boundaries. Even though we merge, at the same time we are different or distinct.

[03:58]

And sometimes that can get a little bit fussy in the relationship because this merging pushes into a kind of very intimate relationship. And the word intimate has the Zen meaning and it also has the other ordinary meaning. So it's important to have very strong boundaries to contain this merging that takes place. And although sometimes I would like the teacher-student relationship to be more like a teacher being like a true friend, instead of remaining in this kind of impersonal or teacher always being in this transcendental position, always being Buddha. Although the teacher goes back and forth between being Buddha and being male. Buddha face, ordinary face.

[05:02]

But you have to be careful because in being a friend, being a friend also carries the danger of becoming something more than just friends. Something like enemies or lovers. So that's why again the boundaries are important because there's a very strong pull to merge. Also in Menju, I like to play with the sound of words because sometimes the sound between words gives us a meaning beyond the words themselves or connects things that apparently are different. So Menju sounds like Menju. Did you hear it? And, you know, and the Bible says that Moses' face was radiant when he came down from the mountain and became the first Jew.

[06:14]

That was the first Jew was Moses coming down from the mountain and his face was radiant. And that continues, you know, with the face of the rabbi still shine like Moses during Sabbath and holidays. So the mountain in Zen represents the steadiness, the mountain is something steady, the steadiness of Zazen posture and steadiness of practice, but also the mountain is something that leads us to something that's very cool and very rarified. rare, something cool and rare and also brings us closer to the source of light. But in Zen this radiance is not the manifestation of a deity. So that's the difference. Although we can say God nature, I think we said Buddha nature, God nature, actually we're pretty close to the meaning

[07:21]

The one is always meeting the one in the many. And so it's like every tradition says, well, this is the one way. We say that too in Zen. This is the supreme vessel, the supreme vehicle. And yet, at the same time, we know that there are many gates. And different people need different gates. But that's kind of explaining it. In another way, people can say, we can say, this is the one way. And Jews can say, this is the one way. And Muslims say, this is the one way. So it's always the one way meeting the one way. So then there's no problem. Everybody can say, this is the one way, whether you're a Jew or Muslim or a Buddhist. Okay, so I'm going to read now a section of Dogen's text.

[08:41]

Make sure I'm not straying too far away from what he's trying to convey to us. So, once Shakyamuni Buddha on Vulture Peak in India, in the midst of a vast assembly of beings, held up an Udumbara flower and winked. Venerable Makkahashapa smiled. Then Shakyamuni Buddha said, I have the treasury of the true Dharma, I, the inconceivable mind of Nirvana. This I entrust to Makkahashapa. So this is the I of seeing. Teacher, seeing student, seeing teacher. And it's a very lofty kind of statement, you know, and Shakyamuni can say something like this because he's very pure, has no self. Otherwise if anybody else, any of us would say something like that, probably it would sound a little, you know, arrogant or too lofty, saying you have something.

[09:53]

This is the meaning of transmitting the treasury of the true Dharma I face to face from Buddha to Buddha, from ancestor to ancestor. It was correctly transmitted by the seven Buddhas through to venerable Makahaśyapa." So the seven Buddhas are the seven Buddhas before Buddha. So this is to mean that this is beyond counting, how many actually, is to say that this is an ancient, ancient path that was rediscovered Not that it was created anew by Siddhartha or Shakyamuni. From Makkah-Hashapa there were 28 transmissions up to and including Venerable Bodhidharma. Venerable Bodhidharma himself went to China and gave face-to-face transmission to Venerable Huike, great master Zengzhong Pujue. This is Eka.

[11:00]

There were five transmissions through to great master Dajian Wineng of Mount Tsao Chi. That's Wineng, the sixth ancestor. And then there were 17 transmissions through to my late master, old Buddha Tiantong of the renowned Mount Taibo. of the King Shuan Prefecture Great Song. This was the port of China that was closest to Japan and during the Song Dynasty era in China. This is a kind of very formal statement and it's very simple actually. It's just listing the lineage. It's very deep and very simple at the same time. Then he says, I first offered incense and bowed formally to my late master, old Buddha Tiantong in the abbot's room on the first day, fifth month of the first year of bow, king of great song.

