Aug 4-5th 2023 - OUR MONTHLY 4-hr ZAZENKAI - Genjo Koan (II) - The Key to Dogen's Zen

**Jundo** · 08-03-2023, 06:04 AM

The text for our talk today, the second in a monthly series, is based on my modernized translation of the Genjo Koan, from my book ...

THE ZEN MASTER’S DANCE
A Guide to Understanding Dōgen and Who You Are in the Universe
https://wisdomexperience.org/product...masters-dance/

Other translations of of the Genjo can be found here for comparison: (LINK)

~ ~ ~

Buddhas are those with great understanding of the nature
of delusion. Alas, confused beings are those who are greatly
deluded about the nature of enlightenment. Moreover,
because life is not stagnant, so a Buddha must continue to
realize realization upon realization, while ordinary folks
just fall into delusion after delusion.

Practitioners sometimes think that enlightenment is the endpoint of practice rather than an ongoing series of daily actions that are each an opportunity to manifest either ignorant or enlightened behavior. They think that they must get to a perpetually blissful place called “enlightenment,” removed from the pain and complexity of this world, and all their problems will disappear but their wishes and desires will be fully satisfied. Actually, that has never been the way Zen masters considered enlightenment, or, at least, a complete vision of it. While there is a state beyond self and problems—a place where all desires are satisfied in unbroken wholeness—human beings cannot live there. They cannot pay the bills and fall in love there. So, we should realize that instead we can experience a flawed world that is also flawless. We can have goals and expectations and demands, yet also accept life as it is, on its own terms. In other words, we can know a realm of endless peace, beyond all lack and ugliness, as one with this world of frequent disturbance, lack, and ugliness.

* * *

Buddha doesn’t need to note she is Buddha. Nevertheless,
Buddhas are just living Buddhas who keep on living Buddha
by bringing Buddha to life.

When you manifest Buddha, you do so in each wise and compassionate thought, word, and deed, great or small, of your daily life. Buddha’s action is not a fancy gesture you need to stick a flag on, make a big show about, or hire a marching band to proclaim. Buddha is wondrous, yet quite ordinary. I personally see Buddha manifesting all around me, not with a golden body and a shining halo floating high in the sky, but in the simple acts of generosity, peace, love, kindness, and harmony carried out by ordinary people in this world each day. Whenever a human being acts with generosity and altruism rather than selfishness, when she offers peace where there was strife or sees though division to the unity of all things, then she is bringing Buddha to life in this world and time. The person so acting need not even note to herself that she is doing so.

When one sees the forms or hears the sounds of the world
fully and wholly with body and mind [free of judgment,
free of mental categories, transcending “me, my, mine”],
one intimately understands without separation. Then, it is
not like some object and its reflection in a mirror, and it is
unlike the moon and its reflection in distant water, whereby
one side is illuminated and the other side is left in the dark.

Most of us feel cut off from life much of the time, as if our self and the rest of the world were separate. Frictions and disappointments come out of this sense of separation. But there is a way to experience life so unified, so intimate, that such frictions and disappointments drop away. It takes a sense of separation to have tumult and trouble. So, let’s just stop feeling that separation! Give up sticking so stubbornly to this sense of our separate selves via our Buddhist practice. Then, one sees both sides at once, wholeness and separation, completion and lack, as two sides of a single no-sided coin, and all is illuminated.

For to master the Buddha Way is to learn the self. To learn
the self is to drop the separate self from mind. To drop the
separate self from mind is to be actualized by the myriad
things of the world. When actualized by the myriad things,
one’s body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of
others all drop away. In such intimacy, no trace even of
“enlightenment” remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.

The self is filled with all manner of drives and desires, as well as feelings of isolation from everything and everyone that is not itself. You are frustrated when the world fails to meet your terms and conditions. Please study that, then stop that! Then all the world comes to embrace you without terms and conditions, unifying all life. This “life-self-world” becomes so fluid, whole, and natural that there is no need to label it even with a term like “enlightenment.”

**Jundo** · 08-03-2023, 06:04 AM

Our Dance this month, during O-Bon Season, has to be a traditional Bon Odori ... Here is a "How To" ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcmwzdqfB9E

A Tanko Bushi Bon dance in Tokyo filmed this week (I am happy to see the dancing coming back after ... you know what ... ) ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN_yZdM_4T8

Tankō Bushi (炭坑節) is a Japanese folk song ... the rhythm is in swung, ondo style. It is a song about coal mining, and it refers to old Miike Mine in Kyūshū (Tagawa City). It is a common song used in Bon dances during the Bon Festival, and the dance that accompanies it depicts actions in mines such as shoveling coal, throwing a bag of coal over the shoulders, wiping sweat from the brow or pushing a cart of coal.

Excerpt from Tankō Bushi

Japanese:

Tsuki ga deta deta
Tsuki ga deta, a yoi yoi
Miike Tankō no ue ni deta
Anmari entotsu ga takai no de
Sazoya otsukisan kemutakaro
Sa no yoi yoi

Rough English translation:

The moon, has come out,
Oh, the moon is out, heave ho
Over Miike Coal Mine has the moon come out.
The chimney is so high,
I wonder if the moon chokes on the smoke...
Heave Ho!

The song was recorded in Japan in 1932.

**Kiri** · 08-08-2023, 08:24 AM

Thank you everyone!
Gassho, Kiri
Sat/Lah

**Kotei** · 08-08-2023, 08:29 AM

Uh, I forgot to thank you all for sitting together.
Thank you!
Gassho,
Kotei.

(p.s.: your German accent sounds strangely familiar, Bion :-) )

**Bion** · 08-08-2023, 08:43 AM

Originally posted by Kotei

Uh, I forgot to thank you all for sitting together.
Thank you!
Gassho,
Kotei.

(p.s.: your German accent sounds strangely familiar, Bion :-) )

Ah.. I do my best! [emoji1] I can only follow the best example I have !!

[emoji1374] Sat Today

Aug 4-5th 2023 - OUR MONTHLY 4-hr ZAZENKAI - Genjo Koan (II) - The Key to Dogen's Zen

Aug 4-5th 2023 - OUR MONTHLY 4-hr ZAZENKAI - Genjo Koan (II) - The Key to Dogen's Zen

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