Myoki Raizelah offers a reflection on Eihei Dogen's Genjo Koan during this second session of her shuso's class, Discovering Your Genjo Koan. This class was offered in support of the community's Winter Practice Period.
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Myoki Raizelah's talk notes:
We’ll start from the beginning. Let these words wash over you. Maybe you’re listening with different ears today. Maybe you will hear it differently. Maybe not. There is no right way to hear Genjo Koan.
As all things are buddha-dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings.
As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death.
The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many of the one; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas.
Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread
To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.
Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings. Further, there are those who continue realizing beyond realization, who are in delusion throughout delusion.
When buddhas are truly buddhas they do not necessarily notice that they are buddhas. However, they are actualized buddhas, who go on actualizing buddhas.
There are two
This is the world of convention
Concepts, beliefs, ideas about self and other rule this world
This is my conditioned mind
This is my small mind.
There is one
Here, the absolute; there are no bounds.
Boundary-lessness.
In this world,
No concepts, no ideas, no beliefs
Interdepence, interpenetrating, dynamic co-origination
No self and no other
There is Big Mind
Leap clear: the big mind holds the small mind with kindness and compassion
A warm feeling.
(Tell my story here)
So, I’d like to tell you a story about my zazen experience at our December one day sitting. This is taken from my journal:
When I was sitting at the Buddha’s Enlightenment Sesshin, I was feeling a little depressed. I had been moving in and out of depressed moods during the weeks leading to practice period. I felt insecure. I felt inadequate. Much of my childhood conditioning about not being good enough was coming up.
When I sat with my depressed feelings at the 1-day, I felt just beaten down. I don’t think my parents didn’t physically beat me. But they threatened me often by holding up their hand angrily, ready to spank me. My mother’s hand would fly up in her rage, and she would stop herself from hitting me by biting her hand. I would watch her shake in pain as she continued to sink her teeth into her own hand for what felt like an eternity. She would also threaten me with a wooden paddle hanging by the fireplace.
As I sat on my cushion with these memories flooding my consciousness, I felt in my body take the posture of fear - the fear of simply being myself.
I feel vulnerable sharing this with you, but it’s an important story, so I will continue.
At that particular one-day sitting, I was the kokyo, and required to chant a kokyo part that I had never done before. It was done in the sing-songy style of the alternate Metta Sutta we sing - with the voice going up third and down a third. I was nervous about doing it, because it was new to me. I knew I would make mistakes.
But something unexpected emerged out sitting in this posture of fear - the will and the strength to just be myself - to belt out the kokyo part as if I knew what I was doing. To fully express myself.
Unexpectedly, the posture of fear simply dropped away. My depressed mood lifted or morphed into something completely different. This leaping clear happens to me sometimes when I fully and authentically enter the moment, when I show-up completely with both my delusion and acceptance of it, when I observe my suffering with compassion. This is showing up with both a Small Mind and a Big Mind. Maybe this is actualizing is the fundamental point?
Suzuki Roshi has another feeling about it. p. 59 of Not Always So
How can I be both Buddha and an ordinary human being? It is amazing! That is enlightenment.”
To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.
Isn’t life a mystery? It’s truly beyond our knowing.
There is a feeling that I am moving forward in my life, making choices, choosing this direction in my work (I want to teach), choosing this path (I am a Zen practitioner), choosing this husband (his name is Tim).
But who is choosing?
There is a feeling that life is choosing me as I choose this life. Really, how did I get here?
Some of you know I teach massage continuing education classes. By the grace of God/Buddha, it seems I was given the gift of teaching. I never make a conscious choice to become a teacher. I was invited to TA at a couple of Acupressure classes in my early days as a bodyworker, and discovered my love of teaching, and that love continued to draw me in. So, I applied to teach at the Sebastopol Massage School. Just one class, and introductory Acupressure class. By the time I left this school, I found myself with 8 classes a year. How did that happen?
In 2015, the director of the massage school retired, sold the school and I moved on.
At the same time, I was also working as the Lead Massage Therapist at an Eastern day spa. You might say it was a Zen influenced spa. The owner was a Zen practitioner, and hired our old friend, Steve Stucky, to design and install beautiful Japanese meditation gardens on the back of the property. This was a quiet space for the spa guests to relax and reflect. This garden drew me in.
Before I knew it, I accepted a position as the Massage Supervisor and then the Spa Services Manager. 10 years past, only to be reminded that I was not really a manager. In my heart of hearts, I was a teacher. I needed to move on. I started Open Pathways, my massage continuing education school.
What prompted this “choice?” Was it really my choice? I wasn’t happy in my heart as a spa manager. I learned a lot and grew a lot in that role, but it didn’t feel like me. I didn’t really want to manage people. And the Spa Director who worked directly above me was actually quite mean to me. But sometimes it’s our suffering that fuels a change. It was as if I needed to meet that particular flavor of suffering to motivate a change in my career to one that is more aligned with my heart. But who made that choice?
And then there is Zen…
I found myself one day, really by accident, at a one-day sitting with Norman Fischer at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. This was in my early forties. I hadn’t formally practiced Zen for 20 years (since my early years at Green Gulch Zen Center). I wasn’t trying to re-ignite formal Zen practice in my life. I just wanted a day off. My husband (of that time) took the kids and encouraged me to do something nice for myself. So, I went to a one-day sitting called “The One who is not Busy.” Perfect for me. I was so over-stretched with 2 little ones, and seeing bodywork clients, teaching yoga classes, and teaching massage classes. And that one-day sitting I re-connected with Norman (who I had met in my Green Gulch days) and found Everyday Zen. Some part of me felt instantly at home. All by accident.
And then there’s Tim. Really no choice here.
