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Talk Notes
Morning. Good morning.
So, this is going to be my last dharma talk this sesshin.
And I just wanted to tell you what a honor and privilege it is to be here with you. And to have been sitting together and watching the world turn together on the cushion.
It changes us. Even this one week can make a difference in our life. And over the years, I've discovered that by the end of sesshin, I love every one of you so much. I can't even tell you. And it doesn't matter whether I know your name or not. I don't need to know if you have a job or what it is. Just you being here and this sitting together, it just breaks my heart open each and every time. And every time when I'm driving home, I cry because I know that we'll never ever be together like this. Even if we all showed up next year, it would not be the same. So I really wanted to tell you and you folks on Zoom are just as much a part of it as the people sitting in zazen and probably the whole world does. But I just want to tell you how much I love you right now.
So today, let me start with a poem. You probably all know it, have chanted it before, spent time with it. It is Peaceful Life by Katagiri Roshi. Being told that it is impossible, one believes in despair. Is that so? Being told that it is possible, one believes in excitement. That's right. But whichever is chosen, it does not fit one's heart neatly. Being asked what is unfitting, I don't know what it is, but my heart knows somehow. I feel irresistible desire to know what a mystery human is. As to this mystery, clarifying, knowing how to live, knowing how to walk with people, demonstrating and teaching this is the Buddha. From my human eyes, I feel it's really impossible to become Buddha. But this I regarding what a Buddha does vows to practice to aspire to be resolute and tells myself yes I will just practice right here now and achieve continuity endlessly forever. This is living in vow. Herein is once peaceful life found.
So today I would like to share some thoughts about another Dogen essay Sho Ho Chi So, The Reality of All Things.
And this is the opening:
Actualizing Buddha ancestors is reality thoroughly experienced. Reality is all things. All things are reality thusness original nature thusness body thusness mind thusness world thusness cloud and rain thusness walking standing sitting and lying down thusness sadness joy motion and stillness thusness staff and twisk thusness taking up the flower and smiling thusness Inheriting dharma and giving predictions. Thusness studying and endeavor of the way. Thusness pine purity and bamboo joint thusness.
A little later he writes, "Reality studying reality is called the Buddha ancestor receiving transmission of dharma from the Buddha ancestors." And this is all things confirming the enlightenment of all things. And later still living and dying, coming and going is the real human body.
The whole universe is the 10 directions. In the 10 directions is the real human body.
I've been sitting with these passages for a while now.
And one thing that really strikes me is not what Dogen explains. It is what he refuses to explain.
The title of the fascicle is the reality of all things. And if somebody handed me a book with that title, I would expect definitions, logical arguments, a road map, an action plan, steps to take, things to watch out for. I might expect philosophy, but Dogen gives us clouds and rain, walking and standing, sadness and joy, bamboo and pine trees.
It is almost as though he suspects that the moment we decide that we know what reality is, we will stop looking. Have you ever encountered that in yourself? You've got it figured out so it gets put away and you don't touch it again.
So that's what Dogen is pointing at. So instead of giving us certainty, he gives us living questions.
These things do not illustrate reality. But these things are where he wants us to look. He wants us to pay attention to our sadness and joy.
And another thing that is pretty amazing is that you may notice that this list does not include any spiritual goals or attainments.
Other than that he gives us everything. Joy and sadness, stillness and motion. Not just enlightenment but the very, very ordinary activities of normal daily life.
Before we have the slightest chance to sort experience into the categories we prefer, Dogen has already welcomed the entire world into the room. There is something deeply reassuring about that and something very challenging.
We spend a lot of time in our life deciding what belongs and what does not belong. What is spiritual or worldly, wholesome and unwholesome, what we find acceptable and unacceptable.
Dogen seems to be far less interested in the sorting process and way more in seeing and observing and participating.
Then he says this really remarkable thing. Reality studying reality is called a Buddha ancestor receiving transmission of dharma from a Buddha ancestor.
