Today is the fourth day. Can you hear me? Today is the fourth day of our five-day Sashin, and I've been talking about, or I've been commenting on Dogen's, Master Dogen's Gaku Doyo Jinshu, which is translated as Points to Watch in Buddhist practice, or various things. And I'm going to finish today. I hope to finish today. So this end of Sushin will also be the end of our spring practice period, which will be tomorrow.

[01:30]

And then we'll have our shuso ceremony, in which our shuso, our baika, will answer questions from the people who are in the practice period. So that will happen tomorrow afternoon. So Dogen says, according to this translation, you should practice throughout the way. That's the title of this particular section. He says, courageous people who study the way should first know what is correct and what is incorrect in practicing throughout the way. The great tamer of beings, Shakyamuni, sat under the Bodhi tree and was immediately awakened to the way.

[02:45]

the unsurpassed vehicle when he saw the morning star. Of course, this is the stereotypical story of Shakyamuni sitting for seven days. And then he said that I will sit for seven days until I have a realization. And then on the seventh day, he saw the morning star. and had his enlightenment experience. So Dogen says, this way of enlightenment cannot be reached by Sravakas, Pracheka Buddhas, or beings such as this. Buddhas alone can be enlightened, and Buddhas have transmitted to Buddhas ceaselessly. So how can those who have attained enlightenment not be Buddhas? So I want to explain a little bit what he means when he says, The way of enlightenment cannot be reached by Sravakas and Pracheka Buddhas.

[03:52]

Sravakas, to the best of my understanding, Sravakas are those people who are followers or people who are not necessarily practitioners. but people who are interested in the Dharma, but not necessarily engaging in practice. And Pracheka Buddhas are those who have some realization, but they don't share that with others. So there's no transmission. One can be enlightened in a selfish way, actually, even though we think of enlightenment as not being selfish.

[04:55]

But they can have good understanding. but no inclination for sharing with others. So, in a way, that's a kind of selfishness, because you keep your treasure to yourself. Is that still considered enlightenment? Well, that's a good question, but I don't want to get into it. Yeah, we'll hold that one. It is enlightenment, but it's not great enlightenment. It is an aspect of it. Someone can have good understanding.

[05:58]

and enlightenment, but it's not ultimate enlightenment or great enlightenment, which is the Buddha, the Bodhisattva, the Buddha as Bodhisattva or Bodhisattva as Buddha, which is to share your understanding for the sake of other beings. So he says, the way of enlightenment cannot be reached by Sravakas and Pratyekabuddhas or beings such as this. So then he says, to practice throughout the way is to actualize the limitless realm of the Buddha way and to illuminate all aspects of the Buddha way. All aspects of the Buddha way, he actually talks about down below, so I'll wait until we get there to talk about that.

[07:04]

The Buddha way is under everyone's feet. Being obstructed by the way, clearly understand right on the spot. Being obstructed by enlightenment, you yourself are complete. Therefore, even though you arrive at full understanding, still, this is only a part of enlightenment. Being obstructed by the way is a wonderful term that Dogen uses. It means, basically, being totally immersed in the way. So, cause translated this as being totally immersed in the way, which is what it means, but it's not what it says. What it says is being obstructed by the way, being obstructed by enlightenment, you enter the way.

[08:09]

So, this is Dogen's wonderful language. If we take Dogen's language literally, we cannot ever understand Dogen. So he uses one literal meaning to mean its opposite quite often. But if you want to look at it as obstructing, I think that's also valid. Being obstructed by the way, you enter the way because the way always abruptly comes up in your face. And without that obstruction, you can't enter the way. You can't even recognize what it is until you face your difficulty. So obstructed by the way, you enter the way. Obstructed by enlightenment, you enter enlightenment. Enlightenment can actually be a hindrance to the way.

[09:22]

And it is for many people. Enlightenment can be a big hindrance to the way. If you have some idea about enlightenment, what enlightenment is, that in itself is an obstruction to the way, a hindrance. for entering the way, you really have to let go of everything. So, you know, the main thing is how we let go of our ego. Anyway, so Dogen says, immersed in enlightenment, you yourself are complete, or obstructed by enlightenment, you yourself are complete. Therefore, even though you arrive at full understanding, still this is only a part of enlightenment. So this is the Pratyekabuddha, but it's also us. It's like you may have full enlightenment, but it's only half of enlightenment. You know, we say even Shakyamuni Buddha is only halfway there.

