See, everybody, and welcome to Sashin, to this one-day sitting, and welcome to those who just came to the talk. The Sashin is our idea of vacation and rest. So it's kind of like a resort. So our idea of resting. And we take a day off from our usual activities and come together and rest in this practice of silent illumination, as we call it. And Saturday also is the Sabbath, so it's a day of rest. And yesterday was Good Friday in Purim, and the first day of spring. So death and resurrection cause and effect all at once. So, apropos of that, what I want to speak about today is about enlightenment and delusion.

[01:10]

Or about what Dogen calls the enlightened person who is ever intimate with the nevertheless deluded. Which is kind of like the teacher-student relationship. I'll repeat it. Dogen has a very elaborate way of using language. The enlightened person who is ever intimate with the nevertheless deluded. But then the other definition is the enlightened person who is nevertheless deluded. And that's the teacher. The teacher is the enlightened person who is nevertheless deluded. And only if the teacher can be the enlightened person who is nevertheless deluded can he or she relate to the nevertheless deluded in his student or her student.

[02:18]

So I'm going to approach this topic of delusion from three angles. One is delusion as discrimination. discrimination or duality of the thinking mind, delusion as imperfection or suffering, and delusion as what Dogen calls dim-sightedness, dim-sightedness, dimly seeing or not seeing clearly. I have been reading this book of Kim, who is a scholar on Dogen, who wrote this known book on Dogen, Mystical Realist. And this is his update, his new book on the subject, in his senior years, after many years of Dogen scholarship.

[03:26]

And it's quite remarkable for a scholarly work. He's a professor, so he's not exactly a Zen teacher, but his understanding is quite good. And he has this view of having studied Dogen for many years, so knowing Dogen and his language intimately. And it's very hard to penetrate Dogen otherwise, and very easy to get lost. So it's difficult to get a perspective of actually what he's saying, or what was he teaching. So I found it quite surprising what he said about Dogen. And one of the things he says is that Dogen gives positive meaning to things that in Buddhism are usually considered negative. And these are things like thinking, duality, language, delusion, imperfection, and dim-sightedness.

[04:38]

So that in the teaching of emptiness from the Heart Sutra and from Nagarjuna, enlightenment and delusion are equal. Well, they're ever-elusive. Enlightenment is ever-elusive. Delusion is ever-elusive. They're both bottomless. And they don't have a cause-effect relationship. And... So he says Dogen is different than usually we think of Zen is founded on a dualism between intuition and intellect. So Zen is about intuition and it rejects the intellect or on a dualism between meditation and wisdom like in the Rinzai school and the Soto school and that

[05:44]

that Dogon overcomes this dualism and restores all these things that are considered negative and gives them a place within the Zen tradition. So, non-duality doesn't signify the transcendence of duality so much as the realization of non-duality within duality. And that Dogen's approach towards duality and not duality or intuition and intellect was not hierarchical. Meaning one is not superior to the other. Intuition can be superior to intellect and intellect can be superior to intuition. It can go either way because they're not dual. And Dogen's teaching is rooted in this context of the Rinzai and Soto school, and the Yogacara and Madhyamika schools of Buddhism, in which we have these things being debated back and forth.

[07:05]

And then in Japan nowadays, apparently there's two schools of Dogen studies, those who privileged Dogen the meditator, the Soto school as being the Sazen-only school, just sitting, and those who privilege Dogen the thinker, and who consider Dogen as the preeminent Japanese thinker ever, and who consider him a basis for critical thinking, and critical thinking as a form of right thought or right discrimination and the way to apply Buddhism to social problems. How do we think about social problems? So when we come to Zazen, we leave behind the external world.

[08:16]

or the world of sense consciousness. And we just sit, and our consciousness sort of reverts back. It's the backward step that turns the light inward. So, sitting brings forth the radiance in our own being. which is what the Buddha says what we actually see with. We think we see with the senses and with the sense objects and that we see the external world, but actually we see with the inner light or with the inner radiance. And at the same time it brings up thinking. Zazen brings up thinking. And then we get to see our thoughts, how our sense of reality is colored by our thinking, by our thoughts, or how we construe what happens to us or our reality through our thoughts and our feelings.

