Welcome to Clouds and Water. This evening we'll have an informal talk by Taigen, and a chance to hang out together some afterwards, and great patience, Paul. It's a pleasure to have Taigen here. We first met in 1990, I think. Might have been the first time we met in Japan. And Taigen at that time was living in a little apartment with a view of a cemetery, I believe. Big cemetery. And we hung out some. I stayed at his place a bit as I was moving around Japan. And little did I know that in a really short period of time, really 13 years, Taigen would become someone who I regard as one of the most important figures in American Zen. His book on Wangyue, cultivating the empty field, and his work with Dogen in a wholehearted way, and some of the Zen standards, standards for the Zen community that Taigen and Shohaku Kimura Sensei translated, as well as the upcoming work that we've been able to use in our center-based practice, the extensive record of Ehei Dogen.

[01:23]

are some of the most important works in American Zen. So Taigen brings to that translation work, and some of that work he'll be sharing with us tonight and tomorrow morning particularly, or tomorrow, he brings his deep practice and his academic understanding, and it comes together really wonderfully. It's a pleasure and an honor to have you here, Taiji. Welcome. Thank you, Dosha. So I feel honored to be here. It's nice to be back. I did, I don't remember when it was, 99 or somewhere back there, years ago, I did a weekend here on the Bodhisattva Archetypes. So what Dosho didn't say about when we first met in Japan was I was living in Kyoto and he had, sometimes it's referred to as jumped the wall at Tsuyoji, one of the training temples, and ended up finding his home for his Japanese training in Bokoboji.

[02:40]

So I really appreciate Dosho's spirit of independence and a spirit of really finding his own way. It's important for us. So American Zen is still a big experiment. And we don't know what we're doing. And yet there's something we do know, even though we can't say it. And this Zazen is something we can trust. And to find our own way to express it is very important. I appreciate being here. Thank you for your friendship, Darshan. So what I want to talk about tonight is actually based on one of Dogen's writings from Ehe Koroku, his extensive record. Not one of the things I'm going to talk about tomorrow when we're going to have a day-long workshop on the dharma hall discourses, the short talks that Dogen gave to his monks.

[03:51]

This is actually hogo in Japanese, a dharma word, from earlier on before he went to Heijin. So I'm not going to read all of it, but I'll refer to it because it says something important about Zazen, and basically I only talk about Zazen. So maybe I'll just start with the first paragraph, where Dogen starts. With the whole body just as it is, who would get stuck in any place? With the entire body familiar, how could we find our way back to a source? Already beyond the single phrase, how could we be troubled by different vehicles? When you open your hand, it is just right. when your body is activated, it immediately appears. So this practice we do on the kushin and zazen, but then it expresses itself in everyday activity and in our whole life as we steepen it, is just about the whole being, the whole body just as it is.

[05:07]

And Dogen says, then how can we get stuck in any place? Actually, you know, everything is constantly changing, basic principle of Buddhism. So, Dogen's version of Buddha and our practice of Buddha is Buddha going beyond Buddha. So, whatever realization you have, whatever awakening you have, please express that dream and keep going. Our practice is not about getting anything. Our practice is not about understanding anything. Our practice is perfect just as it is, when we can be completely present, just facing the wall, just facing our life, upright, breathing, being willing to be the person we are. This is the whole body just as it is. And Dogen emphasizes how could we be troubled by different vehicles.

[06:13]

It is just right. In many ways, Dogen Zen, Soto Zen's practice we do, starts at the top of the mountain. It's not about reaching any stage. It's not about levels of attainment. Sometimes those may be used as a kind of candy for children. Sometimes we may think of our practice in terms of stages and phases. And of course, our life has phases. really is just about, over and over again, just this. The whole body just as it is. So Dogen goes on, truly after Mahakasyapa broke into a smile at vulture peak, the 28 Indian ancestors could not add even the slightest thread. He says, without exchanging verbal expressions, simply match enlightenment.

[07:14]

This is direct pointing, not stagnating in intellection. So again, as I think for most Americans and students with our very active monkey mind and our craving for understanding and our desire to get a hold of something and put a frame around it and put it up on the wall and know that we have it, we want some And it's not that we can't understand the Dharma intellectually, that's part of it. But how do you express your body just as it is? How do you express your heart just as it is? This is our practice. He says, not caught up in the stages from living beings to Buddha already transcend the boundaries of delusion and enlightenment. How could we compare them with those who wait for enlightenment and verification from others? and who recognize shadows rather than their true self, or were those who abide in intellectual views about their essence and chase after lumps of dirt, never acting for the sake of others?

