in the reserve. Maybe the reserve will be right here. There's a couple of copies there. And there's also Xerox copies of the first 14 or so pages of this. And so this is a commentary by a Chan master, Ching-Yen, a teacher from Taiwan who also has practiced some in the Rinzai tradition. He has done a lot of intensive practice. He's also a scholar, so he brings a well-rounded approach. And as I said, he's practiced some in Japan, too. And then Suzuki Roshi, maybe primarily or singularly a Soto practitioner.

[01:00]

Not exactly a scholar, although he did, as best he could, dedicate his time to scholarship. He made a point of seeking out teachers who were scholars and studying with them. And then, of course, he also had the education of trying to teach us Zen, which was probably very educational. I can't see what the title is. Is that Branching Streams? It is. This one's Branching Streams, and this one is called The Infinite Mirror. Those are the two books that we'll primarily refer to, and then at various points may refer to other things to illustrate. some of the more particular points in the poem. My notion is that we are an eclectic bunch, which is wonderful nature of Buddhism in the United States, that some of us have studied a lot, are fairly well versed, probably better versed than I am, in certain aspects of Buddhist teachings, and then some are maybe

[02:28]

It's quite new to them. What I'll try to endeavor to do is present the material in a way that, like the first teaching, the first couplet in this poem, The Mind of the Great Sage of India, we could spend our whole time Exploring what exactly does that mean? What is the Buddha mind? What is the mind of the great sage of India? So to offer a couple of references, which I'll do tomorrow, will be maybe how that's explored in the Theravadan tradition and how that's explored in the Zen tradition. And then books that might refer to that. And try to have them there for those of you who want to explore it in that way.

[03:30]

So to maybe point towards more in-depth study. And then at the same time to not make it baffling for those of you who are not so familiar with Buddhist concepts. So that you're not sitting there thinking, what are you talking about? Someone said to me recently, they took a class with a rab, and he was at that time teaching on the Sandi Nirmachana Sutra. And they said, they really liked the class, but they didn't have a notion as to what he was talking about. They liked the class and they liked studying with him, but they really just didn't get it. Which, you know, maybe it's fine. that's the strategy and then hopefully our study together will prime us as these different teachers come in and and give us their presentation you know their presentation on the mind of the great sage of India yeah and we will enact sandokai in relating to what we think is

[05:00]

and feel and practice as Buddhist practice, and what they think and feel and practice as Buddhist practice. That we'll approach it all as a teaching. That it will involve our inquiry into the way. I was thinking of this as actually a poem. I was looking at the Chinese with Lucy and she was pointing out to me how indeed in Chinese it is a poem. Every line has five characters and it's in couplets. two couplets of five characters, and that the end character in the first of each couplet ends in a vowel sound, and this repeats down all 22 couplets.

[06:13]

And how, well, except for those of us who are fluent in Chinese, a scholar once said to me, why don't you just learn Chinese and read everything in the original? Yes, why not? So we won't, most of us who don't speak Chinese, won't catch some of that aesthetic. It made me think of how when you engage an aesthetic, when you engage the sense of beauty of something. It's a very interesting kind of enhancement. It's not just, oh, let's look at this and let's study it and understand it.

[07:17]

It's something, let's appreciate it. Let's have it sort of soften and open us and let the world and the notions be held up like a flower. Like Shakyamuni's transmission to Mahakashapa. He didn't give him a book of things to study. He held up a flower. Something beautiful. That the original is intended as a flower as a thing of beauty a thing of rhyme and rhythm and I was actually thinking of starting with a piece by Pablo Neruda and then I realized well he had his own rhyme and rhythm in the original language

[08:29]

that gets lost in the translation. And yet when you think about it, even if we were native Chinese speakers, still we would create some kind of personal relationship, some kind of translation of the material. It's not only an inevitability, And it's not only a deficit, there's some enrichment. To find our relationship to it is also the sandokai. Each one of us is uniquely who we are. And we're taking in this amazing treasure house. This amazing diversity of teaching.

