Good evening. Happy night before Thanksgiving. It's nice to see you all here. Thank you very much for coming. My name is Joan Amaral. And I have to say that it was walking into the Buddha Hall just now. It was a little bit disorienting, this beauty behind me. What a backdrop. We just had... Some of you probably were here for it, a very beautiful ceremony for Thanksgiving, kind of Zen style. And I just want to say how moving it was and how beautiful it was to see people walking up to the altar, to these baskets, offering so beautifully this food. for hungry people. It's really an honor to be part of that kind of ceremony.

[01:02]

So thank you for participating in it. And I was also thinking about how, you know, a can of beans held with such dignity and as an offering, you know, what's sacred and what's mundane. This is kind of what I wanted to talk about tonight, and I knew I shouldn't have written in my journal. Poor Benji. Sorry. Thank you for wielding it. Anyway, let's see. So, what I was interested in talking about tonight is a text that we've been chanting during practice period. It's called the Sandokai in Japanese. And, you know, I have to say right away, even attempting to talk about the Sandokai, thinking about it, I was immediately dwarfed.

[02:05]

It's a beautiful text. Zen masters have talked about it. And all I'm trying to do is just flesh it out a little bit because we've been chanting it every day at noon service. And I don't think anyone's really talked about what is it or why are we chanting it? What's the significance of it? And I've also felt that it's kind of a heady time right now for maybe for the practice period participants. You know, we've been sort of rolling along in the practice period for the last couple months in kind of a steady rhythm, a steady kind of schedule. And all of a sudden we have two days off. You know, it's kind of like, whoa, what's going to happen? And then we go into a seven-day sashim. So it just feels like there's a lot going on. And I wanted to just stop and just talk a little bit about, you know, just back up just a little bit, even though, as it turns out, today was the last day we're going to be chanting the Sandokai, except for, I believe, next week we chant it for the Suzuki Hiroshi Memorial.

[03:14]

So... So just to flesh it out just a little bit, just to talk about the poem, it's a poem, and its author, and just to maybe talk about a couple things that had a personal impact for me. Can you hear me okay? Okay, good. So it was written by a man named Sekito Kisen, and he was actually Chinese, so his Chinese name was is Shurto. I consulted with Lucy about this. She just gave me the A-OK sign. Shurto. And I said if it didn't come out, I would go back to the Japanese, which is much easier, Sekito. Anyway, his name is Shurto, and he's from the 8th century. This was a very formative era for Zen, for Chan, Chinese Zen. The way we translate...

[04:16]

The sandokai is the harmony of difference and equality. And I've also seen it translated, I think in this temple, the harmony or the merging of difference and sameness. But we don't really use that because the kokyo announcing that, it's kind of like the merging of difference and sameness. It doesn't really work. It sort of like fizzles. So we've gone with difference and equality. It's also variously translated as realizing unity in praise of identity. And one that I really like is a vow of conversation. Just to talk about Shirtu, the poet, just for a moment, because I kind of found something about him and one of his teachers that was pretty moving. He's, when we chant the Dayosho's, you know, a couple times a week we've been chanting the Buddhas and the ancestors.

[05:21]

He's Sekito Kisen Dayosho, who's two people after the sixth ancestor, Daikaneno or Huenang. And so it's Daikaneno Dayosho, Seigen Gyoshi Dayosho is the one in between, and then Sekito Kisen Dayosho. But... Apparently, there isn't much recorded about Shurto's life, his early life, but it seems that he met Daikon Eno, the sixth ancestor, who's considered one of the great Zen masters, like a real heavy in Zen. But Shurto met him when he was only 12 years old. And... Then the master died only two years later. He only had two years with him, but apparently they had enough of a closeness that Shirtu was with him at his deathbed, being 14 years old.

[06:23]

And then apparently Huinang, the sixth ancestor, had asked Shirtu to study with Sagan, with his appointed Dharma successor, Sagan, to train with him, but what ended up happening, apparently, is Shirtu left. And he was gone for 15 years before coming back to settle in, as someone described it, into studying with Sagan Giyoshi as the sixth ancestor had asked. So, you know, when I think about this, 15 years is a long time, kind of, you know. He had this powerful experience with the sixth ancestor and very soon after that his teacher died. So he goes away for 15 years and what does he do? What's he thinking about? What kind of questions is he asking?

[07:25]

How does he feel challenged? Does he keep practicing? And if not, what does he do? And as time goes by, what is he thinking about what happened during those two years, that brief time that he had when he was still really young? So as the story goes, as time goes on, Shirtu at some point reads a line from one of the Chinese commentaries on the Buddha's teachings. And the line is... the one who realizes that the myriad things are one's own self is no different from the sages. The one who realizes that the myriad things are one's own self is no different from the sages. Then soon after that, Shurtu has a dream. And in the dream, so this is 15 years after, right?

