Good morning. Well, here we are, another sunny Saturday. We are sitting indoors. I've been noticing the San Francisco seasonal change. We don't really have the seasons like they do in some parts of the country. This is definitely a feeling of fall to me. I've lived here all my life. I can feel it. Also, I can see it. To me there's a change in the light, something of the quality of the light at this time of year.

[01:05]

I think it's very beautiful. It just reminds me that the year is ending and the sunlight is changing. I was going out with my friend Angie the other night. We'd been studying tea together for several years, and once a week we'd go out to my teacher's house, our teacher's house. She lived out on 6th Avenue, near there. And as we left here, left the block, driving, and I said, well, it's dark. And she said, yeah, it's going to get darker. I said, what do you mean? It's going to get darker. How can it get any darker? It's already dark. which she said, until the 21st of December, every day is going to be shorter. But, I mean, okay, that was fine, but I really enjoyed touring with this idea it's going to get darker when it's already dark.

[02:10]

And somehow it's been sticking with me. I kind of like it. It's going to get darker. Because we were going to see Mrs. Ueda, Ueda-sensei, our Japanese, of course, tea teacher. And so we used some Japanese words in the ceremony. And since I've been thinking of that darkness, I thought about the Japanese language that when you say good evening, you say konbanwa, which literally means it's dark. If there's any Japanese speakers here, please forgive my butchering of any of this language that I say right now. And like when you say goodnight to somebody, you say, which means have a dark sleep. And that's pretty neat. What it means is like, you know, have a black sleep. Sumi is like ink. And sumi means don't have any dreams.

[03:14]

Have a good rest. Anyway. What I'm going to do today is read a song. It's called the Song of Meditation and it's by Hakuin Zenji. Hakuin lived in the 17th century and some say that he isn't working very well. Up to his time, Zen in Japan still had a lot of Chinese flavors to it. Of course, it came from China. But they give Hakuin the credit for making Zen completely Japanese. So he, I don't want to say he popularized it, but he made it available to the folks, to the people. The other great teacher of that time was Musou Seiki.

[04:21]

And he was the teacher of the emperor, so that's pretty high stuff. But Hakowin kind of brought out to the people and was necessarily just for aristocrats. And anyway, if you look at his, he's left a lot of paintings for us, ink drawings, and they're quite warm and humorous and human. And right here, nothing really fancy far out about him. Actually, I recommend, if you haven't seen any of his drawings, to go. We have some books in the library, and they're really very great drawings, ink drawings. But let's get to his words. He lived during the time of 1685 to 1768. He acknowledges being a part of the Rinzai lineage, but he's not in our Soto lineage. But that doesn't mean we can't study him.

[05:23]

Okay. The Song of Meditation. All beings are from the very beginning Buddhas. It's like water and ice. Apart from water, no ice. Outside living beings, no Buddhas. Not knowing it is near, they seek it afar. What a pity. It's like one in the water who cries out for thirst. It's like the child of a rich house who has strayed away among the poor. The cause of our circling through the six worlds is that we are on the dark paths of ignorance, dark path upon dark path treading. When shall we escape from birth and death?

[06:26]

The Zen meditation of the Mahayana is beyond all our praise. Giving and morality and the other perfections, taking of the name, repentance, discipline, and many other right actions all come back to the practice of meditation. By the merit of a single sitting he destroys innumerable accumulated sins. How should there be wrong paths for him? The Pure Land Paradise is not far. When in reverence this truth is heard even once, one who praises it and gladly embraces it, it has merit without end. How much more one who turns within and confirms directly one's own true nature than one's own nature is no nature, such as transcended vain words. The gate opens and cause and effect are one. Straight one's the way, not two, not three.

[07:33]

Taken as form, the form of no form, going or returning, he is ever at home taking as thought the thought of no thought, singing and dancing all as the voice of truth. Wide is the heaven of boundless samadhi, radiant the full moon of fourfold wisdom. What remains to be sought? Nirvana is clear before one, this very place the lotus paradise, this very body the Buddha. Well, that's it. I'm not going to leave, yet. I feel like it. I mean, how can I say anything? When I decided to use this as a topic today, I got it out of this book here.

