I'm not sure whether to go to the teaching or to the empty pillars next, the pregnant pillars. Let's go to pregnant pillars. We need a little something to purpose at this point, don't you think? Well, I'm not quite sure that we're ready for the pregnant. Let me... It's possible. It might be perfect after lunch. Yeah, well, we'll get to that, but let's go to 266 now. Let's get into some real meat. So this one I like because it really goes in... It shows Dogen's awareness of how he's training these monks, how he's training these disciples. And it shows his awareness of his own modes of teaching and of how they're impacting his disciples. So this one's a little more complicated.

[01:04]

So it starts off by saying, sometimes. And that sometimes, Arubeki is the same characters that he uses in the essay, Being Time. So, some of you may know the Time Being, which is Dogen's essay in Shobogenzo about time. It's really wonderful about how time is being, and being is time, and how time is not some external container, and how our engagement in practice is time. But anyway, it also just means sometimes, and here it's just sometimes. But it just has that overtone. Okay. So, sometimes I, Ehe, enter the ultimate state and offer profound discussion, simply wishing for you all to be steadily intimate in your mind field. I'll read through the whole thing. Then sometimes within the gates and gardens of the monastery, I offer my own style of practical instruction, simply wishing you all to disport and play freely with spiritual

[02:11]

penetration. Sometimes I spring quickly, leaving no trace, simply wishing you all to drop off body and mind. Sometimes I enter the samadhi of self-fulfillment, simply wishing you all to trust what your hands can hold. So these are all specific examples of how he's teaching, how he's training his disciples. And each one, I like it that each one, he's talking about particular teachings, all of which he talks about a lot in other places, and then their impact on his monks. And then he says, suppose someone suddenly came forth and asked this mountain monk, what would go beyond these? I would simply say, scrubbed clean by the dawn wind, the night mist clears, dimly seeing the blue mountains form a single line. So often he has these very poetic capping phrases.

[03:12]

So let's go back to the beginning and look at what's going on here. So he gives four different modes of teaching that he's actually engaged in in the monastery. So he says, sometimes I enter the ultimate state and offer profound discussion, simply wishing for you all to be steadily intimate in your mind field. So sometimes... So part of what he's talking about here has to do with the five ranks, or the dialectic between sameness and difference, between the ultimate and the particular, or the universal and the phenomenal, which is the background of Soto philosophy. It's talked about in the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, or the Sandhokad. Do you chant that here sometimes? Yes, I do. Ah, good. And it's also in the five ranks. So we're on 266.

[04:14]

So the first of these modes of teaching that he discusses is that he comes from the ultimate, so this is one of the five ranks actually, and offers profound discussion, and he simply wishes for all of his monks to be steadily intimate in their mind field. So to be... So what does that... How does that feel to you? How does it feel, steadily intimate in your mind field? Comments, questions? The way I read that is being in my mind field, just being intimate with all the perceptions that arise up, and all of my emotions, and all of my discursive thinking, and just to intimately receive all of that without avoiding or swirling. Mm-hmm. Okay, good.

[05:17]

It's a very stable, but not necessarily... For me it doesn't indicate necessarily a real deep samadhi, but it's just a stabilized, quiet mind. So, because it seems to me in these four, he's talking about different levels, and he's talking about dropping off, but this particular one doesn't sound like dropping off, but just a stable, being intimate at the moment. That's interesting. I don't know if they're different levels, or if they're different ways of talking about the same level, but yeah, I think it is... So, mind field does have to do with being present with what's there, but there's also this steady, intimate quality. So, to me... So again, there's no right and wrong responses about this. We're kind of playing with this together. But, for me anyway, that one reminds me of, to study the way is to study the self. It's this kind of practice of persistent intimacy with one's own experience, to actually see

[06:23]

how it feels, as I was talking about last night, in this moment. And yet, it's kind of... It's interesting that when he's speaking from the ultimate state, then the student meets from this place of study of the self. So, also, mind field could have different levels. It could be, I think what you were referring to, Brent, just the phenomenology of our senses and experience, but also mind field, the field imagery... Again, this is... Part of why I like Dogen, to go back to your question, is that he's using this Zen way of talking about things, which is to use images, to use metaphors, to talk about things, rather than to... Rather than some philosophical discourse. There's a different way of talking about the Dharma in a lot of Indian Buddhism,

