Good morning. It's wonderful to be here again at Green Gulch Farm. And today I'm going to talk about a little part of one of the basic writings of our tradition called Genjo Koan. So I'm just going to talk about a few passages of this from Dogen's writings. It's a few pages and we chant it regularly. And part of the Genjo Koan I'm working with this morning is that I've been struggling with a sore throat the last couple of days. So can you hear me in the back? Please raise your hands if you can't as we go along. And we'll see how long my voice holds out. So what I want to do is talk about the practice of Genjo Koan which is something that actually we're all already doing and that applies to all of us in terms

[01:03]

of our own life and practice. Just about this writing called Genjo Koan that's usually considered part of one of Dogen's masterpieces, Shobo Genzo. Genjo Koan was originally a letter written to a layperson. So it's very relevant to our practice I think here in America where we're all trying to find our way towards Buddha's way in relationship to being in the world in some way, even here at Green Gulch Farm. So this title, this name Genjo Koan, Genjo means to completely manifest, to completely express, to actualize, to make part of reality. So it's not just to realize in terms of some understanding that may be part of how we find our deepest truth, but it's to actually bring it into the world. So Koan, you may all know,

[02:06]

Koans are the traditional Zen teaching stories which are in some branches of Zen used as, well in all of Zen we talk about them, comment on them and use them as teaching stories. In some branches of Zen they're used in a particular way in meditation and in consultation with a teacher. And this phrase Genjo Koan was originally used before Dogen as a kind of phrase for resolving or solving the Koan. So when a student had completely, fully penetrated the Koan, the teacher would say this is Genjo Koan. But Genjo Koan is actually a verb and to Genjo, so we could Genjo Koan many things. And as Dogen uses it, Koan just means what is most essential in our own life. What is the actual dilemma or problem or situation that we meet today here as we inhale and exhale and every day as we sit facing the wall and meeting

[03:12]

ourself in some way. So in this branch of Soto Zen that we do here, we emphasize how we express the awareness that we connect with in meditation in our everyday daily activity. How we bring that into the world. How we see ourself not just as we're sitting upright facing the wall but also in our daily activities, in our relationship to friends and family, in how we take care of ourselves and the people around us and how we relate to the world at large. So I wanted to talk about just a few passages, but I may need to take sips of throat medicine. So I'll do one now. Thank you. So Dogen says in one part of this essay, to carry yourself forward and experience

[04:15]

myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. Those who have great realization of delusion are Buddhas. Those who are greatly deluded about enlightenment are sentient beings. Further, there are those who continue realizing beyond realization, who are in delusion throughout delusion. So this is very, very important and practical information for us in our spiritual practice, in our struggles to find the deepest meaning of our life and to express that and to make that real in our life and in the world. To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things, that's what we call delusion. Now this is what we all do. This is our normal human life. We carry ourselves forward and we experience the

[05:16]

things around us, maybe even the things we are. So we have an idea of who we are that we carry forward in our ordinary activity and awareness. We have some identification. We have some sense of this self, the body and mind who's sitting on your cushion or chair right now. You all have addresses and phone numbers probably and social security numbers that you could probably recite. You all have some story about who you are. This is the self that we carry forward. Part of the self we carry forward is all the ideas and stories you have about who you are not, what is the world, the world around you. So we have various ways of seeing this world we live in. We have various ways of viewing the people around us and our situation and our work and home and people we know.

[06:21]

We have stories about all of that. This is all the self we carry forward to experience myriad things. We could call this the Buddhist original sin. We separate ourself from the world and we get attached to ideas of ourself and the world. But although this is a delusion, it's not that it's bad. In fact, we need to do this. This is how we survive. This is how we function in the world. But it's delusion. This self, this story about ourself, the story about the world, the story about how things are that we carry forward in this delusion is how we live. It's what we live in. It's the ordinary human world. It's even the ordinary world of Buddhist practice. We have ideas about ourself and they're so deeply ingrained that, of course, we carry them forward. We bring