[08:28]

Okay, so after Daikane, you know, after the master's death, Shirtzu, after practicing or doing whatever for 15 years, has this dream in which he and the sixth patriarch are riding a giant turtle in the ocean. And upon awakening, he understands that the meaning of the dream is that the tortoise represents wisdom. And he and the ancestor, the sixth ancestor, are traveling together on top, on the back of wisdom, in the sea of existence. Now, we might think, okay, whatever, it's kind of a stretch. But to me, the poignancy of it is after all that time, he still has this contact with this great teacher. And this is how it manifests.

[09:30]

And that dream actually was the inspiration for the Sandokai. He wrote the Sandokai after having that dream. And this is what we've been chanting every day. We didn't even know every day for a noon service. Anyway, oh, by the way, for those of you who haven't, who aren't familiar with the Sandokai, you can Google it when you get home tonight, okay? You can look it up under San Do Kai, or the harmony of difference and equality. I'm sure you'll find it, because I looked. So I asked Blanche yesterday, why is it that we chant? Every month we do the Suzuki Roshi Memorial, and why is it that we chant the San Do Kai for the Suzuki Roshi Memorial? And right away she said, because it was Suzuki Roshi's favorite poem, And, you know, as a matter of fact, we've talked about several of the books over the practice period.

[10:33]

This practice period, we've been studying Suzuki Roshi's teaching specifically because it's the 50 years since Suzuki Roshi arrived. It's been exactly 50 years this year. So to honor that, we've been studying him pretty intimately. And this is the only book, I don't think, anyway, in my circles, in our little group or in the classes that we've really talked about, It's a book that Mel Weitzman and Michael Wenger put together. It kind of took a lot of time, many years. Many people were involved. And it's a series of talks that Suzuki Roshi gave about a year and a half on the Sandokai, about a year and a half before he died. So this would be in the summer of 1970. And in the first talk he gave, he talks about the title. So I thought I would start with that. So San Do Kai is the title.

[11:39]

San literally means three, but here it means things. Do is sameness. To identify one thing with another is Do. It also refers to oneness. or one's whole being, which here means great mind or big mind. So our understanding is that there is one whole being that includes everything and that the many things are found in one whole being. To completely understand the relationship between one great whole being and the many facets of that one great whole being is kai, san, do, kai. So san means many, or things, and do means sameness, and kai means understanding the relationship between the two, the one and the many. Kai means to shake hands.

[12:40]

You have a feeling of friendship. You feel that the two of you are one. In the same way, this one great whole being and the many things are good friends, or more than good friends, because they are originally one. Therefore, like shaking hands, we say, kai, hi, how are you? So now when I see sando kai, I think the translation is, hi, how are you? I think that gives a good feeling of Suzuki Roshi's, how it must have been a warm feeling whenever he spoke. So, you know, when I was reading this, one of the things that I was thinking, to completely understand the relationship between one great whole being and the many facets of that one great whole being, how hard that is to understand the relationship of the two and to hold that. And it seems that the problem for humans arises right here because we only see one side of that, part of it.

[13:47]

It's hard to hold both of them. And I was thinking about how, you know, kind of an example of this. I was living in the mission. This was a long time ago. I was living in the mission district, and I had... I lived in a place that kind of was on a hill, and it had a big picture window, and it looked out over South of Market, basically. And I had a lover who was living in South of Market, and we were talking on the phone one night, and I was looking out the window, and we were talking about just things, and I was saying, oh, yes, you know, and there's the Coca-Cola sign that's right in between us. Can you see the Coca-Cola sign? And he said, oh, yes, I can see it, except it's a Diet Coke sign. And I said, no, it's a Coca-Cola sign. No, it's a Diet Coke sign. I'm looking right at it. Well, I'm looking at it, too. It's a Coca-Cola sign. Back and forth, major turn in the conversation. As it turns out, it's still there.

[14:49]

Have you seen it? It's this huge neon sign. On one side, it says Coca-Cola. On the Mission District side. And on the other side, it says Diet Coke. You know, the other thing about it, too, that I've always... thought about is, you know, tonight, for instance, we might say there's this beautiful moon out. Did you see the moon when you were coming? It's a half moon, right, more or less? Well, actually, we say half moon, but the moon is always full, isn't it? It's just tonight we can only see half of it. So this is interesting to me. We see what we see just from our point of view. whatever our point of view is at any time and any place. And, you know, Darlene, my other teacher, Darlene Cohen, many of you know her, the way she kind of terms this is we only have eyes in the front of our head. I could turn around and see, but it's different, you know. Right now, it's different.

