I want to start today talking about Ehikoroku, Dogen's extensive record, which was, many of you may know Shobogenzo, True Dharma, I Treasury, by Dogen. Ehikoroku, I translated it with Shohaku Okamura, its massive work of short, mostly short Dharma Hall discourses. from his entire career. And Dogen was sitting on the Dharma seat in the Dharma hall and the monks were standing in the Dharma hall. And so they're mostly short discourses. I'm going to be doing an afternoon seminar on Eheko Roku on June 13th, 1 to 3.30. I'm also doing a first and third Thursday of the month, starting this Thursday, a study group on Huayan Buddhism.

[01:06]

So anyway, Heiko Roku, they're formal talks, but it's actually kind of more informal or more personal in terms of Dogen's sense of humor, Dogen's feelings and sentiments, Dogen's Dogen's mature teachings from A. Heiji. So, I'm going to start with a couple of those. So, in 1240, while he was still in Kyoto, Dogen said, here is a story. Tianhuang Dao Wu asked Shito, what is the essential meaning of Buddha Dharma? Shito is the guy who... Sekito in Japanese, he translated, he wrote Sandokai, the Harmony of Difference and Sateness, in the Song of the Grass Hut. Anyway, his students said, what is the essential meaning of Buddhadharma?

[02:09]

And Shitta said, not to attain, not to know. No attainment, nothing to attain, as the Heart Sutra says. And even not knowing, not knowing is most intimate. There are many things we don't know. So, Tao then said, beyond that, is there any other pivotal point or not? And Shito said, the wide sky does not obstruct the white clouds drifting. Not attaining, not knowing is Buddha's essential meaning. The wind blows into the depths, and further winds blow. The wide sky does not obstruct the white clouds drifting. At this time, why do you bother to ask shita? So, that's the entire Dharma Hall discourse.

[03:11]

The wide sky doesn't obstruct the white clouds drifting by, and this is also a meditation instruction. As we sit, open to... the universals, the ultimates, the wide sky, thoughts come up, and they're not obstructed by the white clouds. The universal wide sky is not obstructed by the white clouds drifting by, only thoughts and feelings. So, and vice versa. The clouds do not obstruct the white sky. So that's the entire Dharma Hall discourse. I wanted to do another one, which is much later, 1251. So Dogen taught in Kyoto from 1233 to 1243 after coming back from China.

[04:14]

And then he taught, he died in 1253. So this is a fairly late one. And he said, the family style of all Buddhas and ancestors is to first arouse the vow to save all living beings by removing suffering and providing joy. So this is the basic vow. To save all living beings, to free all living beings, removing suffering and providing joy for them. Only this family style is inexhaustibly bright and clear. In the lofty mountains, we see the moon for a long time. As clouds clear, we recognize the sky. So literally, if you go to the mountains of Tassajara or someplace else, or if you sit for a few days, like a lot of you recently did here, we see the moon for a while, for a long time.

[05:19]

Only this family style was inexhaustibly bright and clear. In the lofty mountains, we see the moon for a long time. As clouds clear, we first recognize the sky. Cast loose down the precipice, the moonlight shares itself within the 10,000 forms. So as we go back out from Sashin or from a practice period at Tassajara or wherever, the moonlight shines on the surface of the streams that flow down into the busy marketplace within the 10,000 forms. Then Dogen added, even when climbing up the bird's path, taking good care of yourself is spiritual power. So at the same time that we... we shave all living beings by removing suffering and providing joy, we also take good care of ourselves.

[06:31]

So in Zazen, we see our ancient twisted karma, and over time, we see the moon, and we see through our ancient twisted karma. We can let it go. It comes up again and [...] again, but we can also let it go. So we share ourselves within the 10,000 forms. We work with the suffering of our world. This is the basic practice of Zen bodhisattva people. So these days we are working with the... MAGA forces of corruption and violence and cruelty. Maybe it's only 30% of American people who are part of MAGA, probably less, much less in Chicago, but this corruption and violence goes back to the foundation of the United States.

