So what I'd like to, I'd like to have this be more interactive and I'd like to talk about Val, but first I just want to see, it felt like we were sort of unfinished in the morning and I wonder if there were questions that had come up or things that were holding over from the session then. things about save the body, or before Buddhas were enlightened, they were the same as we enlightened people today, or exactly as those of old. Go ahead.

[01:00]

It just doesn't seem so mysterious to me. I remember Laurie one time saying, we are the ancestors. And it made sense to me. Without us, if we don't keep practicing, there won't be this practice. So we just keep carrying it on. Maybe I'm missing something. I think what Carol said, I think even though there may be weird aspect to that. I think that we do sort of take that for granted. I mean, we don't... Dogen, or whoever edited that, were probably more in a context where people did sort of think that Buddha was like a god, or a superhuman, only came along once every trillion years, and that kind of thing. And I think that even though You know, if we think about Buddha, we might think, well, he was probably an extraordinary guy.

[02:04]

We don't think that it was like something just dropped out of heaven. We do assume that he was just, you know, he was an ordinary guy who was unusual, something or other. And so it's not that we don't think that so much. I mean, there's other aspects where, as a practical purpose, we might think, oh, gosh, those guys who went off to the mountains for 10 years, I would never do that, or so on. But I don't think we really think that they're of a different quality. It's just, you might think, well, I'm not that tough, but I'm still a human. They're still human. Does anyone have a contrary point of view? Well, not contrary, but just to contribute further, that was probably my favorite line.

[03:05]

Which? The line that you just read about, you know, ancient people... Let me paraphrase. Before Buddhas were enlightened, they were the same as we enlightened people. So they are exactly as those of old. That line sort of jumped out at me when I was reading it, because I think that that's the human condition, is to constantly idolize the golden age of the past. We're always doing that. Every society always does that. Oh, people 100 years ago. so much better and so much more incredible than we are today. But in fact, that's kind of a way of letting yourself off from facing the realities of the present. And that you are in fact the same human beings as people 2,000 years ago, dealing with the same problems, just in different circumstances.

[04:15]

I'll take, I agree with what's been said, but I think there is a contrary aspect to it, which is I don't really hear people in our current community writing the way that Dogen wrote, as kind of mystically or poetically or carrying out right now. And that may be a number of reasons. A style of writing in the past, which is different from the way we write today, or I don't know, any number. I also remember asking Sojourners why we don't write co-ops for the present. There's some talk of rewriting the rules of practice for a contemporary monastic situation.

[05:28]

And Sojin's answer was, well, you can't just write a koan. And in a way, I wonder why you can't. Because it seems like some of those stories had an origination somewhere. Is there a way that we could be as a Buddhist community, exploring koans that somehow resonate with our particular conflicts or mental struggles now? If we wanted to do that, see, the whole idea of sort of dokasan and private interview is a relatively modern idea. And of course, in our tradition, it's also gotten highly therapeuticized, but that's not relevant, but the koans are all taken from what was called public record or public cases, and most of these dialogues, and if you read stuff from the Tang dynasty, what was happening all the time was that the teachers were

[06:46]

publicly with the students. They weren't meeting necessarily one-on-one. I mean, that might have happened sometimes, and some of the koans are like that. But a lot of them are public records. So if we wanted to do this, what would be really cool would be for someone to take notes on Shosan, you know, because that's where Koan material happens. So, we don't, we don't, we consider that confidential, but then, you know, there were records kept of, there were records kept of these exchanges that were enlightenment experiences. Somebody was noting this down or making them up. So that's just a thought that occurred to me.

[07:50]

Michael Wenger, what was the name of his book? 33 Hands or something? Fingers. 33 Fingers? Yeah. Michael Wenger composed a book of modern koans, but a lot of them were drawn from literature and they were pretty cool. But a koan to me is like, you know, I played this traditional music and they're Irish tunes, they're Appalachian tunes, they're tunes that go back to the 19th century or earlier. And the reason that they've survived is that there's something alive in that tune. You know, it's not like you could just go and write this. You could. And some people are writing tunes that will last, melodies that will last. But we also have this record because it's been sustained in an oral tradition in the same way that the Koans have been sustained in oral tradition, because there's something really fundamentally human and alive in them.