[09:32]

So the first word san in the Chinese comes from three. And the title was taken from a Taoist text, as you ought to read in the handouts. And then in the Taoist text, had three, the three referred to the three branches. You know, the I Ching, the Tao, and the... What's the Chinese word? Lo Hua. Lo Hua. I Ching, Tao, and Lo Hua. Which means I Ching is the Book of Changes, or maybe the... Shift it more into a Buddhist term. Something about understanding and relating to impermanence.

[10:35]

And then the second one is Tao, the way. That sensibility. Maybe in the Soto school, we would say everything is the way. Ordinary mind is the way. Or as a practice that we meet everything. Each person. Each phenomena. Each mental and physical arising. As an expression. As an engagement. As a manifestation of the way. The Tao. Aloha as fire. As alchemy. That engagement has an energy. We could think of our practice as how to practice with energy. We sit and breathe and relate to a rising experience.

[11:45]

We let it flow. We let something be engaged without grasping. As Shakyamuni Buddha's teaching said, grasping causes suffering. This is the fundamental teaching of Zazen. Completely connected, engaged, without grasping. And this fire, this energy, cooks. human life so these three come together and they express the multiplicity of the many flowers of the Dharma they express the diversity of United States you know that people we

[12:57]

come from all over the world. We come from all sorts of backgrounds. I was sort of thinking this morning that there was a time, particularly in Japanese Buddhism, where there was a sort of segregation. You had the monks who studied and You had the monks who worked in the kitchen and did the chores and things like that. In fact, for part of Dogen's life, he was one of the study monks. He came from the privilege class. And even though the Zen heritage had tried to remove this, it was actually a great revelation to Dogen when he got it.

[13:59]

was completely and fully expression of the heart of our practice. So we get a couple of weeks of being privileged monks. And we have this wonderful bodhisattva kitchen crew in there working away, cooking our meals, washing the pots and pans, and we get to sit here and be profound. Hope so. Hope so. Hope so? You mean you hope they'll cook our food? What did you say, Brenda? Over the place there's diversity.

[15:06]

Then there's a diversity of our own, each one of us, how we will reference this material, how it will or will not make sense to us. What are the teachings we've studied within Buddhism or just in the experience of our human life. So San covers all these ranges of diversity. And part of practicing is that you find the teaching everywhere. I really hope for us during this brief three weeks that we can hold the heart and mind of practice and find it everywhere. That this title will resonate and express itself in how we relate to each other as coming from different backgrounds and having different ideas and thoughts and watching how we harmonize and don't harmonize.

[16:10]

That we will notice how here we are in a way setting ourselves apart. How will we harmonize or not harmonize with the other monks in the building and the people who flow in and out every day? How will we do that? How will we harmonize within our own mind and body? This is the Japanese word of study. More literally means study by doing repeatedly. You do it repeatedly and that's how you study it. That we will repeatedly do harmony of sameness and difference. And that's how we'll study it. We will study sitting still and letting everything go.

[17:19]

And we'll study work and totally engaging in whatever is put in front of us. The most important word in Zen work is yes. When the work leader asks you to do something, you say yes. And then you watch if you feel completely compelled to say, but. Is that an expression? of the harmony of difference and unity or is that something else? So the first sign as three, as difference, as multiplicity, as the enrichment of diversity that all these ways of diversity

[18:31]

offer us the flowers of the Dharma. And then Do is not San Do. So Do is not the Do that many of us are familiar with, the Do of the Way. It's a different term. It's translated as common. I was trying to insist with Lucy when we were doing the translation that it had a different meaning, but she wouldn't let me away with it. I'll have to keep working on it because there is an interesting term in Buddhism where in the Soto School in Japan, a word that sometimes translates as standard or normal.

[19:34]

But it has an interesting twist within Soto Zen, which means the twist is this. The way of the Buddhas is standard or normal. So what we're actually doing is endeavoring to see and realize the normal way of being in contrast to the agitated and vexed manifestations that we more usually bring forth. So it's like it's this wonderful inverse that Zen sometimes does. Common actually is being related to in terms of something that's actually very uncommon. That we fully manifest our true heritage of Buddhahood. So common. And then the last term, Qi.