[08:18]

So the last point is important, and he refers back to this. And it's easy to read Zen texts and read Dogen and miss this, but the point of this is to act for the sake of others. Others includes ourselves, of course. It includes all beings. How do we sit for others? So when they come and sit satsang, naturally your first impulse to sit satsang probably had something to do with some problem that you thought, you know, maybe you could have some stress reduction or some feeling of wholeness or something, some problem brought you here in some way. And it's important to address that problem, but that problem is not your problem. That problem is your problem and the problem of all beings. So our practice is actually on that level. So this particular writing I mentioned in the beginning is a Dharma word.

[09:23]

It was a letter sent to a student. The Genjo Koan, which some of you know from Dogen, was also such a letter. And it's interesting to me that Dogen could speak this plainly in a letter to a student. Truly the point of the singular transmission between Buddha ancestors, the essential meaning of the direct understanding beyond words, does not adhere to the situations of the koans of the previous wise ones or the entryways to enlightenment of the ancient worthies. It does not exist within the commentaries and assessments with words and phrases, in the exchange of question and answer, in the understandings with intellectual views, in the mental calculations of thought, in conversation about mysteries and wonders, or in explanations of mind and nature. So we do all those things, sometimes, as Zen students or Zen teachers, in studying the Dharma.

[10:26]

And yet, what is the point of this singular transmission? What is the point of the essential meaning beyond words? Dogen speaks endlessly about this essential meaning beyond words. So, it's kind of a joke for me to come up here and talk to you. Dosho asked me before I came in if we wanted to sit first and, you know, I could have come up here and just sat. That's been done. So I have to say something. So I'm borrowing all Dogen's words But I'll say some of my own too. Dogen says, only when one releases these handles without retaining what has been glimpsed is it perfectly complete right here and fills the eyes. Behind the head, the path of genuine intimacy opens wide.

[11:27]

In front of the face, not knowing is a good friend. So part of our practice is to take care of our not knowing. Of course, there are things that each of you know. Each of you knows how to get out of your house and get to clouds and water. And you probably have a route that you know how to take. And probably each of you can recite, by memory, your social security number. There are many things that we know. And yet, our greatest friend is this genuine intimacy of not knowing. So there's another one of these Dharma letters. This is from while Dogen was still teaching south of Kyoto. And it's one of the letters, one of three letters we have to one of his nun disciples. He had many women disciples. This one's name was Ryonan, who he praised very much.

[12:30]

And I won't read the whole thing, but he says, do you want to know the essential, most important meaning of the teaching. And he goes on, but then he says, if you want to understand this mountain monk's activity, do not remember my comments. So Dogen was very sly. If you remember that, that you should not remember any of my words tonight, then you're remembering something. If you don't remember that, then You might also remember my words. It's okay if you remember what I say, or what Darshan says, or what some Dharma teacher says, or what you read in a book. But that's not the point. So sometimes I'll ask some students who've gone to a Dharma talk, what do the teachers talk about?

[13:36]

and often they can't tell me what I'm thinking. And that's okay. Sometimes they can't and that's okay too. But the point of these words is not these words. The point of our life is not some description. The point of our practice is not some formula or some system of stages of practice or some level of attainment or realization. It's, in fact, just this. Okay, so here's where the meat starts.

[14:38]

Because Dogen talks about something which I hadn't seen. I've been talking about this particular writing a lot because he lays out something really clear to me that I like, which is about the oneness of practice, realization, and expression. And he goes through it in lots of different ways. And probably some of you have heard, if you've read about Dogen or read Dogen, about the oneness of practice, realization. So, Dogen didn't make this up, but he emphasizes that our practice is not practice to get some realization in the future. And our realization or our enlightenment is not... In fact, there cannot be any enlightenment unless it's practiced. What would that be? That would be some idea of enlightenment, some delusion.

[15:40]

So in Getja Koan, Dogen says that deluded people have delusions about enlightenment. Enlightened people are enlightened about their delusions. So if you have some delusion about enlightenment or attainment or something like that, you should understand it and study it and really sit with it and see how it is. But basically, again, there is no practice that is not the practice of your realization right now. There is no realization unless it is in practice right now. And in this writing that I'm going to read some from, continuing this Dharma letter, Dogen goes beyond that to talk about the oneness of practice, teaching, and practice, enlightenment, and expression. or expounding. So, he says, within this true Dharma, there is practice, teaching, and verification, which is one of the words for enlightenment.

[16:44]

This practice is the effort of zazen. So there is some effort in our zazen. It's not that we can just sit and sleep and Well, there might be some effort in your sleeping too, but anyway. There's some effort, but it's not our usual idea of effort. He says, it is customary that such practice is not abandoned, even after reaching Buddhahood, so that it is still practiced by Buddha. And in our ordination ceremonies, lay ordination and priest ordination, In the San Francisco Zen Center tradition, we say, maybe it's in your ceremony too, will you continue following these precepts even after realizing Buddhahood? And of course, the person says, yes, I will. So when Shakyamuni Buddha, 2,500 or so years ago in northern India, sat under the Bodhi tree and had his great awakening, that was not the end of his practice.