[07:24]

them to how your ears are hearing the sounds of my voice today, right now. The other side is that myriad things come forth and experience themselves. That is what Dogen calls awakening or enlightenment. All the 10,000 things, all of the myriad selves in this room right now, all of your gestures, readjusting your posture, scratching, holding your head up, down, inhaling, exhaling, everything that we are, each of us, on our cushions right now, here in this room, and the cushions themselves, and the sound of the plane overhead, everything just comes forth and experiences itself. This is what Dogen calls awakening. And yet, it's very easy to misunderstand this, to think of this as some thing. So this is a problem that many

[08:30]

Zen practitioners get into. They think that awakening, even when they glimpse that sense, when they get a taste of myriad things coming forth and experiencing themselves, they think it's something out there. So we are part of the myriad things that come forth. So there's that old saying I've seen on bumper stickers, the world does not belong to people, people belong to the world. The myriad things coming forth and experiencing themselves in awakening right now, totally includes you, it's not happening somewhere else on some TV screen that you can watch, it's not happening on the wall that you're watching, it's happening in your watching the wall and in the wall watching you. We actually have to take responsibility for being part of the myriad things. But this is different from carrying ourself forward. It's a very, very subtle difference. So in some ways this is a very simple instruction

[09:34]

about the difference between delusion and awakening, but actually it's very subtle, and we have to be completely in both, and that's part of what Dogen says in this. And yet it is possible to just sit and be with all of myriad things, ten thousand things, thoughts, feelings, sensations, sounds of the birds arising right now. We can actually experience that. But that's dangerous too. So in the next passage Dogen says, those who have great realization of delusion are Buddhas. What Buddhas do is to study delusion. What Buddhas do is to really, deeply, closely, intensely study and realize and awaken to

[10:40]

their own delusions, and of course the delusions of the world, because we're not separate. Then he says, those who are greatly deluded about enlightenment are deluded beings. So probably all of you came here at one point or another, if this is your first time or if you live here or if you've been here many times. Part of your first coming to Green Gulch Zen Center was that you heard something about enlightenment. You heard about this possibility of awakening. That's what Buddha means. It just means the awakened one. Buddhism is just the ism of awakening. And given the difficulties and corruption and pain and cruelty of our world, and given the sadness and confusion and greed and frustration of our own hearts,

[11:44]

of course we want some relief. And so we hear about this enlightenment, this awakening, and think, oh, I want some of that. So some version of that is probably how all of us got here in some way or other. And yet, when you first hear of this word, it's almost impossible not to arouse many delusions about enlightenment. And that's what deluded beings do. They have delusions about enlightenment, maybe like delusions of grandeur, thinking that if they can just sit still for forty minutes and breathe and not run screaming from the room that they will be enlightened, or whether it's forty minutes or forty years, anyway. And that there's some thing called enlightenment that you can get. So enlightenment's not a thing. It's

[12:47]

kind of a verb, or it's the way things is. Just like Genjo Koan is not a thing. It's how we study our life. It's how we study delusion. We Genjo Koan delusion. And we Genjo Koan awakening by coming back to study delusions, not by having some idea about enlightenment. So you do have delusions about enlightenment. All of us do, or else we couldn't have gotten here. So what Dogen is saying is it's important to study those delusions. You should know what you think enlightenment might be. You might think it will solve all your problems. So this isn't about solving problems. Of course, if you can solve your problems, that's great. If you can solve some problems, that's wonderful. But the world is alive. There will be more problems. So I don't know if I agree with Suzuki Roshi one time. He said, the problem that you have right now, you will always have. Maybe so. Maybe for many of us that's the

[13:53]

case. But sometimes, you know, some problems go away. They sort of dissolve. Not necessarily because we figure out how to fix them, but just we see through them. We let go. Other problems will come. And if you ever solve all your problems, somebody else will come and give you theirs. So our practice is just to sit facing the wall studying delusions. Studying our own delusions. Studying the delusion of the world around us. Really getting to know very intimately what it is to be this deluded being. And the funny thing is that that's what Buddhists do. They study their delusions. They study the delusions of their friends and the people around them. They study the delusions of themselves in interaction with those people. Because nobody can be deluded by themselves just like nobody can be awakened by themselves. We're all in this together. We are not separate, isolated selves. We are

