In the opening talk of the 2024 Samish sesshin, Nomon Tim offers a reflection on Eihei Dōgen's Gakudo-Yojinshu, Points to Watch in Practicing the Way, which was written soon after his return from China.  This was the first of three talks given on Dōgen's early work. 

Stream audio:

Tim's talk notes:

Good morning,

There will always be a few loose edges on the first day of sesshin. Maybe you received a "reminder" about something you had no way of knowing like not getting coffee before the meal? Don't sit down yet. Sit over there, not here. How did you practice with this little jolts? Accepting? Defensive? indignant? They should have explained that properly. Did you enjoy your ill begotten coffee?

Or maybe you found yourself whispering with someone about something that in retrospect really didn't need to be said. I am guilty of that a few times. It's so hard to release from the sense of urgency about the many details. It really is true that a very high percentage of the time it works out perfectly if we all just keep the silence. And being in a leadership role only makes this more true, not less.

There are deep opportunities in how we operate together for practicing in so many deep areas: restraint, trust, patience, acceptance. You name it.

So this at times seemingly overly complicated way of arranging things with so many different little roles is actually a very rich field of practice in it's own right. It's not just a good way to organize our little society so that we can sit lots of zazen. It's not that the deep practice only happens in zazen. Walking to the meal is a deep practice. Listening to everyone chanting so you can keep in sync and harmony is a deep practice. Noticing when you aren't fully present for any - any - of the millions of moments throughout our day is a deep practice.

So thank you for your practice so far. Maybe it doesn't feel so "deep" in that way the conditioned mind is always trying to evaluate things but the depth is there. The invitation in there. It's right here actually. Listening to a Dharma talk is a deep practice too.

Another interesting, challenging and rich aspect to the many roles that are assigned is the practice of staying inside your role, being aware of your actions and those few actually needed words - am I within my role here?  That's not just logistics and being respectful of the roles the others are holding it's actually a deep practice around identity and clinging and control.

Early on in my training I sat a few practice periods at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center near San Francisco. At the first one the Ino was this woman named Fu. Maybe some of you know Fu Schroeder - this was the Fu of 35 years ago actually. She was the Ino. Fu is a tall, very strong woman. She'd been through a lot in her life and it showed in her eyes. To my 20 year old self those eyes were just piercing. She was one tough Ino. No hesitation to move us around in the zendo or correct us or check on us. One time I overslept somehow and I'm in my sleeping bag in my room kind of half awake with this sense that somethings not quite right here. Before I had a chance to fully wake up and figure out what was happening there's a sharp knock on the door and Fu sticks her head in. "Time for zazen!" she says her eye brows going up. She had large and expressive eyebrows too. I guess to my memory here she was a embodiment of Bodhidharma!

So I kind of feared Fu but also appreciated the sense of order her strong presence created - not sure I quite understand that at the time but there was something if a bit challenging but also quite RIGHT about how it all went. And I didn't have any monastery Inos to compare her too anyway.

A couple of years later I went back for another practice period there. This time Fu was the head student, the Shuso. And it was like someone had taken the Fu I remembered and completely reworked her psychological profile. This Fu was sweet and kind and open. She gave me a wrist mala she'd made. Walking up the trail on work period she was chatting away with us about her childhood. She never corrected anyone or seemed even remotely bothered by little irregularities in the zendo. It was amazing to me! How is this possible? This isn't "Fu".

Somehow this transformation came up no idea how, I was way too shy to ask her what had changed, maybe she just figured it out in how I was looking at her or something or something little thing I said. And she said, "oh yeah I was one Mean-O Ino wasn't I?" and gave out a big laugh. I asked how I was supposed to be Shuso and my teacher said just practice with people and support the sangha. It's a lot nicer.

Who was the real Fu? There's a koan like that. Was her taking on the Mean-O Ino role just an act? Or was it living into her understanding of that role? Was the sweet Shuso the real Fu or here fully inhabiting that role.