[07:44]

We were founded on exterminating indigenous peoples. We didn't succeed completely. There are indigenous people still around. But we put them in reservations. So anyway, the Europeans came to this country and took the land and exterminated the cultures of many indigenous peoples. Also, the U.S. economy was based on slavery and slave trading. And it's both north and south. The United States economy was based on this. But also, all through this history of exterminating ancient peoples and slavery and Jim Crow and racism, all through there was resistance. So there's also a history of resistance to all of this.

[08:49]

There's a book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James Lowen, that goes into this very well. Tells the truth about Christopher Columbus exterminating people in the Caribbean. He talks about Jeffrey Amherst, who sent smallpox-infected blankets to Native American people. But there were also many white people who were included among Native peoples. So the movie Dances with Wolves is actually, you know, not uncommon story. There were many white people who were part of Native tribes and, you know, were forced to go back to white people when Native Americans were being exterminated or put into reservations. He also tells, and my teacher told me, the truth about the Mexican-American War, about John Brown, about Helen Keller, who was a wobbly and an activist, amongst other things.

[10:06]

So, you know, in this country, we have the ideals of life, liberty, and equal justice under the law. They've never been actualized completely, but still, we do have these ideals. Doken didn't even have these ideals. He lived in a feudal society where everything was just up to the feudal lords. So, yeah, these ideals are important. We believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We believe in equal justice under the law, even though it's never really happened completely. But we have the ideals, and that's important. So I want to talk about something which is, to many of you, ancient history, the assassinations of the 1960s.

[11:13]

So I've been reading a book by James Douglas, two S's at the end, called Martyrs to the Unspeakable, the Assassinations of JFK, Malcolm Martin, and RFK. He did a previous book, JFK and the Unspeakable, how the CIA and Alan Dulles and some people from the Joint Chiefs of Staff were behind the assassination of John Kennedy. So again, this may seem like ancient history to many of you. was very aware of it, all of it, in the 60s. So, these books are extremely well documented. How Kennedy was killed. He was going to withdraw troops from Vietnam when he got back from Dallas.

[12:16]

And there were people, cold warriors, who didn't want that to happen, who wanted to continue to have war. So Oswald was a Patsy. JFK's head wound was from the back, from the grassy knoll. And, yeah, JFK, John Kennedy, freaked out after the Cuban Missile Crisis and said, no, we can't have this. We can't have nuclear war. Because it came very, very close during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So he wanted to end the Cold War. And he secretly had negotiations and communications with Nikita Khrushchev and the Russians. Although they were secret from the hardline militarists in both sides. So there were these negotiations.

[13:27]

And Kennedy and Khrushchev were talking about a joint man mission to the moon. And there was a secret envoy from Kennedy sitting with Fidel Castro in Havana talking about including peace for Cuba. This was after the Cuban Missile Crisis. And they heard about the assassination. And Fidel Castro said, this changes everything. And it did. So again, this is ancient history to many of you. But John Kennedy campaigned for peace in the last six months of his life. He talked about peace, and he spoke about peace to the country. The country was actually going along with having peace, and to some of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to the people who were called warriors, that was not acceptable.

[14:36]

They considered him traitor, and they had to have war. So John Kennedy was killed with involvement of the CIA. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were also killed with a lot of support by the FBI. The FBI made sure that Malcolm and Martin Luther King's police protection was withdrawn at the times of their assassination. And there's more about... Martin Luther King's killing was not James Earl Ray. He was another Patsy. Anyway, this book is extremely well, extremely, extremely well documented.

[15:44]

So RFK, Bobby Kennedy was not killed by Sirhan Sirhan. Sirhan Sirhan was Palestinian. He was a very malleable person, very much influenceable, hypnotized, suggested. So he did stand in front of Bobby Kennedy right after he won the California primary and was going on to Chicago and would have been president. He was four or five feet in front of Bobby Kennedy, but according to the coroner, Mr. Noguchi, and his autopsy, Bobby Kennedy was killed from a gun that was an inch to an inch and a half behind his ear. Sirhan was four or five feet in front of him.