[14:53]

the self that you study is deeply, intimately connected to the self of the body and mind sitting on the chair or cushion next to you, even if you've never met them before, this moment. So our job in practice is to just really get to know these delusions. To really study dangerous delusions about our attachments to fantasies about enlightenment. We study those too. And part of our practice is that we do. We should know that we do have some idea of something we want. We think, if only, whatever it is. So study that delusion too. So we emphasize a lot in Suzuki Roshi lineage, non-gaining mind. To sit just for the sake of Buddha, just for the sake of Zazen, just for the sake of the birds singing outside.

[15:56]

But it's not that Zazen is purposeless or meaningless. In fact, Genjo Koan is about finding the deeper meaning of Zazen. We Genjo Koan our lives to see what the point is of our being here this morning, this lifetime. So don't worry if it's deluded or awakened. For awakened beings, there's no difference. But because we're deluded, we think there is. So study that too. Dogen says, there are those who continue realizing beyond realization, who are in delusion throughout delusion. So when you see your delusions, really look at them, really get into them. It doesn't mean act them out. When we're really willing to face the confusion

[17:06]

and the craving and the frustration and all of that stuff that comes up as we sit silently facing the wall, inhaling and exhaling, just to be present with that is the point. To get inside that, to really study that. So there's another passage where Dogen goes into how to do this, right after that one. He says, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as bodies and minds of others drop away. This is tricky and also can be misunderstood. So many Zen students here, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the

[18:10]

self. And they want to race right ahead to forgetting the self. How can I forget the self? They're urging us to turn away from facing the self. We have very skillful entertainment and recreation and distractions and addictions and many, many, many ways that we've been trained to avoid facing the self. That's not the same as forgetting the self. So you might think that to study the Buddha way is to study the self. You do that first and then if we study the self then we forget the self. Then if we forget the self we are actualized by the myriad things arising. But it's not like that. This is not some stages of practice. This is the way Zazen is right now. This is the way our practice heart is right now. So studying the way is itself, studying the self is itself forgetting the

[19:15]

self. We don't forget the self any other way but by studying the self. And this study of the self is not the usual way we think of studying the self. This is the yogic study of the self. This is the study of the self that we do sitting quietly, upright, inhaling, exhaling, seeing thoughts and feelings arise, letting them go, inhaling again. Coming back again and again to see how does it feel to be this body, this mind on my cushion today. So this is not the same as a psychological study of the self. That might be part of it and that may be helpful. Some of us need to do that. So it may be that psychotherapy

[20:20]

or analysis might be part of this but this study of the self is something other than that, something deeper. It may include that but how is it to be this person? So doing this meditation we actually give ourselves a chance to just be here and see what it's like. So this practice and enlightenment is not about getting some other body or mind. It's not about getting higher, it's not about reaching some higher state of consciousness. It's about just really seeing how it is to be this person sitting on your chair right now. And how can then you express that and realize that and make that part of the reality of all beings. This is the Genjo part of Genjo Koan. But we don't do this by forgetting the self. We don't do this by thinking we can actualize myriad things. Just a lifetime of studying the self. That

[21:22]

is forgetting the self. That is, if you're willing to study the self then you're not running away from the self and then actually the self is dropped because it's just here flowering and there's no self that's separate from anything else. But the way we do that as deluded beings is just, how does it feel? How's my voice doing on this day when I have a sore throat? Can you still hear me in the back? Thank you. So, what's difficult about Zen practice is not getting your legs into some funny position and wearing some funny clothes or knowing when to bow where, all of those forms that we use as supports for our study of the self. What's difficult to sustain about this practice