[09:30]

So what are we doing in meditation? So that's the famous koan, what are you doing? And usually in the West, people think of meditation as thinking. I'm Cartesian meditations, right? I think that's the name of a book, which is a lot of thinking. And which is what happens in zazen, that we struggle with the thinking mind. The thinking mind becomes pervasive in some way, or we get to see it very clearly. Because when we're going about our life, we're experiencing the senses, Reality is coming through the senses, but it's also coming through our thinking. And sometimes it's difficult to distinguish. Usually perception is more our thinking than actually clear seeing.

[10:34]

But we see that clearly in zazen. That perception is more thinking than clear seeing. So that's the thinking part. I remember when I was, my mother told me recently actually that when I was a little boy I was very impressed by my stepfather sitting in a chair, just sitting there in a chair apparently doing nothing. And so she said that I quoted this dialogue where I asked him, well what are you doing? And he said, I'm thinking, my boy, I'm thinking. So that's like the thinker in the West with Rodin's sculpture, too. Thinking about what underlies appearances. But that thinking is also delusion.

[11:40]

There's an aspect of enlightenment in it, so that's why when we say, go get an education, that's a lot of thinking, a lot of working through thinking and thinking through working. And so in the West we call that enlightenment, but we call that delusion in Buddhism. So what is it? Is it enlightenment or is it delusion? So then we see in Zazen, we see how our perceptions are colored by our thoughts. And so then comes not thinking. And this goes back to the koan of Chinese Zen that Dogen used so much. What are you doing? Ask the student or to the teacher. And he says, if I recall exactly, it's not thinking.

[12:51]

How do you think? Not thinking, non-thinking. So, the not thinking piece is the part where we reject the intellect and where we reject thinking as delusion, as a necessary step. So we let go of our thoughts, particularly if our thoughts are about the posture and what we're doing and why did I come and why am I doing this again and so on and so forth, which, you know, we struggle a lot at the beginning of practice when doing saschins. Later on it becomes more like the comfortable way. It's a very comfortable way, very restful way, very illuminating way. But at the beginning we struggle a lot with posture. It's not so easy.

[13:53]

So a lot of people get turned off to Zen because of the difficulty of the posture. Oh, I can do that. So we have to negotiate the way and how we negotiate the posture. So then the thoughts come up about that, and we let them go. So that's the aspect of not thinking continually, accepting the thoughts and letting them go. And then we have the thought of non-thinking, which is the thought of the body, or thinking with the body, or thinking with our feet. or thinking with our belly, or thinking with our breath. All that is the thought of the body, or non-thinking. How do we not think?

[14:57]

With non-thinking, which is thinking with the body, and which is the true basis of thought in reality. This is a real thought. Not a thought of reality, but a real thought. The painting of the cake is the cake itself, says Dogen. Oh, it's an ecological thought. So, this is why Bodhidharma, you know, which is credited with bringing Zen to China, and usually it says, oh, he brought the Lankavatara Sutra, and the Lankavatara Sutra is the one that's associated with Zen is about rejecting the discriminating mind, or that the discriminating mind is an obstacle to realization.

[16:01]

Bodhidharma actually wrote one text, or left behind one text, the twofold entrance into the way, the entrance by way of reason and the entrance by way of conduct. And the entrance by way of reason is that in meditation you're in close communion with reason itself, or the base of reason in reality, where we think with the body. But thinking with the body requires a step of not thinking. So that's the aspect of where the intellect or discrimination needs to be put aside or in its proper place. There's a correction there that needs to happen for it to function properly. or it's in its right place, for it to be right thought, which is one of the Eightfold Noble Path, we have right thought, or right thinking, or the thought of enlightenment.

[17:16]

So it can be an instrument of enlightenment rather than a hindrance to enlightenment or realization. So there's a moment where we have to stop analyzing. You know, in Zazen we don't analyze. We have to stop analyzing. But then we have to take up right analysis afterwards. Once we get back to the world and take up the world again, we have to take up right thinking. I like right analysis, perhaps, or right thought better than right discrimination, because discrimination has a negative social connotation.

