Self-Paced Practice Course
Undivided Activity
with Zenki Dillo Roshi
About This Course
In this course, Zenki Roshi provides a line-by-line commentary of the Dogen fascicle ‘Undivided Activity.’ It has also been translated as ‘Total Function,’ ‘The Whole Works,’—or for most entertainment value as ‘The Everything Machine.”
The main point of ‘Undivided Activity’ is that to live an awakened life is to experience both life and death (appearance and disappearance) as a manifestation of the whole, interdependent meshwork of all beings and phenomena. Each moment is simultaneously emptiness and form, liberation and manifestation.
This self-paced course can be an opportunity for you to enter into the embodied concreteness of this seemingly abstract teaching. How can we experience wholeness within our partialness, freedom within our limitations, connection within separateness, newness (birth) amidst loss (death)—right here in this moment?
If we want to enjoy our own lives as liberated aliveness—manifesting moment by moment—we need to discover our everyday activities as a place of practice.
What You Will Learn
- Gain a deeper, felt understanding of interdependence by contemplating that your body and mind and the whole universe are an undivided activity.
- Receive a line-by-line commentary on Dogen’s "Shobogenzo Zenki – Undivided Activity" with an interpretation that shows how relevant and applicable Dogen's teachings are to your life in today’s world.
- Be amazed how a seemingly inaccessible text like Dogen's "Undivided Activity" is not out of reach, even for new practitioners, and how it helps you to articulate insights you are ready to have.
- Simplify your understanding of your own path of awakening (the Buddha Way as consisting of two fundamental practices: liberation (dropping free into undividedness) and actualization (experience momentary appearance completely).
- Refine your understanding of interdependence as the simultaneity of connection and separation (inter-independence), which is the fundamental dynamic of reality.
- Deepen your relationship to life and death and learn to see them not only as biological events that mark the beginning and end of a life, but also as expressions of the undivided field of reality that manifests as appearance and disappearance from moment to moment.
- Recognize that appearance and disappearance are two sides of the same coin; each appearance implies loss, and each disappearance implies the emergence of something new.
- Expand your sense of self by realizing yourself as undivided from your lived situations and their wider contexts.
- Find spiritual satisfaction and power in embracing the ordinariness of your life and entering into the immediacy of sensorial attention.
- Feel empowered to approach other Dogen texts on your own.
What You Get
This course consists of an introductory talk, 7 modules of commentary and interpretation, plus a concluding talk on how to practice in your daily life (see curriculum below). Each module contains a translation of the original text, a video dharma talk, the audio recording, and written materials to deepen your study. Altogether you will receive:
- 12+ Dharma talks originally given to a live audience
- All Dharma talks and practice suggestions in mp3 audio format for easy download, so you can use the recordings while on the go
- 4 recaps and prompts that were originally given to a small study group (audio)
- Access to several text translations pertaining to each module
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Lifetime access to course
Plus: - 1 free practice meeting with Zenki Roshi to discuss questions about your practice
