This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. No. Yes. You can let me know if it gets better or worse. Thank you very much for those of you who came out in this storm for being here, making this effort to be here. It's actually, I'm very happy that it's raining like this, as you probably are too. Something feels very normal when we get some rain. So I feel like I'm about to offer a talk that's right in the middle of my meditation on this talk.

[01:17]

So for me it has this very partially formed exploratory questioning quality to it that I think is probably a good thing, but makes me very nervous. But what I like about it is I feel like what's coming up for me can perhaps be the basis of a conversation. We'll probably mostly have later. but I feel like we're together in this. I don't feel so separate from you sitting here on this seat. I feel just like you. You're sitting on your seat and I'm sitting on mine, and I probably have some of the same questions and some of the same explorations.

[02:23]

This is, I think, a rather difficult time in... the life of the planet and many individual lives. So I'd like to begin with a quotation that is familiar to those who live here. It comes from a chant that we chant once a week in English, and then every month on our founder's memorial anniversary, we chant it in Japanese as well. The lines I'd like to quote are, in the light there is darkness, but don't take it as darkness. In the dark there is light, but don't see it as light. Light and dark oppose one another.

[03:25]

like the front and back foot in walking. These lines have moved me for a long time, and I've never felt that I really understood what was being said. So here's another translation, which is a little bit helpful. That's what I just said was what we chant, that there are many translations, because this is a... This is a poem from 8th century China, written by a monk whose Japanese name is Sekito Kizen. And it's called the Sandokai. So here's another translation. Within light there is darkness. but do not try to understand that darkness.

[04:27]

Within darkness there is light, but do not look for that light. Light and darkness are a pair, like the foot before and the foot behind in walking." So there's lightness and there's darkness. I have a long history, professional history, in the realm of the somatic or the body experience as a dancer and a yoga teacher. So whenever I'm given an image that's actually something I can relate to physically, I really like it. So that walking image keeps coming back and bring it up again. So the sun no kai, that title can be translated various ways. We normally hear translated the harmony of difference and equality.

[05:32]

It also can be the merging of difference and unity. It also can be the harmony of difference and sameness, identity of relative and absolute. So you get the idea, we're dealing with opposites and how... they harmonize, accord, merge, how they become the same. So that's kind of the basic concept here. So when I read these words, what comes up for me, what does it mean? that there's darkness in light? I mean, I have my ideas about what light is and what darkness is, but those are also big questions. How is there darkness in light? And what does it mean not to take it as darkness? What does that mean?

[06:33]

What does it mean that there's light within dark and you don't see it as light? How can you not see light in darkness? And what does it mean that they function like the front and back foot in walking? So I was asked to give this talk about six months ago and, you know, with no sense of like direction. And as I started to come toward the time that I would be giving it, I was noticing on a daily basis that it seems, as I said earlier, that This world is in the midst of a time of deep, pervasive suffering. In my lifetime, I know there's been deep suffering and before, but I don't ever remember it being so pervasive. And maybe it's just that we have so much more media to tell us about it.

[07:37]

But I could cry every day from what I'm hearing and reading about the world and the planet. and human beings. And I also have been noticing that my own inner world is rather heavy and dark a lot of the times. And lately, that darkness of my own personal world, but also the world around me, gave rise to a memory of some words that I studied when I was a freshman in college. The words are the opening to Dante's Commedia, Divine Comedy. And I think a lot of people probably might remember these from your academic studies. But once again, they come up in a way that really penetrates me at this time. So again, a translation.

[08:41]

In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself in a dark wood where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of how wild, harsh, and impenetrable that wood was. So that thinking of it recreates the fear It is scarcely less bitter than death. And as you may know, this journey that Dante was on was through the three realms of hell, purgatory, and heaven, led by the poet Virgil, the first two, and his own imagination of...

[09:46]

Blessedness, Beatrice, in the realm of heaven. So it's kind of where my kind of existence in darkness has been coming up. And then this week, however, I should say that... I knew I was giving this talk and I was appreciating this darkness and noticing that I really wanted to give a talk on light. That was actually what I want to give the talk on. And I had several texts that I was looking at and reading that are beautiful and profound. I'll say something about them later. But I also noticed, hmm, how can I talk about light when there's so much darkness? It would feel a bit like...

[10:47]

ignoring something that's right here with all of us and running off somewhere else to something, uh, that I would prefer to think and talk about. And somehow I can't quite do that. So although I would love to be here just talking about the light, if I could, um, somehow I could not, I, I felt that I could not come before all of you and, uh, ignore the darkness that we're experiencing. On the other hand, who needs to sink into it? It's bad enough as it is. I'm reading on social media a lot, like people are turning off their Facebooks and turning off their radios and throwing away their newspapers because they just can't take it anymore. And I kind of feel the same way. I feel enough already. I don't think I can stand another piece of bad news. So it was, for me, this back and forth, back and forth.