[22:26]

is studying the self. We get tired. We may need a break. We may need to relax. We may take some distraction or recreation and that's fine. So it's not about getting to some particular realization. This is about ongoing realization. About Buddha going beyond Buddha. Because actually we're alive. And the birds who are singing are alive. And the world itself is alive. The trees and grass and flowers and dirt on the path and fence posts of green gulch are alive. The world is meeting us moment after moment. And sometimes we get tired or sometimes we get to a place where sometimes people get into a kind of plateau in their

[23:27]

practice where it's just kind of okay and everything's going along and they can do it fine and it kind of gets boring. And sometimes problems come up. Sometimes we get caught by our confusion or our friends do. And it's difficult to just stay sitting. It's difficult to keep watching our own confusion and our own pain and sadness. So the point, what we emphasize in the practice in this tradition is not getting some particular fancy experience. That might happen. It's okay. It won't hurt you. And if you realize something, of course it's transformational and this whole process is transformational. We are alive and we're changing. And we realize things. But we realize it not from figuring it out, although if you have that kind of mind, that's fine. Go ahead and try and do that. But just sitting silently,

[24:31]

quietly, studying how it feels to be this person on your chair or cushion. And as we do that, of course we get to know our habits and patterns. We get to know our ways of reacting. We get to know the ways in which we usually see the world and the ways in which we carry ourselves forward and react to the world. So part of this study of the self is to see from inside the self, from inside our idea of the self, and from inside this body and mind, dropping away on this cushion right now, to see how it is to be this person and to get to know very intimately from inside our own reactions and patterns. And sometimes that's really painful. We've all got stuff from, in Buddhism we say many lifetimes, but just think of the number of decades you've been around in this body and mind. We all

[25:32]

have had losses and pain and made mistakes and, I don't know, gotten angry or had people get angry at us. Things happen. This is our life in the world. And it's painful when we're actually sitting there to actually face that stuff. But that's the job of Zen students. That's what our life is about. That's what our practice is about. That's what true spirituality is about. Willingness to just face our delusions. And it's difficult. Go ahead and take a break if you need to. But the point of our practice that we emphasize is to keep coming back to actually facing ourselves, to not running away from ourselves. To be willing to be the person you are. And right there in the person you are, that's where Buddha is. Not somewhere else. So there's a very common delusion about enlightenment that, oh, if only I could, I

[26:33]

don't know, go off to Tassajara or the Himalayas or Japan or, I don't know, some other place where if I could only live at Green Gulch, if I could only get out of Green Gulch, whatever. The people who live here work very hard. It looks idyllic from the outside. Of course it is. And so the whole world is. But we have to do this hard work of seeing ourselves in order to appreciate the myriad things arising, including ourselves. So when we get to know from inside our various patterns of reacting, our various habits, our various ways of reacting when, I don't know, the various ways we can allow ourselves to express anger and so forth or frustration or whatever, when we see our patterns very, very intimately from coming back to them again and again and again and not turning away, not trying to forget the

[27:36]

self but saying, oh, here it is again. When we do that, we have a chance to see a wider reality of ourself. When you know what you're up to, when you know your patterns, then you don't need to react the way you usually do, based on those habits and patterns. You can see your reaction arising and stop. Maybe you won't all the time. Sometimes, you know, you might do that again. And we have to just keep watching. But as you watch, as you have the joy of experiencing myriad things arising, including yourself, you can have a much greater range of possible response. So I think of it in terms of responding to things rather than reacting. You can stop, take a breath, and then you may have a different way of responding

[28:37]

to some situation that you would usually react to in another way. When you know your usual reactions, then you have a wider sense of possibilities. So part of the sitting, part of the studying the self, is that we see a wider range of reality than our stories about ourselves and our stories about the world. Reality, awakening, is much wider, much deeper, far beyond what we think it is. Of course, so when you started to come to this Dharma Talk this morning, this is not the Dharma Talk you expected. It's not the Dharma Talk I expected. Reality is beyond our ideas and expectations. Reality is wider and deeper than what we think it is. We can't see behind us. We can hear the plane flying overhead,

