This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Green Gulch. I hope you all are well. It's a beautiful day here in Marin. Suzuki Roshi once said that the important thing about Zazen is not that it gives you power, but that it gives you possibilities. The important thing about Zazen is not that it gives you power, but that it gives you possibilities. There are so many things that Suzuki Roshi said and demonstrated while he was living here with the students who, in those beginning years of the founding of the San Francisco Zen Center, Some of those he said privately, and others, very gratefully, were recorded and transcribed and then turned into books, like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

[01:07]

And then more recently, Zen is Right Now, and Zen is Right Here. And then for me, these days, I've been thinking and talking a lot about his book, a series of lectures called The Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness. So the teachings in The Branching Streams are about a Dharma poem. written in the 8th century by our Chinese Zen ancestor Sekito Gisen. In Chinese, it's Shirtou Shiqiang. Sekito was a devout student of the Dharma for a great many years. He traveled around to various Buddhist teachers looking for answers to his heartfelt questions. I think a lot of you may also be carrying heartfelt questions around with you, you know, maybe for many years, looking for answers you hope will be a good answer my own question has been a kind of mixture of existentialism you know existential dread starting with where am i and then what am i and what am i supposed to do now that i'm here you know and that last question just circles back to the first where am i

[02:20]

So that reminded me of a story I'm fond of that I've told many times, some of you have heard before, it's gotten around quite a bit, about a young girl long, long ago who was being taught about the world, where we are, by one of the village elders, an old woman. As the elders was telling the students how the world was riding through the sky on the back of a giant turtle, the young girl raised her hand and asked, old woman, What is the turtle riding on? And smiling, the teacher said, Oh, on an even bigger turtle. But before she could go on, the little girl raised her hand again, saying, Well, what is that turtle riding on? To which the elder responded, maybe a little annoyed. Listen, it's just turtles all the way down. So I've been thinking about that story. why I like it, because it reminds me of myself, my own inquiring mind, which has been spending most of its life looking in a great many places for what might simply be called home, as both a feeling of belonging and as a way of life.

[03:34]

That inquiring mind in Buddhism can also be characterized as the great doubt. And I would say that the great doubt is one of our best friends, provided we don't settle too soon for the right answer so it's the great doubt that opens us to the world of great possibilities you know the promise that Suzuki Roshi gives about the practice of Zazen of just sitting of finding our seats and thereby of finding our true home and our true way of life and in speaking of home and of great doubt these two came together last Saturday when I went to the city center to join Paul Haller and the community there, in offering Buddhist precepts in a priest ordination ceremony for three long-time Zen practitioners, Robin Morris, Krista de Castilla, and Tim Kroll, all who are currently residents of Tassajara. And during the question and answer, following the talks that Paul and I gave that morning, a person asked us about the great doubt.

[04:43]

So that's what I'm planning to talk about this morning, is my evolving answer to as I find myself looking deeper and deeper into that question, with the help of a great many teachers and of teachings such as those given by Sekito Gisen and by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. So as I began pondering, as we say, the question of great doubt, the word aspiration came to my mind, which quite honestly surprised me. Where did that come from? And I really appreciate when that happens. When the answer to a question comes into my mind as if from someone else's mind or some mysterious source, which, of course, it does. All questions and all answers come from a mysterious source. As is reflected in the title of Suzuki Roshi's book, Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness. With each of us as a branching stream arising uniquely from within a mysterious source,

[05:44]

true home. In the teachings of the Buddha, the mysterious source is also called the ultimate truth, the unimaginable, ineffable, unconstructed, beginningless process of creation itself. So in endeavoring to answer the questions about great doubt, I began to realize just how aspiration and great doubt are traveling companions on the pathway awakening you know first there's the aspiration the bodhicitta or the thought of enlightenment and i think from the first time we hear about the possibility of awakening we recognize within ourselves the unlikelihood that we you know as a tiny human being could ever arrive at such an exalted destination as enlightenment so this that view of ourselves is the great doubt about the great aspiration becoming, as I see it, not only companions on the path, but conjoined twins.

[06:48]

Doubt and aspiration. Doubt and aspiration. Round and around again, just like the great earth itself. So this is the same great doubt that plagued the young prince when he ran away from the palace, that plagued the young Dogen standing near his mother's funeral pyre, and that plagued Sekito Gisen. as he wandered the Chinese countryside looking for answers to his own search for home. As I mentioned, my own great doubt seemed also to be centered on the search for home, for belonging and for identity, a search centered in the region of my heart, my feelings. Sekito's great doubt, on the other hand, had crystallized over many years into an intellectual understanding of Zen. centered in the region of his head. He was confident in his understanding of the Dharma as he met with and indeed challenged Master Seigen Gyoshi, who by means of the following exchange would soon become his teacher.