[09:03]

So I don't feel that we're not doing it, it may be more that we're not recording it. I would also add that I think in the past people's lives were not so drowned out by media and other entertainments. So when you wrote a song, or people sang songs regularly, That was how they entertained themselves at night, Monday after dinner. You'd sing songs or whatever, or play games. Dogen, for example, he was writing. There were other writers around, but in that time, it made more of an impact, because there wasn't an internet or mass newspaper printing that he was drowned out?

[10:06]

Well, in fact it did. It didn't. He was, his work was lost for something like four or five centuries until it was, but someone had preserved it at Eheji and in a couple of other places. They had saved his work almost as relics. And when they You know, when they found it, they said, whoa, what is this stuff? But it wasn't. We have a cult of Dogen that did not exist in the 15th century at all, but anyway, we've got it now. I think he was probably just a local teacher, you know, who, I mean, I think he had influential he had influential heirs.

[11:12]

And, you know, he built what's now, you know, one of the headquarters of Soto Zen. But then it was like, you know, he picked up from He built this beautiful monastery on the outskirts of Kyoto and there was so much sectarian strife that he just packed it up and moved it, it's like moving it to the wild west, it's like taking a wagon train to some distant place, it's the equivalent of that. In fact, in the first place he just in Echizen province and then he built this monastery and even then it was kind of modest and now it's, you know, huge. But I think that his influence was extremely limited but it was very influential on a few influential people.

[12:18]

So the institution actually was built by the third, yes, something like that. But anyway, Khe Sanh was the institution builder and he built his institution in Yokohama, you know, which was in the heart of an urban area rather than in the... And is that the second I think he had a temple before Sojiji, but he was the one that's released as kind of having founded institutional Soto Zen. And that's the last of the Buddhas and Ancestors in our chant, right? In our chant, but, you know, Lori and I just got back from Tassajara, and some of you have been to Tassajara. There's a reason.

[13:22]

We stop with Khezan because Khezan is the last of the common Soto ancestors in the lineage. From there, there's tremendous amount of bifurcation, and you have Ahe, You have the Eheji school and the Sojiji school. So for example, Suzuki Roshi was an Eheji monk and Maezumi Roshi was a Sojiji monk. And there's not much difference, but there's minor differences. So the lineage keeps shifting. So when you go to Tassahara, how many of you have been there? And I don't know what, did you guys chant a whole temple lineage at Filitendo?

[14:23]

Right, so there's the whole lineage which continues from Khezan up to, would be up to Maizumi Roshi, or it'd be up to Suzuki Roshi, the last ancestor that's passed away. And those lineages are different. And so at Tassajara, You do the whole temple lineage. So the whole temple lineage then ends with Shunryu Suzuki. And our temple lineage would also end with Shunryu Suzuki, if we did the whole lineage. But what we're doing is the common Soto lineage, if that makes sense. Jerry? Well, I just was going to, for me, I feel two things. One, I feel really inspired by this. Which this? This, by the teaching in the Hikutsu Hutsugamai.

[15:26]

Because it feels to me like he's talking about practicing. He's not talking about... He's talking about confessing and repenting, looking to our karma, that sort of thing. And it seems to be encouraging us in the way that if we keep just walking in the path and sit and doing our practice and pay attention to ourselves and are working on our wholesomeness, whatever, that is possible for us to be the same. He's not setting up anything glorious, I don't think. He's saying, they were just people who practiced all the time. So if you practice all the time, The idea is practicing, not achieving anything. And if we look at Suzuki Roshi, he didn't write anything. He gave some talks that got written down.