[08:38]

And this book has like 10 chapters on this poem. And it's a series of lectures that someone gave And here I'm going to try to give one lecture, one talk, and I'm feeling very funny right now. But I'll try. All beings are from the very beginning Buddhas. Some of us just recently have been studying with Mel some of Dogen's writings on Buddha nature. And it's pretty difficult stuff to try to understand. The trouble is, the more you try to understand, the more difficult it gets. But Dogen uses the term, all sentient beings are Buddha nature. And usually in Dogen's way, he's always fooling around with the language.

[09:41]

The Chinese character that's used for that, usually it says all beings have Buddha nature. But Dogen says all beings are Buddha nature. He's trying to make it clear to us to try to get this feeling of that no separation, not to get into this dualism that we have something. You can't have something that you are already. It's not like gaining something. So here, Hakuin uses the term like water and ice. And that works pretty well. He says, apart from water, no ice. So if you look at the ice as being what we are, as being thinking we're not Buddha, and we're all frozen and stiff, and we're not Buddha, I'm not Buddha, I'm no good. Then if you start sitting and you melt this ice down, it becomes water. And water flows and conforms the thing, and it doesn't have much trouble.

[10:41]

I mean, water is a big... a metaphor in Daoism also, where water finds a way to move rocks and stuff like that. It doesn't have any resistance, but yet it's very powerful. Anyway, this idea of using water and ice, ice and water, you can't have the water without the ice. I mean, you're not going to have ice without water, and you can't have any water, blah, blah, blah. Another writing, they use this idea of saying that all beings are Buddha. It's like in the ocean and waves. Now, you know, can you have the ocean without the waves and the waves without the ocean? And where are the waves when there aren't any waves? The ocean is there and the waves come and go, but they're always there, always part of it. So outside living beings, no Buddhas.

[11:47]

I used to... I like the terms, all beings. I may not get any too picky there, but like Dogen sometimes talks about grass and rocks being Buddha nature. That doesn't leave anything out. And sometimes the term is used, sentient beings. But I like it when you don't use that, just say beings. And there's a rock habit in nature. No. Yes. Not knowing it is near, they seek it afar. What a pity. This kind of example has been used for many, many things. Searching, going on journeys, going on quests.

[12:52]

You go on for months and months, years and years, and you go searching for this something. Sometimes these great stories, they go on for so long that the quester has forgotten why they're on the quest. They go on that long. that usually at the end, and many of them, when they find what they're looking for, they're back in familiar territory again. They're back where they started from. There's one you probably have heard many times. I'll repeat it anyway. I think it's from the Hasidic tradition. It's about, I think it was a rabbi or something, which was told that there was a, a great treasure in this town, the next town over. It was under a bridge. So he went over to find the treasure. When he got there, there were soldiers guarding the bridge.

[13:56]

Well, he was afraid to go down. There's a lot looking for this, given what the soldiers were there for. So he hung around a few days and kept looking, waiting for them to go away, and they never went away. Finally, one of the soldiers noticed him coming back all the time. They said, what are you doing? He said, well, I heard there was a treasure here, some certain name of the treasure he even knew, some precious stone or something like that. I said, well, I've heard of that. He said, but it's not here. He said, it's in this town, the next town over. They gave him directions to how to find it, what street to take, how many doors to go down, and all that. And he said, it's in that building. So he followed the map and went back, got to his own town, counted the doors and the steps. He was in front of his own house, went in, and the treasure was under his hearth. And they'd been there all the time. The story is told better than I'm telling it. But anyway, it's just something about the idea of all beings being Buddha.

[15:02]

We think we're not. We think we're all messed up. And we don't believe it. He talks about the child of the rich house. This is a reference to the chapter in the Lotus Sutra about the son who leaves home and goes away and then comes back, wanders back many years later and is recognized as the son of the king. And the king recognizes him, but it takes quite a struggle to get him to believe that he has all this wealth that is his. And this is also kind of like we have this treasure already. It's already here, right now. And it's just there for our use. But words are cheap. The cause of our circling through the six worlds is that we are on the dark paths of ignorance,

[16:03]

dark path upon dark path treading. That's always stayed with me. I must be in some kind of darkness thing, because I really like this image of a dark path upon dark path treading. I see this kind of image of it. But what this, you know, what they say, dark paths of ignorance. One in the Hindu philosophy They use the term Maya, Maya, meaning that's about illusion, which of what we are in, it's like a dream. And we're here and being covered with illusion. Interesting thing in the root of the word, or the use of the word Maya, is also the word they use for art, painting, sculpture. That's what makes the Sanskrit really a pretty neat language.

