Podcasts about genjokoan

Book study on Dōgen's "Genjokoan" given by Eran Junryu Vardi Roshi of Eiryu-ji Zen Center in Wyckoff, NJ, USA on 10/26/2025.

Senseis Monshin, Kathie Fischer, and Shinzan, together with Hoshi Senko, open Upaya's Fall Practice Period by welcoming participants from around the world into a month of deep study of Dogen's Genjokoan. “To study the way is […]

In this Fall Practice Period session, Senseis Kathie, Monshin, and Shinzan, with reflections from Hoshi Senko, open the study of Dogen's Bendowa and Genjokoan. They invite participants to encounter Dogen not as a distant master to be analyzed but […]

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk during Fall Practice Period at Upaya, Sensei Monshin explores the meaning of dharma position. Building from Dogen's Genjokoan, she explains dharma position as an expression of the inseparability of self and […]

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 10/05/25 - The opportunity our lives offer is simply to live—not in the past, nor the future, but now—and this requires a measure of both faith and appreciation for all that is present, right now. Rather than living in memory and recollection, or in our hopes and fears, Dogen's Genjokoan emphasizes that the dharma state of any phenomenon is just this, right now. - Fall 2025 Ango - Genjokoan Series of Talks - Part 6

Book study on Dōgen's "Genjokoan" given by Eran Junryu Vardi Roshi of Eiryu-ji Zen Center in Wyckoff, NJ, USA on 9/28/2025.

Ron Hogen Green, Sensei - ZMM - 9/28/25 - Manifesting absolute reality—awakened reality—in everyday life is Genjokoan. In this lively Dharma Encounter with Hogen Sensei, the awakened reality of everyday life is explored as our fundamental practice. Sensei says “true realization manifests as compassionate action in the world; that's the bottom line,” and asks that we each consider how we enter this ordinary, everyday actualization of compassion. (Dharma Encounter at the September 2025 Mountains and Rivers Sesshin)

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 9/27/25 - Zazen is a powerful practice for entering an intimate relationship with ourselves. Without adding anything extra, we have available at all times our true mind, our buddha nature, perfect and complete. But how to work with it skillfully? How to let go of all the suffering we carry, and re-create, moment by moment? Drawing from Dogen's Genjokoan, Shugen Roshi takes up the opportunity this radical intimacy offers. - Fall 2025 Ango - Genjokoan Series of Talks - Part 5

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 9/24/25 - Being devoted to the study of the self which Dogen outlines in Genjokoan is quite different than being self-centered. Rather, it means to take up wholeheartedly the practice of living into our true nature. Making this path real—bringing our understanding out of the realm of concept and abstraction—becomes the entryway to the joy and ease of practice-realization. In recognizing our deluded, karmic self, we are freed to realize the true self, our true nature. That's where Dogen is pointing. (Fall 2025 Ango - Genjokoan Series of Talks Part 4)

Book study on Dōgen's "Genjokoan" given by Eran Junryu Vardi Roshi of Eiryu-ji Zen Center in Wyckoff, NJ, USA on 9/21/2025.

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 9/7/25 - Becoming aware of our sense of self is central to understanding the True Self—the self of no-self. And with practice, we come to realize that the ten thousand things are none other than what we call “self.” In this talk, Shugen Roshi introduces Genjokoan, a fascicle of Dogen, which brings us face to face with the everyday reality of our lives. Our most important question then becomes: How do we live freely within this great truth, when all dharmas are Buddhadharma and nothing is left outside?

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 8/31/25 - Shugen Roshi introduces the theme of the MRO 90-day Fall Ango 2025 training period, "The Way of Everyday Life: Genjokoan."

Genjokoan can be found on page 34 of the Appamada chant book here: https://appamada.org/s/Appamada-Chant-Book.pdf. Guided meditation adapted from Henry Shukman's book, "Original Love."

"Fields are greener in their description than they are in their actual greenness." - Fernando Pessoa "Yes, we want to clarify the stories that are keeping us separate and maybe causing harm for ourselves and others. That doesn't mean that we don't need stories that support community that keep us in touch with ancestors that help us make meaning of the world. I think Pessoa is talking about the power of our descriptive faculty, our imagination to make meaning of greenfield that we experience. So I want to lift up both of those aspects of stories." "I started thinking about what is the power of community at this moment, when there are so many forces that are driving us to isolation and being siloed. I enter into a situation with my own description of "the field" in a community like this where we share an intention, and I can have that description of the field bounce up and open up to your descriptions of the field. Simultaneously in those moments, I am shown how I create my own world and I can feel like the suffering of my own grasping onto my idea of the field. There's also a relief and wonder in the realization that I'm involved intimately involved in the creation and expression of worlds. And then collectively, I can imagine there's a field of possibility that gets plugged into the context of a community like this. That feels really necessary and powerful at this moment." Texts referred to: Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet. Genjokoan text from Dogen Zenji Recorded at Millerton Zendo in Millerton NY on April 6, 2025. The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.' Thank you for your generosity!

2025-04-20 | Dharma Talk | Genjokoan | Joel Barna by Appamada

ADZG 1228 ADZG Sunday Morning Dharma Talk by Eishin Nancy Easton The post Genjokoan first appeared on Ancient Dragon Zen Gate.

BRINGING ORDER OUT OF CHAOSIt might be said that the function of the discriminating mind (S. citta), in the most general sense, is to render what is perceived as chaos into what may be perceived as order. Of course, this is not an original idea, and has an associated idea that chaos, as we perceive it, may be thought of as a higher level of order, one that is not accessible to our perception. This idea resonates in both the world of Zen and that of art and design thinking. One would have to speak of a relative degree of order versus a notion of absolute order. However chaotic reality may appear, it is following physical laws that suggest an underlying order that is simply not a respecter of persons, or of the sensibilities of humans. We must come into compliance with reality, rather than expect reality to conform to our expectations or preferences. This, I think, is the fundamental basis of the concept of the “Way” in Taoism, and an underpinning of Zen as it developed in China. However, the Way in Buddhism, as I understand it, is not a hypothesis or theory of objectified reality outside the observer, but exists only in complementary balance with the person. Our observation of perceived order also exhibits relative degrees, or a spectrum from one extreme to another. For example, our house may be a mess inside, but look orderly on the outside, unless we get evicted and our possessions are dumped on the street. If you peer into parked cars on any city street, they will tell you a story about the person who drives them, or lives in them. Some definitely have that lived-in look, while others are pristine, even sterile-seeming, as are some homes. If you have ever seen the French movie, “Mon Oncle,” or “my uncle.” you may remember its satirical take on the super-white, stainless steel interior, and the housewife's gloved approach to maintaining its spotless state. My best friend in high school lived in a home where the floors of the living rooms were covered with shag carpet, which was newly popular in the 1950s, but theirs was brilliant white. We had to remove our shoes to enter the house, which was peculiar to me at the time, but later became second nature after being exposed to the Japanese culture, beginning with the Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, in the 1960s. Sensei had us stand at the door with a basket of clean socks to hand to the barefoot hippies coming in off of Halsted Street. In his eyes, they must have appeared as complete barbarians. If you are in someone's home as a guest, you might take a peek in the medicine cabinet. There you will see an indication of the sense of order of your host's mind. (I have never done this, of course; it is very rude.) What is on the shelves, and where, and whether the medicines are outdated, may paint a portrait of how obsessive-compulsive — or happy-go-lucky — your friends may be. Bear in mind that for a couple living together, these issues become instantly, and infinitely, more complicated. Who does what and when, and who is responsible for the resulting mess, becomes entangled in the relationship. Master Dogen, who transplanted what is now called Soto Zen to 13th century Japan from his sojourn in China, used the word katto to identify entanglements, using the analogy of twining vines, like wisteria. This applies not just to the tyranny of possessions and environments, but to the subtle entanglements of relationships themselves. Other examples of refined order, from the human perspective, include such storage-and-retrieval systems as fishing tackle totes and sewing boxes, where the necessity for “a place for everything and everything in its place” determines the efficiency and effectiveness of the endeavor of actually fishing or sewing. I inherited an antique sewing box, with its many spools of colored threads and implements of sewing wonderfully arranged in stunning order, formerly in the control of a friend's grandmother. Somehow my son and daughter, under 5 years old at the time, got into it and turned order into chaos, probably in about 5 minutes, when the array of organization had likely developed over five years or more of grandma's life. There was no way I could put it back in order. Workshops are another example, where attention to the organization and design of the environment can begin to overwhelm the prospect of actually getting anything done. The project of organizing the process can distract our attention from doing the project itself. In the course of organizing my various studio and shop environments over time, I have developed what I call the “Island of Sanity” approach. It took me 50 years or so to learn that table tops are not for storage. I strive to keep the tables clear of any clutter, including tools, even during the process of working. “Clear the decks” is the trope. The “work,” the piece under construction, or a painting, is the only item that is allowed to occupy the table top. I have found that laying tools on the table means that when I need to move the work, the tools often get in the way. So I keep a side table as home for the tools. On the tool table, I keep the various tools in play in a neat array, rather than mindlessly piling them on top of each other. In the hurly-burly of executing a project, the tool table often becomes disorderly. I occasionally reorganize it quickly, so that the tools are side-by-side in a scannable row, not overlapping. This way I can quickly recognize and seize the particular tool I need when I need it. Others have refined these approaches. Allowing a relative degree of perceived chaos in the work environment seems to be a necessary evil. Otherwise, we may be driven to distraction by trying to improve the process, and never finishing the project. What is sometimes called “completion anxiety” may set in. As long as we are working on a project, but have not brought it to conclusion, it can remain forever perfect in our mind's eye. When it is finished, it is just what it is, warts and all: imperfect. Everything is somewhat imperfect; or at best, relatively perfect. In my case, maintaining islands of sanity creates the proper balance for getting things done, with minimal stress on the mind and body. What the particular balance amounts to, and what works best for the individual, seems to be a personal trait. Some people can work efficiently in a virtual pile of clutter; others are highly dependent on a visually uncluttered workspace. Einstein's office — which is preserved intact even today, as a memorial, just as he left it — is said to be an exceptional example of “meaningful clutter.” Whether yours is meaningful, or not, is up to you to determine. Clutter control is a recognized discipline, a known issue in interior design of environments, whether working or living spaces, public or private. The “rising tide of clutter” can overwhelm any space. Just tune into one of the current spate of television shows on hoarding, to see some of the worst-case scenarios. Contrast becomes important in being able to see the shape of a tool, to state another obvious point. Vertical walls for storing tools often consist of white pegboard for this reason. I have learned that I lose my eyeglasses less often if I remember not to place them on a dark surface, into which the dark frames blend and disappear. The inverse is true when retrieving a light-colored object. Dark backgrounds are called for. Along with many of my contemporaries, In the 1960s I experimented with so-called psychedelic or psychotropic drugs. One memorable experience found me sitting in my basement shop, trying in vain to sort various items of hardware into appropriate category designations for storage and retrieval. All items share many characteristics in common with others, and it actually was not clear which were the priorities. For example, many fasteners (of which there are many kinds) may be made of metal, and so “go together,” but are designed to fasten many different materials, such as wood, as opposed to metal. In the case of fasteners, we end up with so many leftover screws, nuts and bolts, et cetera, from our projects, that it becomes a more-and-more time-consuming process just to keep what you may never use in some kind of order. I have seen everything from homemade systems utilizing salvaged glass jars, lids attached to the underside of shelves, allowing the jar to be unscrewed with one hand; to endless aisles suffering from over-choice, and designed systems for storing virtually endless categories, sizes and types of fasteners, in hardware and big-box stores. The world is really too much with us, in these categories. An example from retail, that might not be obvious to the customer, but is well known to the insiders, entails the arrays of shoes at your local shoe store. The stock is usually stored in back, where the various sizes of a given style can be efficiently stacked and retrieved in labeled shoe boxes. The storefront, by contrast, displays all the shoes in their best light, putting our best foot forward, literally. Usually the smaller sizes are displayed, not only because they take less room, but because they are usually more aesthetically pleasing than bigger sizes of the same style and color, vestiges of ancient foot-binding in the East. A little-known fact is that the array has the appearance of more styles and colors than are actually in stock, because the merchandisers display them by style, by color and other attributes: the same shoe will appear in two or more displays throughout the store. As a boy, I used to wonder why my father had so many pairs of shoes in his closet, when I had only one or two. Now I have more shoes than he did, accumulated over time, because the size of my feet stopped changing, and I found different needs, or lack of need, for different types and styles of footwear. Imelda Marcus is the poster girl for this category of disorder, with her 3,000 pairs of shoes. Produce in a grocery store is another example. People generally like to pick over produce, selecting the best ones, leaving the fruits or vegetables that are less appealing in looks, apparent freshness, et cetera. For this reason, pre-packaged produce is a harder sell. This is why we see monstrous stacks of open produce in brightly-lighted bins, in most modern food supermarkets. Which, by the way, are destabilized when 10% are removed. To see, a bit more clearly, how fundamental the process of sorting is to the basic function of perceived order — including storing and retrieving things — try to imagine a contrarian approach, such as displaying books by color, say, or clothing grouped by fabric, rather than size or style. I have witnessed the tendency to over-organize — or organize by inappropriate groupings — in my own efforts to achieve order, in striving to make sense of my environment. One example is that I tend to group and store like things together, such as putting any and all writing pens in the same place. Or I may do the same with my collection of eyeglasses, which has accumulated over time through misplacing, replacing, and rediscovering spectacles. Problem is, I need a writing pen at different places at different times, yet I do not want to have endless writing pens scattered all over the place. I know people who collect fine writing pens, and wonder if it amounts to a compulsion, or a stubborn resistance to the decline of handwriting, in favor of the word processor — with which, incidentally, I am writing this essay, from handwritten notes scrabbled on various sheets of notebook paper, noted when I was away from my desktop. We tend to blame linear thinking as the main culprit behind chaos, and all of this need for — and inability to find, or sustain — order. When we begin to consider that everything we regard as belonging to one category actually belongs to many others — perhaps an infinity of categories, if we parse it finely enough — a kind of insanity or cognitive dissonance, a lack of mental order — begins to come into play. This is, in Zen, or Taoism, the point at which we begin to “confront the mystery,” from the Tao te Ching: Caught by desire, we see only the manifestations;Free from desire, we confront the Mystery. “The one and the many” are indeed like the yen and yang of our discriminating mind. That phenomena and noumenon exist in complementary embrace, or the endless dance of becoming, is not immediately evident, when we are just trying to get through the day. This is why, and how, it becomes important to take a break, and to sit on it for a while. Hopefully, when we stop striving, the immanent order of emptiness underlying the alienating appearance of form will become manifest. But as Master Dogen mentions in Genjokoan, don't look for it to appear in your perception: Do not suppose that what you realize becomes your knowledge, or is grasped by your consciousness; although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent. The inconceivable may appear as chaos; the underlying order may not be apparent. Chaos may be embraced as a higher form of order, or an elevated degree of complexity, in which any discernible pattern is elusive; while perceived patterns of order may be similarly interpreted as artificially lower levels of chaos, or higher degrees of superficial simplicity. Upon closer examination, perceived simplicity devolves into the complexity of chaos, e.g. on the subatomic or quantum level; whereas chaotic complexity gives way to serene simplicity. “All things are like this,” to borrow another vintage Dogen-ism; the vacillation is built-in, from duality to nonduality and back. Enjoy the ride.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

