Blanche Hartman talks about it from, she's one of the abbesses of the San Francisco Zen Center and she's received transmission from Mel and she began practice at Berkley Zen Center. At any rate, she says, she tells a story about eating with her, eating orioke with Suzuki Roshi. They used to have, just be sitting on the floor and then he would be up on a kind of a platform and he did what, the kind of thing you've heard Mel do a million times, said, people please be quiet with their spoons or something like that. And she had been taking tea lessons, so she was quite proud of her orioke. And so she's eating and she says, the thought arose, I wonder if he notices how nicely I'm doing it. And the bowl rolled out of her hand, like it leapt out of her hand, you know. And I was, the reason I tell you that, when I was bowing, when I bow before a lecture,

[01:03]

my intention is to set aside my ego and I was asking Suzuki Roshi and Prajnaparamita for help and thinking also something about asking everyone for help that we bring forth the Dharma together. But there was this little piece that was kind of like saying something like, this wasn't all real conscious like I was thinking exactly, but there was this little piece that was like saying something like, I hope it's good. And then I tripped on my robe. And then I really said thank you. So, oh well. This is Dolly's, by the way, this book cover. Was it? Well, this is the one that was under the television set, I stole it.

[02:11]

I thought she might like to come to the lecture. I want her here. I wanted her to come to the lecture, so here she is. So the theme of this Aspects of Practice, practice period is Zen or Zazen practice in daily life. And I want to talk today about the Genjo Koan, the Koan of daily life. There's a particular paragraph I want to talk about. Now, if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it, this bird or this fish will not find its way or its place. When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point.

[03:13]

When you find your way at this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. For the place, the way is neither large nor small, neither yours nor others. The place, the way, has not carried over from the past and it is not merely arising now. Accordingly, in the practice enlightenment of the Buddha way, meeting one thing is mastering it. Doing one practice is practicing completely. So what does this 13th century Japanese essay have to do with daily life and why do we call it the Koan of daily life? This is the Koan of our practice. You know, we don't so often use systematic Koans, we don't do Mu or whatever.

[04:18]

This is the Koan of our practice, this is the Koan of daily life. But how does that manifest? What does this have to do with me? And who is this guy anyway? I imagine most of you have heard of Dogen, he was the Japanese founder of our school. He was born in 1200 and in 1223 he went to China to learn more about the Dharma, to deepen his practice. He had some sense that he wasn't going deep enough into Zazen, into meditation in Japan and there weren't people expert enough. So he went to China and there he met his true teacher, Ru Jing. And he came back in 1227 and eventually, but not too much later,

[05:21]

he started actively teaching and founded a temple first in Kyoto and then in the mountains. The temple in the mountains is called Eiheiji and that's where Suzuki Roshi studied centuries later. He wrote the Genjo Koan in 1233, so probably about six years after he came back from China, probably to a lay follower. So that's another reason why it's particularly relevant for us because our practice is a lay practice. Our practice is integrating Zazen with daily life, probably more so than in Japan where there tend to be the priests and the monks do Zazen and lay people support the temple, but don't so much do Zazen.

[06:21]

But here, lay people do Zazen and practice intensely. And work in the world and practice intensely. So he wrote this for lay people. He wrote this for everybody, I should say. And when he compiled the collection of his essays and so on, something called the Shobo Genzo, that's what the collection is called, the treasury of the true Dharma-I. When he compiled it, the first chapter was Genjo Koan. So you can see how important it must have been to him. I think of it as really the heart of our practice, the heart of our teaching. He wrote Zazen instruction which is called the Fukan Zazengi, the universal recommendation of Zazen.

[07:23]

And that's also heartfelt, but it's more about the how of sitting. And this is about the how of living your life. So it's called Genjo Koan. Genjo is translated as actualizing the fundamental point. Gen is to appear or to manifest, to actualize. And jo means to become or to complete or accomplish. So manifesting, manifesting in the present. Manifesting now, being now. When I taught this in Vallejo, we played around for a few weeks.

[08:29]

We were talking about thinking of more modern names for this. And a woman named Koan came up with this great name. I think this is a Flip Wilson line anyway. She said it's the church of what's happening now. And Koan is usually translated as kind of like public case. Ko is public. And on, I think it's like desk or something. But at any rate, a public case in the sense of a precedent. Just like in law we have precedents and they guide us. They point the way. But there's an old commentary by a man named Senne who was a direct disciple of Dogen's, a student of his, who wrote a lot of commentaries and recorded what Dogen had written. And he interpreted it a little differently.

