So during this practice period, we've been studying Genjokula of Tengen Zenji. And so there are a few lines that we didn't finish in our class. So my subject, until we finish, is going to be So, this is not all of you who are in the class, but I'm just going to take it up from where we left off, and treat each section individually, because each section stands alone. and can be treated that way, or I will treat it that way. I thought of reading it from the beginning, but I'm not sure that would be any help.

[01:19]

That would take up a bit of time. But we've come to the well-known part, which I'm sure all of you are familiar with. This is where Dogen talks about the fish and the bird. So even if you are familiar with it, Suzuki Roshi's commentary on Sando Kai, in his Sando Kai lectures, he talks about the monge above your window. And being bothered by, he says, you shouldn't be bothered by the blue jay who is doing this over your window.

[02:39]

Just think the blue, just let the blue jay enter your heart and enjoy the blue jay. So Dornian says, When a fish swings in the ocean, there is no limit to the water, no matter how far it swings. When a bird flies in the sky, there is no limit to the sky and the air, no matter how far it flies. However, no fish or bird has ever left its element since the beginning. When the need is large, it is used largely. When the need is small, it is used in a small way. Thus, no creature ever comes short of its own completeness. Wherever it stands, it does not fail to cover the ground. If a bird leaves the air, it will die at once.

[03:40]

If a fish leaves the water, it will die at once. Know that water is life, know that air is life, life of the bird and life of the fish. there are further implications and ramifications. In this way, there are practice and enlightenment, mortality and immortality. So I think this section speaks for itself and doesn't need any commentary. So I will comment on it. So when a fish swims in the ocean, there is no limit to the water, no matter how far it swims. And when a bird flies in the sky, there is no limit to the air or the sky, no matter how far it flies.

[04:44]

And ocean is like your environment, but actually it's more like your true nature. So there's true nature and environment. This can be construed either way. We're always swimming in the ocean of Buddha nature. We're always flying in the sky of Buddha nature. And we're always swimming in the ocean of our environment. And we're always flying in the sky of our environment. This statement is about the non-duality of ourself, our environment, and our pure nature. So sky and water are like buddha nature.

[06:01]

No matter how far you swim, you can't get out of it. No matter how far you swim, you can't get out of it. So it's like no matter what we do, people feel that when you're bad, you're losing it, and when you're good, you're gaining it. But actually, it's not depending on good and bad, or right or wrong. We just can't get out of the period. So, when we have evil karma, Buddha nature squeezes us and makes us suffer. And when we have beneficial karma, Buddha nature supports us and gives us a... reveals enlightenment.

[07:05]

But it's not dependent... Buddha nature is not dependent on good and bad and right and wrong. So, you know, when the fish swims in the ocean, There's no limit to the water. You can't get out of it. No matter whether you're good, bad, right, wrong, or indifferent. And the same goes with the sky. Another name for Buddha nature, of course, is emptiness. And another name for ocean is emptiness. And another name for Sky is emptiness. So emptiness is the great leveler that makes everything equal and also makes everything different.

[08:10]

So we're always coursing in our true nature. not necessarily realizing it. Some may realize it and some may not, as Bill Gates says. We're all coursing in our nature, which is enlightenment, but some may realize it and some may not. But it doesn't matter as long as we practice. So we identify ourself with various things. I'll get to that. Wow. So, then he goes on to say, however, no fish or bird has ever left its element since the beginning.

[09:29]

So, this is our element. When the need is large, it's used in a large way. And when the need is small, it's used in a small way. kind of interesting statement. Why do we feel incomplete, that we need something more? This is like, wherever we are, how do we find ourself? How do we find our true place, wherever we are? Our example, of course, is Zazen. Because it is the most confined, maybe not the most confined, but it's confined enough so that it's the smallest place.

[10:37]

It's the place where you have the least wiggle room. And yet it's the place where you have the most expensive environment. At the same time, it's big and small at the same time, and it's immeasurable. When we sit in Zazen, we are just one with the whole universe, which is immeasurable, because We're no longer discriminating. But it's also the most confined, smallest space. So we sit in the grain of sand.

