Good evening. Yeah, you can all hear me. Good. So this is my first lecture as a priest after having been ordained. So I'm still a little bit down. There's a lot of me. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it. Oh, well. So bear with me while I fidget. So as many, if not most, of you know, during this practice period, this nine-week sort of intensive, the text that we're studying is the Genjo Koan. The Genjo Koan... The Genjo Koan... Is that better? No, that's worse. Better? Yes? Anyhow, the Genjo Koan... The Genjo Koan is an essay, a religious essay, by the founder of the Soto school in Japan, Ehe Dogen Zenji, who lived from 1200 to 1253.

[01:18]

The translation of the text that we're using translates Genjo Koan as something like actualizing the fundamental point. The The commentary that I've been reading, which was written by Bokusan Nishihari Zenji, a 19th century Zen master, translates it as right to the point. Since I am completely innocent of languages, I get to translate it any way I want without having to worry too much about accuracy. So I thought some other translations might be doing and being done by it, enacting or embodying enlightenment, or living the mind of faith. So Dogen Zenji was a monk, a Zen teacher, one of probably the most brilliant religious thinkers that Japan has produced, a poet, a very gifted writer.

[02:31]

And the product of a tremendously sophisticated culture As a young man, as a young monk, he went to China to study Chan Zen there and came back. And of course, you know, at this time China had, you know, an ancient culture, very sophisticated. And so he's the product both of the Japanese culture and of this Chinese culture, which is sort of the matrix of Japanese Buddhism in many ways. And he also spoke a language of which I know not a word." So he's just about as different from me as can be. different part of the world, different culture, different language, different thoughts. Everything that went into this man, almost, was different from all the things that went into this late 20th, early 21st century individual who's sitting up here tonight.

[03:39]

So how can I begin to speak about what he wrote? with any knowledge or intelligence or accuracy. What on earth could we possibly have in common? Dogen Zenji says, eyes horizontal, nose vertical. So we have that in common at any rate. When I think of talking about the Genjo Koan, the way I think about it is like this, sort of like a story. So imagine you're traveling in a distant land and you're walking through the marketplace or something and it's crowded and there's all sorts of wonderful and exotic sights and people and things and smells and you're completely far away from home. And over in the corner of the marketplace, you hear somebody playing a tune on a flute. And it's a beautiful and haunting melody, something like you've never heard before.

[04:42]

And maybe you're even a musician yourself. And you're so taken with this melody that it goes over and over in your mind until many days or many weeks or months even later, you come home and maybe you pick up your own flute or you sit at your piano, and you try to remember as much of the melody and to create it as nearly as you can. You know, it may be that you'll produce something quite beautiful, and it may be that you'll produce something with a phrase or two that is reminiscent of the music you heard far away. Is it the same? It's a recreation, a loving recreation, but still a recreation. So that's sort of the caveat that I would like to offer you when I talk about Dogen Zenji's work. So bearing this in mind, I would like to consider the portion, the following portion of the Genjo Koan this evening.

[05:50]

It begins, enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water. Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky." If nothing else, it's very pretty, isn't it? So, a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to my father. And I think possibly inspired by my ordination, my father's decided to pick up a book or two on Zen, which he's never done in all of the 20 plus years that I've been here.

[07:08]

So we were talking and he wanted to know, he said, well, when you're sitting there, what do you think about when you meditate? What do you meditate about? And oh, by the way, have you had Satori yet? I kind of dodged that question and said, well, let's talk about meditation. And I talked about breath and posture and stuff like that. And then when we had to get back to Satori or enlightenment, I told him the story that I heard about Suzuki Roshi. And I don't think I've ever seen this written down. It's sort of the oral tradition, so who knows if it's true. whether it is or not it serves my purposes this evening. Supposedly, Suzuki Roshi said once at Tassajara, everybody wants enlightenment. You all want enlightenment. Well, some of you are going to get it and find out you don't like it. So I told my father that story.