This dharma talk was given by the Reverend Jay Rinsen Weik Roshi at the Buddhist Temple of Toledo on March 5th, 2023. In this talk Rinsen Roshi discusses Dogen's Genjokoan--zen and the creative process (in tribute to Buddhist jazz musician Wayne Shorter). If you would like to learn more about the Buddhist Temple of Toledo or to make a donation in support of this podcast please visit buddhisttempleoftoledo.org.

This is the sixth (and last) in our monthly series based on the modernized translation of the Genjo Koan, from Jundo's book "The Zen Master's Dance" A Guide to Understanding Dōgen and Who You Are in the Universe. Today a message very appropriate for a good life in this New Year and every day ... Further reading and discussion for this talk are available on the Treeleaf forum: OUR MONTHLY 4-hour Treeleaf ZAZENKAI - A Happy New Year Genjo!!

Rev. Chikyo Ewan Magie's Fall 2023 class on Dogen's Genjokoan (class 6 of 6)

Rev. Chikyo Ewan Magie's Fall 2023 class on Dogen's Genjokoan (class 5 of 6)

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, November 4th 2023 by Karen Sundheim.

Rev. Chikyo Ewan Magie's Fall 2023 class on Dogen's Genjokoan (class 4 of 6)

Rev. Chikyo Ewan Magie's Fall 2023 class on Dogen's Genjokoan (class 1 of 6)

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, October 21st 2023 by Hannah Meara.

Rev. Chikyo Ewan Magie's Fall 2023 class on Dogen's Genjokoan (class 2 of 6)

Rev. Chikyo Ewan Magie's Fall 2023 class on Dogen's Genjokoan (class 1 of 6)

Continuing with our discussion of various turning points in living the Zen life, we will examine the Buddhist tradition of “leaving home” to become a mendicant, with its unexamined but intrinsic root question of what, exactly, we mean by “home.” The monastic ideal of “leaving home” is repeatedly praised by Master Dogen in the ordination ceremony known, in Japanese, as “Shukke Tokudo” — which translates as something like “leaving home, sharing the dharma.” In lay householder practice, we do not literally leave home, of course, other than for the occasional extended retreat, or sesshin. But we interpret the meaning as deeply significant, even to the householder. Our true home turns out to be unrelated to geography, or any of the other relative circumstances of existence.We might also question the reality of home-leaving in the life of monastics, as Master Dogen mentions regarding monks of his time (see Shobogenzo Zuimonki). He suggests that some cannot really relinquish their attachment to family, and all that it entails, for the sake of Zen. But it seems a near-prerequisite in order to “hear the true Dharma,” as he puts it in Dogen's Vow (Eiheikosohotsuganmon).Other monks, who are able to relinquish family and home, are not able to let go of their attachment to their body, and good health. They are not willing to put their life on the line, which is, after all, understandable. In this same poem, he quotes Ch'an Master Lungya: “In this life save the body; it is the fruit of many lives.” I take his point to be that an obsession with living a normal life as the scion of a family lineage, at the expense of Zen practice, is ultimately doomed to failure. As a famous analogy has it, family will not accompany you in death. Like other aspects of your life, including health and wellbeing, they will only go as far as the grave. Aging, sickness and death, the three major marks of existence, according to Buddhism, cannot be avoided in the long run. And Zen takes the long view.But the third and most difficult level of monastic non-attachment pointed out by Dogen Zenji, is clinging to our own ideas and opinions, especially regarding all the above. Even monks who can realize the first two levels have difficulty with this last, unable to relinquish, or even to recognize, their erroneous worldview. The monk who can do this most difficult thing has the best chance of waking up during this lifetime. Highest Level of PracticeThis brings up an interesting point, a seeming contradiction, that Dogen does not go into. Achieving this last bit of letting go — of the “ties that bind” — implies letting go of our viewpoints. Including, most notably, those regarding the prior two levels — forgoing a normal lay life of family and friends, marriage, social status, and so on; and further, forsaking our attachment to our own health and, ultimately, our very life. In other words, if we truly let go of all of our own opinions, this would necessarily include any preconceptions we harbor — such as that the most advanced monk or nun is necessarily detached from family and body. Not necessarily. In Zen, we give up our opinions of all such kinds of attachment. It is, after all, natural to be attached to both the body and our family; the distinction lies in the degree to which we are attached to them. This is the heart of the Middle Way.A clear example of this principle is found in pain. We experience some pain in meditation. But we do not immediately react, doing something to make it stop right now. We sink into it a bit more than we usually would, going beyond our comfort zone. In doing so, we have an opportunity to truly experience the “pain” for what it really is. Thus, we may discover that it is not so bad. Although even if we thought that the more extreme dictates of practice may turn out to be life-threatening, we should not shrink from it, according to Dogen. Nothing ventured, nothing gained on a scalable spectrum. Unless we are ale to set aside our preconception that pain = bad, we cannot learn from the experience. This principle then applies to all of our aversions to testy circumstances in life. Aversion is simply the flip side of attachment. Master Dogen's assessment of the levels of commitment of various monks ends with the rare case of one who is able to sunder ties to family, health and life; and, finally, to one's own worldview. This is the highest and truest form of liberation from the random, but seemingly determinative, causes and conditions of our present human birth. But since the last test entails relinquishment of our personal opinion of “all the above,” this should lead to the conclusion that the life of the lay householder is not all that distinct from that of the mendicant monk or nun, at least in any way that really matters in the context of the Great Matter. It is a case of the well-known “distinction without a difference.” If the circumstances of one's lifestyle are only that — circumstance — then by definition, they are not central to living the Zen life.Following on this reasoning, we might propose that the lay person — who is able to relinquish all such opinions, and “succeed to the wisdom of the buddhas” (see Fukanzazengi) — represents the highest possible level of realization. This may explain why it is, in the history of Buddhism and Zen, that such lay persons as Vimalakirti, Emperor Ashoka, Layman Pang, and countless others, are so admired. In spite of having their plates full, constrained by domestic and even governmental duties, they were able to gain profound insight into the Dharma, without renouncing their ordinary life. Not to mention certain monks who were known to flout the norms of monastic life. Of course, you cannot tell the Zen book by its cover, so it is best to appraise only your own practice, and not to judge others, from outward appearances. Contemporary Lay PracticeContemporary lay practice in America is surely vastly different from what it was, and is, in the countries of origin, today as well as in ancient times. My limited understanding suggests that most lay householders practiced dana — generosity — by supporting the monks and nuns of the local orders with offerings of food and material support, including currency and other forms of fungible goods such as metals and fabrics. The community was apparently engaged in other, interactive ways as well. Young children would be sent to the temples and monasteries for training, which probably amounted to finishing schools, including some study of Buddhism. The early monasteries of the East probably evolved into the institutions of higher learning, universities, as they did in the Middle East and in the West, in Europe, for example. But the actual practice of Zen meditation, specifically, was probably not widespread, even in China and Japan. It was, and is, primarily the purview of the monastics Today, however — I think perhaps especially in North and South America, as well as in Western Europe — lay practitioners generally equate Zen practice with meditation. Particularly in the USA, we tend to be do-it-yourselfers. We are not satisfied with second-hand information, and look to direct experience as having its own value, in most everything we do. Thus, Zen training is closely related to apprentice modes of professional training, as in a craft or guild. A novice becomes an apprentice to a master; and eventually a journeyman; finally certified as a master herself. But we must be careful about this idea of becoming a “Zen Master.” We do not master Zen — Zen master us. But only if we allow it. As Master Dogen reminds us in the Genjokoan excerpt from Bendowa, meaning “a talk about the Way,” the first fascicle from his master compilation, Shobogenzo: When buddhas are truly buddhas they do not necessarily notice that they are buddhas. If spiritual awakening is simply awakening to reality, it would not necessarily include taking on a new self-identity as a “buddha.” It might, however, include seeing oneself, as well as others, in a somewhat different light. “Your body and mind, as well as the body and mind of others, drop away” as Dogen assures us in the same teaching. Living the Zen Life TodayWhile we may admire, and hope to emulate, the life of a monk or nun, I believe we in America do not have enough grounding in the reality of that choice, nor in the cultures of the countries of origin, in which Buddhism and Zen originally arose. The choices we have today, in terms of maintaining Zen practice in the midst of life, are surely very different from those of ancient India, for example. Joining the Order meant leaving behind the conventional trappings of society, including family name and caste position, wealth, and so on, though some of Buddha's top disciples seem to have been his blood relatives. The original Order at first included men only, but even during Buddha's lifetime, it expanded to include women. From what I have gathered, any adult from any level of the caste system of the time could join, as long as they were willing to forego the privilege and provenance of their upbringing. This, it seems to me, had to do with renouncing the self, in the conventional sense.This tradition is what Master Dogen, some 1300 years later, referred to as “leaving home,” in laudatory language. Today, we join the community, or Sangha — and can even become ordained as a priest — without literally leaving home in the obvious, outer sense of the phrase. However, when we undergo Shukke Tokudo, lay ordination as a novice priest, the implication is that we leave our ostensible home, in order to find our true home, in universal homelessness.Our True Home: HomelessnessThis homelessness is considered the original, or natural, way of being, and has nothing to do with where we were born, or where we currently dwell, in the geographic sense. Circumstances of our birth, as well as our growing up, our livelihood, and our eventual death, are just that: circumstantial. They are not central to our being, though they may play an inordinate role in shaping our worldview; and, indeed, whether or not we are ever even exposed to the Dharma.This human birth is considered rare in Buddhism, though with nine billion and counting (when I originally wrote this, it was seven billion), it may appear to be so common as to threaten the very survival of the species. By comparison to other life forms, such as insects, we are not even close to predominance on the planet, as measured in biomass. But the disproportionate effect that we as human beings have on the environment amounts to a crisis. We may want to broaden our scope from considerations of our own, personal mortality, to embrace the possibility of extinction of the entire species. There is no greater form of homelessness than to become extinct. ASZC & STO as Collaborative Community Each month, during our Second Sunday Sangha lunch and dialog at ASZC, we discuss issues of how we as individuals can join in the efforts of promoting true community, without compromising our own personal lives as householders and lay Zen people. Matsuoka Roshi predicted, and I concur, that the rebirth of Zen would be seen in America, and that its propagation would be primarily in the form of lay householder practice. He would often remark that “Zen is always contemporary.” That is, we don't have to try too hard to make it contemporary.We have just passed the sixth year anniversary of what might be considered one of the all-time great failures of community, that seen in Charlottesville, Virginia. It recalled to mind the greatest international example of decline of community in Germany, Italy, and later, Japan, which led to WWII. But Charlottesville is only a blip on the screen of the ongoing series of catastrophes, both natural and human, that have plagued the human community since the beginning of recorded history. The latest being the hell on Earth that is Ukraine, courtesy of the Putin regime in Russia. Any serious student of history is not at all surprised by the daily atrocities that we witness on the news. This is human nature in full flower. It is why we aspire to buddha-nature, instead.Now we are in the throes of adolescence, in the growth of the Zen community in America. That there is a lot of confusion wreaked upon this process is to be expected, owing both to quirks of contemporary Western society, and the persistence of myths surrounding the origins of Zen practice in the seminal communities in India, China, Korea, Japan, and the far East. Most of the confusion arises, I think, from the supposed contrasts and apparent contradictions between traditional monastic, and contemporary lay householder, lifestyles. So, as if we need one more thing to worry about, we do not want to become attached to the propagation of Zen as yet another preconceived project in its own right. We are privileged to be exposed to the Dharma, in the most humble sense of the term, and not merely by dint of circumstances of our birth, the source of most social privilege. Let us not miss this opportunity to join with the Zen community, and to serve its members in true collaboration. It is well within our enlightened self-interest to do so.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Rev. Chikyo Ewan Magie's introduction to his Fall 2023 class on Dogen's Genjokoan 