[07:26]

or in Tibetan Buddhism, or at least Goloka. And, if you're studying Nagarjuna, there's a different way of discoursing. Here, he's using these images. So, steadily intimate in your mind field. Also, mind field could imply the kind of ground of mind. So, there could be various different depths there. But it's not that there's one right answer. This is where imagination comes in. How do we... How we meet these teachings has to do with how we are willing to play with the images that Dogen's playing with. How we're willing to turn them and be turned by them. So, this is where our own... Part of why I like Dogen is that he's demanding that we... It's not just that you read something, and you get it, and you understand it, and he tells you what to think. It's actually, you have to enter into, what is he talking about? What does it mean that he's entering ultimate state,

[08:28]

and then offering profound discussion? Does that mean that sometimes Dogen's discussion is profound, and sometimes it's shallow? What is he saying here? So, part of the practice... In a way, I had talked last night about Zazen as performance art, but Zazen is also just inquiry. Zazen is about the question in your nerve that's lit, as Dylan says. So, how do you... So, it's not that there's a right or wrong way to respond to this, but how do you... This is about how to work with Dogen. How do you feel about being steadily intimate in your mind field? Which aspect of the mind field is that? What is the difference between being steadily intimate and being shakily intimate? Yes, Tracy, first. The steadily intimate part is what really caught me back and offering profound discussion.

[09:29]

As you were talking about turn and being turned, what that feels to me like, oftentimes, is... I kind of contacted being aware of my own avoiding, of my own fearfulness. And this seems... The steady intimacy feels to me like a willingness to have the courage to stay upright no matter what comes. I got... It feels to me like when I was doing Tungario, I got... That's what comes to mind when you say, how does this feel to you? Some of that intimacy, which was really quite horrifying in some ways, but the ability to just stick in there and then when you find out that you're not, beginning again, is my experience of this. That comes up to me. Good. Yeah, it's horrifying. It's disappointing. It's really difficult. There's a verse that's in one of the commentaries

[10:33]

in the Book of Serenity that says something like, why is it that the deepest intimacy feels like enmity? So the person who you're most close with often is the most difficult. Feels like enmity. The greatest intimacy. Tom. I'm hearing it a little bit different in that... Good. In the... I don't know if it's Chinese, but it says, intimate in your mind feels close to intimate with your mind. You're hearing it as intimate in the mind. I hear it as sending you to that space-like sublime, which is then intimate with Dogen's communication. So it's not a narrow intention, Dogen, but it's the opening up, just being completely at home in your mind field, which then is the place from which you can be intimate

[11:36]

with Dogen's profound communication. So you're reading it as for you all to be steadily intimate with my teaching in your mind field. Yeah, good. So here's... Dosho encouraged me to bring the Chinese, so I'm not sure it's going to help, but... The character that we translated as profound literally means deep. It's also just for deep, like deep water. Yeah, and it's literally field... It's like in the rope chant, field... How do you... Formless field. Oh, do you do formless field? Good. There's a different bad translation. Yeah, so it's the same field. And it's...

[12:40]

Intimate, it was our translation for the character Mitsu, which is also the character of Mikkyo, or esoteric Buddhism. So intimate, that character, I think intimate's a good translation, obviously, because that's what I used, but it also means hidden, secret, dark, fertile, has those meanings too. It's also esoteric, it's the character that's used for Vajrayana. Mysterious? Mysterious is part of it. I think intimate is the best single word, but anyway, it has those overtones. What does the word mean, Mitsu? Mitsu, yeah. It's like there's a fascicle of Shobokenzo, Mitsugyo, Mitsugo, for intimate words or mysterious words. I think it might be an enlightenment unfold. Anyway, it's that character. So that intimate, that intimacy... So it's intimate with those overtones. To be... And there's no preposition,

[13:42]

so you can read it in all those ways. It's just literally, simply wishing you all... We read it as... Actually, we put in mind field. It's just field. Just in the field, steady and intimate. So actually, we read in mind... That was our interpretation, to put in the character mind. So a number of hands up. Susan first. I was... It just reminded me, maybe... The previous piece was just eating a bowl of rice. Yeah, so that's part of the mind field, right. Just not running away. That's right, not running away. So this field of practice, this field of your life, this field, it's the mind field, but it's also just the field of awareness. But it's literally the character for a field, like a rice paddy. Liz? Yeah, I was...