[17:50]

That was not the end of Buddhism. That was the beginning of Buddhism, in fact. So practice is not practice to get to Buddha and then leave and go home and watch television or whatever. Of course, there could be practice that includes going home and watching television, but then where is your effort? Anyway, Dogen continues, teaching and verification should be examined in the same way. This zazen was transmitted from Buddha to Buddha, directly pointed out by ancestors, and only transmitted by legitimate successors. Even when others hear of its name, it is not the same as the zazen of Buddha ancestors. So this practice we do is the practice of Buddhas. Of course, when we are practicing as Buddhas, we also realize all of our grasping and anger and frustration and confusion and we may feel very deeply our pettiness or our habits and feel very far from Buddha.

[19:05]

But still, this is the practice of Buddha going beyond Buddha. So it's recommended to see everyone you practice with as Buddha. To see even people who don't know or think they're practicing as Buddha. To appreciate the Buddha nature of all beings. And many people we practice with, we can feel some gratitude for, some respect for, and it's quite easy. But sometimes the people who we have a lot of trouble imagining as Buddha, are our greatest teachers. You may know some of them. So even when others hear of its name, it is not the same as the zazen of Buddha ancestors. This is because the principle of zazen in other schools is to wait for enlightenment.

[20:10]

For example, their practice is like having crossed over a great ocean on a raft, thinking that upon crossing the ocean, one should discard the raft. The Zazen of our Buddha ancestors is not like this, but is simply Buddhist practice. So you may have heard that simile, when you reach the other shore, you put down the raft and keep going. But Dogen is saying, please carry the raft with you. After you get to the other shore and trudge up into the mountains, please carry that raft with you. So this is not how we usually think of our life. This is not how we usually think of practice in our ordinary mind. The world of fame and gain is about accumulating things, about investing in our lives, about getting ahead. And we can do that with spiritual practice too, all too easily.

[21:17]

But can you keep carrying the raft with you as you continue going beyond Buddha? Can you make the raft available to others who are also practicing going beyond Buddha? Dogen continues, we could say that the situation of Buddha's house is the oneness in which the essence, the practice and the expounding are one and the same. The essence is verification of enlightenment. Expounding is the teaching. And practice is cultivation. The effort of coming back and sitting on your cushion day after day, period after period. Tolkien says, even up to now these have been studied together. Then he says this wonderful thing, we should know that practice is the practice of essence or enlightenment and of expounding.

[22:22]

And the character that he uses for expounding also could be read as expressing. So... Zazen is actually a creative mode of expression, not a method to get somewhere else. He says expounding is to expound the essence of practice. The essence is the verification of expounding of practice. If practice is not the practice of expounding, it is not the practice of verification of enlightenment, how can we say it is the practice of Buddhadharma? So, actually, from the very first time you thought of spiritual practice, from the very first time you sat down and meditated, and right now, you are completely expressing your practice realization, right now. In our usual way of thinking, our usual way of understanding the life of Buddha is that he left the palace and practiced very hard for a long time.

[23:28]

And then he got enlightened. And then, at Brahma's persuasion, he went and turned the wheel of the Dharma and expounded the Dharma. But actually what Dogen is saying is that it's not that way at all. The very first moment that the Buddha realized the future, the Buddha-to-be, what we call him the Buddha-to-be, that he realized the truth of suffering, that he became aware of old age, of illness, of death, the very first time that he saw that we struggle and suffer because we resist the reality of our old age, sickness and death. In everything you do, you are expressing this right now. This expression is the expression of practice realization. So there's an old story about this practice realization, and Dogen's kind of turning it by talking about expression in the midst of it.

[24:33]

Maybe some of you've heard the story. It's a story about a student who came to visit the sixth ancestor. So in some of the teaching stories, in some of the koans, it just says, the monks asked, and there's a question, and there's a dialogue, but sometimes they tell you the name of the monk, and in that case it's somebody who became a great teacher later, and that's the case here. So this student who later became known as Nan Yue, and was one of the great disciples of the Sixth Ancestor, when he first showed up to visit the Sixth Ancestor in China, he went to visit to see him, which was the custom at monasteries, The Sixth Ancestor said, Where have you come from? And Nanyue said, Oh, I've been practicing at the National Teacher's Place. And then the Sixth Ancestor said, What is this that thus comes? Kind of a funny way to ask, Who are you? What is this that thus comes?

[25:36]

And Nanyue couldn't say anything, didn't know what to say. And he went and the story goes that he went and sat considering this question in the Zendo there for eight years. So sometimes in these dialogues, in these old teaching stories, it looks like they're zapping back and forth between the teacher and student, but actually a lot of times there may be other people around who aren't mentioned, or there may be some interval of time, maybe the student goes away and comes back the next day or the next week. In this story, they tell you that he went away and considered this question for eight years. What is this that thus comes? Finally, after eight years, he went back to the Sixth Ancestor and said, oh, now I can understand that question that you asked me when I first came here eight years ago.

