For more information on Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, please visit our website at www.ancientdragon.org. Our teachings are offered to the community through the generosity of our supporters. To make a donation online, please visit our website. I think, just without further ado, Taigen, our MA artist guiding teacher, who was our guiding teacher for forever in the life of the dragon, is going to offer the Dharma talk today after what I've heard was a wonderful seminar yesterday on Togen's great fascicle. Thank you so much. And welcome everyone. And so yesterday I did a two and a half hour online seminar on an ancient dragon on an essay or a fascicle from Dogen.

[01:05]

from his Chopa Genzo, Two Dharma on a Treasury, massive work. And so first I should, for new people, just to say who Dogen is, he was the founder of this branch of Zen, which we now call Sato Zen, who brought it from China to Japan. He was a Japanese monk who went to Japan for four years and brought back this lineage. And... wrote voluminously and we often talk about his writing. So in Zen we do, you know, the focus of Zen is zazen, seated meditation, upright sitting, enjoying our inhale and exhale, facing the wall, facing ourselves, letting the wall see us. And But also we talked about these old teaching stories, sometimes called koans, that are a great treasure for our tradition, many old teaching stories.

[02:24]

And Dogen wrote about them in various places. And so the teaching I did yesterday online was about one of these essays, which goes back to one of the stories of one of the great ancient masters in China. So this tradition... They were again brought to Japan, and my teacher, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, brought to San Francisco in the 60s. And now here we are in Chicago, and there are people online from New Mexico and many other places, and Michigan, you see. So here we are, and Dovian does this essay in Cheval Genso that I talked about yesterday extensively, and I'll just have brief highlights of today. It's based on an old story.

[03:27]

And there's an introduction to this essay, which I talked about at length yesterday at the beginning, which celebrates the influence of one of the branches of Chinese Buddhism, Hua Yan, from the Flower Ornament to the Tantra Sutra. I talked about it at the beginning yesterday. Hopefully, I'll be talking about it at the end today. But I want to start with the basic story. So Dogen says in his essay, an ancient Buddha said, a painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger. And this is, he doesn't name him in the Shobo Genzo essay, but this is Shangyan Dogen in Japanese, who died in 898. So, you know, we have this long time span of time. the teaching that we refer to. And this is an important thing for us today to have a long, a wide, deep time span in which to consider

[04:33]

how we are sitting as us and how we are practicing shogunate elsewhere says to study the ways to study themselves. So for newcomers, welcome, welcome. And glad to meet you all. And Part of what's difficult about this practice is not getting your legs into some funny position, and that might be difficult in sitting for long periods. There's some physical pain. But actually to see all the thoughts and feelings that arise in Zazen, and one of his practices is not to get rid of those, but to merely digest them, cut through them, not be caught by, go beyond, All of our stuff to use. Is that a modern psychological term? Anyway, so that's cool. Yes. Right. OK, so, OK, I want to I want to get to this story, though, first.

[05:38]

So, in the essay that I will talk more about, Dogen quotes this teacher, Shonin, in a painting, Where Escape Does Not Satisfy Hunger. And the story about that, okay, I'll just read the story. I'm going to read the story from a different massive work of Dogen called Eikoroku, Dogen's Extensive Record, which I translated to Shobako Okumura. So, and one little excerpt of one talk that Dopey gives to that. He says, when Master Xiangyuan had passed a number of years in the circle in the assembly of Guishan, Guishan said to him, and Guishan, who was Xiangyuan's teacher, is very important in the history of Chinese Zen. He's the founder of one of the five houses or lineages in Chinese Zen. And for those of you who are newer or have been around a long while, there will not be a test.

[06:40]

It's okay if you don't remember anything I say. or any of these names, or any of that, the point of studying the Dharma, the teaching, teaching these teaching stories, is simply to support our practice, to support our uprightness as we sit facing the wall and as we get up and go out into the busy world. But that's part of how Dogen reports the story. So, again, Shangyan, Dogen was a student at Guishan, and Guishan said to him, after he'd been there a little while, other than what you remember from commentaries or have heard from the sermons of this old monk, read me a single utterance, some versions say, say something before your parents report. And Zhang Yan was very well read, as well known. He had studied many commentaries, and Zen is supposed to be a teaching beyond mind and words, but we're beyond words and letters.