[12:06]

He also saw me for the first time. So this is a seeing. Very simple, but it means more than ordinary seeing. Upon this occasion, he transmitted Dharma finger to finger, face to face, and said to me, the Dharma gate of face to face transmission from Buddha to Buddha, ancestor to ancestor, is realized now. So this is the first time he met him, you know, and said something like that to him right off the bat. That's very unusual. So I don't know if that actually happened. or whether it's simply stating that during this it's like the first time you meet or the first time you sit zazen you have an awakening experience or the first time you sit zazen you have an awakening experience and then that has to be cultivated and carried forth through this mutual seeing of teacher and student or mutual seeing of student with student

[13:19]

because we also function as teachers to one another as we practice together. This itself is holding up a flower on Vulture Peak or attaining the marrow at Mount Song or attaining the marrow at Mount Song refers to Winang. Attaining the Mount Song refers to Bodhidharma, the nine years of wall-gazing. Or it is transmitting the rope at Mount Wangmei, which refers to Wing-Yang, the sixth ancestor, or the face-to-face transmission at Mount Dong, which refers to Toza. This is Buddha ancestors transmitting the treasure of the eye face-to-face. It occurs only in our teaching. Other people have not even dreamed of it. So this is only in our teaching, this is the way Dogen speaks sometimes, a little bit like a fundamentalist, you know, because he was a reformer and trying to establish Zen.

[14:30]

So he has this way of speaking sometimes, this is the only way, everything else is just, you know, it's just dreaming. But everybody says that, you know, to some way or another. It's kind of not very, it's not according to our sensitivities nowadays. We don't speak this way anymore, you know, because this kind of fundamentalism leads to conflict, leads to infighting and so on and so forth. So as long as we can say that and then not be bothered if somebody else says the same thing. you know, I am the true way or I am the true disciple or everybody can be, can say that. As long as everybody else can, you feel okay, you can say that as long as you feel okay about everybody else saying that as well and not get defensive or angry about it. And at the same time, there's something true and specific about his teaching that's also being conveyed through that statement.

[15:37]

That this, you know, teaching, there's a way in which we have to practice together and there has to be a relationship to a teacher. There's a story later on, further on, which I don't know if I'm going to get to today, but where he criticizes another abbot who also was an abbot with Dharma for saying that he had received transmission from Matsu, even though he had never met Matsu. And so, he uses that example to emphasize this point about face-to-face transmission, that you actually, literally, you have to see the teacher and the teacher has to see you. So, this seeing is both ordinary seeing and the Dharma eye at the same time.

[16:40]

Because when we sit sazen, then something in us is awakened, this dharma eye is opened. And then we go looking for a teacher. And because that dharma eye has been opened, then we can see the teacher's face, or the teacher's true face. If that dharma eye is not opened, then we can't see it. For somebody, they'll find that recognize their own face, their own awakening experience in a different teacher. So they'll say, oh, I don't know what you see in that person, you know. For me, it's just an ordinary person, and you know, I don't know why you see Buddha there. And that's okay too, because for that person, their own face is revealed in a different teacher. or they recognize their own face through a different teacher.

[17:44]

So it can happen for different people with different teachers. Sometimes people come here and they practice for a while and say, oh no, this is, no, it's not my teacher, you know, and they go on to look for another teacher and then maybe there's another teacher that really resonates for them with what their own experience of the Buddha Dharma is. You know, because even though the experience is the same in some ways, it's different for every person. Then eventually if you go too many, you know, you keep going doing that, you know, eventually you never find that. So then you have to settle. Then there's something about your own practice that you're not recognizing. So he criticized people that say they received transmission from people that they haven't actually practiced face-to-face with.

[18:46]

So this puts the important, you know, raises the question of lineage. Although, you know, it's an important consideration, you know, the fact that you have a teacher and that you bowed your head to a teacher and that you, you know, it's like when we bowed a male on the way out, you know, and he's looking at us, you know, and we're wondering, you know, what's he thinking or what is he seeing, you know, is he, you know, is he happy with me or is he unhappy, you know, is he mad, you know. And actually, he's just, you know, just seeing, better just see it, he's just seeing us, you know, and then we just bow our head, you know, he's bowing the head to the teacher, which is really our own face. So, it's not like the teacher is some other face that we have to, it's really the teacher is the vehicle for us to be able to recognize our own true face, that unless we have a teacher,

[20:00]

that true phrase remains other to us. So we recover ourself from the other. But actually most people first have an awakening experience and this is part of, I think it's always the stories at the beginning and it kind of dazzles. I thought, you know, people had awakening experience after a long time of practice, you know. But actually the awakening happens first. And then we have to cultivate it. for a long, long time. And some people do that very quickly, and some people take a long time. And that's sort of the Sun-Face Buddha, Moon-Face Buddha, we don't discriminate. Some people do it very quickly, that's Moon-Face Buddha, some people do it for a long time, takes a long time, that's Sun-Face Buddha. The Bodhisattvas awaken according to different sets of circumstances and situations according to the needs of people.

