Thank you, Stephen and Shotai, for arranging this wonderful gathering and opportunity. When Stephen first talked about my talking here, we talked about Ehekoro, or Dogen's extensive record, as a topic. And I'm not going to talk about that, but I want to say a little bit. I want to talk about, I said about an essay in Shobokenza, but I'll just say, it's already been mentioned, so I don't need to say so much, but Dogen's extensive record is the other major, massive work of Dogen's, the Saisho Ogenzo. And Stephen was talking about, other people were talking about Dogen's sense of humor, even though the little Jodo or Dharamhal discourses in Eikoroku, most of what Eikoroku is, are very formal. In some ways, you get to see Dogen's personality and his sense of humor and his warmth his own teaching style more. These were very short, really very, very short talks given to the monks.

[01:13]

So anyway, it was a privilege to work with Shobhapetra more on that. And I'm glad it's out there now. And maybe I'll say a little more about it or give some excerpts from it in the roundtable. But what I want to talk about now is one of the essays in Shobhogenzo that I think is quite revealing about Dogen's approach to practice. And, but it's not gotten as much attention as I think it deserves. Of course, there are many, you know, there are in the largest version, 95 essays, sometimes considered part of Shobo Genzo. But anyway, I want to talk about Yobutsu-Igi, is the Japanese name. This is a Shobo Genzo essay that I translated with Kaz Tanahashi, and it's And we translated the title, Kyobutsu Ikki, as The Awesome Presence of Active Buddhas.

[02:19]

But I want to talk about the title a little bit and talk about some of the basic teachings in there. It's a long essay, and I'm not going to get to all of it. But I think it has a lot. It reveals a lot about Dogen's approach and attitude towards practice. So first of all, Kyobutsu could be translated as It's the gyo from shugyo, which means to practice. And it also has some relationship to the Lotus Sutra story that Griff mentioned about the Buddha, because the Bodhisattvas who came from under the ground and inspired Buddha's revelation of his long lifespan were all, had names, the leaders all had names that involved gyo, conduct or activity. Anyway, Dogen, in the beginning of the essay, talks about how These yogotsu, or active buddhas, practicing buddhas, and you can say actual buddhas, are not one of the other categories of buddhas. They're not one of the three bodies of buddha. They're not buddhas who acquire enlightenment.

[03:21]

They're not buddhas who have innate enlightenment. And he goes on to different kinds of buddhas. He says they're actual active practicing buddhas. And he ends up saying at some point that all buddhas are actually active practicing buddhas. So this is talking about buddhas not as some theoretical cosmic being, but as what is the actuality of Buddhas. And then the other part of the title, Iggy, we translated it as awesome presence, and cause sometimes translates things a little slavoyantly, which I appreciate a lot. And Iggy does mean awesome presence, but more commonly it would be translated as dignified manner. It has to do with the kind of dignity and presence that the inner dignity of these active Buddhists. And actually, there's a story about, I think, Tessitikai was mentioned earlier, one of Dogen's, who was referred to, one of Dogen's disciples who was told that he wasn't ready to receive transmission because he didn't have enough grandmotherly mind.

[04:30]

Later on, he told his teacher, Koen Ejo, who had also studied with Dogen, that finally he dignified manner is the buddhadharma. Now, for Westerners who maybe think of monastic regulations and so forth as restrictions and rules and, you know, maybe very anal or something, that to see this dignified presence as the actuality of these active buddhas is So I'm going to refer to the chapter in my new book, Same Questions, where I talk about this essay. One of the first things that Dogen says in this essay is, know that Buddhas in the Buddha way do not wait for awakening. So again, this is not about, awakening is not something that will happen

[05:36]

Eventually, later on, if you do enough practice, or if you have enough faith, buddhas don't wait for awakening. So for Dogen, this zazen, this shikantaza, is not some method to reach some altered state in the future, or some technique to get to somewhere else. So this points to, as I see it, the expressive side of what buddhas are and what buddhas do. But they don't wait for awakening. They express this awakening right now. Of course, there is, as Griff was saying, there is awakening and those who aren't awakened. But the point isn't that you get some awakening in the future. And then there's this sentence right after that that is maybe one of my favorite sentences in all of Dogen. And there are other famous sentences, like, just trying active Buddhas alone, or you could translate it as active Buddhas simply, fully experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha.