In the last segment of UnMind, we touched on the typically fraught turning points in normal life of changing jobs, going through divorce, and becoming empty-nesters when and if the kids finally move out. And if they don't move back in again. They say you should write what you know, so I am living up to that dictum. In this installment we will touch on the traditional “marks” of dukkha: sickness, aging and death, and then turn to the subject of turning points in zazen itself. It is important that as we experience these pivot points in our practice, that we resist the temptation to interpret them negatively, as evidence of failure, and that we persist through thick and thin, assuming and accepting that we are no more in control of the progress of our meditation than we are in control of the pilgrim's progress of our lives. Zen, and zazen, work on subtle and subliminal levels, beyond our control. We should take the advice of the third patriarch in China, and “trust in Mind.” In closing the last passage, we mentioned that the various time-of-life changes that we all go through, if we live long enough, are generally exploited in the service of selling ever-more narrow-niche categories of products and services, including ever-increasing scams inflicted on the unwary. Sickness & DrugsIf you still watch the news on television, you belong to an ever-shrinking segment of the population, and can see this process in extreme. Commercials hawking every kind of cure for every imaginable disorder of body and mind, some truly unimaginable. The firehose of drugs coming out of Big Pharma's pipeline is overwhelming, ostensibly to treat an ever-expanding cascade of illnesses of the aged and infirm, who are typically shown in highly affluent situations, joyfully engaging in cool, strenuous activities in luxurious settings. Each new wonder drug comes with an endless list of side-effects that make the cure sound worse than the illness. It leaves me wondering what they are going to do, when they finally run out of names for the next generation of cure-alls. Expect to see companion drugs designed to treat the endless litany of side-effects. According to a Zen student who works in the industry, and who just happens to be a PhD neuroscientist, most of the new drugs are actually old drugs, in which a single atom of the molecule may have been tweaked, yielding the minimum legal requirement for calling it new. So much for claims of return on investment for multi-million dollar research. Aging & DeathSpeaking of aging, most of the turning-points that we associate with time-of-life — and other transitions in the normal process of “living la vida loca” — are basically attributable to aging. If we did not age, many of these passages would be impossible. Or at least, more of a choice on our part. Death may be the penultimate turning-point in aging. That's right, not the ultimate, but next to it. There is yet another, final turning point, even after death. It is called rebirth. Or its earlier version, reincarnation. In any case, something comes after death. As with divorce, it is tempting to say that if you are against death, don't get born in the first place. Birth is, after all, the leading cause of death. Birth is, we might say, an indeterminate turning-point. What comes after birth depends upon you. In one of the most startling developments regarding cultural coping strategies for these turning-points, I recently came across a news article entitled “Putting the fun in funerals.” I am not making this up. Because you can't make this stuff up. In his teaching titled Genjokoan, which translates something like, “actualizing the fundamental point,” and which seems to touch on nearly everything in life, Master Dogen weighs in on the nature of birth and death, in the process refuting reincarnation: Just as firewood does not return to firewood after it is ash you do not return to birth after deathThis being so, it is an established way in buddha-dharma to deny that birth turns into deathAccordingly birth is understood as no-birthIt is an unshakeable teaching in Buddha's discourse that death does not turn into birthAccordingly death is understood as no-deathBirth is an expression complete this momentDeath is an expression complete this moment Then, with his usual default to concrete examples from the world of Nature: They are like winter and spring You do not call winter the beginning of springNor summer the end of spring Thank you Dogen, for clearing that up. I don't pretend to understand this fully, but then Master Dogen himself does not claim to understand it. He merely lays it out as it is, take it or leave it. Interesting to contemplate that birth does not turn into death: Hallelujah! But wait a minute; death also does not turn into birth. What does that do to our aforementioned concept of rebirth? As usual for vintage Dogen, after he bludgeons us with an uncomfortable truth, he turns to Nature to soften the blow. Some of us, however, would petulantly argue that winter is, indeed, the beginning of spring, and summer its end. The monkey mind is stubborn in all seasons. I find it a particularly compelling expression of Dogen's understanding that he refers to both birth and death as “an expression complete this moment.” It begs the question, “An expression of what?” An expression of lifewould seem the logical answer, but Master Dogen's worldview does not depend upon simple logic. Turning Points in Zen MeditationSpeaking of Dogen, we owe him — big-time — for the point when each of us turned to Zen. If he had not made zazen his cause célébre, we would probably still be smudging ourselves with smoke, engaging in Shamanistic shenanigans, hoping for some kind of revelation. The turning points in zazen are too many to catalog. The Ox-herding Pictures touch on eight or ten of the main ones. I want to mention just a couple that come up frequently. I recognize that you, like me, are not 100% responsible for your short attention span, or your attenuated threshold of patience. Especially if you are in the midst of a turning-point of your own, at the moment. First is comfort-level. To those of you struggling with a critical turning-point in your life — or just the aches and pains, not to mention anxiety, confusion, and generalized angst that can sometimes accompany zazen, and not only at the beginning — it may be cold comfort, but zazen is supposed to be the “comfortable way.” I think the most reasonable rationale for this assertion is that any and every other way of meditation you may take up is at least as uncomfortable, in the long run, at least. It has been my experience, and is my testimony, that there is a turning-point in zazen that comes about, when the posture does actually become comfortable. I can also assure you that it becomes comfortable not only in the physical sense, but that the nattering nabob of the monkey mind finally wears itself out, like a kitten or a puppy dog, and lies down to take a nap. Mental and emotional comfort ensue. Of course, your results may vary, especially with any significant change in your circumstances. That pesky turning-point, again. Eventually, you may even become socially comfortable with zazen. That is, even though your spouse and other family members may not practice Zen, or even bother to understand it; and even though your in-laws insist on making a wedge issue of your devotion to Zen, this is okay with you. You no longer feel the need to explain, let alone to apologize, for doing zazen. Of course, this turning-point may precipitate a turning-point in your relations to the others mentioned. But you may find that you are comfortable with that, too. Another is the plateau effect. After practicing for some time, even over many years, it may begin to dawn on you that it seems that nothing is happening in your meditation any more. Curiouser and curiouser, interesting things that used to pop up from time to time — in the form of creative ideas; resolution of a nagging problem; or cool sensation, vision, or hearing experiences — just aren't happening. It seems clear that Zen isn't working, or else you are not doing it right. You have flat-lined, plateaued. Interestingly enough, Matsuoka Roshi mentioned this, and introduced me to a new Japanese word: cho-da. He said it means a “fall up.” You go along for some time, practicing your little heart out, but are getting nowhere. Nothing seems to be happening. Then, one day, if only you do not give up, you go through a cho-da. You fall up! It may be a small cho-da; it may be a large cho-da. But, you fall up — to the next plateau. A plateau is, by definition, flat. So, once again, just when you thought it was getting good, nothing happening. The good news is you never go back. The bad news is that the plateaus just keep coming. No one knows how many there are. Traditionally, there are said to be three major barriers in Zen. The first is physical, getting beyond your comfort zone to true comfort. The second is said to be sleep. Once you are cozy and comfortable in zazen, naturally, sleep would raise its ugly head. I have not heard what the third barrier is, but I suspect that it would involve some kind of plateau. Perhaps it is simply self-doubt. Matsuoka Roshi pointed out that by far the greatest cohort of Westerners who engage in Zen meditation are those who give up too soon. So if you see yourself in any of these pictures, welcome to the club. If you are uncomfortable in zazen, welcome to that club. If you are plateauing, welcome to the flatliners club. Zen is the most exclusive club in the world. But it is all-inclusive. The only dues it demands of you is everything you have. But the payback is huge. What else can you do that will give you your whole life back? as Matsuoka-Roshi would often ask.

In the last several series of the UnMind podcast, we have been exploring some ways of intentionally bringing Zen practice to bear on various situations and circumstances of daily life in America. By extension these might apply anywhere on the globe today, where revolutionary changes in technology and exploding population growth have taken hold. Again, as Matsuoka Roshi would often say, “Civilization conquers us.” In navigating the deeper waters of Buddhism, this world — including so-called “civilization” — is sometimes referred to as the “Ocean of Samsara.” Samsara is likewise referred to as the “Saha world of Patience,” in that it tries our patience — unrelentingly, and on a daily basis. Just when things seem to be going swimmingly, “Someone is always coming along to take the joy out of life,” as Grandma Nelly would often say. “Saha” is defined on Wikipedia as: It is the place where both good and evil manifests and where beings must exercise patience and endurance (kṣānti). Buddha likened his Dharma teachings to a raft, one that we ride — read: “cling to for dear life!” — sailing across the ocean of Samsara to the “other shore,” Nirvana. There are various turning points in the process of navigating the roiling waters — some positive, some negative — as with everything else in life. Whether they appear as positive or negative is largely a matter of interpretation, of course. The famous Ox-Herding Pictures illustrate various turning points on the Path, generalized to fit most anyone's journey into what I call “The Original Frontier,” the title of my first book on Zen. By the original frontier I mean to point to the frontier of mind, itself. This is the frontier that Shakyamuni Buddha discovered, and entered, some 2500 years ago. It beckons to us still, today. Perhaps the first turning-point in the process of spiritual awakening precedes discovering the hoof-prints of the ox, the first of the ten illustrations. These marks are sometimes interpreted as indicating one's first inkling of the existence of the teaching, or buddha-dharma. The hoofprints resemble brush strokes, the obvious analogy being to the written record, which consisted of scrolls of painted calligraphy in ink in those times. Translation into today's printed book format comprises the medium by which most of us first stumble across buddha-dharma. However, something else — a prior turning-point— has to precede this event. In order to begin the quest for enlightenment, one has to feel that something is missing in their life. Otherwise, why would you even be looking? Master Dogen touches on this in his tract called Genjokoan (“actualizing the fundamental point”): When you first seek dharma you imagine that you are far away from its environsBut dharma is already correctly transmitted you are immediately your original self We are blithely skipping along with our everyday life, fat and happy, when one day it occurs to us: Is that all there is? “What's it all about, Alfie?” However normal our circumstances may seem at the time, and however rich and full our life may appear, there seems to be something that is not quite right, something missing. Matsuoka Roshi emphasized this as the source of our anxiety, uncertainty, and the very unsatisfactoriness of Buddhism's definition of dukkha, or suffering. Everyone feels this dis-ease, and some eventually come to Zen, to find what is missing. Other turning points in life can precipitate a crisis of confidence, one which drives us to Zen in the first place, or makes us question whether Zen is really right for us. Or whether it works at all, for anyone. Let's take a brief look at a few of the more obvious turning-points that come up with some frequency in life. These are FAQs brought up in private interview (J. dokusan) or practice discussion, from time to time. Perhaps you may see yourself in one of these pictures. Changing JobsOne of the most stressful turning-points that many people face today, and with ever-increasing frequency, is the need to change jobs. This may come about through a personal decision, or one made by one's employer. Or one's partner may receive an offer they cannot refuse, but it requires moving to another part of the world. In any case, the resultant demand for engaging in a job search, interviewing, and starting the new job, can be fraught and disruptive. Some worry that they can not afford to continue their Zen practice during the transition, either from considerations of availability of time, or from a financial perspective, or both, as a supporting member of the Zen community. These judgments may not be true, or fully thought through, but the pressure feels very real at the time. Zen practice — at home, or in a community — should not really be considered as necessitating an expense of either time or money, certainly not an expensive proposition. Zen is about the middle way between extremes, all about finding and maintaining balance in all things. In this sense, Zen is free. And portable. When going through a job change, or any other stressful turning-point, you may need Zen meditation more than ever. It will help you to make the right choices and decisions, if you allow it. When you get back on your feet, and find yourself in a more stable position — financially and otherwise — there will be plenty of time and wherewithal to support your sangha, and your teacher. You really cannot afford not to continue practicing Zen, and even more so when you are in dire straits. “Zen will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no Zen.” (With apologies to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.) DivorceDivorce, along with its true antecedents — unrequited love, unfaithfulness, or irreconcilable differences — is an even bigger bugaboo in today's society than losing your job. Though you might not think so, based on the treatment of divorce in pop media. It is often the theme of comedy; the butt of alimony jokes; a target of shadenfreude; and, in some recently publicized cases, even celebrated — with ceremonies akin to a wedding. Divorce often accompanies, or triggers, a change in employment and residential status as well. They say “bad things come in threes.” It is tempting to suggest that, if you are against divorce, just don't get married in the first place. This may sound less crass, and may make more sense, in the context of the life of monastics. But we do not pretend to be Zen monks or nuns. They surely have their critical turning-points as well. Householders may just have a lot more of them on a daily basis, especially given the complex society of today. I have been divorced once in my short life, and it is no fun. But the situation that led to the divorce was no bed of roses, either. Whatever the circumstances, divorce is definitely a turning-point. Whether it is “for better or worse” (a resonance on the wedding vows), it is, again, your call. If both sides are better off afterwards — as Buddha is said to have said about a “just war” — it may be considered a just divorce. Of course, there are always more than two sides to the dispute. Children often end up as pawns in the game, suffering even more short-term pain and long-term consequences than their parents do. Zen meditation is not a panacea, but can help to adjust to the new reality, even in these dire straits. Empty NestersSpeaking of parenting, there comes a time-of-life phase called “empty-nester,” at which point the rugrats are finally, and permanently (or so we hope) kicked out of the nest. Sometimes divorce follows on the heels of this exodus, and not coincidentally. The parents may keep the failed marriage together long past its shelf life, “for the sake of the children.” They may have decided to have children to “save the marriage” in the first place. In the context of professional market research, based on sociology, I suppose, there are various such “time-of-life” categories, tracing the normal flow of maturation, through biological and culturally-determined changes, from womb to tomb. Like most other models from the soft sciences, these are employed mainly to structure the marketing of goods and services. In the next episode of UnMind we will continue looking at turning points in our life, and how our practice of Zen meditation may help ease the transitions, and mitigate the sense of loss, as we move through the inevitable phases of “time-of-life.” As we witness the evolution of our own life, the evidence of the centrality of the teachings of Buddhism and Zen becomes ever more apparent, and not at all as pessimistic as they may have first appeared to us. The inevitability of aging, sickness and death, interpreted as negative developments in life, is accompanied by an increasing appreciation of their meaning and significance, and the importance of what we do with the opportunity. The good fortune of having been exposed to the Dharma and thereby being enabled to practice Zen and zazen in the context of the passing of time, is the real treasure of the Three Treasures. Please continue in your pursuit of Zen, no matter what stage of life you may be in.