[14:42]

I'm just recently reading something that Dogon's written on the enactment Buddha, and he uses the phrase a lot in there. Maybe you can translate that. Which essay is that? Enactment Buddha. No, it wasn't your translation. It's Enactment Buddha. Dogon's Enactment. We're talking about Enactment Buddha. This is Dignified Bearing. Dignified Bearing, yeah. Oh, that's... Yeah, that's... Yeah, I did translate that, but not the translation you're using. Okay, yeah. It's a better... I'm going to send Brent a better translation. Make her a copy of it. Yes. Great. Well, there's a phrase in there of Buddha relaxed, body relaxed in the great truth, which I really love. I think that's really great. And as much as I really like the enmity aspect that you're talking about, I think that's really vital. But it's also nice to have that feeling of relaxing into. I agree. I also wanted to say that the way that Dogon uses metaphors is so wonderful,

[15:43]

as opposed to defining something and pinning it down. It's so creative and it's evocative rather than... The whole... Essentially, not defining something is defining something is going to kill it. Yes, exactly. Yes. So this is why imagination is so important in this practice that we have... And all of you are bringing your own your own imaging of this to the text. So these are interactive texts for you to allow yourself to bring your practice to. These are not didactic texts. Ever. Okay, so that's the first one, which we could talk about a lot more. But let's... I have this problem, I'll confess right now, that when I'm teaching, I usually have more material than I can ever get to and I want to cover a lot of it. So we could spend the rest of the day just on this first sentence

[16:45]

and that would be okay. And my teacher would probably do it that way. But anyway, I do want to share more of these discourses with you even in this one, even though it's sort of a little shameful not to spend the whole day just on this one, if not just the first sentence. But... So I'm sorry, I'm just confessing I have this problem that I have. Okay. Sometimes within the gates and gardens of the monastery, Dogen continues, I offer my own style of practical instruction, simply wishing you all to disport and play freely with spiritual penetration. You know, this one reminds me of A. A. Shingy. Within the forms, within the gates of the monastery, within the practices, within the routines of the monastery, I offer practical instructions. How to pick up your chopsticks when you're eating oyoki, how to get off the tan and on the tan, how to, you know, just all of that, that very routine,

[17:46]

how to conduct yourself in the monastery. And he offers this, he says, simply wishing you all to disport and play freely with spiritual penetration. Any responses? Interesting combination. Play freely with spiritual penetration. That's kind of what you're saying all along here. Right there. Right next to me. You don't have to be serious, intense, and deadly, sober, to have spiritual penetration. Well, you might, you know, play at your spiritual penetration by being very loud. You're not serious. Stop, I'm getting tired. Yes? Putting the two together, I mean, just reading into it, although the way he says it, you know, sometimes within the gates of the garden of the monastery, it doesn't have a very austere quality in the way that he's presenting it. But, you know, what he's saying is that he offers his own style

[18:47]

of practical instructions in which monastic instructions can be pretty severe. So there is that quality. So he's offering, what he's saying to me, is that he's offering these practical instructions which are difficult, you know, to enter the monastery in that way, by these rules. He's offering those instructions so that you can play and be free. Yes, exactly. Yes? Remind me of a phrase from Mahamudra about going freely. Yes, yes, yes, exactly. Yes, good. Yeah, so... It also contrasts in a way with steadiness. And now, by penetrating, you're not being steady. You're actually occasionally dropping down further. So, nothing works all the time. Yeah. Well, he gives four modes here, you know. And this Jyota, this Dharmaloka's question, is really interesting. Yeah, so we could say,

