I vow to teach the truth as the Tarkhatevs would. Good morning. Good morning. So, for various reasons, I wanted to talk about Dogen's Fukanza Zengi. during the Sashin. Someone was questioning me about it, and of course that person's not here, but it's still a great text. And the more familiar we are with Dogen, the better we understand our practice, I think.

[01:01]

This is Dogen's recommendation to everyone for Zazen, which he wrote in 1227, shortly after he came back from China, when he was 27 years old. But then later he revised it. He revised it a couple of times. And then there's a popular version. So it reverberates with many of Dogen's other fascicles. And it's a good introduction to Dogen's Zazen. There's another shorter piece called Zazengi. which is simply how to sit Zazen, which is also interesting. But Fukan Zazengi has a beginning and an end to Zazengi, where he explains why we should be doing this and what it's all about.

[02:18]

Not very long. recommending Zazen to all people. This is Ta-Nehisi and Ed Brown's translation, which was later revised. Thank goodness. Some of the terms. I'm always used to reading Dr. Abe's translation, which was the first one to come out in the 70s. And so those phrases reverberate in my mind. you know, the Abbe's translation of the Fuka and Abbe and Norman Waddell, their translation of the Fuka and the Zengi, those phrases always reverberate in my mind. So when I read another translation, it sounds very different, different kind of language. Abbe and Waddell's language is more kind of formal and poetic and so forth, whereas, you know,

[03:22]

which is actually an addition. Translators always like to add things. But anyway, so this is much more a common language feeling, which I like. Anyway, And some of the terms, you know, that people argue about aren't even in here. It's just, we get so, we get very attached to the words that we hear, and then we mull them over, you know, so it's good to study more than one translation of something, because you get, you're very attached to a certain translation, and then when we see another one, we say, no, that's not right, that's not right. but it's actually just a different way of expressing the same thing, which may be more accurate than the one that we like so much.

[04:33]

So anyway, Fukanza Zengi. The real way circulates everywhere. How could it require practice or enlightenment? The essential teaching is fully available. How could effort be necessary? Furthermore, the entire mirror is free of dust. Why take steps to polish it? Nothing is separate from this very place. So why go away some place? Why journey away? Why go off to dusty lands to look for it? So the real way is not difficult. It circulates everywhere. This word, well, before I say that, the reason why Dogen, seems to be the reason why Dogen wrote this the way he did, was because

[05:50]

of, he supposedly had this great question, if everyone has Buddha nature, what need is there to practice? Why do you have to do something? So that was his question. And when he went to China, His question was resolved for him by his teacher, Rujing. That's why he so much admired Rujing, because Rujing gave him the turning words for his realization. You know the story, of course. When Dogen was sitting Zazen, Rujing used to come around and hit the monks with his slipper.

[06:56]

We used a stick, but he used a slipper. He came up to the monk next to Dogen. The monk next to Dogen was sleeping. And so Dogen came up, I mean his teacher, Rujing, came up next to the monk who was sleeping and hit him with his slipper and he said, what are you doing wasting your time sleeping? Don't you know that without effort there's no realization? Without practice there's no realization? Something like that. And Dogen, the light went on for Dogen. But there are other experiences that Dogen had that also participated in that experience. One was meeting the Tenzo of Ayuwang. who made Dogen realize that everything that he did was practice, and whatever we do is practice, and that enlightenment comes out of our activity.

[08:10]

And without the activity of practice, enlightenment doesn't appear, even though enlightenment is your nature. So these were contributing factors to that kind of experience. So this understanding that the real way, bodhi, the way here means bodhi, actually. enlightenment, the way of enlightenment. Dao means way or path, right? So you can argue over what the path or the way means, and it's used in various ways, but it means the way of the enlightenment, the enlightened way in Buddhism.

[09:12]

So the real way, our bodhi is actually present everywhere. And we can enter that way at any moment in whatever we're doing. It's like the water is everywhere. And all we have to do is realize that it's wet. Like walking in the fog. you after a while you touch your clothes and you feel like and you realize they're wet because water is everywhere so uh enlightenment is not some object it's our deepest nature so when we touch the depths of our nature That's called enlightenment. And then light is that water. Light is water. Light is mountains.

[10:17]

Light is trees. Light is you. And light is me. So, he says the real way circulates everywhere. Like electricity, I just plug in. But you have to have the means. And the means is called Azen. So he says, how could it require practice or enlightenment? So that was his question. Why do you have to do something about it if it's everywhere? The essential teaching is fully available. So how could effort be necessary? Furthermore, the entire mirror is free of dust. So the mirror is referring to the story of the sixth ancestor and the ancestor's poem. and Shen Hsu's poem. According to the story, Shen Hsu wrote a poem on the wall that referred to wiping the dust clear of the mirror in order to keep your mind clean.

