This week we are wrapping up our reading in recent weeks from Zuimonki, Dogen’s casual conversation teachings recorded by his friend Ejo. Roshi tells us that if anyone is interested to have a sort of ‘pocket’ portable carry-able set of teachings, Zuimonki is great for this purpose.

Roshi feels that in regards to western psychology there are many benefits to talk therapy, to analysis. In many ways it is very helpful to build a consciousness about who we are, what we are feeling, and what we are doing. That is very useful, but Roshi feels there is one very serious issue with western psychology, that as far as he has experienced, he believes every conversation begins and ends with ‘me.’ “How do you feel?” “What are you thinking?” “What was your experience?” Me, me, me. So in terms of building consciousness that is helpful, but then we can never escape the ‘me, me, me’ bubble. As far as he has experienced, he feels it is ‘designed’ to be extremely narcissistic. “The whole hour that I’m paying for is about me.”

There is a question of how do we get out of that? How do we get away from that? How do we liberate ourselves from ‘me’? That is where Roshi thinks practice with the dharma is so wonderful, beautiful, because when we start to go through the same process but we filter it through the dharma, that filter automatically takes away a lot of the garbage. Well that is not really you. That is just your attachment, that is just your thinking. All this stuff that we think is us, the dharma filters that out pretty quickly. Then we can get to the gist of what is causing our unhappiness and causing our dissatisfaction.

Now in truth, we have to be a little bit careful about this because you can filter out or filter yourself through many means. The dharma is one. But there exist in the world other filters available to us that are not quite as useful. You could go to a teacher or an organization, for example that is satanic. They may filter out your ethics, and your morality, and may tell you that is not who you are, that you are actually a child of Satan. “Yes, yes, yes,” you may enthusiastically agree. Then they may tell you that you need to go out and burn and destroy the world. “Yes!” I am going to get rid of my self, leave my body and mind aside, and dedicate myself to the destruction and burning of the world, “Because I am a child of Satan.” Those things do exist, and we want to be careful that we are not part of those.

Thankfully the dharma has been around for a couple thousand years, and has been thoroughly tested. We have seen over a couple thousand years that it is beneficial to humanity, so it is something we can rely on. It is a pretty safe way to filter our identity and our behavior. Again, the beautiful thing about doing this process is, when they say “Listen to your teacher,” it is not just that human being in front of you. Really what we are talking about is the dharma. We need to get rid of our self, filter our self, what we think is our self, and dedicate ourselves to the dharma, to the teachings. That is really what we are talking about. The teacher is just a venue hopefully for the dharma.

All of the Zuimonki teachings are very practical. There is a very practical thing to being able to sit down and get over yourself, by giving yourself over to a teacher. Hopefully they are a decent teacher. Just that physical act of, “I am going to forget myself, and just bathe in the dharma” is a very practical way to turn off that switch and liberate ourselves from ourselves.

Roshi says he does not know if we know anyone that is a ‘boat person,’ but there is a well-known adage for people that are into boats, they often say that “The second happiest day in a boat owner’s life is the day they get their boat. The happiest day of a boat owner’s life is the day they get rid of their boat.” Now to be fair, he has friends that are boat owners who still love their boats, saying it is “great, great, great” and that it is not true for them. He also has friends who are into boats who say it is absolutely true, that they cannot wait to get rid of their boat.

He does not understand that whole world, that for him the closest thing would be becoming the Abbot of a temple. This is his closest experience to that. As we all know he never wanted to become the Abbot, it was never a desire, it was always Ban Roshi’s desire. But when it happened, it was more “Oh, ok, this is pretty cool.” But he does believe he will be much happier when he is able to hand it on to the next Abbot. The reason being that his most fulfilling wonderful days as a student of the dharma have not been in this seat, they have been in those seats. The days when you can sit in front of a teacher and just give up yourself and just listen to the dharma and listen to a competent teacher, those are the things that made it all wonderful for him. Those are his best memories.

When you are in this seat, it is a great honor and a privilege, and responsibility to somehow share the dharma with so many beautiful human beings, but it is not quite as easy to give up this stuff, liberate yourselves and just bathe in it. This is why whenever possible, and he encourages all of us, go listen to other people. Give up yourself, give up your judgment, give up your attachments, give up your identity, and just bathe in those beautiful teachings. It is an incredible privilege to be in this path and have that experience.

That is what Dogen is talking about in this. As we walk away at the end of Zuimonki, we need to get over ourselves, and just keep coming back to liberating ourselves through the teachings, through the teacher. Those are his final words at the end of Zuimonki. Now having said that, Shohaku Okumura who wrote Living By Vow which we read as part of our Jukai preparation did a translation of Zuimonki. In it he took some liberties and consolidated parts of teachings that he thought belonged together, he edited them, and in that process he basically eliminated the sixth chapter so that it became integrated with the first five chapters. So the last chapter being six is actually number five. Then we look at the last teaching of number five, which theoretically could be the last teaching. So what does the last teaching of the fifth chapter say to us in Zuimonki? Dogen says essentially as a huge love letter to our practice:

The most vital concern in learning the way is to practice zazen. In China many people attain the Way entirely through the power of zazen. If one concentrates on practicing zazen continuously, even an ignorant person who does not understand a single question can be a superior to an intelligent person who has been studying for a long time. Therefore, practitioners must practice shikantaza.

It goes on and on. Essentially he is saying that all of our ancestors, all of our teachers, that is what they all share, and we share that same beautiful practice. It is the same kind of liberation that we are talking about in terms of bathing in the dharma. It is the same kind of lesson, but without the teacher.

So whether it is concentrating on the dharma, or concentrating on zazen, these are Dogen’s final instructions to us as he finishes Zuimonki. There is a .pdf of this freely available online which we may want to keep handy. He is always grateful for the practicality and how simple these teachings are.