[06:52]

So this is a kind of meaty statement that I recommend to my students to memorize and chew on. To fully experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. Again, it's not about reaching some state of mind or state of being called Buddha. It's about this vital process. It points to a kind of organic, that chemical, vital process that is happening in the process of zazen and life based on zazen. We sit in the cauldron of the going back 2,500 years, and actually much more. But just surrendering to this organic path, allowing the dynamic act of Buddha to take form, is this vital process. So it points to this quality of Zazen that's not yet, he says elsewhere, he's not learning meditation. It's not some meditation technique. Although, practically speaking, in the context of doing this practice, studying and learning and taking on some of the old

[08:03]

Buddhist meditation technology may be helpful in settling, but the point isn't to master some spiritual exercise. It's to give yourself to this vital process and to the path. And what is it the path of? It's the path of going beyond Buddha. So when we're translating He Koroku, one of the phrases that Dogen uses very often, much more than Shikantaza, I think, is going beyond and going beyond Buddha. So this is a little bit like Linji Rinzai saying, if you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha. A little gentler way of saying it. Going beyond Buddha is a common phrase in Dogen's writings indicating the ongoing nature of awakening and of the active or practicing Buddha's conduct. For Dogen, Buddhahood is not some one-time attainment to be cherished thereafter, but an ongoing vital process requiring continued reawakening.

[09:08]

The historical Shakyamuni Buddha and all the other many Buddhas do not stop practicing, and they do not stop awakening. The only real Buddha is a Buddha going beyond Buddha, this ongoing sustainable renewal resource of Buddha. So this idea of going beyond Buddha, has some deep experience of Buddha, whatever that means. If someone has some good understanding, it's possible to have understandings of all of this. As Griff was saying, koans are not nonsense. There's a logic of awakening that they express. But what Dogen is saying here is to find this vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. of not sticking to, you know, if you have some experience or understanding of Buddha, it's not enough to make a picture of it, because one won't bow down to it. How do you continually, ongoingly reawaken?

[10:12]

So I would say that Buddha had his great awakening experience, and yet he continued for, you know, four decades afterwards, teaching and awakening. So this going beyond Buddha, I can almost see going beyond as a kind of definition of Buddha. Buddha is the one who is going beyond. This is this flavor that this particular essay really points to of this kind of active, lively, dynamic practice of actual Buddhas that's not caught in one particular understanding or experience of what Buddha is. That in each I would say alchemical process that Dogen Zazen is about. So what is this going beyond Buddha?

[11:14]

What does it mean to fully experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha? push together a vital process and path. But really, he uses all these words to kind of get at the texture of something. And soon after that, he says in this essay, because active Buddhas manifest awesome presence in every situation, they bring forth awesome presence with their body. It's not something theoretical. Thus, their transformative function, he continues, flows out in their speech reaching throughout time, space, buddhas, and activities. So there is a transformative function that he's talking about. In the Tsuki Roshi lineage that I was trained in, we sometimes talk about, Tsuki Roshi talked about non-gaining attitude. And some people think that means you're not supposed to get anything.

[12:15]

And that's bad if that happens, or that there's no, that Zazen practice is meaningless or doesn't have any real purpose. And clearly that's not what Dogen is talking about. There is a transformative function, but it's not something based on our ideas of what enlightenment is or ideas of what spiritual reality is. It's deeper than that. We do not try to get something specific from this practice because if we have to, If we have some outcome we want to get, that's just consumer Zen, just trying to acquire some goodies. Our practice is not meaningless or purposeless. So there is a transformation that happens through doing this practice. I've seen it in my life and in many people I've practiced with, that doing this Zazen practice that Dogen recommends, this practice of just sitting

[13:17]

sitting upright in this dignified manner. I may have hit something on the Snapchat. Anyway, there is something that happens by taking on the practice of just being willing to fully experience this vital process. Something happens. There is some transformation. as a basic Buddhist principle, awareness itself is transformative. That when we pay attention to something, it changes what it is. When we pay attention to our own life and our own habits and yogically, physically study the self, as Dogen says, experience the realities of our own life and our own awareness and our own patterns of greed, hate, and delusion, That awareness changes it. This isn't just Buddhism. This is modern physics, where they've discovered that if you study something, if you observe a phenomenon, it changes the phenomenon, even on the subatomic level.

