where we sit Zazen and have a few sessions of studying a subject. So the subject this weekend is called Dogen Zenji's Zenki. Zenki has various There are various ways to translate Zenki, but I like the total dynamic activity of the universe. Of the universe is extra. Total dynamic activity of birth and death, basically. But there are two fascicles of Dogon. and Shoji is the other.

[01:10]

Shoji actually means birth, death. Shoji. So this morning I'm going to talk about Shoji, because this is the public lecture. And I'm going to save Zinki for the sashimi. but they're quite related and they're usually spoken of together. These are the two fascicles of Dogen that specifically talk about birth and death. And, of course, birth and death is sprinkled throughout his Shobo Ginzo, but these two fascicles are just about this. For Dogon, this is the most important matter.

[02:14]

It's called the great matter of birth and death. No matter what you're involved with in this life, it all comes down to Shoji, birth and death. So we should pay attention. Basically, Dogen says, maybe better just be totally naive. Not grasping at life or rejecting death. Or not grasping at death and rejecting life. So, I'm not sure exactly why I wanted to talk about this. study this. Recently, of course, our Abbot Elgin, Steve Stuckey, from the San Francisco Zen Center, died very recently.

[03:23]

And I was looking at this list of people that I know that died, and it just keeps going on and on. It gets longer. It gets longer and longer. And the older you get, the longer it gets. And when you're young, people die out a little bit here and there, but the older you get, more people start dying of people you know, your peers. So I think this is an important subject for us. And it's something that I like to talk about. Not everybody likes to talk about it. But it's interesting to see the various ideas that people have about this fact.

[04:25]

No matter how we think about it, it's just a fact. So, birth and death shoji of Dogen Zenji. Dogen says, according to the translation, because the Buddha is within birth and death, there is no birth and death. It is also said, because the Buddha is not in birth and death, Buddha is not deluded by birth and death. These statements are the essence of the words of the two Zen masters, Jishan and Dingshan. These are Chinese Tang Dynasty Zen masters. You should certainly not neglect them because they are the words of those who attained the Way.

[05:30]

So I like to use the term, I don't like to use the term According to our understanding, life includes both birth and death. So, life really has no opposite. This is the oneness of birth and death. The oneness of birth and death is called life. So, we say there is life in death and there is death in life. There is birth in death and there is death in birth. It's not just one way. Because we think in terms of a straight line, we have a problem. So what does he mean by a Buddha? He says because a Buddha is in birth and death, there is no birth and death.

[06:40]

Dharmakaya Buddha, Nirmanakaya Buddha, Sambhogakaya Buddha. These are the three Buddhas of your own nature. Dharmakaya Buddha is your Buddha nature. Sambhogakaya Buddha is your wisdom nature. Nirmanakaya Buddha is your So what he says, because a Buddha is in birth and death, there is no birth and death. Buddha here can mean nirvana. What is the mind of a Buddha? The mind of a Buddha is nirvana. What is the state of a Buddha is nirvana. So what is nirvana?

[07:49]

Nirvana is the settled state. And what is birth and death? Birth and death is called samsara. So this is a kind of Buddhist language. nirvana, samsara. So basically, Mahayana Buddhism says nirvana is samsara, samsara is nirvana. So when Togya is getting at birth and death is nirvana. Don't try to escape from birth and death in order to find nirvana. because the Buddha is not in birth and death. A Buddha is not deluded by birth and death. So I'll talk about this a little bit later because I want to go on.

[09:00]

These statements are the essence of the words of the two Zen masters, Jia Shan and Ding Shan. You should certainly not neglect them because they are the words of those who attained the So those who want to be free from birth and death should understand the meaning of these words. If you search for a Buddha outside of birth and death, it will be like trying to go to the southern country of UA with your spear heading toward the north, or like trying to see the Big Dipper while you're facing the south. all the more in birth and death, and lose their way of emancipation. So, if you want to be free from birth and death, do we want to be free from birth and death? And what does that mean?