[21:09]

So when there is a need for a quick awakening, there's a quick awakening. So I think, you know, Mel was a quick awakening because there was a, you know, Suzuki Roshi wasn't around for very long. And we've had the fortune of having him for 30 years, 40 years. I guess we're celebrating the 40-year anniversary. And he still, you know, he still looks, you know, pretty good. You know, he's in good shape. You know, he may be around for a long time. But, you know, sometimes we feel it's too long, you know. I mean, it's like, you know, like we're hearing the same lecture over and over again, you know. 40 years, it's always the same teaching. And maybe it could be faster. Many of us could have been doing things a long time ago.

[22:13]

And so there's that double side to that. But on the other hand, it's been fortunate to be able to have him for a long time. So then we have to be great. When we were waiting a long time, there were sun-faced Buddhas. And sun-faced Buddhas take a long time. And moon-faced Buddhas take a short time. But they're the same. And they're different, of course. So, say the teaching or the teacher is in your face, you know, and that in English has kind of a double meaning, being in your face, and it's not a face outside your face, so it's in your face, you know, and what that means is the teacher's face inside our face, although sometimes in Zen, in Zen stories, it's like the drill sergeants in the military, you know,

[23:25]

yelling at people, you know, in their face, they're in their face, you know, yelling at them, you know, trying to wake them up, you know. Although that's not very according to our, you know, sensitivities, you know, we don't like that so much anymore. That's kind of the old way, old school, you know, beat people up, you know, and we don't do that anymore. That's kind of, you know, too raw. Although there's something very vital in that rawness, you know, But, and nature is that way, you know, nature, you know, it just, you know, it's a big meteorite coming our way, you know, it just crashes into the earth, you know, and it's a big humongous, you know, atomic bomb and destroys life and whatnot, you know, and that's kind of raw. And so nature has that raw edge. But we humans like to humanize nature. to render it gentle, you know, and compassionate.

[24:28]

And that's a distinction that we have, and that's why Buddhas are born in the human realm, because that's our distinction, you know, to humanize nature. So it's a little bit, you know, that kind of raw Zen, you know, this attacking lion, you know, it's very masculine, very, you know, kind of, macho in some way, and there's a certain power and rawness to that, but not very tasteful to our sensitivities nowadays. And of course, male is not that way, you know. Although sometimes he is, you know. Unfortunately, sometimes some of us have gotten his, you know, his stake more than once, you know. And then you have to deal with that. When a teacher gets in your face and yells at you or throws you out, then you have to deal with that.

[25:35]

When somebody's coming at you with that kind of anger, how do you respond to that? And then we have to respond in a way that, you know, it's like, do we use the anger that's kind of being evoked by that, you know, or do we find a way to respond to it that's beyond our conditioned anger, you know, to somebody challenging us or attacking us, you know. It's like giving the other cheek, you know. Talking about the eye in the face, an eye for an eye, you know. Or do you turn the other cheek? That's kind of a koan, you know. And in Zen we have those too, we have the kind of the Jewish way and the Christian way. Well, the Christian way is really the Jewish way too, you know.

[26:37]

It's another way of talking about the Jewish way. So, you know, we have to lose our eyes. I mean, it's the eye for an eye. It's like how you become blind, you know, or blinded by karma. And so the teacher-student relationship goes through phases. At the beginning, you know, we see that the... So, we have to see the teacher, but the teacher has to see us. That's what Dogen says, you know, because, like, you could have a vision, You can have a vision of Buddha, or Shakyamuni, or Jesus, or a spiritual being, or celestial being, whatever, right? And you say, oh, that's my teacher. And people do that. And sometimes people like, you know, the Jews are trying to revive the Kabbalah, and they've broken lineage for centuries.