[09:29]

Ko could be understood as public, but in the sense of equal or horizontal. You know, something that's in the public interest is supposed to be in the interest of all of us. Right? I'm biting my tongue about making political remarks. Anyway, it's public in the sense of horizontal. That it is in all of our interests. You know, somebody who is a public person is meant to take everybody's interest into account. Maybe we should just laugh. There's a person, Paul Wellstone did that. There are others, Barbara Lee. At any rate, so Ko is equal or horizontal or public. And Ahn refers to the fact that each of us,

[10:36]

as a separate private person, is unique. We each have a different role to play. You know, Mel talks sometimes about hierarchy, not in the sense of good or bad, but that there are different parts, for example, of a plant. Some of us need to be the roots and some of us are the stalk and some of us are the leaves and some of us are the flowers or the fruit or the seeds or whatever. So we have, can we fulfill our individual role, the vertical part of our experience? Can we do that? So that's Ahn. And so KoAhn is the intersection. KoAhn is now. Where the horizontal and the vertical meet. Well, I can't do mish. Well, I can say mish. At any rate, where they meet, that's KoAhn. So actualizing the present,

[11:39]

integrating the horizontal and the vertical. Two different ways, really, of saying right now. Somebody once asked Mel, what's beyond form and emptiness? And he said, now. That's where we live our lives. We forget. But it's happening regardless. Now, if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it, this bird or this fish will not find its way or its place. When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. When you find your way at this moment,

[12:42]

practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. For the place, the way, is neither large nor small, neither yours nor others. The place, the way, has not carried over from the past, and it is not merely arising now. Accordingly, in the practice enlightenment of the Buddha way, meeting one thing is mastering it. Doing one practice is practicing completely. Practice enlightenment, by the way, is hyphenated. In other words, it's one word for dogen. So I want to back up then. So now if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it, this bird or this fish or this person will not find its way or its place. We can't know our experience with our heads.

[13:46]

We can't figure it all out and then do it. We have to practice enlightenment. We have to do our lives. We have to do our work. We have to relate to one another. We can't wait until we understand it. Somebody was telling me that she had had an insight recently that she realized that she was waiting for her life to be just right, and then she was going to sit more zazen. And then she finally realized, no, she was just going to have to sit more zazen and stop waiting for her life to get just right because that probably never was going to happen. So she should just do what she wanted to do right now. So it's not a matter of figuring it all out. A fish has to swim in the ocean, right? The fish cannot figure out an ocean or explore,

[14:50]

know the whole ocean before starting to swim. It doesn't work. We cannot know the universe or even we can't know the sangha. We can't know our boss. We cannot know our co-workers completely before we start working with one another. As a matter of fact, isn't that how we get to know one another? That's how we get to know sangha, by working with sangha, by bumping up against sangha, by bumping, we get to know our co-workers by bumping up against them and having a little difficulty and then working it through. Until we have the difficulty, we don't really know ourselves or each other, right? I'm sorry. It's not always pleasant, but I think it's really important.

[15:51]

My own experience is that the people I really trust are the people with whom I have had a fight and worked it out and then I find out that we can trust each other, I guess, to put our truth out there. And that is part of daily life. It's part of work life and family life, putting one's truth out there, and you don't get to know what the response is going to be before you put it out there. You have to just do it. And then you see what happens, just like a bird or a fish or a person. I'm sure you've heard the story about the grain of salt,

[16:54]

wanted to know how salty the ocean was so it jumped in. So we have to jump into our lives, and that's what he's encouraging us to do. Jump. So when you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. Actualizing the fundamental point is a classic translation of Genjo Koan. So he's saying, that's Genjo Koan, finding your place where you are, and also finding your place where you are. Finding your way at this moment. So it's not about going somewhere else, it's about allowing yourself to inhabit your experience right now, at the water cooler, when everybody is gossiping about somebody else.

[17:56]

Then the question arises, how do I practice with this? What's Genjo Koan right now? What does this feel like to me when my co-workers are trashing somebody else? Then what? What does it feel like to me when my boss asks me to give the word to four other people that they're getting laid off a week before Christmas? How do you practice with that? What if a co-worker gets promoted to a job that you think that you are better qualified for? Or what if you get promoted to a job and you think somebody else might be better qualified? Or what if you just simply get promoted and it's a new situation? Genjo Koan is, how do I manifest the Dharma right now? How do I practice with this? What is an appropriate response in this situation?

