Good morning. Well, I've decided, oh I haven't started talking yet, I've decided to continue talking about this particular section instead of going on. Because I really want us to get grounded in understanding what Dogen is talking about here, and what Nishyari Sama is expressing. And because I think this is a little more volume. It's important for us to get it in our bones. Well, we still have them. a person deaf.

[01:06]

This is called The Great Matter. So, Dogen starts out by talking about form and emptiness, and how form and emptiness are one piece. And then he goes into various ways that he understands that. And then he comes to really talking about birth and death. So I think it's important for us to get this understanding. Suzuki Roshi taught us all about this without mentioning it exactly. And as I read, as I studied Nishiyari, I can see, oh, this is where Suzuki Roshi is coming from, because he uses the exact same, or close to the same, concepts.

[02:17]

I have to put this under my toenail. I mean, under my toe, so my toenail doesn't dig into the... So, Dogen talks about how to be, the way to be free from birth and death is to, in birth, totally be born. When in death, totally die. That's how you escape. you escape by being one with, rather than running away from. So our lives are always running away from something that we don't like. And then somehow or another we get caught by Zen practice. And it makes us sit down in this cushion and face it.

[03:24]

Face the stuff that we usually run away from, like pain. suffering, mental and emotional problems. It's all right there. You can't stay there sometimes, so you can't run away. So what do you do? You become one with it. If there's pain, you just become one with the pain. And then there's No pain. It doesn't mean that there's no pain, but pain does not become suffering. If you become one with the pain, pain does not become suffering. If you don't become one with it, it becomes suffering. This is Buddha's teaching. Buddha is teaching us.

[04:26]

Buddha is inside here teaching us. how to deal with things, how to deal with the pain in our head, how to deal with the pain in our body, how to be comfortable. Dogen calls zazen the comfortable way. We all say, oh, ha ha. But it is the comfortable way, as you all know, as we all know. And then we get up, and we do kidney, unfortunately.

[05:33]

And then we come back and sit again. And it's different. And it's the same. And it goes on and on. And pretty soon, it's just our life. And we just have to live it. So how do we live it comfortably? Without creating a problem for ourselves. And that's about this. Suzuki Roshi said, what we're doing here is just living our lives one moment at a time. That's my entire teaching. We just live our lives one moment at a time. And that's exactly what Dungan's talking about. This is called firewood and ash. And this moment is firewood.

[06:38]

Ash is not before or after. Ash is just ash. There's an Indian simile about a cow. It's really about a steer. because steers, cows give us milk, but steers give us their body. So when the steer is slaughtered, it's chopped into many pieces and goes into the marketplace and we call it meat. And then someone buys the meat and cooks it and then it's called dinner.

[07:41]

And then we eat our dinner called meat and it becomes digested in our system and dissipated and the chemical reactions create energy for the person who's eating and then it becomes something else. I did bring that poem about reincarnation. I forgot. The one that Megan read. Yeah. The one that Megan read. Yeah. The punchline was, Slim, you ain't changed all that. But each stage is a different lifetime for this It's totally different.

[08:49]

It does not turn back into a steer again. So, every stage of its life is disconnected from the last stage, even though it's conditioned on what went before. So just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death. Here everyone is astonished. He's talking to a Japanese audience because Japanese Buddhist audience who probably believes in rebirth. The reason is that your understanding of birth and death is based on the common view.

[09:50]

You get disappointed because you have a view of permanence. But permanence can also mean continuation in some way. Yeah. So the views that Dogen criticizes is the view called the Shrenika heresy. Shrenika was a monk. who disavowed Shakyamuni's view and he expressed it in the usual Indian way. There is a soul which is permanent and transmigrates through many lifetimes. And this transmigration embodies source of the embodiment of many lifetimes, over and over and over.

[10:53]

So, Doge criticizes this view because it conflicts with the understanding of no-self or no-soul. So, this is the common Indian view. There's a continuation, but there's no you that continues. Yes, there's a continuation of... Anyway, there is... Cause and effect. There's cause and effect which rolls along, but there's no you in it. There's no self in it, yes. So, you're disappointed because you have a view of permanence, which means a self, basically. What happens to my self? So we're all afraid of losing myself. The reason is because we orient ourselves as a self, separate from the universe.

