Hi everybody, good morning. It's Diane Mitchell-Hamilton on the line, and this morning we have again our guest teacher, Taigan Van Leyden, who's joined us again for this series on Dogen's Essays, and today is the second of three in the series. And I just want to welcome everyone who has joined the call. It looks like there's lot of good friends and some people that I don't know also, and I can see people who are in Canada, who are in South America, and a couple of people who are on the call from Europe. So I want to, as well as just, you know, across the United States right now, so please, thank you very much for taking your time to be here. It's a great honor and a great pleasure always to be on the line with you and to appreciate the preciousness of this moment in the study of Buddhadharma. And I'm really thrilled that Tighe and Dan Layton have joined us. You all know that he's a Zen priest and a Dharma successor in Suzuki Roshi's lineage, and he's also the author of a number of highly acclaimed books.

[01:05]

Faces of Compassion is one of my favorite, and also Zen Questions that we're working with. And he has the Ancient Dharma Gate in Chicago. Back in Zen Gate. What did I say? Oh, Ancient Dragon's Gate. Got it, got it. Not just the Ancient Dragon's Gate, Ancient Dragon's Zen Gate. So Taigan, thanks for being here. It's a great pleasure. Well, I'm very happy to be here and to continue. And so today, we'll continue with Flowers in the Sky that I started last time. So I want to review just a little bit and continue with the text of Flowers in the Sky and also cover Dogen's being time today. So what I want to do is actually just wait for questions and discussion until the end and hopefully have some, hopefully allow some good time for discussion. So we'll just do that at the end. So we started on Flowers in the Sky last week.

[02:09]

And just to review a little bit, One of the things that Dogen does a lot is to encourage shifting and opening of different perspectives to see the limitation of our usual human perceptions. So in the Genzo Koan we talked about last week, for example, he talks about riding in a boat in the body of water and thinking that the shore is moving or being out in the middle of the ocean and thinking that the ocean is round because we can't see all the particularities of the configurations of the shoreline. So he talks about practice in the same way, and he's concerned about overturning our usual prejudices about reality. And this was even more the case, well, he does this in Flowers in the Sky, and even more so in Being Time, which we'll talk about also today.

[03:10]

his essay on time and temporality, which is confirmed in terms of modern physics in many ways, and also is about, well, we could say about seeing multiple dimensions. So, especially Dogen overturns conventional Buddhist views of reality, and conventional Buddhist prejudices about how things are, to see through our usual ideas about, you know, gaining enlightenment and destroying delusion, but instead to act and see through both delusion and enlightenment, and act in both delusion and enlightenment, instead of trying to, as he says in Genjo Koan, that enlightenment is about seeing delusions, and delusion is about having delusions about enlightenment.

[04:19]

So, going to the text of Flowers in the Sky, we talked about, just last week on page 69 in the Cleary text, how the whole phenomenal world, where's that line? Yeah, towards the top, all the phenomena of the material world, as well as fundamental enlightenment, fundamental nature, and so on, are called flowers in the sky, which from conventional perspective, flowers in the sky are, you know, cataracts or delusions or obstructions to seeing. But Tolkien is interested in not just being prejudiced against the phenomenal or conventional reality and trying to grasp onto or abide in ultimate reality, but how do we integrate whatever we see of ultimate reality into our everyday activities? So to actually see that phenomenal reality and ultimate reality are not separate. So the whole phenomenal world is just flowers in the sky.

[05:23]

So that's kind of the direction of this text. And I want to continue. We got up through about page 69. I want to start in the text, Flowers in the Sky. Again, the query, translation, Sherbrooke Enzo's essays, on page 70. So, back in my notes, that text. So, on page 70, in the middle, he says, you should know that the sky is one plant. Sky inevitably flowers, just as all plants flower. And then he talks about the precise moment of this arrival of the flowers has never been arbitrary, about 2 3rds of the way down the page. He talks about apricot and willow flowers always bloom on apricots and willows. So each kind of flower blooms in a particular way on a particular tree.

[06:25]

Apricots don't bloom on willow trees and vice versa. And sky flowers bloom in the sky. The final paragraph, the blooming of flowers in the sky is also like this. They don't bloom on any other plants or trees. So each plant blossoms in its own way. This is the point here. I think of this in terms of my students, that each Buddha nature, sitting on each cushion, blossoms in its own way. I can't tell anyone how they can be Buddha. Each Zen practitioner, each person, the Zen practitioner, blossoms and gives forth Dharma in their own particular way. but each one is, but each plant is its own kind of, has its own kind of flower.

[07:33]

And then he says at the top of 71, to learn that flowers in the sky are not real, but other flowers are real, is ignorance of the Buddha's teaching. So, all, so there are all kinds of flowers. And this word, so just to think of flowers, again, I mentioned this last time, I think each flower is a verb. here. So, my friend Jean Reeves, who translated the Lotus Sutra, a wonderful new translation, relatively new translation, talks about it as the Dharma Flowering Sutra. It's not really about, in Japanese, it's the Hokekyo, the Dharma Flower Sutra. Lotus Sutra is kind of an English name for it. The point of the Buddha work, so we talked last time about how in the Self-Performance Samadhi, Dogen is talking about the Buddha work, all of this is based on the Bodhisattva vow and the Buddha work that we are all doing, and that work could be described as flowering the Dharma.

[08:37]

So again, each plant blossoms in its own way, and all flowering is real. So to make judgments about, you know, some flowers are real and some flowers are not real, is a kind of limitation of our perception. Um, there's a little further down on page 71, it's still near the top. Um, uh, he quotes an adept who said, the flowers have never been born. And then Dogen says, the manifestation of this message is, for example, the principle of the flowers have never been born and never perished. The flowers have never been flowers. The sky has never been the sky. Um, so It goes on to talk about, we shouldn't get confused about existence or non-existence. Flowers are always being imbued with colors. The colors are not necessarily limited to flowers. So how each plant blossoms, it has its own particular time of blossoming.