[08:10]

And it reminds me of the, some of you were here last week for Jordan's lecture. And it reminds me a little bit of the koan that he spoke about last week. And I'll just briefly tell you what that was. So there's these two monks. They're walking along. And they stop in the middle of the path or whatever. And one of the monks, who I guess is feeling very grand or enlightened or something, takes his staff and pounds it down on the ground and says, look, just here is the summit of the mystic peak. And the other monk stands there for a while and finally looks at him and nods and says, yes, what a pity. So it's kind of like that, you know. What a pity, but this is it, the only game in town. You know, we seem to, and when I say we, of course, I'm talking about myself. We seem to want or think we want enlightenment because we maybe have some idea that it's going to be grand or exciting or solve our problems or let us solve everybody else's problems or whatever.

[09:25]

And like David Copperfield, we want to be the hero of our own story. But what if? We are only a puddle an inch wide or a dew drop on the grass that reflects the bright light of the moon. Is that enough? Is that okay? So what is enlightenment, by the way? Or any other name we choose to give it, you know, the absolute or practice realization as Dogen Zenji says. Well, let's hear what the experts say. This is a quotation from one of the early Buddhist sutras. The Buddha here is speaking. Excuse me. There is monks, an unborn, a not become, a not made, a not compounded. If monks there were not this unborn, not become, not made, not compounded, there would not here be an escape from the born, the become, the made, the compounded.

[10:34]

But because there is an unborn... a not become, a not made, a not compounded. Therefore, there is an escape from the born, the become, the made, the compounded. So those are the words of the Buddha as they were recorded in the early Pali canon, the earliest Buddhist scriptures that we have. And what I will note here, of course, is that In this particular passage, the Buddha is speaking of the absolute in terms of the relative. Do you get that? Yeah? Okay. Or something like that. So he's speaking about it as else, as other, as that which allows our escape from the world of suffering. And that is one way of speaking about it. And, of course, it's a very good way of speaking about it because that's what we all want. It's the, you know, in the Lotus Sutra, there's a story about the children who are in the burning house and their father lures them out with promises of toys and things.

[11:39]

And of course, what he actually has waiting for them is much, much more wonderful. So when the Buddha speaks about the escape from the made, the becoming, the complicated, compounded actually, he's speaking from the relative point of view, appealing to our relative point, our relative minds, and our desire to escape suffering. Not a bad idea. Yeah? You want me to read it again? Sure. No, fine. It's a little complicated, so I'll try it again. Okie doke. There is, monks, an unborn, a not become, a not made, a not compounded. If, monks, there were not this unborn, not become, not made, not compounded, there would not here be an escape from the born, the made, the become, the compounded. But because there is an unborn, a not become, a not made, a not compounded, therefore there is an escape from the born, the made, the become, the compounded.

[12:50]

The early scriptures, by the way, tend to be very repetitive because they were originally transmitted orally. So the prose style is not exactly zippy. So here we have Suzuki Roshi. who will also speak on this matter. But actually, listen, more from the point of view of the Absolute. I discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color, something which exists before all forms and colors appear. This is a very important point. And further down, if you are always prepared for accepting everything we see as something appearing from nothing, knowing that there is some reason why a phenomenal existence of such and such form and color appears, then at that moment you will have perfect composure.

[13:53]

And further on at the end of this section. By enlightenment, I mean believing in nothing, believing in something which has no form and no color, which is ready to take form and color. This isn't that enlightenment is the immutable truth. It is on this original truth that our activity, our thinking, and our practice should be based. So there are a couple of versions of enlightenment or the absolute or the uncompounded and unborn. I don't know how to make a graceful transition, so I'll just transit. As I said, a couple of months ago, not quite a couple of months ago, I was ordained as a priest. And my friends, particularly those friends who are not familiar with Zen practice or Buddhist practice, ask me, well, what are you doing?

[14:57]

What does this mean? Why, what, how, where? You know, it's not something that's immediately obvious to people who don't understand our tradition and not necessarily even obvious to people who do. So when I tried to think about it, the way I talked about it was, for me, you know, doing the ceremony and becoming ordained was picking up a key of willingness. that would open a door just enough, just a little, that allowed me to step through. And what did I step through into? Basically into not knowing. Into a faith that... in giving myself over to something bigger than I am, to allow myself to be changed in ways that I can't predict or determine beforehand, in ways of which I am unsure of the outcome.