[11:51]

I don't want to ignore one, but I also don't want to dwell in it. I don't want to sink into it. So this is, again, part of my meditation as I prepared for what I would say to you. And I really wasn't resolving anything. And then this week I attended a class taught by my teacher, Tenshin Reb Anderson, and many of you here were there. But he is giving a class on the ox herding pictures. So this is the 10 ox herding pictures, or there's various numbers, but anyway, we're doing the 10 ox herding pictures. First arose in 11th, 12th century China, and they're... They're pictures and they're also commentaries. The ox from earliest Buddhism represents meditation.

[12:53]

And so in the first class, we looked at the first picture and read the verse that accompanies it and what I call a commentary. I think it's... entitled a preface. Maybe it should be. Anyway, so this is the verse. By the way, let me just say something more about these pictures because you may not be familiar with them. So they're a depiction of a person seeking realization or enlightenment. And it starts, the first verse, the picture shows a person in a landscape searching. So the verse with it goes, beating about the endless wild grass, you seek and search.

[13:58]

The rivers broaden, the mountains stretch on, and the trails go ever deeper. Your strength exhausted and spirit wearied. No place allows you refuge. The only sound. Evening cicadas shrill in the maples. I thought, that sounds like the beginning of the Commedia. And I can resonate with this a lot. And then there's the commentary, what I will call a commentary. Till now, the ox has never been lost. Why then do you need to search for it? Turning away from your own awakening, you become estranged from it, then enclosed by dust. In the end, you lose it. The hills of home recede further and further away.

[15:02]

You're lost as soon as the paths divide. Winning and losing consume you like flames. Right and wrong rise around you like blades. So here is the light. And as I thought about that, this statement about in the light there is darkness, something made sense to me. Not in a way that's particularly verbal, so I'm going to find a way to try to express it. A few years ago, I was sitting in this room, one of these seats here in the deep darkness of the early morning in Zazen, and a message came to me. And I could say, I kind of heard something, but I didn't really. It was just kind of a message that appeared as though from somewhere else.

[16:04]

And that message was, take care of the light. And I was... a little stunned by this message. And I thought, well, what is the light and how do I take care of it? And that became a koan for me for the last few years. What is the light and how do I take care of it? And I talked to various Zen teachers about that. And they quite naturally suggested that I also ask about the dark and how to take care of that. And the dark is equally as mysterious as the light, what it is and how to care for it. And this is a great subject for this season because we're moving towards the winter solstice when the dark becomes predominant and the light becomes predominant.

[17:10]

and then we will go into reversal. And in this season, the dark is something that has a kind of positive feel to it. It's often represented as stillness and quiet and regeneration and a source of the light. But still... There's a sense of them being separate. They're functioning like the front and back, foot and walking. Light, then dark, then light, then dark. But what is this darkness in the light? And how do you not see it as darkness? How do you not take it as darkness? So when I... read that verse in the Ox Herding Pictures and realized this connection I felt to how important it was to not leap past this darkness to the light, but to stay with the darkness.

[18:26]

I saw that it was completely surrounded and embraced by light. this deep exhaustion and despair and suffering is held and embraced and harmonized with light. The light of awareness. The light of the energy of awareness of all things. The Buddha's light. And actually, without that, we don't see darkness. We can't see our exhaustion, our despair, our longing, our fear, our wanting to run. And in fact, we run away from it. And I began to think about addiction.

[19:34]

And I read this Interesting thing on Facebook. Let's see if I have the exact words. About what addiction is. I think it says something like, addiction isn't a substance. Addiction is trying to get away from reality. Something like that. It's not alcohol. It's not drugs. It's trying to get away from reality. And I thought, yes, I'm addicted, as we all are, to getting, I want to get away from the reality of my life a lot of times. And the reality I want to get away from, of course, is the exhaustion, the despair, etc., the tiredness. And how do I do that? I jump into the light as much as I think I can. And I... push the darkness into another realm.

[20:36]

The darkness is no longer in the light. I'm not paying attention to the darkness at all. I'm just thinking about the light, just talking about the light, just wanting to read about the light. That embracing of the darkness from that place of the light, yeah, that seemed really an important antidote to this addictive process. And then I remember the teaching of the Buddha. So in his first, supposedly, his first Dharma talk after enlightenment, he talked about the middle way. So the middle way, this one I definitely want to quote.

[21:37]

So this is called the setting in motion, the wheel of Dharma, or the setting in motion of the wheel of truth. And he says, monks, this is about the first thing he says too. Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. What are these two? There is addiction to indulgence in sense pleasures, which is low course, the way of ordinary people, unworthy and unprofitable. And there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy and unprofitable. So I could say in my own paraphrasing, there's addiction to darkness and there's addiction to light. How do we practice the middle way between these addictions? So it's in this...