[26:41]

You asked me, what is this that thus comes? And now I can say, if anything I say will miss the mark. It took him eight years to come up with that. He became a great Zen teacher. So then, the sixth ancestor said to him, well then, is there practice realization or not? And Nanyue proved that he had not wasted his eight years. He said, it is not that there's no practice realization, only that it cannot be defiled. So I think this is where Dogen gets his teaching of the oneness of practice realization. It cannot be defiled. And the six ancestors said, just this is what all Buddhas and ancestors take care of.

[27:50]

Now you have it. Keep it well. So I think Dogen is answering the question here, how is it that we take care of this practice realization, this practice that is not at all separate from the enlightenment of the Buddhas? It comes from, it springs forth from the enlightenment of the Buddhas, that is, the enlightenment of the Buddhas, and this enlightenment that is completely what we are practicing right now. it is the oneness of practice, realization and expression. So Dogon says, if expounding or expressing is not the expression of practice and is not the expression of verification, it is difficult to call it expressing the Buddhadharma. If verification is not the verification of practice and is not the verification of expression, how can we name it the verification of the Buddhadharma? Just know that Buddhadharma is one in the beginning, the middle, and the end.

[28:57]

It is good in the beginning, the middle, and the end. It is nothing in the beginning, the middle, and the end. And it is empty in the beginning, the middle, and the end. So, the point is, how do we engage just this? How do we engage our experience right now? How can we be willing to face the wall, to face our lives right now, without hoping for some enlightenment, or whatever you want to call it, sometime in the future? This is our practice. So, for me, Zazen is a kind of creative mode. Zazen is a kind of performance art. Zazen is a way of connecting with the steepest creative source.

[30:01]

Our Zazen is how we express our life. And my own experience and the experience that I see of people who sit with me is that when people connect with this creativity of Zazen, this performance art of Zazen, But then it gets expressed in various ways, in various creative modes. So some of you may have some mode of expression outside of Zazen, like writing poetry or playing music, or it could be studying, it could be singing, it could be running, it could be... I have a few people who are students of mine who like horseback riding. and their horseback riding is very much connected to their zazen. But even if, it could be just going for a walk, but there is in your life something that echoes the creativity of your zazen. So you may not have realized that your zazen is a performance art.

[31:09]

You may not have realized that in your zazen, in each moment with each Inhale, and with each exhale, you are completely expressing practice, realization, expression right now. But actually, that's a practice. So one of my favorite Zazen instructions recently is a saying by my favorite American Dharma poet, who's from Minnesota. So I recommend the mantra, or the koan, as you're sitting, to just ask, how does it feel? Whatever is happening on the wall in front of you, whatever is happening in your shoulders, or your knees, or your mudra, how does it feel? Not just what do you think about it, but how does it feel to be on your own, complete unknown, like a Zen student?

[32:12]

So this is a very useful Zazen instruction, I really recommend it. So we express our deepest self by looking into, what is it to be here right now? What is this practice realization right now? That anything I say about it will miss the mark. Nan Yue put us in on that. So every single word I've said tonight is off. But still, here we are sitting together. performing the ancient dance of dharma, of the Buddha ancestors. So Dogen continues, this single matter never comes from the forceful activity of people, but from the beginning is the expression and activity of dharma. So it's not what we think it is. It's not

[33:18]

doesn't happen according to our expectations or plans. So if you look closely, you will realize that nothing in our life or experience is exactly as we expected it. This is not the Dharma talk you expected when you set out to come to Clouds and Water tonight. It's not the Dharma talk I expected, even though I knew the material I was going to be using Our actual real life is raw, tender, naked, wild. Right now, what is it? How does it feel? So this creative aspect of zazen, you all know about it, or you all, maybe you don't know about it, but you all are it. Can you be present with myriad phenomena of your body and mind and your karma and your life and your sadness and pain and your joy and all of it right now with this inhale?

[34:37]

With this exhale? And as we are willing to do that, as we are willing to not know who we are but to allow some new creation to take shape in this body and mind and awareness and in our hearts right now, something grows, something is created, and it's not what you thought it would be. So for Zen students, it's not that you need to write poetry or play music or do any of those creative things. It may turn out that you like to do that, But just how is it to hold your body and mind and mudra right now in this period of samsara? So Dogen says this single matter never comes from the forceful activity of people. So that's a reference to something in the Lotus Sutra, the single great matter, which is

[35:48]

the reason for Buddha's appearing in the world, the reason for Buddha's practice appearing in the world, is the suffering of beings, is the effort to help others, to help all beings find their way to the practice where they can help others find their way, to help others find their way. This is why Buddhas appear. If there was no problem, there'd be no Buddhism. There'd be no need to sit like this. So, in some ways, your problem is your friend. Your problem is what allows you to fully express body and mind right now. So we have a responsibility. It's not that this happens automatically.