[07:54]

Seigen asked the young monk, where have you come from? Where is home? Sekito said, from the place where the sixth Zen ancestor taught. thereby declaring himself a serious disciple of the Zen tradition, and a home lever, as we say, in our priest ordination. Sagan then held up his whisk. And do they have this at the six ancestors' place? So not quite getting the hint, being given by the raising of the whisk, Sekito responds, well, not at his place, not even in India. This answer by Sekito opened up the Dharma gate of no place other than all places. In other words, if they don't have this whisk at the six ancestors' place, they certainly don't have it in India either. However, in the commentary on Sekito's response to Sagan, in a book called The Transmission of Light, chapter 36, the author Kezan Jokin says that while Sekito did reveal...

[09:03]

the whole unique being, he still had the affliction of self-consciousness, meaning that he was still up in his head and coming from a conviction of his own accomplished understanding, to which Kezon then adds, because of this self-consciousness, the young monk could speak with such grandiosity. Sagan, already somewhat suspicious of his visitor's correct understanding, then says to Sekito, you haven't been to India, have you? Sekito replies, no, but if I had, it would be there. Seigan then takes the high seat and says to the young monk, out of great kindness and compassion, that's not enough. Say more. Sekito, finding no place to put himself intellectually, challenges back. You too should say a half-teacher, don't rely on me. Sagan then says, I don't decline to speak to you, but I am afraid that later on no one will get it.

[10:12]

So this response by Sagan, that later on no one will get it, is directed at us meeting here today, the ones who may be wondering just what there is to get. Are we getting it, you know, from the conversation between Seigon and Sekito so far? Is there something to get? And if so, what is it? Sekito then says to the teacher a very Zen thing. It's not that they, that's us, won't get it, but no one can say it. It's not that they won't get it, but no one can say it. Reflecting on another well-worn Zen understanding that words can't reach it. Words are mere fingers pointing at the moon, or at the grass, or at a child, at the fire, at the rain. Words are tools that we humans use to point at the great mystery itself. The great flowing mystery from which all of this, and all of that, and all of us, has arisen.

[11:17]

And once arisen, vanishes. A teaching itself pointing to the reality of our existence. A teaching reflected again and again in these stories of awakening, as well as in the name that the Buddha gave to himself. He called himself Tathagata, meaning the one who thus comes and thus goes. Thus gone, thus come one. So what happens next in the story of Sekito's awakening is not a further exchange of words about the Buddhist teaching. Seigon, who was holding up his whisk while talking to Sekito, stops talking. And he raises the whisk to whack the student in the face. Just like this. Kezon... tells us that the whisk, since ancient times, was used to give a clue or initiate an action that would make a student abandon sidetracks by giving them an immediate instruction, right here and right now, just as it did in this case.

[12:30]

Whack! In that moment of sensory contact, the train of Sekito's thought immediately ground to a halt. As Kazon also says, By getting him to know his original head, he experienced a great awakening. Just this is yet. Just this is yet. This story is a good example of performing enlightenment, of immediacy and intimacy with the place and the people that you're with right now. Without the need of a sound or a gesture, we are all here. And we are all now. together. Sekito's great aspiration for enlightenment was no longer shrouded in great doubt, no longer looking for answers in all the wrong places. He was suddenly realized. And with that realization, two great teachers were there at the very same place, face to face, like arrow points meeting in midair, as Sekito later says in his poem, The Sandokai.

[13:41]

Seigan and Sekito become a reflection of one another in what a few generations later, a descendant of theirs, Tozan Ryokai, named poetically the song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi. The song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi. The great round mirror wisdom reflecting reality itself, just as it's doing right now. So it's my hunch that in the next moment, both of those faces broke into a warm and welcoming smile. Just as in the first Dharma transmission when Shakyamuni Buddha held up a flower and Maha Kashapa smiled. Just this is it. The unofficial motto of our house. So what happened to Sekito in this story is of great importance to us as we too try to find answers to relieve the great doubt. The doubt that's blocking us from seeing who we truly are and most importantly have always been. Finding the answer to the great doubt can also be heard in this story about our founder, Tozan Ryokai, and his own pilgrimage to awakening.

