...together by his disciples in his early part of his career. And it's in Chinese. He didn't write it in Japanese. It's Chinese. And it's usually translated and it's pronounced in the Japanese pronunciation of these characters is Gakudo Yojinshu. Gakudo Yojinshu. This practice is intensive. I think the right markers and the right erasers. So the text I'm talking about is Gaku. Yo. Oh, excuse me. Gaku. Gaku. Dō. yo, jin, shu.

[01:06]

Gaku means to learn and do means the way. It's guidelines or teachings for learning the Buddha way. There are at least four English translations. You don't need to read them. but if you want to read them, there's four, and at least two of them you can find online if you just search for Gakudo Yojinshu. One you'll find online is by Kaz Tanahashi, and another one you'll find is by Gudo Nishijima. But also, Shohaku Okamura has translated it, and also... Yokoi Roshi has translated it. So it's at least four. And I have enjoyed over the years noticing the big difference in the way the title is translated.

[02:09]

The text is pretty... There's differences also, very interesting differences in the way the paragraph of the teaching is translated. But the title of the section... So the last section of this Guidelines for the Buddha Way, the last section, some people translate, as I said to you this morning, they translate it as directly realizing the Buddha Way. which is kind of, it's a free translation. I don't disagree with it. In fact, I appreciate that they did that, that they translated it that way. A more literal translation, and the one I just said was directly realizing the Buddha way.

[03:12]

The more literal translation is Settle down right here. Or straight down right here. Jiki Ge Joto. Another translation of this. This is the title of the section. Another translation is Directly Hit. Right here.

[04:19]

Or another one is receiving, directly receiving a hit. Right now. The direct way to realize The Buddha way, the direct realization of the Buddha way is to hit right now, to hit right now. Or you could say, to be hit by right now. To hit right now or be hit right now. By hit by right now. This is the direct way. I love this idea that the direct way is to be hit by right now.

[05:26]

Or to be hit by is the same as to settle down right now, here. So I think this is a wonderful way to start the practice period. The direct realization of the way is to settle down right here and now. this direct realization of the Buddha way, this is what I refer to by the word Zen. Other people may use Zen differently, but what I mean by it is directly realize the Buddha way right now. So Zen is the Buddha way. And the Buddha way is Buddha and the way that Buddha practices.

[06:33]

Now, the next part of this, then that's the title. That's the title of this last section of this wonderful text, Dhaka Duryodhana Jinshu. Then, again, the next line is also translated quite differently. Literally, it says, there are two ways to penetrate body-mind. There are two ways to penetrate our psychophysical existence. Or you could say, there are two ways to understand. The character penetrate could also be translated as understand. There's two ways to understand body and mind. And again, other translations are, there are two ways to realize awakening.

[07:41]

So, penetrating body and mind, I'm okay. That's what it literally says, says penetrate body and mind. But it's okay to translate that as, that's what enlightenment is, that's what awakening is, is to understand body and mind. Which we, you know, we have some trouble understanding it, have you noticed? Understanding it there are two ways to enter understanding body and mind. And the two ways are, first is to go to the teacher and listen to the teacher. And the Chinese character that's used here Chinese character that's used... No, no, that's not it.

[09:05]

It is that. This is to listen. So this is a gate with an ear inside. pronounced mon. So, san chi mon po. Go meet the teacher and listen to the teaching. But this character also means to ask. So it is to go and meet the teacher and listen to the teaching, but it's also to go to the teacher and ask for the teaching and ask about the teaching. This is the first way to directly realize the way. The second way is wholehearted sitting or complete devotion to sitting meditation.

[10:09]

Some of the translation is translated as devotion to sitting zazen. I beg to differ with that translation because what it's saying is wholehearted devotion to sitting, sitting meditation. So it's really just wholehearted devotion to sitting meditation. wholehearted devotion to settling down right here. Those are the two ways. So this settling down right here is me settling down right here, but it's also me going to the teacher and listening to the teaching. In other words, we can't just do one. Just going to the teacher and listening to the teaching is part of it. It's really all of it, but part of it.

[11:15]

But this all of it, which is part of it, needs the other part, which is wholeheartedly settling into body and mind. But as Suzuki Roshi said, we say our practice is just sitting. Or you could say just settling into sitting. But that may be rather difficult to understand. And other ancestors have said that too. Very simple teaching, just sitting. Actually, it's just hit sitting. Just settle down. But in order to just settle down, we need to go listen to the teaching about what just settling down is. So it's both interpersonal interaction and it is just settling down right here, which again resonates with what we talked about last winter here, last intensive, the Lotus Sutra, that the thorough understanding of the Dharma is only a Buddha together with Buddha.