[10:28]

So even though we say completely having mastered the Dharma, it's still only halfway there. So there's really no end. So, people nowadays who study the way do not understand where the way leads or ends. So they strongly desire to gain visible results or visible rewards for practice. What is my reward at the end? I always tell people that the reward you have for practice is the effort that you put into it. that practice allows you to enter it.

[11:35]

Practice allows you to do something, and doing something is the reward. The practice itself is the end of practice. Entering practice is the end of practice. I remember one time at Tassajara, there was this woman who said to me, you know, usually when we talk to people, you say, where are you going? But at Tassajara, we say, how did you get here? So people nowadays who study the way do not understand where the way leads or ends. So they strongly desire to gain visible results, as if there's something beyond this. Who would not make this mistake? It's like someone who runs away from his father, leaving a treasure behind and wandering about. Though he is the only child of a wealthy family, he endlessly wanders as a menial in foreign lands.

[12:41]

Indeed, it's just like this. So this is, of course, the story of the prodigal son in the Lotus Sutra. who goes off to seek his fortune and not realizing that it's right where he was when he began. And so he goes off to foreign lands and ends up as a kind of beggar. And finally comes back to his father's place, but he doesn't recognize it. He'd been gone such a long time, he doesn't recognize his original home. But the father recognizes him somehow. And he says to his servant, I want you to go get that kid and bring him back and give him a job. So the servant goes out and brings him back and gives him a job in the stables. And little by little he works and he does really well and they treat him well.

[13:46]

And he finally gets up to where he's a supervisor and all this, and then his father finally tells him who he is and leaves him his fortune. So this is the story of the prodigal. And it's the story of how you leave your original home, but then you find your way back through practice. So Dogen says, those who study the way seek to be obstructed by the way. For those who are obstructed by the way, all traces of enlightenment perish. Those who practice the Buddha way should, first of all, trust in the Buddha way or have faith in the Buddha way. And those who have faith in the Buddha way should have faith that they are, in essence, within the Buddha way. We're free from delusion, false thinking, no confusion, no increase or decrease, and no mistake.

[14:48]

We use the word trust, and trust and faith are kind of interchangeable. Faith is really what Dogon means. And trust is the, or maybe faith is the essence of trust. So having faith in the way, you trust the way. And this is actually the bottom line for practice. But the faith in a way, faith means to have faith in your own Buddha nature. This is the essence of Soto Zen practice, is to have faith in Buddha nature and the fact that ordinary beings and Buddhas are not two.

[16:00]

That's kind of the Soto Zen slogan. to have faith in that you are Buddha and that ordinary beings and Buddhas are not two. And that practice and enlightenment are not two different things. It's like this hand is practice and this hand is enlightenment. And if you only have dealing with the one hand, it's not complete. So you bring practice, practice enlightenment is like this. So this is why we're always bowing. Practice and enlightenment is one. So he says, those who truly seek to be immersed in the way, or obstructed by the way, for those who are obstructed by the way, all traces of enlightenment perish.

[17:10]

Because enlightenment becomes subsumed in practice. You don't need to worry about enlightenment. If enlightenment sees practice, and practice sees enlightenment, then they're separated. So you can't see it. You can't separate one and look at the other one from the point of view of the other one. When you separate it, it's called self-consciousness. It's called discrimination, which brings on self-consciousness. So there are two kinds of self-consciousness, which I like to talk about. One self-consciousness is what we usually think of as self-consciousness, where you feel alone, you feel separated.

[18:18]

You know, you're doing something and suddenly you feel self-conscious. you're in a play, you feel self-conscious and you can't remember your lines, right? And that's because you are feeling alone and disconnected. The other self-consciousness is where there's no gap between you and the world and the universe. The universe is yourself and so this is self-consciousness in which there's no place to fall to. Wherever you fall, you're in the right place because every place is yourself. This is consciousness of your true self, which instead of being isolated, is complete.

[19:24]

So when there's that completion, there's no enlightenment and no practice. There's simply practice and enlightenment. So those who trust in the Buddha way should have faith that they are in essence from the beginning within the Buddha way. That's kind of interesting because it's not like you begin practice. Practice is really the practice of everything in the universe. But to enter the Buddha way, to enter the Dharma called practice, is to have realization about practice.

[20:31]

So we say the moment you enter practice, there's realization, there's enlightenment. So Zazen is the practice of the whole universe. Everything is doing Zazen. Everything is practicing Zazen. It's not a special practice for Zen Buddhists, but we practice Zazen in a conscious way. So when he says, He points out the various factors of practice. He says, free from delusion, this is what the practice is from the beginning.