[10:02]

There's a famous koan. The monk asked Tozan, how can I be free from cold and heat? When it's cold, how can I deal with that? When it's hot, how can I deal with that? And Tozan said, kill you. So what does kill you mean? It means when it's hot, just be hot. When it's cold, just be cold. When it's time to live, just totally live. When it's time to die, just totally die. That's how to be free from heat and cold. How to be one with what is.

[11:17]

suffering. So when we try to escape from birth and death, we have suffering. So those who want to be free from birth and death should understand the meaning of these words. If you search for nirvana outside of birth and death, basically is what he's If you search for a Buddha, or for Nirvana, or for your true nature, outside of birth and death, it would be like trying to go to the southern country of your way with your spear heading towards the north, or like trying to see the Big Dipper while you're facing south. You will cause yourself to remain all the more in birth and death, and lose the way of emancipation. Just understand we have our life.

[12:34]

So nirvana is to be found not in some special place, not in escaping from. This harkens back to Buddhism just after Shakyamuni, where the monks tried to understand Shakyamuni's words and they felt that by asceticism and by divorcing themselves from daily life outside of the monastic life, they would escape from that would cut them off from the impurity of the world.

[13:44]

But basically, purity is only to be found within what is impure. That's the same thing as to find nirvana within samsara. To find release freedom, true freedom, within the daily life of samsara. So just understand that birth and death is itself nirvana. There is nothing such as birth and death to be avoided. There is nothing such as nirvana to be sought. Only when you realize this are you free from birth and death. So this is what scares us, that birth and death scare us. In order to find our true freedom,

[14:56]

we can't escape from the fact of our life that lies right in front of us. So it is a mistake to suppose that birth turns into death. Birth is Death is a phase that is an entire period of itself with its own past and future. For this reason, death is understood as no death. This is illustrating Jashan's statement that because the Buddha is in birth and death, there is no birth and death. This illustrates the first sentence. But this also is a quote from Dogen's

[16:01]

Ginjo Koan about firewood and ash. If you go around studying Hadoge's Ginjo Koan, he says, firewood becomes ash, and it does not become firewood again. You have to not suppose that the ashes future and the firewood past. You should understand that firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood. Firewood is just firewood. It doesn't turn into ash, even though it does. Firewood, which fully includes past and future, and is independent of past and future, abides Ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, which fully includes future and past.

[17:07]

Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death. This being so, it is an established way in Buddhadharma to deny that birth turns into death. Accordingly, birth is understood as no birth. discourse that death does not turn into birth. Accordingly, death is understood as no death. Birth is an expression to complete this moment. Death is an expression to complete this moment. They are like winter and spring. You do not call winter the beginning of spring, nor summer the end of spring. So this is Dogen's radical understanding of thing is just what it is. Although it has a past and a future, it's what it is now.

[18:10]

So, Nishiyari Boksan uses the analogy of beans and tofu. Tofu, as you know, is made out of soybeans. But if you say to tofu. Do you know that you were once soybeans? And you were mixed with water and boiled and nigiri and all this stuff. And then you turned out to be the tofu that you are? Tofu said, are you kidding me? What's beans? Never heard of them. So, although beans are beans, And tofu is tofu. Tofu is not beans. Tofu is tofu. Beans are beans. Beans have its before and after. Tofu has its history.

[19:13]

But it's not beans. So transformation, everything is in the process of transformation, but one thing doesn't turn into another. Although within, death is birth, and within birth is death. Without death, there's no such thing as birth. Without birth, there's no such thing as death. So this is the natural con-sequence, or sequence, however you want to call it, of life. Life is birth and life is death. and no death because nothing is really established in transformation except for a moment. So then he says, in birth there is nothing but birth and in death there is nothing but death.

