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. So I just want to welcome people I haven't seen for a while over there in the corner. And Arhanesia and Lauren, if I remembered. circle back, and I think everyone else has been hanging around for a while. I want to remind everyone that next week is our Sujiki ceremony. So at this time, we will have the great ceremony of welcoming unsettled spirits, offering them nourishing dharma and awakening. and even some food. So you're welcome to come for that in costume if you'd like.

[01:05]

If you have someone who you've lost, so Sujiki is in part a memorial service, so if you have someone close to you who you've lost in the past year or so, roughly, please send a name if you'd like it read during the ceremonies because we will read names of the deceased during the ceremony. And you're also welcome to bring any food which we can consume afterwards, but also offer to the spirits who mysteriously partake voraciously, but everything is left untouched. So it's pretty good. And without further ado, it's a great pleasure to have with us our founding guiding teacher, now guiding teacher emeritus, who is going to speak with us today. And let me give you this microphone. The world can hear you. Okay.

[02:07]

Can you hear me? Okay. So, and hi, everyone online. So I want to speak today about the teachings from last weekend. So Saturday, last Saturday, A week ago, yesterday, Ben Connolly was here and gave a seminar on Huayen. And so I want to talk about that some. And then Sunday, Seven Laika from University of Chicago was here and talked about the evolution of Soto Zen precepts. So I want to talk about that some too. So Huayen is the school of Chinese Buddhism. that comes from the Flower Ornament or Avatamsaka Sutra, and it's kegon in Japanese. And so the Hawaiian school is very important and important to Soto Zen and important to all of East Asian Buddhism.

[03:09]

Ben talked about three chapters, particularly the chapter on purifying practice, which has various everyday life gathas and how to to help beings arouse the vow in situations of our everyday activity. And then he also talked about the ten umis, the ten stages or ten grounds sutra, which is an independent sutra, which is one of the chapters in the Flower Ornament Sutra. And then he talked about the Gandhaviya Sutra, the entry into the realm of reality. So, This sutra, this vast sutra, it's what, 1,600 pages in Tom Cleary's translation. There's starting to be other translations, but there's parts of it anyway. This is a very flowery, as the name says, but also psychedelic sutra, filled with names of different samadhis, different buddhas and bodhisattvas.

[04:19]

pages and pages and pages of names of different bodhisattvas and various ornaments, parasols and garlands and jewels and flowering trees and so forth. It's replete with these flowery events. But the Gandavyuha Sutras is about a pilgrim named Sudhana. a young boy who goes on pilgrimage, to 53 different bodhisattvas. And these different bodhisattvas include men and women, monks and priests and laypeople, mariners, incense makers, goddesses. And anyway, each one presents some amazing teaching, some very lofty, And then ends up saying, but I don't really know how to fully express the bodhisattva teaching, so please go see so-and-so who's to the south.

[05:29]

So Sudhana continues on his pilgrimage and eventually sees Manjushri, who sort of started him on the pilgrimage, and Samantabhadra, the great bodhisattva. So Manjushri rides a lion, Samantabhadra. rides an elephant, and has a set of ten vows which are fully expressed there. And then he goes to Maitreya, the next feature Buddha, and Maitreya's castles and palaces, each of which is vast and huge and contains many other castles and palaces. And each one of them is complete with various Samantabhadra Bodhisattvas, and includes all the others. It's this amazing, as I say, psychedelic sutra that Sudhana goes on. And talking about the Huayen school and Huayen Buddhism, Ben emphasized very much that this sutra emphasizes the phenomenal world.

[06:44]

the particulars of our lives and taking care of them, taking care of all of the different particular phenomena. We're doing a reading of the Flower Ornament Sutra the first Friday evening of every month. We've been doing it for several years. Everyone's welcome. And you can read and there's a PDF provided or you can just listen. But we're doing that every Friday. evening from 7 to 8.30, Friday evening, the first Friday evening of every month. So please feel free to join us and enjoy this wonderful sutra that emphasizes, again, it talks about the interaction of the phenomenal or particular with the universal truth. But yet, it emphasizes taking care of each particular thing. each phenomenal thing.