[14:28]

So this awareness is transformative. And I think that's what Dogen is talking about. Again, there are a lot in this essay. I want to go to a few other parts. He has a teaching about letting go. So the excerpt from Gyopu Tsukigi, he says, this is to abandon your body for dharma, to abandon dharma for your body. This is to give up holding back your life and to hold on fully to your life. The awesome presence or dignified manner, not only let's go of dharma for the sake of dharma, but also let's go of dharma for the sake of mind. And then he says, do not forget that this letting go is immeasurable. So this idea of letting go, connecting up with giving up, holding back from your life, I think is very, well, in some ways it's stern in the way Dogen can be, and in some ways it's very comforting, I think.

[15:37]

But this letting go, In Fukanza Zengi, he says, not thinking or beyond thinking is the essential art of zazen. I would say that letting go is the essential art of zazen. Here he says letting go is immeasurable. And letting go is subtle. It's not getting rid of. So thoughts and feelings arise naturally as you're sitting upright or walking or in your life. It's not about getting rid of thoughts. But letting go And then in the next moment, they may come again. But this art of letting go is a kind of craft of Zazen and something that Dogen is encouraging here. I would say this is letting go of holding back from your life. We have so many reasons and encouragements to hold back, to get distracted by all the sophisticated entertainments that our culture provides, to retreat from living our life. Dogen says, give up holding back your life so as to hold on fully to your life. So the sense of holding back from this awesome presence, which is available.

[16:44]

There is this active, there is this presence and this vital process that we can get a taste of when we are willing to take on this practice. Stoken says about this, let me go a little further, who would regard this apparition of blossoms in the sky, which is, again, another reference. Maybe you should be in quotes, but there's a whole essay called Blossoms in the Sky. But who would regard this apparition of blossoms in the sky as taking up a mistake and settling in with a mistake? Stepping forward misses, stepping backward misses, taking one step misses, taking two steps misses, So there are mistakes upon mistakes, Dogen says. So this is not about fully experiencing the vital process. It's not about getting it right. What Dogen's practiced is not something that one needs to learn to do perfectly or impeccably.

[17:54]

That's not what he's talking about. It's simply a mistake upon mistake. We're actually alive. in this vital process. So to give yourself, to not hold back, to let go of all the things that are, that get in the way of our being willing to be the person we are, upright, engaged in a vital process on a path of going beyond Buddha, of not being caught by any idea we have of Buddha. So what is Buddha? There's innumerable answers to that in the Koman literature. but to not hold back and to let go from mistakes. As Griff was talking about also in terms of koans, anything you say is a mistake. But not saying anything is also a mistake. How do you take on this kind of active process?

[18:56]

That's what Doga is talking about here. He goes on to say, though totally unconscious by Buddhas, active Buddhas are free from obstruction as they penetrate the vital path of being splattered by mud and soaked in water. So maybe that means going into the swamp here, maybe otherwise. Anyway, being splattered by mud and soaked in water. It's a koan quote. Aha. Where's the front? I forget. I have it on my computer. But if you don't know where it's from, and you don't know the context, it's hard to make sense of it there. OK. It might be the, actually, this one might be from the Lewis. I think it's from, I think there's something, I think there's a phrase in the Blueprint record that it might, which may also go back to the Lewis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway. But yeah, that's part of. But it's another one of these things where. Yeah. You know. Yeah. So. And yet, and yet, even not knowing what the context of the original use of the quote was. It's rich, I would say.

