Good morning. This week we are celebrating the birthday of Eihei Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen in Japan. His birthday is usually commemorated on the 26th, which is Tuesday. So I want to talk about Dogen's what I see is Dogen's most fundamental teachings today. He's the founder of Soto Zen, which is one of the main branches of Zen in Japan, and is the branch of Zen that we follow here that was brought to the United States at San Francisco Zen Center by Suzuki Roshi. So, little bit of background.

[01:04]

Dogen was born in 1200, so it was 13th century, and died in 1253. He became a young monk in Japan and traveled to China because he had questions about the teachings he heard in Japan. So he traveled to China from 1223 to 1227 and then established a temple finally in Kyoto, the capital of Japan, in 1233. On the way back, there's a picture of Kanna on the Bodhisattva of Compassion that's attributed to Dogen. It's on our wall, and we have an image for him on the altar for this week to commemorate him. taught in the capital of Kyoto from 1233 to 1243, and then rather abruptly moved away from the capital, went to the north of Japan, to what's now Fukui Prefecture, and eventually established there a Heiji Temple, which is still one of the two main headquarter temples of Japanese Soto Zen.

[02:28]

I had the honor of going to Eheji and doing the Zuisei ceremony as honorary abbot on December of 08. And I've been involved in studying Dogen for 35 years and translated many of his writings. His, with Shohaku Okamura, translated One of his two major works, Dogen's extensive record, and then from the other major works, Shōbō Genzo have translated some in Kaz Tanahashi's books and some with Shōhaku, and also with Shōhaku translated the collection of Dogen's writings about monastic standards or guides for Zen community. And so I've been very involved with Dogen. Even though he practiced from 1243 to 1253 in this monastery in Eheji, and was mostly addressing his monks, I find that what he says about monastic practice particularly is very relevant to us as lay people practicing in the world, in this storefront temple in Chicago, and welcome everyone and to new people.

[03:45]

find our inner dignity and uprightness in this Zazen practice that he emphasized that we've just done, and also how that gets expressed in our practice in the world. So just maybe a footnote that his In terms of the history of Soto Zen in Japan, his writings were not so important. What was most important is he trained a group of disciples who then, in the generations after him, spread Soto Zen through the countryside of Japan so that it became, I think, the second most popular school of Zen, of Buddhism in Japan. And his writings weren't read much except for a few monks and scholars until the early 20th century. But they've been very important in terms of the, or translations of them have been very important in terms of the translation or transportation of, not just Zen, but Buddhism as a whole to the West.

[04:54]

That's a little background. I want to talk this morning, and hopefully we'll have time for discussion too, about what I consider his four main teachings. The first one is a phrase that he uses quite a lot, to drop body and mind. For Dogen, this phrase, dropping body and mind, is kind of a synonym for zazen, the sitting meditation that we do here, this upright sitting. It's also, for Dogen, dropping body and mind is kind of a synonym for enlightenment itself. And the phrase is considered to go back to a story about Dogen's own major awakening experience when he was studying in China. We don't know how accurate historically this is, but the story is that he was sitting up late one night in the monastery, at Tiantong Monastery in China, and his teacher, who was a Saodong or Sojo teacher, Tiantong Rujing, Tento Nyojo in Japanese, was walking around the zendo, and there was a monk next to Dogen who was sleeping.

[06:07]

And... and he yelled at him and said, you're supposed to be dropping body and mind, what are you doing wasting your time sleeping? And Dogen hearing that was awakened and went to Rujing's room. Anyway, that was confirmed. Anyway, whether or not that actually happened historically is not important, but the idea of dropping body and mind doesn't mean getting rid of your body and mind. It's not about lobotomy, zen, or suicide, or something like that, or self-immolation. It's letting go of our attachments to this body and mind, letting go of our attachments to self. So he uses this phrase quite a lot in his writings. just to drop body and mind, or sometimes it's translated as cast off body and mind, or maybe it's letting go of body and mind, how actively this letting go of attachments can happen is pretty much an individual matter in terms of the context of a particular student and situation.