[07:46]

And Ben mentioned that he was encouraged. His book is based on a sutra, a verse, 30 verses, that's used in Korea where the Wayan Sutra is very popular. And so he organized his book around these 30 verses. And This was introduced to him by a teacher named Jin Park, a scholar named Jin Park. And she's Korean and very involved in the Hawaiian school. And she recently had a conference of academic scholars of East Asian Buddhism from all the different schools, Pure Land School, Nichiren School, Soto Zen, of course, Jodo Shinshu. they all ended up agreeing that the Hawaiian teaching is foundational to all of East Asian Buddhism.

[08:52]

So it's very important. The Hawaiian school has a very different kind of discourse than the Flower Ornament Sutra, which is this flowery, evocative, psychedelic text. The Hawaiian school is in some ways more analytic, or more, it's not the right word, more talking about, talks about tens, various kinds of tens, like the ten times. The ten times are the past, present, and future of the past, and the past, present, and future of the future, and the past, present, and future of the present. And then all nine of those together is the tenth. Anyway, but there are many, many, many tens in the sutra. Again, it emphasizes the particular, the phenomenal world, our world, this world. Although in the sutra, there are innumerable other worlds that are invoked and that appear.

[09:57]

But in terms of Soto Zen, this Hawaiian school is very important. My teacher, Reb Anderson, talks about Dongshan, the founder of Chinese school of Sojozen called Saozong, as the sixth ancestor of Huayen. So the Huayen teaching is continued in Dongshan's teaching. And particularly, there's a teaching called the Fourfold Dharma Datu in Huayen. There's many other teachings, but this Fourfold Dharma Datu is important to us because it is a background for the five degrees or five ranks, which is a teaching of Dongshan and Shotozen. So the fourfold Dharma Datu is the particulars of the phenomenal world, the ultimate or universal truths, the mutual non-obstruction of the ultimate and the universal.

[11:01]

So the ultimate and the, excuse me, the universal and the particulars. So, The universal reality, the universal truth, only appears in the phenomenal world through phenomena. And phenomena, each phenomena, completely, completely reflects the ultimate truth. So they don't obstruct each other, the particular and the universal. And they have this mutuality between them. And then the fourth Dharma Datu is... the mutual non-obstruction of particulars with other particulars, which is kind of cool. And the sutra is about everything in the universe, is completely present in everything else. So everything that you've ever seen or done or been or whatever, all the people you've met, all the people you don't remember that you've met,

[12:07]

are part of what you are sitting here now. Everything. Everything in that entire universe is part of who and how you are right now. And each thing interacts with each other thing based on that everything in the universe is completely connected with everything else. So particulars reflect each other. Particulars reflect Don't obstruct each other. This is difficult for us to see in our time because of the difficulties of our time and ice agents gathering up people and so forth. And so some of you, I know, were at the No Kings rallies yesterday. And Ben talked about the application of this YN teaching to our world. and to engage Buddhism.

[13:08]

So each thing includes everything else in some real way. Again, this is hard to see when there is, when our country is so divided and there's so much contention and maybe there was unity yesterday and people from all over the country appearing that didn't know King's Marches, but particularly Ben spoke about his own practice in Minnesota and he lives not far from the place where George Floyd was killed and how there are gatherings of people at that spot and many people, many beings and many groups come to the spot where George Floyd was killed and celebrate there. it was very angry at first and now it's more celebratory.

[14:11]

Maybe that's a little strong, but yeah, there, there are people who are working in various ways to help beings. And, uh, so Ben talked about this in terms of why in terms of how everything is connected together. And, uh, So how do we see this in our lives, in our world, where each of us includes everything else and everything else includes each of us and vice versa and backwards and forwards. So, yeah, it's a way of seeing how beings can be together and being to interact with each other in time as well as in space. So the ten times, you know, Dogen has this teaching of being time where there's no time as some external exact phenomena.

[15:14]

Time is our presence, our being of time. We each are time. And we each have a presence in time, of time. So, yeah. How do we see this time connected to the time of slavery, the time of reconstruction, the time of the Civil Rights Movement. For example, how do we see this time connected to our ancestors 10,000 years ago in caves? Well, maybe it's 50,000, 100,000 years ago in caves, and then civilization started, but also in the future. So we are... practicing here now for the sake of the future. We continue Buddha. Buddha is here. Buddha is on your seat. Buddha-ness is the way things is.