[19:57]

And part of what it's pointing to is that this practice is not something that happens in some beautiful, ethereal, heavenly mountaintop realm. We have that idea that Buddhas are up on some mountain somewhere. Right in the middle of the mud and water, we practice dignified presence and engage the transformative function. So in terms of bringing Dogen down to Earth, where you are in the mistakes you're involved in this week, that's where it happens. It's being splattered by mud and soap and water. So maybe just a couple other of these sections I'll mention and then we could have some discussion. We've been talking somewhat about understanding and knowledge and what is knowing and what is faith. There's a phrase later in this essay where Dogyal says, thoroughly practicing, thoroughly clarifying, it is not forced.

[21:02]

It is just like recognizing the shadow of deluded thought and turning the light to shine within. That's also a reference to a basic meditation instruction, to turn the light to shine within. Then he says, the clarity of clarity beyond clarity prevails in the activity of Buddhas. Parity here has something to do with faith. It's a character, it could be translated as understanding. It also could be translated as brightness. So it's the brilliance of your brilliance beyond brilliance. The understanding that goes beyond anything we can understand. So right now in this room many things are happening. any situation is beyond our human intellectual capacities.

[22:05]

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to understand or use our intellectual capacities, but just to know that the clarity of clarity beyond clarity prevails in the activity of Buddhas. How do we know anything? And this also relates to faith. How do we trust? Rather than the English word faith, I would use the word trust. How do we trust the next breath? How do we trust the next step? How do we trust the next mistake? All of these are, to me, implied in what Dogen is saying, this understanding beyond understanding. And so this is not just some ancient Eastern inscrutable mystical philosophy. As I was saying, according to modern physics and string theory, there are dimensions of reality happening all around us of which we are not aware. How do we know, well, I can reach in my pocket and I can feel the difference between the coins and the pens without looking at them. I can see that with my fingers.

[23:06]

How do we know whatever it is we know? And so I think this vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha is about knowing things in ways beyond how we usually think we think about knowing things. And he says, to understand the principle of total surrendering, you should thoroughly investigate mind. And the steadfastness of thorough investigation of phenomena are the unadorned clarity of mind. And I think it may be a different essay where he talks about clarity and control Maybe this is a show against our heads on where he talks about, oh, we don't even control whether or not we control things.

[24:08]

So nothing ever happens that we're totally in control of. That doesn't mean we can't actively, actually engage it and express it. But nothing ever happens according to our expectations or ideas of some outcome. This is not the event that I could have imagined, because it's the actual event with each one of you in the room now. So again, this clarity of clarity beyond clarity, I think, is an interesting notion to chew on. The last piece of what he says in this, there are many other sections of this. But I'll talk about another section where he talks about, you know and understand that the three realms of desire, form, and formlessness, the standard Buddhist construct, the three realms, are merely elaborate divisions of mind.

[25:11]

Although your knowing and understanding are part of all phenomena, so it's OK if you have some knowledge or understanding, although your knowing and understanding are part of all phenomena, you actualize the home village of the self. And that's a phrase that I really like. It's not that you should get rid of your understanding, intellectual knowledge, but what is this home village of the self? Where is that? What is this home village of the self? It's not about our small ego self. Of course, it's not separate from that. All phenomena of the unadulterated parity of mind, he says, to let go beyond letting go and actualize the home goals of the self is simply another way of saying to take refuge in the Buddha. So maybe we could understand what he's saying in this essay about the awesome presence of active Buddhas as to turn towards this possibility of Buddha, whatever that is.

[26:18]

How do we find the home village of the self? That reminded me, and I don't know that the home village of the self is a phrase from another koan, but it might be. But there is a phrase from Blue Cliff Record, case 61. That's a story that in the main case, the teacher asks, are there any patchwork monks who can live together and die together? And the commentary on this is, he has his own mountain spirit realm. And I just, again, finding these phrases that resonate, that help us sink into this vital process, is part of the, to me, part of the joy of reading Dogen. It's not, you know, you don't read Dogen to try and figure out and understand it, but there are phrases like this. And this was from the Gluckler Frackert, but he has his own mountain spirit realm. Not when I say she has her own fairy spirit realm or lake spirit realm.