[27:38]

And so, why not? They have visions and they have, you know, Why not try to revive it, since there are no teachers. But actually they are, you just have to find them. So there's always two sides to that question. But it's not enough to say, you know, I have a realization experience, an enlightenment experience, and I'm going to go teach now. even though Shakyamuni technically did that, but then we say, no, he didn't do that, because there were seven Buddhas before Buddha. He didn't invent it. So it's always a little tricky to say, oh, I had an enlightenment experience, now I'm going to teach. Because that's not the face-to-face transmission. So it's not enough for just us to see Buddha, Buddha has to see us. And that occurs actually through

[28:40]

two bodies, two eyes, the concrete experience. And then we go through a period where we don't see each other. And that's the face, the troubling face between a teacher-student relationship. And this not seeing is when we when we then start seeing each other with our or the student sees the teacher with the ordinary eye or vice versa the teacher sees the student with the ordinary eye and then they can miss each other or the relationship gets entangled and this is called spiritual entanglement twining vines you know Dogen speaks about twining vines and twining vines usually means the dharma relationships. But it's also an entanglement. There's a double sense of entanglement, of twining lines.

[29:43]

You know, you're getting caught in the entanglement of the relationship, and at the same time, that's how the dharma is being transmitted. They are kind of delusion and enlightenment together. And many times, during that second phase of the relationship, the relationship goes awry. I like that English word, or A-W-R-Y. And that happens, it's common that the teacher and the student become alienated from each other. We had this case of a teacher who after naming people their dharma successors and she writes an official or he writes an official letter saying, oh, these are not my dharma. Even though I said they were, I was wrong, they're not, you know? So this is an example of this kind of not getting past this not seeing each other.

[30:44]

This troubling second phase of the relationship, and then it's like first mountains are mountains, then there are no mountains and no rivers, and then there are mountains and rivers again. So you get to the third phase where then you go back to seeing each other the way you originally saw each other, and then there's face-to-face transmission, which was there to begin with anyway, originally. But it couldn't be face-to-face transmission if there wasn't face-to-face transmission. So we also have this expression about, you know, saving faiths and losing faiths. So somebody's saving face, you know, so there's that or somebody loses face. So this saving face can either mean, you know, the face can either be the mask or the Buddha face or the ordinary face and the Buddha face.

[31:58]

And so when we say face, are we protecting our mask? You know, which happens, you know. I mean the face is a kind of mask in some way. What is it covering? What's behind the mask? You know, our true feelings. Sometimes it's our true feelings. So the Buddha face is the non-duality of the mask and what's behind the mask. or when the ordinary face becomes the face without the mask. And that's the true face, the Buddha's face. And then Buddha's face is the same in some ways. So this is what Logan says, it's the one mirror facing another mirror, the round mirror facing another round mirror. So we're all these round mirrors facing each other. So what we are is essentially

[33:01]

But this round mirror is not different than the ordinary face at the same time. It's expressed in the ordinary face. So when we resume our true face in practice, that true face is revealed as our ordinary face without the mask. And then we can really recognize and appreciate one another and each other. instead of that kind of posturing that takes place with the mask, the protection, defense, the anger and so on. So safe face could mean either trying to save the mask or actually saving our Buddha face. How do we save our Buddha face moment to moment in every situation? How do we respond? And losing face is the same thing.

[34:04]

It's how do we, do we lose our ordinary face? So like it says that when Neng met his teacher, he lost his face or his face dropped. So he lost his ordinary face. Or lose face can also mean, you know, lose your honor, which could mean you're holding onto your ego. Who cares? about honor. Just be yourself. Whether you're confused or you're clear at that moment, just be yourself. If you're clear, you're clear. If you're confused, you're confused. In practice, it doesn't matter, because if we have ongoing practice, then whether you're confused or you're clear is the same thing. Because if you're confused, you'll get back. It's a matter of ongoing practice. You'll get back you will return to clarity but then you won't protect your clarity either so that if in a moment you become confused then that's what's happening you're confused.

[35:11]

So how are we doing with time? Five minutes. So five minutes to questions or questions should come now. Do we begin with questions now or do we, we've in five minutes, which one now? Okay. Thank you very much. Yes, Tamar? I've been reading the lineage of the history of Zen, and actually, apparently, the lineage up to Koi Ne, myth that people, probably the generation after him, invented to give him legitimacy as a teacher, and to give themselves legitimacy as the true San.