[16:17]

And how do we continue this so that somebody walking by here in 50 years or 100 years will experience ancient dragon? Or maybe by then we'll be in some other building. But how do we take care of people, beings, 500 years from now? 1,000 years from now? 10,000 years from now? Will there be people 500 years from now? Well, there will be people, but maybe they'll be back in caves. We don't know. Climate is changing. So anyway, all of this is about how we are connected. And how we have a responsibility to take care of things. Because everything is part of who we are. And who we are is part of everything. And interacts with it. So how do we take care of all the people? And the sirens going by. And the people who maybe need an ambulance or whatever.

[17:20]

So in space, how do we take care of the people in Gaza who are still... being attacked by Israeli soldiers. How do we take care of the people in Israel who've had hostages returned? Anyway, we are responsible for, of course, Chicago and, of course, our sangha, taking care of our sangha. So each of us has a particular position in the sangha, a particular position in the mandala of how we are today, whether it's online or here in the Zendo. And we have various jobs and positions. So we're taking care of things. We take care of the space. And we take care of the space of our neighborhoods as best we can and so forth. So anyway, that's a little bit about YN and how it applies to this world and engaged Buddhism. I want to shift now to talk about the precepts.

[18:20]

As Stefan Leica talked about last Sunday, He talked about the history of Soto Zen precepts. So maybe many of you know that we have 16 Bodhisattva precepts in Soto Zen. The three refuges, the three pure precepts, doing good, well, translated in various ways, doing good, not doing evil, or benefiting all beings. And then there's 10 grave precepts. And these precepts come, they were... initiated as a system of 16 by Dogen, who came, who was a monk in the 13th century, the founder of Japanese Soto Zen, and went to China and brought back the Soto Zen lineage, going back to Dongshan and Huining and before him and Shito and Hongzhi and so forth. Anyway, Dogen...

[19:22]

put together these 16 precepts, but they come out of the Tendai precepts. So Stefan talked at a great length about the various incarnations of precepts. There were the so-called Theravada precepts, the monastic precepts. And then there were the Bodhisattva precepts, which Saito developed. But those come from a sutra that was popular in China called the Brahmajala Sutra, one, you know, in Japanese. There will not be a test, but the Brahmajala Sutra has 10 major precepts, which are our 10 precepts, 10 grave precepts, and then 48 minor precepts, which somehow disappeared in Dogon 16. However, When I did a practice period in Japan at Shogoji Temple and Narazaki Ikoroshi, who was the abbot then, did what we call the full moon ceremony, the Bodhisattva precept ceremony, which I think is being done Wednesday evenings here sometimes, once a month.

[20:44]

Yeah, near the full moon. And in Japan, they do it on the full moon and the new moon. They do it twice a month. In Japan and China, they did too. Well, I won't speak for every place in Japan, but at least at this temple, they did a full moon and new moon. And Narazaki Ikaroshi recited the 48 minor precepts from the Brahmajala Sutra, as well as the 10 precepts and from our 16 precepts. So anyway, there's a long history of precepts. And so the 10 precepts, can be seen as ethical guidelines. Not killing is the first one. That there is no killing. A Buddha is awakened to non-killing. And then there's not stealing, not lying, not misusing sexuality, not intoxicating mind and body of self or others, not praising self at the expense of others, not slandering others, not being possessive of anything, not

[21:51]

getting angry or holding on to anger and then just not disparaging the three treasures and the precepts, the three treasures of Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Anyway, those are the ten. But I want to talk a little bit about one Soto understanding of these precepts, which is that they're non-dual. So it's not thou shalt not kill. It's not like a commandment or a... statement to not kill, the disciple of Buddha realizes that Buddha is not killed, is non-killing. I'm paraphrasing Dogen's Kyoju Kaiman, his writings on these ten precepts. But just to take not killing and work with that a little bit. So, in the non-dual way of understanding precepts, which I'm not supposed to talk about with people who are not transmitted and providing the precepts, but I'm going to anyway, that killing and not killing, life is not killed.

[23:11]

Killing and not killing are both violations of that precept from this non-dual perspective. Both killing and not killing violate the precepts. When we think about killing, it's vast actually. Killing, well, you know, killing could include how we eat, so we serve vegetarian food, and vegan food, and yet, you know, vegetables also sacrifice their lives. Asparagus is killed before we can eat it. And, you know, we don't, asparagus and broccoli and lettuce, they don't scream as loud when they're pulled as chickens and cows. And, you know, it's been scientifically shown that trees, when they are cut down, there is a sound actually.