[12:00]

When we see ourselves as the universe, then we're not so scared. But it's hard to do that, because when we step off the pole, Where do we go? When we step off after living this life, where do we go? So that's a big mystery, which is scary. We don't want to lose. It's the only thing we know. So Dogen Zenji is not talking about such a view. He's actually pointing out the position of one moment that is the entirety of time. So what is one moment that is the entirety of time? I talked about that yesterday. And the view that birth is the actualization of undivided activity and death is the actualization of undivided activity. That's what I was talking about when I was talking about Zazen.

[13:09]

There is just birth. Even when we say someone has died, it does not mean that birth turned into death. At the time of death, there's just dying. In this way, it sounds very cold, right? In this way, birth as birth is a single rod of iron for 10,000 miles, meaning that's just it. Death is also a single rod of iron for 10,000 miles. That's just it. Even if innumerable kaphas have passed, death does not turn into birth. You should fully understand this one moment of this entire time. Indeed, there is no other way other than to say that today is one moment. There's a difference between a moment and a minute. Sometimes we say, wait a minute, and sometimes we say, wait a moment, and we think they're the same. But they're not. A minute has a certain amount of duration, 60 seconds, you say. But a moment is indeterminate.

[14:12]

It just means a pause, or it means a certain amount of undetermined time. So a moment can be a thousand kelpas. It could be, because we measure time according to our distinctions. Yeah. Can you say it a little louder? Where does dream fit into all of this? It's all just a dream. Totally. your boat. That's called the Song of Enlightenment. It is. Row, row, row your boat. But it's a great line. It's a terrific line. Am I a butterfly? Am I a cocoon?

[15:14]

Or am I The cocoon thing. I'm going to be a butterfly or something like that. If we have too many questions, we don't get them. Go ahead. It's a dream. Why are you so concerned about whether the bat is one quarter or one half? Because I'm dreaming about things lining up with each other. What if I'm dreaming about something else? Well, then you're off. That's why we have discontinuity. So you don't get stuck there. Yes. I want to come back to this rod. OK. 10,000 units of light. Yes. It's just a metaphor. Yeah. For forever.

[16:17]

For forever. That's a moment. Yeah, forever is a moment. Yeah, forever is a moment in time that covers the whole of time. So just a moment. Waiting. Yes. It's like Jack Benny. Do you remember Jack Benny? Great timing. Great timing. Great timing. The thief came up, put his gun in his side, and he said, my lady of your life, a pause, a moment, a long moment. Nobody knows how long. And then the thief says, Isn't that how we act?

[17:24]

Yesterday you spoke a bit about your son Daniel. In fact, you said it twice, back to back, that he reminded you, or it was your father, You said, you know it's not true, and then you said it again, and I'm wondering about it. I said it again? Yeah. You said it twice back to back, which to me connoted, like, it's a very strong feeling. My question is, how do we, or how does the universe discern a feeling from a teaching? It all depends on circumstances.

[18:28]

Really, it's just a feeling. Teaching is just a teaching. So my sense of your experience of your son was that it was a very strong feeling, but you will not hold on to the teaching, the Hindu teaching, that your father has been reborn into Daniel because of your... Yeah, yeah. Like I said, what I said... Nesciari said, it's not that the ninth son becomes the reincarnation of the eighth son. It's just the eighth son is the eighth son. The ninth son is the ninth son. It's not like somebody else came back as somebody else. Somebody came back as somebody else. That was the meaning of what he said. So I said, jokingly, oh, my son, I think, sometimes I think my son is the reincarnation of my father. Ha ha. I didn't mean it seriously, but I said, sometimes it feels that way, right?

[19:30]

But I said, I don't know what I said after that, but I said something like, I know that's not the way it is, but it feels that way. So that feeling, we're fooled by our feelings a lot. We're taken over by our feelings and so forth. So they're not necessarily always accurate. And we can make a story out of a feeling. I feel that this is the reincarnation of my eighth son. And then we start believing what we feel. So don't believe everything you feel. As a matter of fact, that's what all the Buddhist teachers are telling us. Don't make a story out of what you feel just because you feel it. What is the force behind continuity?