This time, we will be looking at passages of Genjokoan based on the modernized translation from 'THE ZEN MASTER'S DANCE A Guide to Understanding Dōgen and Who You Are in the Universe' in light of our Jukai (Undertaking the Precepts) and Ango (Peaceful Abiding) Season ... Further reading and discussion for this talk are available on the Treeleaf forum: OUR MONTHLY 4-hour Treeleaf ZAZENKAI - Commencing JUKAI & ANGO!

THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO In one of the recent segments of this podcast, titled “What if This is Hell?” I indulged a “what if” conjecture, speculating that this earthly life may not be some kind of test, as many religions conceive of it — wherein those who pass the test go to their reward in heaven, while those who fail are condemned to an eternity in hell — but that this level of existence, if there are levels, may actually be Hell itself, with a capital “H”. I then explored the implications of that supposition. In the last segment, titled “Change the World,” I carried the thread a bit further, issuing a challenge to consider: What would you actually do, if you had the power to change the world? Where would you begin? Unfortunately, these days, everything is subject to being politicized, and even classified as partisan, especially if we dare to be even mildly critical of the status quo. So I want you to indulge me in a huge caveat, here. Please set aside any knee-jerk reactions to read a partisan or political slant into my discussion of the world as I see it, and my fears of where it may be going in the near future. I don't have all the facts at my disposal, needless to say, which places me in the same class as all other current commentators and writers. Nobody has their arms around “the full catastrophe” — thank you, Zorba the Greek. These issues are not merely a matter of political opinion. They may turn out to be not only legal in their impact, but lethal in their unintended consequences. In an early piece, lost somewhere in my ever-expanding archive of prior writings, I made the somewhat specious point that it is not lost on me — that those who are (or have been) most resistant to recognizing the validity of concerns over global warming, or the less threatening label, “climate change”; and those who have been loudest in sounding the alarm about it — tend to be reflective of the two dominant political parties, as currently defined. I am also keenly aware of another correlation, that the former tend to populate the so-called “flyover,” rural areas of the country — let's call them the “Reds” — while the latter are more concentrated in coastal, urban locales — let's call them the “Blues,” in keeping with the tropes of the times, as well as Orwell's characterization of the permanent state of global warfare in 1984, if memory serves, reporting on the battles between “the reds” and “the blues,” with our side constantly winning, of course. Thus, my hopefully ironic point was, if worse comes to worst, and the coastal areas are flooded by rising ocean waters owing to the worst scenarios predicted by the “woke” faction coming true, some may welcome the idea that we will have a truly “red” country from coast to coast, though on a significantly smaller continent, as all of the “blue” coastal cities are now under water. A crude but compelling rendering of one potential consequence of our actions, or inactions, following from our inattention to Mother Nature's mandates. But seriously, folks. Let us assume for the sake of argument that the doomsday predictions — of what are, after all, the majority of scientists around the globe — are for real. The oceans are irreversibly warming, and the ice caps at both poles are melting. The South Pole being the most threatening, apparently being defrosted from underneath by warming Antarctic waters. When those ice cubes fall into the drink, that glass of tea is going to overflow, and quickly. To the tune of a ten-foot rise in the world-around oceans, according to those who do the math. Goodbye New York, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Jacksonville, Miami, Savannah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, you say, we will just all move inland; head for the hills, the high ground. The interior of the country is not exactly a paradisical refuge these days, what with natural-man-made disasters resulting in losses of crops, diminishing harvests, and resultant general mayhem disrupting country folks' formerly pastoral lifestyle. Any refugees from the coasts will encounter forest fires, drought, flash floods, and geometrically expanding tornados and hurricanes, along with air pollution on steroids. What have historically been labeled as “once-in-a-lifetime,” “500-“ or “1000-year” events may now be annual, seasonal, or monthly, while increasing in magnitude each year Further, in today's divisive political climate, it is anyone's guess whether the “blues” fleeing from the coastal deluge will find themselves welcomed, or confronted, by the “reds” — many of whom are armed to the teeth — as the scarcity of resources increases, and easy access to the necessities of life decreases. Another major concern: major coastal flooding will not only take out major cities, or major parts of them, but will also disrupt the seaports through which much of the commerce of the world flows, including imports of fresh food increasingly shopped and shipped from other countries. The most absurd example of this trend I have heard of had to do with a ship from China, a floating chicken factory, that regularly docks at a port in California to pick up a boatload of live chickens, then sails a wide circle in the ocean while “processing” them, only to return to the same dock and offload the meat. This is somehow more profitable than processing the chickens on the farm. And this is only one example of the international scale and scope of how the world “works” these days. Throw in the possibility of yet another pandemic, with supply lines permanently — not temporarily — disrupted, and you begin to see the dystopian possibilities. In this case, what's a Zen person to do? One suggestion would be to not sweat the small stuff. And its corollary: it's all small stuff. At least, our usual, trivial preoccupations are. Those of you who follow my podcast may recognize the following anecdote, from UnMind #111: “Analysis and Analogy.” Please forgive the redundancy — and the absurdity of quoting myself — but the story has relevancy to our current thread of Design Thinking and Zen, in the dystopian present. It bears repeating one more time. We once had a young man visit the Zen center who had trained with Tony Packer, the heir apparent to Roshi Philip Kapleau, who had famously turned down an offer to take up his mantle, the robe of a transmitted Zen priest. She had published a book on her approach to practicing Zen without calling it Zen, titled “The Work of This Moment” if memory serves, which I asked to borrow from him. One of her main points in the text was to avoid falling into “comparative thinking,” which was exactly what this young man had done. From the first time he joined the meditation sessions, he continually questioned and criticized each and every detail of the protocols we followed at that time. To address his concerns, I invited him to give a guest talk on his opinions, or hers, which was received with the sympathetic skepticism you would expect from a community of folks who had all had similar reservations, as to the protocols of a practice inherited from Japanese and Chinese traditions. I also made up a parable, or analogy, for him to consider. To wit: A monk is travelling through a remote mountain pass late at night, needing to get to the other side of the range. A sudden storm blows up, forcing him to seek shelter. Fortunately, he finds a cave nearby, and settles down to wait out the weather. But as his eyes adjust to the dark of the cave, and his sense of smell adapts to the stale air, he begins to notice the remains of carcasses strewn about the floor. Just as he realizes that he is ensconced in the lair of some kind of beast, and is preparing to make his escape, a large, furry silhouette appears in the entrance, blocking him from leaving. Standing there, shaking in fear, he asks himself: Now, what is the best way to confront this situation: standing flat on my feet, or up on my toes? In a situation like this, the details are clearly not all that relevant, and can even create a distraction from what is, starkly, relevant: the “clear and present danger.” Similarly, in the situation we are now confronting globally, details fall into insignificance. We are left with the question posed by Master Dogen, in Fukanzazengi—Principles of Seated Meditation, when he asks: Now that you know the most important thing in Buddhism, how can you be satisfied with the transient world? Our bodies are like dew on the grass and our lives like a flash of lightning — vanishing in a moment. If you have listened to UnMind #53: “Principles of Zazen,” this will sound familiar and, again, somewhat redundant, but if anything bears repetition, it is Dogen's teaching. What is “the most important thing” in all of Buddhism?; after he has rattled off several pages of things to consider. The same question gets to the point in our present dire straits: what is the most important thing to do about it? How to go about “actualizing the fundamental point,” another Dogenism from his classic Genjokoan. This is the koan of the present moment in history, which may mark the end of history as we know it. The end did not come in 1989, when Francis Fukuyama controversially and prematurely predicted that liberal democracy had triumphed, and in his 1992 book, “The End of History and the Last Man,” fulfilling the earlier vision of Hegel (see link in the post): Hegel had argued that history has a telos or goal – an end point – equivalent to the emergence of a perfectly rational and just state. That state would guarantee the liberty necessary for the full development of all human capacities. At the same time, it would exist in a state of perpetual peace with other – similarly configured – states. Would that it had come to pass, but like all visions of the future — utopian or dystopian — certain determinative factors were left out of the calculation. Just as legal trumps political, no pun intended; natural trumps legal and political. Mother Nature will not be denied, no matter how “evolved” we consider the machinations of humankind to be. We are all complicit, if not equally responsible, for the kettle of hot water in which we find ourselves. The problem of human survival on a global scale is too vast and variable to be amenable to discrete definition, so we are forced to resort to the old trope to “think globally but act locally.” In Buddha's time it was no different, the “act locally” part, that is, but in terms of thinking globally, they did not have the overwhelming glut of information that we “enjoy” today. But Buddha's prescription for addressing the problems of life and society still apply today. Take good care of yourself and those around you. Whatever comes to pass, and however our lives come to their conclusion, there was never any other ending to the story. What matters is what we do about it now. As Matsuoka Roshi would often say, demonstrating the zazen posture, “This is the most you can do.” Zen is a way of action. If you get straight with yourself on the cushion — your life, your death — you will more likely know what to do, and when to do it, off the cushion. Don't look to me, or anyone else, for specifics, but “Be a light unto yourself.” Spread the word. ZEN VERSUS DAILY LIFE 7Worst CaseWe have lived to seeThe worst-case scenarioLet us sit it out. THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO In one of the recent segments of this podcast, titled “What if This is Hell?” I indulged a “what if” conjecture, speculating that this earthly life may not be some kind of test, as many religions conceive of it — wherein those who pass the test go to their reward in heaven, while those who fail are condemned to an eternity in hell — but that this level of existence, if there are levels, may actually be Hell itself, with a capital “H”. I then explored the implications of that supposition. In the last segment, titled “Change the World,” I carried the thread a bit further, issuing a challenge to consider: What would you actually do, if you had the power to change the world? Where would you begin? Unfortunately, these days, everything is subject to being politicized, and even classified as partisan, especially if we dare to be even mildly critical of the status quo. So I want you to indulge me in a huge caveat, here. Please set aside any knee-jerk reactions to read a partisan or political slant into my discussion of the world as I see it, and my fears of where it may be going in the near future. I don't have all the facts at my disposal, needless to say, which places me in the same class as all other current commentators and writers. Nobody has their arms around “the full catastrophe” — thank you, Zorba the Greek. These issues are not merely a matter of political opinion. They may turn out to be not only legal in their impact, but lethal in their unintended consequences. In an early piece, lost somewhere in my ever-expanding archive of prior writings, I made the somewhat specious point that it is not lost on me — that those who are (or have been) most resistant to recognizing the validity of concerns over global warming, or the less threatening label, “climate change”; and those who have been loudest in sounding the alarm about it — tend to be reflective of the two dominant political parties, as currently defined. I am also keenly aware of another correlation, that the former tend to populate the so-called “flyover,” rural areas of the country — let's call them the “Reds” — while the latter are more concentrated in coastal, urban locales — let's call them the “Blues,” in keeping with the tropes of the times, as well as Orwell's characterization of the permanent state of global warfare in 1984, if memory serves, reporting on the battles between “the reds” and “the blues,” with our side constantly winning, of course. Thus, my hopefully ironic point was, if worse comes to worst, and the coastal areas are flooded by rising ocean waters owing to the worst scenarios predicted by the “woke” faction coming true, some may welcome the idea that we will have a truly “red” country from coast to coast, though on a significantly smaller continent, as all of the “blue” coastal cities are now under water. A crude but compelling rendering of one potential consequence of our actions, or inactions, following from our inattention to Mother Nature's mandates. But seriously, folks. Let us assume for the sake of argument that the doomsday predictions — of what are, after all, the majority of scientists around the globe — are for real. The oceans are irreversibly warming, and the ice caps at both poles are melting. The South Pole being the most threatening, apparently being defrosted from underneath by warming Antarctic waters. When those ice cubes fall into the drink, that glass of tea is going to overflow, and quickly. To the tune of a ten-foot rise in the world-around oceans, according to those who do the math. Goodbye New York, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Jacksonville, Miami, Savannah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, you say, we will just all move inland; head for the hills, the high ground. The interior of the country is not exactly a paradisical refuge these days, what with natural-man-made disasters resulting in losses of crops, diminishing harvests, and resultant general mayhem disrupting country folks' formerly pastoral lifestyle. Any refugees from the coasts will encounter forest fires, drought, flash floods, and geometrically expanding tornados and hurricanes, along with air pollution on steroids. What have historically been labeled as “once-in-a-lifetime,” “500-“ or “1000-year” events may now be annual, seasonal, or monthly, while increasing in magnitude each year Further, in today's divisive political climate, it is anyone's guess whether the “blues” fleeing from the coastal deluge will find themselves welcomed, or confronted, by the “reds” — many of whom are armed to the teeth — as the scarcity of resources increases, and easy access to the necessities of life decreases. Another major concern: major coastal flooding will not only take out major cities, or major parts of them, but will also disrupt the seaports through which much of the commerce of the world flows, including imports of fresh food increasingly shopped and shipped from other countries. The most absurd example of this trend I have heard of had to do with a ship from China, a floating chicken factory, that regularly docks at a port in California to pick up a boatload of live chickens, then sails a wide circle in the ocean while “processing” them, only to return to the same dock and offload the meat. This is somehow more profitable than processing the chickens on the farm. And this is only one example of the international scale and scope of how the world “works” these days. Throw in the possibility of yet another pandemic, with supply lines permanently — not temporarily — disrupted, and you begin to see the dystopian possibilities. In this case, what's a Zen person to do? One suggestion would be to not sweat the small stuff. And its corollary: it's all small stuff. At least, our usual, trivial preoccupations are. Those of you who follow my podcast may recognize the following anecdote, from UnMind #111: “Analysis and Analogy.” Please forgive the redundancy — and the absurdity of quoting myself — but the story has relevancy to our current thread of Design Thinking and Zen, in the dystopian present. It bears repeating one more time. We once had a young man visit the Zen center who had trained with Tony Packer, the heir apparent to Roshi Philip Kapleau, who had famously turned down an offer to take up his mantle, the robe of a transmitted Zen priest. She had published a book on her approach to practicing Zen without calling it Zen, titled “The Work of This Moment” if memory serves, which I asked to borrow from him. One of her main points in the text was to avoid falling into “comparative thinking,” which was exactly what this young man had done. From the first time he joined the meditation sessions, he continually questioned and criticized each and every detail of the protocols we followed at that time. To address his concerns, I invited him to give a guest talk on his opinions, or hers, which was received with the sympathetic skepticism you would expect from a community of folks who had all had similar reservations, as to the protocols of a practice inherited from Japanese and Chinese traditions. I also made up a parable, or analogy, for him to consider. To wit: A monk is travelling through a remote mountain pass late at night, needing to get to the other side of the range. A sudden storm blows up, forcing him to seek shelter. Fortunately, he finds a cave nearby, and settles down to wait out the weather. But as his eyes adjust to the dark of the cave, and his sense of smell adapts to the stale air, he begins to notice the remains of carcasses strewn about the floor. Just as he realizes that he is ensconced in the lair of some kind of beast, and is preparing to make his escape, a large, furry silhouette appears in the entrance, blocking him from leaving. Standing there, shaking in fear, he asks himself: Now, what is the best way to confront this situation: standing flat on my feet, or up on my toes? In a situation like this, the details are clearly not all that relevant, and can even create a distraction from what is, starkly, relevant: the “clear and present danger.” Similarly, in the situation we are now confronting globally, details fall into insignificance. We are left with the question posed by Master Dogen, in Fukanzazengi—Principles of Seated Meditation, when he asks: Now that you know the most important thing in Buddhism, how can you be satisfied with the transient world? Our bodies are like dew on the grass and our lives like a flash of lightning — vanishing in a moment. If you have listened to UnMind #53: “Principles of Zazen,” this will sound familiar and, again, somewhat redundant, but if anything bears repetition, it is Dogen's teaching. What is “the most important thing” in all of Buddhism?; after he has rattled off several pages of things to consider. The same question gets to the point in our present dire straits: what is the most important thing to do about it? How to go about “actualizing the fundamental point,” another Dogenism from his classic Genjokoan. This is the koan of the present moment in history, which may mark the end of history as we know it. The end did not come in 1989, when Francis Fukuyama controversially and prematurely predicted that liberal democracy had triumphed, and in his 1992 book, “The End of History and the Last Man,” fulfilling the earlier vision of Hegel (see link in the post): Hegel had argued that history has a telos or goal – an end point – equivalent to the emergence of a perfectly rational and just state. That state would guarantee the liberty necessary for the full development of all human capacities. At the same time, it would exist in a state of perpetual peace with other – similarly configured – states. Would that it had come to pass, but like all visions of the future — utopian or dystopian — certain determinative factors were left out of the calculation. Just as legal trumps political, no pun intended; natural trumps legal and political. Mother Nature will not be denied, no matter how “evolved” we consider the machinations of humankind to be. We are all complicit, if not equally responsible, for the kettle of hot water in which we find ourselves. The problem of human survival on a global scale is too vast and variable to be amenable to discrete definition, so we are forced to resort to the old trope to “think globally but act locally.” In Buddha's time it was no different, the “act locally” part, that is, but in terms of thinking globally, they did not have the overwhelming glut of information that we “enjoy” today. But Buddha's prescription for addressing the problems of life and society still apply today. Take good care of yourself and those around you. Whatever comes to pass, and however our lives come to their conclusion, there was never any other ending to the story. What matters is what we do about it now. As Matsuoka Roshi would often say, demonstrating the zazen posture, “This is the most you can do.” Zen is a way of action. If you get straight with yourself on the cushion — your life, your death — you will more likely know what to do, and when to do it, off the cushion. Don't look to me, or anyone else, for specifics, but “Be a light unto yourself.” Spread the word.

