It gives me a great pleasure to introduce my friend and Dharma teacher, Gary. Thank you, Russ.

[01:29]

So good morning. Good morning. It's a cold, beautiful Saturday morning. And I always like to come here on Saturdays and do the schedule. It's our Sabbath. So today I want to speak about the Bindoa, which is an early text of Dogon. And there's a translation with a commentary by Uchiyama Roshi. It's called The Whole-Hearted Way. If you haven't seen it, we have it in the library. And this is his first writing after he came back from China to Japan.

[02:43]

And he was trying to sort out what his approach to Buddhism would be and how he would communicate that to the local culture in Japan. And he had been practicing, I guess he started when he was 17. He didn't have much of an adolescence. And so it's different than Shakyamuni, you know, who had already lived quite a life before he started practicing. You know, he had a life of indulgence in the palace and his father partially indulged him so that he would be kept away from fulfilling his destiny as a teacher because his father wanted him to be a warrior.

[03:55]

and, or a king, but king had to be a warrior. And so instead, he had spiritual aspirations. So eventually he tried the path of hedonism. And then he tried the path of asceticism, the opposite. And then he settled in the middle way, which is what we practice. And Dogen started practicing when he was 17. And he was practicing the Rinzai schools and the Tendai schools that were prevalent at that time in Japan. And he practiced that for five years. And then he went to China.

[05:01]

and practice in China for five years. And he received Dharma transmission after five years, which is not unusual. That's usually what happens in Japan as far as I understand. People go to the monastery and practice for five years and then they get Dharma transmission and then they go to a community temple. When he came back, he came back to the same place where he had been practicing before he left, which was called Kininji. But Kininji wasn't such a good place for him because it was a Rinzai temple. And he wanted to transmit the Soto teaching that he had received in China. And actually, apparently he was forced to leave.

[06:05]

He was asked to leave, shown the door, so to speak. So he stayed at a small temple, which is now called Koshoji. And he sat there by himself. And eventually founded a monastery when he was 33. Pretty young. But he died when he was 50, so he died young. So there at Koshoji, he wrote the Bindoa and the Ginja Koan. And the Genjo Koan is more his kind of main central teaching, the beginning of it at least, the beginning of the Shobo Genso. Whereas the Bendo is more sort of his dialogue, interaction with the rest of Buddhism at that time in Japan. And basically, when he was at Koshoji, that's when Ejo came to see him.

[07:17]

And Ejo was his first student. But Ejo actually was identified with the rest of the other schools of Buddhism. in Japan at that time. So he was a kind of good spokesperson for the various schools. And so the Bendoa is 18 questions that Ejo poses to Dogen and actually challenging him. Why do you think you're doing anything different than what we've been doing here all along? So he was a little controversial because he wanted to differentiate Soto Zen and the practice of Zazen from the practices that were being practiced in Japan at that time.

[08:24]

I think at some point later they even burned down his monastery. So they were actual factions with armed soldiers and whatnot. We don't have that problem anymore. Thank goodness. So there's been some progress. Some people are now saying that, you know, sometimes we say, well, it's always the same problem. It's just a circle, right? So it's a repetition that goes in a circle. So we have the same problems over and over and over again, individually or collectively. But actually the dharma wheel disrupts that repetition and produces something different. The repetition with a difference. So apparently now we have less, even though we live in a pretty violent world, compared to the violence before, it's less violent.

[09:41]

So now we settle our differences in different ways. And hopefully that's the direction of the future. So the Bendoa was lost for 400 years. 400 years. Nobody knew anything about it. And I think that's the same for the entire Shobo Genso, which was basically kept by his family. as a family treasure. So it's a kind of Dharma treasure, Dharma family. But then his actual blood family kept the Shobo Genso for Japan for 400 years. And then in the 1700s, it reappeared again. In 1700s, the beginning of the Western Enlightenment, around the same time.

[10:51]

So what does Bindoa mean, the title? To distinguish the true from the false, to practice wholeheartedly, and a teaching about how to walk the path. It has those three different meanings. So what is this distinguishing the true from the false? because he also mentions that we shouldn't engage, Buddhist practitioners shouldn't engage in arguing about the superiority or inferiority of one teaching or another or one school or another. That's really, he wants to discourage that or not discriminate between the superficial and the profound. But so what he means by that is just how to know the difference between how to know whether the practice is actually genuine or false.