[18:23]

Discrimination is associated with social discrimination. And precisely, we have to use critical thinking to speak about what is it like for people of different races or cultures or gender or sexual orientation to do this practice of silent illumination. So everybody can speak from their relative truth. And this is the Madhyamika teaching of Nagarjuna. The relation between absolute truth and relative truth. They don't have a hierarchical relationship. They have to be in relationship to one another. but sometimes if we just take the absolute truth, then we think that these relative questions are not important and don't matter, or are actually a hindrance to realization. But we have to be grounded in realization, in non-thinking, in order to be able to take up these questions of social discrimination in a non-discriminating way.

[19:43]

And that's kind of the challenge for Buddhism in the contemporary world. So let me read you a passage here from Dogen where he talks about the nevertheless deluded. You know, we've heard a lot, we've chanted a lot the Ginjo Koan, where he talks about delusion, those deluded within delusion, or deluded amid, he makes a distinction, deluded amid delusion versus deluded within delusion. Deluded amid delusion is when, for example, I work in a clinic in the mission, And when you work with somebody who is deluded psychiatrically, they actually have a disorder, delusion as a symptom.

[20:53]

you try to use understanding to try to, instead of saying, well, this gibberish doesn't make any sense, just take this pill and go home, okay? And the way you think and see the world is really disturbing to me, so take this pill and see you later. So you have to be intimate with the delusion in some way. This is understanding and empathy in one. And you have to use logic to make some sense of what they're trying to say. And so this is being deluded amid delusion or throwing fire on fire. Because, of course, logic is also a form of delusion, as we've already stated.

[22:05]

But nevertheless, you use it as an expedient mean to help somebody. And then when we think we're not deluded, we're also deluded. So, people who think they're normal Normality is another form of delusion. This is part of being deluded amidst delusion. If you realize that normality is another form of dim-sightedness, of not seeing clearly, and of setting up this separation between the deluded and the normal, If you don't see that, you're deluded, within delusion. If you see that, then you're deluded amid delusion. So, here is this, the fascicle is daigo, or great enlightenment.

[23:22]

He says, a monastic once asked great teacher Pao Chi of the Huayan Monastery in Qingchao, successor to Dongshan, also known as Xiuqing, what is it like when a greatly enlightened person is nevertheless deluded? That's a very contemporary question. Old Chinese contemporary question. The teacher replied, a shattered mirror never reflects again. A fallen flower never returns to the tree. So a shattered mirror, this is like breaking the mirror into a thousand pieces. never returns back, always remains with realizing enlightenment within delusion and within everyday life and holding no idea about a distinction between enlightenment and delusion or any idea of an enlightened self or a deluded self.

[24:33]

So the mirror is just an expedient, but it has to be broken. Because if the mirror is not broken, then we think there is an actual mirror. We even think of the mind as an actual clear mirror. And the mind is a mirror. We use the clear mirror as an example, but it's not really an object called a mirror. So that idea of a mirror or the object of a mirror needs to be broken into a thousand pieces. which in a form is like delusion, seems like disintegration. But it isn't. And a fallen flower never returns to the tree. So, usually we think of enlightenment as this flower in full bloom That's enlightenment, whereas a fallen flower is delusion. But the fallen flower also has the time or the being time or the time being in it.

[25:46]

And it also germinates the earth and leads to new life. So, the fallen flower is as important as the flower in full bloom. Delusion is as important as enlightenment. So, neither can exist without the other. Can't have enlightenment without delusion. And you can't have the illusion without enlightenment. Can't have a flower in full bloom without a fallen flower. Can't have a mirror without a shattered mirror. And this is how we practice through this. And this is part of the stuff that our life is made up of. And the stuff that our relationships are made up of.

[26:50]

The stuff that sangha relationships are made up of. Because sometimes we think, well, there's the ordinary life, you know, samsara over there, and then there's nirvana over here. There's the enlightened Buddhist world over here, and the world of deluded beings over there. Actually, the world of deluded beings over there is also the world of enlightenment, and the world of enlightened beings over here is also the world of delusion. We find the world of delusion right in the midst of the world of enlightenment. And that's what's so surprising and disappointing to people, you know, that people who appear to be so wonderful, you know, so wonderful teachers, then, you know, delusion shows its ugly head or face, and then that's very discouraging. But that's why we need this teaching of the shattered mirror, not just the teaching of the clear mirror.