[27:24]

Here, you have your own ever great spirit realm, ever great spirit realm. But where is this home village of the self? So part of this process, this vital process and the path of going beyond Buddha, is this coming home, returning home to Buddha. Taking refuge is an interest. The idea of taking refuge is very interesting. Partly, it implies refuge as in sanctuary, But it's also like a few returning back to the starting point, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot. So for Dogen, Buddha is not some, again, not something on some exotic, a being on some exotic realm, but something that we don't wait for Buddhas to, we don't wait for awakening. Buddhas don't wait for awakening. Awakening is something that is available here. I feel that very strongly as one of Dogen's messages, so to speak.

[28:27]

And again, there's so much more in the original Gyaltsu Ikki essay. I'll just close with one more little section that he talks about. He talks about everyday activities. So how do we experience this awesome presence of active Buddhas? Again, if it's not on some mountaintop realm, So Dogen says, although the everyday activities of active Buddhas invariably allow Buddhas to practice, active Buddhas allow everyday activities to practice. So again, what does that mean? Dogen offers us these, they might seem mysterious, but on some level I feel rich and comforting. What does it mean to allow everyday activities to practice? We could see this in terms of the monastic rules and allowing the forms of the zendo or eating oryoki meals or the various forms that are part of the Zen tradition as forms that allow us to practice.

[29:38]

And if we take them on fully, even though we can say they're just rituals, well, they are rituals. There are ritual ways of expressing this act of Buddha. But I think when he talks about everyday activities, it's not just the activities in the Zen temple. How do we allow washing the dishes, or taking out the trash, or cooking, or gardening to be Buddha, to be act of practice? So anyway, I wanted to just, I think essay, Gyobutsu Ii, Gnostic Presence of Active Buddhas, and share that with you. Because I think it's one of Dogen's richer essays. Of course, there are many others. But I'll stop now and ask if there are any comments or responses or questions. Go ahead. I wouldn't translate the title the way you did, not right away. Mikyo puts a mikyo into an adjective, an act of Buddha.

[30:41]

And it's almost certainly in Chinese, this is a verb. It means to practice. And the Buddha is an adjective. So I would translate, this is to practice the etiquette or the igi, the decorum of a Buddha. That's the baseline meaning. Now, your meaning, Does Dogen use gyo-butsu, standing alone, like an active Buddha? Right? He does. So he's playing with it. Yes, he is. He's playing with something. OK, absolutely. I just wanted to point out that when I'm translating, I prefer to start with what it actually says and then maybe go to, like, with the problem, am I going to bring out the sort of point of this in the title, or am I going to stick with the literal translation?

[31:44]

Also, I found the quote. You want to know where it's from? It's Yuan Yu Kachin, and it's really long. It's a little This is the note I have in my translation, where I find it in Kenbrook's, Seeing the Buddha. The expression dragged through mud, drenched in water, is often used by Chan master, and by his disciple, Dawei. It's very common, actually. In many contexts, the expression is employed as a disapproving comment on someone's words, indicating that the speaker is muddled and caught up in deluded thinking. And so it's in Blue Cliff Record, actually. Yeah. Right. a little piece of a very long comment by Michael. Yeah. Yeah. And this is just another example of how much Dogan has on his fingertips. All of these. But see, this thing here, if I were to read it, it contextualizes his use of that.

[32:47]

Right. So he knows that. And it changes the meaning of what he says when he mentions mud and water. And where are you? To the Blue Cliff record. So you guys can all go there. That's a big record. Griff, they want to know what case. Can you track it down? Well, I'll just mention that in case 37, it's mentioned as a negative in a negative context, as we've said, but what Dogen says, act of goodness, or kyogusus, are free from obstruction as they penetrate the vital path of being splattered by mud and soap. Right. There's also some commentators say that it's a metaphor for skillful means. Yeah. The Buddhists really, or Bodhisattvas, get down in the mud with ordinary living beings. Sure. It's about a Bodhisattva path, for sure.