[12:03]

Because the whole emphasis is going to fall in his teaching on the practice, ongoing, continuous practice of Zazen, which is what we have here. The other way of understanding the true from the false is this question of delusion and enlightenment. So he points out from the beginning that our practice is not to eliminate our false delusions. Ultimately, delusion and enlightenment are not one, not two. but rather what it means is to become aware of the fact that we are deluded. Since enlightenment can't be known, if we try to express enlightenment as a form of knowledge, then that becomes delusion.

[13:16]

So the only thing actually that we can know is our delusion. And that we should know. Each personal delusion that we all, I mean, it's similar themes, but we're all deluded in different kinds of ways. And we all have character flaws. So a Buddha is one that knows delusion. or can take responsibility for their delusions or their character flaws. So we have to kind of study, this is part of studying the self, is to study our character and how we act and respond. And then let reality teach us. So when we act in a certain kind of way, And then the certain, hopefully the responses are swift. So if you made a mistake or you said something that was not on target, then the response should be swift, meaning the karma, you'll experience it right away afterwards.

[14:35]

And I will teach you to speak differently next time. Because there we recognize our delusion by the feeling that we have. We have a feeling of regret afterwards. Or we're left angry, you know, for a while. Then we have to own this anger and anger is one of the poisons. And we live in a very angry world. For various reasons, people are angry, upset. And there are lots of valid reasons to be angry about, especially politically. But the anger can be skillful, but mostly it's not and can lead to delusion.

[15:36]

That's why we consider it a poison. But we can't swallow it and we can't spit it out. So if you spit it out, you act it out, you'll regret it sooner or later. And if you don't regret it, and you're a little bit like a psychopath, then, you know, that's even more serious. We're proud of our ignorance or proud of our delusions. Early question back there, my friend. I don't think they know. That's a kind of a deep ignorance. And if they know, then they're no longer a psychopath at that moment. Like, my son sometimes tells me, you know, oh, I'm a psychopath, you know, because, you know, he doesn't want to listen to me or does something else, you know, or steals some money from me or something like that, you know.

[16:48]

Small amounts, not Not big amounts. Oh, I'm a dad, I'm a psychopath. And actually, I don't get worried about it. If he didn't say that, then I would be worried. So this is being aware of our delusions. It's also how it's related, how we deal with criticism. It's not easy to, I mean, it's a lot easier to give criticism than to receive criticism, right? You know, criticism, You know, lots of things to be critical about. And we do have an impulse to critique.

[17:54]

And some of it is wholesome and some of it is unwholesome. So we have to monitor that when we're giving criticism. You know, that's why here in our practice, we have a kind of form for doing that. So it doesn't just become a kind of, you know. unwholesome form of criticism. So, you know, for example, the cook, you know, cooks in the kitchen. And then we eat our meal. And afterwards, the cook, the form is for the cook to go to Sojin or the Doshi and ask for feedback. And Sojin, as a teacher, he's very detailed. What's the behavior of each grain of rice? It's not always easy to receive, especially after, you know, you've been cooking all day and you're exhausted and you've, you know, poured your, you know, sweat and blood and tears, left all of that in the kitchen, you know.

[19:21]

And it's nonstop, you know, and your back hurts and you have to work with a team and all that, you know. So you're kind of raw and sensitive. And it's not always easy to receive the criticism. But it's good practice, you know, because when we get criticized, we tend to close down and feel hurt, right? And then we complain. So just to open at the point of receiving criticism. And so it helps that we have a form for it. Sometimes people take the form and make it informal. And then that creates problems, you know, because people start criticizing each other and getting into fights about, you know, how you sing or how you do this or what form, what's the right way to do the form or the wrong way to do the form. So it's best not to be motivated, not to fault find, not to be motivated by fault finding.