[19:48]

you know, one question is, are these four different or the same? Another question is, are these four, if they're different, or even if they're the same, are they, you know, stages of practice? Is one deeper than another? They might be different and they're all kind of on the same level. But, you know, so, you were talking about, a couple of you have talked about it as, you know, shallow or deep, you know. To disbord and play freely. Yeah, and Hongzhe talks about it in terms of romp and play in Samadhi, it's the same characters. So, Hongzhe uses it, it's not, it's in Zen, too, in other places, but Hongzhe uses it a lot as a, to talk about the kind of concentration. And here, it's being used by Dogen, this romp and play, disbord yourself and play, in the context of the practical instructions

[20:48]

in the gates and gardens of the monastery. So, this Samadhi in Zazen, you know, that we might think of as only in Zazen, actually, here, Dogen is bringing it into, you know, again, like the one about bring out your bedding and sleep and, you know, sit at your bowls and eat rice, into everyday activities. So, again and [...] again in Eikoroku, Dogen emphasizes the, this, the interfusion, the inter- reactiveness of Zazen mind and simple everyday stuff. So, this is, this is really one of the main things that you can see in drilling into his monks who then later made Zazen. Yes? Yeah, my impression with these first two, they're a little bit juxtaposition as if the first one, to me, seems to speak

[21:48]

to the, to the ultimate and the second to the relative level. And often has a criticism of Zazen as that would be, that the only path on the ultimate is on the, is deep. But it seems to me he's, he's integrating that, that this, this is about the relative, spotty concentration within the relative realm. Still within the walls of a monastery, but, yeah, well, it goes beyond the walls of the monastery. So, I'm going to talk about this in yet a different way tomorrow morning, but, yeah, so, so, and I was saying last night that, to me, Zazen teaching is all about the ultimate realm. It's all from the mountaintop. That, anyway, my, my way of teaching is not about stages or steps. It's just all, and you can understand even if you have a program of stages and steps, you can understand each stage and step as being that, actually. It's not about

[22:49]

getting anywhere. It's not that, that after 30 years your Zazen will be any more Zazen than your first Zazen, actually. This is, kind of, this cutting through level of Dogen's teaching. And yet, the emphasis in Soto training is, how do you express that in everyday activity? You know, how do you, in the monastery, how do you express it while you're cutting carrots, while you're sweeping the path, while you're, you know, cleaning the Zendo, and so forth. And then, of course, that applies to the world around us too, and how do we express it in the world? And that's the challenge that we have in non-monastic Soto Zazen in America, which is what we're doing. Even if you're following the monastic program, you know, we're living in the world. This isn't the mountains. So, it's nice to go to

[23:49]

a place like Tassajara for a few years as I did. But, even there, the point is to come back. Yes, Trish? Oh, I was, I've just been struck throughout this by how his, he's always mumbling. In other words, he's talking about his teaching styles and none of them are about lecturing. They're all about engaging. So, that behavioral thing. Well, when he says the first one that offers profound discussion, that's probably, you know, that may refer to some of the Shobo Genzo essays, I'd imagine. He's talking about that. yeah, he, but even in his teaching, it's not, there's this playful quality which I'm trying to elicit for you. Yeah, I mean, throughout the Ehe Kuroku, I think, you get a sense that he's, I don't think

[24:49]

there's been a talk where he hasn't invited, he hasn't asked a question and invited a response. So, there's always that temptation to enter and try your, try your skills. Yeah, for Dogen, it definitely is a question. So, whether or not you're working on a koan formally or anything like that, you know, sitting upright, facing the wall, breathing in, breathing out, there is a question. And Dogen's encouraging that, pushing, he's pushing it. So you can see his training of his monks in Ehe Kuroku is this constant kind of pushing. What is this that thus comes? How does it feel? It's there over and over. So the third one, he says, sometimes I spring quickly, leaving no trace, simply wishing you all to drop off body and mind.