[07:18]

But this idea of letting go of our attachments to self, This is a basic Buddhist idea that in the Four Noble Truths, the first being that there is dissatisfactoriness or suffering, the second being that the cause for this is our desire and attachments and grasping. So the Third Noble Truth that there is a, going back to the historical Buddha 2,500 years ago, that there's an end to this kind of suffering. And that has to do with letting go of attachment. So this is Dogen's unique way of talking about that. And so he uses it, again, as a synonym for both meditation, our Zazen meditation itself, and also for enlightenment itself. As part of a context for seeing what that means to him, I will mention one of his earliest writings about meditation called Bhen-do-wa. I translated it with shohakus, the wholehearted way, or say engaging the wholehearted way.

[08:21]

Dogen says, when one displays the Buddha mudra, the Buddha position, this upright sitting, with one's whole body and mind sitting upright in this samadhi or concentration, even for a short time, everything in the entire dharma world becomes Buddha mudra, and all space in the universe completely becomes enlightenment. So for Dogen, this practice and this awakening is not a personal, individual matter. It relates to the whole world. other people, but even beyond that, he says a little further, at this time, because earth, grasses and trees, fences and walls, tiles and pebbles, all things in the phenomenal realm in ten directions, carry out Buddha work. Therefore, everyone receives the benefit of this functioning. and all are imperceptibly helped by the wondrous and incomprehensible influence of Buddha to actualize, to make real the enlightenment at hand.

[09:27]

So for Dogen, this dropping body and mind includes, when we let go of our attachments to self, it actually changes the field of space around us. It affects not just animals and plants, but he says fences and walls, tiles and pebbles, everything. So this is why this dropping body and mind is... this profound experience, and we don't necessarily realize it, but this is the Buddha work, to help ourselves, of course, but also to help everyone together to wake up. This is always available. So this dropping body and mind is letting go of that which gets in the way of our just expressing our true heart, most wholesome, deep love. And this is about ourselves and in our sitting practice, facing the wall, facing ourselves, inhaling and exhaling, settling into what it's like to actually be the body and mind on your cushion right now.

[10:41]

We have many ideas and many ways of identifying our self social security number, phone number, and so forth. We have lots of numbers and stories about who this is sitting on your cushion. But what's it like to actually sit here for 30 or 40 minutes and witness, be present with, the reality of this body and mind and the wall or the floor in front of us and let go of our holding on to reality? some idea of who this is. It doesn't mean that you, again, that you get rid of yourself or you even get rid of your ego, but what is it that is the deeper reality of our experience? So this is the first of what I'm calling his four major teachings. The second one, which he emphasizes quite a lot in Japanese, shusho no ito, the oneness of practice and awakening, or practice and enlightenment, that he says in one of the essays I translated with Kaws, The Awesome Presence of Active Buddhas, that active Buddhas don't wait for enlightenment.

[11:58]

So this is not a practice that's a technique or a method by which in some point in the future we will get enlightenment. Enlightenment is not some thing that we can obtain. You can't go down to the corner store and buy a pack of it. It's something that is here from the very beginning. So this oneness of practice and enlightenment is pretty subtle. basically that enlightenment, awakening, and maybe a better translation of the original word in Buddhism, that awakening is available from the very beginning. Awakening is the way things is. And of course, we don't see that and we see that in the world, there's lots of cruelty and corruption and violence and wars and hunger and all the suffering in the world. this week in Haiti and many other places.

[12:59]

And also, of course, in our own lives, in terms of our own grasping or greed, our own anger, our own confusion, and that of the people around us, family, friends, co-workers. And yet, this awakening what Dogen says is something that's here from the very beginning. And it doesn't exist somewhere outside of our practice. It doesn't exist in some, you know, sacred heavenly realm in some mountain in Tibet or Japan or California. Enlightenment is only, awakening is only awakening when it's actually put into practice. So we have a couple of people who were sat for the first time this morning, which is wonderful and auspicious for all of us. And yet, from this perspective that Dogen's talking about, about the oneness of practice and awakening, something, whatever it was that drew you to actually consider coming to find out about Buddhist meditation, has to do with this awakening.

[14:11]

from the very beginning, that it's not that awakening is something we will get later on. If you practice harder, go to lots of Dharma talks or read lots of Buddhist books or sit in this meditation practice for a long time, there is a development and transformation and unfolding of our body and mind that happens through engaging this practice. But awakening is part of it from the very beginning. This is radical because we're used to thinking of everything we do in our life as a kind of investment, maybe, or we do what we do to try and get what we think would be good for us. And it may be wholesome or unwholesome, but we try and manipulate our world and our experience and even ourselves, of course other people sometimes, to get what we want or to get rid of what we don't want.