I realized something then about holding my conceptions of who someone is too tightly is a mistake. That the real "me" seems to be something more fluid and malleable in the middle of our roles. And perhaps, thinking about this now, a real danger for us in the "ordinary" world where we're in one set of roles for many years, or our whole lifetime, that we come to think our role is the real us. That we are that role. Makes us so rigid and inflexible.

So it's ideal in Zen training to rotate roles. We're doing a little better with that at Red Cedar. In past years we often feel so starved of core volunteers that once there was someone in a role doing it well I'd be like, "woah leave her in that role, we're not going to do better" and they'd be stuck in the role too long, sometimes was too long and it actually created harm when once the person is thoroughly attached to something like always being the tenken and then you do get around to rotating people they feel deeply criticized and shamed. The only possible reason Nomon Tim asked me not to be in this role is that I'm totally screwing up, or even more likely, I am a total screw up. So rotating roles is very good. We'll keep working on being more regular and semi-systematic about that. One of my flaws is I just don't remember to track stuff like that, and I also have trouble remembering to ask for help so obviously I should ask someone who's good at tracking to create a system and remind us.

Anyway this happens here too. It's amazing. In a day or two you can be really identified with your role and you can also be overstepping into other people's roles. Rich field of practice there. And underlying it like everything the deep truths of not-self, impermanence, and the unsatisfying nature of conditioned reality.

Your conditioned self can take on doing your role really well as a way to try to solve existential angst too - finally I found a deep tradition that I believe in and it's going to heal me and save me. If I can ring every bell perfectly my fears will melt away and everyone will love me. This is not such a big exaggeration actually - listen to the quiet, or not to quiet, muttering of that insecure level of your mind when you do these things.

The downside of feeding that particular demon of course is the reverse it true also. If I mess up any one of these many bell rings it proves to me and everyone here, and probably if someone isn't here they'll hear about, what a hopeless unworthy case I am. It'll all be out in the open. No fucking way I'm singing up for be doan, are you kidding me? Way too risky.

I have fun exploring this stuff, with yes a little exaggeration to prove the point sometimes but it's worth tuning into and wondering about - but better not to overthink it all - what I am actually doing as I go through my day here at retreat and throughout my life. What role am I playing? Can I see that it's just a role? What heavy stuff am I loading onto my performance or it? Am I judging others as they try to play their roles? Whew.

And speaking of overstepping my own role. As Guiding Teacher I do get to advice and suggest and in lots of things I have the double edged sword of having the last say, at least for now, but I also need to keep working on letting people play their roles fully with my interfering. Wait for the time we're talking about it or planning to make my little suggestions. I miss that bit up often, but actually less often than before. There is growth there.

So when Raizelah and Desiree were explaining about shifting to this cards system for dokusan - it's a real change here at Samish but actually just normal everyday practice for us in Bellingham, no big deal. When they were explaining that it sounded complicated - or maybe I was just projecting on some of you that you thought it sounded complicated, who knows? Anyway I jumped in to explain very emphatically where to put the cards while you're waiting for dokusan so the jishas can see them. And I said exactly the wrong thing. So I'll try to clean up my mess a little here - sometimes that just makes it worse but this one feels simple enough so I'll plunge in.

Please you your cards behind you as you sit. So the side towards the center of the room. Just set them right behind your seat at the edge of your mat on the floor. That way the jishas can walk behind you and see whom to invite. Okay? Sorry about that Inos and sangha. Cards behind you when you're facing the wall. Remember to put them all the way back in the little pocket in the chant book before you leave for dokusan. Extra cards if you're missing a color on the table.

The Dharma Portion today is from Dōgen - we're having a kind of year of Dōgen at Red Cedar.

As you might know Eihei Dōgen who lived from 1200 to 1253 CE is revered as the founding teacher of Sōtō Zen. As a young man he famously went to China on pilgrimage as he was dissatisfied with the Dharma understanding in Japan of the day (despite the fact that actually Buddhism had been practiced quite deeply in Japan at least within the monastic enclosures for 700 years or so by then) but like all stories it's good if it'd tidy so felt like there were no true teachers or true understanding to match his deep yearning in Japan. The root of his question is about what our true nature is and why we need to practice.