[20:20]

This is the other side. Birth is just birth. Death is just death. That's all. It is also said, and from the beginning, because a Buddha is not in birth and death, a Buddha is not deluded by birth and death. Meaning there is birth is just birth, death is just death. So these are the two sides, the two ways that we observe. In birth there is nothing but birth, and in death there is nothing but death. Accordingly, when birth comes, face and actualize birth. When death comes, face and actualize death. Do not avoid them and do not desire them. This is what I mean by being naive. No avoidance and no denial.

[21:22]

No grasping and no aversion. then you can just live peacefully in nirvana, moment by moment, without desiring anything. So, these are the two phases of nirvana. So this birth and death is the life of Buddha.

[22:27]

If you try to exclude them, you will lose the life of Buddha. If you cling to them, trying to remain in one or the other, you will also lose the life of Buddha. And what remains will be the mere form of Buddha. Only when you don't dislike birth and death, or long for them, do you enter Buddha's mind and just move on. So the self is the same. You say, me, myself and I, the three people, the three bodies of me, myself and I. So we identify with these three bodies of the self. But we say also that the self is not a self. The self that we think that we identify with is really not our self. It does not belong to us.

[23:31]

The eyes do not belong to me, the nose does not belong to me, the body, all the juices are flowing and I have nothing to do with it. You can't have one without the other. So, you can't have birth without death. So, sometimes I think that we're like earthworms, you know, we eat ourselves, eat our big mouth eating the earth and leaving our trail, which is good. The trail is better than the eating because it replenishes the earth, the vitality of the earth.

[24:44]

So the self is not a self. And what is not a self is the self. So this is kind of mixed up, but it's the way it is. The self that we identify with is not our self. So what is our self? When we identify with the universe, then we don't have the same problem as when we simply identify with consciousness and our body as a self. So this is where the and the body as the self. So he says, however, do not analyze or speak about it. Just set aside your body and mind, forget about them, and throw them into the house of Buddha.

[25:53]

Then all is done by Buddha. That's an interesting statement. let go of everything and throw yourself into the house of Buddha, that everything is taken care of by Buddha. When you follow this, you are free from birth and death and become a Buddha without any effort or calculation. Then there is no obstacle in your mind. So obstacles are of course created by our identification with our self as the self. Then he says there is a simple way to become a Buddha. When you refrain from unwholesome actions,

[26:54]

attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no designing thoughts or worries, you will be called a Buddha. Don't seek anything else. It's very simple. There are volumes and volumes written about Buddha and Buddhism, and he says, it's just a simple way. But it's not so simple. The simplest way is the most difficult. When you refrain from unwholesome actions, well, that's really hard. what pulls us, and the magnetism is what unwholesome actions are.

[28:11]

Actions that stimulate our desire, basically. So we keep being victimized by our desire for stimulation. Stimulation and satisfaction The hardest thing is to be satisfied. One of the eight aspects of the enlightened person is knowing how to be satisfied. Really hard. Because we thrive on momentary satisfactions and we're always looking for momentary satisfactions. But what is basic satisfaction? We talk about joy. Joy is definitely an aspect of practice.

[29:16]

When you throw yourself into the house of Buddha, joy arises. But what does that mean, joy? Joy is not necessarily like eating a candy bar, but more like a river, a silent river And it's always there. And when you tap into it, it can express itself. When you refrain from unwholesome actions, you are not attached to births of death. So that's difficult too. You become attached to births. And we can also become attached to death. And one way to become attached to death is to avoid it. To not like it.

[30:18]

To not want it. That's an attachment. We've become attached to our aversion. But it's not easy to accept that. But if we study birth and death, if we know how to study it, it becomes familiar to us. And when it becomes familiar to us and we realize what it really is, we no longer need to be attached to it in that sense of aversion. So if we want to study birth and death, just study your breath. As I always say over and over again, inhaling, It's inspiration coming to life. Exhaling is expiration, letting go. So we're continually coming to life, coming to birth and letting go.

