I want to continue speaking this morning from this short writing from Dogen, from Shobo Genzo, Shobo Genzo's Zenki. I've given out two translations, one from Kaz Tanahashi, one from Tom Cleary. And I'm talking about this in terms of this practice of Sazen and Sashin we're doing this weekend. So just this word Zenki, want to come back to cause translates it as undivided activity. Tom Cleary, as the whole works. Zen, so this is also the name of my teacher, Tenshin Zenki, or Reb Anderson.

[01:02]

Zen is not the Zen of Zen Buddhism or Zazen. It's Zen that means wholeness or totality, or mataku in Japanese, complete, total, because it's undivided, Non, so he talks, when he was here talking about this last May, he talked about non-separation in various ways. And then the key is this very interesting character that means many things. It means activity, but it also means function, it means potential, it means the working, it means the works or the workings of things. It also refers, in context, you may refer to practitioners. It also means a loom that is weaving things.

[02:09]

So, but I've been, in terms of seshin, seshin means to gather together the mind. So, This has particularly relevant to our practice of Zazen and of Sashin. So let me say a little more about it. I want to then say a little bit from the text and then come back to Zen ki. But ki could also mean something like purpose. what is the function, what is the working of our, well, of everything, but in this case of our practice, of our life. So, Dogen talks about this in terms of life and death throughout this essay.

[03:13]

What is the function and purpose and working of our life and death? And how do we bring that together in this practice we're doing of sashaying, this practice of just sitting, being present? And I was thinking of Zen as a verb. So in Japanese, you can take any character and make it into a verb, or you can make the whole compound into a verb. So this total, this complete working, this holistic working, this total working, or functioning, or acting. Somehow as I was sitting I was seeing it as completeness working or functioning in each breath, in each moment, in our sitting here together.

[04:27]

So I've been talking about Sangha and somehow this is also a Sangha practice. We, together, completely are working. And I was thinking of a loom and how we sit, take another breath, and weave together our whole life and death, or the wholeness of our life and death weaves together in Zazen. The wholeness of our mind, of not just our personal mind, but the wholeness of mind, of awareness, completes itself in this activity.

[05:39]

So, to look at some of what Dogen says about this, the great path of the Buddhas, the great way of Buddhas is, in its consummation, is passage to freedom, is actualization, or is emancipation and realization, that passage to freedom is that life passes through life to freedom and death too passes through death to freedom. So it's not a matter of choosing life over death or vice versa. Therefore, there is leaving life and death, there is entering life and death. Both are the great path of consummation or such as the complete practice of the great way as causes it. There's abandoning life and death and crossing over life and death. This is the thorough practice of the Great Way.

[06:41]

So it says on the Han out here, life and death is the great matter. But we can talk about this, so talk, class talks about non-separation, this is life and death, this is also practice and enlightenment, self and universal self, time and the timeless. We talked about it yesterday in terms of non-action and action, so, or stillness and action, so that comes up maybe in Sashin, where we're sitting still and then how does that, relate to the activity of our ordinary, so-called ordinary, daily life with all its busyness. But there's no separation. So how do we see this completing itself, weaving itself together in wholeness? So this is something that, in a sense, we do together in Sashin.

[08:01]

In another sense, Holm does this with us. It's not something we have to figure out. It's not something we have to accomplish. This is the way things is. So he gives the example of the boat. 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. So sitting in Sashin, one causes Sashin to be Sashin. But seshin carries us. This applies to seshin, this applies to our whole life and death.

[09:05]

This applies to ultimate self, to the whole universe. So this is also the Soto dialectic of the universal and the particular, we are each part of wholeness, wholeness would not exist without each one of us. So even in a small intimate sasheen, each one of us is essential. It makes, each one of us makes the sasheen and vice versa. When riding in a boat, 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. We that are life, life that is we, are the same way. So he's saying the boat is the world, and the sky, the water, and the shore all have become circumstances of the boat.

[10:18]

So wholeness is working through each of us, all of us. What is our function? What is our purpose? So we each have some function in the boat. Dale is serving. Jerry is helping the Tenzo. We each have some place in wholeness. Wholeness is and the totality is expressed through each of us.

[11:29]

Another meaning of ki is opportunity. So we have the opportunity to be whole, and wholeness, or everything, provides us this opportunity. So just this word zenki keeps turning for me. And again, ki also means turning, or operating. It's an operation. It's something that's happening. It has all those meanings. And it's what wholeness does. or it's what does wholeness, or totality, or completeness, completion.

[13:02]

But it's also a completion that's not finished. It's not like death finishes life, or life finishes death. Life can also be read as birth. Death doesn't turn into birth, and birth doesn't turn into death. Each is complete as it is, and yet each period of Zazen has its own completeness. inhale has its own exhale, or each inhale is followed by exhale. So he quotes, in his essay, Dogen quotes Yuanwu, who is the commentator of the Blue Cliff Record. And it's interesting, just as a side point, there are places where Dogen severely criticizes Yuanwu, but here he quotes him as an example. So this, You know, when, in Zen, when one teacher makes some comment on another, we don't have to take it as a matter of ultimate principle.