[36:50]

It's true that you're already expressing something right now in your posture, in the way you hold your head, in the position of your hands, in the quality of your breathing. How can we actually make the effort to express this right now, to practice this right now, to awaken to this practice expression right now? We have some responsibility. to do this for the sake of all beings. It doesn't mean just going out and helping others, it means also for the suffering beings within your own body and mind. The whole world is others. The whole world is yourself. So, you know, when you do Zen practice, it's very natural that our comparative mind will also appear.

[38:03]

We may think, oh, that was a great Dharma talk, or that was a crummy Dharma talk, or that was a great period of Zazen, boy, I felt really clear and awake, or that was a crummy period of Zazen, my mind was rattling around and I was sleepy, or whatever. Our mind does those things, still. how are you going to express the practice realization in a crummy period of zazen? This is the point of our practice. Our ideas about, you know, whether our practice or our enlightenment or our expression are good or bad are just our ideas, just our judgments. And when you see yourself making judgments and allowing your critical mind to compare this period of zazen and that period of zazen, this dharma expression and that dharma expression, you know, you don't have to make judgments about yourself making judgments. That's just more judgments. This is what our mind does. Still, in this space of creative expression, there is something deeper.

[39:11]

There is the joyfulness and the play and the sadness of generations and generations of Buddha ancestors in the past and in the future. And we are expressing them all right now. So Dogen says, we already know that there is teaching, practice, and verification within Buddhadharma. A single moment in a cultivated field always includes many times. Actually, we translated it that way, but literally he says that with a single moment in a cultivated field, there is no time that is not included. It's kind of in Japanese. In Dogonese he likes to use double negatives or sometimes quadruple negatives. So it's hard to untangle, but anyway.

[40:17]

We're not just practicing for our fellow practitioners here together, the people we know in this world who we practice with in one way or another, but actually We're practicing for Dogen, we're practicing for our grandparents, we're practicing for people 200 years from now. Right now. So Dogen finishes this Dharma words, the teaching is already thus, or already just this. We could also say the expression, so teaching is expanding the Dharma, turning the Dharma wheel, expressing our hearts and minds, which all of you are doing now, in one way or another. So this expression is already just this. The practice is also just this.

[41:21]

And verification or enlightenment is also just this. As such, we cannot control whether or not we ourselves can control the teaching, practice, and verification. He doesn't say we can't control it, he says we can't even control whether or not we control it. There might be times when you can control, when you can hold the Dharma in your hands, in your mudra, when you feel the whole practice, realization, enlightenment of... the practice, realization, expression of the Buddhas and ancestors in your mudra. Still, you can't control it, whether or not you can control it even. wherever these have penetrated, how could there not be Buddhadharma? So the effort here is about not just passively accepting that we are practice, realizing, expressing right now, but how do we take this on? It's not... if you just kind of passively think that you're doing it, that's not practice. So there has to be practice there, there has to be awakening there, there has to be expression there.

[42:24]

And they're all there, and yet we have a job to do. And our job is just to share this together, to allow our expressive hearts to be present in our lives. So again, I think our practice is a kind of creative mode of expression. Even if it looks like you're just sitting still for 40 minutes, doing nothing. It takes a lot of creative energy to really do nothing. It takes a lot of creative energy to really be willing to look at the wall, to look at yourself, to be with your breath, to see. How does it feel? So I think in our tradition we maybe get a sense of this through service, through chanting and doing ceremonies. And I don't know what the ceremonial forms are here, clouds and water, Dosho and I both practiced in Japan, where there are much, much more than here or Tassajara, where they have service for a good while.

[43:32]

Anyway, all of those forms, bowing, sitting, expressing my practice and my realization with our voice as we chant, offering incense, These are forms you can do at home, too. Getting up from your cushion and walking from Kinyin. All of these are maybe easier to see the performance art in than when you're just sitting still. So, there's an old American Zen saying, it speaks to this also, something like, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.

[44:36]

Here we are, and I can keep talking, but maybe I should shut up for a while. I'd love to hear whatever any of you have to say, or express responses, comments, questions. Do you know anything about the student that he wrote this letter to? No. This is, like they have the unknown soldier in Arlington, this is the unknowns of the student. Some of these letters we do know who they were to, but this one we don't. But then he wrote it down and put it in his writing in a Korok book so others of his students could read it. But, you know, we can imagine. So what do you think about this? What kind of student would Dogen have written this for? What do you imagine, Ben?