[07:43]

And interestingly, there's huge libraries of words and letters and books and commentaries about these old teachings and commentaries and those commentaries. Anyway, Zhang Yan has studied a lot of this. And when Guishan asked him that, bring me, say something that goes beyond, you know, these good commentaries, that goes beyond before your parents were born, Guishan said, I can't, I don't refuse to speak except that, no, no, he said, Guishan said, Shangyan said to Guishan, I'm unable to speak. He was speechless. I asked you to say, to tell me, Master, I said, I don't refuse to speak for you, except that later you would scold me. So Shongyan said, in this present lifetime, I no longer expect to understand Zen. Some of you may feel that, but for restoration, I will become a monk who just serves Zen.

[08:46]

serves food. So, you know, when we have longer sittings, we have servers who come around in the meditation hall and serve meals, and we take meals formally in the meditation hall. So, basically, Shakyamuni was saying, well, I'm not going to study all these teachings anymore. I'm not even going to sit satsang. I'll just serve food to the monks. And he said, a painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger. And then he burnt all his books. Because none of his commentaries provided him with a response to Guishan's question. So, you know, I don't recommend book burning, and we're not up to that yet in our culture, although now we're doing book banning, and banning books from our curriculums, and even wonderful books like Beloved by Toni Morrison, one of my three favorite novels. But, of course, it mentions racism and slavery, and we're not supposed to talk about that anymore, according to the powers that be.

[09:55]

So, Xiangyang burned all his books. And then later he traveled to the site of the former hermitage of the national teacher, Nanyang, who was a significant figure at an early time. And he built a hut there and stayed and took care of the memorial space. And so there's a few different stories about this guy, Xiangyang. He's not one of the people we talk about most, but one day he was sweeping the path And as he swept, a pebble jumped up and hit against some bamboo and made a sound. I won't try and imitate it because I don't know. But anyway, with that sound, Zhang Yan suddenly became clear. And... He wrote a verse saying, with one blow, subject and object vanish, which is important to this story.

[11:04]

I no longer practice to solve things on my own. In all my activities, I celebrate the ancient path and do not hold passivity. So this sitting, that's important. This sitting, Zazen, may seem like it's just some passive, settling, calm, quiet. It is that, but it's also attempted. So while you're sitting, pay attention to thoughts and feelings that come up. It doesn't mean you have to think about them. Just don't try and get rid of your thoughts and feelings. Don't try and be, you know, just calm and quiet. That's not the point of our practice. That's not the goal. The goal is not to get rid of all your thoughts and feelings, but how to sit through it all and be awake. Awakening is the point. So, after writing that verse, Guishan Pei addressed in a formal manner and faced

[12:08]

In the distance towards Guishan, where Guishan was, I think Guishan had passed away by then, Shakyamuni made prostrations to Guishan and said, Great Master Guishan, as my excellent teacher, my gratitude surpasses that to my father and mother. Gratitude to you. If Guishan had spoken for me at that time, how could I have passed today's experience? Okay, so that's the basic story, the version of it in the extensive record that Dogen is talking about in his Shogo Genzo essay, Anything Roy's Cake is Not Satisfied Hunger. Dogen, in many of his essays and writings, undercuts usual perspectives on stories and on our usual way of thinking, our subject-object way of thinking. So he does so in this essay very much so. He says a little further down from saying in the story, however, to think this statement means that skillful teachings are useless is a great mistake.

[13:19]

This is not the authentic transmission of the ancestors' teaching. So Dogen emphasized in our tradition, and particularly the branch of Sato Zen and Tsuki Roshi brought to California, does not dismiss study of these old stories and of the sutras, the scriptures, the words of the Buddha that go back 2,500 years. We do study these texts and these stories and use these stories to awaken ourselves. But the point isn't to get some understanding of these. It's okay if you don't understand. The point is, how do these stories support you to practice, support each of us to face the wall, face our lives uprightly? So... In many of his writings, there'll be an undercut to the usual way of seeing these kinds of teachings.

[14:24]

So the story, the saying is a penny price cake does not satisfy hunger. And usually this has been taken as, well, you know, just paintings or stories or whatever of reality don't take care of our hunger and desire. It doesn't satisfy us. And some people have said that traditionally that that means not to study these. And Durgin strongly disagrees with that. And there's a whole lot in this long essay that I'm not going to get to, but he says, Dogen says, for example, know that a painted rice cake is your face after your parents were born and your face before your parents were born. Just a painted rice cake. Although it's neither born or unborn, the moment when a painted rice cake is made, it's made of rice flour.