[09:45]

Each color has its own way of expressing itself. This is, of course, contrary in some ways to our usual way of thinking. And flowers in the sky seems like nonsense to us, but again, if we think of the sky as a single plant, that's maybe what it looks like to beings looking down on our planet from some other place in the solar system or from some other solar system. the whole sky, the whole atmosphere is one flower emanating from the earth. So part of what Dogen is doing in this essay and very much in Being Time is shifting our perspective on reality. To see from different perspectives and different dimensions opens up our possibility of acting in the world. Again, how we do the Buddha work is

[10:46]

not about trying to judge what exists and what doesn't exist, but how do we actually allow the dharma, the flower, how do we allow expressions of reality to open up and to be shared in our everyday activity? That's what the concern is here. I'm gonna skip ahead, and again, I'm not talking about, everything in all of these essays, I'm touching some points, and in the discussion, if you want to bring up other points, you can, but, you know, well, just in the middle of page 72, he has this, he's commenting on a poem from Shishuang, or Sekiso in Japanese, and there's this line, nirvana and life and death are flowers in the sky. So, Uh, you know, he says, Nirvana is unexpectedly perfect enlightenment, the resting place of the Buddhists and Adepts, as well as disciples of Buddhists and then Adepts of this.

[11:52]

Life and death is the real human body. So Nirvana and life and death are these things, they are flowers in the sky. So, uh, we tend to hold on to, again, he's, he's, he's, uh, trying to push us to look at what we think of as real and non-real and not get so caught in that, to open up our view of reality. On page 73, jumping ahead, he has this quote from Great Master Kosho in Chinese Langya, in the middle of the page, what a marvel the Buddhas of the Ten Directions are basically flowers in the eye. So this is, so Dogen isn't making this stuff up. He's citing, he's taking things from, you know, he's taking things from the Chinese masters and expanding on them. So Longyan said, if you want to know the flowers in the eye, they're basically the Buddhas of the Ten Directions.

[12:58]

If you want to know the Buddhas of the Ten Directions, they're Not the flowers in the eye. If you want to know the flowers in the eye, they are not the Buddhas of the Ten Directions. If you understand this, the fault is in the Buddhas of the Ten Directions. Don't understand, the disciple does a dance. The self-awakened one puts on makeup. So, I'll let you ponder that. But, commenting on that below, Dogen says, if it is not in the eye, it is not the abode of the Buddhas. flowers in the eye are not non-existent, non-existent, non-void, non-substantial. They are of themselves the Buddhas of the ten directions. So our assessments about all this are just that, are just our assessments. So, um, but this is, you know, contrary to, again, conventional Buddhist views that we should get rid of the flowers in, in, in the sky that we should get rid of, delusion, try and get a hold of something called, something that we imagine called enlightenment and so forth.

[14:03]

This is a wider view of reality. So just a little bit more in this essay. On the last page, on page 74, talks about another Chinese master who said, sky, flowers, so this is, well, in the last paragraph, sky flowers emerge from the earth. So this is a wonderful image, and just to go to the very end of the essay, Tolkien says, there are sky flowers that emerge from the earth. There is the whole earth that blooms from the flowers. Therefore, know the flowers in the sky have the meaning of causing both earth and sky to bloom. So I talked about this last week, that the Chinese character for sky is also the Chinese character for emptiness, is also the character for space. So where do we separate Earth and sky?

[15:05]

Where do we separate Earth and space? Or where do we separate form and emptiness, actually? Space includes our entire planet, and the floor that you're sitting on right now is also just space. And if we want to separate, you know, the Chinese separated earth, heaven and humanity, but where the earth stops, the sky begins. We're used to looking, pointing up at the sky, but the atmosphere actually comes all the way down to the concrete or grass outside your window. So, anyway, sky flowers emerge from the earth. The whole, all of the Dharma flowers from the earth. And, you know, we're used to thinking, you know, from some perspective, Buddhism is an earth religion. And Buddha, when he was awakened, touched the earth to witness that he was the Buddha.

[16:09]

And yet also, we have flowers in the sky. That's a little bit about this essay, Flowers in the Sky. And if you have questions about this, let's wait till after I talk about Being Time and we can talk about them together. So, I'm jumping to this very famous essay, probably the most commented on essay by Dogen, maybe Genjo Koan also, but Being Time is... challenging, and he talks about, Dogen does talk about time in other places, and my book on Dogen and the Lotus Sutra talks about his view of space and time, and they're connected, but this particular essay, it's not so long, but very dense, very difficult. People have compared it to Heidegger, anyway.

[17:15]

I want to kind of say some things in the introduction and then look at some parts of the text. So he's talking about time, temporality, the nature of time. And he says, he's basically saying that time is being, time is our existence, time is us. Time is not only some objective external container. I think that's how we usually think about time. You know, we have a certain amount of time before this class ends. And we may all have clocks or watches or something available. I guess people today don't use watches. I'm still from the last millennium. But anyway, people use their cell phones to check time now. But anyway, time is not only an objective container. What Dogen is saying is that time is being, time as existence. So just the word, the title of this is uchi in Japanese, being time.

[18:20]

But this phrase, these two characters put together, uchi, being time, also just means sometimes. It's a very common word in Chinese and Japanese for sometimes. It's just an ordinary, you know, the word sometimes is the way of translating this. But Dogen here is taking that apart literally. The first character, u, means existence. or to have, and g is a common character for time, so sometimes this has been translated as existence time, or the time of being, but we could just say being time. And he says very much that being time is not separate from us. He's not negating clock time, but he's saying that's only one way of seeing time, and he's encouraging us to look at time itself, to study our perspective, our limited perspective on time and temporality. The clock time is only one valid perspective on time. So, this is actually, you know, pretty clear.