[15:13]

And again, This is not, and sometimes that's a good thing to do. Sometimes we, you know, in our everyday life and work world, of course we want to make things better, whatever that means. And part of it is examining that question. What would be good? What would be helpful for myself, for the people around me, for the world? Again, the meditation, as Dogen talks about it, is not some technique to get something else. Meditation is the expression itself of awakening. So there's no awakening that's not put into practice, and this is the way we do this through this meditation. And also, there's no practice that is not informed by awakening. So again, just the impulse to come and engage in spiritual practice, to try and consider What is the quality of my experience?

[16:14]

How do I live and how do I take care of my life and my world? To examine that question, is practice informed by awakening? So they're not separate. Well, practice and awakening are one. He gives a definition in one of his more famous writings, Genjo Koan, Actualizing the Fundamental Truth. He says that, Duggan says that, delusion is when we carry ourselves forward to experience the myriad things. This is our usual way of being as human beings. We project our own self and our ideas onto people and the world around us and experience it from our own perspective. So this is our ordinary human delusion. Right after that, he says, awakening is that the myriad things arise and experience themselves. This doesn't happen outside of us. We are part of the myriad things when everything arises and we just see everything arising together without trying to mold it or define it in terms of our own agendas or our own self image.

[17:30]

when everything arises and just experiences itself. That's what Dogen calls awakening. But he makes the point then of saying that it's not that you should get rid of one and get the other. He says Buddhists are awakened to delusion, or awakened to their delusion. Deluded people are deluded about awakening. And he says if you're in delusion, to be in delusion throughout delusion. The point is that the practice of oneness of practice and awakening is to be present, to witness our body and mind as it is. And this is probably the hardest part of this meditation practice, of continuing this practice, not getting our legs into some funny position, but actually seeing sometimes how crummy this person is, or on my own, grasping and anger and, you know, our own human foolishness and greed and anger, and that can be very painful.

[18:36]

And to just sit for 30 or 40 minutes and be willing to be present in the midst of that can be very challenging. But actually, to let go of it, we need to be able to Be intimate and be friends with ourselves, and not just ourselves that we think of as ourself, but this actual experience, this body and mind on your cushion here today, now. So, to be in awakening throughout awakening, to be in delusion throughout delusion, to just see awakening as it is, to just see delusion as it is, both are present in our sitting. So this is the second of Dogen's four main teachings, this idea of oneness, of practice and awakening. We don't wait for enlightenment in the future. It's not about some technique to get something else other than just enjoying.

[19:37]

This experience are inhales and exhales and sensations and sounds and what it's like to actually be present, this body and mind. What I would call his third basic teaching And this isn't, these four are my own interpretations of Dogen, but his third basic teaching is, in the phrase he uses also very often in his writings, about going beyond Buddha, or Buddha going beyond Buddha. So this practice of awakening is something that happens ongoingly. It's something, it's not that, we have some flashy, dramatic experience of awakening, and that's it, and we're set for life. Even the Buddha, the historical Buddha, 2,500 years ago, more or less, in northeastern India, he became the Buddha, he had this complete, unsurpassed awakening, and he continued to meditate every day thereafter.

[20:46]

He continued to practice. So, Awakening is something that happens again and again. Awakening and confusion, I guess, happens again and again. But this is why in this tradition we emphasize sustainable practice, not sitting. So we do longer sittings. We have a monthly all-day or half-day sitting or sometimes longer. And in the Zen tradition, there are five-day and seven-day sittings. And some branches of Zen emphasize trying to get some dramatic experience of awakening from that. And that's okay. If that happens, that's fine. But more important is how do we sustain a practice of attention? of awareness, of awakening, of being willing to be present. So this is something you can do at home in your spare time. You're welcome to come here and do this together with us, and it's helpful to do it together with others.

[21:50]

But also I would encourage people to sit at least several times a week. 30 minutes, 40 minutes, even 15 minutes, just to have this kind of rhythm in your life of paying attention to what it's like to be the body and mind on your chair or cushion. How is it? How is this inhale? How is this exhale? So this ongoing awakening, Buddha going beyond Buddha. The point isn't that we have some experience of Buddha or some understanding of Buddha. And it's possible to have some, even though there's a way in which Buddha's truth is inconceivable, it's beyond our human rationality, still we can have a fairly good understanding of Buddha. awakening. We can have some deep experience of that. That's fine if that happens.