[25:50]

Anybody imagine Dogen springing quickly? Ah! Sometimes he does it with that sort of wrist thing. Pulls up his wrist. Or throws down. Yeah. I always have a feeling when that happens, like what just happened. Well, he does it so that you'll drop off body and mind. Isn't that his death poem? He sprang into hell. All of his teachings are his death poem. Every single word he wrote was his death poem. So dropping off body and mind is good practice. Please enjoy. The fourth one is, sometimes I enter the samadhi

[26:52]

of self-fulfillment, simply wishing you all to trust what your hands can hold. This is interesting and I don't know how... Do you know about the samadhi of self-fulfillment? The Jijyu Zamai? So, there's a book called The Wholehearted Way that I translated with Shobako Okamura which has Bendo Wa in it which is about this samadhi of self-fulfillment. It's one of Dogen's many names for zazen. And it's very interesting. So the characters for... Zamai is samadhi or concentration. Jijyu literally, Ji is self. Jijyu as a compound means fulfillment or also enjoyment. So, this is basically just the practice in which you learn how to realize yourself, how to enjoy yourself, how to fulfill yourself. That's what zazen is. And part of that name, though, the Jijyu which is a compound means fulfillment,

[27:53]

literally means to receive your function. So the Jiyu is the same as Jukai when you receive the precepts. So, fulfillment or enjoyment of yourself is when you can receive your position, your role, your dharma. Dogen also talks about engaging your dharma position. So, this is the practice. This entering the samadhi of self-fulfillment, he says, I enter, let's see, does it say I? Probably it just says entering. It may be, just given the structure of this, he's talking about himself first. Yeah, no, literally it's just, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, no, he says, Ehe, at the beginning of each sentence, he says, Ehe does this. Ehe sometimes, literally Ehe sometimes enters self-fulfillment samadhi

[28:55]

only wishing for people to trust, to have faith in what their hands holds. It's a really wonderful image and, you know, presumably if he's entering this samadhi of self-fulfillment, this allows this field of samadhi to be available to all of the monks too. So he's been, you know, the samadhi of self-fulfillment is one of his earliest teachings about Satsang. And yet he says he does this, partly I'm playing with it because I want to say that we do it, you know, he's talking about him doing it for the monks, but actually I feel like this is, you know, when he does it he's suggesting that the monks do it too. But the point of that he simply wishes, so you were asking about faith, simply to have faith you could read this, in what your hands hold. So

[29:58]

how do you use what's at hand? How do you use the realities of your life? When you're fulfilling yourself, when you're accepting this body and mind your own karma, your own place in the mandala of Buddha's world, how do you use what's in your hands? You don't. You don't? Too bad. Of course not using it might be a way of using it too. When I try to use things that's when I get in the most trouble. okay. That's interesting. If it's you using it to get something for you, maybe that's a problem. But this is not

[31:00]

Well, this is in the samadhi of it's for you to trust what your hands hold. This feels to me like the 10th precept. Not defiling the total treasure. Okay. Having a confidence in what your hands hold. Almost operating as if. It's like I'm blind and now if I could really be blind I could enter in. Any other comments on what the hands hold? One of the words that came to mind as you were reading that to me was reverence. You know it's not reverence. The other one that came to mind was trusting it to do what it what you need. What you need at the moment accepting that whatever it is that the hands are holding this has to be. This is not

[32:04]

this is this isn't um not interjecting anything between the experience. Mhm. Sweeping the floor not making it into So you sweep the floor with a broom right? So this is an image of skillful means. Um probably somewhere actually there's an image on there's a relevant image on this altar over here. So the Bodhisattva of Compassion in Buddhism is named Avalokitesvara or Kanzeon or Guan Yin and one of the one of her main forms has a thousand hands. And many of those hands hold various implements .

[33:04]

So to me this is also an image of skillful means using what's at hand in that way. So it's not so as Tracy was saying it's not using um in a sense of trying to uh implement some usage but it's just this response of using of So do you know the story of um uh actually a monk in our lineage Yun Yan was asked by his brother why does the Bodhisattva of Compassion have so many hands and eyes? And he responded it's like reaching back for your pillow in the middle of the night. So it's using like that reaching back for the pillow. Sometimes I enter the samadhi of self-fulfillment simply wishing you all to trust what your hands can hold. So this is this

[34:09]

it's interesting to compare Jiji Uzama this samadhi of perceiving and fulfilling the self with um this image of skillful means of the Bodhisattva of Compassion using what's ever at hand to respond to the suffering immediately in front of us. Yes, Tom? I also hear um that this is a inappropriate response for a human being is what our hands can hold. Our hands can't I know it's sometimes they say they can't hold the sun and the depths of the ocean and all that but mostly our hands just hold chopsticks and tools and very small human things and so in the context of self-fulfillment being self-fulfilled as a human being um walking simply.