[14:18]

Here he's using a quote from Yuan Wu as a, he's citing as an example, and he says that, he quotes Yuan Wu saying, in life the whole work appears, the whole works appears, in death the whole works appears, or as Klaus has it, birth is undivided activity, death is undivided activity. We don't have to choose life or death, each is complete, and each is working, undivided. To clarify and investigate these words, what you should investigate is, while the undivided activity of life has no beginning nor end and covers the entire earth and entire sky, it hinders neither life's undivided activity nor death's undivided activity. At the moment of death's undivided activity, while it covers the entire earth and the entire sky, it hinders neither death's undivided activity nor life's undivided activity.

[15:24]

So life does not hinder death, and death does not hinder life. So what is it that we're doing here at Sashain? Or what is it that a sasheen is doing here with us? How do we enjoy or appreciate or allow completeness to sasheen us? How do we together make sasheen, sasheen? Part of this is to see how this working is working. How is our functioning complete?

[16:31]

And completing us, each other. So there's an aspect of this that has to do with energy. How is our energy as we sit? And it's not exactly a matter of evaluating or grading our energy individually or collectively. We can notice as we're sitting, oh, I'm feeling sleepy, or I'm feeling dreamy, or my mind is very busy, or I'm feeling calm, or I'm feeling open and bright, or I'm feeling foggy. We can make those kinds of evaluations, I'm feeling high energy, low energy, whatever, I think the practice is just to notice that. We're not trying to reach some particular, part of what he's saying is the wholeness is there, whatever you think about your sasana.

[17:41]

This is wholeness, this function, this operation, this creation, this potentiality of the weaving together of sasheen. whatever your commentary about it, whatever your evaluation or judgment about it is, this is the energy of Sashin. This is the completeness and wholeness that is gathered together in Sashin. And so we may as well appreciate it. How do we feel grateful for the wholeness that is completing our functioning in each situation as the bell rings, as we get up for walking, as we sit down for another period?

[18:53]

And there's also this weaving together communal aspect. This could only be something that happens together. It's hard to sit sasheen by oneself. I've done it at times. It's been quite a while since I've got this song to sit with. It's been a while since I've tried to do an all-day sitting on my own, but I have done it. Some of you have done it, I think. No matter how many people are in the room, when we have some people sitting together, There's something that happens called gathering the mind. And it doesn't have to be done in an official Zen space like this, although part of what a formal Zen dot is designed to do is to create a conducive space for this, for Zenki, for gathering this function.

[20:17]

And part of what Zen priests are trained to do is to create that. So even in a space with huge ceilings, like at Rockefeller Chapel, Nyozan has managed to create a space where people can sit, like in a Zendo. Or we have had our second camping Sashin this year, and even outdoors it's possible to do Sashin together. even under difficult circumstances. But how is it that the whole works? So Dogen asks us to look at this. What is going on when totality is functioning? When completeness is completing? our particular potentialities, our particular functioning, weaving us together.

[21:25]

And maybe that happens even for individuals sitting. So in Theravada and Tibetan traditions, people sit more by themselves and do longer retreats. And probably this applies to that too. But anyway, here we are in Sashin in this form. And so how do we see this here? In the manifestation of the whole works there is life and there is death. So the whole works of life and death must be like a person bending and straightening their arm. Or like someone asleep at night searching, reaching back for their pillow. This is realization in vast wondrous light. I'm bouncing back and forth between the translations.

[22:37]

This has to do with our activity, our functioning, our, you know, and then I threw in the word purpose there, and that has some other different connotations, but I think it's partly relevant to what Dogen's talking about. It's the purpose of completeness itself. It's purposing completeness. It's creating and activating and realizing completeness in the partiality of our particular situation. In this sasana, in this period of zazen, there's the creation of wholeness, of totality. that depends on each one of us and that creates each one of us in this situation. at the moment of manifestation because it is completely activated by manifestation, one sees and understands that there is no manifestation before manifestation.

[24:20]

So here we are. However, prior to this manifestation is previous manifestation of the whole works. So the whole is working. Completeness is expressing itself before us and after us, but yet through us, depending on us. Although there is previous manifestation of the whole works, it does not block the present manifestation of the whole works. For this reason, such a vision and understanding vigorously appears." So again, this vigorously appears in one of the translations, or it can be manifested moment after moment. How do we give ourselves to activating wholeness to enjoying fullness.

[25:34]

Or, you know, even when we're, when we have some pain in our knees or our back or whatever, there's fullness there too. or when we're feeling tired or bored or whatever, you know. All of it is an expression of fullness. So beyond our ideas of what we think Sesshin should be, this fullness is right here. So this Zenki is, keeps turning. And it's complete. as it moves, as it turns, as it functions, as it operates. And so the word kiosk is used for machinery.

[26:49]

So there's this mechanism that's happening. But all of that's a lot of words, you know. The point is just to sit and take another breath and feel how it feels. And each one of us does that in our own way. But together, that's what makes a sheen.

[27:23]

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