I'll say that again. Reality studying reality is called the Buddha ancestor receiving transmission of dharma from a Buddha ancestor.
Each time I read this, it becomes a little stranger.
We often think of transmission or teacher student or person to person as a handover.
A teacher supposedly possesses wisdom and gives it to the students and the student receives it. But Dogen does not describe transmission in that way. Reality studies reality. The Buddha confirms the Buddha. Buddhas confirming each other.
The Buddha receives transmission from Buddha. It is not a transfer of information or some quality. It is participation. It is not ownership but recognition.
Then Dogen says this is all things confirming the enlightenment of all things.
Let's slow down a little. What does that mean? All things confirming the enlightenment of all things.
Not Buddhas confirming Buddhas.
All things confirming all things.
The wind confirms the wind. Rain confirms rain. Rivers confirm mountains. Waves confirm water.
Ancestors confirm descendants. Descendants confirm ancestors. The world, the very world itself participates in this awakening not as a backdrop or a collection of objects surrounding us. The world itself participates.
With the last couple of talks, we have been exploring Dogen's vision of a living world. In Keisei Sanshoku, Valley Sounds, Mountain Colors, the world becomes vivid. The distance between observer and observed disappears. practice realization enters and we see that realization is not waiting somewhere else for someone else.
In much the world speaks dharma because it is not separate from dharma. The world manifests Buddha nature because it is not separate from Buddha nature. And reality remains faithful to itself. The speaking never stops.
Mountains and rivers preach the dharma and so do trees and grasses. Clouds and rain and wind speak dharma. In the chair or cushion you sit on is an expression of dharma.
Here in Sho Ho Chi So, Dogen seems to take yet another step. The world is not merely speaking the dharma. It is participating in awakening itself.
We do have this tendency to separate ourselves from reality.
Some of us have encountered the yogachara teaching of Alaya-vijnana. The storehouse consciousness is often described as this vast store in the house that contains all possible karmic seeds.
Every potential lives in there. Every action, every habit, every perception leaves traces. And under the right condition, we do support certain traces to ripen and come to fruition. It's a very rich and useful teaching. But sometimes I feel we misunderstand our role in relation to it.
Some of us are approaching the storehouse as managers, as the gardeners of it. We imagine ourselves standing outside, opening the door and looking in and touching what we see.
We evaluate the contents and we discover anger or jealousy and decide, well, that stuff's not so good.
Then we find grief, resentment, confusion and immediately we begin making plans for their removal. They enter the storehouse carrying spiritual weed killer.
What strikes me now is how different this is from the movement of Dogen's fascicle. He keeps widening the circle. Joy and sadness,
joy thusness, sadness, thusness, motion thusness, stillness thusness. Again and again, Dogen refuses to stand outside of experience and sort it into piles. Instead, he invites us to become intimate with it. We need to see and understand the contents of the storehouse. We need to become intimate with all the hidden and dark corners of it. Yes, we do our best to nurture some of those seeds. But we can't go in with weed killer to manicure our field of practice. After all, who is it that stands outside the storehouse making judgments about what belongs and what does not belong? Dogen keeps undermining that position. Reality studies reality. All things confirm the enlightenment of all things. We are not outside the process looking in. We are we are among all the things.
Nothing lies outside of our practice. Grief and joy and compassion alike belong. This does not mean that every seed should be watered equally. It does not mean ethics disappear. It does mean that nothing is transformed by being rejected.
When we are intimate with something, it is revealed what it truly is, which is something rejection cannot do. And the longer I practice, the less interested I become in deciding what should and should not be present. And the more interested I become in meeting what is present with curiosity. Understanding and care will do a much better job than weed killer. Don't stand outside the field. Don't manage it. belong to it.