[17:05]

Because you think about, what is painting? What is sculpture? It's illusion, right? Another interesting side trip on this, for me anyway, I teach Buddhist art. So I usually teach the Hindu cosmology at the beginning of it. Buddha's mother, Buddha's mom, her name was Maya, And that's always kind of struck me. I don't know if it's just a coincidence. I don't think so. But here at Shaka Muni, Sid Arthur, the prince, was born of someone whose name was Ignorance, which would also use a relusion, Maya. That's kind of neat. I won't get into that too much. But this thing of treading the dark path after dark path of Ignorance in the dreams, We have that song back from the 50s, I guess, Life is But a Dream.

[18:13]

And so we are trying to wake up. The word Buddha itself means awake. And we come to the Zendo to try to wake up. Sometimes we go to sleep. More asleep. This dark path after dark path. The idea of dreams is kind of fascinating also. There's been a lot of poetry written about dreams. And sometimes they tell, one of the most famous one is Zhuangzi's Butterfly Home. Zhuangzi, I guess you all know, if you don't know, he was a great Taoist teacher, fifth century Chinese. And he wrote, that last night I dreamt I was a butterfly.

[19:18]

And I woke up. And then I wondered, if I was dreaming of the butterfly, was the butterfly dreaming of me? That poem has always been very helpful to me. Who's dreaming who? Is Buddha dreaming you? You dreaming Buddha? And then there's some poems about dreaming, of dreaming, and telling somebody of a dream. And then this dream telling about a dream goes on and on like this. And some of those images also kind of get into infinite type of images. I used to remember, do they still have that pet milk can? But there's a cow on the can, and on the cow there's a can around the cow's neck hanging on a strap. And on that can there's a cow.

[20:22]

And it goes on. I remember as a kid I was fascinated with that. They used to be about samples. And I remember I had this little pet milk can sample, little tiny thing, like a toy, you know. And I used to sit around and look at that cow and kind of get lost. And then I started going to barber shops. That's even more, to get into the barber shop. I guess the barber shop, only the old-fashioned ones now, they have the mirrors all around. And you're sitting in the barber chair and you look up and you see yourself. It's kind of this endless illusion, endless maya. And it's skipping to the end now.

[21:27]

I'm not about to be able to go over one of these lines. We could go on for ten weeks on this. This is such a wonderful, I actually recommend it so much if you haven't read it, because it covers all of Buddhism in just a short, I don't know how many lines, but not many. And it's all there. Another one of my favorites, Straight Runs the Way, Not Two, Not Three. When I, I was brought to this temple by Suzuki Roshi's book, Then My Beginner's Mind. In fact, I came here to buy a copy. But the reason I wanted to buy a copy, I read a blurb, sort of like,

[22:27]

pre-publication advertisement they put out on poster form. And there was a quote from the book. And it said, I didn't look it up, I should have the exact quote, I hate to paraphrase, but something like, our practice is like a straight iron rail going off to infinity. And I saw that image when I read that, I said, that's what I want to do. I still wasn't quite sure why that showed me the idea of this. It almost gave me kind of a chilly feeling. Oh, my God. And this iron path, hard, cold. And you take it, you go off. Didn't seem very exciting. Wasn't promised me any kind of Buddha nature or anything at all.

[23:29]

Just said, our practice is like a straight iron rail. And I guess there's something like Hakun says this here. Not two, not three. Maybe that drew me to decide to do this single rail gun. I mentioned this to Kobun Shino. quite a few years later, when I was at Tassajara, and he smiled and he said, but you know, he said, you take that rail and you go, and you go, and go, and then eventually you come back. And I said, oh. Well, that's COVID, anyway. So maybe he saw that I was kind of desiring this getaway, take this rail off into infinity, like, oh, wonderful, I can escape now. No.

[24:31]

But it does describe the practice. And it's one. Taking as form the form of no form, Going or returning he is ever at home. Taking as thought the thought of no thought. Singing and dancing all is the voice of truth. Wide is the heaven of boundless samadhi. Radiant the full moon of the fourfold wisdom. What remains to be sought Nirvana is clear before him. This very place, the lotus paradise, this very body, the Buddha.

[25:34]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_88.25