[19:24]

So, I don't know how long you're used to sitting Zazen. I know some place, we usually sit 40 minutes or sometimes 35 minutes. And I know some places sit 50 minutes, and some places in Japan I sat 30 minutes. however long your standard period of Zazen is. Probably all of you know that some periods go by very quickly. Some periods seem interminable, and you're sure that the dawan or whoever hits the bell has gone to sleep. So our actual experience of time is not the same as clock time. So, right away there, you can see that time is not some objectively valid container. And what Dogen goes on to say in the text is that time is multi-directional. Time moves in many different directions.

[20:26]

The nature of time is flowing. So, I'm going to be talking to you from the query translation, but I also may reference the Waddell-Abe translation in Hartdorf and Schobogenzo, and Kaspar Nahashi's translation in Moon and the Dewdrop. And this essay, and there are other good translations of this essay, this essay particularly is one where looking at a number of different good translations is helpful. But at any rate, so different translations talk about flowing or passaging or presencing. a word that Norman Waddell uses, which I like. He also talks about syriacum passage. I don't know what that means, but anyway. The nature of time is that it's flowing, but it's not what we think it is. It moves in many different directions. And the last thing I want to say before we get into the text, and I'll come back to this, is that he's not talking about time as timelessness, not talking about time as some

[21:30]

eternal time. He's talking about time as our actual being, our activity, our thinking, our presence, our awareness. Time is us. Time is our being. Uh, so, um, and some of you may remember the old Ram Dass book, Be Here Now. Uh, one misunderstanding of that is to think that, to only be in the present. So time is, of course, not the past, because the past is already gone. Time is not the future, because the future is not here yet. But time is not the present either. So there's a way of thinking of being here now that cuts off past and future. And my friend Joanna Macy talks about inhabiting time. And part of being time is about this sense of deep time, of really being in time. All of that was by way of introduction to the text. So I'm going to start looking at some of the things in the text and talking about that.

[22:38]

So I'm looking at page 104 in Tom Cleary's translation. And so in the middle of that first page, he talks about the length and brevity of the 24 hours, though not as yet measured, is called 24 hours. He's actually translating. In the original, it says 12 hours, because in China and in Japan in those days, they divided the day into 12 hours. We divide it into 24. That's kind of arbitrary. One of the things that's interesting about that, though, is that their 12 hours, all of the hours were not exactly the same. There were six hours at nighttime. There were six hours between dawn and dusk, and six hours between dusk and dawn. And if you think of the changing time of sunrise and sunset, you'll realize that those hours shifted a little bit in terms of our sense of objective time. Anyway, he says, the length and brevity of the 24 or 12 hours, though not yet measured, is called 24 hours.

[23:44]

Both the direction and course of their going and coming are obvious. People don't doubt them, yet though they don't doubt them, this is not to say that they know them. Actually, all the translations I looked at translate that as doubt, but I would say people don't question them. The point here is that he's encouraging people to question our way of looking at time. Because sentient beings' questioning of things which they don't know is not fixed, the future course of their questioning does not necessarily accord with the questions of the present. It's just that doubting or questioning is, for the moment, time. So even doubting or questioning is also time. So what he does with this, with his sense of time, of being time, as opposed to some objective external container of time, uh, changes how we, how we see time and our own being. So, um, he says, self.

[24:48]

So again, so this also is relevant to, our whole sense of what our self is, and our notion of our self as a separate being, our ego sense of self, our constructed self. He says, self is arrayed as the whole world. You should perceive that each point, each thing of the whole world is an individual time. Mutual non-interference of things is like the mutual non-interference of times. For this reason, there is arousal of minds at the same time, there is arousal of times in the same mind." So, um, it says, "...perceive that each point, each thing of this whole world is an individual time." It might be helpful here to substitute the word, event. Think that each

[25:50]

point or each thing of this whole world is an individual event or occurrence, this individual situation in time. That, so, um, this is, um, goes back to mutual non-interference of things, goes back to, uh, Chinese Buddhist Huayen philosophy, and it's the basis of the Sutras and Five Ranks and so forth, just for those of you interested in those philosophy things. But the mutual non-interference of things is like the mutual non-interference of times or events. And actually things, times, are not separate. For this reason, there is arousal of minds at the same time. There is arousal of times in the same mind. But in practice, in achieving enlightenment, we're also like this. Principle of self being time. So he's, so he's here talking about the way in which self is time.

[26:52]

So as I said, I'm not going to try and cover every single thing in the text. There's not time to do that. But I want to point out some particular parts of this that I think are helpful or important. So I'm skipping to the bottom of 105. One should not understand time only as flying away. One should not only get the idea that flying away is the function of time. If time only were to fly, then there would be gaps. Not having heard of the path of being time is because of learning only that it has passed. Tell the gist of it. All existences in the whole world while being lined up are individual times. Plus it is being time, it is my being time. Very important part of this, um, and I actually, um, look at, um, the other translations just to give you another reading on this.

[28:11]

Well, actually, I'll do that with the next part of this, which is important. In being time, and from the query, there is the quality of passage. That is, it passes from today to tomorrow. Also, it passes from today to yesterday, it passes from yesterday to today, it passes from today to today, it passes from tomorrow to tomorrow. Plus passage is a quality of time, past and present, doesn't pile up, doesn't accumulate in a row, and then he cites various features which he says are also time. Since self and other are time, cultivation and realization are times, going into the mud, going into the water, is similarly time. So, just to read it, uh, this is Kastanahashi's translation of the same passage, and, um, this, it's basically the same thing, but it's just another way of saying it in English.