[31:27]

Coming to birth, we're actually born on each moment. And we actually are letting go on each moment. coming to birth on each moment, letting go on each moment. It's not that at one time you were born and at another time you will die. That's one kind of way of looking at it, of course. That's usual. But if you really investigate, you will see that each moment is a moment of birth and death. And one aspect produces the other. If you don't die in this moment, you can't come to life in this moment. I can prove that to you. Just hold your breath until I say, breathe. You can't come to life until you die on each moment. So really letting go on each moment is our practice.

[32:34]

So that when you come to life, you come to life fresh, without any baggage. new, without any baggage, even though we have the baggage. When you synthesize it in the zendo, you're actually letting go of everything. And then you walk outside and pick it all up again. But you have a choice when you walk out the door on what to do. You don't always realize that. So how do we start our life anew on each moment is not to be caught by birth and death. So you are not attached to birth and death and are compassionate toward all other beings, all sentient beings.

[33:37]

So compassion means to suffer with. Passion means suffering. calm passions that you suffer with. But in order to suffer the suffering of sentient beings, you're not causing suffering. You're simply sympathetic to the suffering of beings. And so you hear, you see, you feel. But it's important to save yourself, to have some distance or to sympathetically understand the suffering of beings is important, but you also have to have the ability to have some distance so that you can actually help.

[34:39]

Without distance, you can't help. If you simply are crying all the time and lamenting all the time, You can't help. So, being respectful to the seniors and kind to juniors. It simply means being respectful and kind to everybody. Never mind seniors and juniors. Just being respectful to everybody. Sometimes the senior is the junior. Sometimes the junior is the senior. They're not junior people and senior people. Although, there are.

[35:44]

Not excluding or desiring anything. In other words, not falling prey to grasping over aversion. And this is what we learn in Zazen. Buddha teaches us through Zazen. Buddha teaches us about birth and death. When I say Buddha teaches us, it's not some Buddha in the sky. Your nature teaches you. Your Dharmakaya and your Sambhogakaya are your teachers. You have all the knowledge within yourself. So when we say Buddha, our teaching comes through Zazen. Buddha teaches us through Zazen means your Dharmagaya, your Sambhogagaya are your teachers in Zazen. And they're always teaching you about not grasping and not averting. Otherwise, you fall into suffering. So it's all about how you

[36:49]

I've heard suffering, and the greatest suffering is not understanding births and deaths. So, just throw yourself into the house of Buddha and act like this, and you will find your freedom. It's very simple. So, with no designing thoughts or worries, No designing thoughts or worries. Designing thoughts. Calculations. Making a lot of calculations. And worrying about them. You'll be called a Buddha. So, you know, basically a monk has three bolts and a rope. No designing, calculations, and no worries.

[37:53]

Other than concerns, there are concerns. Of course there are concerns. But if you don't make life complicated, there's not a lot to worry about. You worry about other people. You are concerned about the problems of other people, but not so much about yourself. So there's a quote from Suzuki Roshi that I wrote down. He says, in the evanescence of life, that means the flow, evanescence is like something that comes into being and disappears. Evanescence is like dew, dew on the grass.

[38:57]

It's there in the morning and it's gone in the afternoon. In the evanescence of life we find the joy of eternal life. So as Blake says, catch the joy as it flies. But right there is Nirvana. So actually we're touching life and death or birth and death on each moment. And right there is where we find our freedom. We find our freedom in letting go. And strangely enough, when we let go, everything comes to us. You can't avoid it. Zen Stoning says, empty your hand So, letting go is the practice.

[40:09]

Taking up is also the practice. Taking up, but letting go. Nothing belongs to us. As soon as we get possessive, we have big problems. As you were talking, something that I hadn't put together before is I've always thought of birth and death as being more about what happens to the human being at the beginning and end of their lives. But as you talk about it now, I hear it as past and future. So birth is how we come into being and these ideas of how we are that determine our life, this idea.