[33:49]

Yeah. Other questions, comments? Yes. Hi. Hi, I'm Gina. How are you doing? Hi. I was just curious, because this is the first time I've read about this, but I do study a lot of Buddhism and Eastern religions. but how, you say that it's active Buddhism, but if you're living in an everyday, is it still considered aesthetic in the mind, the way you would garden, the way you would handle it with your own kids? Because it seems that you're saying that it's active Buddhism, but you're living in this world, those everyday activities, does it make it harder for one to separate from attachments because you're more surrounded by it? I don't know if that makes sense. OK. I think I heard a question in there. Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, no. It's all right. Yeah, no. So as Griff pointed out, active Buddhas is just one way to translate it. But he's talking about Buddhas practicing or and,

[34:52]

You know, I'm obviously, in the spirit of Dogen, I'm playing with this and translating it, in a sense, for our context. So Dogen was teaching to monastics. Mostly, they were lay people also. But for most of American Zen, practicing in the world with parenting and with working in the world. And I feel like Dogen, in the spirit, again, of bringing Dogen down to our earth, that a lot of these sayings, yes, are relevant to how to practice with the attachments we have. So to recognize a vital process on an active path is to, in some sense, have some space around all of the attachments that we're involved with. But also, the Bodhisattva way is about not being attached to non-attachment.

[36:02]

So in some sense, this is more advanced practice. It's more difficult. It's, you know, for those of you, and there's some, I know some in the audience have gone to practice in monastic context and ongoing. You know, in some sense, not that it's not very challenging, but in some sense, there is the support of the community and of the monastic containers. But most of American Zen Buddhists are out in the world with relationships, and parenting, and jobs, and going to the grocery store, and so forth. And I think what Dogen is saying, even though he was speaking to monks, has something important to say to that kind of practice. In the same way that Dogen's first standards for the Zen community, Ei Shingi, which I translated, is about the practice of monks in the monastery in taking on their various positions, like the head chef and the various jobs in the monastery, but the spirit of how to take on everyday activities that is in a shingya.

[37:06]

I think it is relevant in ways that need some unpacking for us. Well, we have this problem in translating and in just talking about any of this stuff in English that any religious word has connotations from Abrahamic religions and Christianity. So I like the suggestion of Wilmae to use the word clergy or cleric rather than priest or monk for what Zen clerics. The same with the word faith.

[38:08]

There's a lot of Christian baggage around that, Western religious baggage around that. Faith usually means in a Western context, or it can come to mean, belief in something. And I think the spirit of faith in Dogon and Zen is more, maybe better to translate as trust, or confidence even, and it's not It's not faith in something outside. It's not faith in something inside either, exactly. It's this kind of big willingness to take the next breath, to take the next step, to be involved in the stake upon the stake. Yes. Just commenting on that, I think of Xin Xin Min. And it seems to me that this concept of faith, it's more about discarding all these things that we do have faith in, that we may not even realize we have faith in.

[39:13]

One after the other, one continuum, realizing delusion after delusion, letting them go. Very different from the Christian or the Judeo-Christian idea. Yeah, so there's a process of deconstruction. Deconstructing what, how we, what we think, who we think we are. I mean, basic teaching about Atman, non-self, doesn't mean to get rid of the ego, I would say. Dalai Lama says that too. But it means to see through the ways in which we're caught by this constructive small self that we need to get, you know, to survive adolescence. We all have an ego. How do we, how do we not be caught is more the point of that. So yeah, I may have missed part of your question. Steven? I agree with you that this is one of the maybe overlooked, relatively overlooked, vesicles.

[40:16]

And on the translation issue, it sounds like you've been working with this for a while, because you did the translation that was in an earlier book, and now you're coming back to it in your monograph here. How do you feel in that process? Did you see it differently 10 years later? Well, I see that. So I didn't go back and try and retranslate it. I used the translation that Kaz and I had done a while ago. But looking at it again, of course, No translation is perfect. I agree with what Griff was saying. There's various ways to translate this. And this title, particularly, we translated in a kind of provocative way, intentionally. But the process of translation is, as the Soto Zen Translation Project is doing at Stanford with voluminous footnotes, you really need to

[41:23]

He had all the citations and everything. When I translated Dogan's extensive record, we tried to have lots of footnotes, because there are lots of references. So in terms of how this particular fascicle, and looking at it again, I tried to focus on the parts that felt most juicy for me. But there's a whole other section where There's a long saying with, I'll go to the translation, with Xuefeng and Zhuangcha and then Yuanwu's later comment about the Buddhas in the past, present, and future abiding in flames, in turn, the great Dharma wheel. There's a whole section of Yogacitta Gita that talks about this image of Buddhas not just for this transformative function in this final process, but also the good of sitting in flames.