[29:29]

The time being has the quality of flowing. So, passage or flowing. So-called today flows into tomorrow. Today flows into yesterday. Yesterday flows into today. and today flows into today, tomorrow flows into tomorrow. Because flowing is a quality of time, moments of past and present do not overlap or line up side by side. Being splattered with mud and getting wet with water is also time. So this is about, you know, uh, other places Dogen talks about going, about how Buddhas go into the mud and water, get in, get in, get mixed up in the various difficulties that happen in this time. Do not withhold, do not withdraw from the phenomena of this time. So, quality of passage are flowing from today to tomorrow, from today to yesterday.

[30:31]

Time moves in various directions. You know, on some level, we can see this as just, well, all of you, if you think about yesterday, think of something you did yesterday. Yesterday was, what, Friday? So think of something from yesterday, and then time is moving from today to yesterday. Or we can think about something that we think we might be doing a week from today, and time is moving in that direction. Our usual sense of time as something fixed is a kind of, um... Well, I'm going to jump away from this text for a second and talk about the Huayen idea of ten times, just to give this a context. In the Huayen school in China, it's based on the Flower Ornament or Avatamsaka Sutra, the mystic theory also is translated. And, um... they talk about the past, present, and future of the past, past, present, and future of the present, and the past, present, and future of the future, and then all nine of those times the 10th time.

[31:45]

So to see time in a more, in a less linear, limited way, actually enlivens our sense of how we can inhabit time. Of course, we can change time. We can change the past, of course, as well as changing the present and changing the future. If you don't know about that, we can talk about that in the discussion period. Anyway, this is another way of talking about what Dogen's talking about here, that time moves in various directions. So he's at the bottom of page... 106, very important statement. So again, from the Cleary translation. Well, I'll take it back to the last paragraph.

[32:47]

It's now exhausting the limits of the whole world by means of the whole world is called investigating exhaustively. So again, again, and again, and again, all through his showbook Enzo and Koroko, his extensive record, keeps telling his students, please study this thoroughly. Have you studied this thoroughly? Please study this more. So there's this kind of nourishment to sit with and look at what's going on in our life and in reality. To actualize being the 16-foot golden body by means of the 16-foot golden body as determination, cultivating practice, Enlightenment and Nirvana, is being, is time. Just invading, investigating exhaustively all time as all being, there's nothing left over. Then here's this wonderful saying, what leftovers are leftovers, even the being time of half-exhaustive investigation is the exhaustive investigation of half-being time.

[33:53]

Because leftovers are leftovers, even the being-time of half-exhaustive investigation is the exhaustive investigation of half-being-time. So, I'm going to read a couple of other translations of that, because I think it's such an important statement. Kastanahashi says, thus the time being half-actualized is half of the time being completely actualized. And a moment that seems to be missed is also completely being timed. So in the next page, so that's the sentence at the top of 107 Uniforms, which seem to slip by our being. Norman Waddell says that, the Waddell translation, Any Dharma left over is as such a leftover Dharma. Even the being-time of a partial exhaustive penetration is an exhaustive penetration of a partial being-time.

[35:03]

The form of understanding that appears to be blundering is being. This is one of those statements by Dogen, the same time that it's challenging, that I find extremely comforting. So it's not that he says, investigate thoroughly. You have to investigate thoroughly. What is time? What is your being? And yet he's saying, even if you don't do it thoroughly, even if you only do it half-heartedly, that's completely doing it half-heartedly. So there's a way in which he's not saying you're a bad student if you don't understand this. He's saying, just look at this. and you're looking at this, is it? So, again, I find that encouraging and comforting. And there are lots of places in Dogen where at the same time that he's challenging, he's very consoling even.

[36:10]

So, just reading a little further on page 107, "...even forms which seem to slip by are being. Furthermore, if you leave it at that, being the period of manifestation of slipping by, it is the abiding in position of being time." So you all probably, many of you may know that the two divides. Anyway, don't stir it as non-existence, don't insist on it as existence. Only conceiving of time as passing one way, one doesn't understand it as not yet having arrived. Though understanding is time, it has no relation drawn by another." So, he's kind of saying here that you should understand, but don't get hung up on quality of your understanding. attention, the process of attending is what's important here. Even if they have long expressed, going to the end of that paragraph, even if they have long expressed it as such, as suchness, still everyone gropes for the appearance of its countenance.

[37:20]

If we leave ordinary people's being time at that, then even enlightenment and nirvana are only being time, which is merely the appearance of going and coming. For that, he says, only recognizing it as coming and going, no skin vagus seems to it as being time of abiding in position. So, anyway, there's a lot here, and I would encourage you to hang out with this stuff. And again, as I said in the very beginning last week, the point with Dogen is not to try and decipher it. What are you saying? The point is to kind of bathe in it and hang out in it. And I'm trying to give you here an introduction to what Dogen is talking about so that you can go back. This essay is something that you can go back to throughout being time forever, and there's more to see.

[38:25]

So I hope you didn't take this course thinking that I would explain Dogen to you. I'm trying to give you an entryway to come back and hang out with this and enjoy your being time, of studying being time. So a little more. At the bottom of 107. Passages, for example, like spring. In spring there are numerous appearances. This is called passage. you should learn that it passes through without any external thing. For example, the passage of spring necessarily passes through spring. Though passage is not spring, because it is the passage of spring, passage has accomplished the way in this time of spring. You should examine thoroughly in whatever you are doing. Speaking of passage, if you think that the objective realm is outside,

[39:30]

phenomenon which passes through, passes a million worlds to the East through a billion eons, and thinking that you are not concentrating wholly on the study of the Buddha Way. So, this idea of, um, uh, if you think the objective realm is outside, um, and the, and thinking of that, thinking of the phenomenon which passes through the objective realm as something separate. This is one of the main points that he's trying to make here, I think. That time isn't some objective realm outside. That all of us, time of being, are being time in each in our own way. And this is this quality of being time is worthy of study as being and as time, and how do we express and appreciate and enjoy and do the Buddha work in this time of being.