[20:32]

What drives continuity? Well, did you ever see The Wizard of Oz? Yes. Well, behind the booth is this guy going like this. It's called the law of cause and effect. Whenever something happens, it's a cause for a result. So how could a Tibetan Buddhist die and is reincarnation found? I'm not a Tibetan Buddhist. What? I'm not a Tibetan Buddhist. So I can't answer your question. I can only guess. And all of you can do your own guessing. But I'm not going to answer that question.

[21:34]

As a matter of fact, Buddha did not answer that question. He said, that is a question I refuse to answer. Yeah, he said, I will not answer a question of what happens after you die. but other questions he would answer that have to do with the same subject. There was 14 questions that he didn't answer. And that's one of them. There's a story of a Zen master or a Zen student sitting in Zazen, and poof, a Tibetan yogi appears in front of him. And the Zen master says, what took you so long? So to continue what you had said to Ross, don't believe everything you feel. Don't feel, yeah. So what do you believe? Not much. What do you mean by believe? It seems like we can't really trust our thoughts.

[22:53]

I don't believe everything I feel. So I have to investigate. Where does this feeling come from? And what is it applying to? And what is the source of the feeling? Does this feeling conform to the Sutras? You know, you say that when you study the Dharma, when you have some thoughts or ideas or views, you should check with the sutras to see if your views match the view of the sutra, the understanding of the sutras. So it's not a matter of belief, you know, it's a matter of investigation. As a matter of fact, when you have a belief, You should investigate the belief to see what the source of the belief is. In Buddha Dharma we don't have a belief system.

[23:56]

We have an investigative system. We have several investigative systems. So we're always investigating and not landing on belief. I believe that. No. There's not a belief in a soul. There's not a belief in a deity. As a matter of fact, Nagarjuna just showed the fallacy of believing in anything. Which doesn't mean that we don't have faith. We have faith in, as Suzuki Ryoji said, in nothing. But nothing doesn't mean no thing. I won't tell you what it means. You have to intuit what it means. One of the things that strikes me is how Buddhism is in so concert with scientific thought, because in science, nothing is certain.

[25:10]

It's all a matter of probability. There are high probabilities for some things, but it's probability. Yeah. There's that correlation. They're not the same, but there is that correlation. You've been asserting that, or the teaching here, is that there is no rebirth. And the reason for that... No, I'm not suing that. No reincarnation? He's not saying that. That's different. Reincarnation. Rebirth is not reincarnation. There's a distinction. How about, were you saying that Paul will not be born again? The Paul that I'm looking at will not be born again. Because there is no self in the ball. There is a self, but it's a dependent self. A non-separate self. A non-separate self, yeah. Why can't a non-separate self be reborn?

[26:17]

Go ahead. Show me. So you believe it doesn't happen? I think there's a belief here. There is a belief. It's more that it's different from nothing. You're not believing in anything. There is a belief that something does not happen based on teaching, based on literature. Well, some literature says that it does happen. And some literature doesn't think so. The Zen literature is what... But in Zen literature... There are different ways of thinking about it. I don't hold to any specific view about it. Oh, OK. That's different from what I thought I heard you say. It is different from what you thought I heard you say. Is it different from what you said? Yeah. Here's what Dicciari says.

[27:17]

Even if there is rebirth, that does not mean that death becomes birth. He's not saying there's no rebirth. I don't understand the point of saying that at all, that death does not become birth. Of course death does not become birth. When Paul dies, Paul might be reborn, and that would not be death becoming rebirth, that would be Paul becoming reborn. Yeah. Yeah, death just does death, birth does birth. Yeah, birth is just birth, death is just death. But you're saying the point is the same. You won't come back. I don't know, what do you think about coming back or not coming back? I think that you can't know. Yeah, okay. You don't know. That's good. I don't know that you can't know. I think that I don't know. Oh, yeah. To say you can't know is another belief. It's true. It's true. Yeah. I think we both don't know. But he said okay to guess that Paul would never be Paulian.