We had a brief relationship at Green Gulch in our early twenties. I was scared of intimacy at the time, and fled the relationship. We each moved on, got married to other people, and forgot about each other. But Buddha watered those seeds planted in our early years at Green Gulch. When we re-connected in 2020, those seeds of love had already grown and blossomed, and awaited our discovery. And when we met again, the mutuality was clear: our love had found us just as we re-found each other.
To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.
My life was a sequence of well-timed accidents - over and over again. Myriad things coming forth. Drawing me in. Inviting into what I take to be my life. But really whose life is it?
To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion.
The idea that I carry myself forward assumes duality. “I made a choice” assumes that there is a self and other (I and the choice). This is the world of convention, our relative existence. This is surely part of who we are, but it is not all of who we are.
That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.
We are a single wave in a vast ocean of being that is alive and moves - and moves us. The ocean’s tides pull us in and pull us out. The flow of this immeasurable body of water carries us through this life. We are not doing this life alone. We are profoundly interconnected with each and every other wave. We actually have no choice about this life.
And we have a choice. Dogen is talking about both the relative or dualistic dimension of life, and there is the boundless dimension of life. One does not exclude the other. We are living in the middle of this dynamic relationship between the relative and absolute simultaneously expressed through us. We are choosing and being chosen.
Okumura says (p.54)
“…it is not I who practice, but rather Buddha carries out Bruddha’s practice through me. In our zazen practice and in our daily activity of bodhisattva practice, it is not a matter of individual acts based on individual willpower and effort. It is rather the myriad dharmas, or all beings, that carry out practice through our individual bodies and minds.”
Diads (8 minutes each with 4 min for discussion):
What is your feeling for how you got here? Do you feel, in your life, that you tend to push upstream? Or do ou allow yourself to be pulled by the currents in this direction or that? What is your relationship to control? Letting go to life’s stream or current involves some faith or trust. Is that hard for you? Maybe it’s hard in some areas of your lift, but not in others. Discuss any aspect of this.
Group Discussion of what came up during the diad (10 min)
Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings.
Here we are again talking about the interpenetration of the relative and the absolute: delusion and enlightenment.
Niashari says (p.48)
“Delusion is Genjo Koan. Enlightenment is Genjo Koan. It is not that different dharmas are seen as delusion or enlightenment, but that we are deluded and enlightened about the same things. So, when we face delusion, we say “sentient beings.” And when we face enlightenment, we say “all buddhas.” But ultimately, they are the same thing.”
Don’t get caught by either one! I find myself, all the time, clinging to ideas about myself or grasping for liberation from them. Clinging and pushing away all at the same time! This is why I need practice: to come back to my body (Chris calls it “zazen body”), to breathe, to settle, to bring awareness to my clinging and grasping, and then, with Buddha’s grace,maybe I can let my preference go. And allow both: this dynamic, interpenetrating relationship between the my constantly arising delusion and “enlightenment.”
Further, there are those who continue realizing beyond realization, who are in delusion throughout delusion.
Okumura says (p.60)
“Though we are diluted as individual karmic beings, we are still living with the absolute universal reality that is Buddha Dharma, and even though we are living within this universal reality, we are still diluted as individual karmic selves.”
We are completely diluted. And we are completely enlightened. This is what I think Suzuki Roshi was referencing when he said, “You are perfect the way you are. And you could use a little improvement.”
We always have been and always will be both diluted and enlightened, so we always have and will forever continue to discover endless layers of our delusion and endless expressions of our enlightenment.
When buddhas are truly buddhas they do not necessarily notice that they are buddhas. However, they are actualized buddhas, who go on actualizing buddhas.
Norman reminds us (in his 4th talk) that if we talk about our enlightenment, we are already removed from it. He goes on to say that really it can’t be talked about. No words can describe it, because language always reflects some separation from it.
If Buddhas recognize themselves as Buddhas, then they are already trapped in dualism, the polarity of self and other. If “I” amd “Buddha,” there is already a subject and object. We’ve entered the conceptual mind of separation, and left behind the unity of being.
Okumura explains this (p.66):
“We can not judge whether we are buddhas or not because true reality is beyond such judgment. There is no independent “I” in “I become Buddha.” When we sit zazen, letting go of thoughts, placing ourselves on the ground of reality, our practice manifests Buddha.”
He says this again is slightly different words:
“When we sit in the upright posture, keeping the eyes open, breathing through the nose and letting go of thoughts, reality manifests itself. This is Genjo Koan - the actualization of reality.”
This is Genjo Koan! What is he saying here? When we practice, reality manifests itself. He’s talking about Dogen’s teaching of practice-enlightenment. All one word: practice-enlightenment.
Suzuki Roshi explains it like this (p. 58 of Not Always So)
“When you sit zazen, you are independent from various beings, and you are related to various beings. And when you have perfect composure in your practice, you include everything. You are not just you. You are the whole world or the whole cosmos, and you are Buddha. So, when you sit, you are an ordinary human, and you are Buddha.”
“When you sit zazen, you are independent from various beings, and you are related to various beings.” You are alone and together.
“And when you have perfect composure in your practice, you include everything.” No preferences. This echo’s Dogen’s words: “In attachment blossoms fall and in aversion weeds spread.”
“You are not just you. You are the whole world or the whole cosmos, and you are Buddha. So, when you sit, you are an ordinary human, and you are Buddha.” You are everything together: the interpenetration of an ordinary person snared by dualistic views, and Buddha, the boundless dimension.
Group Discussion (15 min):
I think by now you are seeing a theme in the Genjo Koan: We are ordinary human beings and we are Buddhas. And the Buddha Way is, in some way, to leap clear of both this duality and oneness. Not two, not one.
What is your feeling about leaping clear? How do you experience it? I think there are many ways to experience leaping clear. I am interested in what ways leaping clear has happened in your life.