[27:51]

So, another metaphor that Dogen likes is kato, the entwined vines, or entwining vines. which suggests usually it's kind of the, I think, Ross has a little, on your desk Ross, there's a little picture of somebody sitting and then there's all these vines or lines coming off their head, you know, there's kind of all the thoughts that are kind of turned into vines and then go around and wrap everybody, you know, and there's some of those coming out of everybody's head and he's wrapping everybody into all these vines. So these are the entwining vines that our relationships are made of. And so it's sort of a negative association in some way that can be seen as kind of binding rather than emancipating. But Dogen uses it in that non-dual way to talk about the relationship within the Sangha and within teacher and student as the entwining vines.

[29:10]

it has this quality of enlightenment and it has this quality of delusion, depending on how you look at it or depending how you see it or depending on the moment. But non-duality is expressed in both, or emptiness is expressed in both. So, in Dogon and Nagarjuna what holds the non-duality of enlightenment and delusion is emptiness. to both the flower and full bloom and the fallen flower, they're both empty in their own being. And therefore we can enjoy, or we can accept at least, both our, you know, wonderful experience of silent illumination of, you know, what is this? past our thinking, past our discrimination, what is this?

[30:15]

But also past the object of the sense or past some gesture. Sometimes we think Zen is about this speaking through gestures or enjoying a cup of tea, just a direct contact with the sense object. but it's also past that because just this is more than the sense object. Just this means the brightness of our being, the brightness of all things, our feelings, our serenity, our samadhi, everything together, this. Let me say, what is it? So, this is what. So, the what is all this together, just swallowing the whole thing together, both enlightenment and delusion, our joy and our pain, you know, our likes and dislikes, moment of encounter with the teacher, the moment of mis-encounter with the teacher.

[31:37]

That's the entwining vines, kato. How are we doing, Ross? What time? The question started at 11. Okay, let me just, I'm going to end with a passage of Dogen, and then we can have some questions. I'm going to read this. The greatly enlightened person in question is not someone who is greatly enlightened from the beginning. So it's no original enlightenment. Nor is the person someone who gets and appropriates it from somewhere else.

[32:43]

It's not acquired either. Great enlightenment is not something that despite being accessible to everyone in the public domain, you happen to encounter in your declining years. The Bible says, you know, the difference between the righteous and the wicked is that they both suffer. but the righteous get to have a nice time in their later years. Nor can it be forcibly extracted through one's own contrivances, even so one realizes great enlightenment without fail. You should not construe the non-delusion as great enlightenment, nor should you consider becoming a deluded person initially to sow the seeds of great enlightenment. Right?

[33:44]

Because if you have it too easy, if you have it too easy, then you should get into some trouble, you know, so that your enlightenment will be stronger. On the other hand, if you have it very hard, If you have it very difficult, it's not that that's any worse than the one that has it easy. Sometimes easy, sometimes hard. Consider this further. Is a greatly enlightened person who is nevertheless deluded the same as an unenlightened person? When being nevertheless deluded, does a greatly enlightened person create delusion by exerting that enlightenment? So by being enlightened or talking about enlightenment, becomes deluded. Or by way of bringing delusion from somewhere else, does the person assume it as though still deluded while concealing his or her own enlightenment.

[34:54]

So this is like the mask of foolishness. You know, does the person appear to be a foolish ordinary person, sort of to don that as a mask while concealing enlightenment and pretend to be just, you know, like just an ordinary person? Or is it just the ordinary person? While an enlightened person remains the same and non-transgressing, he's a great enlightenment, does he or she in any case partake in being nevertheless deluded?" So even though the person is pure with respect to their own… they keep their mind pure and they're pure with respect to their own enlightened mind, they nevertheless partake in being nevertheless deluded. So they're nevertheless deluded despite the fact of the purity in their practice.

[35:56]

So the teacher may be pure in practice and nevertheless deluded. Regarding a greatly enlightened person is nevertheless deluded, you should also investigate whether the nevertheless deluded means fetching another piece of great enlightenment. In any event, and it concludes, you should know that to understand a greatly enlightened person is nevertheless deluded is the quintessence of practice. Note that great enlightenment is ever intimate with the nevertheless deluded. Thank you. Yes, Kofi. I was thinking about empathy. Can we translate this differently some of it?