[42:25]

And that's, again, another provocative image that we can understand in lots of ways, is being willing to be in the flames of one's own attachments. There's a line in there, though, that I'll mention that I think is helpful. George Rapham, a great master, is the one who turned over the rice and the sand in the story before. said this statement, Buddhas in the past, present, and future abide in the flames and turn the great dharma wheel. His student Xuanzang said, as flames expound dharma to all Buddhas in the past, present, and future, all Buddhas remain sitting and listening. So this is a point that Dogen also makes in the Heikou Roku, that it's not that Buddhas are the ones giving the teaching, and then there are the diluted listeners, but that Buddhas also come and listen to the dharma. So anyway, he turns things around again and again in lots of different ways. So I'm not sure I explained it to you.

[43:27]

Yeah, no, good. Thank you. But yeah, in terms of what to present in this book, I tried to look at some of the parts of it that seem most provocative. And that seemed to fit into the theme of questioning and how Zen is about questioning. Other comments or questions, speaking of which, or responses? Yes. I was also wondering, does this practice also include, like, traditional Buddhist practices, like mantras and mudras, like the Han traditions as well? I'm not sure about mixing religions. No, no, no. Well, this is a controversial issue. So has anybody here, an official from Satoshu? OK, well, you know, shikantaza, so that could be a whole discussion. What is shikantaza? What is shirjin datsura, which is a phrase that Dogen used, that Stephen mentioned that Dogen uses much more than shikantaza. But just sitting is just sitting.

[44:29]

There's nothing else that you need to do. But just in terms of my own teaching and my students, I'll say that, practically speaking, many people need to have some particular object of meditation to help settle. Just sitting is basically objectless meditation, just to be present with whatever comes up. But I do sometimes recommend mantra and sitting using mantra while you're sitting. And I do it myself. And for any Zen place that checks the heart sutra, it ends with a mantra instruction. And the mantra, kate kate, parakate, parasamakate, bodhisattva. So I think it's OK if you're doing zazen, even in the Soto context, to use that mantra, if it helps you to settle. To go beyond, beyond. OK. So let's make sure I understood what you're saying. Yes. OK. So I think whatever helps. Practically speaking, including mantra.

[45:34]

Of course, we do mudra. We do this mudra. We do, in meditation, this mudra. And walking meditation, this mudra. So there's lots of mudras. And in terms of Soto Zen ritual, and Will has written about this, there is a large part of it that comes from Shingon esoteric Japanese ritual, or maybe Tendai. esoteric rituals. But more fundamentally, for Buddhism in America, I don't think we have to get hung up on this way or that way. I think we can be grounded in Dogen's teaching, for example, and learn from lots of other traditions that are around. This is a really exciting time for the history of Buddhism. Buddhism is a global religion for the first time. maybe in the last 10 or 15 years.

[46:34]

It used to be an Asian religion, but here it is in Florida. And also, all the different forms of Buddhism, Asian representatives of those teaching forms, branches, and all the different cultures are around, and there are American disciples. So why not learn from each other? So you're saying that it is quite flexible. Well, some teachers are more flexible than others. And maybe sometimes being flexible is not helpful. One more, please. Yes. Thank you. I was wondering if you could briefly talk about any parallels that exist between shirankaza and vipassana, or vipassana, whatever the hell word is for now. People like to close their eyes.

[47:41]

That's one good reason they're not as necessarily as focused on posture. That is an exhaustion. But, you know, there's the difference that, you know, as scholars we study the differences and those are important in a certain way. But to talk technically about the different meditation approaches, I could go into that, but that's a whole other topic. Thank you. OK, there'll be more chance for interaction at 4 o'clock. So let's take our short break, and we'll come back with the last speaker. Thank you, Kevin.

[48:22]

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