[16:05]

And this is a faith that is not so much a leap of faith, but is the kind of step, one step at a time, of faith that I think the practice is about. And how does that relate to enlightenment? You might well ask. You know, in the Soto Zen school, which we practice, Dogen Zenji, who wrote this, speaks of practice realization. Not practice and realization, or practice or realization, but practice realization. And so we're one word, one term, one basic reality. So we practice from and because of our enlightenment, not to get it. Each of us here tonight, each person who comes here, whether they come for a day or for the rest of their lives, comes here because each one of you has come here because at some moment you've had a vision of your own enlightenment, whatever that means to you.

[17:12]

And it is our enlightenment which we manifest in practice. This is Dogen Zenji's understanding. And this is my understanding of what it means to practice either as a priest or as a lay person. But to practice with that faith, that practice and realization are one and the same. You know, at the beginning of the ceremony for ordination, I think the first line is, in perfect faith that we are Buddha. So there you go. You know, but the faith that I'm talking about here and that I'm speaking about is that enlightenment, the absolute practice, whatever you want to call it, actually occurs beyond our ability to see or guess or cognize what that actually is or means. Dogen Zenji also says, do not suppose that what you attain becomes your knowledge and is grasped by your consciousness.

[18:14]

Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent. Its appearance is beyond your knowledge. So practice and enlightenment, the absolute what have you, is not about... the jigsaw puzzle pieces of our thoughts and our emotions. It's not about lining them all upright. It's not about putting everything in perfect order in our minds and our hearts and our lives. On some level, it's not even about what we feel or think because the pieces always fall apart again, inevitably. So no matter how we line them up or how hard we work on perfecting ourselves and our emotions and our responses and our dealings vis-a-vis the world and ourselves, it always falls apart again. And so our faith in enlightenment can't be contingent.

[19:20]

Our faith in the absolute, our faith in practice cannot be contingent upon these things. So what is it about? As far as I can tell, it's about living the vow, living in faith, living the vow. So what vow, right? You know, there are any numbers of ways to talk about it. At the end of this lecture, for example, we recite the four bodhisattva vows. You know, beings are numberless, I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. Dharma gates are endless, I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it. So that's one way of expressing the vow of our life and our practice. You know, another one that we say sometimes in another ceremony is, I vow to make every effort to live in enlightenment.

[20:21]

And, you know, we have the Bodhisattva precepts. I vow not to kill, I vow not to take what is not given, etc., etc. And each one of these is the entire, excuse me, Each one of these vows is the entire vow. Each one of these vows can sum up our entire life. When we say Dharma gates are endless, each vow is a Dharma gate. Each moment of our life is a Dharma gate. And we can enter the Dharma gate at any moment, through any gate. And so our vow manifests itself in many ways to us. And we don't really understand the vow that we make. Whether we make it at the end of this lecture, whether we make it when we take Jukkai, whether we make it when we take ordination, we don't really understand the vow.

[21:33]

And, you know, if we really did understand the vow that we take and what it means and what it leads to, we probably wouldn't do it any more than we would really want enlightenment if we understood what that was. It's okay, though. You know, just to say the words is enough because by saying the words, I think it was There's some Zen master who once said, 5% sincerity is enough. So just to say the words is enough because thereby we turn ourselves over to it, to the life of the vow, to the life of faith, to the practice realization that will carry us onward. And, you know, enlightenment, I mean, is I misunderstand it. Enlightenment isn't like really very complicated or mysterious. It's actually very simple. It's just letting go of everything. You know, that's pretty simple.

[22:35]

And it's really scary too. You know, actually, We were talking about this at tea this afternoon, and it was interesting because I had thought about this earlier, and it's already in the lecture. But the question is, if all of this stuff drops away, if all of my scaredness and all of my neurosis and all of my... If I let go of everything, what's left? Who am I? You know, I'll look like the hole in the donut, so to speak. So this simple letting go is actually pretty scary. And the most difficult thing to give up, you know, I mean, sometimes when we think of letting go, we think of some sort of aesthetic lifestyle, you know, I don't know, giving up going to movies or giving up sex or giving up good food or something like that. And all of that is, you know, pretty hard to do. You know, but the hardest thing to give up, I think, is our suffering.

