Good morning. As I was walking down the stairs, it occurred to me, I should say, that one of our really strong and important teachers in American Zen passed away yesterday. Daido John Lurie, He had cancer, he was ill for quite a while, and he was really, he was a very powerful teacher. He was a very kind man and a tough man. He actually had, he shared a, as an artist He studied with Minor White.

[01:00]

I didn't study with Minor White, but Minor White took pictures of me. Oh, he just took pictures of you. Well, there you go. You were very handsome in your youth. And in your present circumstances. I had to say that. But in what I'm going to talk about, which is practice and realization and dedication to practice, I think that Daito-Roshi was an exemplar and actually yesterday I was listening to, I found some YouTube videos, they actually weren't videos, just audios on YouTube of him lecturing on gejo koan on what I want to talk about it. So just to bring him to mind as a spirit that stays with us even for those who didn't know him.

[02:09]

A number of us were lucky enough to encounter him and that was just a wonderful opportunity. So I bring Daido to mind. How's it now? Is that better? Yes? OK. At the end of Genjo Koan, by Dogen Zenji, there is a kind of a parable or a story, which I will read to you and then we'll come back to. Zen Master Baoche of Mount Mayu was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, Master, the nature of wind is permanent. and there is no place it does not reach. Why then do you fan yourself? The master said, although you understand that the nature of wind is permanent, you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere.

[03:14]

What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere? asked the monk again. The master just kept fanning himself. And then Dogon says, the actualization of Buddha Dharma, the vital path of its correct transmission, is like this. If you say that you do not need to fan yourself because the nature of wind is permanent, and that you can have wind without fanning, you will understand neither permanence nor the nature of wind. The nature of wind is permanent. Because of that, the wind of the Buddha's house brings forth the gold of the earth, and makes fragrant the cream of the long river. So, today is the sessin that opens our autumn aspects of practice period, and in that we are

[04:20]

constantly fanning. And we bring that energy and commitment to what we do. What we do in this room and what we do in all the moments of our day. So this year we're doing something a little different with our practice period. We're actually having a shuso and after this talk we're going to have for those of you who are in practice period a shuso installation ceremony for Kano Kenshin Catherine Cascade and that means, her name means Generous Nightingale Manifest Spirit and in the course of this next month her job is to be an example in Zazen and in comportment to all of us.

[05:24]

This is the first practice period that I've led in the first time that I've had the opportunity to train as you so. So I'm really honored and humbled to take that position and I hope that I can provide an example of making a strong effort and being truly myself This is what I wish for all of us in this practice. As Suzuki Roshi said, when you are you, Zen is Zen, which is a kind of koan. Well, who are you? Who am I? What does it mean to be truly yourself? I'm thinking back This was the fan.

[06:33]

At their shuso ceremony, which is a dharma question and answer ceremony at the end of the practice period, their teacher gives them a fan. And this was the fan that Sojon Roshi gave me 16 years ago. It's a little worse for wear, which is not because I've been busily fanning myself, but because We have curious children in our household. But still, it does the job in coordination with the permanence of Wnt. But I'm thinking back. That was 16 years ago. Those of us who were here, and there's a bunch of you who were here, were younger. I had the opportunity to follow, as Juso, to follow a number of my elders in practice.

[07:39]

Some of, I'm thinking of Meili Scott, my Dharma sister, and Fran Tribe, and then Rebecca Mayeno, none of whom are able to practice with us anymore. and then after Rebecca was Raul Moncayo and there's a whole chain of people who I before and after whom I admire and look up to and who I learned from in the course of watching them be Shuso. This is the wind, you know, we talk about the nature of wind being permanent and Dogen talks about the wind of the Buddha's house. This is the wind of our house. The wind of our house that I learned from my teacher and all of my teachers here is to be dedicated to stable zazen, to stable upright sitting.