[24:18]

We can't hear it. But at any rate, So not killing is complicated. Where do we draw the line? We need to nourish ourselves. So both killing and not killing violate the precept. But the precept is that in the life of Buddha, non-killing. So how do we... I'm using this precept as an example. How do we live and practice... with the precept of not killing, which is a question. How do we question our killing? Do we kill spiders? Do we eat chickens or meat? What is killing? What is not killing? How do we live in the question of living in the realm of birth and death without

[25:19]

trying to fix it. So there's birth and death. And birth requires death. And death requires birth. And there's this cycle of beings being born and dying. How do we live with this reality without trying to fix something? How do we question it? How do we question our own activities? So all of the precepts are like this. Not stealing, not lying, not misusing sexuality. But how do we appreciate the complexity of this? So I'm just taking off from what Stefan talked about last week to talk about these precepts as non-dual. And again, bodhisattvas live... in the realm of birth and death without trying to fix it, without trying to change it, because there is birth, there is death.

[26:25]

And they require each other. And our life is, you know, there are various aged people in this room now, maybe most younger than I am, but at some point, It's very, very, very, very likely that all of us will die at some point. And yet also other beings will be born. And so this cycle of death and birth continues. And we don't want to talk about it. We don't want to hear about it. It's difficult to talk about. It's difficult to hear. But at the same time, how do we take care of this, of these precepts about birth and death? So I'm just going to close by reading a little bit from Reverend Anderson's book on the precepts being upright, talking about not killing. We cannot see the ultimate truth.

[27:26]

There isn't really any dust to wipe away from ultimate truth. If you try to kill ignorance, then you will kill the actual life of your body and mind. So we have this ignorance. We have the capacity to ignore. life and death. If you face your pain and ignorance uprightly, tenderly, and respectfully, then the truth will be revealed. Thus the precept of not killing life comes alive in formal meditation. So when we're sitting, we're sitting in life and death, and we're questioning life and death. Or maybe we're not, but it's there as a question. when you face your pain and your ignorance and you're sitting uprightly, tenderly, and respectfully, then reality is realized. So Reb also says the mind that realizes action in concert with all life has gone beyond self-centered actions.

[28:38]

The mind that realizes action in concert with all life. Not killing life is the concerted activity of all beings. It is the celebration of all life working together in harmony with the entire universe. So this way I'm teaching of everything being totally connected is that everything is in concert with the entire universe, in harmony with the entire universe, when we celebrate all life working together. Somehow even the ice agents are part of this, as difficult as that may be to imagine. All of this is in concert, in harmony together. So Reb also says, the ancient Buddhas realized that the principle of life cannot be destroyed. In other words, killing cannot be established in the fullness of life.

[29:41]

In the fullness of life, how can there be killing? How can there be not killing? The fullness of life is realized in supporting and appreciating all other beings and in understanding that we are fully supported and appreciated by all life. Right now, each of us is fully supported and appreciated by everything, by all life, by everything we're not, everything we are, each other, of course. So we're supported by all life. And then Reb quotes Yuanwu, who was the guy who wrote the Blue Cliffs record commentary, who said that life is the manifestation of the whole works. The whole works is total dynamic activity. It's actually Reb's name, Zenki. Death is the manifestation of the whole works. Life and death are both a manifestation of the whole works.

[30:43]

Filling up the great empty sky, upright mind is always bits and pieces. So our upright mind sees the interaction of life and death and how life and death is not killed. But we're just bits and pieces of that. We are... here together, connected together, as all being. So, there's some time for comments, questions, responses, whatever. Please feel free. Yes, I'll get you. I think people can hear me. My question is, I kept thinking about our Sajiki ceremony and thinking of Huayan and the precepts. I wondered if you had some thoughts about that plugin. Yeah, well, Sejiki used to be called Sagaki.

[31:48]

Anyway, that's a whole other story, but it's about feeding the hungry ghosts in one sense. So we do this chant, the gate of sweet dew, filled with all these Dharanis that open the throats of hungry ghosts so that they can consume and take care of various aspects of who and how hungry ghosts are. And so hungry ghosts are, you know, there's six realms. I don't know if I should go into all that, but maybe... I was thinking about the Avatamsaka. Okay. And, you know, in Wayan teachings and how all time it's included in the ceremony, we kind of work time on space. And... in some ways, express our compassion and gratitude in this way that is also kind of a honoring of the precepts and even a giving of the precepts, you know, operative precepts to these unsettled spirits.