[20:38]

means the more literal translation is contract and then the more subtle variation is harmony or Lucy was saying that it can refer to like a couple who've been together a long time they don't even need to talk about it. They both sort of get each other and it's like a wordless harmony or understanding or an understanding beyond words. Like when something's resolved into a deep harmony, it's like there's nothing to talk about. It's only when something's trying to discover harmony.

[21:40]

It's like when your teeth don't hurt, you don't ask yourself, why is this like this? What's going on? It's only when your teeth hurt that you ask yourself, what's going on? How do I deal with this? How do I come back into harmony? When our relationships are good, We don't look at each other sternly and say, we need to talk. We need to talk when something's not in harmony. So that sense of harmony, that sense of well-being, which maybe points to You know, that sense of harmony has its own beauty, its own aesthetic.

[22:47]

You know, the flower has integrated, you know, soil and sun and all the other ingredients that go into its creation into a harmonious expression. And then that comes forth, and there it is. And we can run all the tests and analysis and try to understand exactly, which as far as I know, we still haven't done it. We haven't figured out how grass grows. But whether or not we can do that, we can appreciate it. beauty of the flower and just maybe more interestingly and more consequential that beauty that appreciation can predispose us can draw us into an engagement with experience that has a softness that has a gratitude

[24:11]

that has an aliveness, that has a connectedness. You know, we can think of Jiju Yuzamai, you know, engaging the samadhi of just being this. You know, we can think of that as some deep, Concentrated accomplishment. Or we can just think of it as sitting with a deep appreciation for being alive. So then the title goes together. And we have San Do Kai. Difference. Commonality. investigation, harmony, integration.

[25:14]

Integration of difference and sameness. And then when I was concocting the title of this intensive, I translated it as Realizing the essence, embracing the 10,000 things. Which has its own kind of heresy because then it makes it sound like it's two distinct activities. But here's my excuse. My excuse is this. Just the same way when we're in deep harmony, you know, when we're in deep harmony with our teeth, we don't have to get involved in some purposeful engagement.

[26:23]

It's like when we're in deep harmony with all being, awakenedness has happened. There's no need to practice. It's like we practice to discover. this common state. We practice to realize that it's always manifesting itself through us, with us, and that we're not separate from it. But it's almost like we practice asserting that there's something that needs to happen or be done. And that's how we discover something beyond our endeavors. One of the things I hope to do is to describe zazen in a way that makes it much more difficult.

[27:26]

I sometimes think the notion of shikantaza is a very dangerous one. because it is this, it points directly, it expresses it directly, it holds up the flower of sandokai. That is our common heritage, but it's an uncommon experience. It doesn't mean sit there with your mind rambling all over the place in a kind of distracted and agitated way. And that's shikantaza, that's just sitting.

[28:38]

it is just sitting but it's not realized just sitting so we practice to realize realize the essence and then we embrace the ten thousand things because everything that we experience is an opportunity to actualize Sandoka. How will you meet this person? Are you going to be something separate from them? Are you going to, from your place of flowering diversity, are you going to set yourself up as superior or inferior? Or are you going to manifest, realize harmony? As we embrace the many forms of Buddhism, as we embrace the many kinds of people we are together, all of these are our opportunity to actualize the essential realization.

[30:03]

And of course, this is a little bit like trying to understand flower. in the actualizing, in the engaging. It's more about getting out of our own way. It's more about not becoming self-conscious. It's more about letting something happen. is engaged by intentional practice. This is the tension.

[31:11]

We do something deliberate to go beyond self-determined engagement. This is the realization of our school, of the soto way. You know, we do everything with a kind of holding it as a treasure. And in holding it as a treasure, a small mind, a small way of relating turns into transforms through the heat of engagement, through the alchemy of engagement in the big mind into something that flowers a sandal cut. And I hope that doesn't make too much sense.