[35:10]

Good. Other comments? Going back to what Tom just said the line that's been coming up for me is when you are in a song of a grassroots community you should open your hands and walk in the sand. Thank you. Well, isn't it open your hands and relax completely? Open your hands and relax anyway somewhere in there relax completely. But go about a hundred years and relax completely something like that. I translated that myself so I should remember it but anyway. Yes, Chris? Can you talk a little bit? Right,

[36:16]

so yeah our hands hold emptiness and of course emptiness is no different from cups and fans and papers and pens and watches so emptiness you know is not outside of is not something other than the implements of the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Emptiness is not other than forms. Emptiness is the way forms is. Emptiness is the nature of tools. So yeah Dogen said that when he came back from China it's in somewhere in Ekoa I forget but he said that he came empty-handed he didn't bring anything back from China except that his eyes were horizontal and nose vertical but of course

[37:32]

you know the emptiness that he held in his hands when he came back from China included this amazing mastery of this koan literature in China in which he demonstrates all over the place in Ekoa Roku he just had this phenomenal grasp of this literature so yeah his hands were empty and full so sometimes we say emptiness sometimes we say suchness but emptiness is not separate from things emptiness is not the absence of things emptiness is the way things is including the things we hold so when he says simply pushing you off the threshold of your hands do you think

[38:33]

he means literally looking at your hands and holding them physically like this he does mean that what else does he mean well I was wondering if he was making some kind of a point about how real so-called physical objects are not separate from this and somehow they're self-developed from what I understand what that is right that's right but I think yes so he's talking about I mean he's just been talking about you know working in the gardens and gates of the monasteries too so he's also talking about the tools you're using to clean the monastery and to take you know and the tools you're using to hit the bells and to hit the Han and so forth all of those tools too so our hands hold those but you know could he have said or could he also mean simply wishing

[39:34]

you all to trust what your ears can hear he's talking about having faith in your experience following the experience and not not doubting right so that's there I think he is talking about skillful means in terms of the image of the Bodhisattva of compassion with all the hands and with all the implements but yes I think you're right that he's also talking about it metaphorically to trust what your eyes can hear to trust what your ears can see suppose go ahead you know it felt a little bit like we glossed over the part about sometimes I scream quickly leaving no trace simply wishing you all to drop off body and mind you know I know dropping off body and mind was like a turning point

[40:34]

in his training at China could you say more about dropping off body and mind in these contexts okay dropping off body and mind is good practice dropping off body and mind is so when you say it's good practice I'm just quoting Dogen but it is good practice I agree with Dogen it's good practice it's also what is it it's dropping off body and mind it's also he also basically it's just another name for zazen like the samadhi of self-fulfillment when you sit so in the bendowa he says when you sit just upright fully present in body and mind holding this buddha mudra in body and mind all of space becomes a mind so dropping

[41:36]

body and mind is also he says in some places that dropping body and mind is the complete perfect enlightenment of buddhas dropping off body and mind does not mean self-immolation it does not mean that you should get rid of thoughts so there's this popular American Zen heresy some of you may have heard of it that if you this idea some of you may have even entertained this that if you got rid of all your thoughts that would be enlightenment and if you just had a period of zazen where there wasn't this damp constant thinking that that would be it has anyone ever had that delusion so there is this heretical school in America of lobotomy zen and if you

[42:37]

want to you know get rid of your thoughts you can do that operation I think you can probably find a doctor who will still do it but that's not dropping off body and mind in fact dropping off body and mind is to see that you do have a body and mind dropping off body and mind is using body and mind dropping off body and mind is letting go of body and mind which is not holding on to your idea of your body and mind dropping off body and mind is taking care of your body and mind very well dropping off body and mind is allowing a flexible body and mind. Should I keep going? I think this would be a good idea. I have suffered under the delusion of looking up to being such a concentrated state that even though you're thinking creative thoughts, you don't experience yourself as being the

[43:42]

originator of the thoughts. Are you the originator of any of your thoughts? I didn't... Really? Do you sometimes experience yourself as originating your thoughts? Yeah, I experience that sometimes. Ah, wow. It's in the delusions. Amazing. Wow. Has anybody else here ever had a thought? Ever what? Ever had a thought. Oh, good. Some confessions. Yeah. So, um... That's... So, confessing your delusions about body and mind is dropping off body and mind. So, you know, there's this very, very helpful, um... Have any of you ever heard of Yogacara? There's this, um, system of eight consciousnesses, and the sixth consciousness is, um... So, this first one is eye...