So he went to China at the age of 23 and was there 4 years. During which he did indeed find his true teacher, had deep and transformational experiences in the Dharma and returned home with a lot of zeal to share what he'd learned. He didn't in his many writings express the desire to like set up a new school of Buddhism but he was important in the shift in Japan from the main Buddhisms being schools called Tendai and Shingon and some smaller ones to Zen and Pure Land Buddhism dominating. This took 100 years or so but in the zoomed out time scale of looking back at history it was a big chapter change in the story of Japanese Buddhism and Dōgen and a few other inspired teachers turned the first pages.

There are two main aspects to how Dōgen did this. The most important one really is his own presence and practice. He started two monasteries where he and the monks and nuns who came to practice with him enacted and lived what he'd learned in China. He introduced the practice which goes on to this day in Japan of the monastics living, and meditating, and eating on one tatami mat of space together. You sit on your cushion all day, they bring you food there, and at night you open the little cabinet behind you and pull out your futon and quilt and sleep right there too. Moreover everything's done together. Here we are doing a version of this today but more thoroughgoing. The monks also brush their teeth together, bathe together, go to the toilet together. Everything. 24/7. No alone time. It's the rock tumble system of ego softening rubbing away at your rough edges, triggering your preferences and starving them of fuel. And this kind of thing really can be incredibly transformational for some people. Now we understand more about trauma and our diverse psychologies and the impacts of systemic oppression we know that for some people this can also be a really bad idea too. Like the worst thing you could do. 

And ordinary people in Japan did not, and do not, do this kind of thing. It's those who are either part of a temple family so it's expected that you'll do this kind of training for 2-3 years or you are one of the fairly rare people who are drawn to it. So I guess we're all in this second category unless someone here has inherited a Zen temple somewhere. No?

In Japan in April we met an American fellow - now in his 70's - who was so powerfully drawn to this that he gave us his American life completely and did a half dozen of these 2-3 year training periods at monasteries all over Kyoto. Sweet guy. And definitely an outlier.

Anyway that's really the main way Dōgen started the dominoes falling that led to the Sōtō Zen movement and eventually us right here. By practicing with people. Maybe up to a few hundred at a time and he had about a dozen transmitted disciples. Maybe a few thousand people or so ever met him or heard him teach. He was well known, I'm sure, in Buddhist religious circles. The still powerful Tendai school on Mt Hiei outside Kyoto probably felt a little threatened and/or upset with him - he started with them and could definitely have gone on to be a major Tendai monk but he bailed and his way of practicing probably felt like a deep criticism of their way of doing things too.

He started one medium sized monastery south of Kyoto which isn't there anymore and then he and the monks left there, hiked about 150 miles into the rural mountains on the Sea of Japan side of Honshu up into some low mountains and where he set up a larger monastery called Eihei-ji which continues to this day.

And he was an eloquent speaker and an incredible writer. There's a whole thread of teaching woven into Zen that questions the value of words, and he had that sense too - so limiting, conceptual and dualistic words - but he also wrote. A LOT. Up there with the top 2 or 3 medieval Japanese religious leaders.

So that's what we tend to think of today about Dōgen - his writings. But actually they were less important historically. He'd write out his talks, he wrote many essays which he's also share as talks, he wrote letters. But this was all written by hand. Maybe a few students would make copies. Maybe someone visiting from another temple would take a copy of some Dōgen writing back home but mostly he wasn't read during his lifetime or for hundreds of years afterwards. Original scrolls written by Dōgen's hand were more often revered as holy objects. So you put them on a secret altar or in the monastic treasury but you wouldn't presume to open it up and read it. So it was actually his lived example that carried on.

And we're living that ourselves. Right here and now at Samish sesshin. Thank you for being a part of this lived tradition. It means a lot. Maybe you thought you were coming her for your own benefit or to see your Dharma friends but actually you're here to carry on Dōgen's practice. Which is to say Buddha's practice.