[12:30]

Buddha together with Buddha is going to teach, going to listen to the Dharma. Going to ask about the Dharma. That conversation is only a Buddha together with Buddha. And the only Buddha is settling down. Settling down in body and mind. Meeting the teacher listening to the teaching. And also part of the reason I think was led to bring this up is that in this intensive we have the structure of the intensive is to have coming together, listening to the teaching, and sitting. We have these two parts in this intensive. We don't just sit in the zendo together. We also listen to the teaching and ask about the teaching.

[13:40]

These two together make it possible to settle down right here. We need to encourage each other We need to allow each other, we need to allow ourselves to settle down completely in the moment, here. And we need to allow others to do so. So one unintended consequence of this crisis is that for the first five days we ask no social talk, only talk that bears on the practice. So we allow ourselves and others in these first five days to really settle And don't say anything to yourself or others which would in any way disturb them from settling down.

[14:52]

The ancestor goes on to say, going to meet the teacher. Meeting the teacher and also the character for meeting also means practice. practicing with a teacher, listening to the Dharma, practicing with a teacher, asking about the Dharma, practicing with a teacher, questioning the teaching. That dynamic, that part of the practice is lets our conscious discriminating mind have free range, lets our conscious mind play freely it opens up our conscious mind.

[16:55]

In following this meeting and listening to the Dharma, we give up our old nest. And because of settling down completely, we just settle down and do not get a new nest. So the first part of the practice is to set our thinking mind free by working it. The wholehearted sitting is concerned with, when some translations say concerned with, another translation I like is literally it says, wholehearted sitting, left, right, practice realization. The Chinese character, wholehearted sitting, left, right, wholehearted sitting. So it's like in wholehearted sitting you have the practice

[18:11]

and you have the realization, and you left-write the practice and realization. You integrate the practice of listening, the practice of sitting, the practice of walking. Whatever practice you're doing, You can make that the left, and then the right is the realization of the way. And in the sitting, we harmonize or integrate whatever practice is going on with the realization. What time is it? What time is it? 9.39 a.m. Somebody has their hand raised. If you have your hand raised, could you wait just a second?

[19:15]

And when you do, you can come up here. Actually, there's a microphone up here. Do you want to talk? Why is your hand raised? Come up and tell me why your hand is raised. What did she say? Yeah, if you have a question, just wait a minute. And if you want to ask a question, come up here. There's a microphone over there. You can go out the door, I guess, and stand by that microphone in a minute. And I want to move on or coordinate this teaching from the Zen ancestor. And Zen ancestor means the Buddha way ancestor, Dogen. I want to coordinate that with traditional Mahayana teaching. that bodhisattvas need to develop three kinds of wisdom. The wisdom of listening and the wisdom of thinking, of investigating, of questioning, of discrimination. Part of our practice is to listen, and there's a wisdom that goes with that.

[20:21]

Then there's a practice that comes with working and questioning what we have heard, what we have learned. And then the third type of wisdom is the wisdom of meditation, where we integrate the Dharma we have heard with the subtleness that we are. But maybe I'll do that later, okay? Get into that. Yeah, I'll get into that later. Is that okay? Three types of wisdom. First is wisdom of listening. Second is wisdom of thinking or investigating or in questioning and discrimination. using the discrimination mind to work with what we listen to. And then, in the wisdom of meditation, we contemplate the wisdom, the first two wisdoms, without any discrimination.

[21:26]

We just left-write them. Yes, you can ask your question now if you like. Hello. Before I ask my question, Reb, your voice is coming through a bit muffled, and I have a hard time understanding you. It's not, like, clear. I don't know why. I don't know if it's the bass, maybe. I don't know. Yeah, I really appreciate your letting us know. Are there people finding it muffled back there? Why don't you sit closer? Try that next time. There's some seats up here if you want to sit closer. And you have another question? Thank you. It's so nice to see you. Thank you. You can sit up here if you like. Okay. Please. I will. You can go now if you want. But should I ask my question? Oh, I thought you did.

[22:28]

No, that was not my question. You talked about free thinking. I mean, free sitting, like free thoughts while you're sitting. Pre-thoughts? Yeah, like flowing your thoughts. Did you say that? I said that one of the virtues of listening to the teacher and questioning the teaching is the mind becomes opened and it becomes free, that the thinking becomes free. Oh, I misunderstood. I thought you meant when you're sitting, just let the mind flow free, and then you come to a realization. That's not what you said. Letting the mind flow freely in conversation is what you work on in the second type of wisdom. And wisdom comes out of this conversation. With you or with me? With me, with whatever, with the teaching.

[23:30]

Not with me though, right? Not while I'm sitting. You're settling into what you have understood from your study of the Dharma. In sitting, you're settling into your understanding of practice and awakening. And you have some understanding of that which you have developed and which you will continue to develop in conversation with listening to the teaching and then listening and conversing with the teacher. And also with thinking about what you've heard and questioning to yourself, but also questioning to the teacher what you've heard, like you're doing right now. This is, in some sense, you've heard me say something and now you're coming to practice a second type of wisdom.

[24:30]

Your understanding, which you arrive at now in this conversation, you can sit with that and just settle down with it. That's the third type of wisdom. So the free-floating of thoughts is not realization on the cushion. When all that comes up for you, it's more like analyzing what understanding was given during your interaction with the teacher? That kind of analysis of what comes up in the teaching is the work you do in the second type of wisdom. That's what you do in going to meet the teacher and listening to the Dharma. You listen to it and get some wisdom from listening. Then you move on to question and think about what you've heard, what you're doing right now. On the cushion? No, right now you're not on the cushion. You're right here talking to me.

[25:34]

Now you're doing the second part of wisdom. Based on that, when you're not talking to anybody else, when you're sitting, you settle into whatever your mind is doing. You settle into whatever your understanding is. And if your mind is moving, you just settle into that with your current understanding of what that moving mind is. You're not trying to get any more teachings to come in. you're not analyzing, you're not questioning, you're just settling down with your understanding of practice and realization. So if I'm coming to an understanding, I'm not analyzing? No. In the second part of wisdom, in the meeting with the teacher, there is analysis going on.

[26:36]

When you're listening, you're just listening. Then you have some understanding from listening. Then you ask some questions. Or you get questioned. Or you state some understanding. And you ask for feedback. Like you're doing right now. This is the process over on this side of meeting with the teacher, talking about the teaching, listening to the teaching. And wisdom comes out of this. And this wisdom comes with the free flow and the relaxation, the playfulness, the creativity of the working of your mind. And then when you sit, you just settle into who you are, which includes what you have understood so far. And it includes your monkey mind and all of that?

[27:41]

Your monkey mind includes your understanding of monkey mind. That's not settling though, is it? You have monkey mind? You have an understanding of monkey mind? That's what you are in a given moment? Then you settle with that. Got it. Got it. Thank you. Like Siddhartha Kurukshetra, he often talked about monkey mind, right? He didn't say don't have monkey mind. He said when you have monkey mind, have just that monkey mind. That was his understanding. And then just have monkey mind is not more analysis. It's just settling with your monkey mind and your understanding of the relationship between monkey mind and directly realizing the Buddha way.

[28:47]

If you have monkey mind, there can be direct realization of the Buddha way. If you don't have monkey mind, there can also be direct realization. Whatever mind you have, straight down, right here, that's the teaching for realizing directly. But it's hard to settle with the monkey mind, because you know what monkey mind does. It offers up many challenging comments. And you maybe don't realize, oh, you're supposed to really be with that. That's why you need to converse a lot to have confidence in really settling down. We can't really settle down if we don't have the first two times of wisdom. And we can't have the first two kinds of wisdom without conversation with the teaching and the teacher.

[29:52]

And the teacher can't without the conversation with the teaching and the student. Yes? Good morning. Good morning. Over here, the rain is louder than your voice. One time in the yoga room, you started the first class by saying, Zen is love. So I was just looking at your words on the board just now and I thought that listening to the teacher is love with form and Meditation, the other side, what you wrote there, is love with emptiness. Is that true? I mean, how's that sound? I don't know if it's true, but what you're doing now is you're working on the second type of wisdom. You're working your mind. Yeah, you're developing the second kind of wisdom by what you're just saying now.

[30:57]

When I had that thought, it was very lovely because it didn't feel like working my mind. But I thought that as soon as I said it, you would ask me a question and then I wouldn't know what to say. Listeners to the Dharma... Listening to the Dharma can be lovely. Listening to the Dharma can be lovely. And the working of your conscious mind, the exercise of it, the play of it, that can be lovely too. And maybe you had a little taste of that loveliness right then. I thought you said lovely also in the process. You can't hear, Carolyn? Yeah. I said love, and now Reb is saying lovely, but... Well, when you're working with your conscious mind, when you're working with your conscious mind, the way to work with it is lovingly.

[32:14]

The way to listen is lovingly. The way to question and think about what you have heard is compassionately. And you work with the listening and the thinking and the investigating compassionately. You're not trying to get anything when you listen. You're not trying to get anything from the conversation. You're giving yourself to it. And this compassionate way of relating to the first two types of wisdom will also, the same thing will be done in the just sitting. So we have this strange thing that speakers have to go over to the microphone, right? Because they don't have their own amplification.