[16:45]

So this has been, all of this has been confirmed by congressional commissions. that happened later weren't so advertised. So all of our history since these assassinations in the 60s has been impacted by this. Kennedy, John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy wanted to have peace, wanted to end the Cold War. But Yeah, that wasn't going to happen. We did not learn the lessons of Vietnam. John Kennedy was going to withdraw troops from Vietnam. Vietnam continued into Nixon's reign. Wars continued. Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan.

[17:48]

Wars we lost. And our country now is super militarized. So all of this is kind of background to what's happening with MAGA and the current regime and the ICE detentions. The money that we pay for the Pentagon is... that could be paid for, could be going into health care and housing and education is massive. So our national budget, which is a kind of moral document, is about militarism. Okay, how do we practice in the midst of this reality?

[18:53]

So first of all, hopelessness is not helpful. Hopelessness is not reality, actually. Resistance and opposition to the current regime is strong and growing in all kinds of places. Amongst rural people as well as city people. The culture has changed since the 60s. The politics is still under control of MAGA, but our culture has changed. The Cold War ended. The apartheid ended in South Africa. Women have been empowered, although certainly not enough. And MAGA is trying to move everything back. persecute women, and so the ICE detentions are horrible.

[20:07]

Same-sex marriage, it was legalized. Our culture has changed a lot, in good ways. So we have to have the long view. Dr. King said that the arc of history is long, but it moves, it bends towards justice. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. And Zen, Our tradition has a long view of history. We invoke Shakyamuni Buddha, who lived 2,500 years ago. Rogan lived 800 years ago. Suzuki Roshi was back in the 60s.

[21:12]

So Zen Buddhism can see a wide range of history. How do we see the resistance to MAGA and all of the horrible things that are happening in our culture? The violence and the cruelty. It's just cruelty. So we all know this, and some of you are here for the first time, I think. And... We probably came to a Zen place to get away from all of that. Zen is supposed to be chill and calm. We live in this world. So again, what did Dogen say? We can see the wide range of history.

[22:23]

We don't have to feel caught by the cruelty of Naga. We can resist. So, Dogen said, again, the family style of all Buddhas and ancestors is first to arouse the vow to free all beings by removing suffering and providing joy. You know, there's still joy in the world. There's still birds and flowers and trees and, you know, climate damage is with us, but there's still, I still hear birds. How can we provide joy? How can we feel the joy of friendship, of community? of the birdsong.

[23:29]

But also we remove suffering, so there is suffering. People are having a hard time, some people, many people. The economy is not friendly to many people. We here are all more or less privileged white people. I would have some token Asian people. But still, we're, you know, we're relatively privileged. Well, he's Asian American. So I apologize if I convey that to you in a right way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[24:33]

Well, we have had black people here at Ancient Dragon. Anyway, so Zen is supposed to be like, you know, peaceful and cool and calm. And yet we respond to suffering in the world around us. To the ice ages. Maybe there are not so many in Chicago anymore. But there's still some. And, yeah. So, only this family style is inexhaustibly bright and clear, Dogen says. In the lofty mountains, in Sesshin, or even in one period of Zazen, we see the moon for a while, for a long time. As clouds clear, we first recognize the sky.

[25:35]

So, as we work on the clouds of our ancient twisted karma, and we each have them, and that's endless, we each have things we may regret or problems that we may have. It's not that we do one than the other. We work with our personal karma, at the same time that we respond to the suffering of the world. So we recognize the sky. Then cast loose down the precipice from the mountaintop or wherever. We don't have mountains in Illinois, hardly. So there are prairies and there are skyscrapers, you know. Gary Snyder talks about cities as natural places where there are skyscrapers and avenues, boulevards of streams. Anyway, cast loose down the precipice, the moonlight in the stream shares itself within the 10,000 forms.