[11:27]

And then Hui Nung, who was working in a pounding rice, came and wrote another poem It said, what mirror are you talking about? There is no mirror. What is there to wipe? There's nothing to wipe. So that was a more transcendent kind of response to the fifth patriarch's question. But actually, both of those answers are correct. It's not that one is right and one is wrong. Although there is no mirror to wipe, we have to wipe it anyway. Although there are no sentient beings to save, we vow to save them all. So, in other words, our basic nature is pure and clean from the beginning.

[12:33]

There's no way we can purify it. But in order to practice, in order for that mirror to shine forth, we wipe it, keep it clean. That's called practice. So furthermore, the mirror is free of dust, so why take steps to polish it? Nothing is separate from this very place, so why go away someplace to look for it? Suzuki Roshi, I remember saying, usually when we think of a path, a religious way, we think of a path going away from ourselves. We're searching for something. When you search for something, when you look for something, you go away. But in this practice, you go here. You don't go anywhere.

[13:37]

You go here. Because wherever you are, that's where it is. So if you're here, that's where it is. If you go there, that's where it is. It's okay to go away as long as you know that wherever you are, that's the place. So what he means by path or bodhi is to really be where you are and to find the reality right where you are in whatever it is you're doing. So this is called Genjo Koan. So this aspect of Genjo Koan, it's like very related to Dogen's Genjo Koan. And the Koan is right here in front of us, or not in front of us, right where we're standing. in every situation. So this is called the living koan of our daily life, moment by moment, in whatever we're doing.

[14:48]

So there's no way to waste your time except to forget that. Because every problem is an opportunity to practice our koan. That's called practice. When we say practice, that's what we mean. Whatever situation comes up, oh, I feel terrible, that's the place to practice. Exactly the place to practice. I'm tired, I can't get up, this hurts, that hurts. They just mean to me, that's the place to practice. Oh, I'm confused, I don't know what to do. That's the place to practice. That's Kenjo Koan. And it's also Zazen. So how do we stay balanced?

[15:49]

and in our breath, and centered. Whatever happens, that's called tsa-tsen. And it's at the center of the koan. Where do I go? What do I do now? What do I do? Go here. Tsa-tsen. if you deal with every situation from here as zazen, as an aspect of zazen. But the entire mirror, furthermore, the entire mirror is free of dust. The entire mirror is like the whole body of reality, which is empty.

[16:56]

And yet, its emptiness is expressed as the manifestation of forms. So wiping the dust is not just cleaning a mirror. It's polishing our activity, refining our activity. Enlightenment is realizing the empty mirror. And practice is refining our life, refining our life through our activity. So both is necessary. Refining doesn't necessarily mean being meticulous. It simply means being true to ourself in all of our activity.

[18:05]

staying with practice. And so we say sudden enlightenment, gradual practice. Sudden enlightenment is the beginning of practice. And then refinement or gradual practice is refinement. But we usually think, but I'm not enlightened yet. That's okay, that's actually good. I'll never be enlightened. That's good. Then you don't have to worry about anything. All you have to do is practice. Very good. If you think, now I'm enlightened. Too bad. So, he says, and yet, and yet,

[19:15]

If you miss the mark, even by a strand of a hair, you are as distant as heaven from earth. That's not a very good, I think, not a very good simile. Because heaven and earth, how distant are heaven from earth? They gotta be right next to each other. You know, the sky comes all the way down to your feet. We think if the sky is up there, it's at eye level. But if you miss the mark by even a strand of a hair, missing the mark means separating practice from enlightenment. Practice is enlightenment and enlightenment is practice. That's Dogen's stance. So if the slightest discrimination occurs, you'll be lost in confusion. So he's talking about discrimination between practice and realization, practice and enlightenment.

[20:21]

There's practice, enlightenment, and realization. Although realization is usually equated with enlightenment, it's the realization of enlightenment. So you can be practicing within enlightenment but not realize it. So I don't like to use those words interchangeably. You know, Suzuki Roshi and when Tatsugami Roshi came to America, they could see what our practice was better than we could, because they knew what it was like in Japan. So they saw our practice as being very innocent. We didn't know anything. We really didn't know anything. We were just, you know, being like little children practicing. And they just loved that. because there was no stink of Zen yet. And so they could just see our pure activity, you know, and Suzuki Roshi warned us not to worry about getting enlightened.

[21:37]

So we were just all just practicing, most of us. And So they were very pleased that we were practicing Dogen's practice of just seeing zazen as zazen. You know, there's this phrase from Bendoa where Dogen talks about, he says, there are some who realize that Buddha's practice is Zazen, and Zazen is Buddha's practice. But very few have realized that Zazen is Zazen, or that sitting is sitting. Some have realized that sitting is Buddha, and that Buddha is sitting, but very few have realized that sitting is sitting.

