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 evening, everybody. Good morning and good afternoon to some of you. Can you hear me okay? So thank you, Matt, and thank you to Nancy for inviting me to give this talk. And tonight I would like to dedicate my talk to Dr. Wang, my late teacher of Chinese medicine. Earlier this month was the anniversary of his passing. And tonight, I'd like to talk about medicine and disease as a way to celebrate the life and teachings of Dr. Wang.

[01:29]

my teacher. And I'd like to bring forth a koan, which many of you have probably heard of. It's Human's Medicine and Disease. You've heard about that? It's... case number 87 from the Blue Cliff Record, a koan collection from Song Dynasty, China. And so tonight I'm going to talk a little bit about the case itself, and then we'll explore what it means. To give you a little history, the Blue Cliff Record was compiled by Master Yuan Wu in the, I would say in the 11th century.

[02:50]

And the Blue Cliff Record is a collection of koan stories, koan teaching stories from the masters of, for the most part, from the Tang dynasty earlier. And so the collection was based on the hundred cases compiled by an earlier master, Xue Dou, Sechou. and which was based on an even earlier collection, which was called the Jingde Record of Transmission of Light. So Master Sechou Shuedou compiled, selected 100 cases from the Jingde Transmission of LAM,

[04:00]

which had, I don't know, over 1,000 or close to 2,000 cases or stories of old masters. And also he selected from a collection of teaching stories and teachings of Master Yunman and put these 100 cases together and added stories verses of himself. So that's probably part of the reason why the Blue Cliff Record have quite a number of cases that are about Master Yunmen. So Master Yuanwu took Master Xuedou Satchel's hundred cases and added introduction and added commentary. And he was residing in Jiashan Mountain, and that was also called the Blue Cliff.

[05:13]

And so he named this collection Blue Cliff Record. And the case I would like to talk about tonight is Numbers 87. The title of the case is called Humans, Medicine and Disease. So with the introduction and case commentary and verse altogether, it's quite long, so I'm just extracting the case itself and a few sentences from the... Commentary. The case says, Master Yunmen said to the assembly, medicine treats disease according to its nature. The whole earth is medicine.

[06:17]

Which one is for you? Okay, this is my translation. You probably have heard of other translations that's different from this one. A common translation you might have heard of is medicine and disease cure each other or subdue each other. The whole earth is medicine. What is the self? And that's also a fine translation. The wonderful thing and also peculiar thing about translating Chinese is that, especially from classical Chinese, is that it's very concise. And some of the characters, they have multiple meanings.

[07:24]

And as you translate, you have to see... what the context is in order to translate it more accurately. And sometimes you have to add, fill in the blank. Sometimes you have to reverse the order, switch words around. And so there are several phrases here. Medicine and disease cure each other. And I want to show you. I don't know. Can you see this? Can you see this? Yes? Sort of? So medicine, disease, each other, cure.

[08:28]

And there's no question about medicine, disease, and cure. So three of the four characters are very straightforward. Cure can also be treat or to manage to govern if it's a country. But if it's an illness, you would translate it as treat or cure. The question is, The third character, 要病, 相治, 相. In modern Chinese, the most obvious meaning is each other. So many translations would say medicine and disease cure each other. So that's the most straightforward way to translate. On the other hand, If you look at the context, if you look further in the commentary, and also in Chinese culture, also we often say, we give medicine according to the illness, according to the disease.

[09:51]

And so the character xiang can mean each other. It can also mean... Accordingly. Accordingly. So most Chinese teachers, when they talk about this case, they would interpret it as medicine treats disease according to its nature, according to the nature of disease, the patterns, the nature of the disease. Or medicine is given to treat disease. or medicine is given to a person according to the illness. So that's the way I would personally translate. And then the next phrase is, the whole earth is medicine. The whole earth is medicine.

[10:53]

And the following sentence is, which is the self, which is... And again, the straightforward meaning of the characters, 哪个是自己? Which one is self? And again here, sometimes you have to fill in the blank. So... You could translate it straightforwardly as which one is the self, or you can say which one, which medicine, parenthesis, which medicine is for yourself, is for you. So, again, the case says, medicine treats disease according to its nature. The whole earth is medicine.

[11:57]

Which one is for you? In the commentary following the case, commentary by Master Yuan Wu, it mentions that the Buddha himself, the Buddha taught for 49 years, And whenever he taught, he would teach according to the nature, the condition, and the potential of his students. And the commentary says this is what it means to give medicine in accordance with the disease. You might also know another name for the Buddha.

[13:04]

The Buddha had many names, and one of the names is called the Great Medicine King. The Buddha gave teachings to heal suffering. He gave medicine for the mind and the heart. And the whole earth is medicine. The whole earth is medicine. In the commentary, Master Yuanwu mentioned a story from an earlier land record which talked about Manjushri and Sadhana. Manjushri Bodhisattva, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom.