[26:48]

So we share our awareness, our sense of the ultimate, of the universal, within all of the 10,000 suffering beings. And then he says, even when climbing up the bird's path, which is this image from Dongshan of the birds fly overhead and we don't see any path, but they're flying. But they can, for centuries and centuries, follow the same migration paths, north to south and south to north. Anyway, even when climbing up the bird's path, taking good care of yourself is spiritual power. So we take good care of ourselves. And that includes studying real history of where we're at, of our country. So we can study that history. But also our personal ancient twisted karma becomes apparent in Zazen.

[28:00]

So we work on that. We work on both. And sometimes we take turns working on one or the other. But anyway, so this is what Dogen talked about. This is our story, how we practice in the world. And, you know, knowing all this history is helpful, I believe. John Kennedy actually tried to work for peace and end the Cold War. And he had a secret from his own hardliners connection with Khrushchev. And they shared things and talked about how to not let nuclear war happen. This was a big impetus for John Kennedy.

[29:00]

He had been to war, PT-109. His boat in the Pacific was cut apart and he had to swim. Anyway, he'd been to war. And Bobby Kennedy, in his last six months before he was killed, or maybe a little more than six months, he connected with people. He connected with poor people. He connected with... Farm workers in California connected with black people in ghettos. And he saw that hunger was a problem, a big problem, even then, in the 60s. So, okay. I'm going to take... comments and questions now, and please feel free to share whatever response you have to this difficult talk.

[30:13]

Thank you very much. So anyone online, you may want to raise your hands. And in the room, we can share a mic. So comments, responses. Yes, wait. David. Oh, David, right. Thanks for that talk. You're welcome. I first want to... to say some of the thoughts and feelings that it brought up for me because one of my earliest memories is yes exactly the triangle folded flag being given to Jackie Kennedy is one of my earliest childhood memories and I grew up in Georgia so I remember so many people saying that there were going to be race riots after the

[31:22]

after Dr. King was shot. And I remember waking up that morning in June to the news that Bobby Kennedy had... Those are very vivid memories for me. They're defining. But every generation has defining memories like that. We all have shared events that we remember where we were when we heard that. But that makes me think more about history. about the weirdness of what it is to be an American Zen Buddhist. But I really want to ask you about Dogen because I'm in this group where we're reading Dogen. And so here we are, these, you know, good urban virtue signaling liberals. And Dogen is, to use the word, sometimes problematic, at least in the way he's sometimes translated. And So a lot of us in this room are teachers, caregivers, and the style now to be a teacher or caregiver is very friendly and gentle and all of that, and that's difficult.

[32:29]

Dogen isn't always that way, or at least he doesn't always come off that way. So my question is really, you know, as someone who has spent most of your life in the company of Dogen, how would you describe Dogen as a teacher? Was he a crabby, difficult teacher that people only at length and at last could sort of get to? Does he seem to have been open and welcoming? What would it have been like to be a student or to be a practitioner in Dogen's practice community? Yeah, well, Dogen was complicated in many, many, many different things. So he seems... sometimes crabby in Shobo Genzo. Inehe Kouroku, he's warm at times and humorous, very funny, actually, and welcoming and caring about his students.

[33:35]

So, you know, he was many things. He was also strict sometimes. And he also often asked, do you really understand this? He would give some talk and say, can you thoroughly understand this? Can you thoroughly study this? Please do. So he could be strict, but he could also be warm and cry at times. And I wanted to mention Bobby Kennedy's killing. The next morning, I was in court because I had been arrested. I was going to mention this, but I had been arrested for sitting in at Dow Chemical Company. Dow Chemical Company was recruiting among students at Columbia University, where I was then, freshman. And I went and sat in in front of Dow Chemical Company to recruit there.

[34:40]

employees for the anti-war movement. And it happened that there was a court appearance the next day after Bobby Kennedy was killed. And Bobby Kennedy, you know, the judge just said, well, these young people are doing something good for the country. And Bobby Kennedy was killed. So he just dismissed the charges completely. So... Anyway, just a little anecdote about that. Other comments, questions? I have a follow-up to David Ray's. Okay. I do want to say you were very lucky. Today you might have been taken to another country and put in jail. So... Yeah, the ice may be coming to take me away, and I'll let you know if I can. We'll find you. We'll send lawyers, guns, and money. So... So I'm thinking about Dogen, you know, and I love Ehei Kuroku.

