Good morning. I will be referring at times during these three days of Session to a teaching from Dogen Shobogenzo called Zenki, and I've passed out two different translations, one from Thomas Cleary, one from Kaz Tanahashi. And please feel free to just ignore them. You can put them under your cushion. You don't have to look at them. But if you want to, you're welcome to look at them. So I want to talk about this teaching in terms of Arzazan and in terms of Sashin. as a way of talking about this practice we're doing. And I'll just speak first about this word, this word that's the title of this fairly brief essay, Zenki.

[01:17]

And actually, cause Tanahashi when he was here, uh... earlier this year mentioned it and Zenki is actually the name of my teacher uh... Tenshin Zenki, Reb Anderson the Zen in Zenki is not the same as the Zen in Zen Buddhism or Soto Zen or Zazen it's a different character that's pronounced Zen it means complete or total or whole or uh... everything And the character Ki is a very interesting character. It's not the same Ki that's in Paula's name, Yoki Shudo. It's the Ki that It means many, many things. It's a very interesting character.

[02:20]

It means function. It means potential. It means activity. It also means a loom, like a loom where weaving is done. It also is used to refer to a practitioner. And it has other meanings too. It's sometimes used as the prime working function of the whole universe. So together, Zenki, as a compound, has been translated in various ways. I could call it total dynamic activity. Kaz Tanahashi translates it as undivided activity. and emphasizes that this wholeness means undivided. Tom Cleary, who has interesting ways of talking about things, translates it as, the whole works. Like what you get on a hot dog.

[03:25]

So the whole works. So this is about our experience in Zazen, in Sesshin, in life and in death. And it's an encouragement towards a kind of way of engaging experience. Total, complete, full, dynamic activity. Undivided engagement and activity. The whole works. And it does. The whole works in lots of ways. So Zazen, this practice we're doing, has to do with how we use and engage our energy.

[04:34]

It has to do with how we see this self on our cushion. And part of our zazen is to pay attention to this experience on our seat and the quality of its energy. Sometimes our mind is racing. Sometimes we feel sleepy. Sometimes we feel very present and just fully engaged in the quality of the silence in the room.

[05:41]

Sometimes we notice that somebody's cell phone is humming. So, I will start with Tom Cleary's translation, but I may go back and forth. And again, you're welcome to follow this in the translations or just ignore them. But he says, the great path, or we could say the great way, it's probably the Tao, of the Buddha is in its consummation, in its consummation, when it's thoroughly practiced, is passage to freedom, is actualization. causes is emancipation and realization. That passage to freedom is that life passes through life to freedom, and death too passes through death to freedom.

[06:51]

So this text is also about life and death. And as the Han says out front, life and death is the great matter. Therefore, Dogen says, there is leaving life and death, there is entering life and death. Both are the great path of consummation. This is the complete practice of the great way, letting go of birth and death and vitalizing birth and death, as cause says. How do we see, how do we fulfill, how do we appreciate our life fully in this life and our death fully in this death, or our death in this life and our life in death?

[07:58]

Actualization is life, life is actualization. When that actualization is taking place, it is without exception the complete actualization of life. It is the complete actualization of death. This pivotal working can cause life and cause death. So this pivotal working, the key also means a pivot. So pivotal working is a way of talking about this character key, complete pivotal working. at the precise moment of the actualization of this working. It is not necessarily great, not necessarily small, not all pervasive, not limited, not extensive, not brief. So when we hear complete, undivided, total, dynamic activity, we have ideas about that, but it's beyond those ideas. How is our sasana? How are we experiencing? This inhale, this exhale. So people sometimes think that the point of Zazen is not having thoughts.

[09:15]

This is a very common idea. If I can just get rid of all this thoughts and all these thinkings, that would be undivided activity. You know, our undivided activity is this whole pivotal working right in the middle of life and death, right in the middle of thoughts and feelings and sensations. And of course, sometimes no thoughts, no feelings. But it's not like that's the purpose. What is the whole working? What is the working, the functioning, the activity of wholeness? How do we feel this? How do we see this? How do we be this, period after period, step after step? So this life and death, this character for life also could be read as birth, so cause-release is birth and death.

[10:43]

But life and death, life and death, in each moment. Or life just completely life, death just completely death. The present life is in this working. This working is in the present life. Life is the manifestation of the whole works, and death is the manifestation of the whole works. And he has this example. Life is like when one rides in a boat. Though in this boat one works the sail, the rudder, and the pole, the boat carries one, and one is nothing without the boat. Riding in the boat, one even causes the boat to be a boat. One should meditate on this precise point. Life is like when one sits in a zendo.

[11:47]

Though in the zendo one, you know, works the bells, someone works the bells, someone, you know, there's the cushions, there's the incense, there's the light, Sitting in the zendo, each one of us causes the zendo to be a zendo. What is our relationship to this space, this world that we inhabit. We inhale the whole world, we exhale the whole world, each one of us at the same time. So before that, he says, there's nothing at all, not so much as one time or one phenomenon that is not together with life, with this life, even be it a single thing, a single mind, none is not together with life.

[13:20]

Anything we can think of, anything we can imagine, anything, even the things we can't imagine, are only there because we can't imagine them. What is our relationship to our experience and to the world? How are we connected with all of that? What is our role in that? How do we find our way to be undivided in our activity? Of course, we have various ways. So Cosmony was talking about this, talked about non-separation. We do create divisions. This is not just a function of, you know, maybe we could think about consumerist society and rationalist society and literalist thinking, but just our conceptualizing mind

[14:35]

language that involves subjects, verbs, and objects. You know, we have, we make divisions, we separate things. It's how we usually think. We separate life and death, of course. We separate action and non-action. There's activity and there's non-activity. So we think, when we're sitting still, that that stillness, and it's separate from activity. So then sometimes we get all upset about the activity in our mind, as if that's not stillness. How can we allow the whole working of undivided activity? We separate ourself from time. Oh, here I am, right now, right now, right now. There's no time. Tomorrow doesn't exist.