[22:39]

That's very pure practice. And that's the practice that Suzuki Roshi actually transmitted to us. Sitting is sitting. It has nothing to do with it. Don't try to become a Buddha. Don't try to get enlightened. Just sitting is sitting. So you could be proud of your understanding and have abundant realization. or acquire outstanding wisdom and attain the way by clarifying the mind. Still, if you are wandering about in your head, you may miss the vital path of leaping, of letting your body leap. It's a little funny. There's gotta be a better way of saying that. The point is, You know, someone said, well, can a person just have enlightenment and then not practice Zazen?

[23:51]

It sounds very logical. Why couldn't a person just practice, just be enlightened, and then not have to sit Zazen? But that misses the point. The point is, it sounds like, well, you have to sit Zazen for some reason. We don't sit Zazen for some reason. We just sit Zazen for Zazen. It hasn't got anything to do with being enlightened, except that Zazen is enlightenment. And for Dogen, true enlightenment is is what practice is, and practice is what enlightenment is, and they cannot be separated. There's a story of the Sixth Patriarch and Nangaku.

[25:05]

And they have this little conversation and they talk about practice. And Nagarjuna said, it's not that there's no practice and no enlightenment, it's just that they can't be defiled. It's not that there's no practice and no enlightenment, it's that they can't be defiled. Defiled means separated. So separation is defilement. Discrimination is called defilement, actually. Suzuki Roshi says, it's not hard. Practice has difficulty, but it's not because your legs hurt. It's because it's hard to keep your practice pure. And he says purity means non-discriminated. And then he says, you should observe the example of Buddha Shakyamuni of the Jeta Grove, who practiced sitting up straight for six years, even though he was gifted with intrinsic wisdom.

[26:34]

Still celebrated is Master Bodhidharma of the Shaolin Temple, who sat facing the wall for nine years, although he had already received the mind seal. Ancient sages were like this. Who nowadays does not need to practice as they did? So he gives him these examples. He says, even though these two as examples were fully enlightened, that didn't stop them from doing Zazen. They realized that Zazen is what brings forth enlightenment, even when you're enlightened. So an enlightened person doesn't say, why do I need Zazen? enlightened person says thank goodness for Zazen because now I have something to do yeah just for the sake of argument I've heard stories that shockingly

[27:49]

Who'd you hear that story from? I thought it was you. I've just heard pieces of literature, anecdotal, supposedly something from the sutras. I think it was, that story came from somebody that was there. Right. Presumably. Presumably, yeah. Well, we all have our stories. This is also a story. Whatever we say about Shakyamuni Buddha is somebody's story. Nothing was written down for 400 years after Buddha passed along. They had a wonderful oral tradition, but when somebody starts talking a lot, they start making things of their own. But in those days, they had people whose job it was, and who were very good at this, memorizing a whole volume, although they didn't have much writing in those days.

[29:13]

I don't think there were long volumes that were in. Sutras came much longer after the 18th century. Shakyamuni. Anyway, people have memories and some of them match and some of them don't. My story is, my fantasy is, that Shakyamuni Buddha sat all the time. He sat a lot, because otherwise the tradition of meditation wouldn't have come down as the main practice of Buddhism. I like that better. Well, it's not that he kept going without having to sit. He kept it going because he wanted to sit. We do have this thing. Zazen has two sides to it. One is wanting and having.

[30:16]

Wanting to and having to. And that really, I think, for most of us, there's that wanting to and having to. When we're not sitting, we want to. But somewhere within that long session, we feel like, I have to, or we feel zazen guilt. This is very Jewish. We feel Zazen guilt, you know, like, oh, I just, you know, they won't like me because I didn't come to Zazen yesterday, you know, or I haven't been keeping up my Zazen. I'm so guilty. So that's a phenomenon. I don't know what to do with that, but maybe that's good, you know. I don't want to sit Zazen.

[32:07]

And when I am sitting Zazen, it's like, what was the problem here? This is so relaxing and peaceful. Long sessions are another story, but that's more the reality. When I'm not sitting Zazen, Zazen seems, in some bizarre way, inconvenient. And when I am Right, so we all have our different ways of feeling about it. Nancy? I was just going to add something there about Christians. My tradition growing up, I think we have more shame, not guilt, but shame about sloth. I actually don't feel guilty, I just feel yucky and repellent. Shame is more Japanese.

[33:11]

Guilt is a little more Western. Anyway, we all have our thing about it. When I'm in the midst of Zazen, it's wonderful. even though sometimes difficult. But then the difficulty becomes wonderful. So he's talking about Shakyamuni and Bodhidharma and, you know, if this was their practice, you know, given that they were fully enlightened as much as they could be, we should follow their example.