[29:44]

we can hear the birds singing, but I can't hear the people crying in San Francisco. But when we are studying ourselves deeply, we may feel connection to things we don't know or see or hear. Reality is much more complex than what we think it is. So we have to be aware of that. I didn't know I was going to get into this, but I've been reading a little bit about string theory recently, and the new physics, and I don't understand it, but they say that other dimensions of reality are very nearby and they're totally different, maybe. That this whole universe is like one slice of bread in a loaf of reality, and there are other slices. And another way to think of it is in terms of what the scientists say

[30:48]

about the brain and how there is a large percentage of the brain that we don't use, usually. So anyway, what we think the world is, is just a little bit of reality. We can't understand how porpoise buddhas practice. They don't have hands and sticks to raise, they don't have legs to cross, but I'm sure there's some way that porpoise buddhas practice. They have bigger brains than us, so probably they don't use all of their brains either. So this study of the self is about opening up our reality, being willing to face the habits and patterns and confusion of our ordinary, normal patterns of reaction, and not run away from them, not try and go beyond them, and that's how we go beyond them, by actually

[31:52]

being the person we are, right now. In delusion, throughout delusion. So I want to talk about one last little part of this writing, Genja Koan, that Dogen gave us. And I don't understand these two sentences, I've been sitting in the middle of these two sentences for decades. But Dogen says, when Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it is already sufficient. When Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. So it may be when we're not filled with the Dharma in body and mind, we think it's enough. Sometimes we can feel okay in complaisance about our life, or we

[32:58]

can feel like it's okay to hear a little bit about the reality of how I can meet myself, and that's okay. So I think it's pretty good to have Dharma fill your body and mind just a little bit. But part of how it works then is that you might want to keep watching yourself, and then make it a little more. When Dharma fills your body and mind, Dogen says, you understand something is missing. So I've always really liked this line, and been drawn to it, and still don't understand it. But I'll say a little bit about my feelings about it. That this has to do with the truth of suffering, the first noble truth in Buddhism, that something is missing. So we say that, sometimes people think that Buddhism is pessimistic because there's this truth that life is suffering. But really that's a kind of bad translation,

[33:58]

and it ignores the third noble truth, which is that there's an end to suffering. Things are slightly out of line. Things are a little bit out of whack. That's what it really means. This word dukkha, we can translate it as suffering, and it means suffering and dissatisfaction. Etymologically it means a wheel that's slightly out of line. The alignment's a little off. So we emphasize posture, and sitting upright. Not strained, relaxed, but upright. Finding our center point, finding our balance. And in many ways, the life of practice is about finding our balance. And yet something is missing. So enlightenment doesn't mean that everything in the whole world is suddenly perfect and glowing. Maybe it means that, but it also means something is missing. So what Genjo Koan is emphasizing is, how to

[35:05]

Genjo Koan your life right now? How to Genjo Koan the problems you have this week? How to Genjo Koan what is really important to you? How do you want to live your life? How do you want to find your way of expressing something that is meaningful to you? Not to somebody else, not to me or Dogen or Shakyamuni Buddha or whoever. How do you want to Genjo Koan your life? So it may be sad, or it may be encouraging to hear that something is missing. This is not about some idea of enlightenment or delusion. This is about how do we actually express ourselves in the phenomenal world, in the world of the particulars, in your own situation, in your friends and family, in your work life, in your play life, in your study of yourself. Something is missing. So as I said, we have to find our balance, and reality is alive. It's dynamic. It's changing every moment. So even if you can Genjo Koan

[36:16]

your life completely, right now, at this moment, maybe you can. It happens. Something else will happen when you get up and leave the lecture, or tomorrow. Our life is alive. Our world is alive. We are not dead objects, and the world is not dead objects. Reality is alive. So each new situation, of course something is missing. We haven't yet Genjo Koaned this situation. How can you study yourself as you grow, as you open up, as you feel pain, as we suffer losses? How do you continue to Genjo Koan yourself? This is what is called awakening beyond awakening, and delusion throughout delusion. So it's not that we see this reality

[37:18]

once and are transformed and then everything is taken care of. But how do we keep doing this? Not just today. So maybe you're all enlightened today, but how are you going to take care of tomorrow? So Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment was not the end of Buddhism, it was just the beginning. There's an old saying that Shakyamuni only got 50%. So here we are, the other 50%. So I would point to this other 50% in terms of our responsibility to ourselves, and to the world, and to Buddha, and to all beings, and to all the people we care about, and to all the people we don't care about. How can we Genjo Koan our lives?