[19:00]

What's the response when you get a call from the vice-principal at the school and your kid's been cutting school? What's the response when your kid brings home straight A's? You know, we tend to think only about really awful things. What happens when you find out your kid's been smoking marijuana and you used to smoke marijuana all the time and do acid? Now your kid is doing these things and then how's that? How do you practice? How do you practice? You know, it's not just in the zendo. Manifesting the Dharma now, right now. You know, it's a definition of enlightenment. One of them is an appropriate response. So it's not like there's only one response. If your kid's cutting school, maybe you tell your kid about how you used to cut school.

[20:06]

I don't know. I used to cut lunch. I never took that very seriously and I think that's appropriate to not worry about that too much. When I was in high school, by the way, there was something called a closed campus. Maybe most of you don't know about such things. But you weren't supposed to leave campus during the lunch hour. So that's how it's possible to cut lunch. Nowadays I don't think that's much of an issue. So practicing with the mind, with the intention to be always asking, what's next? What's an appropriate response here? To be, the intention to be willing to put one's own truth out there. Which means the intention to take this finger that's so often pointed that way

[21:07]

and turn it around, this way, looking at this one. What's going on with this one? Isn't that where we have to go first to learn what the appropriate response is? If we don't know what's going on with ourselves, the response is much more likely to be blaming or reactive. So practicing right where I am. And if I'm angry, then anger. If I'm sad, then sadness. And I love that phrase, when you find your place. So it's not always so obvious. And it is a search. It's that mind that asks, what is this? What's going on here? The church of what's happening now.

[22:11]

Just coming back to what's going on here. And that's where the Zazen practice is useful. Developing the habit in Zazen of paying attention to your own experience. Paying attention to your body. A good Zen student, according to Mel, always knows where her breath is. Maybe you don't always know where your breath is. And it's a very useful habit to know where your breath is. And when you don't know, when there's something difficult, to turn inward and then check where your breath is before you say a word. And if it's way up in your chest, take a couple breaths. Then respond. And that kind of a habit comes from sitting Zazen.

[23:14]

Comes from having a habit of following your breath. It comes from also having a habit of paying attention to your body. So that you can check in. When there's difficulty in daily life, you can check in with your body and ask, what's going on here? Joko Beck has a practice of body scanning. That's a useful thing. Check your gut. See where you're holding your tension and so on. So the place, the way is neither large nor small. Neither yours nor others. It hasn't carried over from the past and it's not merely arising now. It's just now. It's just now. It's just right here.

[24:15]

It's just now. And I understand that it's not large or small. Neither yours nor others. It's not something to hold on to. And it's not about me and mine and it's not about making an other of you. It's just about living right in the middle of whatever it is that's going on. Whatever difficulties, whatever joys are going on. So it's not mine or somebody else's. It's that mind of not grasping. A friend was reminding me, I don't know, sometime when I talked here before, some question came up maybe sort of like, you know, in the what is it realm and I said, nothing. And she objected to that. So I said, okay, no thing.

[25:19]

We don't really know what's out there, right? We see with our own perspective and our own ideas. An eye sees a form, but then the brain decides how to organize it and the brain names it. And we have to do that in order to live in the world. We have to separate from our experience and we have to name it. But really we're not separate from our experience. So the mind of not believing too much in that separation, the mind of being embedded in the experience, that's the mind of Genjo Koan, the mind of not grasping after experience. You know, we say you can't hold on to a river. You can't grasp the water. But you can put your hand in it. So that mind of not giving too much credence to otherness,

[26:37]

even though we need to make otherness in order to maneuver in the world and in order to relate to each other, but not giving it too much substance. So it's neither yours nor others. It's yours and others. And as soon as you believe too much, put too much credence in the separation, then you're off to the races and that's what we do all the time. Does this make sense? Do you understand what I'm saying? Is it too obscure? Accordingly, in the practice enlightenment of the Buddha way, and again, practice enlightenment is one word, hyphenated word. Enlightenment is not la-la land out there.

[27:39]

No, it's right here with this stuff at the water cooler and what do you do when your friends or your co-workers are trashing somebody. In the practice enlightenment of the Buddha way, meaning one thing is mastering it. Doing one practice is practicing completely. So just really, really embedding yourself in what's going on right now, in genjo koan. So when you are doing zazen, you're completely your breath. Then you put your attention on your posture and you're completely your back. And then you come back to your breath. And then thoughts distract you and for some period of time you're your brain, your thoughts. And then you're back to your breath.