[16:26]

But he's our ancestor. So I feel really like we can practice like Suzuki Roshi and be inspired by that. So on the one hand, I feel very inspired. On the other hand, when I got my lineage paper, when I got ordained and saw my name at the bottom of it, it was freaky. Because I was seeing my name and all these other names, I thought, oh my God. No. It just felt like this awesome responsibility. And that I didn't know if I could ever live up to it. That it made me feel like, whoa, I've got to really totally reorient everything and look harder. So there was that part of it. that if I really want to walk with the ancestors, behind the ancestors, I have to be as dedicated as them. But still, that's a kind of inspiration. Well, this is at the heart of this piece by Sojan Roshi.

[17:29]

He says, we avow our karma. then renew our practice by reciting the names of the Buddhas, Ancestors and the Precepts. You are acknowledging the stumbling blocks that you keep putting in your way from beginningless greed, hate and delusion. It's all about stumbling blocks and how you obstruct the way through your, my karma. We want to go somewhere, but we're always putting something in the way. And then he says, how do we deal with our stumbling blocks or our problems? One of Suzuki Roshi's main teachings was face the problem you have, just deal with the problem you have, and that is practice. Practice is to acknowledge the stumbling blocks that are in your way and deal with them.

[18:33]

As you know, Suzuki Roshi would say, the problem you have now is the problem you will always have. You should be grateful for the problem you have because when you change your problem, it may be even worse. He never talked about being good or bad or right or wrong. He would just say your problem is your treasure. If you didn't have a problem, you couldn't practice. So that's what, that's Sogen's gloss on, at the heart of what Dogen is talking about here, this both faith, vow, intention, which means dealing with the hard places in our life. For me that's really key because I keep coming back over time to this idea that somehow when I work with my problem or practice diligently or whatever, I'm going to feel good.

[19:51]

There's going to be this earthquake and all this mythology and reality will shift and suddenly I'll have that wonderful sense of peace. really kind of honing in on this section in italics, because it's all about this life, and to my ears, relative, the relative realm, you know, why the body, why not the mind or the heart, and you know, first this life and then many lives. And I mean, lives actually appears, or life, appears three times in this section. So it reminds me of Dogen's thing of practice and enlightenment or not to. And I like it because in those darkest moments, the most challenging to come back, to just show up.

[20:58]

and practice is enlightenment and enlightenment is just to be there. It's like, you know, it's not a thing. Yeah. So it's not, I guess what I mean by that is it's not a question of whether, you know, Dogen is a genius or the Buddha was a genius and what am I? It's more like I need to be a hundred percent me. Right. And that's it. And it's like, oh man, all the weight's off my shoulders because it's just about making And that's why we need verification of that. That's why we have all these interrelational practices. Right, right. So one of the things where you started is we have this problem, most of us have maybe two or three, you know, Our deluded thinking is constantly going to, if I just clear this out of the way, you know, then everything would be okay.

[22:10]

I had a saying that I used to ironically say, I'm hoping next week will be better. You know, if we just clear this out of the way, then everything would be okay. But actually, We can't clear it out of the way because it's like crawling up a sand bank or something. It's like we're getting our hand hold and then we're pulling down all the sand on top of us. So how do we live with the sand coming down, the shit coming down, all of that? How do we live with this? problem of problems that we have and you know the Buddha had a lot of problems you know if you read the suttas you read the early Pali suttas like one person after another has given him a problem you know it's like every encounter is with like somebody who's kind of a pain in the ass and he's just

[23:25]

He's not trying to get rid of them. He's just actually trying to meet one by one. Until, actually, he died. You know, when he died, he had a problem. He had probably something like food poisoning, and he had an infection, and he was, you know, really, really sick and in a lot of pain, and he dealt with that and let go. Can we do that? So where this leads for me, actually where I wanted to go was actually, was to ask, Andrea asked this morning, when we were talking afterwards, she said, well this is, Dogen's universal Dharma vow, his entry into the vow, his gate into the vow, and I'm curious, what do you all think is the meaning of vow?