[32:53]

So, I don't know, that's kind of... Yeah, yeah. No, no, that's right. But, you know, like, there's something about the way our practices kind of put together that, as you say, how foundational... Abhatam Sattva and Hawaiian teachings are to our practice. Right. And it's cool. Yeah, and we also remember beings who've passed in the last year. So there's the hungry ghost, but that we're also celebrating beings in our culture and in our lives who have passed. So yeah, all of those beings are together. And that's, you know, the Hawaiian aspect is, you know, in part that it's all together. the people who've passed, who we celebrate, and the restless spirits that are there, too. All of the different realms come together in the ceremony through noisemaking, through chants.

[33:54]

And, yeah, so, yes, it's very Huayin kind of experience, yes. Even the, you know, Huayin has this vivid imagery, and I think... connecting to that as part of the ceremony to this kind of beyond our sort of conventional imaginations. Yes, that's right. So there's, I see somebody on the, with the raised hand. Yeah, Chris Cadman has his hand up. Chris. Chris, go ahead. Good morning, Ty gang. Good morning, everybody. Hi. So I wanted to share kind of a recent experience that I'm still kind of struggling with of You know, what seems to be a pretty simple precept of non-killing, and I prefer the preserve life or protect life. So was at my mother-in-law's grillings, a meal for her and for us, and there is a spider on the grill before I get it started.

[35:03]

And I... And this is a big black spider, and I haven't seen one of these in decades, but it ends up that this is a black widow. And, you know, my mother-in-law is older and not in the greatest health. She has two dogs. And without even really giving it much thought, I grabbed a broom and I killed that thing. Sure. And so it's the getting stuck with... Preserving life on one end by killing. And I don't know what to think about that, except it hasn't sat well with me. Okay, well, right. Yes, killing spiders. You know, I like spiders because they eat other pups. But, you know, what do we do with a spider? Well, a black widow spider is particular danger. So, yeah, I think you did the right thing, in my opinion. But... you know, in terms of the precept, not killing and killing, both, you know, killing the spider is a violation, not killing the spider is a violation.

[36:13]

So, how do we, how do we live with that? And so just considering it, just remembering that black redder spider who had babies and, you know, had a life and so forth, but also was dangerous to other beings around him. I don't know. Just to sit with that was the point. So I see David Ray's hand and I see Jerry's hand. David Ray first. Thank you, Tygen. Thank you for your talk. My question is about something that has been sitting with me from Stefan's talk, and I imagine it's still sitting with some others. It was... It was the moment when Stefan was talking about a long period of Chan in which he said, well, there's no evidence that Zazen was practiced. There's no evidence that it wasn't, but neither is there evidence that it was being practiced. Yeah, I see you're already shaking. So it has got me thinking about the academic study of Zen Buddhism, which I don't know about that much.

[37:21]

I mean, I'm an academic. I'm a classicist. I have opinions about academics in general, but most academics do. But it's... It has been strange for me this week thinking about it. And I saw a series of interviews, YouTube video interviews, and the first was Paul Kopp and Jimmy Yu. And it was cool. It was, you know, it was practice-informed and very scholarly. And then the next one that I watched was clearly between two academic students, you know, scholars of Zen who clearly don't practice. And one started to talk about meditation and said, well, you know, I guess with meditation you start to get more and more mental control and you get more and more distant from life. This is a scholar of Zen Buddhism. And I kind of laughed out loud. So I just wanted to hear what you might have to say about all of that. Oh, my. Well, I'm both an academic and a practitioner. A practitioner first, but I have a PhD anyway. And I teach adjunct.

[38:21]

I'm on the adjunct faculty at the Institute of Buddhist Studies. And I'm teaching Dogen this spring. And I taught Dongshan last spring. Anyway, so maybe Paul can respond to this also. But, you know, there are academic scholars who actually understand Zen. Some of them sit, some of them don't, but they understand it, you know, in a way that I can appreciate. And then there are scholars who are just, you know, bickering about this point and that point. And the thing about not practicing Zazen for long periods of time, I just don't believe. I think there were periods when there was more, well, Asian Buddhism is more devotional, first of all. So devotional practices, chanting and so forth, have been at times much more part of the life of Buddhists than sitting. And for lay people in some parts of Asia, you know, they don't sit as much.