[11:46]

We're like the grain of sand expressing the whole universe. So this is our place, our endless immeasurable space. This is like the dynamic activity of the universe taking place in the grain of sand. That's what Zazen is. I mean, I don't want to explain, I don't want to define Zazen, but that's what Zazen is about. Allowing yourself to expand, to fill the whole universe. Experientially, you may not feel that.

[12:48]

I'm just sitting here, nothing's happening. I just sit there and nothing's happening. But if you actually present yourself to the universe with all of your, totally, all of your energy, totally expressing yourself, totally offering yourself to the universe, then that's what happens. If we just sit expecting something to happen, nothing will happen. So, it's also, you know, there's a saying, a short bamboo is short, a long bamboo is long. In other words, everything, the short bamboo expresses itself completely as a short bamboo.

[13:50]

The long bamboo expresses itself completely as a long bamboo. But long and short are simply comparative values. The short bamboo fills the whole universe. The long bamboo fills the whole universe. It's not a matter of big or small. It's like, you know, you think about enlightenment being Dogen talks about the moon, and previously he talked about the moon reflected in the water, and the depth of the drop is the height of the moon. So the moon reflected in the water is enlightenment penetrating thoroughly into person. But the height of the moon, the depth is equal to the height, so there is small enlightenment and big enlightenment, but it's still the same, whether it's big or small, it's still the same, but there's no end to how expansive it can be and how narrow it can be.

[15:13]

The depth of our practice expresses the depth of our enlightenment. So when our practice is not so deep, even though there is enlightenment, the trace of enlightenment is there. It's the same enlightenment, but it's not as expressive. The light is not as strong as when it's deep. So he says that wherever it stands, a creature, it does not fail to cover the ground. Yes, you say, well, you know, I'm sitting here in this spot, but yet this spot covers the whole ground. This spot covers the whole earth. Usually, it's usual for humans to divide the earth up into little pieces. North America, and there's Canada, and then this is California, and this is Berkeley, and then this is Russell Street, and so forth.

[16:33]

But actually, it's just one whole piece. You can say, we're sitting here in Berkeley, but actually, that's just an idea. It's a construction. Recovering the whole Earth, wherever we step, recovering the whole Earth. So, Dogen's idea, his understanding is very vast, and not so narrow. So if the bird leaves the air, it will die at once. So the bird leaves the air, in order to exist. That's its environment. If the fish leaves the water, it will die. The water is its environment. But the bird doesn't necessarily think, I'm living in the air.

[17:36]

And the fish doesn't necessarily think, I'm living in the water. But when we pull out the fish out of the water, the fish knows something. So what Dogen is talking about is our nature. Our environment is our nature. If we separate ourself from our true nature, we die at once. So, he says, know then that water is life and that air is life, like with the bird and like with the fish. Here, when we identify with ourself, then we have this idea of birth and death.

[18:56]

and our separation from the subject and object. I am the subject over against the object. If we identify with life itself, then we step off of the Self-centeredness is like I exist, or I exist as over against everything else, and I am the center. When I am no longer the center, then we identify with life itself. And we simply become part of the whole pattern of life itself, which includes myself.

[20:09]

But when I center on myself, then I exclude myself. That's how we exclude ourselves, by identifying, by creating a self, a separate self. And when we create a separate self, there's birth and death. Because what it is that dies is that self. When that self is no longer the center, then there's simply the interconnectedness of all life. And we leave it up to our nature to determine how that goes. The bird is life, and the fish is life. Not just a part of life.

[21:13]

The fish is... The whole life is there in the fish. The entire life is there in the bird. You know, I often say, when breathing takes place, we say, I am breathing, but actually, it's just universal life doing its thing, because you don't have anything to do with it. I don't have anything to do with it. I can make it fast or slow, but I really have nothing to do with it. The blood runs through the veins. I have nothing to do with that. All of this stuff is the interdependence of nature working together. And then I have this idea about I, which is okay. We have to have that. But that's not our center. That I needs to center on Buddha, on our nature.