[41:16]

And death is an extinction of this moment that we either want something or we're afraid of something. So, how do we live our life completely from one moment to the next, so that we can experience that fully? experience of birth, experience of dying, with equanimity and interest.

[42:38]

You started your talk about, when you spoke about your friends dying, people you know dying. And I was wondering, what is the process of grieving? It is a letting go of some relationships. But where's the birth and death? Well, what is the process of grieving? Well, we are attached to various things in our life. And we don't even know what they are, necessarily, until we start dying. And then they start coming into view. And then you have various feelings about them. The important thing is, while we're living, to actually prepare ourselves for our dying. Because the purpose of living is to know how to die.

[43:39]

Because they're just two aspects of the same thing. So, if we see dying as life, even though it's dying, is not the opposite of life. It's the life of dying. It's the life of death. So you're also celebrating their birth? When I do a funeral ceremony, we're here to celebrate the life as well as the death of this person. That's not just one way, but the life as well as the death. Celebrate the life and grieve for the death, actually. We're here to mourn the death and celebrate the life. I think that's important. You know, it's like when the saints go marching in.

[44:47]

They go to the funeral. And then when they return, it's when the saints go marching in, they have a party. You always have a party, even in Brusa. When you celebrate someone's death. Afterwards, you have a feast. It says so in the book. According to the book. The Gyorjikian. They have a priest after that. Cathy. I just wanted to touch grief again, because it feels to me like a process that is like other emotions we feel, and what comes to me with this question is, Jack Hornfield described working with someone who had come to him and had learned to do the Buddha talk really well, and was describing these physiological feelings that he was having, and he just said, and this is just a sensation, and this is just a sensation.

[46:09]

The student himself was saying that very dutifully. And he said, but I can't help suffering with it and I don't know why I'm suffering because it's just a sensation, and Jack Thornfield said, you're grieving. And then went on to say, as we have these physiological responses, these deep, deep feelings of loss, They're part of our life, they're part of our present moment, and they need to be felt fully for what they are, and recognized and embraced and allowed. That's right, grieving is a very important part. You can't just say, it's just time is rolling along. It's a stereotype, which is true. That is the danger in trying to objectify something. There's a reductionist view. And we live in the humanistic world as well as the mechanical world.

[47:14]

So there's the mechanics, right? It's just dharmas rolling along, there's no person and blah blah blah. This is the mechanics. But we have to pay attention to the human view, which is the feelings, the grieving, the attachments, all the people around us and so forth. And the training of Zazen to me is sitting with what is. And we find that when you can hold your grief and really recognize it and feel it, it becomes like a clear stream. Then you see the bottom of the stream. I mean, it's healing to actually be with it and grieve. And I think that's what I want to pretend. Right. But then there is a point where... That you let go. Yeah, let go. Right. So you have a good cry. Yeah. Again and again. Really good cry. When you're crying, just totally cry. When you're grieving, just totally grieve. And then when it's over, it's totally over.

[48:15]

Even though it creeps back in. I think, just like everything, we use words. You were saying something about we should prepare for death, or anticipate it, or something like that. And I think it's very difficult to do that in any real way, because we prepare for or anticipate our idea of it, which is something controllable. But I just wanted to say, I recently had an interesting experience. Some friends of mine, a couple who were married, finally they both died. And I was informed that they had left me some things in their will. They lived in Fresno. And some of the things were fairly large, wouldn't fit in my car. So I had to rent a van. It wasn't funny.

[49:17]

Everybody laughs at me. A lot of them laugh. But anyway, it was interesting because I had to make all kinds of arrangements. I had to have somebody ready to meet me to help me unload it. when I arrived here, and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, the day before I drove down, which was this past Tuesday, I got to feeling awful. And it was very inchoate. And I still am not clear about the feelings. But I'm sure it had to do with that I was facing the fact that these people are really dead. Because they lived in Fresno. And I've experienced that with my family who lived in Fresno. When they die, then when I come back to Berkeley, I'm back just, life is the way it was before. As soon as I go back to Fresno, it all hits me again, because they're really not there. So I was dreading or something, I can't even think of the right word, I was feeling some inchoate thing.