[44:44]

It's the eye and eye objects, and then there's eye consciousness. There's an awareness of a visual field, and we can also do that with the sound of a bird, the sound of a fan. There's this ear consciousness, and so forth. Nose, tongue. That's a nose, taste, and, uh... Smell or taste and touch consciousness. And the sixth consciousness is mind consciousness, and this is the consciousness of mind objects. Do you know what mind objects are? Thoughts. Right. So, it's just another sense. And in Zen, Dongshen recommends that you see with your ears and hear with your eyes. So, maybe you could think with your nose, or smell with your thoughts, or... I don't know. Anyway, um... There's also the seventh and eighth consciousness beyond that. The seventh is the one that imagines that the world is separate from us, and that there's self and other. It's kind of the Buddhist original sin.

[45:46]

And there's the eighth consciousness, which is the storehouse of all of our karmic tendencies, which we can reinforce in various ways, wholesomely or unwholesomely. But the sixth consciousness is very important to your question, and it may be very helpful to dropping off body and mind, that one of our senses is just that we're aware of mind objects, otherwise known as thoughts. So, when you sit Zazen, it happens sometimes that there may be a thought that appears. Have any of you experienced that? Yes. Sometimes two or three. Sometimes many, many. Now, it happens sometimes that there's a space between those thoughts. Have any of you experienced that? I actually deeply believe that all of you have. Whether you know it or not, whether you've had that thought, did you experience that space between your thoughts or not? I am firmly persuaded that you have all experienced that,

[46:49]

or else you wouldn't be here in this room. …beard and robe up in the sky who made it all. Actually, there is Brahma, the creator deity in the Indian pantheon of deities. He's a rather minor deity, actually, in Buddhism, a projector deity. At the same time, I like the word creation. So, when Judeo-Christian people talk about creation as the world, the phenomenal world, I kind of like that. I kind of feel like, yeah, we're all creating it right now. So here we are in there, in the creation otherwise known as St. Paul. And all of you have many more ideas about what St. Paul is than I do, because I've only been here a couple of times. But still, you know, together, here we are in this creation. But I'm not sure that has anything to do with your question.

[47:54]

So, do you think that we create our thoughts right now? Do you think… Well, what just came up when I said that was the title of, was it Mark Epstein's book, Thoughts Without a Thinker? So thoughts exist independent of… The brain continues to secrete thoughts. Are you separate from your brain? Don't take that personally. I don't know. I'm not sure how useful those kinds of questions are. Here it is. What are you going to do about it? So, where did it come from? I don't know. Here comes another one. Anybody have a thought? Yes, Kurt, can you tell us a thought?

[48:58]

Pick one, anyway. The breeze is nice. So, where did that thought come from? Is that a thought that came from Brent, or from me, or from Susan, or from Kurt? Or maybe it came because Tracy turned on the fans. So she used her hands. But then, your feeling it nice didn't happen when she turned on the fan. It happened just as you were saying it. Anyway, so Dogen says, Sometimes I spring quickly, leaving no trace, simply wishing you all to drop off body and mind. So, part of the practice, the good practice of dropping off body and mind, is, again, to confess the ways in which we're holding on to body and mind. So that's what we've been talking about. Or to think that we can control body and mind. Anyway, so Dogen then says, after going through all these different teaching modes,

[50:13]

suppose someone suddenly came forth and asked this mountain monk, what would go beyond all of these? All of these teachings he's just enumerated. Dogen says, I would simply say to him, scrubbed clean by the dawn wind, the night mist clears. Dimly seen, the blue mountains form a single line. Comments? It's beautiful, first of all. Yes, it is. Thank you. And, particularly the first part, scrubbed clean by the dawn wind, the night mist clears, reminds me of body and mind study, the way being in your own ancestors, there's something I've been working on, this idea of just continual practice, and you naturally are your own ancestors.