[22:51]

But the point isn't to understand it. The point is how do we make it real? How do we express this dynamic awareness in our everyday activity? How do we express it in our interactions? How do we express it in our world? Our world very much needs awakening. in so many ways. So one of Dogen's, one of my favorite expressions of this idea of Buddha going beyond Buddha in Dogen's writing is a phrase, again in this Scherbogen's essay, the awesome presence of active Buddhas. I translated it with Kaz Tanahashi, it's in his Beyond Thinking book, and he says, just experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha.

[23:55]

So this zazen, this dropping body and mind, this upright sitting, is a kind of, well, It's a vital process, it's organic, it's alchemical. It doesn't happen according to our usual categories of things. I mean, it may fit into those categories, sometimes it's possible, but it's a deeper, dynamic, organic, vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. This doesn't mean getting rid of Buddha. There's a Zen koan that actually is about the same thing that says if you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him. Well, we don't actually practice killing in this tradition. In fact, we try and support life and livelihood and the quality of life in all kinds of ways. But the point is not to set up some Buddha so you may have some understanding or experience of Buddha and you make a picture of him and set him up and bow down to him.

[24:57]

So we do bow down to an image of a wooden statue on the altar, an image of the historical Buddha, but it means more than that. It's not just that we're bowing to some statue or icon. We're bowing to this reality and possibility of awakening in everything, in ourselves and in everybody. So going beyond Buddha means not stopping with some Buddha. That Buddha is Buddha is going beyond Buddha. Buddha continues to awaken, continue to teach throughout his life, continue to find new ways to express what he had realized and continue to realize. And in the context of trying to share this, it gets realized more and more fully, hopefully. And there's rhythms to our practice over time. Sometimes it may feel kind of dull.

[25:58]

Sometimes your meditation may be sleepy. Sometimes it's just lots of tapes rolling and, I don't know, laundry lists or song lyrics or all kinds of things come up. Our brain continues to secrete thoughts as we sit upright. But the point is to continue this practice of coming back to attention, coming back to our inhale and our exhale, and enjoying this path of going beyond Buddha. So this idea of the path is important in Buddhism. It's not some goal, some limited goal we set up is not the point. Suzuki Roshi, my Dharma grandfather, talked about non-gaining attitude, not to try and get some particular goal. Any goal that you might think of as enlightenment is just what you think of. So how do we enter into the path in one of the great

[27:04]

scriptures and sutras of the Bodhisattva Buddhism, the Lotus Sutra, it says Buddhas just appear to help suffering beings enter into the path of awakening. Being on the path, being in the process, being in this vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha is the point of this third main teaching of Dogon, Buddha going beyond Buddha. And then the fourth main teaching, what I consider his main teaching is about abiding in one's dharma position is how he puts it. So dharma position, dharma means the teaching, it means reality itself, it means truth. It also implies the path towards that. Abiding in one's own situation. So this is tricky. Our situation, our dharma position shifts.

[28:08]

Everything is impermanent. What does it mean to abide in our dharma position? The sixth ancestor who we were studying recently, in some ways the founder of Chan or Zen in China, although also we venerate Bodhidharma, the legendary founder whose image is on the other side of the altar from Dogen. But the sixth ancestor was awakened when he heard a line from the Diamond Sutra to realize or actualize the mind that does not abide anywhere. So abiding in our dharma position is not about finding some place to settle, because it's a dynamic dharma position. And still, as someone pointed out when I talked about this, the dude abides. How do we meet our karma? How do we settle into this body and mind?

[29:12]

Not our idea of it. And of course it changes, which is wonderful. We're not some picture on a wall. Buddha is not some picture on a wall. It's a living process. So Dogen talks about this abiding in Dharma position, abiding in our situation. At some points we could see it as, you know, him using that as a way of talking about positions in the monastery, people as we have in our temple where we have a director and a work leader, and a head dohan, and people who are dohans, and hit the bells, and so forth. We have various positions, so each of us takes a different position. Board presidents, and practice councils, and all, you know, we have a kind of structure of how we try and take care of this sangha and this temple. And in some ways, okay, how do you settle into the position you're in, in terms of our mutual awakening society called sangha, or community?