[08:56]

as one key fundamental that you build your life on. And then building on that, I think of the expression of our first Juso, Melie Scott, which she is known to say, devotedly do. Devotedly do zazen devotedly do your life, whatever work that you need to do. And of course the koan is, what does that mean? What is that devotion? Without making anything smelly or holy about it, how do you keep that, how do you keep on point right there? So that's why we have a practice period. I was looking through notes and there's a piece that we kind of put up most years when we have our spring practice period that Sojin Roshi wrote our approach to practice period and it's worth looking at some of this.

[10:19]

During our practice period we have the opportunity to renew and concentrate our effort and re-establish our practice in beginner's mind. The practice period has some minimum requirements, but within these requirements, each person creates his or her own schedule. This is the nature of lay practice. Some will be able to do only the minimum, while others who have the opportunity will be able to extend or stretch themselves much more. When you include your Zazen schedule in your calendar, it incorporates Zazen into the rhythm of your life, as an intention, rather than as a random or arbitrary activity, or a special activity. It's not a special activity, it's just part of the day, part of what we do. When we design our schedule for a limited time period, taking into consideration

[11:24]

all of the other factors and responsibilities in our life, we have a foundation for practice. It is also necessary to honor our commitments and to be realistic about how we create our schedule. Sojourn writes, I like to think of the spirit of practice period as the wish to do it all and then narrowing it down to what is practical or possible. rather than simply picking or choosing pieces of it based on convenience or preference. This helps to create an edge, something to push against, but not enough to be inhibiting. When we all have this attitude, it creates a strong Sangha feeling of mutual support and encouragement. And finally he says, it is also important to manifest the spirit of Zazen in our home life and work life as continuous, well-rounded practice. Not just something we do on our cushion.

[12:29]

I think that is the spirit of this practice period. It's a challenge. It's a challenge in our busy life. To be quite honest with you, it's more of a challenge now for me than it was 16 years ago. I don't know what it is, but it seems like those spaces kind of get closed up, and whatever feeling one had, even if one was driven 16 years ago, it seems there's less time. But Dogen also said, don't waste time. All Zen teachers say, don't waste time. What is wasting time? How do you use your time? Rather than how are you used by it and pushed around by it.

[13:31]

So for practice period, practice period is the setting of our intention, clearing some space around our day so that we can make this effort. For the practice period, we're going to be studying an early text of Dogen's called Gakudo Yojinshu, or Guidelines for Practicing the Way. And in the spirit of Aspects of Practice, this is a very basic text with a lot of really accessible teachings that one can incorporate into one's life. That's the point. As in other aspects of practice periods that we've had, the senior students will be teaching, they'll be team teaching these classes, a couple of them each week, and that's open to all.

[14:37]

The Zendo is open to everybody. There's not an exclusive feeling to this practice period. but rather the people who are making a commitment both to themselves and to sit together. This is the interesting aspect of when you are you, Zen is Zen. It also means when Zen is Zen, you are you. Meaning when we're all practicing together, then you can be yourself. And we help each other practice simply by being here together. So I want to come back, this is going to be a relatively, I'm not going to go on today because we have this ceremony. But I want to come back to the story that I told at the beginning.

[15:42]

And maybe we can talk about that a little bit. When Dogen was a boy he was studying at a Tendai school and he was perplexed by this expression in Mahayana Buddhism especially in Japanese and Chinese Buddhism that all beings are Buddhas all beings already are manifesting Buddha nature. And so the question that came up for him was, well, if that's the case, then why do we have to practice? And he went to his teacher, and his teacher said, oh, that's a really good question. You should go find a Zen teacher. and ask them that, because we can't really answer that question.

[16:46]

So he went to the Zen school. And that was the question that he brought. And in a sense, that's the question of this story. That's the point, and this is the distillation of really a lot of his teaching, and particularly Kenjo Koan, but Dogen had this this really interesting formulation which is the mark of, it's also the wind of our house, the notion of practice realization, that there is not a, these are not two things, that we don't practice in order to become enlightened, we practice because we already are enlightened. We practice, we sit down as an actual expression of our enlightened activity.