[22:19]

So discrimination is what creates the schism. And yet we have to discriminate. But we need to discriminate on the basis of non-discrimination. So water itself is life. Air itself is life. Our environment itself is our life. It's our life plus our surroundings. So wherever we go, our surroundings are this, where our life takes place. That's our ocean. That's our air. But it's all in peace. So to find ourselves

[23:23]

Where we are means to find ourself as us, plus our environment, or as our environment. We influence the environment, and the environment influences us. Wherever one is born, they say, I want to go home and be buried there. But we're all just people, right? What does that have to do with place? the border. We're all trying to preserve our place. And we're products of our place. And we fight other people in order to protect our place or to get their place as our place. Which we've all done. So our environment creates us and we create our environment.

[24:34]

Sometimes we say the environment arises with us. We think, we tend to think that there is this place that we're born into and it already exists before we're born there. But actually it exists when we enter. and it rises up as we enter. Someone else may be in that same symbol or same place and the world arises for them when they enter. It looks like the same world but it's a different world for each one. So how do we surrender to life?

[25:39]

We're always working real hard to work with it. How do we cooperate? So that our ego, our self, is not trying to separate all the time, but cooperate. So in Japan, there is this word, wa, which means harmony. In its highest sense, it's like the basis of the society, which means great harmony. And as an ideal, it's quite wonderful. It's kind of like in Bhutan, it's a gross national product, it's happiness.

[26:52]

unhappiness, I would say. We really live an unhappy life. And we try to carve out our happiness out of it. We try to carve out our piece of happiness out of this cash cow, which is called America. Sorry. It doesn't mean I don't love it, but I can see what's happening. So, life is a bird, life is a fish. Beyond these, there are further implications and ramifications. You can keep talking about this for a long time. In this way, there are practice and enlightenment, mortality and immortality. That's interesting. Mortality is an expression of immortality.

[28:07]

So mortality and immortality look like two things, but actually they are the same thing. Mortality and immortality are the same thing. if we want to use that term, immortality. Not that our momentary life is based on our true moment.

[29:26]

Eternal moment. Momentary life is an aspect of our true moment, which doesn't go anywhere. Mortality is like a limited life and immortality is like unlimited life. So practice enlightenment, I think it's practice and enlightenment, I think it should be practice enlightenment and mortality and immortality. And that was practice enlightenment and limited life and unlimited life. So practice enlightenment encompasses both of those.

[30:41]

So I often speak of It's not that life is the opposite of death, but birth and death are the two activities, and life is what encompasses both of them. Otherwise, it's nothingness. These are the two extremes. forever and never. One is eternity and the other is when life is completely cut off and there's nothing.

[31:51]

So those are the two extremes which Buddhism takes in the middle ways. It's neither internal nor... what's that word? Neolithic. Neolithic, yeah. So, a person has two aspects of life. So, you can speculate on what happens after you're no longer breathing. Nonetheless, we can talk about it. As long as we know. Nobody knows. It's fine to talk about it. Thank you. This keeps coming up really strongly, so I thought I would throw it out there.

[32:56]

It seems as human beings, in human form, our water, our environment, the way we construct it, is all about separation. So we have language, we have boundaries we have Israel and Palestine. It's all about separation. Is that necessary? Is that just inherent in human life? Or are we moving somewhere with this? Or what do you think? That's a good question. Why do we do that? Well, the easy answer Self-preservation creates an ego. But that's only part of it. Self-preservation creates needing. And then when we have everything we want, when we have the basics, then we want more.

[34:03]

Because we're on that path of desire. So the path of desire creates more of a bigger and bigger self. And then we just want more, and we don't know how to control ourselves. And there is a teaching about how to control ourselves, but we don't pay much attention to it. Even though we have laws and rules about it, we don't pay attention to it. We live in a dualistic world. So, dark and light are always interacting and fighting with each other and vying for something. And we have both of these parts. As long as we have this dualistic split. But it's what makes the world go round.