[21:40]

Free from delusion, no false thinking, no confusion, no increase, no decrease, and no mistake. I'm sorry. If you look at that literally, you will say, well, how can I do that? I'm always making mistakes. I'm always in delusion. I'm always blah, blah, blah. Where does that leave me? So it looks like some perfect, in order to enter practice, you will have all these perfections. But, you know, enlightenment is to see that you have confusion. to realize that you have delusion, that you have false thinking, and that there's increase and decrease. In other words, these are the things that you understand that are your qualities and that

[22:46]

These are the things that you have to work with. If you ignore these, if you ignore these qualities, then that's to be sunk in delusion. So he says, Those who truly study the way seek to be obstructed by the way. For those who are obstructed by the way, all traces of enlightenment perish. Those who practice the Buddha way should first of all trust in the Buddha way. Those who trust in the Buddha way should trust that they are in essence within the Buddha way, where there is no delusion, no false thinking, no confusion, no increase or decrease, and no mistake. To arouse such trust, or faith and illuminate the way in this manner and to practice accordingly are fundamental in studying the way." So, you know, a teacher

[24:01]

Dogen said, well, in the next, over here he says, you should practice with a teacher. And so I'll explain it over there. But basically, these are the factors that we have to recognize. And when we recognize and deal with these factors, that's practice within enlightenment, or enlightenment within practice. So enlightenment is to realize where you have to deal, where you have to practice. what it is you have to practice with, what your obstructions are. So he says that you do this by sitting, which severs the root of discriminative thinking and blocks access to the road of intellectual understanding. This is an excellent means to arouse beginner's mind. Then you let body and mind drop away and let go of delusion and enlightenment.

[25:09]

This is the second aspect of studying the way. So there's trust and then there's zazen. Faith and zazen. Generally speaking, those who trust that they are within the Buddha way are most rare. If you have correct trust that you are within the Buddha way, you understand where the great way leads or ends. And you know the original source of delusion and enlightenment. If once in sitting, you sever the root of discriminative thinking, in eight or nine cases out of 10, you will immediately attain understanding of the way. To cut the root of discriminative thinking, We always have discriminative thinking. We must always discriminate, you know. We have to choose all the time what we do and how we do it.

[26:12]

We have to choose, we choose what we eat, we choose what we wear. Every moment is a moment of choice. So just our discriminating mind is working all the time. And then there's discriminating, which is based on self-interest, discriminating, which is based on self-centeredness, and discriminating, which is based on ego. Then there's discriminating, which is simply knowing which way to go, distinguishing one thing from another. and choosing on the basis of no self. So that's called the discrimination of non-discrimination. To simply choose, make a choice based on, which is not based on self-centeredness or ego.

[27:19]

is called discrimination of non-discrimination. So this is, in Zazen we say, Dogen says, think not thinking is the art of Zazen. What is think not thinking? Beyond thinking and not thinking. thoughts are always arising, discriminated thoughts are always arising, but we don't discriminate them, we simply let them arise and vanish. So cutting the root of discriminative thinking means to understand or experience the oneness of diversity and the diversity of oneness.

[29:08]

to cut the root of discriminated thinking does not mean to not have discriminated thinking. So then Dogen says, And the very end he says, this is called immediately hitting the mark. I think that actually means bullseye, literally. But immediately hitting the mark or settling down right here. There are two ways to penetrate or harmonize body and mind. studying with a master or a teacher in order to hear the teaching, and devotedly sitting zazen.

[30:14]

Listening to the teaching opens up your conscious mind, while sitting zazen is concerned with practice enlightenment. Therefore, if you neglect either of these when entering the Buddha way, you cannot hit the mark. So Dogen says you have to have, one is having faith in the teaching or the teacher and having faith in oneself. Tsazen is having faith in oneself and having faith in the teacher is having faith in the Dharma or the teaching. So he says you have to have both of these. So You know, to have faith in a teacher does not mean to see the teacher as infallible. You have to be very careful.

[31:18]

When people were writing stories about Suzuki Roshi, You know, everybody says how wonderful Suzuki Roshi was and all this. But one of my comments was Suzuki Roshi made mistakes. And he was not above making mistakes and he was not perfect in that he never did anything wrong. But I always trusted him. We could trust Suzuki Roshi because he recognized his mistakes. He didn't hide his mistakes. He always apologized for his mistakes. And he always worked on what it is that was the problem. And he allowed people to help him. So you could always trust that there was no deception. So, this is how you can have faith in a teacher.