[15:27]

And that's the moment of actualizing the way. That's That's awakening. Do not see this moment as affected by a limited view that a painted rice cake comes and goes. And it goes on to say that paints for painting rice cake are the same as those used for painting mountains and waters. for painting mountains and waters, blue and red paints are used. And later on, a little further down, he says for painting mountains, rocks and stones and trees and streams are used. So for painting rice cakes, rice flowers are used. And he talks about this painting. He says... Painted rice cakes spoken of here means that sesame rice cakes, herb rice cakes, milk rice cakes, toasted rice cakes, rice cakes, and the like are all actualized in the painting. So the painting is important. Our practice is to paint your rice cake.

[16:30]

And Dogen is refuting the idea that painted rice cake is not the real thing. Paint the real thing. What is the real thing? Not Coca-Cola. But how do we see that the painting, and doing the painting, painting is a verb. So in Japanese, you can make any noun into a verb easily. So painting rice cakes is what we do when we're doing sitting zazen. Painting rice cakes and various other things. And so... I'm going to cut to the chase and go to the end. Well, okay, a little bit more. This is a long essay. But when mountains and waters are painted, blue, green, and red paints are used. Strange rocks and winter stones are used. Four jewels and seven treasures are used. Rice cakes are painted in the same manner.

[17:33]

When a person is painted with four great elements, earth, water, fire, air, and the five skandhas, the five aspects of what a human being is that are mentioned in the Heart Scripture, one of the chants that we did when we thought that force, feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are... all that makes up what a person is in the sense of traditional Buddhism. So we say here that these five are used to paint a person. When a Buddha is painted, not only a clay altar or a lump of earth is used to make a Buddha, or like wood, like the Buddha in the center, in the front of this meditation hall, there's 32 marks of later grass, cultivating a wisdom for incalculable eons are used to make a Buddha. As a Buddha has been painted on a single scroll in this way,

[18:35]

All Buddhas are painted Buddhas. So on the scroll on the left, which is a wonderful scroll from the Pure Land tradition, there's Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, And they're depicted. And those are, you might say, those are just painted Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas are awakening beings who help keep the teaching alive and awaken beings and relieve suffering in this world. And that's what we're all doing here. Even if you're here for the first time, you're doing Bodhisattva practice. Bodhisattva means awakening beings, so beings that are awakening other beings. This is not merely a self-help practice. We don't practice just for ourselves, we practice for all beings in this tradition. So as a Buddha has been painted on a single scroll in this way, all Buddhas are painted Buddhas, and all painted Buddhas are actual Buddhas. So if you think just a picture of a Buddha is just a picture, you're missing the point completely.

[19:37]

We're all painted Buddhists. So he says, when you penetrate this matter, the coming and going of birth and death is a painting. So our lives and the end of our lives are paintings. Unsurpassed Awakening is a painting. The entire universe and the open sky are nothing but a painting. So Dogen is turning inside out the usual conventional meaning of this story that a painted rice cake does not satisfy hunger. And he goes further. Well, he keeps talking about how paintings are real. If you say a painting is not real, then the myriad things are not real. All of the beings in the universe, each of us as people and dogs and cats and fish and birds and trees and lakes and hills and mountains are nothing but a painting, Dogenes said.

[20:47]

So motion and stillness are nothing but a painting. Our endeavor or effort at this moment is brought forth entirely from a painting. So again, if you say a painting is not real, then the myriad things are not real. If the myriad things are not real, then Buddha Dharma, Buddha's teaching is not real. But since the Buddha Dharma, the Buddha teaching is real, a painted rice cake is real. So he's undoing our conventional way of thinking about reality itself. And I'll just mention that in one place in the text he talks about how some moments of awakening is not awakening. It's not just something that happens as a result of some particular experience, you know, which are just talked about in these stories.

[21:52]

So... Yeah, the sentence about that. Yeah. As emancipation is not a matter of time, it is not concerned with a discussion of a certain moment or instant. So it's not so when Xiang Yan heard the pebble hit the bamboo. He did have a kind of opening experience, and that happens. That happens in our life. It happens in zazen. It happens when we're walking around. It happens when we're sleeping, when we're doing all kinds of things. Those experiences happen, but that's not the point. So some branches of zen even think that the goal of our practice is to have some fancy experience. That's not the point Dovina is saying here very strongly. Okay, the punchline, this final point that Dogen makes at the end of this long essay where he's talking about how our practice is about painting rice cakes and other things, and painting ourselves and painting each other and painting awakening and actually awakening as a painting.