[15:51]

We only have eyes facing this way. So Suzuki Roshi talks about this problem in the world of brightness, is how he characterizes this. In the world of brightness, you see yourself and others, you differentiate between things. This is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong, this is Coca-Cola, this is Diet Coke, this is a full moon, this is a half moon, there's no moon. And he says something interesting. We always suffer from the life that we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears. But with a little understanding of darkness, we can find out how to live in the brightness of the world, how to work without suffering. So the darkness, again, is back to that sense of the whole being where nothing's excluded, everything is there, but it's not really things that we can see or think about. And he talks about it being like a dark room where you can't see anything maybe, but it doesn't mean that nothing's there.

[16:58]

There's a story I want to tell that's a personal story. It's a little bit, for me, what it's about is maybe it might be the first time in my life where I actually challenged oh this is good this is bad maybe that's not the complete story you know maybe it's not maybe the world isn't just divided up into good and bad and it was around the time where I received the precepts this was a many years ago in this building I was living in room 17 on the second floor, and there was a woman living next door to me in room 18. And at a certain point, I was the sheikah's assistant, by the way. That was my training position. And at a certain point, she just said to me as her neighbor, I just want to let you know I think someone's coming into my room and taking money out of my backpack, and I just want you to know. And I talked to the sheikah about it.

[18:05]

And this person living next door to me said, you know, and this is kind of a hard story. I mean, this is a temple, but we're human. There are humans living here. The person living next to me said, and this seems to be happening on Thursday nights when I'm down for a class down in the dining room or maybe in the Buddha hall. I'm noticing a pattern that seems to be happening on Thursday nights, so you might want to watch out on Thursday nights. I talked to the Sheikah about this, and she came up with the idea of, well, why don't we, why don't one of us just sit in her room next Thursday night and see what happens? She's kind of daring. I said, okay, I'll do it. And I mentioned it to the, ran it by the person who lived next door to me. What do you think? And she said, why not? Go for it. So... Thursday night came around, and my next-door neighbor went down to the class, and I went into her room and left my shoes outside my door, so there were no shoes outside this person's door, outside room 18.

[19:22]

And I was sitting there on her bed in her room, just sitting there, and the room's getting darker and darker as time goes on, and I'm just sort of sitting there. And then all of a sudden the door opens. It's like right out of a movie. I'm sitting there going, oh my God, oh my God. And the thing about it, I think Maureen's in room 18, I think. I think the door opens inward. So it took forever, it seems, for the door, the door flung open, the person knew. The door flung open, but it seemed to take forever for the person to come in and for me sitting there as they came in to see them. And it was a moment where I knew the person. It was a friend of the person who lives in the room. And it was very clear what was happening. The person came in and went like this. The backpack was right across the room and kind of turned and saw me sitting there.

[20:26]

And I just said, hi. And... Kind of an awkward pause, you know. Oh, have you seen so-and-so? No, well, they're down in class. Oh, okay. All right, well, see you later. Okay, bye. But I sat there, and I'm feeling emotional tonight. I don't know why I could start crying right now. I don't know if I cried in that moment, but something in me just... I felt like it can't be. There has to be something more going on here than someone stealing money. What is going on? But when the person came back, I stayed in the room until the end of class. I didn't really know what else to do. I just kind of sat there and then the person came back after class and I said, yes, someone is taking your money and this is the person. And this is actually a beautiful story because they both had the same teacher.

[21:33]

These people, they're actually long gone, but they both had the same teacher, and what ended up happening was they both had doksan, and it ended up being kind of like an intervention, you know, where this person was finally stopped. She was in a relationship, and the person she was involved with was involved with drugs, and It was just one of these things. She wanted so much to save the relationship and was willing to do whatever she had to to make it work, what she thought she had to. So happy ending. They had this doksan, got to the bottom of it. The truth was told. There was some liberation there. She got out of the relationship and years later, she's now married and as far as I know, happily so, and not with that person. So as for me, I think it was a month later or so that I had Chukai, and it's just one of those cases where I often felt at Tassahara, actually, the whole time I was down there, it's this...

[22:48]

environment where it's just all about intimacy. It's our intimacy with each other that keeps us accountable to each other. This is a very precious way to live and we don't experience it so much in this world. This world of policemen and journalists, we need reporters and we need the police, but it's so black and white. You know, I was thinking even cop cars are black and white and newspapers are all black and white for the most part. But there's so much... life happening, so much compassion or awakening, compassion suffering within that gray area. Well, I better make sure there's time for questions after this. You may have questions about that story. Another way that Suzuki Roshi talks about this darkness-brightness.

