I'm happy that we find this connection to Heidegger. At the same time, since I studied Heidegger myself, This was actually my first question to Roshi when we met. Because he was so basic for my own development. What is very difficult for me today is when you talk about Heidegger and then it's retranslated into his original language, knowing that every single term is important in Heidegger, in his original understanding. So that's playing telephone somehow.

[01:05]

Because it's not Heidegger what's coming back to him, or fragments of it. Yeah, yeah. What makes it kind of hard for me to, I don't know, but it's a pity somehow. Yeah, yeah. You can hand him the book and then he can translate it maybe. It's easier if he reads it. Yeah, yeah. Do you want to translate what he said? No, he can translate it. What I find so difficult is that Heidegger's only medium is language. And every word that you know is important in German. And he has extremely emphasized every word as it was meant to be. Now to have this re-translation that no longer reminds me of Heidegger, because it is such a text. I'm very much aware of this and as bad as it is with Heidegger it's worse with Dogen because at least we have some understanding of Heidegger's century

[02:09]

because we at least have an understanding of Heidegger's language. and of his language, which we don't have with Dogen. So it's to some extent possible to understand Heidegger much more so than Dogen. So you could ask, what in the world do we think we're doing trying to speak about Dogen? through this confusion of meaning. And what it really comes down to is that it's not so much a proposition of understanding Dogen or understanding Heidegger. And that's an effort that could be made.

[03:36]

And that's certainly worth making. But it's not exactly what we're doing here in this seminar. It's more like we're entering into conversation with Heidegger and Dogen. So I'm very aware of the fact that I'm reading Heidegger in my voice. In the light of my practice over many years. And I'm not trying to turn Heidegger into myself. I'm making a real effort to try to understand Heidegger from Heidegger's side as best as I can in English.

[04:42]

Just as I'm making a real effort to try to understand Dogen the best I can from his side through the centuries and the language barrier. And be changed by Dogen and be changed by Heidegger. But in the end, I speak in the meeting point. In the end I'm speaking from the meeting point of my own experience. And I know that there's no way that my Heidegger could be your Heidegger. It couldn't be. And of course that's Heidegger's greatness. And the greatness of Dogen.

[05:51]

And if anybody who managed to speak from the depth, then that person can be a million different people to all of us. If we had language and the knowledge of history and context, we could understand Dogen, for instance, in another way, with more depth. And we would gain a lot by this, and possibly lose something. Ideally, we would have all of that behind us, And then throw it all away and be in dialogue.

[06:53]

So for me, the important thing is always how do we live? What's the quality of our encounters every day in our living? Our encounter with ourself alone? and with the world that we're living in and with others. And it's in the service of that that we read Heidegger or Dogen or anyone else. And I think that at the most important level, this was also the intention of Heidegger and Dogen to be of use to us in just that way.

[07:55]

But the study of Heidegger and Dogen more from their own side is a necessity. Again, it's just not so much our purpose in the seminar. So I apologize to all those who know Heidegger. And I know that there are a number of people here who do. And that's one of the reasons why I'm quoting Heidegger. So that I can hear the problems that I'm creating by my understanding of Heidegger.

[09:00]

So I can learn more about Heidegger that way. So, thank you. Sometimes I wonder, you know, if Dogen were to appear at the door listening to us, You know, what would he think? Of course, this is an unimaginable proposition. It depends on his understanding of German and English. Yeah, well, if Dogen appeared at the door now, he would exactly not be Dogen. That's why, whether we spoke German or English or not, it's an impossible proposition. Nevertheless, I'm fairly certain that if he did appear, he would have no idea what we were talking about. There's a famous story in the Jewish tradition about this.

[10:04]

And I can't remember exactly the story. But it's something like this. That Moses, who wrote the five books, Comes back many centuries later and attends a Talmudic session. In which they're explicating the text. And he's sitting in the back of the room weeping. He's weeping, he's crying. Because he can't understand anything that's being discussed.

[11:07]

Commentators were smarter. Yeah, exactly. But isn't that one of the essence of Zen, that it's by generation reinterpreted? All the time? Over 90 generations? Yeah, reinterpreted, yeah. So it's always new. So maybe both things could be true. In other words... Dogen, let's pretend this impossible situation of Dogen comes to the door and he listens to what's being said and he doesn't understand at all. Doesn't recognize his own words. Doesn't recognize his own concepts. But understands perfectly. and says, well, that's nothing like what I said. But that's exactly right.

[12:12]

And that's what I would have said if I were here today. Anyway, we can hope for this and pretend, imagine that it's so. But Dougl also could enter our Zendo and see us sitting there and he would completely ask, he has been sitting for 12 centuries. Yeah, he would understand. There's no difference. Well, I don't know about that. He might say, oh, you're doing this and that. Probably many differences, but basically the same. And the same here with the talking. Many differences and basically the same. I don't think Dogen would get past the idea that there are women in the room. That one difference alone would be enough to make his hair curl. He doesn't have any hair. Maybe the hair starts to grow. Yeah. What is it? What motivates you to talk about Dogen?

[13:34]

I did my master's thesis on Dogen in 1975. And I think that the first time I encountered Dogen writing, it was so long ago now I can't remember, I was intrigued by it and moved by it in exactly the way that we heard Eijo was intrigued by this phrase. Because it struck me as something deeply true about life. But I didn't really understand. And yet I could feel a sense of its truth and also a healing truth, a truth that, could I understand it, would transform my life.

[14:40]

So I had an immediate affinity with his way of understanding and speaking and writing. And I've been reading him ever since and participating in translation, which meant that I would go into the Japanese also. And it's been wonderful to have Dogen as a companion all this time. And I become so familiar with him that I have plenty of complaints now. Sometimes I get mad at Dogen. Sometimes he gets mad at me. And we don't want to look at each other for a while. And then we get back together again. So it's really been a beautiful thing over all this time.

[16:17]

And one thing we haven't said is, because in a way we haven't been talking particularly about Dogen. We've been using phrases that happen to have come from there. But like this phrase about the hair, I don't think it's an original phrase of Dogen. He often uses phrases from other places, so they aren't even particularly his phrases. So, in other words, this is not a seminar particularly on Dogen and Dogen's thought. But I feel increasingly that Dogen's approach to Zen is unique among Zen teachers. And there's a lot of perfectly good Zen teaching that Dogen strongly rejects.

[17:35]

And so his approach to Zen is different from a lot of other Zen teachers through the generations. And this is something that I've come to appreciate more over the years. And exactly what the difference is and so on is maybe more than we can go into, but it's just to say that there is that. Anyway, I like Doga.

[18:19]

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