[24:40]

What does that mean to you in a personal way? I mean, it could be you could say what your vow is, but you could also just say what you think vow is in the context of our life and practice? It seems like it's commitment to me. So you have the faith, you've got to have faith, and then you have the vow or some commitment, and then you have your intention. You have to have intention too. It's interesting that the that the root is the same root as the word vote I Happen to look it up this afternoon Yeah, Jerry Val feels like it has more of a spiritual feeling to me or a deeper feeling than setting intention

[25:46]

When I set an intention, I didn't have to be a Buddhist to set an intention. I wanted to improve myself, or I wanted to be a kinder person, or whatever. But there's something about a vow that feels to me like it's connected to, I want to walk with the ancestors, or I want to follow the way. So it's deeper than an intention. connected to something bigger than me. I wonder if it's related to when we say we swear something or I don't know like think back in mythology like Greek mythology somebody will promise to do something and they say well you swear it And what the swear means is that you're invoking a horrible punishment if you don't do it.

[26:54]

And so then you can really trust that this person would never dare go back on that, because there's something magical. He's invoked something that will be a horrible thing. And again, that's a different term, but I'm wondering if the origin of the word vow isn't something like that. I'm going to do this and, you know, there's nothing going to stop me. Because, you know, you're sort of creating, in a sense you're creating, not an obstacle, but you're creating some horrible thing that will... We swear to tell the truth. In a trial we swear in the Bible. Right. So that's God. Well, there's something in origin. Yeah, that's interesting kid because There's one of the senior students that I was talking about as we were planning the next Aspects of practice period and I was talking about living with Val that person Really was uncomfortable with Val for I think The reason that you're citing

[28:09]

was that it evoked for that person this side, sort of like swearing of the breaking of the vow implies a really bad repercussion. And that, you know, it caught me by surprise, but I hear it. Someone else? Leslie? I think of vows bigger also, and maybe big enough that it includes our foibles when we take missteps. But it seems like how we want to live our life, to me. Sometimes it's public, which means we said something about voting. And to me, intention is like in the moment, what I intend to do. I don't know, there's something about intention to me that has kind of like an out, you know?

[29:14]

Like, I'm going to try. But, you know, vow seems more whole and deeper, like Jerry was saying, too. Whereas intention, I think in a moment, it's what I'm doing. But if I look at intention in a bigger way, it seems like, well, it seems a little shaky to me, at least sometimes. I think about as invoking accountability, whether it's a vow with another person or within a community, that there's a sense of, it's not, if the other people don't know you've broken your vow, then certainly you have karma or the river sticks or whatever to recap it. internally as a stumbling block, but to me it seems to have more than an individual characteristic.

[30:18]

Yeah, thank you. That's that's really helpful. What I remember when I was working when I was first ordained as a priest and I was working on wedding ceremonies and then Laurie and I had our wedding ceremony that that Reb did and the The ceremony, I'm not quite sure where it came from, it may have come from Suzuki Roshi, that Sojon and Reb do, it includes precepts as vows, but it doesn't include the vows that we're used to in the Western tradition. The vows where you turn to each other and make vows and when I started designing a wedding ceremony my feeling was this is missing and actually it's the piece that was missing to me was you had these bodhisattva vows which were like accountability to the universe but you had never actually turned towards each other and said how you were going to be accountable to each other

[31:38]

So I think, and I think in a sense, this relates to what Ken was saying, but with perhaps a less dire context, right? I mean, you're taking, breaking an oath or a vow, you're accountable, you know, in some cosmic way, something's gonna happen, but actually, if you're talking about vow in the context that, I'm forgetting your name, debt that you're talking about, these are vows that we make to each other. Yeah, Vince. I totally see what everyone else is talking about, the whole sort of accountability and sort of classical vow, if you don't fulfill your vow, you'll be punished somehow. But I guess from a Buddhist perspective, when I think of save all beings in terms of, I feel like now means like when Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha had his realization of enlightenment and saw the suffering in the world and said, I have to save these people because there is so much pain.