[35:43]

Thank you so much for sharing those fascicles. And, you know, I often think, you know, these are just like standing around the Zendo. But I think of Dogen, like I wondered about like these short talks, if some of them were just very intimate, like telling of the family story to his... students, you know, like, here's Dengshan, and here's Dao Wu, and here's Yunnan. And, you know, that it was this way of transmitting the Dharma that was very, you know, like he was instructing them very clearly on knowledge that was in the lineage, or beyond the lineage, really. Right. It was barely a lineage at that time, but within Chan Buddhism, let's say. So I just think it was really, like, to think about that, like, oh, here, I'm telling you these stories, and then... I'm adding my flourish, and I'm engaging you in it. And I think that that form of teaching is something that we really carry forward, and we'll have our own stories we tell.

[36:48]

You know, we've been telling stories of women now. Imagine that. And, you know, Queer People Pride Month is coming up. You know, but there is a family style. I wondered how that felt to you when you were translating Ehe Kuroku. you know, like what that was like for you. Well, yeah, I mean, translating Ehikoroku was like having Doksan with Dogen all the time. And, you know, Ehikoroku is simpler in some ways than Shobo Genzo, which Chudarma I Treasury, which is Dogen's other masterwork, where he has these longer, elaborative essays on particular koans or teachers or themes. Hikoroku was the way he taught in his mature years at AAG. He shifted to these short dharma hodas courses for the most part.

[37:48]

And yeah, it was intimate and it was just, you know, sharing the family style of Dongshan and all the other teachers in the lineage. So yeah. It's just the depth and breadth of his knowledge of the canon seems almost unbelievable and unique. There was no publishing houses. And so I think this oral transmission and very personal transmission is just amazing and wonderful. Yes, it is. So other comments, questions? Howard? Token Asian speaking up. And also, I mean, it's complicated, right? Hearing this talk was interesting because you're talking about the 60s and I became a history nerd starting in eighth grade because I had a great teacher.

[38:51]

That really matters to have a good teacher. And meanwhile, as you're talking about, I'm thinking about everything that was going on in my family history during the 60s. I mean, I was not alive then, but... Arguably. But during the 60s, everything was, you know, stuff hitting the fan in China during the 60s, but also the decades before that, for many decades before that. All of it, you know, maybe arguably traced back to American and European colonialism and whatnot. But, you know, I had this really powerful experience when I was at the Roots and Refuge Center. retreat, the Asian American Buddhist writing retreat, the first time it came around. And these are Buddhists from all backgrounds, mostly predominantly Jodo Shinshu, Pure Land, and a lot of Soto Zen. So even we would notice that, wait, where are all the... There's a lot of pale Asians here, East Asians here.

[39:52]

Where are all the brown Asians at? Where are the South Asians at? Where are the Southeast Asians at? Not that many of them. I... ran into my own sort of conundrums about history and my karma and my inheritance because here I am, a Chinese-American, and I, with these people, did not know how to chant my own sutras in my own language, but I knew the Korean ones, and I was part of a Japanese tradition. It's complicated. It's complicated. What is my ancient twisted karma that it led me here? And something that became very clear to me during that retreat in every... year I've gone since then, I'm fortunately not going this year, is stuff around heartbreak. And I am curious whether from your personal experience or maybe there's a good discourse in the extensive record about, you know, I think I agree that hopelessness doesn't really get us anywhere. But there's something about heartbreak and not letting ourselves...

[40:55]

letting the heartbreak happen, letting our heart open, but not letting it destroy us. And I don't know if there's a good discourse for that or if you can speak from personal experience. Yeah, I mean, there are lots of discourses about that. But, yeah, heartbreak is necessary. We have to break open our hearts to be connected with the reality of our own lives and the reality of our culture. So, yeah, heartbreak. How not to be destroyed by that? We have to just let it in. But, you know, it's different for each person. For some of us, we need to take it very slow. For some of us, it can happen suddenly. And it's endless, in a way. We're never going to get to... We're not trying to get to nirvana.