[30:13]

But it also has to do with just your own personal Dharma position. It's both. It's our position in the world. It's our karmic situation. How can we be willing to rest and be present and be responsive and responsible in the situation of the life that you have been given to live in this life? With all of your various interests and abilities and and awarenesses and friends and loved ones and also in the dharma situation of your particular habitual patterns and conditioning and patterns of grasping and anger and confusion. All of it is our dharma position. So to settle into this practice, It's about finding a way to, in some sense, abide, to rest, to find our comfort.

[31:15]

So this practice of zazen, of dropping body and mind, Dogen also calls the gateway to ease and joy. It may be hard at first to find a sitting position that's comfortable, and it takes a little while, experimenting with different kinds of cushions and different sitting postures. So it takes some kind of settling in, but then how do we abide or be present or be aware and be responsive and responsible? Listen to our own suffering and the suffering of the world. Compassion in Buddhism is about this, being open to the suffering of the world and of ourselves and of this body and mind. How do we be present amidst all of this? Our dharma position is this rich situation. of being alive, of having a particular karmic rewards, we say in Buddhism, of many past lifetimes.

[32:18]

You can take that literally or metaphorically and just think of all the different places you've been and people you've known in this lifetime. Everything that contributes to who you are sitting here this morning. How do we settle into that? And then from that place to express this practice awakening in our life, in our world, in our relationships, in this body and mind too. So Sangha, this community of practitioners, like our community here at Ancient Dragons Zen Gate, is a way of doing that together with others, supporting others to find their own way of settling into their dharma position, to actually be willing to be in the situation we are in. And this is not just a product of personal karma, but we have a collective set of causes and conditions as community, as a

[33:21]

city as a neighborhood, as a country, as a world, as a species, and that also affects us. So how do we settle into the complex, sometimes difficult reality of this situation of this life? So again, these four main teachings that I see in Dogen, first is just dropping body and mind, letting go of our attachments. And it's not that these are a sequence that you do in some order. These are four aspects of his teaching, and each of them is implied in each of the others. But dropping body and mind, this idea of oneness of practice and enlightenment, that an awakening is part of our practice, practice is our practice today of our sense of awakening. And then third, this dynamic process, this vital process of Buddha going beyond Buddha. to take on this engagement with our self and our world and sustain that, sustainable practice.

[34:32]

And sometimes, practically speaking, we may need to take a break from paying attention because maybe it's too painful or whatever, or we need to take a rest, take a nap, need to enjoy some entertainment. go for a walk or go to the movies or whatever, and yet we can do that in the context, and of course all those things can be part of Buddha going beyond Buddha. How do we sustain our awareness and attention? And then the fourth one is this abiding in our situation, our dharma position. So I suggest that A.H. Dogen, who we're celebrating this week, has these four aspects to his teaching. And I welcome questions, responses, anything that anyone, including questions about, basic questions about meditation, this Zazen or sitting meditation from people who are newer.

[35:34]

So please, Wendy. Yeah. I just wonder what you thought, like, just seeing a notion of letting go or dropping. I mean, it seems that that's a kind of dangerous language in that it's been paying attention and becoming very intimate with what is that, like, something very naturally. In other words, if it becomes an intention to drop or to let go, that's an aggressive kind of intimate and allowing what is. So I mean, I've always avoided language just like that. And I just wondered, first, what you thought of my avoidance. And secondly, yeah, just because especially if somebody is new, I know there are new people. I often meet people who, you know, say, oh, well, I can't do meditation because, you know, the whole idea of getting calm or dropping, like, I can't do that.

[36:39]

So I just wonder what you want to say. Yeah, very good question. So, yeah, there's different ways to say this, and we each maybe have our own particular response to particular phrases or language. Sometimes, as I said, it's translated as casting off, and I think that can be too aggressive. It depends on the situation, again. For different people at different times in their practice, maybe making some effort to let go of something might be appropriate. But I think, as you say, letting go means allowing it to fall away. So that's what I mean by letting go. It's not that you push away thoughts and feelings. So one basic teaching about meditation is not to try and get rid of thoughts and feelings, body and mind, but to actually to witness it. So in that essay I mentioned, Genjo Koan, Dogen also says, to study the way is to study the self. to study the self is to forget the self. He doesn't mean that we should try and forget the self.