Occasionally, JF and Phil do a song swap. Each host chooses a song he loves and shares it with the other, and then they record an episode on it. This time, JF chose to discuss "Jesus, Etc." from Wilco's 2001 album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and Phil picked Judee Sill's ethereal "The Kiss," from Heart Food (1973). It was in the zone of Time, in all its strangeness, that the two songs began to resonate with one another. Sill's song is a fated grasping at the eternal that is present even when it eludes us, and "Jesus, Etc." is a leap across time that captures, in jagged shards and signal bursts, the events of the day on which Wilco's album was scheduled to drop: September 11, 2001. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies) and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Download Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/mer-bleue). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Judee Sill, [“The Kiss”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0feFedDWiQ&abchannel=donmussell12) James Elkins, Pictures and Tears (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780415970532) Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, “Surf's Up” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rur92ArNZKg&ab_channel=TheBeachBoys-Topic) Weird Studies, Episode 148 on “Twin Peaks” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/148) Wilco, “Jesus Etc.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efq95Pfqt5U&ab_channel=DaltonRay) Jeff Buckley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Buckley), singer-songwriter William Gibson, Forward to Dhalgren (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780375706684) L. E. J. Brouwer, Concept of “two-ity” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionism) Dogen, Genjokoan (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780992112912) David Bowie, “Heroes” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXgkuM2NhYI) Philip K. Dick, Valis (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780547572413) Weird Studies, Episode 147 “You Must Change Your Life” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/147) Theodore Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780816618002) James Longley, Iraq in Fragments (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0492466/) Sam Jones, I am Trying to Break your Heart (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327920/) Number Stations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station)

03/25/2023, Kyoshin Wendy Lewis, dharma talk at City Center. The theme of this practice period is Dogen's "To study the Buddha Way is to study the self." This is followed in Genjokoan by "When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away." ... In one sense, women's history is a history of gender definitions.

Rev. Choro Antonaccio, Dharma Talk, Sunday 13 November 2022, Austin Zen Center

Rev. Choro Antonaccio, Dharma Talk, Saturday 12 November 2022, Austin Zen Center

“Showing their backs then their fronts – falling maple leafs.”  ~ Ryokan “Resolving the matter of Life and death is of prime importance.” To explore this phrase which is recited

08/20/2022, Kyoshin Wendy Lewis, dharma talk at City Center. In Genjokoan, Dogen further investigates the teaching of The Heart Sutra, especially the dialectical relationship between the relative and the absolute in the context of emptiness. This inquiry is related to how we live in practice-realization.

Danica Shoan Ankele, Senior Monastic and Dharma Holder - Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 07/17/2022 - Shoan reflects on what it is that we're doing and why it matters. How does "looking inward", rather than just outward, help us navigate our life? Shoan brings in three "boat parables" to illustrate. From Master Dogen's Genjokoan, Charlotte Joko Beck's "Everyday Zen", and a poem by 17th century Chinese nun Jingnou in "Daughters of Emptiness".

Each Monday, priests from the Dragonfly Sangha lead an evening meditation and offer a brief dharma talk.    --- CONNECT --- Learn More: https://www.asksenseitony.com Order Sensei Tony's New Book, The Three Principles of Oneness: How Embodying the Cosmic Perspective Can Liberate Your Life: http://bit.ly/senseitony   Subscribe to the Ask Sensei Tony Podcast: https://asksenseitony.podbean.com/ Become a Lion's Gaze Member: http://bit.ly/lionsgaze Visit the Dragonfly Store: https://www.asksenseitony.com/store   --- WHO IS SENSEI TONY? --- Anthony Stultz, aka ‘Sensei Tony', is a recognized expert on the practice of Mindfulness. He is the founder and Director of The Dragonfly Sangha (1996), and The Blue Lotus School of Mindfulness Arts (1999). A leader in contemporary spirituality, his works on mindful living have appeared in both popular journals and academic books like Mindful Magazine, Lion's Roar, Buddhadharma, and Engaged Buddhism in the West (2000). He is the author of the award-winning book, Free Your Mind: The Four Directions of an Awakened Life (2007), and his exciting new release, The Three Principles of Oneness: How Embodying The Cosmic Perspective Can Liberate Your Life (2019). 

Julie Nelson reflects on Ehei Dogen's distinction between fish and birds (in Genjokoan). (April 14, 2022)

Sunday talk given February 6, 2022. Verse from Dogen Zenji's Genjokoan.

Dharma Talk By Dosho given in 2016 regarding The first fascicle in Dogen Zenji's Shobogenzo entitled Genjokoan