[17:50]

So that's a core element of the Zen tradition that we got from Dogen, then through Suzuki Roshi and Sojin Roshi. It's a challenge because it provides a response and an answer and it doesn't tell you exactly what to do. If practice and realization are one, what does that ask of us? So that's kind of the At the heart of this story, let me read it again, Zen Master Baoche of Mount Mayu was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, Master, the nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach.

[18:54]

Why then do you fan yourself? Baoche replied, although you understand that the nature of wind is permanent, You do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere. What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?" asked the monk again. The master just kept fanning himself, and the monk bowed deeply. Now, we don't know what it was that the monk understood. He might have actually understood something really important there, bowed. The real question is, what do each of us understand? How do we receive this teaching? And then Dogen explicates it a bit, saying, the actualization of Buddhadharma, the vital path of its correct transmission, is like this.

[19:58]

If you say that you do not need to fan yourself because the nature of wind is permanent, and that you can have wind without fanning, you will understand neither permanence nor the nature of wind. The nature of wind is permanent. Because of that, the wind of the Buddha's house brings forth the gold of the earth and makes fragrant the cream of the long river. So, the wind, of course, is a metaphor for buddha nature that pervades everything and buddha nature itself is a word for something that is inconceivable and inexplicable so you have metaphor piled on top of metaphor but it's an interesting idea the wind is blowing everywhere and the master is fanning in some sense that doesn't make any sense

[21:05]

in our common logical mind. But in the context of Buddha nature, what I see is that in order to bring forth this awakening, you have to align yourself with Buddha nature. You have to uncover what is already happening. There has to be some activity. Zazen, even though it's sometimes characterized as immobile sitting, is activity that's in line with the dynamic working of the entire universe. This is our activity. We have to do something. It's not easy to sit here all day as people who will tell you particularly by about 4.30 or 5 this afternoon.

[22:11]

If you ask them, is it peaceful and is there any activity, you'll get a lot of responses. But it is our effort to align ourselves with the total dynamic working of the universe. We have to do this. If we think that, oh, I'm already enlightened, there's nothing to realize or understand, there's nothing to do, then we're going to fall into a deep pit. Various, and there are various ones to fall into. There's the pit of inactivity, there's the pit of overactivity, there's the pit of righteousness, there's the pit of seeing everything, you know, oh man, everything is one.

[23:16]

Well, none of these will quite do. We learn about reality by working with it, by dancing with it, by uncovering it, and that's why we have to have not just the daily practice. Our daily practice is, you know, it's really wonderful to show up here every day, or as much as you can. This is an important thing for our life, or as much as one can. It's also really important to intensify that. in some time, in some periods of time, for session or for a practice period. That's why we have practice period. Something else comes forward. Something else is uncovered. I think of the last, for some reason, the last practice period we had when Andrea Thatch was Chiseau, this spring.

[24:22]

Boy, that was I mean it had nothing to do with her, but for me that was just really hard. It was a hard effort and there was something raw and exposed in myself that I came to by doing that, that I probably wouldn't have come to or would have missed the awareness of. if we hadn't had that container of practice. So to add another metaphor, I was thinking about, as we're piling metaphor on metaphor, another metaphor might be to consider the nature of a diamond. Diamond in whatever form is always a diamond.

[25:29]

Before it was a diamond, it was a chunk of coal. But we don't call coal diamond, and we don't call diamond coal. There was some transformation. But when that diamond is just somehow residing in the mud, of a riverbank it's just another piece of earth in that riverbank it's functioning just like any other stone or any other object that's embedded there and when it's removed and when we wash it clean then we can see We can see it shine. We can see it has some inner glow.

[26:34]

So we're seeing its potential. But even so, what's involved, at least in human culture, is to work over this stone very, very carefully. And as we work it over, not only does it have a glow, but it begins to have a shimmer. And we begin to see the facets and the angles that are embedded in its crystalline structure. And a careful jeweler works on this potentiality to bring out the maximum number of faces and dimensions to this stone. And in time we can see so many different things each time we turn it and look at it from a different angle.