[23:37]

To give up our suffering is the hardest thing. Our victimhood, to give up being a victim, to accept the world as it is, without drama, without the sort of suffering that we create for ourselves because it's kind of exciting or something. Actually, it's kind of jazzy. It's a rush. A lot of our suffering is pretty exciting. You know, and mostly we seem to find, and once again I just remind all of us that when I say we, I'm talking about myself, you know, we find serenity pretty hard to take because I think we often confuse it with boredom. You know, if something's not happening on the big screen, you know, we get bored pretty easily. I think it was Pascal who said that the greater part of human troubles can be traced to the fact that people find it impossible to sit quietly in their own rooms.

[24:44]

So we're always looking for something exciting going on. And I like one of the things that Nishihara Zenji says in this commentary to the Genjo Koan that I really liked is, enlightenment does not boil water. Delusion does not level mountains. I really like that. So, you know, before, you know, before enlightenment, mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers. At the moment of enlightenment, mountains are not mountains, rivers are not rivers. And then mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. Enlightenment does not boil water. And I think it was, somebody might know, either Robert Frost or William Carlos Williams who said poetry makes nothing happen. Anybody know who said that? Yeah, yeah. So, poetry makes nothing happen and neither does enlightenment. Oh well. So anyhow, because we make this vow to live in enlightenment, which is beyond our thoughts and beyond our emotions,

[25:56]

our day-to-day practice is also beyond thought and beyond emotion and beyond the small puddle of our neurotic thinking. You know, for example, we make a decision to get up every morning and go sit zazen. You know, and some of us make agreements about that. And some of us just make agreements with ourself. So that's what we do. If we have to ask each morning, do I really feel like doing this or not, most of the time I think we won't get up. And we also, if we ask ourselves, do I feel like doing this or not, we place our practice back within the realm of desire and back within the realm of like and dislike and back within the realm of suffering. We take our practice... out of the realm of the vow, out of the realm of faith, out of the realm of that which carries us and brings it back to our small and at this point pretty muddy puddle.

[27:10]

Do I like this? Do I don't like this? Do I want to do this? Do I not want to do this? You know, this doesn't particularly appeal to me at this moment. It's a lot of trouble and a lot of energy. At least I find it so. I find it much easier just to get up. All that wear and tear on my mind is spared and I need as much wear and tear on my mind spared as possible. As some of you know, one of the titles of the Buddha, which of course means the awakened one, which is the title itself, is the Tathagata. So it's translated in various ways, this word. The one who is thus come, the one who goes thus, something like that. The way I like to translate it for myself is the guy who shows up. He just shows up, whether he feels like it or not, on that particular day, because he's living the life of the vow.

[28:15]

He's living the life of practice realization. He's living the life of faith. And this is what Dogen Zenji means, I believe, by dropping away body and mind. This is dropping away body and mind. This is dropping away our thoughts and emotions. And this is finding our original face beyond personality and beyond the realm of like and dislike. And in the midst of this, we allow ourselves, even though we are utterly and only us, to be reflections of the Moon of Enlightenment. I'd like to read this one more time. Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.

[29:16]

Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass or even in one puddle of one drop of water. Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon and the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon, all the way down to the murky depths of our personal histories, our traumas, our likes and dislikes, our joys and our sorrows, from birth to old age, sickness and death. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each moment is Buddha nature. Each moment is permeated with enlightenment and with the absolute. Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, our own vastness, our own limitless mind.

[30:28]

and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky. And there is no boundary between us and enlightenment. There is no boundary between us and the Buddha. So, I'd like to offer my apologies to Ehe Dogen Zenji. for any misrepresentation of him I might have given. And to you all, for my cracked and broken song, if I have said anything that confuses you or offends you, please forgive me and forget it as soon as you can. If I've said anything that is useful for you, please take it as your own. Keep what you need and throw the rest away. Thank you.

[31:28]

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