[23:08]

He says, There is no remedy for satisfying hunger other than a painted rice cake. Only a painted rice cake could satisfy hunger. So the original saying from Shang Yang was a painted rice cake does not satisfy hunger. They burned all his books. But Doga says, no, the only way to satisfy hunger is through a painted rice cake. Without painted hunger, you never become a true person. There is no other understanding besides painted satisfaction. So he talks about painted rice cake cannot satisfy hunger, and then he talks about painted satisfaction and painted hunger. In fact, satisfying hunger, satisfying beyond hunger, not satisfying hunger, and not satisfying beyond hunger cannot be attained or spoken of without painted hunger.

[24:11]

So this is like core teaching in Buddhism, that suffering arises because of desires, because of hunger, because of yearning, because of grasping after objects of desire. And we're trained in our society to do that. We see painted advertisements on TV and on signs, and we're supposed to satisfy ourselves and satisfy our desires and satisfy our hunger by getting these painted objects of desire. But actually, this is just painted hunger. And we get beyond that through painted satisfaction. So that's a very, very brief summary of what Dogen says in this long essay. So he talks about actualizing the painting of the Wigan. It's all a painting.

[25:16]

And it's all painting. It's all the activity of painting. So yesterday in a long seminar, we talked about the role of art and music and poetry in our practice. And that's a controversial topic because people think that we should be focusing on, that practice means focusing on studying ourselves and sitting upright. It is a central practice. And studying these old teachings, But we should be painting awakening, Dogen is saying. We should actualize the painting of awakening. So if we think that there's reality and then there's only a painting of reality, that misses the point completely. So I talked last month in a seminar and talk here about another essay by Dogen, which talks about expressing the dream of inner dream.

[26:19]

Dogen talks about expression a lot, that we express buddha by sitting zazen. When you're sitting zazen, so the people who just did this for the first time this morning, congratulations, and are sitting upright, facing the wall, facing ourselves, we do this as a way of painting Buddha. So there's a Buddha in front of the meditation hall, and we are all expressing Buddha in this body-mind, in our own body-mind, when we do that. So Zazen is a performance art, we're performing Buddha in our body-mind. And nobody can tell you how to be Buddha. This is something you need to discover yourself. Of course, there are all these teaching stories and talks about that to encourage us. But we need to Find our way of expressing Buddha.

[27:22]

And Dogen talks a lot about expression. So in the essay I mentioned about expressing the dream within a dream, usually, even in Buddhism, the idea of awakening is to awaken from a dream. This is all a dream. We need to wake up. But actually, Dogen says that we should express the dream within the dream. And here he's saying we should eat rice cakes within this painting of rice cakes that we each did. And the whole thing is this. So that's a summary of or some of the main points of this essay that I talked about for an hour yesterday. But I want to go back, as I said, the introduction to. this long essay is like, for those of you who know the co-art collections, like the Book of Serenity and the Booklet Record, there's usually a little introduction, a pointer, which doesn't have obvious connection to the actual story, but it has something to say about something.

[28:29]

And so I want to talk the rest of the time, limited time now, but about the introduction to this painting of rice cake essay by Dogen. So I'll read some of it and talk about what it's saying and where it comes from and how Hoi An Buddhism is the background of all of East Asian Buddhism. whether it's Pure Land or Zen or Mahjong or whatever, and very important in our Soto Zen tradition. So just to read a little bit of this introduction, all Buddhas are realization, thus all things are realization. This is the first sentence of this long essay. although there are no identical characteristics or minds, at the moment of your actualization, numerous actualizations, manifest without hindrance, without obstruction.

[29:29]

So he's saying here there's no identical characteristics or minds between things, between people, between dogs and dogs and cats and cats and trees and trees. There's no They're not, we're not all the same. This goes back, so this is a, this is a context of the basic philosophy of Soto Zen, which comes from the branch of Chinese Buddhism called Guayan, Japanese is Kegon, goes back to the Flower Ornament Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra, which we are, have been reading for three years, once a month, first Friday evening of the month online. And everyone's welcome to come to me at 7 o'clock, first Friday evening of the month. It's a long, long sutra filled with all kinds of psychedelic expressions of the activities of awakening. and that teaching is actually the core teaching of Buddhism.