[39:26]

They sit occasionally. The monastics are the ones who sit. And so, you know, it's okay. It's possible to parse this in various ways, but, you know, the fact that people didn't write about Zazen for periods of time doesn't mean that they weren't sitting Zazen. It just doesn't. So anyway, I don't know what else to say about it. There used to be, well, I don't know. I don't know anymore. I'm... Out of the loop, I don't go to American Academy of Religion Conferences for a long time now, which is a conference where there's 10,000 scholars and, you know, thousands of them are Buddhist scholars or whatever. And anyway, but yeah, there are scholars of Buddhism who really do practice. Or there are many scholars of Zen Buddhism who did practice at some point. and start naming them, but I won't.

[40:28]

So anyway, but academia, yeah, there are things that are possible. So I don't know if that responds to your question, David. It does. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Yes, Jerry. I had a similar thought to David, but the idea to me that there was a period of Zen where it's possible nobody's had meditation, was a little bit shocking to me because I grew up in Zen where that was the main focus. You sat, you did koans. You sat, you did koans. And it made me realize, you know, when I came to Ancient Dragon from another Zen center, there were many things that Ancient Dragon did that I thought, what? People talked in their center. The way the Tenzo prepared the meal to me was all wrong. And I thought, what? And so when I heard Stefan say that about maybe there was a time when people didn't meditate, I thought, okay, you think you know what Zen is all about.

[41:33]

Maybe you're clueless. Maybe they didn't meditate. Maybe this is a new phenomenon. And yes, it's important to me and my Zazen practice, but that was really helpful to me because once again, it opened up what I think Zen meditation is all about. It opened up. space to say, okay, let's think about what it is you're doing here and why and how that looks in your life. Yeah. Again, in Asian Buddhism, there's a great deal of devotional practice, visualizing, chanting, devotional activities. And so meditation is not as emphasized as it is in American Zen. It certainly is at Eheiji and Sojiji in places, training temples, where young monks are trained in Zazen. But anyway, that doesn't mean there wasn't Zazen. It just means that there's a different emphasis.

[42:34]

And a lot of the Japanese priests who've come to America, Suzuki Roshi, Katagiri Roshi, Shohaku, Shohaku, when he... translated with him in Japan at his temple outside Kyoto. And he had to spend a large part of his time going around to doing memorial services. And he was more interested in Zaza. So the Japanese priests who came to America were more interested in Zaza. And the American students who came to Suzuki Roshi in the 60s were interested in meditation. They weren't interested in you know, the sutras and, you know, all of the other stuff that is part of Buddhism, that is definitely part of Buddhism. So, you know, we have, we're maybe a little skewed towards meditation, but that's okay. Other comments, questions?

[43:39]

Yozan? Yes, just to further comment on this, these things that Stefan said, Last week, there arose so much comment. I would just like to note that I did not hear Stefan to be making a claim that there were hundreds of years when people were not doing zazen. I heard him to be very carefully delineating, in part, what I thought that was happening there was he was delineating carefully and responsibly the difference between the kind of claims someone might make, kind of statements someone might make sitting in the teaching seat, and the kind of claims one could make responsibility as a scholar. I felt the much more, so that's just one thing, I felt the much more interesting part of his talk, or what got my attention, you know, was all this discourse about, and I'm sorry, this question will be a little long,

[44:44]

to articulate but you know all this discourse about you know once you receive the precepts it's in your body you're imprinted now of course we hear many things closer to home that are very similar you know suzuki roshi says that you know if you if you do zazen the precepts will take care of themselves we have you know my understanding of the branching streams there was a lot of talk about the precepts and the sort of distinction between kind of, I think it was, I think the way I heard Douglas referred to it was one mind approach versus a more articulated, you know, more literalistic, more legalistic approach. And the thing about, you know, and then again, this morning you were talking about the kind of non-dual approach, but the thing that strikes me is is that when we talk, there are lots of sort of tropes in Buddhism. The moon does not divide the water. The water does not divide the moon. You know, and then Madhyamaka discourse, the ultimate truth or whatever you would say about, however you would label that, does not occlude or obliterate conventional truth.