[14:08]

And one day, he asked Sadhana to go get some medicine. Sadhana, in Chinese, is known, or in China, is known as Shan Cai, Shan Cai Tong Zi. he famously went on a pilgrimage to study with 53 bodhisattvas and teachers and practiced with them and learned from them. And so one day, Manjushri asked, Sadhana, please go get some medicine. Oh, actually, in the beginning, he said, to Sadhana, please give me something, bring me something that is not medicine. And Sadhana went out and came back empty-handed. He said, there is nothing that is not medicine.

[15:12]

And Manjushi told him then, then bring me something, bring me something, bring me some medicine. Sadhana picked up a blade of grass and said, here you are. And Manjushri took the grass and showed to the assembly and said, the whole earth is medicine. And this medicine, this particular medicine, it can kill you. It can also give you life. And so the whole earth is medicine. But how do you find the one that gives you life?

[16:16]

How do you find the medicine for you, for this particular self? And this is what this case is trying to get at. And in other words, each medicine has it's used for a particular disease or for some disease. And medicine and disease, they relate to each other. They coexist together. And when we have a disease or illness, we have to understand

[17:28]

the nature of the disease, and the nature of the medicine, and the nature of the self. What's happening? What's happening with this mind and body? And what is feeling not quite right? What is the disease? So when we study or work with the koan, it's not about thinking about it, thinking about what the words mean.

[18:30]

It's more about feeling it. It's more about... Arousing the mind of inquiry. Qi yi qing. Arousing the mind of inquiry. This mind of inquiry is embraced, is encompassed in our awareness. So we investigate the phrase, one of the phrases or different phrases in a koan, and the purpose or the intention behind it is to use the koan to

[19:38]

to wake up our mind of inquiry, to study ourselves, to study our conditions, not so much intellectual studies, but to investigate, investigate with awareness. And... I thought it's also kind of funny that the character that I talked about earlier, that the character each other, or accordingly, Xiang, which caused some differences in translations, and that character... In ancient time, in the very ancient time, when Chinese language was still in the face of Shao and Bung scripts, you know, Chinese language is the pictographic, they are pictographic symbols.

[20:56]

So several thousand years ago, the character Xiang or Xiang Nowadays, known as each other or accordingly. Let me see if I can show you. It looked like this. Can you see? Yes. And so the origin of the character had a tree on one side and an eye on the other side. So it used to mean... in ancient days, to look at the tree, to observe, looking, the eye looking at the tree, to observe, to observe carefully. And over time, this character became, looked like this. It looked like this now. And nowadays it means, when it's used as a noun, it means,

[22:04]

look, the look of it, the appearance of something. When it's used as a connective word, connecting word, connecting word, it means each other or mutual or so it's a connecting word. So medicine and disease mutually Medicine and disease are connected to each other. And to use medicine for disease, there is a very close connection there that we need to observe. Dr. Wang, my late teacher, used to say, each human body is like a fine musical instrument, and you have to listen to it carefully.

[23:21]

And I would say that each human heart and mind also is like a fine musical instrument, and you have to listen carefully. When something happens, we want to observe and find the relationships, find our own relationship to what's going on. Where's the self? What's the self? And which is... the appropriate, what would be an appropriate response for this self, for this particular condition? For example, in real life,

[24:39]

I see a lot of repetitive stress cases in people. And now you have to understand, oh, okay, you have a lot of stress in, say, in the shoulder, in neck and shoulder. And what's the condition? What creates the condition? Maybe since pandemic, you've been staying home and working from home, and you've been spending a lot more time in front of the computer. And maybe you are carrying a lot of tension because of all that time in front of the computer. Or maybe you're feeling very stressed. isolated, and you carry that stress in your body.

[25:50]

And so as we look at each body, each condition, we also look at what's underneath How do you feel when it happens? How does it feel in the body? How does it feel in your breath? How does it feel in your mind or heart? Or maybe it's a repetitive stress in the heart. Maybe, maybe again and again, again and again, and something is hurting your heart.

[27:03]

Maybe there is a child crying in your heart. Where do you feel it? What do you hear? The whole earth is medicine, and what would be helpful in this case? What would a loving parent do for this crying child? What would Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva Gwayin Pusa give this child from her healing bottle?

[28:24]

kind of healing nectar this child would need is thirsty for or hungry for. What if what if you are that loving parent yourself, what if you are the doctor? What if you are Guan Yin, you are Avlokiteshvara Bodhisattva yourself? Yeah. So the The whole world is medicine.

[29:36]

Which one is for the self? And what is the self? And what is the medicine that would ease this disease? you so very much for being here tonight. May our gathering be for the well-being and healing of all, for all sentient beings and the whole earth. Thank you. 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.

[30:42]

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 Dharma.

[30:56]

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