Welcome.
I'll be talking about dialogue as a metaphor from a Zen Buddhist perspective.
Zen koans and mando,
Or encounter dialogues,
Are typically read as competitions between a Zen master and his student in which the master,
With his superior wisdom,
Defeats the ignorant student,
Often leaving the monk stunned and speechless.
However,
When read from a non-dualistic perspective,
These encounter dialogues express relative and absolute being through a collaborative dialogue between the master and the student.
From this viewpoint,
Silence expresses the monk's enlightened state of being.
Not his ignorance.
In Shobugenzo Daigo,
Great Realization,
Written in 1242,
Ehe Dogen writes that great realization and returning to delusion are both equally important aspects of this one seamless reality.
We are simultaneously always living in oneness and duality,
In delusion and realization.
Daigo refers to realizing the equality and oneness of all beings while simultaneously recognizing that we are all living in our individual uniqueness.
True realization is to experience our oneness and interconnectedness and at the same time to see the myriad forms as unique and to relate to all beings with wisdom and compassion despite our differences.
This dual relationship to reality finds expression in the Sandokai,
The Identity of the Relative and the Absolute,
Written by the Chinese Zen ancestor Sekito Kisen,
Who lived between 700 and 790.
It's a core text in the Soto Zen school.
The one great ocean and the many waves serves as a metaphor for this relationship.
All waves are part of the one great ocean.
They emerge from the ocean and dissolve back into the ocean.
They're all water.
The ocean is water.
The waves are water.
Some waves are huge,
Loud,
And thunderous.
Others are silent and barely generate a ripple.
Yet they all crash into foam and recede back into the one great ocean from which they emerged in endless succession.
In Genjo Kōan,
Reality Here and Now,
Dōgen teaches that conveying the self to all things is delusion.
However,
He doesn't necessarily review that as a bad or negative thing.
Rather,
For Dōgen,
This is simply an aspect of the actions and relationships that make up all of the activities of our lives.
At the same time,
The myriad things come toward the self and carry out what he refers to as practice enlightenment.
And both happen in continued oscillation,
Just like the waves rising and dissolving.
The same is true for thinking and not thinking.
When we sit in Zazen,
Whether we are aware of our thoughts or not,
They are happening.
In this regard,
We can say that when we are aware of thinking,
Our perceptual reality is engaged in the relative world of distinctions,
Just like the many,
The waves of the ocean.
During moments of not thinking,
We could say that we are engaged in the one ocean.
In this regard,
Together,
Both thinking and not thinking serve as metaphors for the activity of the relative and the absolute.
The interrelation between these two alternating perceptions of reality becomes clear through Zazen.
If we take this orientation a step further,
We can say that the dialogue between Yuehshan and the monk that Dogen refers to in Fukanza Zenji,
Universal Principles of Zen Meditation,
And that he unpacks in great detail in Zazenshin,
The Lancet of Zen Meditation,
Also represents the relative and the absolute.
Here's the dialogue.
Once,
When the great master Yuehshan was sitting in Zazen,
A monk asked him,
What are you thinking of sitting there so fixedly?
The master answered,
I'm thinking of not thinking.
The monk asked,
How do you think of not thinking?
The master answered,
Non-thinking.
Keep in mind that from the Zen perspective,
What or any questions such as why or where are not necessarily questions.
Rather,
They serve as declarative statements used to express the ineffable and the inexpressible reality.
Since ineffable reality cannot really be described with words,
We use questions to assert it.
As a statement rather than a question,
The monk is describing what Yuehshan is engaged in,
And it might be restated as,
Look,
Yuehshan is thinking and not thinking the ineffable.
In both thinking and not thinking,
He's expressing the what.
In his stillness and silence,
Yuehshan represents the absolute and the oneness.
In his comments,
The monk's language represents the relative and the many distinctions.
To unpack this point further,
Here's another dialogue,
This time between Zen master Gensha Shibi and another nameless monk,
Together expressing the relative and the absolute.
Two partners,
One dialogue.
In Shobogenzo Ika Myoji,
One Bright Pearl,
Written in 1238,
Dogen quotes this story that comes from the transmission of the lamp.
One day a monk asks Gensha,
I have heard the master's words that the whole universe in ten directions is one bright pearl.
How should this student understand this?
Gensha says,
In answer to his question,
The whole universe in ten directions is one bright pearl.
What is the use of understanding?
The next day,
The master asks the same question back to the monk.
The whole universe in ten directions is one bright pearl.
How do you understand this?
The monk says,
The whole universe in ten directions is one bright pearl.
What use is understanding?
The master says,
I see that you are struggling to get inside a cave,
A ghost cave in the Black Mountain.
There are several ways of understanding this conversation.
The standard dualistic interpretation is that Gensha is a realized being and the monk is lost in ignorance or in the dust of the world,
Which requires cleansing or sweeping away.
A non-dualistic interpretation describes both Gensha and the monk as realized beings.
They're simply playing with each other for our benefit.
The metaphor for the ghost cave supports both interpretations.
The traditional understanding interprets this provocative image as a metaphor for the darkness of ignorance.
The alternative view is that darkness functions as a metaphor for non-duality or emptiness,
The absolute,
Because in darkness there are no distinctions.
In the dark,
Everyone and everything appears as all one.
But we are also unique individuals.
Can we celebrate both?
Another such metaphor is a white heron standing in the snow.
From the non-dualistic perspective of Zazen,
The so-called dust of ignorance is exactly where we work with wisdom and compassion for the benefit of all beings.
We work in the ghost cave of our everyday lives,
Which from this viewpoint refers to the concrete everyday world.
Dogen writes,
Forward steps and backward steps all take place in the ghost cave.
In other words,
We work in the relative world of duality.
Dogen describes Gensha's comment as a compliment of the monk,
Not a criticism.
As I see it,
The idea that both are realized beings comes through in the role reversal the next day.
They change places.
The monk raises the question,
And Gensha responds exactly the same way that the monk did previously.
In this regard,
The two,
Teacher and monk,
Can be said to alternatively represent the relative and the absolute.
Further,
Dogen views them both as realized or enlightened,
And Zazen becomes an expression of this realization of the identity of the relative and the absolute,
Expressed in the dialogue between Guishan and the monk as thinking and not thinking,
That we spoke about.
And when we sit in Chikantaza,
Or just sitting,
We can experience this relationship for ourselves.
The various forms of concentration practice that Dogen criticizes harshly in his writings,
While having their own benefits and usefulness,
Obscures this realization in this context because technique comes between the practitioner and direct experience and can function as a screen.
When we practice free from techniques and from goals,
Realization is ongoing and is expressed directly through the practice of just sitting.
In conclusion,
I'd like to elaborate this important practice point.
This model for the identity of the relative and the absolute,
For unity and differences,
Is Chikantaza,
Or just sitting.
It is that seated meditation which is objectless,
Imageless,
Themeless,
And with no internal or external devices or supports.
It's non-concentrative.
It's decentered and open-ended.
Yet,
At the same time,
It is a heightened,
Sustained,
And total awareness of the self and the world.
It seeks no attainment whatsoever.
We can say that it's special only in its ordinariness.
So please,
For the benefit of all suffering beings,
Keep on sitting,
No matter what.
Thank you.