[20:33]

Then on the other side of that, well, it's like, okay, it doesn't matter, you know, whatever. And that can also be problematic because then you don't pay attention to things that you should pay attention to. So that's part of how to working with delusion and with the poisons, emotional poisons. Okay, so the main point that Dogen wants to make is that, and these are his words, there's an unsurpassable, unfabricated, wondrous method. That's Zazen.

[21:36]

This wondrous Dharma which has been transmitted only from Buddha to Buddha without deviation, has as its criterion Jiju Samadhi. So wondrous Dharma is something that we can't, it's wondrous because we can't totally grasp it with the intellect or it's incomprehensible. And dogging himself is incomprehensible. What? Was that criticism? Informal criticism. So far, is it comprehensible? Yes? Okay. So it's not fabricated.

[22:48]

So it's not a construction. Nowadays, we'd like to talk about constructions and constructivism and, you know, and so on. But Zazen is not a construction. It's not a fabrication. It's not, it's not made up. It's part of the natural order of things. It's already there, so we don't have to fabricate it. The body is already there, it's already given. So even though we all are born with this inheritance of the Buddha Dharma, of the wondrous Dharma. We're all born with this noble inheritance. But we do not know it. So we ignore it.

[23:51]

So the same with the wondrous Dharma. We experience it, but we know nothing of it with our knowledge. So he says, Jijusamayi is the gate of repose and bliss that uncovers the self that is shared with all things. So you should say the self making the self into the self. That's usually how it's translated. And I would add the self making the self into the self of all things. The self of all things. That's the unfabricated method. So it's not just, it's the foundation for all experience. But we don't necessarily know it, that that's what we're experiencing.

[24:57]

And it's also something that's at work in all things, in all beings, not just in human beings. That's why the famous comment about the dog, does the dog have good nature? That's because also in Chinese culture, there was a big difference between animal nature and human nature, even though they also worship nature in some way. And the same is true in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the big difference between animals and human beings. But Buddhism always stresses the equality of all things. And we have Sweet Pea now in the sangha.

[26:05]

I think somebody said that in the work meeting today. The sweetest cat. Pretty beaten up. Pretty beaten up, you know. I was asking Ross today, he has a big foot, left foot and a small right foot, but actually it was because his leg was broken. So the leg became part of the foot. So pretty beaten up cat, but he's so sweet. So he says Juju Samadhi is like the dew on the grass. You don't have to go further than that. And then Tadjuju Samadhi is how we help others realize this Samadhi.

[27:08]

Sometimes people think, oh, Samadhi is just selfish, you know, it's just people trying to, you know, hold on to enlightenment and feel good and tranquilizations. That's the Rinzai critique of Soto, you know, you guys are just, you know, clinging to Samadhi. But actually, it's the nature of all things. So this self that is established in Samadhi is the self of all things. It's not the small self, but sometimes people interpret it as the small self. If you were doing something selfish for yourself, instead of actually when you actualizing the fundamental point, you're turning something for everybody. So Jiju Yusame and Taju Yusame are not one, not two. So it's beyond the self-other distinction.

[28:12]

So the whole idea of dropping body and mind when we drop, I think he says that in the Gender Koan, when you drop body and mind, you also drop the body and mind of others. So all Buddhas are dwelling in and maintaining this Jiju Samadhi, sitting together with all the Buddhas. So that's what we do. We sit in the center together with all the Buddhas. But, he says, Buddhas never perceive Samadhi. What does that mean? Buddhas never perceive Samadhi. the consciousness of Samadhi doesn't exist. It's not, you could say it's unconscious, not quite. It's an awareness without subject and object.

[29:16]

It's different than consciousness. So it can't be objectified. So Buddhas are always letting go, not of Samadhi, but of the perception of Samadhi. turning it into some kind of object. Okay, so those are kind of basic introductory points. And then I want to read some of the questions that Ejo asked Dogen, if that's okay. So I'm not, will you tell me maybe 10 minutes, five or 10 minutes before, so we have some time for questions, given that a lot of this text is all question and answer.