[40:45]

So, um, rest of the essay, he talks about a couple of stories, um, uh, and You have questions about the story about Yaoshan and Mazu, or Yaksan and Baso in Japanese. And raising eyebrows and blinking eyes as an example of being time. So in the middle here I want. He says, um... Even being time of enlightenment and nirvana is just the appearance of coming and going.

[41:59]

Oh, that's a place where in his translation, Waddell and Ahabé translation, they talk about presencing, which is, I think it's useful as a verb, presencing, to be present in, to give one's presence to. At any rate... Aidan, we're losing your voice just a little bit. Okay, can you hear me now? I can, yes, thanks. Okay. So he uses this story about Yaoshan confronting Mazu and this image of raising eyebrows and blinking eyes, which is this teacher and student face-to-face tangling eyebrows, as an example of being time. Towards the bottom, talking about another story from another koan.

[43:10]

So Dogen introduced these koans to Japan. He talks about intent and expression, our mind and expression, the quote from the bottom. And here, in this case, one time, so he's talking about One of Rinzai's descendants has said, sometimes the intent arrives, but the expression doesn't arrive. The intent there could also be read as mind. Sometimes the expression arrives, but the intent doesn't arrive. Sometimes intent and expression both arrive. Sometimes neither intent nor expression arrives. Dogen comments, intent and expression are both being time. Arriving and not arriving are both being time. So the time of arrival is incomplete, yet the time of non-arrival has come. So all of these are being times, and yet, and also he talks about arriving or reaching is not coming, arriving is blocked or imputed by arriving, not blocked by not arriving.

[44:13]

So he goes through this incredible wordplay on the top of one or nine as a way of talking about all of this being being time. Now, again, all this being time is not about timelessness or eternity or something like that. He's talking about this quality of time as presence and being, and actually, it's about us. It's about our being. It's about our flowering of the Dharma. And then there's this, at the very end, he goes about, he talks about half arriving is being time, half not arriving is being time, and then raising eyebrows and blinking eyes is half being time or is missing being time. and how this is the time of being time. So the point of this is to see in our time, in this time of being, in our presence, that all of this is our time of being.

[45:17]

Again, to emphasize, this is not about just some kind of passive acceptance of all time as flowing and and whatever happens is okay because it's also our presence and practice and cultivation and awakening is being time as well. So all of this is starting off, as I said at the beginning last time, from this sense of response and doing the Buddha work, from the Bodhisattva vow. So I started off last week talking about the Dogen's writing about the four bodhisattva methods of guidance or embracing dharmas. That, too, is being time. So, it's not, again, to think that being time is just some external container that we merely hang out in, it misses the point. Being time is our being of time and our practice of being time and how we practice being time and how we engage our time of being.

[46:21]

All of that is being time. So, he's talking about a kind of radical non-duality, but he's not talking about it as a kind of passivity, and that's a little hard to get. So, one has to start from the sense of the Bodhisattva ideal and the Bodhisattva vow and Bodhisattva precepts uh, when reading Dogen, that's kind of assumed that the point of this is how do we practice, uh, from, uh, the place of, uh, awakening and awakening others and flowering the Dharma for ourselves and others and, uh, awakening this time of being for ourselves and others. And then, and then what, and then how do we study this time of being? How do we engage this time of being? How do we be in this time of being?

[47:23]

And see the movement and multidimensionality of being time and the multidirectionality of time being as it's constantly flowing and passing and passaging and presencing. So, I, that I will stop now and open this up to questions and discussion. So I did that more quickly than I expected, but that's because time is being and moving in different ways. So I want to invite your questions about being time, about flowers in the sky, or anything else about Dogen, and let's have some discussion. I'll call on, at Diane's invitation, I'll call on People, if you'd like to raise your hands or hit the buzzer for whatever, however that works.

[48:27]

So Mukaku. The question, particularly to this discussion of being time-raised, is one that I think I raised at the end of last week, which is this sort of a philosophical question, and maybe that's unfair to Dogen to concretize in that way, but would you characterize his teachings as sort of that reality is omniperspectival? I mean, there are an infinite number of perspectives and all of them are equally real and equally coexist. So in response, Mugaku, I don't know that all are equally real. But yes, there are many different perspectives of what's happening.

[49:27]

I don't think so. Your question is whether there are multiple perspectives of reality. And that's one question. And yes. And I think that's part of what part of what he's trying to say, both in flowers in the sky and being time is that our perspective on on reality is limited by our perceptions by our limitations of human perceptions and limitations of human human limitations of perception and intellect and spirituality and so forth, and that we can't see all of reality. Now, whether all perspectives on reality are equally valid, I'm not sure that Dogen would agree with that. There are perspectives on reality that, so there is a criterion or standard for reality which is non-harming. So the criterion or standards of reality have to do with, you know, the Bodhisattva vows and Bodhisattva principle, and so some perspective on reality that says it's okay to destroy planets for profit or something like that, to take one extreme example that

[50:47]

not actually far-fetched, you know, that's a value perspective on reality that I think, you know, we could say, no, that's not a valid perspective. So the sort of the limits you would say Dovin would place on the availability, he wouldn't say sort of ontologically, you would say ethically, he would say some perspectives are less valid than others. I would say that. and possibly ontologically, I don't know. I can't see all the perspectives on reality, so I'm not qualified as a limited human entity to necessarily to speak for Dogen on that, or to speak for Buddha on that. So I'll just say I don't know. Can I go one step further with this, Taigen? Is that Diane?