But the amazing thing is how many of these little read writings survived. There's an enormous catalog and it's hard to get your mind around it all especially with the consistent titles all being in Japanese and that Dōgen liked to name several different collections of his writings "Shobogenzo" - a phrase he borrowed from the tradition meaning Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. He did NOT suffer from low self esteem it seems.

This is one long run up to my topic. The piece I want to share with you through my 3 talks here at Samish is called Gakudo-Yojinshu - the title means "Points to Watch in Practicing the Way." It's one of 3 known pieces Dōgen wrote soon after returning from China and it's one I just learned about recently. You might have heard of Bendowa - Discourse on the Practice of the Way which is sometimes included in the main Shobogenzo and Fukanzazengi - Universal Recommendations on Zazen - which is in our chant books, we'll recite it tomorrow. These 3 were all written in his early years in the Kyoto area when he started his first monastery Koshoji.

FYI TO ME

Early Dōgen writings:

Dōgen's return from China - 1228

Fukanzazengi (first version) - 1228 or 1232, revised 1242

Bendowa -1231

Gakudo-Yojinshu - 1234. First known publication of Gakudo-Yojinshu not until 1357, probably just shared with his students.

It's written in 10 short chapters and now that I've rambled on so long let's look at the first chapter today and think about how we can practice with our great ancestors words from another place and time and yet within this very same great Dharma stream.

Chapter 1 is called The Necessity of Arousing Bodhi-mind and it's about our underlying attitude. What spirit do you bring to your practice? What mind are you arousing. What motivates you? why are you here?

The opening paragraph is full of references and I'll try to restrain myself from unpacking all of them, but just let this wash over you:

Though there are many names for bodhi-mind, they all refer to the one mind.

The Ancestral Master Nagarjuna said that the mind that solely sees the impermanence of this world of constant appearance and disappearance is called bodhi-mind. Therefore, [for now I think it would be appropriate to talk about] bodhi-mind as the mind that sees impermanence.

Truly, when you see impermanence, egocentric mind does not arise, neither does desire for fame and profit.

Out of fear of time slipping away too swiftly, practice the Way as if you are trying to extinguish a fire enveloping your head. Reflecting on the transiency of your bodily life, practice as diligently as the Buddha did when he stood on tiptoe for seven days.

Even when you hear the melodious music of Kinnara or the sound of the Kalavinka bird flattering you, it is only the evening breeze blowing in your ears. Even when you see such a beauty as Mosho or Seishi, it is merely a drop of morning dew passing before your eyes.

When you have become distanced from the bondage of all objects of the senses, you will naturally be in accordance with the principle of bodhi-mind.

What the mind that deeply sees and gets impermanence feel like? If you really could see that there's nothing to hold onto. Nothing fixed. Everything changing. That how it "usually is" is just a thought - a mirage.

You can easily think of experiences that wouldn't arise, right? Being annoyed that they changed something at Samish sesshin for one thing - this doesn't arise if you're seeing Samish sesshin arrangements as deeply impermanent. That's a simple one. But how about each other? If I don't hold any fixed views of who you are and what you'll do next what does that make space for? What does it allow? If I'm deeply open to being surprised by everything. Vast openness right? Maybe the idea of "loss" stops making a lot of sense: if you can't possess anything how can there be loss? A lack of fixing an judging and opining seems like a natural result here of seeing impermanence doesn't it?

And what does that leave room for? Like most Buddhist teachings he doesn't describe the positive outcomes that might happen. Seems like maybe a deep appreciation for everything knowing it's vanishing before our eyes? A lot of kindness and compassion? Radical acceptance. Great joy?

And if that doesn't click into space and you are still involved in all of the resentments and judgments and wishes and preferences that come with a mind that sees things as permanent Dōgen brings up the ace card on that right away in this teaching:

Out of fear of time slipping away too swiftly, practice the Way as if you are trying to extinguish a fire enveloping your head. Reflecting on the transiency of your bodily life, practice as diligently as the Buddha did when he stood on tiptoe for seven days.