[37:04]

I'm sure we can. But where you want to communicate with someone, you want to connect with somebody, and you listen to them, and rather than try to correct them, and their delusion, you empathize with their, you repeat back, they see that you understand what they're saying without judgment. Is that a sense of what Dogen's talking about? Yeah, that was the first, well that was the way I started the talk with the enlightened person who is ever intimate with the nevertheless deluded. Being ever intimate, so that's the compassion or the empathy. As long as you don't think that their suffering is theirs and is not yours in some way, although the fact that you have empathy means you understand that.

[38:11]

If you don't understand that, then that would be sentimental empathy, dualistic empathy, superficial empathy, which sometimes looks like empathy, but it ain't. mind around communication, understanding, and it seems to illuminate in a new way for me what Dogen's talking about, you know, the empathy and... Yeah, so long as it's true empathy. Oh, right, right. Without judgment. Without judgment, but also not thinking that there's another there, that their suffering is not yours. fundamental needs and feelings. Yeah, at the same time it's not yours. Because if you would be subsumed by the same suffering at that moment, it would be difficult to help somebody else.

[39:15]

Yes? Well, this was kind of a little abstract for me, and everything, very directly positive experience. Well, you know, even though we're sitting here and there's the enlightenment of the immediate relationship of realizing the effect of Zazen in our practice and in what we're doing here, this itself may, within the karmic consciousness that we live in, produce an effect like somebody back home may be upset with you being in Sashin.

[40:25]

So when you get back home, You know, your family or your spouse or your son or your child may challenge you and confront you. What were you doing? Aren't you selfish that you're doing that? Leaving me alone? Weren't you supposed to be doing this or doing that? So, even though we're sitting in enlightenment, we're also planting the seeds of delusion, meaning that the suffering that we will encounter in our ordinary life. And these two are not two. Are you saying that somebody at home is mad at you for being a Sachine? Well, yes. I don't know if I say that is not completely accurate, because in this moment they may actually not be. In this moment they may actually be appreciative. But when I get home, they may be mad. You see?

[41:30]

That's direct, isn't it? Yes, Mike. Yes, so this is part of the nevertheless deluded. Oh, Biker just reminded me to ask Mel if he has something he would like to say. And so I forgot, so I needed Baika to remind me, and that's part of my delusion. Or is it Sojin's delusion? Well, in the beginning, you said that Okay.

[42:59]

I accept the clarification. Yes? It seems like you were saying that if we're enlightened we have an understanding that the conventional world is often our current creation and our own delusion. in it. Yes. Yeah, I mean that's one sense of deluded, amidst delusion, that we have to live our life anyway.

[44:05]

We can't completely erase life. We live within this giddy karmic consciousness, you know, this life of suffering. So that's where we have to practice. But at the same time we have to have a way of negotiating the way. in delusion. And this is something that comes with practice. But it's not like we're always falling down and getting up, falling down and getting up. We fall to the ground and we use the ground to get up. The same problems that we have are the ones that we use to help us along the way. Thank you, Raul.

[45:10]

Could you find the last few lines of his conclusion that you read at the end? I would appreciate that. Sure. In any event, you should know that to understand a greatly enlightened person is nevertheless deluded is the quintessence of practice. Note that great enlightenment is ever intimate with the nevertheless deluded. Yes, thank you. You're welcome. Before that, It sounded like a bit of a cautionary tale to his listeners or to the readers that he was writing for. And I wonder who his audience was at that time. Were they all monastics? Yeah, I think so.

[46:12]

Did you read? Yeah. And so a lot of what he said is addressing the difference between his teaching and the teaching that they came from. The Daruma school. Half of his monks came from that school. So he's talking to them. Of course, it applies to everyone. But to me, those are the people he's addressing. And often it's about, he's saying, this is the teaching in contrast to that. Yes.

[47:12]

You're welcome. Yeah, so that's that subtlety of deluded amid delusion versus being enlightened about delusion.

[48:19]

You're mentioning being enlightened about delusion. being aware of how we project, but that's the dim sightedness. They're not seeing clearly. But that's the very way the world is created. So we have to live within that. So that's why he prefers to speak about deluded amidst delusion rather than to speak about Buddha's being enlightened about delusion. Because it's as if you could live in some other world where there isn't any delusion or dim-sightedness.

[49:21]

So we have to live in that world. And without creating a self of being enlightened either. Thank you, Russ. Thank you very much. Beings are numberless.

[49:46]

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