[37:41]

It means that actually studying what's going on on our cushion, being present and being aware of it, and studying not necessarily like figuring it out, but just witnessing, being aware. It might be figuring it out, and maybe sometimes for some of us, some kind of Western psychotherapy might be helpful in a more active study of the self. But the point isn't to try and forget the self, or to try and get rid of the self. So it's not dropping body and mind or letting go of body and mind as a kind of denial or aggressive trying to cut away something. We allow thoughts and feelings to come, we allow them, let them go. So allowing is a good word for that. Allowing body. When I say letting go body and mind, I could read that as allowing body and mind to fall away. But part of it, some of the time anyway, involves actually actively, yogically, in our sitting, being present with, studying, looking at, being aware of thoughts and feelings, being aware of our patterns of thought.

[38:51]

Is that it? Yeah, I guess one last thought I had is, you know, just given that language is so metaphorical, like even the idea of away, dropping away, you know, like, just the visual image of a way as opposed to into or fully abiding in, you know, like abiding in the dharma position seems very, you know, and I just, you know, with my experiences and a lot of people drawn to Zen, and that would include like me, like I wanted to get rid of some things, you know, and so the people who are like inclined to sit very quietly, we might just get rid of something. So I'm really very language sensitive because it's like language can either amplify our unskillful tendencies or gently remind. Well, the point is, when Dogen says dropping body and mind, when I say dropping body and mind, it's not about

[39:58]

actively getting rid. I mean, there are occasional times when you can do special practices to kind of, you know, if you want to quit smoking or, you know, although I quit smoking a month after I started sitting a long time ago just because I'd been in the Zendo for a few hours and been breathing and enjoying my breath and I went outside and I didn't want to smoke anymore. It wasn't that I pushed it away, it just went, you know, and I didn't and haven't. I know that that's a very difficult thing for many people and there's a chemical quality to that. That's my experience. But it's like that. Dropping body and mind, letting go is allowing... Even though we don't try and get something specific, so don't sit in order to stop smoking. But if you smoke, if you like to smoke, if you're addicted to nicotine, either way, by, and this is a silly example in a way, but other patterns too, by being present and studying the self, abiding in our dharma position, then things drop away.

[41:11]

Douglas. I have a lot of sympathy for the way or letting go is the alternative to clinging to certain thoughts or clinging to feelings, which is partly, in a way, it's something we're not aware of. The thoughts or the feelings that we're experiencing, we're almost inside of them and they're pushing us around. We're not really aware of how they're happening. And so when we become aware of them, we've sort of set the that we've dropped off. I mean, I think you're right that sitting there saying, okay, I've got to drop off this and this and this is another, that pushing is another kind of clinging in a way. At the same time, trying to say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to open everything. It's not quite, rather than pushing hard and just being aware just having the intention you've already dropped it off and I think that's one of the interesting things about the whole idea that just the intention

[42:33]

Well, yeah, there's an active part of this. There's a kind of taking responsibility. It's not about getting rid of ego or self. It's about taking responsibility for how will I respond to this complete dharma situation, and dropping away body and mind, letting go of attachments, is not something that happens once. That's part of the ongoing going beyond Buddha, that we let go by allowing things to let go, but then we take responsibility for how we want to express that in our life and in the world. Titus? I was just going to say that The thing that came up for me in thinking about that was Uchiha Moroshi's metaphor, speaking of metaphors, from the title of his book, just opening the hand of thought, and how often we use our brain like a closed door. But even beyond that, you know, like the pushing away or the poking and prodding, like the brain is really tricky and the hand can be really tricky.

[44:47]

So just to open it and let it, not even flex, but just, I think of it, my brain, let that in. So I'm just like, can it just be there and relax and open and not do anything? Thank you. Yeah, that's a good image. Thank you. Kathy. Yeah, as we're discussing this, it made me think, like today, it was hard for me, I couldn't get here in time for meditation, but that there's a sense of, you know, like I get caught up in lots of things, but there's like a to-do list, a lot of negotiation going on with my family right now, so I'm having conversations and thinking about the conversations, and to get here was a sense of yeah, this is important too, or that doesn't need to be so all-consuming, that I chose to come here. And there almost was a sense of coming in the door of, okay, I can let go of some of all of these things I'm thinking about right now.

[45:48]

And so it feels like part of the dropping body mind is realizing all of these things going on in my life don't need me to be attentive to them constantly. I don't have to be holding on constantly. Things are going to develop the way they develop. I can probably be more present if I have periods of quiet and calm and let go. So the letting go is almost a way of also accepting that. I'm accepting that things are going to happen. They're going to transpire. I don't have control over them. And that seems to be part of the dropping body and mind to me. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. Is there a way to sort of drop the body and mind but still sort of meditate on something that's happening in your life?