[32:18]

Let me say a few more words and then I'll pause. Oh, maybe I won't. You'll be able to read it. You'll be able to read where Sekito, the person who wrote Sekito Kisen, Japanese pronunciation, the person who wrote the Sandokai, you know, where he fits into the lineage. You know, and for those of you. who know very well the significance of the sixth patriarch. Well, he was his grandson. But both texts talk about this. So let's do this. It is my hope to make this class a little bit bizarre. Just because... Even though we're going to have three weeks of being the privileged studious monks, I think we can ride around in our palanquins of privilege.

[33:34]

Hopefully we'll also endeavor to be in the moment and let ourselves be amazed and undone. by its uniqueness. So I'd like to offer us this, that right now, here's what we'll do. Wrestle. Wrestle? Wrestle. It's funny, Zach, that hadn't occurred to me. Thank you for that. Here's what had occurred to me. That's good, Geraldine. No, go ahead. Don't worry about it. No, you can put your leg up there if you want.

[34:44]

It's no problem. I'd like to ask you this question. What have you heard so far? Because something's really interesting is that we can all hear the same thing, but then we all heard something entirely different. What have you heard so far? Sorry, I'll remember to look towards you more often. I apologize. He's a little hard of hearing, so it's very helpful for him if he can make eye contact and do a little lip reading to supplement his hearing.

[35:45]

And certainly if anyone else is hard of hearing, I guess we could turn the mic up. Or you could sit closer up. So rather than ask each one of us to give a 15-minute summary, let's do this. If you can be concise, you can condense it into a word if you like, a phrase, but not more than a couple of sentences. There's something about, you know, this is a poem and he, you know, he followed a classic style in writing his poem. And there's something about stricture. There's something about being held to a form. It's like Suzuki Roshi said, if you want to see how different people are, get them all to stand in Shashu.

[36:51]

Get them all to do the same thing. And then you'll see how different they are. So we create a little restriction, like a word, a phrase, a couple of sentences. And remember, what you got out of this so far is complete. It's not exhaustive. It's not like you got it better than anybody else. But the opposite is also true. You didn't get it any worse than anybody else. You got what you got. That's it. It's its own flower. But one thing I would also ask of you is if you could speak it loud enough so that everybody else in the room can hear. And we'll do it at random.

[37:54]

And if you really don't want to speak, don't speak. I really encourage you. Why not? It'll be fun. Maybe. And if it's acutely embarrassing and painful, well, notice that too. But just what I've said so far, what resonated, what did you get out of it. And then listening. Listen to the diverse voice of the Dharma. We're all in this common experience, and yet we're all in this place of uniqueness. And can each voice teach you? Can you be open to the many flowerings?

[39:00]

Can you let them all, okay? Like when someone says, it's all about wrestling, can you go, okay? Hadn't occurred to me that way, but okay. So, please. So we're going to do this at random. Just, whenever you want to speak, just say something. Paul, what was your question again? What did you just pose to us? The question is, what have you got out of this so far? You know, I've been talking now for the last 45 minutes, rambling along, putting out different notions and ideas and images about the Sandokai. What did you get out of it? Yes?

[40:07]

Sorry? You want me to say something? I'm saying anyone can say anything when they're ready to speak. For me, what I have gotten out of it so far is the non-intellectual experience of oneness and unity, and the indescribable experience of the aesthetic. When Shakyamuni Buddha held up the flower and Mahaka Shakyamuni smelled, that flower was a poem. I have my own question of how to be in harmony with this. Picking this up, I'm holding everything.

[41:10]

The door is wide open. Receive what you perceive that you not conceive. getting out of the way of yourself and just letting things be as they are. Can you speak up, please? Yeah. It's about getting out of the way of yourself and just letting things be as they are. This is a way of interacting with phenomena that makes the absolute manifest. For myself, I'm still practicing with the question about pleasant and unpleasant phenomena. When we do manage to get out of the way, it's truly amazing.