[28:41]

But it's not like your attention is divided so that half my attention is on my breath and half my attention is on my back. No. It's all I am breath. Actually, ideally, sometimes, I hope, often. There is breath. It isn't my breath. There's not an I that is the breath. There's just breathing. But it's not divided. Or there is just body. There is posture. There is pain in the knee. There is lust arising. There is anger. Whatever is going on, that's completely what's going on. Doing one thing, doing one practice,

[29:41]

is practicing completely. It's also, of course, true that if you know all there is, I'm sure you've heard this, if you know all there is to know about a daisy, then you know all there is to know about the universe. Or Thich Nhat Hanh's discussion of emptiness, a cup is empty of water, but it's full of the clay and the person who made it and the trees that went into the kiln and the people that fed the potter and the food that they grew and blah, [...] on and on and pretty soon this cup is full of the whole universe. If I really get to know it, if I really get to know one other person, then I know everybody. If I really get to know, the place to start, of course, is this one, if I really know myself, then I know you. We have these kind of grandiose ideas, actually,

[30:47]

that we're really special and that my story is really something. My dad had multiple sclerosis and my mother was an alcoholic and my mother had cancer and my mother was a very bitter person. There are other things to say about them which were actually quite wonderful, but it was very difficult. For a long time, I thought that, I didn't even literally think this, but I felt that if you didn't have some chronic illness in your family for at least 20 years, don't even talk to me. I wouldn't tell you all those different things at one time because I was sure that that was a conversation stopper. It was so awful that we couldn't go on, so I didn't want to upset people too much. And somewhere, I began to understand

[31:53]

that that was my family's stuff and other families had other things. And that was a great... It was a great relief and it was also something I had to loosen my grip a little bit because it made me, yucky as it was, but it made me special. And I had better suffering. And I've told this story a bunch of times, but I've never told this part here, I don't think, and it was, I was talking to Ross out in front of Berkley's End Center, and I'm sure you don't remember it. It was years ago, I mean, like, 12 years ago or something, and I didn't go through the whole thing. I said something about this, and he said, yeah, every family has its mishigas. And I said, yeah, and I just, and I walked away.

[32:54]

That was the end of the conversation, and I got halfway down the block, and I thought, wow, I wasn't insulted by that. I didn't feel like saying, well, my... That there was something that had changed, that something that I had let go of about the specialness of my suffering, my family's suffering. And now I have that experience over and over, as I am willing to look at myself and really get to know myself, then I find that I know other people. You know, it's not really a secret that we all think that we're frauds. We're all insecure. We all want people to like us. We're all scared. It's true, and you've heard it many times, but you have to, and I know you're doing this work, but we have to get to know this one,

[33:55]

and practice completely with this one, and then you can let go of this one, and then find out that you're just another person. So, whoop-dee-doo. I don't mean to say that's easy. It's not easy. But practicing completely, doing one practice, being embedded in now, being embedded in your own experience, and then from that place responding, that's Genjo Koan. Now, if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it, this bird or this fish will not find its way or its place. When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point.

[34:56]

When you find your way at this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. For the place the way is neither large nor small, neither yours nor others. The place the way has not carried over from the past, and it is not merely arising now. Accordingly, in the practice enlightenment of the Buddha way, meeting one thing is mastering it. Doing one practice is practicing completely. So, do you have any questions or thoughts that come up in relation to this? Yeah. Thanks for that wonderful talk. There are several questions, but I'll just ask one of them, a little one. As Dogen said, it is not what is arising now, right?

[35:57]

Hold on. I think it's not merely arising now. It's not merely arising now. What misunderstanding is he clearing up with that? There is some way in which things both have a history and don't have a history. It's just now, and he really emphasizes that often. It's just arising now. But he says it hasn't carried over from the past, and it's not merely arising now. So, it's neither one of those things, and it's both of those things. In a way, you could say it's not arising now. It's not coming from something. It just is now. I think that's what he's emphasizing. Yeah.

[37:00]

You mentioned right response earlier in the talk, and I was wondering, how do we know right response? I guess that doesn't help on the tape, so we'll see it later. I just pointed to my gut, and I think a lot comes from zazen, right? Because as you get to know your body, you know. I mean, you don't always know. You know when you're not, but I think you have to, as you practice, you learn to pay attention to your gut, and you learn to trust that. Alan, and then Meryl, and then Paul. Well, I don't think this is in contradiction with what you're saying, but a kind of expansion around the question of knowing yourself, you know everyone, or seeing one thing, looking into it deeply,