[33:05]

And that sort of internal, you see something horrible and you're compelled internally to do something about it, that's, I guess, what I think of as vow. There's something vast about vow. You're compelled by circumstances to do this thing. But there's something vast about vow, if I'm reading, I was thinking about this in reading a section of Shokaku Okamura's book. So we take, At the end of this talk, as we did at the end of the talk this morning, we take the four Bodhisattva vows, right? Beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless.

[34:06]

I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Every one of those is a two-part proposition, and between the first part and the second part, there's a complete impossibility. Beings are numberless, okay? If they're numberless, how can you awaken them all? Every one of them embodies a contradiction, which opens up the scope of one's values. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I think that paradox is why I'm not personally comfortable with any of these definitions of value, because it seems too facile and too dualistic to equate it with the promise about the future.

[35:15]

And there's that paradoxical nature of the bodhisattva vow that you can never actually save innumerable beings, you can never exhaust inexhaustible delusion. But if your sense of vow is by moment by moment, it takes on this enormous quality, this vast quality I think you're talking about. Because you will never achieve it, and that's the point. The point is that it's more of a vector than a promise. Well, let me refine that a little, because we had a discussion about this, a discussion about this the group had with Bernie Glassman, Roshi, or I don't know. Yeah, he's a Roshi now. He's eschewed his Buddhist identity to some degree, but he still sees things with a Buddhist lens. When I was in Santa Fe last week or the week before, and what he said, which I thought was really interesting, was he tries to avoid

[36:29]

and at the same time has goals. So there's the distinction. So you don't have the expectation that you're going to save all sentient beings, but you hold that goal in mind, you hold the goal of those vows in mind as a place to to enter your activities. Can you enter those activities without an expectation of their fulfillment? I would only take exception with the use of the word goal, because I think it conveys the wrong meaning, because that would suggest to me a finish line. It's like, if I made a vow to go north, when would I get there? When you arrive back where you began. And whereas if you set a fundraising goal of $10,000, you're done.

[37:39]

It's the renewing nature, the ceaseless, the endless nature of it that gives the word richness to me. Well, I think it has to do with how you think of the word goal. In his case, he had this vision which came in the course of his life, which was subfusal meditation, of feeding all of the hungry people in the world. That's, you know, like the Bodhisattva vow. That was his goal. He knew he couldn't do that, but what he tried to do was to plunge into that in as thorough a way as he could. So it's just a question of how we hold gold to some degree. If you have a better word, I'm open to it.

[38:43]

But anyway, yeah, Katie? I was struck by what Vince was saying about the vow as a response, and I was thinking that if it is a response to something awful, then it's a way of not succumbing to despair. So I vow the way of moving beyond perhaps your immediate emotional response to something and renewing your intention or whatever so that you don't become bogged down by karma, happens? Let me just point out in the Ehekosu Hotsungamon, vow occurs once, and it's the second word of the text.

[39:45]

And here's, so like this is Dogen's universe, this is Dogen's vow, so what is it? It's actually the first proposition. We vow with all beings from this life on, or I vow with all beings from this life on throughout countless lives to hear the true Dharma. Boom. That's it. That's the vow that he's making. Everything else is commentary on what that vow implies, what it means, where it leads in terms of our thinking and our action, but the vow is to hear the true dharma, right? Well, and that upon hearing it will do some other things, doesn't it? Well, that's the effect of having taken the, the effect of having taken the vow is that upon hearing the true dharma, then we'll be free from doubts and we will not lack in faith

[40:59]

and that meeting the true dharma we shall renounce worldly affairs and maintain the Buddha dharma and that in doing that the great earth and all living beings together will attain the Buddha way. So it kind of snowballs. Vince? Not to complicate things, in sort of Indian Hindu philosophy which Buddhism comes out of, there is this long-standing notion that there is only one being, that humans are deluded in believing that they are separate entities, and that therefore, if you are coming from that background and thinking that perhaps it is possible to save all beings, because If you save yourself, or you save one being, then you have saved all beings, because there is only one being.