[30:33]

Now we have heard that the virtue of this, the question one, so Ejo asks, now we have heard that the virtue of the Sazen is immense. Stupid people may question this by asking. They use the word stupid a lot, you know, in the text. I don't know what the Japanese would be. Okay. Is it the same word? Does it mean the same thing? Almost the same. Okay. So stupid people may question this by asking, there are many gates to the Buddha Dharma, why do you only recommend Zazen? And he responds, it is because this is the true gate to Buddha Dharma. Okay. I'll just continue.

[31:41]

Question two follows from the first, why is this alone the true gate? Why do you say this alone is the true gate? Then the answer is, great teacher Shakyamuni correctly transmitted the wondrous method for attaining the way, and the Tathagatas of the three times, past, present and future, also all attained the way through Zazen. For this reason, Zazen has been conveyed from one person to another as the true gate. Not only that, but all the ancestors of India and China attained the way through Zazen. Therefore I am now showing the true gate to human and celestial beings. Fair enough. Ece is going to push further. Push him further to say more about what's true about it.

[32:43]

So question three. Relying on either the correct transmitting of the wondrous method of Tathagatas or following the tracks of the ancestral teachers is truly beyond our ordinary thinking. However, reading sutras or chanting Nembutsu naturally can become a cause of satori. That's what people believed. So if you can, you know, achieve enlightenment by chanting Nembutsu and reading sutras, why do you say this is the true gate? And he says, how can just sitting calmly without doing anything, you're just sitting there, you know, accumulating dust, doing nothing. How can that be a means for attaining enlightenment? He replies that you now consider the Samadhi of the Buddha as the unsurpassed great Dharma as vainly sitting doing nothing is slandering the Mahayana.

[34:00]

He's taking the not doing in a dual sense. He could have taken it in a non-dual sense, but that wasn't what was called for at this point. He says, this is very deep delusion, as if saying that there's no water even while being in the middle of the great ocean. Thankfully, doing Zazen is already sitting peacefully in the Jiju Samai of the Buddhas. Doesn't this manifest extensive virtue? It is pitiful that your eyes are not yet open and your mind is still drunk. He says, on the whole, the Buddha realm is incomprehensible, unreachable through discrimination, much less can it be known with no faith and inferior insight. Only people of great capacity and true faith are able to enter. People without faith have difficulty accepting even when taught. Even at Vulture Peak, there was a group of people whom Buddha said, it is good that they leave.

[35:07]

Generally, if true faith arises in your heart, you should practice and study. If it does not, you should give it up for a while and regret not having the blessing of Dharma from long ago. So it's not for everybody. But there's a thin line between saying that and a kind of elitism. So how do you help somebody practice with the forms of the practice? And yet at the same time, at some point, the person may not be ready. So the compassionate thing may be to say, well, maybe you're not ready for this practice yet, or maybe this is not the right practice for you.

[36:11]

Maybe you need to find a different practice. So I think that's the point about the Buddha saying, it is good that some people got up and left. in rejection of his teaching. Furthermore, do you really know the virtue to be gained by working at such practices as reading sutras or chanting Nembutsu? The notion that merely making sounds by moving your tongue leads to the virtue of the Buddha work is completely meaningless. That's pretty, you know, tough. It's kind of fighting words in some way. I think Suzuki Roshi would say something more like, well, there's a gate for everybody, you know, so there are different gates and you have to find the right gate for you.

[37:20]

And settle down to practice and just practice and not focus so much in all the controversies. Also, as for opening the sutras, if you clearly understand what Buddha has taught as the principle of sudden and gradual practice, and practice in accord with that teaching, you will certainly accomplish enlightenment. Vainly wasting your thinking and discrimination does not compare to the virtue of gaining bodhi. So he's saying, you know, that the Sutra study is not an alternative to Zazen. Right? I mean, if you practice Zazen and you study the Sutras, that's good. So long as you don't try to understand it intellectually only.

[38:35]

which is kind of the Western enlightenment, is to try to understand things intellectually. And it has yielded a lot of fruits. I mean, the Greek tradition, that's what the Greek tradition is. But it doesn't have this deportment beyond right and wrong. It says reading literature while ignoring the way of practice is like a person reading a prescription but forgetting to take the medicine. What is the benefit? So it says reading literature while ignoring the way of practice.

[39:42]

So he's not setting a duality between reading literature and practice, but he's saying if you think that it's enough to just read the sutras, well, you're mistaken, because the fundamental point is practice. And then question four, the Tendai and Kegon teachings which have been transmitted now in our country, We have many forms of Buddhism in our country now, too, are both the most sublime teachings of the Mahayana. Moreover, the Shingon teaching was intimately transmitted from Vairochana, Tathagata, to Vajrasattva, from teacher to disciple without deviation. Its principle is that mind itself is Buddha, or this mind becomes Buddha. which sort of sounds, I mean, there's a famous koan about mind is Buddha or no mind is Buddha.

[40:53]

You could turn it either way. Which propounds the true awakening of the five Buddhas at the instant of sitting without passing through many culprits of practice. So, from this point of view, it wasn't necessary to practice for so long, or so intensely. It's a kind of instantaneous realization. In a way, it's like that book, The Power of Now, of Edward Tolkien, I think? Right. So it's that kind of similar idea that already existed at that time in Japan. He says, this must be called the pinnacle of Buddhadharma. In spite of that, what superior features in the practice you are now speaking about cause you to recommend this only and set aside those others?

[42:01]

And Dogen says, the words, the mind itself is Buddha are like the moon reflected in the water. The principle at the instant of sitting, becoming Buddha is also a reflection within a mirror. Don't be caught up in the skillfulness of words. So this idea of it's not like a mirror with reflections, that refers to language or intellection. So Dogen is thinking that this is just an idea about the mind itself being Buddha. Or it might not be that. I mean, I remember when I went to the Paris Zen Dojo of Taisen Deshimaro, where I sat there for the first time, is it time?

[43:06]

I had a great awakening experience, just the first time. Really deep. And so in a way you could say, well, the mind itself is Buddha. And you just realize it instantaneously in this moment. But, so the question is, do you need to cultivate that or not? And the answer that Dogen is given, yes, you have to cultivate it, ongoing, continuous practice. Without making any difference further on, he will ask the question, well, Do people, what about once you're enlightened, do you still have to continue practicing? Why would you practice after that if you already got it, right? And so there, Dogen responds precisely because this is ongoing practice.

[44:12]

There's no distinction between practice and enlightenment. So practice is the same as enlightenment. So you have to cultivate. Buddha mind. So we go from the zendo to our ordinary life. And in ordinary life, we get caught in all kinds of things, in all kinds of delusions, and in a way that it's inevitable. Meaning that you have to sort of forget all about enlightenment at that point and just be deluded within delusion. But then we have to keep coming back to the practice. And eventually it pervades our entire life.

[45:14]

the more we practice, the deeper our daily life, the genja koan, the koan of our everyday life becomes. So that's why the essential point is that this is ongoing practice, it's not a practice just to attain something and then go do something else. Okay, so I'm going to stop here and open it to questions. John. If we don't have faith, already know.

[46:20]

And if we already know, I think Dogen's trying to make it clear, if we already know, then we're not going to be open enough to actually understand or become, make the mind that is the genuine mind. So when we're calling for faith, if you don't have the need for faith, it seems to me, and I'd like you to rethink that, that does not mean that we're actually already self-satisfied. Well, the faith in something incomprehensible in our nature that we approach through faith or not knowing, not saturating, not completely defining our experience through what we already know. So you could say faith or you could say not knowing.

[47:23]

Yes. Hmm. Well, it seems there's progress in the sense, you know, I was listening to a talk the other day and this person was saying, well, you know, the statistics show that we kill a lot less people than we used to.

[48:29]

Right? So we're less murderers, but now we kill ourselves to a much greater extent. So that's a lot of progress. So progress is relative, right? So, I mean, it is a kind of progress, but at the same time, would you call the higher rates of suicide as opposed to homicide progress, right? So that's the question about the sudden and the gradual. So it's like a stairway as long as you understand that the entire stairway is in each step. So each step of the stairway is the entire stairway.