[23:50]

Another way of expressing this is dependent-independent. And he actually came up with another word, which is independency. He made this word up himself, which was a way of expressing how both independent and dependent are ways of expressing the nature of our lives. We're completely independent and completely dependent at the same time. And he has all these ways of expressing this. Just to try to get this point home to us, he says, the sandokai itself, the words are double-edged. One side is interdependence and one side is absolute independence. This interdependency goes on and on everywhere, and yet things stay in their own places. And then he says, in Zen sometimes we say that each one of us is steep like a cliff.

[24:54]

No one can scale us. We are completely independent. But when you hear me say so, you should understand the other side too, that we're endlessly interrelated. And we have to understand things in two ways. One way is to understand things as interrelated. The other way is to understand ourselves as quite independent from everything. So all these ways trying to get us for this message to... enter us of both independent and independent at the same time. I think it's really hard to hold both of these for any period of time. We tend to fall off one side or the other independent, you know, don't tell me what to do, I know the best way, or dependent of losing some of our own vitality, some of our own freshness, some of our own exploration of who we are, who we think we are, trying things out.

[25:55]

He also says, you know, in kind of praise of this, expressing ourselves, he says, it's very strange that no two things are the same. There's nothing to compare yourself to, so you have your own value. Each one of us is completely and absolutely independent. There is nothing to compare. You are just you. No. The more you practice zazen, the more you'll be able to accept something as your own, whatever it is. Although things are interrelated, everyone, every being can be the boss. In my own life right now, I am looking at this independence, dependence, interdependency. I'm still trying to understand You know, for instance, two years, why it is that I left Zen Center and now here I am resurfaced and going to be staying on.

[27:04]

What is that? Who is this person? And there are a lot of emotions around that. But the feeling that I have, I have a strong feeling of diving back into the thicket. Like Zen Center, all of us as kind of a thicket. There's a lot going on here. We're a lot of different things. We're a temple. We're a residential practice place. We're also kind of corporate headquarters for Zen in America. I mean, this mothership image is really staying with me. Zen Center has a big impact in the world of Zen in America. We've been around for a long time. When I look at this and look at the different aspects of me, I get kind of a feeling of like a sense of adventure just wells up in me. Like I'm up for it. I want to do this. I want to bring energy to it. I want to have contact with the ancestral teachings. I want to bump up against all of you residentially, you know, in unexpected places, unexpected times in the hallways, in the bathrooms.

[28:11]

I've said before and I'll say it again, it's precious to live this way. There's also, along with this, if there's going to be that sense of, you know, some sense of an independent spirit or independent mindedness. What can I offer? What can I bring to this? Of also some sense of responsibility of who I think I am or what I think I'm doing at any given moment. So back to Shurtu. He actually, he wrote another poem. that some people probably know about. It's really different from the Sandokai in feeling. It's got more of a personal feeling to it. It's called Song of the Grassroof Hermitage. And, you know, first of all, the name Shirtu means stone. And apparently, at a certain point in his life, stone or rock, he built...

[29:15]

a little hut on a stone outcropping where he sat zazen a lot. And there's a quote from Dogen who says, Great Master Shirtu did zazen on a large rock where he had a thatched hut. He sat continuously without sleeping day or night. This is kind of a Rahatsu Sashin primer here to get us all excited. Although he did not ignore work, he did not fail to do zazen throughout the day. Nowadays, the descendants of his teacher, Sagan, are spread throughout China, benefiting humans and devas. This is all due to the solid, continuous practice and the great determination of Shirtu. So, let's see, let me just read it. And maybe there'll be something to say after that. So it's called Song of the Grass Hut or Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage.

[30:19]

I've built a grass hut where there's nothing of value. After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap. When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared. Now it's been lived in, covered by weeds. The person in the hut lives here calmly, not stuck to inside, outside, or in between. Places worldly people live, he doesn't live. Realms worldly people love, he doesn't love. Though the hut is small, it includes the whole world. In ten feet square, an old man illumines forms and their nature. A Mahayana Bodhisattva trusts without doubt the middling or lowly can't help wondering, will this hut perish or not? Perishable or not, the original master is present, the boss. Not dwelling south or north, east or west, firmly based on steadiness, it can't be surpassed.

[31:30]

A shining window below the green pines, jade palaces or vermilion towers can't compare with it, Just sitting with head covered, all things are at rest. Thus, this mountain monk doesn't understand at all. Living here, he no longer works to get free. Who would proudly arrange seats trying to entice guests? I have to laugh at that line because of all the chusotis that I've been hosting. Anyway. Who would proudly arrange seats trying to entice guests? Turn around the light to shine within and just return. The vast inconceivable source can't be faced or turned away from. Meet the ancestors. Be familiar with their instruction. Bind grasses to build a hut and don't give up. Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely.