[42:04]

I'm just throwing that concept out there as maybe an explanation for why some of these vows seem so impossible to achieve, or grandiose, because we're sort of thinking of them in a Western, dualistic way. radical functions of Buddhism, it's really interesting to me. This is just my idea. The one being notion of Indian philosophy was also one that in social terms functioned as a complete social determinism. So if you're one being then, you know, okay, actually I've just been reading about this, so the Brahmans were born from the head and the Kshatriyas were born from the heart and the Vaishyas are born from the arms and the Sudras, the servants, are born from the feet and the untouchables are not even

[43:18]

the constituents of the one body, and of course if that's it, it's like your feet, your foot doesn't revolt from your arm. The Buddhist notion of, to me what's radical about the Buddhist notion was actually he posited, he created a context of one body in terms of but within that he posited a kind of radical individualism, that you establish your value as a person according to your thoughts and actions, so you were not locked into gender, caste, occupation, language group, tribe, etc., and that's a very it's a different proposition, it's a different way and then once it got to China and East Asia then you had a kind of another perspective which did have this kind of cosmic and mystic vision but that wasn't so deterministic.

[44:49]

I guess I'm not really referring to the deterministic part. I'm just referring more to the Vishnu concept that everyone is Krishna or Vishnu or whatever. Everyone is the same spiritual entity that pervades the universe. Well, what you're mentioning, Vince, reminds me of some years ago, I had a lot of conversations with a Vedantic philosopher. He was sort of trying to convert me to Vedantic philosophy. But we were also kind of trying to figure out where Vedanta diverged from Buddhism or how they were different. And one of the main things and I'm still not sure if it's actually a difference, was that in Vedanta, there's sort of the concept of kind of what you're talking about, which is a being is sort of the ground.

[46:04]

And then in Buddhism, my understanding is the ground is emptiness. So I don't know if that's a real difference, but that was That was sort of what I came to at that time in those conversations. And kind of related to that, the other thing that what you were talking about made me think of is, I've kind of come to think of at least the vows of the precepts as sort of an acknowledgment I can't think of a good way to really say it, but if you don't believe you're a separate entity, then it's sort of an acknowledgement of what's in your own best interest. Say it again? So if you don't buy into this delusion that we are separate.

[47:09]

then vows, at least the precepts, to me, seem, in a way, just like an acknowledgment of what would be in your own best interest. And I've had a lot of trouble taking the precepts, because I was raised very Catholic, and I didn't want to take them on the Ten Commandments, you know? And so that's one way of thinking about them that's helped me to hold them in a different way than sort of this very Judeo-Christian idea of like, you will be punished if you don't do this. It's kind of like, I mean, in a way you will, but it's just because you're not separate. Well, I think the precepts are all about how we are in relationship to each other. And if, as a teacher of mine said, if there weren't any people, there wouldn't be any precepts.

[48:14]

They're really a map for relationship. Judy? It keeps reminding me of, well, a couple of things. One that, you know, working as a chaplain, to get certified as a chaplain, to do the work, you have to do a lot of being with difference in terms of religious expression, non-religious expression, and so forth. And if I get caught in an idea of anything, I can't serve. So one of the phrases I learned from Menka Roshi is being one with which really resonates and we receive the precepts, the vows, is being one with the Buddha, being one with the Dharma. And when we would do the Atonement Ceremony or Bodhisattva Ceremony, Namu, rather than being homaged to, is being one with Manjushri Bodhisattva, being one.