2021-12-05 Dharma Talk | Genjokoan | Ann Lipscomb by Appamada

Who you gonna call?Where you gonna look for it?Look in the mirror!* * *Stepping out of the Soto Zen lineage, we want to pay our respects to one of the great masters of the Rinzai lineage, Master Hakuin Ekaku. His life bridged the 17th and 18th centuries, so he was active during the colonial period, dying a few years before the Revolutionary War. A prolific teacher, calligrapher, and no-nonsense practitioner of Zen, he was a big advocate of zazen for his students, and is credited with reviving Rinzai Zen in Japan, established by Myoan Eisai some 600 years earlier, whose successor, Ryonen Myozen, traveled with Dogen Zenji to China, which culminated in Myozen's death in China, and Dogen's establishment of Soto Zen in Japan. Matsuoka Roshi dedicated a chapter of his collected talks to Hakuin's Zazen Wasan — Song of Zazen, his translation differing from the one we will review, which is available online at: Zen Buddhist Order of Hsu Yun.This also happens to be the version that I have set to music, so I am somewhat familiar with it.From the beginning all beings are Buddha.Like water and ice, without water no ice, outside us no Buddhas.That “all beings are Buddha” does not mean that they know it, however. As Master Dogen reminds us in Genjokoan, “When buddhas are truly buddhas, they do not necessarily notice that they are buddhas.” The reference to the differing states of the fundamental element of water — its liquid and solid form — is sometimes used as an analogy to the transformative and morphing quality of our buddha-nature. It can flow into and conform to any vessel, any set of causes and conditions.How near the truth, yet how far we seek.Like one in water crying, “I thirst!”Like the son of a rich man wand'ring poor on this earthwe endlessly circle the six worlds.That we do not know our buddha-nature is the fall from grace, and leads to our pursuit of satisfaction in all the wrong places, and for all the wrong reasons. Like the monk or nun who carries the wish-fulfilling mani jewel sewn into the hem of the robe, we run around like chickens with their heads off, when what we are looking for has been right here, right now, all along. What a pity. The “six worlds” are the Buddhist cosmological realms, from Tusita heaven as the highest, to Avici hell as the lowest. So this indicates that this mindless pursuit transcends any one lifetime.The cause of our sorrow is ego delusion.From dark path to dark path we've wandered in darkness,how can we be freed from the wheel of samsara?The primary delusion afflicting us, according to Buddhism, is that of the imputed or constructed self, which is not quite identical with the contemporary concept of ego, I think. The “self” questioned in Zen is not merely a psychological construction, but the physical body as well as the mind. Thus, in Master Dogen's shinjin datsuraku, dropping off of body-mind, the emptiness at the heart of corporeal existence is not just a concept, either, but the dynamic reality of ever-changing impermanence. The dark paths would include those based on superstitions, myth, and beliefs. They are dark, not because they are evil, but because ultimately they shed no light on reality. The version I am most familiar with translates the last line as “how can we be free of birth and death?” It begs the question, how would we even know that we want to be free of this cycle of life, “samsara.” Do we really know the alternative?The gateway to freedom is zazen Samadhi.Beyond exaltation, beyond all our praises the pure Mahayana.Here, Hakuin is talking about true freedom — including, I would suggest, freedom from the concept of getting free from birth and death. This would be contrary to the Bodhisattva vow to save all others, the operative dimension of Mahayana, the “greater vehicle.” Like the traditional American gospel song, “This train is bound for glory,” you are either on this bus or not. In Buddhism, we leave no one behind. We commit to returning to this battleground as long as necessary to bring our brothers and sisters home.Observing the Precepts, Repentance and Giving,the countless good deeds and the Way of Right Living, all come from zazen.As Master Dogen similarly reminds us, “What Precept is not fulfilled in zazen?” And “Without engaging in incense offering, bowing, chanting Buddha's name, repentance or reading scriptures, you should just wholeheartedly sit, and thus drop away body and mind.” All of the protocols and implications that are characteristic of the Buddhist worldview and lifestyle stem from this central practice, just sitting still enough, for long enough, and letting go of all attachments, including those to our body and mind.Thus one true Samadhi extinguishes evils.It purifies karma, dissolving obstructions.Then where are the dark paths to lead us astray?The Pure Lotus Land is not far away.This original self, discovered, or uncovered, in deep zazen, is the only true Samadhi — complete and natural balance within the physical, emotional, mental and social realms. We typically shy away from absolutist terms such as “evils,” substituting confusions or delusions, those frailties, follies and foibles to which we are generally vulnerable. Purifying our karma may seem indefensible as a claim, until we remember that purity in Zen has the connotation of nonduality. If we are resistant to the consequences of our actions, we defile our own karma, and create further obstructions. If we embrace it, we may see the light at the end of the tunnel. The “Pure Lotus Land” is, again, not “pure” in any absolute sense, or morally distinct from samsara, but is the other shore of nirvana coming to us, as Dogen promises. Our charge, our practice, is to see through the delusion of samsara, to the underlying reality of nirvana.Hearing this truth, heart humble and grateful.To praise and embrace it, to practice its Wisdom,brings unending blessings, bring mountains of merit.“Hearing this truth” does not naively imply that simply hearing words pointing to it will do the trick. We must vow to “hear the true Dharma,” as Master Dogen exhorts us to do in his famous vow. A natural state of humility and gratitude accompanies and informs this process. To put it into practice, fully embracing it and praising it, to oneself and others, entails the recognition of “unending blessings” and “mountains of merit” built into existence itself. Our practice, however worthy, does not create it.And if we turn inward and prove our True Nature, thatTrue Self is no-self, our own self is no-self, we go beyond ego and past clever words.Then the gate to the oneness of cause-and-effect is thrown open.Not two and not three, straight ahead runs the Way.Turning “inward” seemingly contradicts a saying attributed to Hakuin Zenji, whose writing is unusually descriptive for the Zen canon, where he asserted that there is no inside and/or outside, something like that. But we have to assume that the great master was perfectly capable of expressing himself on both relative and absolute levels. And zazen, it must be admitted, at least begins with a turning away from other distractions, and to that degree, turning “inward.” Wherein, of course, the rabbit hole we go down ends up coming out on the other side, or back where we started. Like a living Klein bottle.Here he affirms, and reconfirms, that our “True Self is no-self,” hyphenated, so as to indicate an innate state, rather than an outright denial of self. No-self would then capture the emptiness that is at the heart of our so-called own self, as it is for everything else. This is going past any self-identification, or ego, no matter how sophisticated or clever our attributions. Here, the “oneness” of cause-and-effect, again hyphenated, I think indicates his understanding that they are not-two, as we heard in the poem Hsinhsinming — Trust in Mind, of the third ancestor in China. “Straight ahead” is the “Moving forward is not a matter of far or near” of Master Kisen's Sandokai — Harmony of Difference and Sameness.Our form now being no-form, in going and returning we never leave home.Our thought now being no-thought, our dancing and songs are the Voice of the Dharma.Form is the first of the five skandhas, or aggregates, of sentient existence. It is the space in which we all begin practicing zazen. But eventually, the boundaries of our own form become fuzzy, to the point of joining us to — rather than separating us from — everything else. When sensation sets in, it overtakes form, much as energy trumps matter. Segueing through the skandha of thought, impulse, and even, eventually, consciousness itself, it becomes clear that the whole enchilada is nothing more than the Dharma. Whatever we say and do expounds the buddha-dharma, whether we know it or not.How vast is the heaven of boundless Samadhi!How bright and transparent the moonlight of wisdom!Here are Hakuin's descriptive powers in full flower. Elsewhere I have read that, walking without a lantern on a dark, moonless night (remembering that there were no city lights in those days), if the surrounding darkness suddenly is infused with what seems to be moonlight, enlightenment is near. Matsuoka Roshi made the startling declaration that, “The light by which you see things comes from you!” Buddha was said to have told his students, after praising them for their progress in meditation, “But your minds have not yet begun to shine.” The moonlight brightening the night earth has long symbolized enlightenment.What is there outside us? What is there we lack?Nirvana is openly shown to our eyes.Here is the inside-outside illusion again, expressed as the all-inclusive “don't know,” “not-two” Mind of Zen. “Nothing lacking, and nothing in excess.” That this is the much-vaunted Nirvana relieves us of any notion that we have to go elsewhere, somewhere special, to find it. This is how the other shore comes to us, as promised by Master Dogen. There is no secret anywhere, no trick up the Masters' sleeves.This earth where we stand is the pure lotus land!And this very body, the body of Buddha.The “pure lotus land,” here not capitalized, perhaps intentionally, is nothing more than this very planet, that is our contemporaneous, and temporary, home. Again, not an imaginary paradise in some other dimension, an afterlife. This life, and this body, if we are to believe the great master, is the only true life and body of Buddha. It is only that we have to wake up to this truth. That is, we have to die to the limited self, with its attachment to body and mind as conceived, in order to be reborn in our original body, which is our true life, and our true home. “Outside us, no Buddhas. Like water and ice, without water, no ice.” This is already true, according to Zen, so all we have to do is to realize it.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell

What is it, really —this so-called upright sitting?It's your everything.* * *Possibly the briefest of all of Master Dogen's written teachings, Zazenshin is his rewrite of a poem he found in China, as was his initial tract on the principles of seated meditation, Fukanzazengi. The title means something like “Acupuncture Needle for Zazen,” or the shorter “Lancet of Zazen” I have chosen. Something sharp, in other words, that can cut or penetrate to the heart of the matter. In this case, the “Great Matter,” as it is called. In Japan in 1987, I had the good fortune to have acupuncture — needles, electricity and all — performed upon my back. As our Japanese host promised, it made me feel “light.”The essential-function of buddhas, and the functioning-essence of ancestors; Being actualized within non-thinking; Being manifested within non-interacting.Here again, as in the last segment where we covered his Vow, Dogen never mentions it — zazen — even once. But we all know what he is talking about. It — zazen — is the essential function of all buddhas of past, future, and present. You might suggest that their function is to teach Buddhism, to transmit the dharma to the great unwashed masses. But the singular, effective, and only way to do so is through zazen. Not only do they need to impress upon others the central need for them to practice this “excellent method,” as Master Dogen refers to it, but they need to do it themselves, before they can have any idea of why others must be encouraged to sit, or to have any street cred for promoting the practice. It is what buddhas do. It is how buddhas become buddha, awakened. Otherwise, no buddhas.How this comes about is that it begins with “non-thinking.” We return to our natural state of non-thinking, that is. There is nothing automatic about thinking. It has to be learned, just like language. But long before we learn to think, we are already fully conscious. Consciousness does not rely on thinking. Thinking may come and go, but it is not fundamental to awareness. It doesn't hurt, but it can get in the way of direct intuition. We can think that something is real when it is not, for example, and that what is real, is not. We can tell when we are thinking, or when we have been, for a minute. And we can tell when we have not, just the moment before. As soon as we recognize this, of course, we are back to thinking. Non-thinking is neither thinking nor not-thinking. It is that awareness that can be aware of thinking, but is not dependent upon it. It can also be aware of non-thinking, without having to think about it. But simply returning to a childlike state of non-thinking awareness is not Zen's comprehensive insight.Insight into deeper levels of reality — the nondual side of things — is broadly considered the “effect” of meditation, one of many, but cannot be attributed to meditation as its cause, as in linear causality. It is difficult, but not impossible, for individuals to experience profound insight without the prerequisite of zazen. Sixth ancestor in China, Huineng, is the standout historical exemplar of this phenomenon. Most of us have to spend considerable time in zazen, just to cut through the clutter of our own opinions about it. It being zazen, and everything else we might think about reality.This insight is not manifested simply in non-thinking, however. According to Dogen, it manifests in “non-interacting.” A line from one of the Ch'an poems we have examined claims that “All the senses interact and do not interact; interacting they are linked together; non-interacting, each keeps its place.” We look at them as a Venn diagram, overlapping, as in synesthesia. If we come to experience non-thinking as our new normal, intellectual state of mind, we can begin to apprehend non-interacting as an even deeper, intuitive state of merging of the senses, and all that that entails for consciousness itself. If non-thinking, or the embrace of it, is a prerequisite, then non-interacting in general, i.e. in the sensory realm, can be conceived as the next level down the rabbit-hole. This investigation can be understood as a kind of deep and all-inclusive process of profound sensory adaptation. Sitting still enough for long enough, everything adapts, or neutralizes. This is non-interacting on a granular level, so to speak.Being actualized within non-thinking, the actualization is by nature intimate. Being manifested within non-interacting, the manifestation is itself verification.Master Dogen further unfolds the last two lines of the prior stanza, like flower petals opening to reveal the interior of the blossom. If we can accept that it — zazen and its effect — is most naturally actualized within this primordial state of non-thinking, then we can further embrace the idea that this revelation is by nature “intimate.” Here Dogen means, as usual for him, intimate in both temporal and spatial modes. That is, we are awakening to what we already are — nothing is changing — but it is so close in time and space, like the water to the fish, that we cannot really share it with anyone else. We cannot even separate our “self” from “it.” This is Uchiyama Roshi's “Self selfing self,” Okumura Roshi's translation.When we penetrate to the depths of consciousness itself, encountering the stillness that resides at the heart of motion there, the non-interacting manifested therein is itself the verification of our exploration. We have discovered the Original Frontier™ of mind that Buddha pioneered 2500 years ago. We have found the territory for which Dogen is laying out the map.The actualization that is by nature intimate never has defilement. The manifestation that is by nature verification never has distinction between Absolute and Relative.It becomes clear that this new landscape has never been defiled, and cannot be reduced to ordinary understanding, Zen's special meaning of defilement. In it, we verify that there has never been any distinction between absolute and relative, a hallmark of the world of linear logic we have left far behind.The Intimacy without defilement is dropping off without relying on anything. Verification beyond distinction between Absolute and Relative is making effort without aiming at it.Again unfolding the deeper meaning of the prior lines, Dogen reveals that this personal insight, one that cannot be shared with others, nor reduced to common understanding, is experienced as the “dropping off” of the imputed body-mind of one's self, as well as of that of others, as we first encountered in his Genjokoan. This cannot be done intentionally, and can happen only in a context of not “relying on anything,” i.e. not being able to rely upon the usual tricks and dodges we employ in confronting the various vagaries and vicissitudes of daily life. All such gimmicks must be left behind at this remove, on the cushion.This verification, in which absolute and relative truths find no foothold — and that, again, can occur, but we cannot force it — is reduced to simply making effort without aiming at it, again, on the cushion. We continue to make effort as in the beginning of our meditation, when as a novice, the physical world of form, the body and its resistance to sitting still for long, was the first barrier. Then, as the posture became comfortable, emotional and mental distress may have set in, perhaps accompanied by the social stressors of family and friends who do not meditate, and do not understand why we do. When we run out of explanations, even to ourselves, we still have no choice but to continue. We are no longer aiming at anything that we can articulate, but we are still making the effort. It is not rational at this point.The water is clear to the earth — a fish is swimming like a fish. The sky is vast and extends to the heavens — a bird is flying like a bird.But like a refreshing, cool breeze, or a summer rain on a hot day, Master Dogen assures us that all is well. Zazen should be the comfortable way, the posture more like a refreshing stretch, and the breath like a sigh of relief. This is perfectly natural, like a fish swimming like a fish, or a bird flying like a bird. We are just sitting, like a person sitting. The water becomes clear, and the sky vast, extending to the heavens. The “vast emptiness, nothing holy” of Bodhidharma's expression of spiritual truth to emperor Wu opens up before us. When we are asked why we do what we do, i.e. zazen — or even who it is answering the question — we can honestly say, with Bodhidharma and Dogen, and with a sense of putting our burden down, “Don't know.” Nobody really knows, not even Buddha.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell

Oh, self-fulfilling!What samadhi is that, now?It is the real one.* * *Master Dogen's written record is so extensive that it is difficult to select representative teachings, but also impossible to cover them all. The two we have reviewed so far, Fukanzazengi and Genjokoan, are recognized as basic to his message. I feel that this segment's focus, Jijuyuzammai (Self-fulfilling Samadhi), is as well. Both terms in the title, “self-fulfilling,” and “samadhi,” require some explanation. I interpret the “self-fulfilling” part not as meaning fulfilling the self as we usually conceive it — the false, or constructed self — but that the samadhi discovered in zazen is self-actuating and, therefore, self-fulfilling. In other words, we do not make this happen through our effort, but it is there, waiting for us to uncover it.Samadhi is interpreted in many ways in Zen literature. It is unfortunately sometimes wielded as mystical, in-group jargon, as if the author understands it, ostensibly from experience, while you, the reader, do not. This reinforces the kind of us-and-them-ism far too prevalent in our culture. We are called upon to de-mystify Zen, including such jargon. Samadhi is often rendered as “centered,” and/or “balanced.” That seems a sufficiently useful definition, if considered in multiple dimensions — physical, emotional, mental, and even social, balance — comes from Zen. Dogen begins by credentialing his thesis:Now all ancestors and all buddhas who uphold Buddhadharma have made it the true path of enlightenment to sit upright, practicing in the midst of self-fulfilling Samadhi. Those who attained enlightenment in India and China followed this way.In other words, we are not just making this stuff up as we go along. All the great masters you may have heard and read about, revered, and tried to understand, their teachings — including Buddha himself — did exactly as we are doing. They all sat in upright meditation as their central practice.It was done so because teachers and disciples personally transmitted this excellent method as the essence of the teaching.So all the many thousands of teachings in Buddhism that we may choose to study, also stem from this method of zazen. Verbal teachings, as such, do not transmit the essential matter, but simply point at it. Upright sitting — still enough, for long enough — eventually reveals the “essence of the teaching.”In the authentic tradition of our teaching, it is said that this directly transmitted, straightforward Buddhadharma is the unsurpassable of the unsurpassable.All other schools of teaching, bodies of knowledge, philosophical views and practical instructions, take second place, at best. Buddha's tongue is said to be long and broad. The “directly transmitted, straightforward” Buddhadharma is universal, and all-inclusive. The phrase “authentic tradition” implies that there must be traditions that are not authentic, such as competing approaches of other schools. As we heard from Master Tozan, “Whether teachings and approaches are mastered or not, reality constantly flows.” Zazen is the instrument we use to focus like a laser beam on our immediate reality.From the first time you meet a master — without engaging in incense offering, bowing, chanting Buddha's name, repentance, or reading scriptures — you should just wholeheartedly sit, and thus drop away body and mind.Likewise all other practices — usually considered intrinsic to Buddhism — are second in priority to practice-experience in zazen, under the supervision of a true teacher. Such rituals are not absolutely necessary for us as individuals, though helpful, especially within a community. Dogen himself followed these forms. But we do not need to be overly distracted by concerns regarding social forms. If you have not yet met a true teacher, repetition of ritual may support you in your practice, until you do. These routines are meant to be personally supportive psychologically, and to promote harmony in the community.Completely eliminating traditional so-called “Asian” protocols surrounding meditation — which some Americans have suggested — will only result in substituting new rituals in their place. The main point the master is making, of course, is his johnny-one-note insistence on sitting in zazen, with the emphasis on wholehearted effort. Dropping away body and mind, however, does not sound like a desirable goal, even if we could understand what Master Dogen means by it.When even for a moment you express the Buddha's seal in the three actions by sitting upright in Samadhi, the whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha's seal, and the entire sky turns into enlightenment.Now we're talkin'. This is sounding a lot more attractive. There is nothing outside this realization, and nothing that can keep you from it, if only you do not give up on zazen. While not a causality, this is at least a correlation that we can draw, with confidence. The corollary would be that if you are not sitting upright in samadhi, chances are, such a transformation will elude you. And the bonus is that it does not take any time at all, actually. In Dogen's effusive description, our world is utterly transformed, in the blink of an eye. The “three actions,” incidentally, are those of body, mouth, and mind. Just so you know.Because of this all buddha tathagatas, as the original source, increase their Dharma bliss, and renew their magnificence in the awakening of the Way.Here Dogen claims an explicit causal connection, which suggests a kind of magical thinking. But when you realize that the “buddha tathagatas” are merely your and my original natures, it comes full circle. These indicate traditionally cosmic or celestial beings, as they are manifested in you and me.Furthermore, all beings in the ten directions and the six realms, including the three lower realms, at once obtain pure body and mind, realize the state of great emancipation, and manifest the original face.Next comes everybody else. The “ten directions” are the cosmological dimensions, eight horizontal and two vertical: the apex over your head, the nadir beneath your feet. The “six realms” indicate traditional categories of sentient beings, with human beings in the middle, the titans or angry gods next level “up,” and the denizens of Tusita heaven at the top. Just below us, the hell realms of the “lower” animals and insects, then the hungry ghosts, and at bottom, the Avici hells. These heavens and hells are not conceived as actual places, but realms of our own making.Our personal emancipation in Zen is all-inclusive, of all beings, as Buddha himself reported. We only imagine their bondage, of course, but our imaginations are powerful. “Pure body and mind” is not a reference to morality, and is not really obtainable, but describes our original, nondual state. Purity is a lack of confusion about the relationship of so-called duality to its nonidentical twin, nonduality. The “state of great emancipation” is the true state of our existence, but we bind ourselves to our own misguided opinions. Realizing that this is a kind of cosmic category error is the first step toward true liberation. The “original face” is the only face we can manifest, actually. But Dogen is talking about realizing this, not simply knowing it to be true.At this time, all things realize correct awakening; myriad objects partake of the buddha body; and sitting upright under the bodhi tree, you immediately leap beyond the boundary of awakening.Even the many seemingly inanimate and insentient objects, are not as they appear. They, too, are part of the whole buddha-body. You find yourself back in reality, for the first time in memory, crossing the boundary of the “Original Frontier™” along with all other beings, plus the ten thousand things. Returning to our original buddha-body, and re-entering real time and space, our true home. Yet, having never left.At this moment you turn the Dharma wheel, and expound the profound wisdom, ultimate and unconditioned.You yourself manifest and expound the true teaching without error, or ceasing; dwelling in the ultimate, “eternal moment,” beyond conditions.Because such broad awakening resonates back to you, and helps you inconceivably, you will, in zazen, unmistakably drop off body and mind, cutting off the various defiled thoughts from the past, and realize the essential Buddhadharma.Like an echo bouncing back from the distant valley, this awakening is a guaranteed slam-dunk, in which the apparent separation of self and other appears as it really is. You find yourself not at all alone, and not at all confused, in any negative sense. Clarity is not separate from confusion, and manifests as wonder, or awe. The “essential Buddhadharma” suggests that some Buddhadharma may not be as essential as this direct insight. Along with negative habitual thoughts, even your prior understanding of Dharma may constitute the “various defiled thoughts” that have bedeviled you in the past.Thus you will raise up buddha activity at innumerable practice places of buddha tathagatas everywhere, cause everyone to have the opportunity of ongoing buddhahood, and vigorously uplift the ongoing Buddhadharma.Buddha activity may be ongoing, but it is not raised up, unless and until we make the effort. This is effort without aiming at it, returning to the reality that precedes activity. In doing so, we benefit ourselves and others, a distinction without a difference. This is the bodhisattva vow.Because earth, grass, trees, walls, tiles and pebbles all engage in buddha activity, those who receive the benefit of wind and water caused by them, are inconceivably helped by the Buddha's guidance, splendid and unthinkable, and awaken intimately to themselves.The ten-thousand things are all manifesting this activity of awakening, moment by moment, the four elements and fundamental forces included, inherent in nature as well as our bodies. The buddha's guidance is innate, and not a mystical emanation from a separate spirit, or spooky action at a distance. Awakening intimately to ourselves is all-encompassing, and simultaneously intimate.Those who receive these water and fire benefits spread the Buddha's guidance, based on original awakening.Receiving the elemental benefits of this practice directly, recognized as compassion of the universe for allowing our very being, is the only real merit. It cannot be accumulated, but can be shared, once we awaken to it. This awakening is original to the individual, and simultaneously the Buddha's awakening.Because of this, all those who live with you and speak with you will obtain endless buddha virtue, and will unroll widely, inside and outside of the entire universe, the endless, unremitting, unthinkable, unnameable Buddhadharma.If you have original awakening, it will have a ripple effect on those around you. But only if you take the necessary action of sharing it with others. This means entering into the realm of skillful or expedient means, which are designed and intended to fit the recipient of the teaching. Communication is the message received, not the message sent. It all depends upon the sincerity of the aspiring student, as well as the genuineness of the teacher's insight. Correctly transmitted, it empowers others to accede to the same wisdom. As a force of nature, it is endless and unremitting, yet remains unthinkable and unnameable. Not your usual topic of discussion at cocktail parties.In the next segment we will continue with the second half of Jijuyuzammai, where Master Dogen continues his exposition of “buddha activity,” and goes into some of the caveats around misinterpreting his message so far. Please join when convenient for you. And do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or comments.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell

Is enlightenmentdewdrops reflecting the moon —or is it your mind?* * *Following upon Master Dogen's stunning simile of firewood and ash, and his pointed comments on birth and death, we turn to his famous “moon in a dewdrop” stanzas on enlightenment itself: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.Whether we are living in apocalyptic, or merely interesting, times, the promise of enlightenment still beckons. Like the moon on the water, nothing changes. Except everything, including the relative size and scale of the moon and the puddle, or the dewdrop. Like Indra's net, the knots collect the drops of water, which all reflect each other, like the cosmos viewed from any vantage point. Somehow the same though different, as Master Kisen reminds us; entirely harmonic. Nothing changes, no new division of the new you and the old you. Insight only reveals the preexistent truth. You cannot hinder this revelation, no matter how rabid your monkey-mind. If not in this lifetime, then in a future one (again, not reincarnation) this is your destiny. The meaning and culmination of life is to wake up fully, to our original and innate Buddha-nature. If any doubt arises, just repeat “the depth of the drop is the height of the moon” as your mantra. The duration of the reflection in time is analogous to the dimension in space, as well as to our lifetime. Remember, Dogen only lived to be 53 years of age. Realizing the limitlessness of the moonlight takes no time at all.When Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it is already sufficient.When Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing.For example, when you sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean, where no land is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular, and does not look any other way.But the ocean is neither round nor square; its features are infinite in variety.It is like a palace. It is like a jewel.It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time.Back to the beginner's mind. Initially, we imagine that we are already “wandering about in the world of enlightenment” as one translation of Fukanzazengi describes it, but we have “almost lost the absolute Way, which is beyond enlightenment itself.” Testifying as one who has been there and done that, the great master asserts that when Dharma does fill you completely, something is obviously missing in this picture. Matsuoka Roshi said that “People go through life with something missing. They come to Zen to find it.” Just because it is missing, however, you do not necessarily know what it is. You only know that it is missing, for sure. You might think of it as “the rest of the story.” Okumura Roshi speaks of this as our “incompleteness.”Master Dogen conjures a lovely vision to help us picture this subtle reality, again derived from his direct experience, perhaps from his sailing to China, a hazardous journey in those times. The way the ocean looks from six feet off the surface is different than it looks to a fish, who lives there, or from 30,000 feet overhead. Then he goes on to make the obvious, seemingly unnecessary point:All things are like this.In other words, our perception and reconstruction of our world as we know it, is necessarily limited. We can see only what we can see, hear only what we can hear, and feel only what we can feel, think only what we can think. But then he introduces the idea of the “eye of practice”:Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach.In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they may look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety: whole worlds are there.It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet; or in a drop of water.The “dusty world” is everyday samsara, the “world beyond conditions” we assume to be the formless of the “three realms” traditional to Buddhism. In any case, “you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach.”In 1987 I traveled to Japan, and incidentally underwent acupuncture with an aged medical sage, long white beard and all. He performed a cursory physical examination, and then proceeded to list, in Japanese, all the various conditions and potential health issues that I might have, with startling accuracy and comprehensiveness. This was by virtue of his eye of practice. He had seen so many thousands of individuals over his career that he could see things no one else, not similarly trained, could see.Dogen is encouraging us to go beyond the appearance, or form, of things to their true nature, where we find “whole worlds.” This is a much more prosaic statement in the age of electron microscopes, than it was in his time. He arrived at this insight by virtue of his own eye of practice, refined through the intensity of his training in zazen. But this is not something to be found in exotic places; it is directly beneath our feet. Then, with the poet's precision of language, he returns us to — wait for it — “or in a drop of water.” Which provides a neat segue to his next analogy:A fish swims in the ocean, and no matter how far it swims, there is no end to the water.A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how far it flies, there is no end to the air.However, the fish and the bird have never left their elements; when their activity is large, their field is large; when their need is small, their field is small.Thus, each of them totally covers its full range, and each of them totally experiences its realm.If the bird leaves the air, it will die at once. If the fish leaves the water, it will die at once.Know that the water is life, and air is life; the bird is life and the fish is life.Life must be the bird, and life must be the fish.Back to the ocean — for a fish who lives there, it is like an endless palace, as is the sky for a bird. They are in their respective elements. What is our element, as human beings? If we leave it, will we die? Not only the sentient beings, the bird and the fish, are life. Life also manifests as the very water and air we drink and breathe. Must life be us, as it must be the bird, and the fish?It is possible to illustrate this with more analogies:Practice-enlightenment and people are like this.Dogen makes explicit exactly what he is doing — illustrating the difficult to comprehend via analogy. We look forward to hearing how we and practice-enlightenment can be similarly analogized.Now if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it, this bird, or this fish, will not find its way or its place.When you find your place where you are practice occurs — actualizing the fundamental point.When you find your way at this moment practice occurs — actualizing the fundamental point.For the place, the way, is neither large nor small, neither yours nor others'.The place, the way, has not carried over from the past, and it is not merely arising now.Accordingly, in the practice-enlightenment of the Buddha way, meeting one thing is mastering it; doing one practice is practicing completely.Here is the place; here the way unfolds.Firstly, like the bird or the fish, if we are unwilling to explore our element, we cannot hope to find our way, or our place. If and when we do, “practice occurs,” actualizing the fundamental point. We might elaborate, saying that practice is something that occurs naturally. It is not something that we do, or indeed, that we can do. “Place” — where you are; and “way” — at this moment; are placeholders, no pun, for spacetime. Your zero axis runs from the crown of your head down through your spinal cord. Mine runs through mine. Your world is yours, and mine is mine. As Matsuoka Roshi would say, “My enlightenment is mine, and yours is yours. I can't get yours, and your can't get mine.” It doesn't belong to anyone, and is not subject to linear time. Thus, whatever is in front of your face, is it. Meeting it is mastering it. This is the one practice, which is complete. Here and now is the unfolding of the Great Way. But then, as is often the case with Dogen, there comes a big “but”:The boundary of realization is not distinct, for the realization comes forth simultaneously with the mastery of Buddha-dharma.Do not suppose that what you realize becomes your knowledge, and is grasped by your consciousness.Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent.Its appearance is beyond your knowledge.So stop looking for it. That is, stop looking for something special to change. What already is, is all the special there is. Like a wet bar of soap, or like our concept of the momentary passing of time, it cannot be grasped. However, it is actualized immediately, but not as the result of something we do. We do not master Buddha-dharma; it masters us. But the resulting realization is simultaneous with that mastery. That the “inconceivable may not be apparent” has to be an all-time, world-class belaboring of the obvious. If inconceivable, how could it be apparent? To illustrate this existential catch-22, Dogen again turns to analogy, but one offered by another old buddha:Zen master Baoche of Mt. 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?”“Although you understand that the nature of the wind is permanent,” Baoche replied, “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.The monk bowed deeply.Master Dogen exhibits a near-encyclopedic retention of these incidents, quoting them often in his extensive record (Eihei Koroku), spontaneous live teachings documented by his Dharma heirs. The “wind” here probably should be taken as both the literal winds of the atmosphere, but also the fundamental element of movement, which manifests both inside and outside the body, as well as in social and other dimensions, the natural and the universal. Thus the wind is present, whether or not there is any literal wind, and the monk is implying that fanning is, or should be, unnecessary. Mazu's reply, that he does not get the “reaching everywhere” part, is illustrated by continuing to fan himself. This is the nondual, nonseparation of our activities with natural and universal forces.The actualization of the 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 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 housebrings forth the gold of the earth, and makes fragrant the cream of the long river.Buddhadharma, as a force in the world, penetrates all four spheres of existence: the personal, the social, the natural, and the universal. The permanence of the wind seems to contradict the doctrine of impermanence, but impermanence is not a doctrine. Nor is it separable from permanence. The nature of the wind being permanent is analogous to the teaching of dukkha as change. Because there is never any absence of change, change is a permanent attribute of impermanence. No need to tie yourself up in knots over this. We are beset by all kinds of “winds” — as movement, or change, itself. Just as there is no movement without stillness, and vice-versa, the wind of Buddhism blows no one ill. It turns the dross of the natural earth to gold, the symbol of enlightenment, not material goods, as wealth. And makes even the Milky Way a source of fragrant, affirming cream, the nourishment of universal ambrosia.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell

All things do exist.On the other hand, they don't.Truth is in-between.* * *This is the fascicle Master Dogen reputedly designated as the first for his master work, Shobogenzo, which I understand is a common term, meaning something like “true eye of the Dharma treasury,” used in China for collections of Dharma teachings. Bendowa, which means something like a “talk concerning the Way,” from which this section recited in liturgy is excerpted, titled Genjokoan, roughly meaning the “actualization of the fundamental point,” i.e. of Zen. Scholars and historians can provide greater clarity on the provenance and historicity of these various teachings. Naturally, there is more dependable documentation, the closer we get to present times. But, owing to Zen's emphasis on direct experience, I think that these scholarly aspects of Zen teachings, while important, are not of primary concern for us. The main issue, as I see it, is whether they mean anything to you, in terms of your own practice of zazen. The whole point of Buddhism is to wake up, ourselves.As all things are buddha-dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, and birth and death; and there are buddhas and sentient beings.As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death.The Buddha way is basically leaping clear of the many and the one; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas.Yet in attachment, blossoms fall; and in aversion, weeds spread.So there you have it. First, the relative: Yes, of course, all these things really do exist, in their own way. Then secondly, the absolute: On the other hand, and upon closer examination, they do not exactly exist, as there is no there, there; nothing that truly holds together, for long. But no worries, no need to get bogged down in either extreme, Zen's third way: things do exist in the relative sense, specifically by means of their absolute impermanence. Both things can be true at once. Fourthly, however — and this is akin to the fall from grace — the very things to which we foolish human beings attach continue falling; and the very things that drive us crazy flourish like mad, no matter how much we try to prevent either. Flowers, after all, are weeds we do want; while weeds are flowers we do not want.To carry yourself forward and experience [the] myriad things is delusion; that myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings.Further there are those who continue realizing beyond realization; [those] who are in delusion throughout delusionWhen buddhas are truly buddhas they do not necessarily notice that they are buddhas. However, they are actualized buddhas, who go on actualizing buddhas.The classic expression, “the myriad things” — meaning all things in existence, from the smallest particle to the largest astronomical cluster — is likely the way we should take Dogen's meaning. Making definitive statements about “myriad things” without the “the” does not necessarily include all things — there could be exceptions. That all the myriad things “come forth and experience themselves” is similar to Buddha's declaration that all things of the universe were enlightened simultaneously, including himself. What Buddhas realize is delusion; that is, they see the delusion built into awareness. Confusion about this is shared by all sentient beings. Anyone who recovers their buddha-nature is no longer a mere sentient being, but nonetheless, still a sentient being. Buddha means “awake,” so it must be possible to be more awake than usual. This seems pretty obvious. Awakeness, or awareness, like intelligence, must exist on a sliding scale, a spectrum, like everything else. We don't necessarily notice what we actually are, whether Buddha or not. We can have weird ideas about it, of course.When you see forms or hear sounds fully engaging body-and-mind, you grasp things directly; unlike things and their reflections in the mirror, and unlike the moon and its reflection in the water, when one side is illumined, the other side is dark.Seeing forms and hearing sounds represent the whole sensorium, feeling feelings, smelling scents, tasting flavors, thinking concepts all included. This direct grasping of things, however, is not the same as grasping buddhadharma. Both sides are illumined, like reflections, both the item and its reflection are equally illuminated; otherwise, we would not see them. When we see things reflected in the Zen mirror, however, the “other side,” the side we do not see, is dark. The tree that we see clearly in the daylight does not know that it is a tree. From inside the tree, all is dark, though it follows the sun.To study the Buddha way is to study the self;To study the self is to forget the self;To forget the self is to be actualized by [the] myriad things;When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away.No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.Here is the most-quoted stanza of the piece, which I refer to as Dogen's four transitions. Studying the Buddha way, ironically, begins with studying the self, which seems counter to Buddhism's emphasis on selflessness. Eventually we transition to forgetting the self, which necessarily involves engaging with the myriad things; they actually actualize us, not the other way ‘round. This reflects Master Tozan's follow-up to the precious mirror, in which form and reflection behold each other: “You are not it, but in truth it is you.” Curiouser and curiouser. So far so good. But turns out that this forgetting is total. The self, which most of us identify as body and mind, drops away. And as if that is not enough of a whiplash, the bodies and minds of others do so, as well. Twilight Zone. No trace of this realization is to be found anywhere, and that condition is permanent. So what would be the point, if it all gets lost in the ether?When you first seek Dharma,you imagine you are far away from its environs.But Dharma is already correctly transmitted: you are immediately your original self.We approach studying the Buddha Way much like we do any other subject, imagining that somewhere in the literature, or maybe in the foreign lands of origin, we will find the true source. Certainly not in the self, with which we are way too familiar. But Master Dogen assures us that your happiness lies right under your eyes, back in your own back yard. We are already Dharma-holders; we just do not know it. Dogen's use of the term “immediate” I think is special, meaning intimate in time and space.When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving.But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves.Similarly, if you examine [the] myriad things with a confused body and mind, you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent.[But] When you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that nothing at all has unchanging self.One of the things I most admire about Dogen is his ability to draw on everyday yet revealing experiences that we all have in common, to illustrate his point. I grew up on a farm near a lake, where we would go fishing and boating, so remember this disorienting event clearly, from many times in a moving boat. It is a matter of where we direct our attention. If you pay attention, you can detect this same, seeming contradiction, when moving from sitting to walking meditation. As you move through the room, it flows through you. The totality of movement sums to zero, one meaning of “mokurai.”A quick editorial note: all punctuation and bracketed insertions are mine, meant to enhance understanding of the text, for instance reinforcing the point about differentiating “myriad things” from “the myriad things.” I think this bears repetition. “Confusion” here means the kind of disorientation that may develop from our misinterpretation of sensory phenomena, amongst the most insidious of which is the impression that our mind and nature are permanent. This is the Atman of Hinduism, the “soul” of most theistic belief systems. It is non-threatening to recognize that the universe, with all its infinite beings may be impermanent, but when the pointing finger turns in our direction, we cringe. Again, if our practice becomes truly intimate, we will see that our “self” is included in this all-inclusive embrace.Firewood becomes ash, and it does not become firewood again.Yet do not suppose that the ash is future and the firewood past.You should understand that firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood, which fully includes past and future, and is independent of past and future.Ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, which fully includes future and past.Just as firewood does not become firewood again, after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death.This being so, it is an established way in buddha-dharma to deny that birth turns into death.Accordingly, birth is understood as no-birth.It is an unshakable teaching in Buddha's discourse that death does not turn into birth.Accordingly, death is understood as no-death.Birth is an expression complete this moment.Death is an expression complete this moment.They are like winter and spring: You do not call winter the beginning of spring, nor summer the end of spring.Another poetic analogy derived from the familiar, day-in and day-out reality of living in a time before coal was discovered. When warmth, cooking, metallurgy, et cetera, depended upon the wood-fired hearth. We make a logical, linear connection between the firewood and the ash, with the primal element of fire being the agent of change. In modern times, some would argue that this demonstrates the “arrow of time”: You cannot unburn the firewood. Others would argue that it only demonstrates the irreversibility of natural processes, revealing nothing about the nature of time. Master Dogen points out that in all instances, exemplified by the firewood in one case, the ash in another, the Three Times of Buddhism — past, future and present — are always and only coexistent. Matsuoka Roshi referred to this as the “eternal moment.” Firewood has past, present and future, whether it is burned or not; as does ash.Suddenly, another vintage Dogen whiplash: just as ash does not revert to firewood, you do not revert to an earlier state, birth, after dying. That got real personal, real quick. Dogen's assertion lobbies against popular conceptions of reincarnation. Rebirth, as taught by Buddha, does not make this claim: the one that dies is not the one reborn. Note that both birth and death are “expressions,” but not attributed to anything or anyone. One may say expressions of life itself, I suppose. Death is not opposed to life, but to birth. And both are inflection-points in the continuum of life. Neither somehow magically turns into the other. Thus, and this may be a logical leap, birth is no-birth, or non-birth as another translation has it, and death is non-death. Just as there is thinking, not thinking, and non-thinking, Dogen's coinage. Each is complete in the moment, just like firewood, and ash. Or the seasons. Nowadays, of course, we refer to the annual fire season, hurricane season, or drought, flooding and virus seasons. Pump enough pollution into the atmosphere, and it's “so long” to seasonality. Or “hello” to the end-times.Next time we will continue with Master Dogen's comments upon the nature of enlightenment itself. Stay tuned.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell