weeks ago, and I think I brought up a passage from Dogen's Fukan Zazengi, so Dogen being the Japanese founder of the lineage that San Francisco Zen Center is in. And the Fukan Zazengi was Dogen's first work, so it's a very important text in our lineage. Fukan Zazengi translates as universal recommendation of Zazen. And I thought that maybe I could read and discuss the first few sentences of this work. It's only a couple of pages long, and you can find it on the San Francisco Zen Center in the chant book. It's slightly hidden on the San Francisco Zen Center website, but you can find it eventually, and I think if you can search for it. And actually, this is a slightly different translation. Over the years, there's been... a number of variations in translations for different texts. And this is the one that was used when I first went to Zen Center, which felt a little more poetic than the one that's currently being used.

[01:07]

And I think I mentioned last time that the Fukan Zazengi wasn't an entirely original work. Dogen borrowed some of the phrases from earlier Chinese texts, including one that had exactly the same title. But he wrote it when he was 27 and he was a very powerful writer. He had great introductions and great conclusions. And so this is quite a powerful introduction. So I'll read a few sentences first and then I will try to unpack it for us. And I can also share the text in the chat once I've read it so that you can follow along. The way is originally perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent upon practice and realization? The true vehicle is free and self-sufficient. What need is there for special effort? Indeed, the whole body is free from dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean?

[02:11]

It is never apart from this very place. What is the use of traveling around to practice? And yet, if there is a hairless breadth deviation, It is like the gap between heaven and earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion. So I want that into the chat as well. So you can take a look at that while we're talking. And so, you know, we have kind of four propositions here at the beginning, like, you know, a statement and a question, a statement, a question, statement, a question, statement, a question. Great rhetorical work by Dogen there. And what this does is it sets up a proposition, or he's kind of teasing out a proposition. And to explain that, I kind of have to go back a little bit in Dogen's biography, because he was born into a fairly aristocratic family in Japan. And his parents both died when he was young.

[03:13]

And so he went off to a monastery. I was going to say he got shipped off to a monastery, but I think he went quite willingly. I think he had this aspiration to practice and I think he had relatives who encouraged the aspiration after his mother and father had died. And the monastery he went to probably as a teenager, I think the age of 15, that was a Tendai monastery and that's Tendai's Japanese name for the school or Tiantai in Chinese. And part of the Tendai philosophy which is something that Suzuki Roshi often talked about in his lectures. He was very well versed in how the Tendai way of looking at things influenced Ogun and from that also came to influence a lot of the practice that we do. The Tendai notion is that everyone has Buddha nature within them. So everyone is a potential Buddha. Everyone has this seed of awakening within them. And so Dogen's question as a perhaps precocious teenager was like, if we're already Buddha, why do we need to practice?

[04:20]

You know, if we already have this perfection within us, what's the point of making, you know, go to a monastery and doing all these things? And none of the teachers at the Tendai Monastery at the time gave him a satisfactory answer. And this was one of the things that kind of drove him to go with one of his teachers or senior colleagues to China. at the age of 23. And he practiced there for four years and felt that he came to a complete understanding and came back. And the year that he came back in 1227 was when he wrote this text. And so he's kind of setting up this kind of thing like the way is originally perfect to not pervading. The true vehicle is free and self-sufficient. The whole body is free from dust. It's never apart from this very place. So these are all different ways of basically saying You know, the practice and Buddha nature is already perfect and inherent. So what are we doing? How could it be contingent upon practice and realization? What need is there for special effort?

[05:22]

Indeed, the whole body is free from dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? What is the use of traveling around to practice? And this from someone who just spent four years, you know, traveling very hazardously to a foreign country to do this. But... To my mind, he doesn't actually give a satisfactory answer during the text of Fukunza Zengi. But in his next two texts, the Benda Wa and the Genjo Koan, which he wrote a few years later, he does explain it much more thoroughly. But the answer that he came up with, which is fundamental to understanding how Dogen thinks, is this idea of practice realization. So that Our Buddha nature is not manifest unless we're actualizing it in the moment. So that's kind of the key to it. So he's setting up these questions that he knows the answer to, or he feels he has the answer to, even though I don't think he really explains it very well in this text.

[06:27]

What he does go on to say is like, sit zazen, sit lots of zazen, zazen is amazing. If you sit zazen, all these amazing things will happen to you. In a nutshell, that's what the text is about. But he's, you know, he kind of sets this up in this very interesting way. And I can just briefly say that, you know, there are a number of phrases in here that echo, you know, some of the Chinese Zen literature. You know, even the last phrase, if the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion, comes, you know, as a close echo to the Xinjiang Ming, which was written by the Third Church. Chinese ancestor several hundred years before Dogen. And the first line of that, the great way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose. The whole brushing it clean, you know, echoes the sixth ancestor and his famous poetry competition with the head monk, you know, whereas an illiterate monk, he was read the poem that the head monk had written in

[07:33]

kind of an answer to the challenge that the fifth ancestor posed. And the head monk's poem read something like, the mind is the Bodhi tree. Sorry, the body is the Bodhi tree. The mind is like a bright mirror stand. At all times, we should strive to polish it. and must not let dust collect. That's a Wikipedia translation, which is not very poetic. But this idea that, you know, we have to keep brushing away the stains of the world to kind of keep our original nature pure. And the sixth patriarch, when he heard this, instructed another monk to write another poem, which said, Bodhi originally has no tree. The bright mirror also has no stand. Fundamentally, there is not a single thing. Where could dust arise? So this is kind of pointing instead to the absolute purity at the center of everything. And then, you know, a couple of other phrases, the hair's breadth deviation is, I think, an exact copy of something that appears in the song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi by Dongshan, the Chinese founder of our particular lineage.

[08:41]

And there's another, I always think he's echoing another famous poem, the Sandokai, the harmony of difference and equality which was written a few generations before Dongshan. And Sekito says, if you don't understand the way right before you, how will you know the path as you walk? Progress is not a matter of far or near, but if you are confused, mountains and rivers block your way. That may be a lot to take in. I just wanted to kind of throw out a little bit of Dogen. I love talking about Dogen, as you've practiced with me now. But it's just, you know, we can sometimes, you know, if you go to Zen Center, you might chant this, you might read this, but it's always worth stopping and really kind of picking apart every single phrase. So if anyone has any questions about any of that text or anything I've said, I'm really happy to try to guide you through it. Or if you have a general question about your practice or anything else Zen related, I'm also happy to answer that.

[09:44]

sorry about that I couldn't see my hand because I had a meeting earlier today for work and put that background on as a joke um I know um so I'm not I think I'm familiar with with that those words there um In fact, I've got, I assume you're familiar, Moon in the Dewdrop? Yes, yes. And I swear I've read that in here somewhere. Is that, do you think it's in there? Because I wanted to kind of, I may just have to read the whole thing again, right? Yes. I'm not completely sure. As I remember, and I don't have a copy on the shelf behind me, those are all my Dogen books right there, mostly. As I remember, The Moon and the Dewdrop was a selection from the Shobo Genzo, which was Dogen's masterwork.

[11:06]

And the Fukunza Zengi kind of predates his compilation of the Shobo Genzo. So that generally starts either with the Genjo Koan or, in fact, it does generally start with the Genjo Koan. So that's kind of his third great piece of writing. So it's possible it may not be in the text, but he may have also included it in an appendix as part of, you know, Dogen's other important writings. So it wouldn't surprise me, but I couldn't say definitively. Okay, well, I've got a couple other books on the shelf. So it can be in one of those. I just had that one sitting here. It's really familiar. So that... Selection right there is from the... I want to write down where you're saying that. I'll type out the title for you because that's... That would be great. Zengi. And it translates as the universal... Oops.