[33:18]

I'm just going to try to settle in for a second. It can take more than a second. Okay. I really respect the way things keep turning and the way you present things. The fact that you wrote up there the wisdom of thinking seems to go against the non-thinking ideal. And because I do have a thinking mind, It's a very loving inclusion, which I want to thank you for.

[34:28]

You're welcome. The other thing I want to thank you for is your persistent invitation to discover Dharma in relationship. That to me is gold. And it brings up in me a warrior and a love and a challenge to settle. the settling is the piece where I have my question. Because I believe what I settle, what causes me to settle, is different than other people. Just as what they settle is different. So to find that. What we settle with is the thing we're meaning to...

[35:29]

the interaction, what we're interacting with, that's different for each person and different for us each moment. But the way of meeting is basically the same. It's compassion. Now, it functions differently when it interacts with different things, but basically we all have the opportunity to be compassionate towards what we're hearing, what we're thinking. So the settling into the dynamic process of listening and questioning and so on, Dharma, that is facilitated by compassion, which we'll get into more later. And you brought up this thing about thinking and also you mentioned non-thinking. So I will talk about that ancient teaching of thinking, not thinking, non-thinking.

[36:34]

But I'll forecast if I say, thinking, not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. Non-thinking is great compassion. That's how we realize that thinking is not thinking. We apply compassion to the dynamic interaction of thinking about the teaching with the teacher. We apply compassion to that and that's practicing non-thinking with the thinking. That's practicing non-discrimination with discrimination. To follow up with that, the way I experience non-thinking and settling in is Dharma gates seem to open by themselves. in ways that I'm able to be investigative. And it does seem as though there is a primal benevolence or mystery that is being unfolded.

[37:39]

And when my discriminating mind often pushes away the... I'm at war with myself a lot. I have a lot of polarities. I'm guessing a lot of us do. Really courageous, really shy, really bold, really running the other direction. So I don't know. It's a trick. It's a mystery. But that's all I have to say. I had a thought that I'm going to share now with all of you, which is this morning I thought, we sometimes say at the beginning of the intensive or a sashin or a practice period, sometimes a teacher walks around the hall during sitting and checks out the posture, which involves touching a person.

[38:54]

So is there going to be a health and safety meeting today? Would you ask the committee what they feel about a fully vaccinated person with N95 mask touching the back of the people to check their posture? Would you see what they think of that? And then, of course, your thoughts are also welcome. So if you do not want to be touched, even if the Helvin Safety Committee says, okay, you will not be touched, I won't touch you. But I thought, well, we could... We can't talk to each other face-to-face with no masks, but maybe it's all right from this hand, after sanitized, to touch your back. We'll see what the Health and Safety Committee says. And if they say okay, then we'll ask you if any of you don't want it. And if you all don't want it, then there won't be any. Just a thought.

[39:58]

This is part of the working of the mystery, working of the risk. I think of relating that way. I think, oh, this is different. So how do we proceed? Well, we ask the Health and Safety Committee, then we ask the Assembly, and we go from there. We'll see what happens. This is an example, in a way, of listening to the teachings, and questioning the teaching. Listening to the teaching to relate to people, to sometimes touch people if it's helpful, but then discuss it. What time is it now? 10.01. Okay. Any other offerings at this time this morning? Yes.

[41:03]

Well, in the original text, she says, could you go over to the left, right? It says in the original text, devotedly sitting is devotedly sitting left-right practice realization. So some people translate that as devotedly sitting controls practice and realization. Another one says it influences practice realization. Another one says it's concerned with practice realization. but literally it says left and right. And so another translation is to left-right practice realization or to relate to practice and realization as you move your left and right hands. In other words, when you're sitting, you can freely work with the practice and the realization, like left and right hands.

[42:09]

It doesn't say hand, it says left-right. But I notice that some people translate it as like freely working your left and right hands. Which I think that's a nice translation. But the raw original is just sitting, left-right practice realization. This is a kind of physical and simple way to talk about what our sitting is. When we're sitting, we're left-right practice realization. We're practice realization. I'm looking for harmony. not being separate. But at the same time, even though they're not separate, they're left and right, and you can tell somehow you can discriminate left and right. But we bring them together like asho. That's what the sitting's for. Any other offerings this morning?

[43:13]

So we just did the listening and the interaction with the teacher business. We did that now. Now we can do the sitting part again. And then we'll have other meetings and other classes. And around and around we go. And as I said, I will try to bring up the presentation of these three types of wisdom in, for example, the Samdhi Nirmocana Sutra, how they described how these two work together and lots of other unfolding of this basic Mahayana teaching of these two sides of our practice. Is that enough for this morning? How many people had difficulty hearing? So, yeah, the people in the back mostly.

[44:34]

So I see actually three people and they're all in the back, which is perfectly understandable. Thank you for the feedback.

[44:42]

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