[28:22]

I don't know, but it's OK. You can guess. You can guess. So that is a thought or a feeling that I have. But that doesn't mean that my thought or my feeling is true. Nor am I going to depend any of my actions based on whatever I just thought. Say that again. Nor am I going to depend any of my actions based on what I just guessed. You kind of have to. You know, this is why when you do something, you just do it. There's all kinds of speculation about what happens when all the conditions are no longer present for your body-mind to be manifested. in this world, and then it unmanifests when those conditions are no longer present.

[29:25]

That's all we know. When the conditions are no longer holding up the structure, the structure goes back into the unconditioned realm, we think. I have a question about feelings. When you investigate them, is it mainly to kind of dispel them, or is there sometimes something you can learn that they're trying to teach you? Well, I don't know if they're trying to do anything, but that's a mode of speaking, they're trying to teach you. We're trying to learn something from them, maybe. But not all feelings are inaccurate. I mean, you trust your feelings. But there are some feelings that you question. That's all. It's good to trust your feelings.

[30:29]

You don't question every feeling you have. You act on feelings. But there are feelings which are untrustworthy. Not only that, but a lot of the feelings that we have are based on desires. And desires are untrustworthy. I love you today and I hate you tomorrow. So, you look good today and you look bad tomorrow. So, what are those feelings about? But, you know, we operate out of our feelings and some feelings we know are very accurate. Fortunately, it gives us confidence. So we have confidence because our feelings are accurate. We know that we can act out of those feelings, but we should always be circumspect to make sure that our feelings are based on something.

[31:36]

14 years ... feelings intuition if we're going to investigate our feelings that almost sounds analytical and discursive and yet our intuition is Not too much time to investigate and be discursive. Not necessarily. I mean, intuition is not always just a pop. It can be. Yeah, but intuition is just directly knowing. It's not necessarily dramatic. Well, are you going to investigate directly? No, you don't have to investigate all of your intuitions, but If you have some question about your intuition, it should be verified by reason.

[32:52]

This is the difference between just a hunch and intuition. Intuition needs to be verified by reason. Otherwise, dismissing reason as not being valuable Reason is what keeps intuition accurate. I have this intuition about things, but reason is what helps to make the raw material work for us. Only one follow-up. But if you're presented in a situation and your intuition is speaking to you one way, and you act because you need to act, there's not time to go into this. Yeah, well you just act and take the consequences. Well, very good.

[34:02]

I was thinking about investigating feelings and what Veronica said about feelings that can teach us something. And I guess I'm thinking about when a feeling arises and I sit with it. And I'm hopefully not discursively investigating it. I'm directly in contact with it as it does whatever it does, as it's born, and sometimes dies, and transforms, and whatever. And I find that then I learn from it in a bodily experiential way, not a, hmm, when I do this, then. Yeah, right. That's right. We don't just necessarily always investigate. Our way of investigating is not necessarily verbal or have necessarily a pattern to it. It's just, oh yeah, this hurt. So I won't do that again.

[35:04]

There's a bad feeling when I put my hand on the frying pan. It got burned. So I learned from that not to do that again. I didn't intuitively know that my hand got burned. Is that how I might someday give up believing in a separate self? Yeah, that's right. It hurts so much that I give it up. I remember Suzuki saying, as long as you like it, it's OK. Linda, you're the last one. I want to get on with this. Go ahead. Jovovich said something really helpful about thoughts and feelings. The only thing you can believe in is a thought. She said that a feeling is a thought plus a bodily sensation.

[36:12]

Or an emotion, maybe, is a thought plus a bodily sensation. So some people kind of bringing forth Maybe you could trust your feelings more than your thoughts. And that's because often you can trust your body more than your thoughts. Well, e-motion means, e means move. So e-motion means, I mean, e is emotion. And move means emotion. So it's moving your feelings when your feelings go into action. But I would say rather, You look for the balance between thought and feelings, rather than separating them and making one heavy and one light, or whatever. What's the balance between the feelings and the thoughts? I think that's our practice. Instead of eliminating a feeling, we go by our feelings, and we go by our thoughts.