[12:09]

Universal recommendation. Okay. So you can, you know, if you type either of those into a search engine, you'll get a translation of those, I think, very easily. I say if you go to the San Francisco Zen Center site and look for the chant book, the translation is slightly different. I think the Dharma vehicle is free and untrammeled is the second line. But it's a little less poetic to my way of thinking. Okay. All right. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you. And if all this seems, you know, incredibly highfalutin and not something you can get your head around, that's totally fine.

[13:15]

You know, these are quite deep teachings. And I just invite you to just read it over again and read it, as I often say about Dogen, read it like poetry. You know, don't expect to have a meaning that kind of leaps out at you immediately, but just kind of appreciate the beauty of the language and, you know, see what seeps in and see what resonates for you. This is a great approach. You know, I wouldn't claim to understand all of Dogen by any stretch of the imagination, but sometimes you can, you know, read it without that striving for comprehension, and then something appears almost magically sometimes. Not very often, but sometimes. else like to share anything or ask anything?

[14:21]

Ren, go on. I too like Dogen. Yes, I don't understand most of it, but I really do like it. And as Stephen Hine, who's a... Dogen Scholar has said, sometimes you just need to skim over it and see what you get out of that. But what I really like is when you said that we all have Buddha nature, I like Dogen's, we all are Buddha nature. And I think that just is, I just love that. That's just marvelous. And we still have to manifest it. Yes, exactly. And that's what Zazen is the manifestation of our awakening. But what happens when we're not sitting Zazen? Are we not manifesting our awakening without sitting Zazen? No, we should be practicing Zazen at all times, even when we're standing and walking around and doing everything else.

[15:34]

Thank you. That's a very good comeback. Thank you. And yes, and Ren makes a very good point about how Dogen played with language a lot. I'm part of a Dogen study group where we go into the nitty gritty. And it's very clear sometimes how one person will translate things one way and a different translation will have a completely different sense to it. But when you look at the original Chinese characters, obviously they... They're just the kind of the essential elements of the sentence and there are various, you know, prepositions and pronouns that are missing. And so you have to kind of infer, you know, what is actually being referred to. And so Dogen, I think, played on that ambiguity a lot. And so he would, you know, he would often, you know, just turn the language around just to keep you off your balance, I think, not to rely on any kind of certainty of language.

[16:35]

Even though he wrote an awful lot, you know, he wrote amazing stuff, but he didn't write it for you to say, oh, this is, you know, this is, I can say this is the Bible, this is gospel, but those aren't really the right words to choose there. This is, you know, this is the teaching. These are the, you know, these are the things I can cling on to. Because he was always trying to remind you that everything always has to be looked at fresh. And that's part of the vitality of the practice. A Rosemary, please. I really loved it. I thought it was beautiful. It's like listening to a poem. And what stood out to me was if the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion.

[17:43]

Like and dislike lost in judgment. Right. You're not able to be present there. I just spoke to something that happened earlier to me this evening. Yeah, it's a beautifully simple phrase and yet it's incredibly hard to practice because we all trade in likes and dislikes all the time. We're always judging and sifting and sorting and giving opinions about everything. But the moment we do that, we are not fully, as you say, we're not fully present for the reality that's unfolding around us. You know, we're present, but we're not fully present because we've got, like I like to say, we've got these blinkers on. And so, yeah, it's a constant reminder to notice where these likes and dislikes come in and how they prevent us from being truly present. It's a tough ask.

[18:48]

The line that I feel he's echoing, the great way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose. We all pick and choose. It's kind of difficult. But that's just the human condition. And I think there is a way where you can not get caught up in the picking and choosing that does allow for this greater appreciation of reality or greater immersion in reality. Thank you. Okay, I really appreciate those comments and those come from this conversation. Thank you all for showing up and joining us here. Dan will be in the seat next week, I'm pretty sure, and I should be leading the group in a couple of weeks' time. So I hope to see you then, and in the meantime, please enjoy your practice.

[19:54]

Thank you. Thank you.

[19:59]

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