[32:30]

It's not good to put a person up on a pedestal and think that they're perfect, and then when you see that they have some problems or whatever, that This is part of everyone's life. So he says, everyone has a body and mind. In activity and appearance, its function is either leading or following, either Oh, high-spirited or low-spirited. He says courageous or cowardly, but I don't like those terms. Kind of like, you know, either high-spirited or low-spirited, I like that.

[33:36]

So everyone has a body and mind. In activity and appearance, its function is either leading or following or assertive or non-assertive. I like that. Leading or following, you know. When we first come to practice, we are following. And then when we have some maturity, we start to lead. Some people, if you have a train, some people like boxcars, some people like engines. I always try to encourage people to be engines as well as boxcars.

[34:45]

So that, and not just following the practice along, but also leading the practice. It's important that everyone find their own leadership. So the practice, maturity in practice means that the practice originates from you. When we are just following, we say, well, the practice is originating from them, and I'm doing it. You know, I often hear people say, well, they're doing it, and I'm just doing it. But each person is leading the practice. Everyone. There's no practice without everybody leading the practice. So you have to find your leadership, but you also have to find out how to follow. So if a person only wants to lead, we don't let them do that. You have to learn how to follow before you can lead. You have to show that you can follow before you can lead.

[35:47]

But after you learn how to follow, you should learn how to lead. So each one is in a different place in practice. And you're reaching up to someone up here, and you're helping someone down here to come up. So that's the essence of a student's practice, is you have one hand up here and one hand down here, helping someone else. So that's, you're following and leading at the same time. It's also called being turned and turning. So everyone has a body and mind. In activity and appearance, its function is either leading or following, high-spirited or low-spirited.

[36:52]

To realize Buddha immediately with this body and mind is to hit the mark. Without changing your body and mind, just follow the Buddha's realization. It's called immediate. It's called hitting the mark. You know, just being where you are. The hardest place to be is where we are. And the place where we think we should be is someplace else. And we think that enlightenment is some big experience that you will have down the line. But even though you have some big experience down the line, it's still the experience of now. So why not have your experience of now right now? If you just experience really now as now, you'll be in the Buddha way. It's called hitting the mark.

[37:58]

This is why Zen masters hit people. Boom. To follow Buddha completely means that you do not have your old views. Put them down. That's the main thing that stops us, is our old views. Just open your mind. I remember Suzuki Roshi used to call zazen brainwashing. Give your mind a rest. To hit the mark completely means to have no new nest. So, even though we lay down our old views, we don't take up new ones. You know, if you have an empty table, a lot of stuff in there, and then you empty the table and put a vase of flowers on the table, isn't that nice?

[39:07]

And then the next, little by little, something comes. About a week, the table's piling up. So that's the end. The end of Gakko Dōjinshū. Do you have any questions? That was really good. I felt like clapping when you said the end. in Buddha and the way maybe, or the Buddha way. So what I started thinking about is if this correct trust, if enlightenment is correct trust in the Buddha way, then when we falter, and we might not be following the Buddha way, we're trying to do something mean or something,

[40:13]

we're still in correct trust because us faltering is within the condition of being human, and that's what humans do. Faltering within the way is called the way. Thank you. Yes. You know, when we talk about precepts, when you take the precepts, you always are, you can't keep them. Even though you take the precepts, you can't really keep them. And so this is called, it's not called breaking the precepts. It's called staining the precepts. You kind of make a mark on the precepts or you cloud them or defile them, right? But you're not breaking them because you still have faith in the precept. So we're always falling down and getting up and falling down and getting up and making mistakes.

[41:14]

It's not like a straight line that you're always right and always doing the right thing. Life is like a ship on the ocean. Your comments about Suzuki Roshi being able to admit if he made a mistake. the High Sierras for 12 years. So he knew a lot. But still, people had a hard time feeling good about following him because he could never admit when he didn't know. So you would rather follow somebody who only knew half as much, at least when you got lost you all knew you were lost. But in addition, that same sort of deal You turn it around and apply it to yourself or to the person who is leading. You can imagine he can't trust himself, what kind of chaos goes on within.

[42:21]

That's right. What do you do when you make a mistake? Because you will. Then you keep making one mistake after another. Because as soon as you start defending your mistake, there's no way out. And then you just keep backing yourself up, backing yourself up into a corner. Yeah. That can't feel good. No, it can't. Right. And uh... Laying down your old view. Yes. Laying down my view right now that I have a perpetual problem and if I don't get rid of it I just can't practice or be okay. I'm laying down that view.

[43:22]

OK. So ... And with that note ... In silence.

[43:43]

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