[45:40]

Well, actually, I picture this student very much like me. Probably so. Because his expression has come up in my practice. And... Well, there's at least for me a tension of like, okay. And so, just moving forward, knowing that I can't defile it, that I'm not hitting the mark, not hitting the mark. Being apt to authentically, truly be myself. And being held up by impositions. Mm-hmm. It's important. So did you hear the last thing he said? In the middle of trying to authentically be himself, he feels held up by inhibitions.

[46:45]

So this is part of, this is an important part of this practice expression, awakening. So Dogen elsewhere says, to be completely deluded throughout delusion. To be totally locked by steadfast, resolute zazen. So part of the function of this practice is that feeling, to see your inhibitions, to see your bad habits, to see the ways in which we're conditioned, to see how we are blocked from expressing all of the love in our heart. Be willing to be blocked. Completely be willing to be obstructed by zazen. Just sit with those inhibitions. That's a very creative act.

[47:46]

Things happen when you're willing to be completely blocked by yourself, by your ideas of yourself, by your habitual conditioned self. Wonderful practice. And they don't happen the way we expect them to. But still, in the middle of being totally blocked, you're alive. One of my early teachers said to be, he recommended being wild on your cushion. This didn't mean speaking or moving or, you know. Even as you sit upright and still, there's a wildness there. You don't have to go looking for it. You don't have to try and act out stuff and do what you think is wild. Allow the wildness of our own life and body and mind and heart to express itself.

[48:49]

And sometimes it takes a long time. And it's not going to happen the way you think it will. that basically realization has been cut out, that the interpretation of practice realization has become this, that it's just doing the form, and that there is no realization, or any talk of realization is kind of poo-poo. And I'm wondering how you see this in the light of Well, whatever your teacher says, you should listen to.

[49:50]

Should or shouldn't? Should. So I'm leaving after the weekend. He's going to be around. No, well, I think it's true, and I think it's always been true. It depends on what you mean by realization. There are different kinds of realization. So there is the realization that happens in a moment. Aha! There is the realization that when we feel some opening, when we feel some letting go, this is wonderful. That's not the realization that Dogen's talking about. But it's also wonderful. It's not separate from the realization that Dogen's talking about. So, I don't know. practiced in a number of different places in Japan, and, you know, I could make comparisons, but I think, you know, in Zazen, there's realization.

[50:54]

It's not that it's enough to say, well, I'm sitting Zazen, so there's realization, so, that's, you know, I mean, we do have to make the effort to express and engage it ourselves. So, I don't know. There were Japanese priests and teachers that I met in Japan who I liked a lot, tremendous respect for. But it's different for each one of us. How we see practice realization, how we see it happening in our lives, we don't have to figure that out or kind of map it. Again, it's not about our idea about it. But we do have to... Look, how does it feel? What is that authentic expression for ourselves? So, you know, it doesn't matter what's going on in Japan, actually. Here we are in Minnesota, or I live in California, or, you know, wherever we are, that's where it's happening.

[52:00]

And there's different ways of doing Zazen, you know, and Sometimes I talk about this in terms of Rinzai and Soto, but I think it's not Rinzai and Soto, because both are in both. There's different qualities of Zazen, and I don't think it's... Certain teachers emphasize one more than the other. And for certain students, in certain times, different ways are helpful, but there's one way that's kind of edge of the seat Zazen. Wake up right now! That intense. wonderfully dynamic. How does it feel? Look at it now. There's that kind of zazen. And it's actually very wonderful and useful to do that sometimes. And I'm afraid in my lineage, in Suzuki Roshi's lineage, we have more this kind of almost sleepy, settling in, gentle zazen.

[53:03]

So in my sitting, where I teach, I say to students, and I'm not saying this to you, because you should listen to what Dosho Sensei says, but I tell people, if you have to move in Zazen, fine, just do it quietly. If you have to get up and sit in a chair, fine, just do that. Because for me, it's not about getting something. And I know it's not that way for Dosho either, actually, but how can we sustain a life of how does it feel? So the teacher who I respected most, the teachers I practiced with in Japan, I really liked a lot, was named Shinkai Roshi. My last doksan with him, he said, I've seen him since then in America, but the last doksan I had with him in Japan at his temple west of Kyoto, he said, understanding is not important. Understanding is easy. The point is just to continue. So there is this quality of Zazen that is very dynamic and really, it's an intense question that in your nerves is lit, as Bob Dolan says.

[54:15]

But there's also how can we sustain our gaze? How can we keep looking at our life and being present in our life and being upright in our life? period after period, day after day, year after year, lifetime after lifetime. So I hope we can establish that spirit of sustaining Zazen in this country which is so damaged and diseased and in so much need of kindness and help. So that's my answer. That practice realization is constantly happening. I find it so disappointing. Yes. Good. Did you hear that? She just expressed practice realization. It's so disappointing.