[23:00]

It's in this understanding that the darkness is not over here and the light's not over here, and yet they're not the same, that I think the practice of the middle way arises. And this kind of moving forward and back, one foot and another foot, becomes our life. We can't walk with just one foot. And we can hop from foot to foot. And I think that's kind of what I do. I hop from foot to foot. Okay, we're going to hop along on the light foot today. Whoops, the dark foot's going to get hopped on today. But can we actually practice this walking back and forth without embracing one and denigrating the other? There's another story.

[24:07]

I found a lot of stories as I've been thinking about this question. And this is a very famous story. And many of you, I'm sure, have heard it. This is called Bai Zhang's Fox. And I think it is pertinent to the same question from another point of view. So Bai Zhang was a Chinese Zen master. And this is a traditional story. So every time Bai Zhang, Zen master Dao Wee, gave a Dharma talk, a certain old man would come to listen. He usually left after the talk, but one day he remained. Bai Zhang asked, who's there? The man said, I'm not actually a human being. I lived and taught on this mountain at the time of Kashyapa Buddha. One day a student asked me, does a person who practices with great devotion still fall into cause and effect.

[25:09]

I said to him, no, such a person doesn't. Because I said this, I was reborn as a wild fox for 500 lifetimes. Reverend Master, please say a turning word for me and free me from my wild fox body. Then he asked Bai Zhang the same question. Does a person who practices with great devotion still fall into cause and effect? And Bai Zhang answered, don't ignore cause and effect. Immediately, the man had great realization. Bowing, he said, I am now liberated from the body of a wild fox. I will stay in the mountain behind the monastery. Master, could you perform the usual services for a deceased monk for me?

[26:14]

And that's sort of basic. There's a little more to the story, but it goes to another point. So that's basically it. So I'm thinking about indulging in darkness or addiction to darkness and indulging in the light or addiction to the light, and neither is recommended. What is recommended is not to ignore, not to ignore either. So I feel now, just right now actually, I feel this little bit of lightness arising because in spite of how dark I think things are, maybe you agree or maybe you don't, There's a feeling of, yes, things are dire. And they're embraced by our light, our individual light and the light of this entire universe. So now I would like to say just a few things about the light, and I'll be happy.

[27:28]

And we can move on. Dogen Zenji, our Japanese founder, wrote a fascicle in his great treatise, The Shobogenzo, called Komyo, which means light or brightness or luminosity. And I recommend it. It's not very long, but it is very deep. And his student, his Dharma heir, Kohen A. Joe, wrote something which I feel kind of... It explains it a little bit better. It's longer, much longer. It's called Komyozo Zanmai, or The Practice of the Treasury of the Light. And in it, he talks about what it is to practice the light, what the light is. And he does it without ignoring the dark. So I recommend that, too, and it's much longer than I would read to you. But there are some wonderful shorter sections.

[28:33]

I'd like to offer those. Great Master Cheng Sha said to the assembly, the whole world is reflected in this monk's eye. The whole world is contained in everyday talk. The whole world fills your body. The whole world is your own light. Throughout the total field, there is no one that is not who you are. Now, the whole world is the eye of this monk, says Changsha. The whole of space is this whole body-mind. He does not grasp at sacred presence. or avoid the profane. He does not say that deluded beings don't have it while sages do.

[29:38]

He just points directly to your own light. So don't leave it all up to cheng-sha. This teaching presents it all inside of your nostrils. It gives practical advice with your eyes. Some people bring up old koan as examples and models, but never have the least insight about their own lives. This is like being born into a wealthy family, but having no clothes. And then it gets a little bit rough. The worst kind of students are just weary of birth and death. and want to move on to something else, some kind of nirvana, and their practice is based on trying to attain something. Already bloated with self-image, they turn practice into a kind of greed, and their neediness goes on until they die.

[30:44]

Teachers with no discernment praise this lot as diligent and faithful practitioners, and this reinforces their self-obsessiveness until they are reborn as hungry ghosts. And then he becomes kinder. The light of awareness shines without ceasing from the beginningless past through the endless future. This is vast activity. Unentangled by sensory objectification, real and unchanging, the essential manifests. This is the practice of alignment with radiance. Just aligning with the light of awareness, dwelling at ease in it, is the supreme samadhi of shikantaza, of just sitting. So look to yourself for the light.

[31:46]

Look to the world for the light. And just sit. in your life, in the radiance and the samadhi of the light, which includes and embraces the darkness. And when everything seems dark, know that there's light. You may not see it, but know that it's there. And with this practice, I pray and hope we can all move forward like the front and back foot in walking together. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support.

[32:51]

For more information, visit sfzc.org, and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:00]

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