[50:19]

Anyway, I drove there, I got these things, and now I have them in my house. And I realized that a lot of these things are things my friends bought when they were younger and they did a lot of traveling. And they would buy things on their travels. And I didn't even notice these things the few times that I've been in their house. It was filled with all these things. Now, I'm making up stories, of course. But I'm looking at them. And I'm kind of thinking about how they chose these things, and where they went, and how much fun they had. It's making my voice shaky just to talk about it. But it's very wonderful. And I find it to be. And I'm so grateful to them for having done this. I've never before had somebody choose to give me something that I'll get after they die. I've had things. I've cleaned out somebody's place and had things from them. But this was things that are lists.

[51:21]

This woman made 32 lists of things to give to people. Anyway, it's very interesting to me because I'm experiencing a lot of things I, of course, can't and don't want to bother wasting time categorizing. But I don't think you can. I know from my experience, I can't anticipate this. I can't prepare for it, et cetera. Preparation doesn't mean that you know exactly how things are going to work out. Preparation means that you live your life in a certain way. It's not like you're determining how it's going to be in the end. You prepare by simplifying your life so that you don't have a lot of baggage. People live in us. things that are left to us.

[52:24]

That's true. Yeah. That's a kind of continuation. I don't know if I can feel my father's death, but I can feel my fear of my father's death. He's not dead. It is slowly declining in kind of slow motion. And I really fear it and grieve as we go along. And I wonder about this balance of feeling the fear and whatever this is. Rationality and fear.

[53:27]

You're bound to have the fear and then you know things the way they are. And flexibility to be able to, I don't want to say control your fear, just let it be. What is this fear? Study the fear. there is an inevitability that we have to be able to accept, which goes against what we want for life. So we have to, what is that inevitability? What is that? When I attend to people who are dying, somehow, although I have all my, whatever it is available for me,

[54:30]

to deal with this, I feel that my role is to help the person to be as calm and content as possible and not create some kind of fear in them or anxiety in them. They have enough of their own, whatever that is, but to help them by not being fearful somehow to be able to rise above that and just be present, you know, just be present for people without creating anything. It's like there's this moment and this moment and this moment and it's not like helping the person to be present in the moment.

[55:37]

And that's our practice. When my parents were getting old, I would say there was a period of about maybe five years that every time I saw them, and I would leave I would cry because I thought this may be the last time. It actually made me really appreciate them. So I felt like I had gotten a lot closer to them and our whole relationship became more alive for me because because I was recognizing their imminent death. So it was very rich, actually.

[56:39]

It wasn't something that I was resisting or dreading or something, you know. It was very kind of sweet, actually. Yes, how you can actually make that happen. without trying to make it up, without contriving, but to actually allow that kind of, you know, when people are doing it, a lot of times animosities or whatever contentions are these kind of fade away because you're in this state, right? And it's letting go with a kind of wonderful feeling, I think. You know, for me it's easier to grasp if I think about someone who hasn't prepared to experience their death.

[57:48]

You know, it's an incredible thing that awaits all of us. And their last thought is something like, I didn't pay the water bill. And they keel over. You know, I mean, that seems pretty much like a waste of death. Don't waste your day. Say that again. What did he say? He was pointing out that I was going to say something. Thank you, Jeff. There are a lot of people in the room who have a lot of experience with this. And I just want to underscore what John said in a really lovely way. I've never met someone who had regrets. Regrets are about what you don't do. What you don't do with your loved ones, particularly with your the people that you're very close to, like a parent, to express your gratitude, to show off as much as you can.

[58:58]

Because love and gratitude have a great way of healing grief. Nothing will have been left unsaid if you continue to show off.

[59:08]

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