[49:22]

So being one with that energy, that I'm not separate from that energy, and I'm very much with that too. with Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur coming, and very actively maintaining my Jewish practice. And also resonating a lot with Christianity. So where does that fall? Do we have a label for that? That I resonate with all of that? And I'm also a Zen Buddhist, whatever that is. So to me, there's something about being non-linear is being one with. You know, like when we fill out the lineage chart, it's a bloodline that goes all the way back to Shakyamuni Buddha, so it's like, where is it linear and down to me, and oh, now I carry the lineage forward? Well, if it was just that, then why is it back up? And I remember viscerally drawing that, and my hand was almost shaking, because it's a body experience to be one with

[50:27]

I don't know what this is, but I'm feeling it in every cell in my body, and it's incredible. And sometimes vowing is like that, and karaoke. So I don't even have words for it. There's something to me about vow, this plunging. Yeah. So when we started sowing, when some of us started sowing with Blanche Hartman, Her translation of Namu Shakyamuni Butsu was, I plunge into Shakyamuni Buddha. Namu Kiye Butsu. Namu Kiye Butsu, right? Yeah, I'm not sure which was, but the act was plunging into, which makes good sense as you're sticking the needle through the cloth and bringing it back up, taking taking refuge with every stich, yeah, namu ki butsu, yeah.

[51:30]

Sort of on that vein, you know there's this famous statement by Eugene Debs, which I can't remember all of, it's a three-part thing, but two of it, I think the first part is something about as long as there is poverty or something like that, But I believe the second two are, as long as there is a criminal class, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free. So I like this, and I think it sort of opens up here, because think of what he's doing there. He's making a vow of sorts. In fact, he's not even saying, I vowed to do it. He says, I am not free if one person is in prison. But what that's implying, I think, is not like a distant goal or anything like that.

[52:33]

It's like him telling himself, I will remember. I am not going to, like, if somebody is saying, oh, we need to put so-and-so in jail, or those bad guys, or blah, blah, blah, I'm not going to think out and say, oh, yeah, well, of course we need to, you know, that's going to be a little trigger in my head that says, you're talking about me. not just those supposed bad guys over there. As long as this kind of situation exists, I'm guilty. And if there's somebody in prison, I'm not free. Do you see what I mean? It's not exactly like he's saying, I'm going to abolish all prisons. I swear that I'm going to do this. Although that's obviously the goal. But it's like, given this situation, I am going to tell myself, and that's sort of like a repeating thing like we do every day, I am going to remember that I'm with that person in jail, I'm da-da-da-da, right?

[53:53]

So it's kind of, I and I'm sure that he never heard of the bodhisattva vows and things like that, but it really reminded it as a sort of secular version of something that you would say to orient yourself and to remind yourself. I think it's a human perception that cuts across, and this is I think what what you're saying, cuts across all faith traditions, it's a human perception of non-separation. which exists in all traditions. So let's remember, it's like, I vow with all beings to hear the true Dharma. So I'm curious, I have an idea of what that means to hear the true Dharma, but I'm curious to hear what you think in light of what we've been talking about.

[54:54]

What is the true Dharma? Well, I don't know if this goes to it, but I've been thinking, I really like what you said, by the way, about the despair. I think that's really, really true. But there's something about like in the marriage vow, it's like you plight your troth, which means if you take it apart, it's like you put your truth in jeopardy to the bigger truth. So, I mean, it's kind of like that's the true dharma. You plight your troth with the true dharma and you're putting your own individual truth or dharma or something in jeopardy. So, there's this transformative quality to the vow, I think, too. It's like, you know, when you have your marriage vows, you're transformed into a different partner-ish type of person who's, like we talked about, accountable to this other person. And so, in a way, we're accountable to all sentient beings when we put our own individual

[56:00]

Story to the to the bigger story, you know, we let it we let it go into the bigger story and and we lose Control of it in a way or something. So in marriage were we Vow to be accountable to each other This is the way I've been talking with a lot of people With other teachers about the meaning of a student-teacher relationship and to me I A student-teacher relationship, at the core of it, is mutual accountability. Not a one-dimensional or one-directional accountability, but one where teacher and student are accountable to each other, which means that their positions shift. And this is something that Sojan talks about indirectly at the end of this lecture, he says, Dogen talks about turning and being turned.