[38:00]

you see the whole universe. There is the universal and the particular. And the power of, anyway, the power of my ego is such that it demands I pay really close attention to someone else's story. While there are very strong identities, it's also important to know that there are particularities in their story which aren't quite the same. Sure. And it's important to understand that knowing oneself demands very close attention to the particularities of whatever you meet. Okay. Thanks a lot for your talk, Meryl. I'm still not convinced that my suffering

[39:01]

isn't extra special. What's always interested me in the Enjo Koan has been the phrase, practice occurs. Because if practice occurs, there must be a time when practice doesn't occur. So what's interested me always has been the question of moving from one to the other, which seems to have a volitional aspect. There's some sort of willingness involved to help practice occur. So that willingness is what I would like to raise up. And can you have any suggestions on that? Developing willingness or growing it or encouraging it? I've looked at the notion of virya a little bit. There seems to be some aspect of discipline

[40:03]

and of strength and moral strength. But I don't know, when you go that direction, you're already starting to lose it. Well, part of it is, it's not will in the sense of ego-based, but will in the sense of intentionality. And what's always been an important thing for me is the story, the parable in the Lotus Sutra, you know, about the prodigal son, the young man that runs away from his very rich family and becomes a drunk and a bum and forgets, he doesn't even remember where he came from or anything. And he's wandering around as a beggar and kind of finding menial work where he can and happens to wander back and his dad sees him. His dad is outside receiving tribute.

[41:04]

He's like a small-sized king or something in India, say. And he sees his son and he recognizes his son. He'd been searching for him. And he sends after his son and when the retainers put their hands on him, he starts screaming and he's afraid he's being arrested and he's saying, I didn't do anything, and he faints. And his father lets him go. And he says to them, you know, let him go and follow him and see where he goes and then come back and tell me. And so he went and apparently he found some lodging in the village. And so then his father sends and offers him a job shoveling shit in the stables. And they say, you know, we'll give you good food and we'll give you clothing and would you like to do this work? And so he says yes. And then his father keeps an eye on him and has people working with him. And then as he does the work and he settles in and he starts to do a good job,

[42:05]

then he gets promoted and his father comes sometimes and works with him but he never says who he is. And then he keeps working and he eventually works his way up to being in the house and then to being the superintendent of the whole place. And then one day his father takes him into the storehouse and says, actually, this is all yours and you're my son. And it's about our Buddha nature. It's about our believing that we really are practiced, that we can practice, that we do have that intentionality available to us. And it's about you just one step at a time, just doing a little and then seeing that you survive and then taking the next step and trusting your own process.

[43:06]

I would say you answered that question completely. Yes. I just want to say that being here now is perfect for me. I just felt like everything you were saying was just to the point. My mantra for the first year or so has been come to the point. And being on the point, I sometimes think about sitting on these round black cushions and just being like a point or a period at the end of a sentence. And that's what I felt like today. I think this better be the last one. It's probably after 11. Thank you for your talk, Mary. My question is about Dogen, the person.

[44:10]

And this is something I don't know if you know this or I don't know if anybody knows this, but what I'm curious about is I wonder what happened in China. In China, it's my understanding that the monks worked and that that was one of the practices that Dogen took back to Japan. But what do we know about what happened to him internally when he was in China? I don't know if he actually worked or he just observed. I don't know what his work was. It seems like surely he must have spent some time working in the kitchen. Because if you read the Tenzo Kyokun, the instructions to the Tenzo, and then you work in a kitchen, you find out that that is completely practical instruction. Some of it sounds weird until you do it and then you find out. If you're stocking a kitchen, there are things that go in high places and things that go in low places and so on.

[45:12]

And when you're dividing up the rice, you do need to pay attention to myriad circumstances. You can't just say, oh, okay, there are four people and so therefore you do this much rice. It depends on lots of other things. Anyway, so I think so, but I don't know. However... But we don't know anything, what I'm saying, sort of like more sort of contextually. Yes. Maybe he had to struggle with. Well, I have a bunch of things. You know the book Enlightenment Unfolds? I think of it as sort of like the second volume of Moon in a Dew Drop. The beginning of that is a translation of Dogen's diary, his journal, when he was in China. And there are lots of conversations with Ruijing, with his teacher, and it really gives a flavor. It's very sweet, I think. It just gives a flavor of it. And the kinds of questions he was asking. And you can imagine the two of them in Ruijing's room

[46:13]

after evening zazen or during a break or something like that, just having a cup of tea and this young man asking all of his questions. And another thing is he says somewhere that his robe was often wet with tears. I don't know exactly what that's about. But a friend of mine, her name is Kathleen,

[46:35]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