[55:18]

This is it? Just this? So Suzuki Roshi once said, you know, you might get enlightened and not like it. Another time, he said, the problem that you have right now, you will always have. So please tell me about your disappointment. Somebody claimed I was a bad person. So many flavors of different expectations. Okay, well this is where I think the creativity of zazen is really important.

[56:20]

So I think one of the most important qualities in practice, for me, is imagination. And in some Zen teachings or some Buddhist teachings, there's sounds like they're saying we should get rid of our imagination, we should strip away our delusions, we should strip away our expectations, We should strip away the flowers in the sky. We should strip away, get rid of all those extra stuff. But I think there's one aspect of practice anyway, and this may not be relevant to all of you, so please, if you can use this, what I'm saying tonight, use it. If not, forget it. It's all right. But we create the world in each moment. Of course, there's also this. if we fall down and we go, boom, and it hurts. So, it's not that the whole world is your, it accords with your imagination. And yet, it actually is you.

[57:25]

So, our playfulness, our vision, our dreams, are really important to our practice. And it's not that we, and to think of that our life should match those dreams, well, that's kind of extra, you know. In some ways, it already is. You can bring that creative expectation, that imaging, that imagination, that play of possibility and awareness to your reality as you should expect. And it's not that the arising of the 10,000 things that you meet when you open your eyes or when you get up from your cushion will be what you think it is, but you're bringing your imaging, your imagination, your hopes and dreams to your awareness, changes the reality of the world.

[58:36]

So, you know, this is controversial. Do you know a little part of it? Blanche's husband Lou, one of my best friends, says that the motto for the Zen Dojo should be abandon all hope you enter here. And I understand why he says that, and yet I disagree. I think we should play with our hopes and dreams, not in the sense of thinking that the person next to us is going to agree with them. but that our willingness to imagine a peaceful world, our willingness to envision honesty and truth and kindness and awareness and sharing, that does change the world. So we don't understand how the world

[59:39]

comes to meet our dreams and expectations. Of course, it doesn't exactly. But together, we do have a tremendous power to bring positive value to the world. And we don't know how that happens in that world out there. So I'm going to talk more about this Sunday morning. But somehow, suddenly, the Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union collapsed. apartheid ended in South Africa, all relatively peacefully. Things change. And we can't say how they will happen. And in our own lives, too, things change. Problems that were there suddenly dissolve. And they don't dissolve by our trying to fix them, exactly. Now, sometimes we can go to therapy and kind of work on something and it helps, but how real change happens is more mysterious. And I think it has something to do with our imagination and our expectation. and our disappointment, and our willingness to confess our disappointment.

[60:43]

So what was a beautiful expression of practice realization for me was just the purity of your confession of your disappointment. It was very sweet, very touching. We need to be willing to express our disappointments, our dreams, our fears. We already actually do that in our body language, in our attention, in our holding back, and Part of our practice is that we can say, oh yeah, I am afraid. Oh yeah, I wish this was that way. Oh yeah, we can do that. Thank you. Maybe you could say something about the role of faith in practice Good question. He asked about the role of faith in practice realization. Yeah, practice realization, expression, is faith.

[61:46]

So, for me, in Buddhism, faith is not faith in something else. Faith is taking the next step, taking the next inhale, exhaling again. Faith is expression. In Kinyin, are you really sure that the ground will be there when your foot touches it? Well, we have faith. And even if it's not, if we fall 100 feet through the floor, please take that step. So faith is a kind of activity, a way of being. We take another breath, and then we exhale.

[62:52]

This is practice realization expression, and it completely depends on faith. So, I don't know, there are other words like trust or confidence. If you consider each breath, this next inhale that we're each going to take, completely depends on every other inhale that you've ever taken, or will take. So you can't just take a break of breathing. If you stop, if you decide not to inhale for 40 minutes, there won't be any more after that. So every inhale you take and every exhale you take couldn't be without every other inhale and exhale you've ever taken. Faith is like that. Our experience is so subtly interconnected with our experience, with our own experience and everybody else's experience.

[64:06]

So through sitting we get a sense of that, we get a feeling of that. So that kind of faith is a sense like hearing or touch or smell. I don't know if that helps. You spoke about the spirit of sitting for hundreds as opposed to sitting to carry your own bills. And I wonder if you could speak a little bit more about how to do that concretely. Sometimes when I feel like I'm trying to do that, it feels artificial in some way. And so is that OK? Do we put on the art list of doing it and slide into it? Or do we allow it to just emerge in some way into our city? Yeah, good question. It's already organically there. So we don't sit for others, you know, as some kind of, well... Actually, it's not separate.