[46:51]

You know, whether it's dropping, you know, your emotions, like you're angry about a situation, but you kind of drop that, but sort of It's almost like stepping outside your body and looking down on the situation from a different perspective while in meditation and while in that quiet and calm that, you know, you're not letting go of the situation because it's there, but you're kind of able to think about it or meditate on it from like a different perspective, whether it's, you know, stepping away from your anger or stepping away from jealousy or your emotions and kind of removing that aspect. Is that, I'm new, so I'm still learning. Yes, good. No, that was, yes. And that is part of Dogon's teaching. This idea, so first specifically about anger, our precept about that is not to harbor ill will. positive, negative, and neutral responses arise. We do have attractions and aversions. This is part of, you know, it's wired into us electromagnetically and biologically.

[47:54]

So it's not that you can, you know, stop anger from ever arising. Our practice with that particularly is not to try and not turn it into grudge, to not harbor it, to not hold on to it, but that means to see it. So again, dropping body and mind doesn't mean to get rid of body and mind. Dogen says in Genjo Koan to study the self, and one way of understanding what he means in this actualizing, Genjo Koan actualizing the fundamental point is to look at, to be present with, as you described it pretty well, what's going on, and that may include some problem in your life. It's not, you know, in his, another writing of Dogen's where he talks about meditation, he says to put aside worldly affairs and calculations and deliberations, It doesn't mean to get rid of them, but as you're sitting, your whole world is there. The problems going on in your life this week are there.

[48:55]

So opening the hand of thought means just, as you described it, you step aside and look at it, but to be present with it, to study the self, to see how it feels, not to try and figure it out, although that may be part of what's going on too. That's what our mind does. Or not to make judgments. Sometimes we realize we're making lots of judgments. So don't make judgments about that. Or if you do, don't make judgments about that. But just to watch what's going on. To actually open the hand of thought and also take hold of this dharma position, this situation. So one way, and maybe this is a modern Western psychological way, but I think it's implied in Gensho Kōan, is this studying of the self is to do what you just really described, to see how it feels to be present in this body, in this mind, as it is with its problems today. So I, you know, our basic, I didn't talk about Zazen technique itself, basically the practice of Dogen Zazen, he calls it sometimes Shikantaza, just sitting.

[50:06]

It doesn't mean to get rid of everything else and have some narrow idea of just sitting. It means to breathe, to be present, to return to uprightness and balance, to see what is happening. And there are various, you could say, techniques to help settle, like breathing, inhaling and exhaling, and feeling. The space at the end of the exhale, or even counting breaths, I don't know if you heard about that this morning, counting breaths, but you can do that at the end of each exhale, silently count one. two, up to ten and then start over again or just, you know, come back to one when you lose count or forget about the numbers. But there are ways of settling. One that I talk about sometimes, another possibility during sitting is mantra practice to repeat some phrase or traditional teaching, maybe in English or maybe in Sanskrit or Sino-Japanese. repeat that over and over again silently to settle, and one that I recommend is, how does it feel?

[51:11]

You know, taking off from Dylan, but how does it feel to be present? And that includes what you were talking about, feeling what you were feeling, seeing it, watching it, not trying to fix it or, you know, and if you see that you're fixing, you're trying to fix, that's, you know, another kind of pattern you might have. So yeah, yes to what you said very well. Yes, Wendy. Yeah, I just wanted to add, I was thinking, I love the open hand, and I was recently thinking, like, what's an opinion in an open hand? I've been thinking that exact, and then we'll come on, but along the lines of just feeling, how does it feel? I was thinking we can open our hand, we can open the window, like, the sound, the sensory input, you know, the sound of traffic, so we're feeling whole body, including the traffic, including the rain, including the shifting light. You know, because I know a strong bodily sensation, it's sometimes easy to get kind of very internal without allowing the space of, you know, the body of outside and air and light and sound.

[52:19]

So I found that very helpful. Good, yeah. So open hand, open window. Yeah, so another meditation, I could call it a technique, a way of focusing and settling onto your cushion, is listening to sound. That's also highly recommended. So just to be aware of whatever sounds are happening around you. Sounds of traffic or just rustling in the room or whatever. Here's another one along with breathing.

[52:42]

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