[38:20]

How can we see what's important and keep coming back to see, what is it that I'm up to? What is it that I really want? How am I going to express this in this situation, and in this situation right now? So this involves taking responsibility for our practice, and we talk about it in terms of precepts, kind of guidelines for how we express that in the world, and how we see what's going on in the society around us and respond to that, but also how we relate to our friends and those we interact with in the course of our week, and also to yourself. So another way of talking about this, something is missing, is that what is missing is love. What is missing is really finding our way to be kind, not just to others, but to ourselves, not just to ourselves, but to all others. How do we do that? It's a difficult world. Something

[39:25]

is missing. So you know, the Eskimos have 50 words for snow, I don't know how many, but you know, 50 or more. So in a society and culture that was emotionally and spiritually sensitive and aware, there would be at least 50 words for love, and maybe 500. How do we find our own way of, each of us our own way, of loving and caring for ourselves and the world around us? So this compassion is, you know, there's always something missing. There's more that we could do. And it's not that we should be hard on ourselves because something is missing. And it's not that we should be hard on ourselves or on our friends or spouses or whoever for their limitations in loving, or our limitations in loving. Just to see that. Just to study that. To actually respect the limitations. Enlightenment doesn't happen somewhere beyond all limitation, it happens right in the situation that we're in right

[40:28]

now, in this body and mind. So we come back and take our seat and study the self. How does it feel? In your knee? In your shoulders? In your throat? In your belly? In the small of your back? In your elbows? In your heart? How does it feel to be this person right now in this body, in this mind? How can I be kind to myself? At the same time as I don't turn away from seeing all that stuff that life has led me to express and feel and be. So we don't turn away from our confusion. We don't turn away from our anger and greed. But see how we can find something wider. Right in the middle of that. Right in the middle of studying that. Right in the middle of not turning away at all. So this is hard work.

[41:29]

I'm challenging you to do something difficult. Buddhism is challenging you to do something difficult. But actually, you know, the way to do that is to be really gentle with yourself and with your friends. You can't do it unless you're really kind to yourself. So there's a way to not be indulgent, but also to take care of yourself and pace yourself. I thought about calling Fu yesterday and saying, my throat's really sore and I'm not going to come. Please, why don't you give a talk instead? But I took lots of cough drops and I got lots of hot tea remedies and anyway, here I am. And I think I've gotten through a dharma class. So I don't know how I'll be in question and answer, but anyway. I look forward to discussing this with you. So I'll just close with, even though something is missing in this dharma

[42:33]

talk, I'll still end it with, a short sermon or dharma hall discourse that Dogen gave early in his career. This is from a work that I've just finished translating over the last several years that will be out in the fall. Anyway, one day Dogen got up on his cushion on the altar in the dharma hall and said to his monks and students, everybody should just wholeheartedly engage in this genjo koan, this full manifestation of ultimate reality. What is this genjo koan? It is just all Buddhas in the ten directions and all ancestors, ancient and present, and it is fully manifesting right now. Right now. Do you all see it? It is just our present

[43:37]

entering and leaving the practice hall and getting up and getting down from the sitting platform. Why don't you all join and practice this excellent genjo koan? And then he said, Today this mountain monk, referring to himself, without begrudging my life or my word, and I would add, or my throat, for the sake of all of you expounds this again and repeatedly. Then it says, Dogen pounded the floor with his staff and immediately got down from his seat. But I won't do that today. Instead we'll just chant the closing chant together.

[44:25]

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