[41:58]

We're not trying to leave this wounded territory. We are... Yeah, we're here. And so we work with heartbreaking. We work with, you know, just everything. So, Eve, did you have your hand up? Eve and then David Weiner, of course, online. Yeah, well, I think there's a difference between... saying that that's endless and the long arc of history inevitably blends towards justice, which frankly at this point I have my doubts about. And to me that comes more from a Christian messianic view of history than a Buddhist one. And as far as the cracks and discourses, I mean the discourse that's helped me is Leonard Cohen's, the crack that that lets the light in.

[42:59]

Yes. And, you know, his verse about the dove she will be caught again, bought and sold and bought again. The dove is never free, but ring the bells it still can ring. Yes. And I think when we do the vows and we vow to free all sentient beings, I mean, it's impossible, but we vow it anyway. Yes. and it's like the mosquito biting on the iron bar. I think you do it anyway. And I think, and anyway, that's, so I was just wondering about, I mean, the sort of messianic view of history versus this idea that the light is there, and the light is always there. The light is there from the very beginning. There's nothing to attain. There's nothing to get. All of our efforts are just about realizing that.

[44:01]

So, you know, I would say both. We're never going to get there. And maybe there will be a time of justice. I don't know. I don't know. Or we can make more space for more light. Yes. And that's what we've been doing, actually. That's what Buddhist Sangha is about. That's what, you know, is happening in our culture. and yet the politics is pretty morbid now. And I did have another question about family style. I mean, that's a word that, a phrase Hogetsu uses a lot, and I hadn't known, like, you know, what the sources are for that, and you quoted it, so I wondered if, you know. Yeah, if Dogen uses it a lot, and it goes way back. It's just, it's the style of a particular lineage. It's also the style of Buddhism ancestors, all Buddhists. The wind of the family's house. Yes, yes. The wind of the family's house. It's another way to say it.

[45:04]

Yeah. David Weiner. Where? Good morning. Oh, he's online. Okay. Yeah. Okay. In the cloud. David, go ahead. I didn't quite hear Hogetsu's comments just now, but she didn't have the mic, but... Something you're saying about the family style, two things. Howard is the one who really stimulated me to raise my hand. You know, as a chaplain, I'm seeing people who are going through end of life. And one thing I bring up to them to consider is that their disease or their impending death is not the totality of their life. That even though they're facing this usually like somebody recently with Parkinson's, he is still a doctor. He is still someone who played oboe with a classical orchestra.

[46:08]

That the disease is in front of him, and that's right now the only thing he sees, but that is not the totality of his life. And it's his realization that he has more in his life is what is important, one of you. So he is not patient X. He is not a Parkinson's patient. He is patient X who happens to have Parkinson's, and there's a difference. And so I would say to you, Howard, in breaking your heart, you have to deal with the heart that is broken in front of you, and it has to be real in there. But the heartbreak is not the only thing, which segues into Thich Nhat Hanh's book, the heart of understanding. And in one part of the book, he says, do you see a cloud on this page? And he says, well, there was a cloud in this page because water was needed for the trees to grow so that the lumberman could come and cut the trees and then make paper and then the company to print the book.

[47:16]

So those clouds are on this page. There is no separation. There is only interbeing. that we're all connected, it's all one thing, and we're not separate. And this goes back to what you were saying, Tygen, about this is family style. We are all family. We are all interbeing with each other. I'd like to get your comment on that. Yes, yes. Well, you know, death is just part of life. I mean... Everybody in this room, it's very, very, very, very likely that everybody in this room will die at some point. Some of us more soon than others. But, you know, that's to allow another generation to be. So, you know, we old people have to get out of the way so that newer people can come. And, you know...

[48:17]

So it's just part of life. And, you know, it's sad, maybe. It's sad. And we leave people and, you know. But this is the way things work. Are there another comment? Okay. I'll be available if other people have comments. So, okay. Thank you all very much.

[48:57]

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