[37:16]

So how do you put them together? So reason is important. And intuition has more to do with feeling. And so it needs to balance the thought. So if you look at prajna and samadhi, samadhi is more like a feeling. is the wisdom of thoughts, but it also is the wisdom of the body. But they're not two different things. Samadhi and prajna. A samadhi is the basis from which samatha comes forth. I mean, vipassana comes forth. Samatha, vipassana. If you just say vipassana, there's something missing. So samatha is samadhi.

[38:20]

Vipassana is wisdom. And wisdom has to do more with thinking. Samadhi has more to do with intuition. Samadhi is intuition, basically. It's when you're sitting zazen all day, five days, you have this wonderful intuitive samatha. That's what we're doing. And it gives rise to prajna, or vipassana, wisdom. So intuition is the basis of wisdom. I wanted to supplement this with a little bit of something from Thich Nhat Hanh as a nice contemporary expression.

[39:26]

There's this book that some people like and some people don't, but I like it. This is called Transformation at the Base, where, yes, I don't want to talk about too much what it consists of, but it's the manifestation-only teachings. Some people call it mind-only. The teachings of consciousness, how the manifestations of consciousness are how we investigate what we really are. So here he's talking about birth and death. Birth and death depend on conditions. Consciousness is by nature a discriminatory manifestation. Perceiver and perceived depend on each other, a subject and object of perception.

[40:42]

teachings, birth simply means manifestation, the appearance of a phenomenon. Death means the absence of manifestation or appearance. Birth and death come about based on conditions. When conditions are favorable, there is birth, or manifestation, and there is death, the absence of manifestation. When we look deeply and recognize the causes and conditions that allow birth and death We realize that birth and death are only notions. The manifestation of something is not the beginning of its existence, and when something is not manifesting, this does not mean that it does not exist. Before a phenomenon manifests, it is already there in the conditions. Birth is made of death, and death is made of birth, which is a little bit different than dogma. Birth and death occur simultaneously in each moment. Before you were born, you were already there.

[41:52]

When you die, you did not become nothing. You go back to the wholeness, to the base, in order to manifest again. So that's reaching toward rebirth. Everything that is manifested has to rely on conditions. If conditions are sufficient, then manifestation is perceived. If conditions are not sufficient, we do not perceive the manifestation. Unmanifested is not the same as non-existent. That's really different from Dogon. He's saying tofu is only tofu. That's very different. That's like saying tofu is the soybeans. No. He's saying in the conditions of the soil, when the conditions are correct, then something manifests. That's like saying soybeans conditioned on soybeans, tofu arises, but tofu is tofu.

[43:02]

Soybeans are soybeans. That's what he's saying. Ash doesn't arise by itself. Soybeans don't arise by themselves. Everything arises through causes and conditions. Right there, he's saying that before something manifests, it already exists in the conditions. of ash already exists in the conditions of firewood. Yes. But firewood is firewood, and ash is ash. That's also true. Ash is ash, and firewood is firewood. But ash is already a condition for becoming itself. Firewood is the condition for becoming four ashes. Isn't there a line in Dogon that each has its own past and future?

[44:08]

Yeah, each manifestation has its own past and future. So it doesn't mean that it arises by itself. It simply exists as it is, but does not arise all by itself. Otherwise that would be spontaneous arising. I think it's just semantics. People are talking about the same reality with words that sound contradictory. They're just different ways of thinking about things. Well, I think that's right. Yeah, that's right. Different kind of expression. But what he's saying here is, and Doggett says this too, actually. because everything is already here. And Suzuki Roshi says exactly the same thing. The reason that you are here is because you've always been here. You don't come from someplace.

[45:08]

And this is the teaching of no coming and no going. Everything exists as potentiality. And when the conditions are correct, all come together in the right way, then something arises called Paul. And when the conditions are no longer supporting, then we say Paul died. But if we don't understand this, then we think that dying is annihilation. And the reason that we think that dying is annihilation is because we identify with ourself in a separate way from the universe. But nothing in the universe can really die. Absolutely. Except the sense of separateness.

[46:10]

The fear of dying is dying. That's exactly right. The fear of dying is annihilation. condition I am. So it says, in truth, things do not begin to exist. That sounds like Dogon. The birth of a baby isn't the beginning of its existence.