[34:15]

So don't forget, Dogen is talking here, he just came back from China. And there's no tradition of zazen, or sitting, really, in Japan. So when Dogen was on Mount Hiei, where he studied, that was the big center of study, Buddhist studies, was Mount Hiei, the Tendai school. This is where he learned all this, his Buddhist doctrine about Buddha nature. But he realized that he wanted something more than that that was not satisfying, so he went to study with the Rinzai teacher, Eisai, or Yosai. who was so old that we're not sure if he actually met Acai or not.

[35:18]

He probably did, but whether he studied with him or how long is questioned, but he eventually went to Japan, I mean to China with Acai. Myosin. He says disciple and Myosin was his teacher for 10 years and that's where he learned from Myosin the Rinzai school and from teaching and from Rujing the Soto teaching. So that's why in our lineage we have the two A lineage paper has the Rinzai side and the Soto side of the ancestors. If you look at your Kechimiya-ku, you'll see that that's on both sides. The Rinzai lineage is on one side and the Soto lineage is on the other.

[36:24]

But Eisai, he was the first real Zen master that we know about in Japan. But he was really a Tendai monk and he went to China and received transmission from a Chan master. Then he came back and established his school, Rinzai school, but because of the prevailing Buddhist temple system, which was Shingon and Tendai, he couldn't really establish what he wanted to. because the Tendai school said, well, see, Tendai school is the eclectic school and practices everything in Buddhism. They have all the practices. This is very Chinese. They have all the practices which they practice in a monastery. So they said, well, we also do Zazen or meditation.

[37:31]

So why do we need a Zazen school? Of course, you know, it was competition for them. So he never could quite get off the ground completely. But when Dogen came back, he was more defiant, not defiant, but more independent. And so Issei kind of set the stage for Dogen. And when Dogen came back, it was the next step. And so he could establish his school independently. But it was hard, because these guys were going around burning each other's temples down at that time. So then he says, therefore, or hence, hence the finding, therefore, hence, you should stop searching for phrases and chasing after words.

[38:34]

Take the backward step and turn the light inward. Your body mind of itself will drop off and your original face will appear. If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this. So stop searching, you know, because the practice in Japan was totally, pretty much intellectual and scholarly. Dogen was trying to tell people or persuade them to let go of their intellectual pursuits and practice Zazen. So take the backward step Stop just searching for phrases and chasing afterwards, and take the backward step and turn the light inward. You know, this is a phrase by Hong Jue, Zeng Chui.

[39:35]

I've read you a lot of his stuff from Cultivating the Empty Field. He talks about light all the time, and his practice instructions. And Dogen was very much influenced by him, taken by him. And turn the light inward is a phrase of Hongjue. Take the backward step and turn the light inward to illuminate the body, to illuminate the light, to illuminate yourself from inside. Let's see what's going on. And body-mind will drop off. And this is a phrase, body-mind drop off, which is a phrase that we use by Ru Jing.

[40:39]

Actually, when he was hitting the muck, he said something like, don't you know you're supposed to drop body and mind? What are you doing? So also Hong Jue was an advocate of what he called silent illumination. Silent illumination is like the basis actually of Dogen's Shikantaza. But Dogen had his own way of developing that. But still, silent illumination is definitely a part of Soto Zen, a foundation of Soto Zen. So if you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this. Just this means just sitting as sitting, just doing as doing.

[41:45]

for the sake of doing, just do something for the sake of doing something, means doing, not sacrificing this moment for the next moment, not doing this so that that will happen, just doing this for this, which means coming back to just this place, this time and this activity. So this is Zazen, but it's also our activity. And you know, during work period, at Sashin, when we do stuff, we're just doing. It's just doing. That's what's so wonderful about work during Sashin, it's just doing. Although we are trying to get something done, it's not just playing with blocks, but there are two aspects to activity.

[42:57]

One is there's a purpose. You do something because it has some purpose. But on the other hand, you're just doing. And we miss the just doing because the purpose takes precedence. So when you open the door, it's because you wanna go through it. That's the purpose. But there's actually the activity of opening the door, which is what you're really doing. Your hand is on the handle, turn the knob, you open the door, you step out. This is just doing. But we don't pay much attention to that because of our purpose. And we feel that our purpose is the most important thing. So, we get lost in our purpose.

[44:03]

Purposes are important. It's true. But the person who actually has true freedom is the one that's not driven by purposes. But there's also the false, lazy person who doesn't have any, aimless. So aimlessness is an important factor in Buddhism in our life. But there's the false aimlessness and the true aimlessness. The true aimlessness is working for the benefit of all beings. The false aimlessness is just not knowing what the hell you're doing. Just kind of wandering around, self-obsessed. So, true aimlessness is whatever comes to hand to do for sentient beings, you just respond.

[45:13]

Because there's nothing you have to do for yourself. It's not for the benefit of other beings. So it's called the old man who has nothing special to do. Or the old woman who has nothing special to do. Or the young woman who has nothing special to do. you just respond to someone's need. So I think I'll stop there.

[45:51]

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