This is one of the reasons why I find Dong Shan's five ranks so compelling. At first the five ranks seem to appear as a movement towards emptiness, the absolute, a more pure perspective. Yet Dong Shan never lets us rest there. Again and again, realization returns to relationship. Emptiness returns to form. Transcendence returns to ordinary life. Not because realization has failed, but because realization has matured. There is a tremendous difference between escaping the world and embracing it just as it is.
But let's get back to the essay. I have strayed.
Dogen makes a term that I find extraordinarily beautiful. He writes, "Living and dying, coming and going, is the real human body."
I don't know about you, but I usually think of the human body as ending somewhere around my skin. That seems to be obvious. This is my body. That's not my body.
But Dogen immediately undermines that certainty. Living and dying, coming and going is the real human body, not something happening to the body, my body, but the real human body itself. And then he goes even further.
The whole universe in the 10 directions is the real human body. What can we do with that? What do we do with that statement?
The universe in the 10 directions, the real human body.
It's a great field of contemplation. Where does my body stop? If I eat something, is that now part of my body?
How about the air we breathe?
The oxygen that is carried by our blood.
The sunlight that nourishes the plants that nourish us.
The language and culture we have inherited.
The answers, the the ancestors who came before us, the people who built this building, the sangha that supports our practice.
The longer I look and the more closely I look, the harder it becomes to locate a clean dividing line. There are moments during sesshin when the sitting settles down and becomes steady and nothing special is happening. No visions, no mystical experiences, no cosmic revelations.
And yet sometimes a quiet companionable feeling appears that I find very difficult to describe. I have the feeling of not being alone. Not because I'm sitting in a room with people or someone has appeared. Not because anything has been added to the moment. If anything, something has fallen away.
The usual feeling of being a separate individual carrying practice all by myself becomes less convincing. They're simply sitting, breathing, hearing, and the presence of something. And with that comes a great feeling of belonging.
I never think of it as a mystical experience.
It seems to be quite ordinary. But I sometimes do wonder whether it has something to do with what Dogen is pointing toward here. If the whole universe in the 10 directions, is the real human body, perhaps what softens in those moments is not reality, but my conviction that I stand apart from it. The feeling is not one of merging with the universe. It is more like remembering that I was never separate from it to begin with. And perhaps this is where the ancestors appear, not as ghosts, not as mystical presences, but as participants in the same reality, studying itself.
Sometimes in sesshin I become aware of what feels like a mahasangha extending backward and forward through time. Not because I can see someone, not because I can hear someone, simply because practice no longer feels like a private isolated possession. Dogen is here. Dong Shan is here and so is Shakyamuni Buddha. Norman is here. The practitioners whose names have been forgotten are here. The practitioners who have not yet been born are here. All participating in the same reality. Studying reality. All things confirming the enlightenment of all things.
Awakening as a personal achievement sounds a little bit crazy now, but awakening as participation, as world thusness, in me thusness. We're not outside the process observing it.
We are among the all things. We belong to this list. Cloud and rain thusness. Walking and standing thusness. You and me thusness.
And perhaps this is the reason why Dogen never really defines reality because any definition would be too small. Instead, he keeps pointing to clouds and rain, sadness and joy, birth and death, the whole universe in the 10 directions.
Not so we can understand them but so we might notice them. We don't need to arrive at a conclusion but something might reveal itself anyway.
And maybe that is enough for today. To notice the world offering itself, to notice the world speaking, to notice the world simply being.
To notice all things confirming the enlightenment of all things. And to notice especially that we ourselves have never been left out.
Living and dying, coming and going is the real human body.
And after all the searching, all the striving and all the attempts to separate the spiritual from the ordinary, the pure from the impure, enlightenment from birth and death. We discovered that nothing has ever been outside the dharma. There is nowhere else to go, nothing left to exclude. And we return to the marketplace with gift bestowing hands.
I want to close with Rumi. Thanks Hannah. Come, come. Whoever you are, wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving, it does not matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come. Even if you have broken your vows a thousand times, come yet again. Come. Come. Come.