[57:14]

The essence of the practice is to be turned and in turn to turn. When we are turned by the Dharma, Dharma is in a strong position and we are in a flexible position. I don't want to say the weak position. It's not that you're weak, it's simply that you're flexible. And when we're in the strong position, we're yielding. When the Dharma is strong, we yield. When we're strong, the Dharma yields. And to me, that's a map also of the kinds of relationships, certainly relationships that I aspire to. and how we are connecting to each other, because at no one point does any one person have the market cornered on wisdom. Every one of us knows pieces of the world in a more intimate and thorough way than

[58:24]

the other people in this room and in that realm we should be able to pay attention to you and learn from you so you're in the turning position or in the teacher position but in another you know we sway if we change realms then somebody else has the wisdom So, that points to this question of we vow to hear the true Dharma. It's not like I vow to read the book that has the complete truth and get it, or vow to submit myself at the feet of this all-knowing woman who who has all the wisdom collected. It's like, where is the truth right now?

[59:34]

And can I see it and hear it? And also, can I hear it in myself? If I come to an awareness that I'm tapped into something that is really true and basic, then can I hear it and can I say it? Jerry? The third paragraph seems to me, and this seems to me to be getting at May they share with us their compassion which fills the boundless universe with the virtue of their enlightenment and teachings. Buddhas and ancestors of old, where's we? We in the future shall be Buddhas and ancestors. Revering Buddhas and ancestors, we are one Buddha and one ancestor.

[60:37]

Awakening Bodhi mind, we are one Bodhi mind. Yeah, that gets at Vince's point. So, there is something about this process of listening. the very nature of listening and awakening to the teaching or paying attention, and that practice puts us in union. Right. That's right. And I think the word I got from Judy was communion, which is not one we use a lot, but really communion. That's a religious term. There's a term in, I think it's in Bendawa by Dogen imperceptible mutual assistance uh which i think is also there that sometimes the message is coming it's very it's a very quiet signal that we're just barely hearing but it's it's helping us and that's we don't know where it comes from but we're open because we have like

[61:51]

Right. Our radio is able to tune into it. In Christian language, that would be the smallest still voice. Right. There's a great song in old-time country music called, Turn Your Radio On. Turn your radio on and listen to the music in the air. Turn your radio on and the glory share. turn your lights down low, listen to the Master's radio, get in tune with God, turn your radio on. I actually think it's the same idea. So basically then wonder, maybe I'm just sticking this in there, it doesn't need to be, but I want to cultivate skillful learning or discernment.

[62:55]

Yes. But there seems to be, you know, you could listen, maybe it's QEC that's playing. That's the thing. That's right. You could be fooled by that. Is that our understanding of practice? Is practice cultivating skillful learning and skillful discernment? This is why we do this in Sangha and in community. Now, obviously a whole community can be deluded. That can happen. Lots of groups, but what we're hoping is if we're actually supporting critical thinking and not a some given set of beliefs, then hopefully people, our friends can point out when we're deluded.

[64:01]

We do trust that, and of course sometimes that can go wrong, but so far it hasn't gone, I haven't felt it gone too wrong here. And you also have to trust your own internal You have to trust that small, still voice and say, no, this is off. And explore that. And maybe go elsewhere to look for people to raise those questions. But this is a good place to stop, I think. And what I'd like to do tomorrow, we'll work with this So this text goes quite a bit farther into the question of repentance. And it would be good to explore why it does that and what repentance means. Do you guys have the handout?

[65:03]

The section on repentance from... Are you referring to the Django piece? No, the Shohaku, the whole thing. I think the section on repentance is, it begins with, at the beginning of the Shohaku piece, it's on page 53.

[65:20]

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