[51:49]

Yeah, this is Diane. Hi. Go ahead. Hi. So, to say that destroying planets for profit is what Dogen would say is fully destroying, possibly. In other words, the legitimacy of the perspective is in the fullness of it and it contains its own meaning in a certain way. it communicates its own truth. Is that fair? I'm not sure I understood what you said. Say it again, please. Well, I'm just, I'm trying to go one step further with what McGuff is saying. So there's the question of perspectives, and then there's the question of hierarchy of perspectives. Are all perspectives, all perspectives exist, but are all perspectives equally valid? And then I was just trying to say that each perspective is valid in that it communicates what it is.

[52:52]

I would say that in terms of hierarchy, the perspectives are valid in the context of skillful means, what is most helpful towards awakening beings. Yes, okay. And that's the basis of the Bodhisattva vow of non-harming. Non-harming is the negative side of it, you know, but then also positively to help awaken beings and help beings to enliven their own awakened potentials. That would be the positive way of saying it. Okay. Thank you. Enter into the path of helping others that way. Okay. But thank you both for the questions. Other questions or comments or, again, anything about Towers in the Sky or Beantime or Dogen or anything else?

[53:57]

Alex Tokujo. Yes. Hello, Togen and Alex. I have a more general question. So from my very limited understanding of Dogen, I understand that still his focus was on the practice of the zen. His focus was on the practice of sitting, right, of the zen. And so I would appreciate if you could comment a little bit on how to, you know, bring in the reading of his text with with the central practice of sitting. Is it, you know, is reading his text, you know, shall it invite us to, you know, just go deeper in the layers of our sitting and, you know, sharpening our ability to

[55:08]

to see different perspectives in reality? So how do you hold this interplay between the sitting and reading, building texts? Yes, good, thank you. To do whatever other practices, to do them as Zazen without trying to get some specific goal out of them, just to fit with, just to be with that practice. And then specifically when reading Dogen, not to try and decipher or get some particular understanding, but just to use it as nourishment for Zazen. You might read over a paragraph a number of times. So, you know, reading Dogen slowly and just reflecting on what is the Dharma there, what does he mean, and allowing yourself to find that for yourself and what that means to you.

[56:11]

So rather than trying to, you know, figure it out, just listen to it like you would listen to a symphony or to jazz or something and just feel what it means for you. Does that help, Alex? Yes. Yes. Thank you. It makes a lot of sense. Thank you. So, uh, another question, uh, Meg, Yeah, well, it's not so much a question as a comment. It's simply that I am pretty much confused by all of this. And I guess in light of your saying just hang out with it, I'm not overly concerned about it. But I feel like it's sort of there are flashes of clarity and then a lot of just confusion. There you go. Okay. Can you say something about some piece of it that feels confusing? Um, I guess if I try and think too much about any of it, it feels like I cannot grasp... You know, I guess part of this is triggered by, I think, you saying, well, that's clear.

[57:26]

I mean, none of it's really clear to me. Okay. And no, I can't so much because Sometimes when I think about it, it makes sense, and sometimes when I think about exactly the same thing, it's like it's eluding me. Okay. And so that sometimes is exactly being time. So in being time, it makes sense. In being time, it eludes me. Yes. And so maybe, you know, I went through the material on being time rather quickly, and I could go over some of it. Yeah, I can't even really point to a specific passage. It's more like the whole process is one of getting it, not getting it, getting it, not getting it. Yeah, and I think that's right. So the not getting it is equally being time. and they're not getting it maybe more to the point.

[58:33]

The point is to hang out with it, and that all of it is being time, to be willing to keep sitting with it. That partly responds to Alex's question, too, that to go back and look at the text and go through it again now more slowly, be with it, and allow the time of being to be the time of being, again, not in terms of reaching some conclusion, but just, can you bathe in it? You know, that metaphor may be helpful to some extent. Right, and I guess maybe some of what I'm reacting to is, if I relax into it, it's fine. If I don't relax into it and my mind starts working, my mind, I just, you know, I get frustrated. There's a part of me that's frustrated. And exactly seeing that process of relaxing into it as opposed to trying to get something from it.

[59:34]

That's good. That's the process of being time. So, to see that is really important. Good. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. So, I see Rob McNamara has his hand up. Yeah. But, as soon as this question surfaced, it was hilarious. You started spontaneously answering all of them, and you've been, but I figure I'm staying with my question, but I just love your injunctions to hang out and kind of spend time with Dogen and to just explore and kind of, you know, uncertainty is the path of soaking in his teaching and some of the wake that he leaves us to practice in. But my question is really, um, what injunctions, what practices, what ways of engaging the text or engaging Zazen would you offer, just based on the few pieces that you covered today?

[60:46]

I don't know if that question is entirely clear, but... Well, I'm not sure... I'm getting an echo from my...when I'm speaking. I don't know what that... But, again, the question wasn't totally unclear, but could you ask it again, please? I sure can. It'll probably be a different question, but... Rob, just clarifying from Diane for a moment. Um, it sounds to me a lot like Alex's question, so I'm having trouble distinguishing it from that one. Go ahead. Yeah, I'm just curious on what, um, what injunction would you offer us to soak in more of some of the teachings from Dogon that we've covered today? Um, okay. I would take a paragraph that we talked about or that we didn't talk about or maybe a couple sentences and write it out and read it to yourself and maybe, you know, for a week or a couple days or a couple months just recite it to yourself.

[62:15]

That's one way to do it. Um, so to actually just, and wrestle with the words. Now again, um, I, I mentioned a cut once or twice, I looked at other, I gave you other translations. So particularly with Being Time, but with some of the other Shobo Genzo essays, looking at the, at alternate decent translations, and I sent out I sent an email that I think Julia sent out to everyone with some of the other good translations. That's actually a helpful way. If you look at the same passage with a few different translations, and maybe many of you don't want to take that intense a kind of time with it, but anyway, that's one helpful way to do it. And again, just take a a paragraph, a phrase, and repeat it to yourself, and actually hang out with it, and allow it to be something you spend some time with, but also question it, not in terms of trying to, this is subtle, not in terms of trying to figure it out or explain it to yourself, but what is Dogen trying to say to you?