[14:50]

When all of his doubts and questions and accumulated knowledge were conjoined with and as the world around him, the world of near infinite possibility, our true home. This is chapter 39 of the Transmission of Light. Tozan still had some doubts. But later he was greatly enlightened when he saw his own reflection in the water as he crossed a river. Then he understood the meaning of what had gone before, and he said in verse, Don't seek from others, or you will be estranged from yourself. I now go on alone. Everywhere I encounter it. It now is me. I now am not it. One must understand in this way. To merge with being as is. Don't seek from others or you will be estranged from yourself. I now go on alone. Everywhere I encounter it.

[15:52]

It now is me. I now am not it. One must understand in this way. To merge with being as is. So the stories of these great teachers are themselves fingers pointing at the moon of awakening. written down and translated and published and sold to those who the Buddhists and ancestors knew in great faith, would come along and find them. And again, that's us, the living inheritors of the wisdom and compassion of all those devoted to an awakened life. Sekito's awakening and further study resulted some time later in his having a dream, in which he's riding with the sixth ancestor, Huenong, on the back of a giant sea turtle. that is swimming around in a deep lake. Kezon, who is reporting the story, tells us that when Sekito woke up, he realized what the dream meant. The miraculous turtle was the Buddha's wisdom teachings as conventional truths, and the lake was the ocean of essence or reality itself as the ultimate truth, the mysterious source of both Zen masters and sea turtles.

[17:02]

Shortly after that dream is when Sekito wrote Suzuki Roshi's favorite poem, the Sandokai, the harmony of difference and equality. So even as I have been pondering all of this over the last few days, I've also been thinking, you know, this is pretty heady stuff, you know, the stuff of which Sekito's dream is made of and of which this very moment is being made of and in which we ourselves are being made of as pretty heady stuff. So as we scratch our heads and long for something more simple or at least fathomable to appear, up comes Sagan's whisk out of kindness and compassion to whack us in the face. Just this is it. And that's what all of this is saying in two very distinct and significant ways. On the one hand, this very mind is Buddha. Such a relief. Heartwarming relief. This very mind is Buddha. And on the other hand, no mind, no Buddha.

[18:06]

You know, oh dear. So the trick is in knowing that both of these teachings are true. In fact, they're called the two truths. And it's those two truths that Sekito's poem is all about. The poem that Suzuki Roshi helped open for us in the series of 12 talks that he gave at Tassajara in the summer of 1970. while sitting next to a chalkboard and describing to his young American Zen students the Chinese characters in the poem and what each of them meant. Shortly after delivering these teachings, as I mentioned, Suzuki Roshi died at the age of 67, a very young man. It has been said that teachers of Soto Zen often deliver lectures on the Zando Kai toward the end of their lives. The Sandokai isn't a very long poem, and there's a copy inside the chat for you to look at for yourselves if you like. It begins with these lines. The mind of the great sage of India, that's the Buddha, the mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted from west to east, from Sekito to Segon.

[19:14]

While human faculties are sharp or dull, The way has no northern or southern ancestors. The mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted from west to east. While human faculties are sharp or dull, the way has no northern or southern ancestors. So I found it useful to know that Sekito's poem is, among other things, addressing a split that was happening within the Zen tradition about the time of our sixth Chinese ancestor, Huinong. which Sekito believed was an exaggeration of those differences. Differences between what were called the so-called northern and southern schools, or between gradual awakening and sudden awakening. And such splitting within the Zen tradition, he taught, was not in keeping with the Buddha's dharma or with the experience of awakening itself. As he says in the opening lines, the way has no northern or southern ancestors. In later generations, it was said that a monk remained ignorant unless they had visited both south of the lake with Master Sekito and west of the river with Master Matsu, two great teachers who, during their lifetimes, both fully embodied the way of Zen.

[20:31]

These two branching streams would later on and to this day be known as Rinzai Zen and Soto Zen, flowing on in the darkness. In his book by that name, Branching Streams, Suzuki Roshi goes on to say that if we want to see things as it is, to awaken to reality itself, we need to practice hard with our preferences and our judgments, not to get rid of them, but to take them into account. He then says, if you have a computer, you must enter all of the data. This much desire, this much nourishment, this kind of color, this much weight. Without stopping to reflect on all of the data, based on our own limited selfish judgments, we simply say, he is bad, she is unpleasant. By reflecting on whatever we think is simply that, what we think, we can begin to see things as it is. The Buddha mind, the mind of the great sage of India, the first line of the Sandokai.