[42:14]

And we are undone. The entire universe has a place to manifest itself. For me, being in the melting pot, For me, it's about being in a melting pot for the next three weeks and kind of burning up slowly. It makes me feel like practice is a big trap. And we get trapped by it. And somehow, through getting trapped, we become free. Three comes from one and returns to one. Three comes from one and returns to one. The way of the Buddhas is common, ordinary. Potpourri. I think the American pronunciation is potpourri.

[43:15]

Common has two senses. Common has been common to all of us, and also common is an ordinary. What's your play between form and emptiness? A question about sun. Three of what? And with the third one, a body of thoughts, what else would be like the first two? There is multiplicity, and there is sameness, and there's a special kind of harmony where That the fire of life comes from the paradox.

[44:22]

The activity of life comes from the paradox. Paradise or paradox? Paradox. I think this is a demonstration of the Sandokai. lost their form and their sound, and yet still convey stuff. Being in harmony with what is. Again please.

[45:27]

What was the last part? Mine is a question about how to let those differences and reactions to differences sort of vanish in order to have that really easy harmony of not thinking. While the streams are flowing.

[46:28]

Okay. hear the Sandakai in Chinese. Yeah. Qi. Qi. Yes, sir. Here's a question to ask yourself right now.

[48:48]

What did you learn from just sitting and listening and speaking with your own words, too? It's hard to put words to it, and yet other people are very wise. Are we sharing yet? Yes. When somebody looks at a precious jewel, they never look at just one facet. They turn it and look at as many facets as they can. Can you say that so everybody could hear? When we hold the precious jewel, we don't try to look at just one facet. We turn it so that we can see as many facets as we can. Everybody was right. Everybody was right. Traffic branches share the essence. I'd like to speak, thank you very much, for both your words and then those final comments.

[50:01]

So, inquiry. Normally our mind picks up inquiry as creating some concepts by which we can grasp something. I understand it. It's like, there it is, and I catch it with the net, And it's mine. With this sitting and letting the mind open in an attentive, appreciative way, the 10,000 things come forth and express the Dharma. All these expressions of, okay, okay, okay. That inquiry is this opening, this allowing, this appreciating.

[51:10]

And can that be turned out and listened to all the Buddhas in the room? And can that be turned in and listened to this Buddha? That this harmonizing, another way of that's translated, there's also an inquiry. That the inquiry enables the harmonizing. If we sit here and listen to each other in a certain way, deeply, respectfully, appreciatively, we come to harmony. If we sit here in a competitive way, okay, now let's vote on who had the best answer. Or let's divide ourselves. Everybody who thought it was this way, sit over here. And everybody who was more like, everybody who was on the side of essence, be on this side.

[52:18]

And everybody's on the side of multiplicity over here. And then we'll have a debate to decide which is best. So the nature of inquiry is enabling this appreciation of what already is. However, inquiry is brought into being by A certain kind of disposition. There's a concentration to it. But it's not a kind of focusing on a candle flame kind of concentration. It's a kind of opening concentration.

[53:19]

There is, as I've been saying, a kind of appreciation to it. A kind of non-grasping. Whatever comes up is what comes up. And allowing. So here's how I'd like to make zazen more difficult. This is what's asked of us every time we sit down and do zazen. It's not about picking up Some mechanical formula that we have concluded is Zazen. It's not about controlling the 10,000 things. The 10,000 things are the 10,000 things. Good luck in trying to control them.

[54:21]

It takes a lot of effort. And in terms of appreciating the flowering beauty of all being, in terms of realizing the essence of shikantaza, in terms of engaging the beauty of jiji yuza mai, controlling is a distraction. It's kind of something that can keep you endlessly busy. and yet there is something of a disposition something of an availability something of an appreciation that even though this is our common heritage it seems uncommon because we have a lot to complain about because

[55:29]

We do so regularly experience a lack of deep harmony. So each time we sit down to recommit, rediscover, reengage this way of being. Recommit, rediscover, reengage. Recommit, rediscover, reengage. This way of being. And our posture, how we relate to breath, how we relate to mind mental disposition, how we relate to mind objects, are in the service of this. part of our practice because the lack of harmony the lack of connection the struggling is obscuring the original the common harmony