Okay, you've got your preferences and ideas of how it all should be - I'm not going to fight that he's saying perhaps, but you can't argue with me on this one. You're gonna die. Inevitably and certainly. Dude: get to it. Practice. Now.

This reference to the Buddha standing on tiptoes is from a Jataka tale - the early Buddhist stories about Shakayamuni Buddha's practice in previous lives and the good karmic choices he made that gradually led to his full awakening. In this one he was a bodhisattva and was deeply inspired by the Buddha of that era, Pusha Buddha, in a deep Samadhi state so. He was so moved by the devotion he felt he recited verses of praise standing on tiptoe for seven days. Just happened naturally I guess.

The same "marathon monk" we met on Mt Hiei did a similar practice actually. This was like a little "by the way" story. We were walking around the mountain with him after hearing about 100 days of consecutive ritualized marathons he ran and 7-day retreat without drinking, eating or sleeping and then we were in front of a few buildings on the mountain and he explained that one of those is for the practice of standing and chanting for 49 days with no lying down and the other is for sitting for 49 days without moving. He opted for the standing practice. I don't know if it was inspired by this story or not. But it was just one more jaw dropper on a day full of them. What humans can do when deeply inspired - when the Bodhi Mind is strongly aroused - is just amazing. By the way he explained that if he passed out the support monks would let him sleep for a while before he got up to continue the standing and chanting practice. I think there were some ropes you could hold onto too. We weren't allowed inside that building so we didn't get to see how it's set up.

Dōgen then brings up sensory pleasures. Laura's food is yum yum yummy, enjoy it but don't lose sight of why we're here:

Even when you hear the melodious music of Kinnara or the sound of the Kalavinka bird flattering you, it is only the evening breeze blowing in your ears. Even when you see such a beauty as Mosho or Seishi, it is merely a drop of morning dew passing before your eyes.

When you have become distanced from the bondage of all objects of the senses, you will naturally be in accordance with the principle of bodhi-mind.

The impermanence teachings are hard to practice with in some kind of conscious "I am practicing with impermanence" kind of way. You might bring up the phrase, "this too will change" - that's one good way. It's so helpful when you're feeling miserable or annoyed or judgy - "this too will change" - maybe if you're kind of half way there you mentally push this on another person "don't be annoyed, he'll change eventually" but the full practice is to apply it to your own mind "this too will change, I am adding judgments and wishing someone was other than they way they are - silly me - all of my opinions and judgements are impermanent" - there are lots of ways to explore with "this too will change" - better not to overthink it. Just bring up the phrase and breathe with it.

The organic way to practice with impermanence is very reliable though. Just be here. Just go through the schedule best you can. Just watch your mind. Watch it get hooked on something, watch it unhook again. Sometimes we're too busy telling the stories to ourselves that justify the hooked part that we miss the unhooking moment but eventually it dawns you: oh I'm not so annoyed with him anymore, huh? Judgments and annoyances are impermanent too - how fortunate is that!  It just happens. And it might be a while. These things have their own timelines which we don't control.

Dogen here is talking about pleasant experiences not unpleasant ones though. What happens when you get hooked on pleasant stuff? How do things feel. Does the pleasant tip into unpleasant as you mind that doesn't fully accept impermanence does its dark work on you?

The short hand for all of this - I seem to be even wordier than usual today - is simple isn't it: let it be. Just let it be.

There's a beautiful bird. Let it be, no need to stress out about which bird it is or feel like a lame-o because you don't know or can't remember. Just a bird. Nice. Enjoy the moment. Now that moment's gone.

And there's a judgment. Of someone else. Or yourself. There it is. It's got it's sticky hooks in you. Feel that moment too. Feel the darkness of it, the heaviness, however it feels. And then that moment's gone too. Let it be.

I don't let "let it go" so much, by the way, makes it sound like you have a lot more control than you do!

So that's the opening of Dōgen's Gakudo-Yojinshu - Points to Watch in Practicing the Way. The very first thing he says is to arouse the bodhi-mind and his first explanation of what that is? The mind that deeply "sees" impermanence.