[47:15]

The baby has been there all the time. Only now does he begin to manifest in that form. A piece of paper, before it manifests, already existed in the clouds and the trees. If it were to burn, it would not cease to exist. It would simply return to latency. The smoke would go into the clouds and the warmth would go into the atmosphere. Things do not arrive and depart. They either manifest or are latent. They don't come from space. Meaning that the manifestation, there's something independent about the manifestation. Yeah, well, independency is different. So, independence is not isolation. No. But it exists as a thing itself, even though it's related to everything else.

[48:19]

You mean a manifestation appears? Yes. It, what you have to say about it. Well, birth is a period of itself. Well, it's interdependent with death. Because life is birth and death? It depends. We think that because we say birth and death are opposites. Well, if you're born, you're going to die. Yeah, so that's right. So birth is dependent on death. That's right. But also when you're born, you're born. When you die, you die. Even though when you're born, you're also going to die. These are two different levels of understanding. One level of understanding is I was born at a certain date, and I lived my life, and then I died at a certain date. That's conventional. Non-conventional means that there's only continuation and manifestation due to causes and conditions in an unceasing way.

[49:33]

So in the conventional way, when we see something appear, you know, when you say, this is firewood, well, firewood is dependent on being a tree. But if we don't know that firewood is dependent on being a tree, you say, firewood was just appearing now. Firewood just born now. Fiber is fiber, and ash is ash. So they're independent even though they're also interdependent. Yeah, yes. So that's what Tsukuyo Roshi says, independency. It's slightly different than interdependency. Yes, it's a slightly different way of saying something. Because they were both dependent and independent. But independency means in between being dependent and independent.

[50:35]

It's not exactly dependent and it's not exactly independent. We are independent, we have this feeling, I'm me and you're you, but we're actually interdependent. But if we fall into one side or the other, that's not right. So, independency is a word that he made up that means Not falling into one side or the other. Yeah. Before you end, would you like to give any instruction about how we encounter the shuso this afternoon?

[51:59]

OK. Yeah, thank you. Well, we're going to have a shuso ceremony this afternoon. And most of you have done this before. Each one asks a Dharma question and the Shuso will respond to your question. So... Tamar, I think, will explain the ceremony. No, Peter. Oh, I'm sorry. Peter will explain the ceremony just before we start, so I'll make him do that. But our attitude We should bring up something that you deeply feel is a question that you would like to see what the response of the shuso is.

[53:16]

I don't think you need to get information. But it's like, how do you meet the shuso and how would you like the shuso to meet you? We do ask questions, but it's more about how do we meet each other sincerely. So the shuso will make an effort to respond to you from a deep place. So you may ask a superficial question and she may answer you in a way that you don't understand. It may not match your question, but you have another opportunity. Dragons and elephants give me a question, boom.

[54:20]

If you're not satisfied, you say, well, but what about... You say, well, that's the end. You just get one more chance. And it cuts you off. It really should be about repartee, not so much about... I mean, I can't explain it exactly because I don't know what's going to happen, but our attitude should be to address the shusa with a good question that's sincere. And because you're sincere, you want to see what kind of sincere response get is what you give, basically.

[55:27]

You give two bits, you may get back two bits, or you may get back a couple of bucks. But if your question is really from here, then your response will be from here, and we'll have a really good ceremony. But if your response is just a bunch of funny questions, So it depends on, it's not just her ceremony, it's also your ceremony. So you're as deeply involved as yourself. So what do you want to receive? He pays your money and he gets your goods. She's never done this before. It's true. So, she doesn't know how to do it. She does not know how to do it, but she does. And she doesn't know that she does.

[56:33]

Have we done it before? Who's we? You did it. As a matter of fact, nothing we've ever done have we done before. So we're all going into this without knowing what to do. And that's just great. I'll see this.

[57:43]

After lunch, there's a little time in between that time, there's a little work period and cleanup, and between the end of lunch and the time of the shuso ceremony, it's still sashin. So let's not give in to loosening up. We should be very concentrated still. And that will actually help our ceremony, to stay concentrated and sashin.

[58:20]

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