[56:55]

It made it a little bit more difficult. So that. So every time we sit down, it's so easy to slide into some habit, some preoccupation. We're suffering. We want to not suffer. We want to relive the things that are annoying us, so maybe this time in reliving that, we can resolve it. about what will bring us joy and happiness and peace. What a great idea. Maybe if we can get the right image, we can use it as a beacon and head directly to it. Or even better, we can just embody it now and experience it. We want

[58:10]

We want to cut off our suffering. We want to space it. We want to cut off the aliveness of our body. We want to cut off the connection to the ebb and flow of our emotions. We want to cut off the amazing amount of mental activity that's going on all the time. Despite all that, we recommit, reconnect, and engage. This is the fundamental activity of Sazen in the Soto School. We sort of start with enlightenment and go from there.

[59:12]

Here's something to think about. Each of us has had our experiences of connection. Some of us have sat many shashins and done a lot of practice and had very tangible, palpable experiences. Some of us have glimpsed them and connected to them informally you know just through living our lives I mean this is the common ground of human experience who says you have to put on black robes to have it experience so how those experiences give us clues give us ways to return you know what is the body connected being.

[60:27]

What is the mind? So I was trying to give you some palpable, tangible experience of this mind, this consciousness of open being. But it also has a physicality. I mean, the body of Shikhan, a body of Zazen, is not that you sit there in a state of torment The body of Zazen is meant to sit there like a flower, with the balance and aliveness of a flower. So what experiences within Zazen and beyond Zazen? Form us to be fully alive in our body.

[61:35]

How do we return to the original Buddha body? Original Buddha body of connected being. This is adjusting your posture. This is sitting upright. This is letting your chest lift up a little bit, your shoulders widening, your shoulder blades rolled on your back a little bit. This is reaching up through the base of your spine, letting the spine lengthen. This is reaching out and bringing the hands into mudra. This is letting mudra be alive and float with the thumbtips in front of the navel this is letting the gaze be wide and open but grasping nothing this is letting hearing open and hearing the myriad signs this is like experiencing flow in and out of all the five sense doors not because

[62:58]

In engaging those, we're trying to accomplish something in relationship to them. But because they already express the original nature that we've never been separate from. So there. So you adjust your posture. As you engage your breath, there is the mechanics of it. There is the mechanics of sitting upright. But then, there's something. This is the restriction of the pole. But there's also the poetry of posture. That sense of spacious physical ease.

[64:01]

And this is also inquiry. And to remember that inquiry isn't your figure it out. Of course you can look at books of anatomy and discover why the heck that part of your body turns into raging white hot pain. Sometimes that's very helpful and instructive. But the world is much bigger and much more beautiful than what goes on inside the realm of our thinking. Our thinking is just one part of its beauty. So in our posture, What is that upright, balanced aliveness that has an ease, a spaciousness?

[65:07]

This is the koan of posture. This is the inquiry of posture. What is that mind? How do we relate to the methodology of posture and breath and mindfulness? they enable this so in the Soto school maybe we could say in all of Zen schools our practice is one of meeting the cone of Zazen what is Zazen all over the place it's it's meeting it in sitting on our cushion and then we meet it wherever and however we enter the ten thousand things. And can we, in this next three weeks, can we carry that?

[66:17]

when our mind when our emotions is saying well that's not it that person's not doing it right can we look at that you know and can we hold it with this inquiry you know can we practice huh you know when your mind grasps firmly can you look at that and go huh okay interesting thought Interesting conclusion. Can we meet each arising experience and let the flower bloom? And for no good reason, I'm going to end with a little piece of Pablo Neroda. Did you say, yeah, Brenda? Thank you. Let us look for secret things somewhere in the world.

[67:33]

On the blue shore of silence or where the storm has passed rampaging like a train. There the faint signs are left. Coins of time and water, debris, celestial ash. And the irreplaceable rapture of sharing in the labor of solitude and sin.

[68:02]

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