[36:59]

I think there's an intimate relationship between a teacher and a student, but the idea that it goes all the way back you know, it's not that it isn't real, it's real in the Buddhist sense, but perhaps not real in the reality sense. Yeah. Well, it's kind of, I mean, if to try to legitimize yourself by inventing the lineage is kind of ridiculous, right? So if somebody did that, that's kind of ridiculous. Because if there isn't one, then there's no need to, to, create a spurious one. But whether that's what happened, I'm not sure. That's definitely a point of view. It's a point of view of a perspective. We have this experience and this belief that when we sit and we practice,

[38:00]

we're recovering an ancient path and we're walking on a path that's already been walked before and that the experience that we have is not different than the one that other ancestors had or the one that Shakyamuni had, although there may be differences, but essentially it's the same practice. And so that's the important point beyond getting into this debate whether the actual lineage is real or not. And that, I mean, that actually is something that pretty much, you know, there was some scholarly work and a list of women who appeared in the scriptures was, as I understood, developed, but there was no transmission between those women.

[39:38]

And in fact, for some of those women, there's no story saying that they actually got transmission from the body. I don't know if it's the same thing I don't think it's wrong I think it's because it supports women's practice and you know and Mel has many women disciples and there isn't a lot of support in the literature for it that has been you know masculine evoke and invoke a feminine representation of Buddha. So I support that, but that's beyond the question of whether, you know, I see that as important in and of itself, independently of whether this is a real lineage or it's not a real lineage. But it's within the context of the practice that we have now, which we received from Suzuki Roshi and from Mel.

[40:45]

It's not outside that context. So we have to take it into that context. And so we interpret the lineage and the history based on our current experience, which is one in which we do actually have both men and women practicing dharma and studying with male and with some new women teachers. I think it's more than just, it's not a construction. I don't think it's just a human construction. There's something real about it that goes beyond our human faculty to think or discern or speak about things. And that there's a transmission that takes place at that level. that is not a human, just a human construction.

[41:48]

It's beyond discrimination. And that's something that we have faith because we have faith in our experience of Zazen and what we realize and understand in practice. Other people don't have to believe it, though. I mean, from the outside, some people say, well, what you're talking about is just a construction. Well, you have to sit and realize for yourself. You have to sit and realize for yourself, but then you also need a teacher to awaken together with. within, not, you know, it's not the same to go to, if you look at people in other Buddhist countries, other Buddhist cultures, they don't emphasize lineage at all.

[43:07]

And they certainly don't chant it. And they may not even know it more than a couple of languages back, rather than turning it into something that's, in a sense, an object of devotion and reverence. But what I think in this is, is just like, can we see each other? Can we see ourselves in each other? I'm trying to learn.

[44:08]

mm-hmm yeah but yeah but at the same time within our humanity there's something that goes beyond our humanity that we haven't created ourselves that it's not man little man created male man created also the last point I'm going to make in that It's not a deity, it's the source. And in Asian culture, the way in its nature, there's something in nature that's not man-created. We come from it, but we haven't created it. We haven't created the mountains, we haven't created the stars or the universe, but we are an expression of it. We come from the same root, but we haven't created it ourselves. But that doesn't mean that it's a deity.

[45:39]

Also in this story, you know, where Dogen criticizes this other person, there's actually an actual dialogue in his understanding of the dialogue and why he thinks the other teacher didn't get the dialogue. So it's an actual, and you may not agree with him, and there may be a different way of interpreting the dialogue, but there's a kind of presumption on the part of a teacher in the way he interprets the dialogue, whereas the dialogue really was pointing in a different direction. So he's criticizing his understanding of that, and there's no time to get into it, but we can all go, and that's the advantage of having a text, that we can all sit down and read it, you know, and see whether we agree with You know, we may agree, we may not agree. So it's not like Alan said, you know, the best, what was it, the sliced cheese or whatever it is. Yeah, I don't venerate or worship Dogen.

[46:49]

I mean, I think he's a great teacher. You know, we don't do that in Zen. We don't worship, you know, in the sense of idealization. We don't put the face of the teacher outside our own face. whether it's a man or a woman. You know, it's in our face. But it's not, it's more than just our ordinary human face. It's something else and yet it's also us. So, thank you so much.

[47:23]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