[15:38]

Yesterday doesn't exist. We separate life from death. We separate time from timeless. We separate practice from enlightenment. Enlightenment is somewhere out there on the horizon, and, oh, if I can just sit enough sashins, then maybe later, some other time. This is how we think. It's possible to think like that. And we also separate ourself, this person we have some story about on our seat, from ultimate self, from universal self, from Buddha, from all being. We think we are separate. So this idea of riding in a boat, we think that we're separate from the boat. But Tolkien says, riding in the boat, one causes the boat to be a boat.

[16:41]

At this very moment, the boat is the world, even the sky, the water, and the shore, all have become circumstances of the boat, unlike circumstances which are not the boat. For this reason, life is our causing to live. It is life's causing us to be ourselves. When riding in a boat, the mind and body, object and subject, are all workings of the boat. The whole earth and all of space are both workings of the boat. Everything is just the undivided activity of the boat. But we allow the boat to be the boat, or we could say the world.

[17:48]

We create our life, moment after moment. Of course, we all know our birthday and our age and all of that. But also, right now, we inhale, and here is our life. We exhale, and here is our life. Okay. So I think it's very natural that when we think about ourselves or when we think about our life, and maybe it's a function of our culture now, that there's segmentation, fragmentation.

[19:35]

Our culture, there are many different parts of our world. And we can separate them out and think that, you know. art is separate from spirituality, is separate from politics, is separate from, you know, and so forth. Separate from economics, you know, we can label different aspects of our life. There's this part of culture, there's music, and there's different categories of music. We make those distinctions and we identify with one section of something as opposed to another. How does the whole work? What is the whole works?

[20:38]

Can we feel the whole or wholeness working even in all the different fragments of our life. We compartmentalize our own life. There's our job, there's our Zen practice, there's our, you know, the various parts of our life. Sometimes we can feel they're all related. And of course, you know, it's possible to see them as separate. But what is this, where is this wholeness? Where is this completeness? So sashin, the word sashin means, one meaning of it is to gather the mind, to bring together everything. Mind just means everything. Mind doesn't mean intellect. In Japanese, the word for mind also means heart.

[21:50]

How do we gather everything together? It's not that we have to do something about it or figure it out or arrange it or whatever. But there's some function there. There's life and there's death. Zazen gives us this opportunity to just feel our wholeness. Okay. So Duggan says the whole earth and all space are in life and in death too.

[23:12]

We usually think of life and death as totally separate. Though they are not one, they are not different. Though they are not different, they are not identical. Though they are not identical, they are not multiple. Therefore, in life there are myriad phenomena of the appearance of the whole works. In death, too, there are myriad phenomena of the appearance of the whole works. There is also the manifestation of the whole works in what is neither life nor death. So this is, in some ways, this is just a description of reality.

[24:25]

In some ways, I feel like lurking beneath it is a practice instruction. But it's not exactly an instruction. It's like, OK, take it. There's wholeness here. How do we feel that? How do we engage that? How do we appreciate? celebrate and support and protect the wholeness of our life and death, and of everyone else's too. Because, of course, we, in appreciating our connection to the wholeness of everything, we appreciate each other's So I'm not sure what I want to say about this.

[25:42]

I'm just kind of trying to tell it, you know, and I'm going to keep doing that the next two days. But the whole works. How do we see the whole works in the sound of the bell, in the chanting service, in the reaching out of the spoon to serve the rice at lunch? Wholeness is functioning, is acting, is weaving together all of us. And that's not happening somewhere out there.

[26:45]

That's happening on your seat, in your body-mind, in your engagement. In the manifestation of the whole works, there is life and there is death. Therefore, the whole works of life and death must be like a person bending and straightening her arm. Must be like someone getting up the sound of the bell, or like someone asleep at night reaching back for their pillow. How do we express the whole works? Well, in some ways we're doing that. We cannot help but express this dynamic, undivided potential

[27:55]

How do we take it on? How do we appreciate this in our inhale and our exhale? In the fullness of our life and when it's time in the fullness of our death. In the fullness of our loved one's lives and in their deaths too. So this wholeness is what I personally most appreciate about Zazen. It's what Zazen gives me.

[29:01]

to help act in everything else that comes up, this sense of wholeness. But then it needs to be expressed, enacted, fulfilled, functioning. How does wholeness function in our life? And sometimes we don't see it. And that's maybe part of Zenki also. How do we, sasana is like a chance to reconnect with, well, that's what sasana means, again, to gather the mind, to reconnect with the heart. about this right now, and I'll somehow need to think of something else to say about it tomorrow and the next day. We'll have time for discussion this afternoon, but if anyone has an immediate response or comment, please feel free.

[30:22]

So that's time to let him breathe. and then you make what you can out of it without going to judge me. So thank you. It's still not perfect, but it's helpful. Yeah. And in this case, Yeah, neither translation is perfect, I think.

[31:46]

And I didn't try and do a translation myself. And I didn't even look at the original. And people who are fluent in Japanese or Chinese can't read Dogen and just read it. But I think he's pointing to something about the inner dynamic of Zazen and Sashin that beyond the words we can explore as we sit. in this working of wholeness, in this undivided activity, this dynamic activity of totality somehow. So yeah, having multiple interpretations is helpful.

[32:53]

So please enjoy your functioning on your seats and in your walking and in your chanting and in your eating or serving as we settle into this experience today. We'll close with the four bodhisattva vows.

[33:31]

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