[63:43]

in that passage. So pick something that appeals to you, or it might be something that really bothers you, I don't know. But, you know, maybe it's gentler to try and just find a passage that somehow resonates with you. And in this, in Flowers in the Sky, or in Time, or in Mountains and Water Sutra that we'll talk about next week. And just spend time with it. And again, ask yourself what it means to you, what DOCAN might be trying to tell you. Try that. I really appreciate the invitation to relate to the text in just a different way from just kind of reading it from point A to point B. So, thank you. You're welcome. Other comments, responses, questions? Anyone? Yes. Uh, Kathy Brownback. I got interested in this passage about raising the eyebrows. And I'm just curious about that as I was reading it.

[64:47]

And I looked at the footnote on 110, and the footnote says that... I'll just read it, footnote 17. Emptiness and relative existence are each one half. If there is one side clinging to emptiness, not raising the eyebrows, or existence raising the eyebrows, this is a myth. So, it kind of sounds to me like... like the clinging to either the raising the eyebrows or the not raising the eyebrows is amiss. And I'm wondering, what does that word amiss mean exactly? Does it mean... Does he mean to say sort of off the path in some way or is he... I would say it means incomplete. Incomplete, right. So, this is one interpretation.

[65:47]

I think, okay, going to that story about raising eyebrows and blinking the eyes, you know, part of why these stories are, have been remembered is that they can be kind of interpreted in various ways. Here, Cleary interprets them in terms of form and emptiness. But I like the way... If you actually think about eyebrows and eyes, I like the way Dogen talks about them as mountains and oceans. So if you look... So imagine two people sitting face to face, looking into each other's eyes. That's the scene. So in all of these Zen stories or koans, you have to imagine the scene and here... Azu and Yaoshan, or Baso and Yakusan in Japanese, are sitting face-to-face, looking at each other.

[66:48]

This is a kind of intimate relationship, and this is a kind of testing with students, or, you know, testing may be too low to determine English, inquiring about a student. If you think about eyebrows and eyes, eyebrows are like mountains rising above the ocean of the eyes. And the eyes, when we look into someone's eyes, there's a lot there. And so I like that kind of image a little more than, you know, form and emptiness is a little bit abstract, and philosophical. So I like concrete, I prefer myself kind of concrete images, but just facing eyebrows and blinking, And then, you know, it goes into this other thing about sometimes I have him raise his eyebrows and blink his eyes, sometimes I don't. Sometimes having him raise his eyebrows and blink his eyes is it. Sometimes it's not it. So, you know, there's also this image of the teacher or this issue here of the teacher allowing or not allowing the student to

[68:00]

follow him into that. And so, you know, that's another aspect of it. So there's a lot going on in that story, and I don't want to kind of, you know, I don't want to limit it in terms of some particular interpretation. I think it's a very rich story, and it, and Dogen ends up by talking about all of them as being time. But then, you know, part of the point is to question it to take this being time yourself into what do you see, how do you see it? What would it be like for you to sit in front of your teacher and grab her eyebrows and blink your eyes? So all of that's going on. So it's like the going back and forth is what... Well, it's about relationship. It's about intimacy. Right, exactly. And form and emptiness, you know, that's not that that's not what's... It's not that that's not part of it, but there's a lot more than just... So, taking any single interpretation, particularly a philosophical one, to me, in some ways, this is some of the life of it.

[69:18]

Uh-huh. Great. I take it. Thanks. Welcome. Julian Gonzalez? Hi, Teigen. I have a question about one small paragraph on the Genko Koran where you quote Dogen that has always intrigued me and continues to intrigue me and I'd like to know, I'd like just to hear your commentary on it. It's regarding, I'll just read it, it's just one, it's two sentences and it says, When the Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it is already sufficient. When the Dharma fills your whole body and mind, you understand that something is missing. And let me just give you some, just a bit of my experience with this passage. I feel when,

[70:20]

I feel that one of the fruitions of my practice has been a sense of equanimity, a sense of right now I'm sitting on a bench outside and I have a bald eagle flying over my head and the sun is shining on me and there's quite a sense of peace and equanimity and there's a sense that really nothing is missing. And yet here, Dogen is challenging me that when the Dharma fills your whole body and mind, you understand that something is missing. Yes. So it creates this dissonance and it pulls me into his question and to his statement, assertion. So if you can comment on that, that would be very useful for me. Thank you. Well, that's great. Please say hi to that bald eagle for me. I will. And that's lovely that you're enjoying all of that. And yes, it's wonderful that, and practice can give us that state of settledness and equanimity.

[71:24]

And that's a wonderful thing. But, you know, as we expand, you know, it's like the passage also in Genzo Coke, Genzo Korn, when the need is small, the field is small. When the need is large, the field is large. You know, it's possible that, you know, we all have some problem in our life or some difficulty in our life. And it's possible that at some point, and maybe this has happened to you, that all of, you know, those problems can be resolved. But if you look around, there's somebody nearby, and I notice, actually have a list that Lucia sent me of where everybody is, and you're in Vancouver, and that's, I've never been there, but I hear it's a beautiful, wonderful place, and maybe there's no suffering at all in Vancouver, I don't know. But I imagine that somewhere in Vancouver, there may be somebody who is having a hard time, and maybe there's somebody else in Vancouver who might benefit from the Dharma, and maybe there's somebody in Vancouver who actually,

[72:41]

that you could share something of your study with. And so if you haven't engaged with them yet, and maybe it would be hard for you to, but maybe, you know, so there's something missing there. Maybe. Again, I don't know. Maybe there's no suffering in Vancouver. I don't know. It's interesting when you say that. What comes up for me is Trungpa Rinpoche, I'm misquoting him, but once said, really, the fruition of practice is a broken, tender heart. And what you're saying, just this awareness even, not even having maybe to act on, but the awareness of the suffering around us. I can now connect with that from that point of view on the passage. just this tender broken heart where you experience the suffering of the world.