[51:14]

So in the morning, dawn, scrubbed clean by the night before, it's just the dawn. Good. Other responses? Seeing clearly. Seeing clearly. Although it's dimly seen, too. So this, you know, one level of this, you know, part of how Koan language works is that there's this very conventional level, and then there's this, I don't know, metaphorical or allegorical level, too, right? You know, together, completely. So I imagine him coming out of the zendo in the morning, after early morning sitting, and feeling the dawn wind, and feeling his body and mind scrubbed clean, and, you know, he's up in the mountains, there's looking around,

[52:15]

and there's this night mist, and it's clearing, it's almost gone. And then he looks off in the distance, and there's the Blue Mountains walking. And it's way in the distance, and it's like a single line. Are those many peaks, or is that one line? So, you know, we could talk about this last line about the Blue Mountains in terms of the many and the one, and that whole dialectic I mentioned of the five ranks and so forth. There's a feeling to it that's very nice. It reminds me of the line from the Joel Muir sonata, You are not yet what is you, and this kind of coming out, what is you perspective in this. Exactly. The Blue Mountains form a single line, yes. This is the way you do it, to drop off all these previous teaching styles.

[53:16]

Just drop off the teaching, just drop it off. Stop seeking. Yeah, and to just be out in the mountains, just to meet that, the immediacy of that. Susan? Also, the Blue Mountains form a single line, which is what it is for me, because including all of them, dropping them all off, including them all as well. Yes. They're so penetrated that it's only dimly seen, and there's a single line, so they're fused. And also that... Yes, it's inclusive. The ancestral lineage as well. Good, good. So, mountains is an image for Zen teachers. So many Zen teachers are named after the mountain where they teach.

[54:20]

So mountains, yes, this definitely refers to the line of ancestors, metaphorically. Yes, definitely, good. So, you know, clouds are... So there's a line in Hongzhi, Hongzhi talks about the clouds being fascinated by the mountains. So clouds is monks. Clouds and water refers to monks. Literally, clouds and water is the translation for the name for monks in Chinese and Japanese. And so the relationship of clouds and mountains is... There's a literal aspect of that, but here the mist is clearing, the clouds are clearing. Scrubbed clean by the dawn wind. So he's also referring to his students here. In the night, the monks are the bodies and minds of his disciples. The mist is clearing.

[55:22]

The night referring to Zazen too, of course. And the blue mountains form a single line. There's this whole lineage of teachers who allow us to be sitting here in the Clouds and Waters Zen Center, enjoying Dogen. And yet it's also just the physical image. So it's almost too much to talk about the lineage of the teachers, but that's also here. But don't take that as an explanation. There's a lot more that's here. And then it's also, as one of you said, there's this whole setup of all these different teachings that he's talking about how he's training his monks today, aging, and these different modes of teaching and how they respond and what the effect... To me, one of the things about this Dharma Hall Discourse that really gets me is how the subtlety of his awareness

[56:24]

of the impact he's having on his monks and the effects in his awareness of the... Not just his awareness of the kinds of teaching he's doing and what effects they have on his students, but he sees this in this deep, poetic, philosophical way. He sees it in terms of these different teaching modes, in terms of the dropping off body and mind and dropping and playing the spiritual penetration in the monastic forms and being steadily intimate in their fields of their mind and body and having faith in what's at hand. And yet, what goes beyond these? So, I don't want to say too much about this,

[57:26]

and there's a whole lot more that you can... that is here in this Dharma Hall Discourse. But maybe you can... You know, this gives you a start, at least, at studying this one. So, I don't know if it's time for lunch. So, there's no time to do another one really quickly? Okay, we won't. There's a lot more good stuff. Come back after lunch. Well, we'll see. Thank you all. So, we're resuming... 45 minutes? Let's aim for 45 minutes, and if it's a few minutes later than that, it will be. Would that be 12 or 1.30? No. 1.30.

[58:26]

Let's try and be back by 1.30.

[58:30]

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