[30:37]

I'll just read a little bit more and then we'll talk more about that. All of East Asian Buddhism, I should say. At the moment of your manifestation, numerous manifestations come forth without touching one another. This is the straightforward teaching of the ancestors. So one of our main chats is called The Harmony of Difference and Savior by an old teacher from the 700s named Shinto who's in our tradition. And it talks about oneness or wholeness or the universal and the aspect of reality that is differentiation. discrimination in the phenomenal world and each of the particular things in each of us as particular beings in the world. So this is the philosophical underpinning of actually all of East Asian Buddhism, but particularly in Soto Zen. I don't know if I have time to go into the Huay Yen, which is the background of the Sato Zen five positions or degrees, but this is about how we're deeply interconnected.

[31:58]

So another image from Huay Yen and from the Flower One Sutra is Ingris Net, that many people have heard of. Ingris Net means that it is an image of reality in which The whole of reality is a net. And in each place where the meshes meet, there's a jewel. And each jewel reflects the light in the jewels around it. And those reflect the light in the jewels around them forever. It stays that time. Recently I was reading something about how the mesh, the nets, the network, is what's supposed to, the jewels are important. Anyway, this is a metaphor, to put it that way, of reality. That we're all deeply interconnected. And Zazen kind of helps us see this. So as you're sitting on your seat, uprightly, enjoying your inhale and exhale, facing the wall, facing yourself,

[33:01]

Many beings are there on your seat. So one of the ways I indicate this, how many of you can remember your fourth grade teacher? Most people raised your hand. How many of you who raised your hand have thought of your fourth grade teacher in the last month? One person, two people, okay, three people, okay. But many people, not just people, many childhood friends, childhood pets, people you met at a party a month ago and have forgotten, lots of beings. Of course, family members, former lovers, whatever, are part of what you is sitting on your seat right now. So reality is that we are deeply interconnected. And this is put together in Hua Yen in the Sportful Dharma Dato. Okay, I will say a little bit about that. that, well, Dogen says it here, reaching awakening does not limit one thing.

[34:11]

It does not make one thing separate. It does not make one thing not separate. So each of us is a particular being, each object. This is a particular teacup. I think there are probably in the kitchen other teacups that look like it maybe, But they're not this one. And it has water that's delicious. And each particular teacup, each particular object, each particular dog or cat or bird or fish or mountain or lake is particular. But just as we are products of our fourth grade teachers, all things are connected with all other things. the same time. And so in the YN system, there's a system of really particular in the universal, the universal and the particular, the non-obstruction of the universal and the particular.

[35:17]

So we say sometimes form is emptiness, emptiness is form. There's no emptiness or non-separation aside from forms, and forms are empty of separate identity because we're all connected, because many beings are what is on your sheet right now. So, and then the fourth Dhammadhatta in this Blau-Ornament-Yin system is that there's no obstruction between particular things and other particular things, which is really interesting, and helpful in terms of thinking about how do we relate to the suffering of the world, which is the point. How do we respond appropriately to all the difficulties in our own lives and in the lives of the people around us and our family and friends and in our society? Things do not obstruct each other. We are connected. Everything is connected. And we can talk about this in time as well as space in terms of history and

[36:22]

You know, history of slavery and racism in our country is very much part of what's going on in our country now and so forth. So that's the Huaian system. And my teacher, Tenshin Anderson, actually from the Zen Center, has said that The fifth, the sixth ancestor of the Guanyin school, which had five formal ancestors back in the 700s or 600s. The fifth, the sixth ancestor is Dongshan, Tosan in Japanese, who was the founder of the Chinese branch of Seto Zen called Taozong. So again, it will not be a test, but Dongshan wrote the Song of the Jewelmare Samadhi, which we chant here sometimes. It's in our chapbook anyway. And this is a foundational teaching of all of Tso Tso Zen. And Tetsche Anderson says that the sixth ancestor in the Huayuan school is Dongshan, who is the founder of our lineage in China.