[27:40]

And from every angle it's expressing both its uniqueness and its complete diamond nature. We are like this. We have to be jewelers for ourselves and for each other. Stones, tumbling on stones in this room. Polishing, bringing out what is unique, allowing what is essential to be uncovered with this careful and very sharp tool of our Zazen practice. And so that is what we're setting out to do, I think, in the practice period.

[28:47]

constantly challenging us. Yes, you are a Buddha, I am a Buddha, and yet there is something to be brought forth, something to be realized, for as oneself, so that each of us can see each other. That's the challenge of practice period, I think. So we have a few minutes. I'd like to just take a couple of questions and comments tomorrow. I'm sorry. Can you clarify, is anybody welcome to the ceremony? Or is it limited to people in practice? Ceremony should be for people in practice. But everybody is welcome to the classes and the lectures. But we're trying to create a kind of container for people who have made made that commitment. Thank you for asking that. Why couldn't Dogen's first teacher answer the question about being?

[30:08]

Why did he have to send him to a Zen person? I don't know enough about Tendai Buddhism. I think this is simply Dogen's question. It's an apocryphal that I can't answer your question, because he wasn't a Zen priest. But, um, about, uh, Vignanavath speaking in Dharma. Right. But, this Dungan didn't have that. He just was, um, decided that this is just his question. Let's leave it at that. Kate. Well, um, sir. But there's an obvious thing about the scoil that bothers me. Air is everywhere. But there are times where, when you are, the air is very still, which is the obvious reason that he's standing himself.

[31:13]

How does that apply? I don't know that that's the obvious reason that he's standing himself. There's no breeze where he's sitting. How do you know that? Let's not. There's no reason to. It's presented in a way essentially to challenge you. So it worked. Andrea? When you talked about the Buddha nature needing to be uncovered, I think that that needs to be explicated carefully. I wonder if you could give us some insight into how our delusion and confusion are also enlightenment as far as Dogen is concerned.

[32:17]

Our delusion and confusion are expressions of us being Buddha. because they are expressions of us being completely alive. Everything that comes forth is an expression of being completely alive. If you see that as an expression of being completely alive, then you find some freedom. If you see your delusion not as an expression of this pervasive, wide-reaching life, but of if you believe what you think, if you believe in your delusion, then what you're doing actually is limiting life. So how do we see, how do we allow our confusion and our delusion to help us free ourselves.

[33:27]

So that would include seeing our delusions as part of ourselves, part of our life, part of how we express ourselves, and to see it as something other than that, something that's long or mistaken, is a problem. Right. So long as we're seeing it as part of our impermanent self, our self that's capable of changing, If we see it as part of, this is the way it is, which is usually what happens, then we're putting a boundary around, actually, our true self. And we're falling into that pit. Maybe one more. Yeah? Maybe this is something you were already discussing, but what about all the stuff in the riverbank that's not a diamond? immeasurably precious. Each of it, everything there has its total function.

[34:36]

It's creating the river bank, allows the river to flow, allows the water to go where it needs to go. I'm not distinguishing, I'm not truly distinguishing, I'm just saying, you know, we have a conventional view of a diamond as really special or precious. So using that, but when you look at the riverbank, the riverbank itself is more precious than diamonds. So that's kind of where I would go with that. I wanted to ask, Sojin had something he wanted to share with you. I was on his leading. I've invited him to use my seat for the ceremonies. And he can sit in my seat when I'm not here in order to have close relation to the shuso who will be sitting over here.

[35:48]

So when you see him sitting here, it's not like he's knocking me over. Yes, and when you're here, I think it'll be wonderful for Catherine to have that, to be sitting next to you as well. Thank you for your generosity. I'm deeply grateful, a little anxious, and you know, I look forward to this month practicing together. So now we're going to have, after we leave and set up, we'll have the shuso entering ceremony and we will let the

[36:58]

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