[65:11]

There are many others within each of us. So when you sit for others, you are sitting for yourself. And some of you may have had the experience of doing some Hospice worker being with elderly people or volunteering with the sick, and my experience of it and what I hear from others is that it's helpful to you to do that. So we're not separate. So we don't have to go to the Zen Do and sit for the other people in some artificial way. If you're sitting as well as you can, if you're fully expressing your practice realization right now, that is helpful to others. your effort, your intention to just ask how does it feel to just face the wall is supportive and helpful to everybody else. So it's happening. It happens organically. And everybody else's effort, you know, it's not, they're not separate. They're really not separate. It's hard for us to, we can hear those words, you know, we can hear this nice Buddhist, you know, idea that sounds, you know, sweet or something that, you know, self and other are connected.

[66:17]

as we start to experience it, as we feel our connection in these subtle ways. We may or may not recognize it, but it actually is the way it is. So sometimes it might be, you might try it as an artifice, as you said, as you put it. You might try to, it's just for others to see how that feels. And that might be a way of sitting for yourself. So we have Buddha statues and we try and sit like that. We follow each other, we follow examples of many others. And that actually changes how we are. I don't know why I'm sitting. Good. a lot of ideas and motivations.

[67:24]

And over the last year and a half, a lot of those have fallen away. Especially, there's still ideas of what is enlightenment. There's an idea, somewhat dangerous idea, to let go of all ideas of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. I had this expression come to me. If you want to improve yourself, go see a psychologist. Well, that's true. This isn't a self-improvement. Yeah, there is transformation, you know, in Zazen. I mean, things do change. My example is that I quit smoking a couple months after I started sitting just because I'd been you know, came out of the zendo one evening and I'd been enjoying following my breath and I just didn't want to smoke anymore. Those kinds of things can happen. We do actually let go of things.

[68:27]

That happens, but that's not the point. So I wouldn't have continued sitting if it was just a way of stopping smoking. But we do, you know, in very subtle ways, we do have ideas of enlightenment, ideas of attainment, ideas of what we want to get. And the idea of not having any ideas about enlightenment, that's subtle and that's something to work with. And to say that it's just another idea, that's good. See how that works. But the main practice is just to see what's actually going on, which is that you do have ideas of attainment or enlightenment or whatever. So study those. So Dogen says in Genjo Koan, to study the way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be awakened by myriad things in body and mind of self and others drop away. But actually it's enough just the first sentence. To study the way is to study the self.

[69:28]

All the rest of that happens not based on our idea of self. When we study the self, all the rest of that happens right then. It's not like stages. Just study the self. Just see what your delusions about enlightenment are. Look at them. And then there is, you know, there are, things do change, but it's not about some program of change. Anyway, that's how I'd say it. Maybe one last response, question, yes? You said that for you it's not about getting something. And then while you were talking, you also said that if there were no problems, there would be no need for Buddhism. So to me that sounds like getting something. I found myself agreeing with you when you first said that and then I pulled back a little bit and asked whether that was true or not. Would there be no Buddhism and no need to practice if there were no problems? So what about practicing for no reason at all?

[70:33]

Yeah, we don't have to practice because there are problems. In fact, it's possible that you at some point may not have any more problems, but then somebody's going to come and give theirs to you. So here you are, clouds and water. There's lots of people with problems here. You may not have any, but somebody will share theirs with you. There's always some problem. This is why there's job security for some teachers. There's always some difficulty and some pain in the world. But is that motivation to practice? We practice just to practice. We practice because it's the most beautiful way to be. So this is the expressive side. It's the most wonderful way to express our love and our deepest heart. And whether or not there are problems, we can do that. But even, as I said, the world, the nature of reality, the First Noble Truth, is that there is disappointment. So this suffering, you know, it's...

[71:37]

The Sanskrit word dukkha, which is usually translated as suffering, means... The etymology of it comes from a wheel that's a little bit out of line, a little bit out of kilter. Things are not quite right. But, of course, in the world we're living in, in our culture and society, things are so far off that we don't have to worry about that. There are lots of problems out there. And if you think there aren't, then you need to look some more. But we all know that they are. But it's not that we practice to solve the problems. The problems feed our practice. For me, it's just the most satisfying way to try to be me, to try to share this life. Somehow I'm reminded of this story. Maybe you've heard this. I don't know if Dosha's told this story about a time when Everybody in the whole world was enlightened except one person. Have you heard that story?

[72:43]

No. So there was a time when everybody in the whole world was enlightened except for one person. Actually, I think I heard this story first through Gary Snyder. But anyway, this one person at some point realized that he wasn't enlightened. And this was a big problem. And he left home. And he wandered around. To make a long story short, eventually, one night he sat down under a tree. And finally he awakened. And they called him the Buddha. So anyway, that's the story. I don't know why I said that. Maybe a question reminded me of that. So, you know, I don't know why we practice. My teacher says he doesn't answer why questions. But how do you practice? How do you express yourself? This is, I think, what Dogen is getting at and part of, anyway, what comes up in this world of Zazen.

[73:50]

So thank you all very much for your good comments.

[73:53]

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