[73:46]

Yes, yes. So awareness is the first part, and then how to respond is a huge koan, you know. There's not one right way to respond. So, you know, in as much as there might be some suffering somewhere in Vancouver, you know, you may not know how to respond, but You know, maybe there's something you can do, and it may take some time of paying attention to realize what it is that you can do, what it is that calls you to respond to whatever is missing in Vancouver. And, you know, we each have our own way of responding. Thank you. So, Mugaku, you still have your hand up. What's your question or comment? A comment. Okay. We have a number of people here, and one of them, Von Lovejoy, has a question. Taigan, I would just like to ask you from your studies in Dogen over the years, what insights could you provide in terms of, I noticed in your book you have something about climate change and I'm just wondering, I look into the eyes of my grandchildren and I see climate change coming and I'm trying to understand how

[75:04]

compassion. I'm trying to discover the depth of compassion and wisdom to address that. And I'm just interested in any insights that you may have from your time that you've spent looking at this. That's a huge question. Um, I, and I, you know, continue to work on looking at that and talking about it and sometimes contacting people in the government and so forth. And I went to February to a rally with, I don't know, 40,000 other people outside the White House talking about the Keystone XL pipeline. And, you know, there's so much, from looking at Dogen, what do we do? You know, I talked last week about Dogen seeing that, saying, proclaiming this wild statement that one person sitting changes the awakens all of space.

[76:06]

So I don't, you know, I don't know the solution to this. It's a huge problem. Our planet is in, well, human habitat anyway, is in jeopardy. And so one of the things I do, and sometimes it's a little difficult for my sangha to hear me talk about it so much, and I don't always talk about it, but And I like talking about Dogen and being time and all these other wonderful teachings. But, you know, I think it's important to talk about just to bring awareness to people about what's actually going on and dangers of fossil fuels. And people don't know about 350.org to go there and look at what Bill McKibben is doing. The dangers of nuclear power and So anyway, sharing information is important. How this is actually going to be changed physically, in terms of the situation on the planet, I don't know.

[77:11]

But you know, you asked me how my study of Dogen affects how I respond. And I guess, and I'm thinking more about this recently, that the solution is not just a matter of political action, to put it that way, but change in how we each relate to fossil fuels, change in how we talk about it, change, you know, encouraging local sustainable systems and agricultural systems and so forth. There's so much that we can do, and also that, I think what I was talking about before, about different dimensions that Mugaku asked about, I think that what's happening actually is, you know, in our planet is not, we don't really understand all of, and that things are happening in reality on many dimensions,

[78:26]

that are obviously not in our mass media, but also that we can't actually know, and that our intention and caring and practice of uprightness and of awareness has an effect, and that part of what's actually going on happens in realms that we can't necessarily recognize, and that to know that something's happening and we don't know what it is, to paraphrase Mr. Dillon, is important, and that our efforts, that whatever we do by way of supporting awareness and caring on all kinds of levels makes a difference. I don't, you know, I'm not totally satisfied, I'm not satisfied with that response, and I don't think you should be either, but that's what I can say right now.

[79:27]

Thank you. I might just ask for just a little bit of commentary, and it could be very brief, is the issue of passivity and the quote, the do to buy, because that kind of worked out to me when you said it, and it made me laugh a little bit, in relationship particularly to climate change and to the suffering in our world. Just any comment that you might have about the due to bides and passivity and how Dogen's not talking about that. Yeah, well, abiding is abiding in the flow, abiding in change, abiding in that things are happening in all kinds of ways. And what we see of reality is just our opinion, you know? And so we have to be open to how to be responsive, how to be responsible. We are responsible and we can respond.

[80:30]

And so the practice of patience is so important from the Bodhisattva point of view, but that's not passive. Acceptance is not passive. It means that we are included in being time. Being time means that it's our being time. So what we do is part of the time and that's So, nobody asked about changing the past, but we can change the past by what we do now. Yeah, that's a really interesting discussion, but I noticed also that Rod has his hand up, so maybe we can just quickly go to him as well. Thank you. Oh, hi. I actually had a very similar question about, you know, essentially the same one that Musho asked about. Was... I mean, was... Did the hookah ever get out of the house? Was he more of a terrorist? Was he an active player in that monastery? We have to look at his historical response. We have to look at the historical context.

[81:32]

There was no model for, you know, participatory democracy or anything like that. Then his first ten years of teaching was in Kyoto, or near Kyoto, in the capital, and he finally realized that what he had to offer and what he had to teach uh... you know it was drowned out by all of that so he moved to the north coast way up in the mountains even more about the still remote but it was even more about them and founded a heji what he did was that was uh... train a cadre of really good monks who managed to keep up to to keep his teaching alive and make soto zen like second most in uh... numerous uh... uh... form of japanese buddhism and somehow it kept it alive so that we could do this. So, you know, there are different ways to do things, and sometimes there, sometimes, I have a very urban sangha in the middle of north side Chicago. Sometimes you practice in the middle of the city, sometimes you head to the mountains and just keep alive the, you know, the tradition.

[82:35]

So it depends on the situation. So he was not, you know, an activist in any way that I am, but he was aware, you know, he was actually invited to go to the capital of Kamakura and teach there. He went for like six or seven months and decided that he couldn't be helpful there, and he went back to his monastery. So it depends on the situation you're in. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Tygan. It was, again, just an extremely precious morning. And really, for me, the aesthetics of reading Dogen, the beauty of the poetry in his language, is a big part of my experience. And listening to your comments and to you help elucidate the text is really a great gift. So thank you everybody for being on the call. We really appreciate your presence and the quality of your attention. And we look forward to seeing you next week.

[83:25]

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