[49:40]

Yes. Objectifying zazen, right, you said? Well, we objectify Zazen with our thinking. So, we sit in Zazen and we follow our breathing and the thoughts keep coming and going. And we go back to our breath. So we don't, we let go of the thinking that we have about Zazen or what our Zazen is or where we are in our Zazen or whatever thinking may arise in relationship to the practice and just return to our breath. So that's a kind of pure awareness.

[50:48]

And then we take up thinking, you know, at some point we take up thinking again. But in Zazen, we let go of thinking. Just want to give Sojin Roshi an opportunity to say something. Would you like to say something, Sojin? The platform you mean? Platform Sutra? Can I follow up on that one?

[52:06]

So does that mean that it's enough just to sit Zazen and so the sutras are extra? Now there's a lot of possibilities in this story, a lot of notations, except, you know, what is reality. You were talking about it yesterday, you mentioned that. So, we should study and see if there's a focus. Right, but some people say, you know, like, sometimes if you open the Bible, there's a luminosity that arises or is invoked.

[53:44]

Right, but it's not just about, because the thing itself is also there. If you have the practice, then you realize that the thing itself is there. That's not true. That's not, God is not just sitting in the cushion room. Zen teacher, I have a friend, he's a Zen teacher, a scholar at the San Diego University, But my point also was that we have a form for that, that's part of the form, right?

[56:16]

It's become personal, you know, you're not motivated to criticize somebody, right? Right. Right. But even when it's done according to form, it's hard to receive sometimes. It's hard to receive. We have to practice being open to receiving it, right? Yes. Do you think it was important for Dogen to write everything he wrote?

[58:40]

But for Buddhism, for the practice? And he studied quite a bit too. Okay, I think we have some hands up. I think Peter wanted to say something a while back, no?

[59:43]

Yes. Yes. Oh, I didn't say that. The Dogon says that. That's a good question. Do we believe in celestial beings? Right. Well, I mean, Buddhism has the realm of the gods. But the gods are in small g gods, like the Greek gods a little bit. And so I think that's what he means by celestial beings. Did you have any thoughts on that?

[60:50]

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, you need help there. You're at a good place. Just like you need help with your academics. So maybe you could say, whether or not you think there's actually something out there. I see.

[62:16]

There's a hand in the back there. Hi. Yes. Well, I just meant generally the enlightenment that's promised by science is an intellectual form of enlightenment. And it improves. I mean, we live much longer now. I mean, Dogen died when he was 50. And people used to die, although Shakyamuni died when he was 80, but people used to die much younger. Now people live longer. Because we know things such as blood pressure and we have different forms of understanding and medicines to help people with various kinds of illnesses.

[63:21]

So people live longer. But it doesn't resolve the fundamental question of birth and death. Because you may live longer, but how you relate to death is a different question. The fact that you are able to live longer doesn't mean that you'll be able to understand death as the undying. which is the understanding that we have within Buddhism, birth and death. That when we're born, there's something unborn, we're not born. And when we die, there's something undying, we don't die. And we realize that from practice, not from learning or understanding knowledge.

[64:31]

But knowledge is helpful in other ways. So it's information, as Sojourner always says. It's meaningful. I mean, like I've mentioned before, the fact that Newton or Einstein understood basic laws of the universe help us travel in space and go to the moon and so on and so forth. But that's not the same as practice. So we human beings need both, right? We need both intuition and the intellect. And both can be dual or non-dual. Both can help or be a hindrance in some way. Not Zazen being a hindrance, but you know, there were several Zen teachers who were really upset at the time of the modernization of Japan and didn't want universities in Japan.

[65:45]

And if they were going to accept universities, they thought it was a waste of time for people to go to university. They should just be sitting Zazen. Sort of what we had in the Middle Ages. which is the time of Dogen, it was the Middle Ages, 1200. So I think that's where this kind of fanaticism about intuition can lead to this kind of radical position of rejecting any kind of learning or any kind of science for that matter. And then that becomes a kind of dogmatism, which is not really true to the spirit of Buddhism. I mean, the Buddha had studied everything that there was to study at the time. He had been taught and raised by tutors. the king, he was tutored by all the Indian sages of the time.

[66:47]

And so all the knowledge that was available at that time is something that Shakyamuni was familiar with. Okay, thank you very much.

[67:03]

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