[37:29]

And my friend Stephen Hine, who's one of the foremost scholars of Dogen academically, has agreed with that and told me that there was a recent conference of academic scholars of East Asian Buddhism from all these different schools, Pure Land and Rajrayana and... Soto Zen and Rinzai Zen, and they all finally agreed that this Guaya teaching of this interconnectedness is embedded in all of East Asian Buddhism. And Dongshan wrote, put together a teaching called the Five Positions or Five Degrees, that's called the Five Ranks, which is very important because the background is of those. But I have to say that Dogen talks about these systems and he says, do not use the measure of oneness or difference or the universal and the particular as the criterion of your study.

[38:36]

So Dogen doesn't talk about explicitly about this system of five degrees, which is foundational in Sato Zen. He says to reach one thing is to reach an area of things, but that teaching of five ranks, five careers, five positions is very tempting. And it's a kind of system that is very helpful. And it's been studied intensively in China and Japan by such people. But forget about it. The point is that universal reality, the ultimate reality, which we glimpse in Zazen, or sometimes have some deep experience of, and the particulars of the phenomenal world, people and trees and and lakes and mountains and birds and fish and so forth, there's a way in which they integrate or they are interrelated with each other.

[39:43]

It's not that they become one. But anyway, so that's a brief summary of what I talked about yesterday at much more length. The point is to be aware that the ultimate universal reality, reality of the painted rice cake or painting a rice cake, is not separate from each of the particular phenomenal events in the world and each of the particular phenomenal events on all of our seats in this meditation hall. So there's a little bit of time for comments or questions or discussion before we have to... Thank you, Taigen, for such an expansive talk. I think three hours of seminar is probably laid upon us.

[40:45]

And, you know, I thought this connection actually between painting of a rice cake and expressing the dream within a dream I never thought of that before, but I think it's really great. No. We're going to have tea right after this seminar, so we won't have all of our work period after tea, so we can clean up tea, but this will give us time to talk less formally with Taigen. But please, Bodhisattvas, bring forth your paintings and your dreams in response to Taigen's wonderful exposition of this great teaching. And also, new or newish people, please feel free to ask. There's no such thing as Santa's stupid question. But if you have basic questions, that's... Some response I have was that this also is about compassion.

[41:45]

Of course. that the painting, sometimes we think our painting isn't any good. I think we paint ugly pictures or what's going on in our hearts and minds is somehow deficient. And this really speaks to the wholeness and beauty of our experience. So, you know, although I didn't hear that compassion word, I think that it speaks It is strong in this. The other reaction I had is for the past several days, I've been going down a rabbit hole of looking at paintings, at scrolls from Song Dynasty China. And one of the things that I was just really moved by was these paintings were expressions, and they often had verses that were commentaries that were expressing the realization of practice.

[42:48]

And then there's some, you know, and to us, they look kind of weird, right? Like these, you know, black ink just kind of done in these kind of weird forms. I mean, nothing in here, maybe this is... you know, too beautiful. And that scroll is very beautiful, but some of these have these gnarly looks. And then these, like, wonderful commentaries that express. And so I think about us, like, our practices, our Sazen is this great expression and creative expression. So I don't know, maybe I was in rice cake mode lately. I don't know. So anyway, that's just a response for me. I'd love to hear, and I'm sure Taika would love to hear any responses to any of you online. I think David Ray will help us as well. Eve, did you have something to say? I don't know. I mean, I was thinking about expression. I mean, I guess the word that came to my head was representation, more or less the same thing.

[43:51]

And I guess what struck me was this equation of the idea of representation and that represents something else with what we usually think of as separate, which is the relationship of the particular to the general. So that I'm a particular person, but I'm also, in a sense, a representation of all the relationships, all the mirror jewels, et cetera, that I'm part of. Yes. The word representation, I'll come back to it, but manifestation is a word that's sometimes used, or actualization. So Eve is Eve, and Eve is also a manifestation of everything that's not Eve. and everything and everybody that has come together to allow Eve to be sitting in front of me. So yeah, it's intricate and complicated and we can't get to the bottom of it.

[44:57]

One of the parts of this is that to recognize the limitation, and Dogen and Zen talks about this a lot, the limitation of our human capacities, Dogen talks in one of his essays, Genjo Kohan actually has a fundamental point about how different beings see things differently. We each have our own perspective or our own way of thinking. So, you know, this wonderful lady in Michigan nearby, fish see it one way, humans see it another way. Hungry ghosts see it yet another way. Dragons see it another way, birds. So to recognize that our consciousness is limited is part of this. You're talking about landscapes and representation. And I mentioned yesterday, because we got into talking about art and poetry a little bit, and this, I recommend, there's a wonderful two-part, two pieces, two hours of documentary that's on PBS now, has been recently, about Leonardo da Vinci.