[35:04]

You know? It's what makes the world go round. You know, if everything kept running very happy, We'd all be very unhappy. We'd all be really unhappy if you were happy. So... You really think that? Yeah. So you're saying it is inherent in taking human form. What's inherent? What is inherent? That's an interesting subject, inheritance. To explain it in Buddhist terms, we have all the seeds of behavior, both inherent and new, in our life as a seed consciousness. And as we proceed to act one way or another, we keep planting more seeds as we act, and then we keep watering the old ones,

[36:12]

And they keep hatching. So the chickens just keep hatching. And we keep coming back around to them. Can we intentionally move them in one direction rather than another? Through ignorance. It's called ignorance. That's what ignorance is. Not realizing how we're creating the karma that's causing our suffering. That's exactly what Buddha said. that the First Noble Truth is that we keep creating this karma over and over again and we get caught in it and we don't know how to get out. It's like the dinosaurs get stuck in a little ray of darkness and they couldn't get out. We just can't get out.

[37:14]

And we keep working, you know, one generation after another, and then pretty soon we create some freedom over here, and then we create some bondage over here. And we don't realize how we're tying ourselves up in bondage. We don't realize that. And there's so many millions of examples. We went into Afghanistan on a pretext. We went into Iraq on a pretext, thinking that we were going to gain something, and we just got stuck in the labrea targets of Afghanistan and Iraq. And the general in Afghanistan is criticizing the president.

[38:21]

Today they're going to have a big power outage. Apologize. And keep fighting. Keep sending more, more stuff. Give me power. We don't know how to, we don't know how to, how to, you know, Too many people have odds with each other. It's crazy. So it's a battle. This is the eternal battle of human life. It just keeps going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. So how do we find our freedom within that? How do you save all sentient beings? Thank you. I'm not sure if this is accurate, the way I've got it, but I've sort of got it in my head that there's Buddha nature and there's human nature.

[39:30]

And within Buddha nature is human nature, and within human nature is Buddha nature. And I think it's kind of like with delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. I mean, if they're inexhaustible, you're going to vow to end them. What you're talking about is finding peace within. I'm human and I'm going to go out and put my foot in either my mouth or someone else's. And you know, and I got to figure out how to live with that because that's what Buddha nature sort of puts me in the spot of doing. I've got to make a way to sort of screw up and Be good about it? Don't screw up. It comes so easily though. Right, so how you save yourself and the other person that you're screwing up with is your practice.

[40:39]

In other words, when you make a mistake, you try not to make it again. This is karma. Karma is just that every time we do something, we have to do it again, because the seams just keep... we get on the wheel. Oh yeah, let's do it again. Let's do it again. How do you stop from turning the wheel, so that you're always making the same mistake over and over again? That's the practice. But with human nature we're always going to make a mistake. Human nature is basically acting out of our ego. Buddha nature is acting out of our true self. So you want to be acting out of your true self rather than acting out of your ego. small self. But you're always acting out of your small self.

[41:46]

But if your small self is in the palm of your big self, then you say, tell me what to do, you know. Instead of, oh, I got an idea, I know what I'm doing. So, yes. And the secret of the White House The two what? Two things. One is forgiveness and repentance. We hate those two things. But that's the way out. That's the way out. Instead of forgiveness and repentance, it's an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Until as Gandhi said, until there are no more eyes or teeth. And if you just look at what's happening, There it is. BAM! OK. BAM! OK. BAM! OK. This is a punch truck. The world's punch truck.

[42:50]

We live in this cornucopia of wonderful life here in Berkeley. It's amazing that this is a little oasis of sanity, more or less. But at least we're trying. And that little place of sanity, that's our human self being in the palm of our Buddha self. Yeah. Right. Got it. Yes. David Chambers said in the front of his book, Thank you and okay. Thank you and okay. I'll give you a thank you and okay t-shirt. I have. Okay. Of course. Thank you. Okay. Thank you and okay.

[43:50]

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