[32:36]

Open your hands and walk innocent. Thousands of words, myriad interpretations are only to free you from obstructions. If you want to know the undying person in the hut, don't separate from this skin bag here and now. So back to Suzuki Roshi saying, we always suffer from the life that we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears. Thinking of Shirtu saying, will this hut perish or not? Or what if I'm alone in my old age? Or what if I can't find a job in this economy? This recession that just keeps going on and on. but with a little understanding of darkness, of the whole being where everything is included, where we have everything we need, where the moon is always full, right in the middle of fear and anxiety, like seeing this, the, hi, how are you?

[33:54]

Turn around the light to shine within, then just return. Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk innocent. Maybe we can take that also into Rahatsu Sesshin. Those of us who are going to be sitting seven days, all that effort and all the effort we've all been making this practice period. And if you're not in practice period, all the effort you've been making in your daily lives, getting up every morning, feeding the kids, feeding yourself, getting yourself to work, dealing with muni, trying to find a job, whatever it is, continuous effort. To also remember this, turn around the light to shine within. We have everything we need, but we also need each other, too. We need encouragement from each other. But this... letting go of hundreds of years and relaxing completely.

[35:03]

It's okay. Open your hands and walk innocent. Okay, well, there's a few minutes, five minutes. If anybody wants to bring anything up, anything at all about what I've talked about or Thanksgiving or ceremonies or any questions, Stephen. a Mahayana Bodhisattva trusts without doubt. Is that the one? Yeah, in Song of the Grass Hut, he says, a Mahayana Bodhisattva trusts without doubt. Well, that's interesting you pull that out because when I was looking at darkness, I have kind of my own interest in

[36:04]

darkness. I feel like, you know, in the dark and like there's a feeling of even the earth right now as we go into the dark time of the year of sort of the earth turning inward, kind of taking that backward step. There's not so much harvesting happening. Well, we're in California. I'm from New Hampshire. There's not much harvesting after apple picking season. So Thanksgiving takes on more meaning of that's kind of the end of the bounty for a while. But I I feel in that dark time it's like gestation or dormancy, like sure to, you know, it's 15 years of dormancy maybe. It's kind of my story, but in the absence of any historical hard data, I mean, I kind of go with that story of sort of gestating for a period of time. So when he talks about trust without doubt, I kind of... For me, the way I'm viewing trust is... it kind of includes doubt, or maybe, you know, Mahayana Bodhisattva, I mean, this middle way Bodhisattva, it's not like there's doubt over here and there's no doubt over here.

[37:13]

But that great doubt or true doubt includes doubt, but it's not paralyzing doubt. Maybe you'll have the thought, is my roof going to cave in this winter? But it doesn't paralyze you. Well, I kind of think the Song of the Grace Hut is kind of an ode to Zazen. So what is Zazen? I mean, I feel Zazen is sitting with your own mind, sitting with my own mind, sitting in this. Nothing's excluded. sense of light and dark is like it's different like it's darkness the absolute like you sort of in a Christian sense like brightness is God or whatever like the darkness is the devil but I thought that was so interesting how the way darkness is framed is that we're not seeing the edges around things it's like

[38:44]

interconnectivity over the absolute, and that the light is the world of relation, like the relative world. And just that in itself, just the way that this convention is the reverse, the binary framework. Are you all following this? Binary framework. But that itself is a communication to think of everything you're doing. more opening. It's not just, this is this thing. Yes. Oh, even the really basic conceptual framework. Yeah. Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah, and then the offering that we can make each other. I think a great offering we make each other is to give each other space. to say the wrong thing or to do the wrong thing.

[39:45]

I mean, we're learning. So, yeah, thank you for that. It can be kind of intense. Like the story I told, it's kind of an intense story. But I think there's also this feeling of kind of being in it together, you know, burning through karma, you might say. Like getting to the bottom of something. Like I really do feel that this person... got to the bottom of something through being held accountable, being held in it, not being alone, not being isolated. I'm also thinking of our friend Zed, whose letter Michael read at work meeting this morning, who's in prison now, but teaching Sazen, working with his circumstances and wanting to be held accountable. Anyway, thank you all very much for your attention. And I really feel very grateful.

[40:50]

The bounty behind me, the bounty in here, the bounty we're sharing with each other. And as we said earlier, may all beings be happy, peaceful, safe, and also have adequate food and drink. Thank you very much.

[41:09]

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