[46:09]

I hadn't known so much about, actually, but he's the first, they say he's the first Westerner to actually do landscape painting. And he didn't, and his art, and Mona Lisa's kind of the culmination of it, but his art is not just to represent something out there, but it expresses light and dark and emotions and so forth. So, yeah, each of us is expressing Buddha in a particular way. So, yeah, thank you. Other comments online or in the room? Questions? Sorry, but he's such... Thank you, Dogen. I hope. I appreciate you hearing this because it made a lot of connections for me with other Dogen that I hadn't heard yet, like The Dream. There are two specific things that popped up for me, but I'll preface it by saying that I remember reading... this spectacle early on in practice and go, what the hell is this?

[47:13]

This is nonsense. I'm just not going to read this again. Okay. I'm foolishly not ready yet, but... It didn't make any sense to me because I was like so sure that like, oh, well, yeah, you don't get rid of all this extra stuff. That stuff is extraneous. You don't need it. It's a real type. You'll really find out what's going on. You'll really get that. Over the years, I've developed such an appreciation for Dogen because Dogen is so much about like... there's no final here. There's no, there's, there's more. We're not done yet. Right. Sort of quality. And hearing this remind me of two things from the one, which is, I always forget who's who, but I think it's Matsu and Nagoya. That's a good example. The original story is like, student is sitting, and teacher comes along and says, what the hell are you doing? I'm here for you. What the hell are you doing? He's like, I'm sitting. I want to become a Buddha. And it's like, except a tile starts polishing, and student asks the teacher, what the hell are you doing?

[48:18]

I'm polishing to make this a mirror. Oh, you can make that a mirror. What are you doing sitting? You can't become a Buddha just by sitting. But Dogen then turns it on its head, saying, No, that's how you, that's how you become a Buddha. We need to polish a tile to make marriage, yes. And then also the, from, I think, Gimjo Koan, when the Dharma has not felt body and mind, you think it's sufficient. And when it finally does, something is missing. There's always something more, there's always going to be more representation Like others representing you, you representing yourself. And like, is it not done? There's something about like doing the practice, sitting on the cushion, watching it come up over and over again, incessantly. That sort of opens you up to that solidity time and time again. Yes. And one phrase that Dogen uses is, quite often, much more than he talks about just sitting, he talks about Buddha going beyond Buddha.

[49:22]

So Buddha is not something that, you know, you have some fancy experience or some deep understanding and then you're Buddha and then you're finished. The Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha 2,500 years ago in northeastern India or Nepal, he became the Buddha. He was thoroughly awakened, but he continued practicing and he continued awakening every day the rest of his 40 plus years. So part of this practice is we continue to awaken in each situation after each election. With each person we meet, we awaken to what we is in ourselves and everything. And each of us in our particularity is particular in a separate, different way of expressing. Buddha and Durga emphasizes expression, but also we're all connected.

[50:24]

So there's this universal reality and the particular reality. So thank you, Paul. Anybody online? I talked to some of the people in the room over tea, but was anybody online who wants to comment? Anybody in the room? David Ray. I guess a thing in this morning's version hit me and touched me that I heard but didn't hear yesterday. And it comes back to compassion. that the words a painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger means, it means I messed up my life. It means I couldn't answer my teacher and looking at my whole life, I say, wow, I blew it. I should just, you know, I should just serve food and forget it because everything I wrote, everything I did is all wrong.

[51:26]

I got to burn my books. And I'm thinking of Dogen's other saying, my whole life has been one continuous mistake. And that the S yeah. And, and Suzuki where she says, my mind is a, is a, is a garbage heap. Yeah. And that is, Dogen is saying, no, that is practice. That's not, that's not an obstruction to practice. That's not, not practicing. That is the rightness right there. That is right there. And that is compassion. So Chongyang, after burning his books because he realized that he wasn't going to become himself just by reading books, although reading books can encourage us, he started serving food. This was an act of kindness and he was sweeping and taking care of the National Teachers Memorial. So how do we express the fullness? So part of this is that we do recognize the fullness in each of us and each other of the whole universe.