[21:35]

In the story about Sekito in The Transmission of Light, the example of how his own realization deepened is illustrated in what Kezan refers to as two stages. The first stage is the stage of vision, and was demonstrated in his initial encounter with Zen Master Seigon, in which Sekito does a lot of clever talking. And then the next stage, the stage of being, of being the Dharma, takes place when the master hits him with a whisk. No more talking. The sandokai, which as I said, Sekito had written after his dream of the sea turtle, contains these same teaching elements as well concerning Buddha's all-inclusive mind. So san, sandokai, san is the Japanese word for three, ich, ni, san, meaning things or many things. Do means sameness or oneness as in one's whole being, as in the great mind or the great

[22:37]

Big mind of Buddha, as Suzuki Roshi called it, our big mind. And so although we talk and talk and talk about many things, those things are all part of one whole being, as is talking itself. Suzuki Roshi says that many and one are different ways to describe one whole being. To completely understand the relationship between one whole being and the many facets of the one whole being is kai. Sando Kai. Kai means to shake hands, as in a feeling of friendship, the feeling that the two of us are one, which is truly what they are. Sando Kai. Small mind, small mindedness is a mind covered over with the limitations of desires and discriminating consciousness. I like this and I don't like that. When we practice continuously with what appears in our minds, those desires become more porous. to the point of becoming transparent. We can begin to see through them without being fooled by them.

[23:38]

I particularly like the image of viewing the moon through ivy. A student once said that as we were standing outside in the evening following the full moon ceremony down in Tassajara at just that moment as the moon was shining through the ivy. Suzuki Roshi then goes on to talk about the mind we have in Zazen. you know, the big mind, that doesn't care what passes through. Like the great sky, whatever kind of bird flies through the sky doesn't care. This is the mind that Buddha is transmitting to us, the mind of great possibilities. And we even come to enjoy those things that are passing through without any special attachment to them, just as we do when we get up from sitting and we greet our friends at the morning work circle, you know, good morning. This way of seeing can really help us when we see something at the work meeting that we really, really enjoy, that we really might like to become attached to. There's the one I've been waiting for my whole life, for example, or now that's the way I like things to be done.

[24:44]

But it helps us even more when we see something we really don't like very much, whether in the mind or in the work meeting, and we think it should be otherwise. Zen Center is a very popular target for students thinking how things could be otherwise. As Suzuki Roshi told us way back then, maybe so. Maybe it should be otherwise, but not always so. So without sticking with something as needing to be in some particular way, you know, my way, we open our minds to the widest range of possibilities, to the big sky. Without saying, this is a mountain, this is my friend, this is the way it should go. The mountain is no longer a mountain and your friend is no longer your friend and the way it should go is definitely no longer the way you think it should go. Suzuki Roshi says that this is the difference between sticking to something and the Buddha way. And then he says, let your ears hear and let your mind think without trying to stop them.

[25:49]

That is our practice, which is not easy. And yet, having problems with practice is probably a lot better than some mixed up kinds of problems you were having before you arrived. So once again, these teachings from the Buddha through the Zen ancestors are encouraging us to study the teachings, the sea turtle, to study ourselves as we are riding on the back of the turtle, and to study the ocean itself, the all-inclusive awareness, both awake and in our dreams. One very good way of doing this is by giving ourselves time throughout each day to reflect on ourselves. Just as Suzuki Roshi tells us about Zazen, upright and awake, we have time to reconsider what we are seeing and thinking and doing and believing by asking ourselves a simple Zen question. Is that so? Reflecting on ourselves in this way, as our practice, Suzuki Roshi calls the Buddha's mind. the big mind that includes everything without exception, accepting judgment without judgment, selfishness without selfishness, anger without anger, and so on.

[27:00]

In other words, we cultivate a mind that doesn't mind itself at all. You know, I don't mind. Please be my guest. Suzuki Roshi then says that when we can just be ourselves, we can speak without thinking too much and without having a special purpose. We then speak or act just to express ourselves, and that is complete self-respect. And then he says, if you practice hard, you will be like a child, just playing, just singing, just sitting, just this poem, just my talk. It does not mean much. We say that Zen is not something you talk about. It is what you experience in the truest sense. So there you have it. a vision of our life that ends where it began in childhood. When Suzuki Roshi was asked by a student, just what do Zen masters do when they get together? The Roshi replied, we laugh a lot.

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Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dorma.

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