[45:59]

And in fact, you know, our only approach to the bigger truth is precisely through conventional truths, all this kind of thing. Yet, when we come to the precepts, you know, another one just because it's handy in Yen, you know, the four dharma datus, figures don't divide the one, the one does not, you know, obstruct, all that kind of thing. But when we come to the precepts, we get this kind of stuff where, you know, once you've got the magic, you know, you can't violate precepts. And there was stuff in Stefan's talk that indicated the real dangers of that approach. Sure. So to kind of conclude with the question, you get somebody like Suzuki Roshi, who seems, I never met the man, but he seems to have been a very, to use Reb's terminology, upright, solid, a man of good character. Yes. And so that he could say things like, well, you know, the precepts will take care of themselves. Yeah.

[46:59]

But then, you know, I don't know if I should name names, we've had teachers, prominent teachers in this country who seem to have been informed by this notion. I didn't hear them say this, but they seem to have this idea that they couldn't do anything wrong, you know, or that their abuses would be tolerated. And so it's kind of like, and there's some analogy here, it's like if you've got the norms, then the system works. But one, like talking about politics now, when certain norms disappear, it's not enough. And I think that we are kind of in that situation, maybe with the precepts in Soto Zen. You know, so we don't need to take the precepts literally. It's not a matter of taking them literally and obeying the rules and getting things right. But I feel strongly it's also not not that. that it's important not to sexually abuse your students and docus on.

[48:01]

It's important to take them more seriously in some ways. And there's a tension there with the sort of non-dual way of talking about it and that reality. So thank you for your patience there. Yes, yes. So I just want to say that to say that killing violates the precepts and not killing violates the precepts, Killing violates the precepts. So we have to understand these precepts conventionally, very deeply, first, before we get into that non-dual stuff. So, yes, there have been various transgressions and, you know, anyway, yeah, I mean, I agree with you. So we have to understand the precepts somewhat literally. Well... It's probably time for us to move along to tea, which we'll have tea next. I did want to thank you very much for continuing this conversation, both with Ben Connolly's work and Stefan Leica's work, and that these are topics that will unfold the rest of our practice lives.

[49:17]

Yes. And it's been really wonderful to have you open them up and... Kindle them or keep them going, you know, tending the fire, you could say. Also, this is very timely because we have a precepts class happening. And, Neos, and I think you'd be happy to hear that, you know, people are really engaging the real-life applications of the precepts, which I think is really wonderful. And we're doing this at Ancient Dragon in so many ways. And it's always good to be reminded. that there can be a blind spot or that we can get caught in emptiness or relativity. And we have to, like Chris, I think, so nicely pointed out, we see this spider and we make a response and still, there's still sorrow. You know, Suzuki Roshi said something like, not killing is a dead precept.

[50:18]

Excuse me, or I'm sorry, is a live one. And I think there's a humility that the precepts and that the YM teachings give us and that Eve offered us. So thank you very much for being here. You're welcome. I look forward to your next appearance, which I think is in a few weeks. And what are you teaching these days? Ah, well, I just, oh my gosh. I just finished teaching a seminar yesterday at Seuss San Francisco Zen Center on the Bodhisattva Archetypes. which is a three-part seminar on Shakyamuni and Manjushri and Avala Kiteshvara and Samantabhadra and Maitreya and Jizo and Vimalakirti. That's the name of a few. And I'm going to be teaching Dogen and Heiko Roku in the spring. Here at Ancient Dragon. Here at Ancient Dragon and also at Institute of Buddhist Studies and at San Francisco's Insight. So, yeah, anyway.

[51:19]

So I'm basically going over all the stuff I've done and reshaping it. How lucky we are to have someone with a lifetime of practice in these areas. And, you know. Well, how lucky we are to have Zazen and to have Buddha. So Buddha is everywhere. You know, Buddha is on our seats. We don't recognize her some of the time, but Buddha is here in Zazen. That's part of the non-dual point and part of the point that Yozan was getting at, that whether or not we act properly, there is Buddha in all things. Well, thank you very much, and I think maybe we'll chant our vows and And then we'll do announcements. So, may our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true precepts of Buddha's way.

[52:33]

Beings are numberless. We vow to freedom. Delusions are inexhaustible. We vow to go through them. Narva gates are boundless. We vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. We vow to realize it. Being you are not a Buddhist, we are out. The machines are exhaustible. We have a cup of love. No use. We have a cup of love. [...]

[53:36]

We have a cup of love. We have a cup of love. We have a cup of love. Thank you.

[54:07]

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