[52:35]

And then the response to that is, well, how do we share kindness? So, yes, thank you for mentioning compassion. And Bo, yes. And then he says, too, you know, I can't solve this problem on my own, right? Like, which really resonates with me in that particular moment, right? And that's like his awakening, is that he can't do this, you know, whatever problem is in front of him, it's not something he can solve on his own. So that's something, you know, that feels simple but profound that I can, you know, take away from this. Yeah, so that's why we're here together. Yeah, so this is also a teaching about sangha, the lowest compassion. Sangha is community, and we practice together in community. We sit together. inhaling and exhaling, and inhaling the exhales of the person next to us, or whatever, we're all connected. We're each particular and individual, and we're all totally, deeply, deeply connected.

[53:42]

And Sangha community, Dharma community, awakening community, is about that. How do we share this reality and this investigation, and this painting of rice cakes, and a painting of ourselves every time. I think about this in modern times right now. And, you know, there's a real resistance to fluidity in our human architecture. We want to categorize and make things into binaries to see how our mind works. And, you know, if Dogen was speaking today, I'd be interested in sort of what images might be used or what realities that we're in now, because, you know, I feel like we're sort of like, I don't know, 2.0 or 3.0 past Dogen in our culture where, you know, we're, we're really at this point of maximal division, but also right at that way, there's this gate into openness and fluidity along so many lines.

[54:55]

And, uh, so I hear this in this teaching too, that, um, you know, there's whenever we try to hold on to something and try to make it anybody or anything into a thing, objectify, that this is a sort of radical refutation of that and an encouragement to open to everything in ourselves and others. We are interconnected, yes. And part of what you're saying is important that we see that this is a living tradition. So we talk about Buddha who lived 2,500 years ago, and Shakyamuni died in the 800s, and Moksha and Dogen in the 1200s, and Sukhi Rishi in 1971. So we look at, we have this wonderful opportunity to look at the fullness of time.

[56:00]

by seeing our ancestors. Ancestors on many levels, not just our Zen or Buddhist ancestors, but cultural ancestors. Not to mention Leonardo, but many others. And ancestors who worked for liberation and for tolerance and freedom and beyond hate and so forth. Our history is full of them. So... This is a living tradition. Buddhism is alive. This practice is alive because of each of us, each of you, each person. So we make it our own and we express it in different ways. But all these, you know, Dogen is alive also. And the idea of the Bodhisattva is that we practice to help liberate all beings, help awaken all beings. all beings, including ourselves.

[57:01]

But one of the teachings about bodhisattvas today that I like is that, you know, in the Black Ornament Sutra, the Wayan Sutra, and in many other scriptures in Buddhism and many other teachings, there are depictions of Buddhists and bodhisattvas like Nerg who, from many different world systems, This could be for many different galaxies. In the Puyen's Avatamsaka Sutra, they say that on the tip of every blade of grass, on the tip of every staff, in each atom, there are innumerable Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas gathered around them. So, this reality is everywhere. But they say that in this world, it was called the world of Dorics, the Saha world, and Bodhisattvas from all these different dimensions are now lined up waiting to be born here and now.

[58:07]

Because amid the difficulties of our world, this is the greatest place to practice. We can make the most difference in expressing kindness and caring and compassion and insight and awakening. So this is a wonderful opportunity amidst the difficulties of our society now for us to practice and express kindness. And it's going to be difficult. for a while and that's a wonderful opportunity for us each thing that you do that each of us does to express caring and kindness can make a difference right now so i'll just say that i don't know if anybody online uh has anything to say or we could talk okay so we'll do the four-party software now The angels are numberless, we fear not to free them.

[59:18]

Till the shepherds of our needs host the foe. We vow to fight through them, now and at the age of our own lives. We love to enter animals. We love this place. It's unsurpassable. We love to do what is safest with. The dogs might not relate to us. We love to treat animals. They're used to life. They're exhaustible. We love to cut through animals. Don't worry, it's all right, let's do this. We're out to do it together. Put up with this way, it's not successful. We're out to do it together. It's all right, let's do this.

[60:19]

We're out to do it together. Dimensions are inconstable. We allow it to get to them. Darken the gates around the distance. We allow it to get to them. Do it with a place unsurpassable. We allow it to realize it.

[60:52]

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