This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. A funny thing happened to me on the way to the Dharma Talk this morning. I was walking from my place over here, and the Wheelwright Center is that building by the road where you come in with these big glass windows. And on the path, I could see reflected in the window there this person in the distance wearing these funny clothes and walking along. It looked kind of familiar, but Not really.

[01:04]

And then I looked around, there was nobody else around. It was just me. And then I remembered that wonderful Dharma teaching that the auto industry so kindly offers to people. It's kind of a secret. So people often overlook it, but you can find on your rear view mirror this pith instruction from the Buddhas and ancestors. Something like caution, like be alert because reflections in the mirror are closer than they appear.

[02:06]

If you have a car, now you have that teaching, so keep it well. This week, some of us have been sitting and sitting and sitting for five days of seshin in the jewel mirror awareness. We've all been in it the entire time, and some of us once in a while appreciate that. And some of us once in a while could care less because we're into the reflections in the mirror. It's so easy to overlook the mirror because it's extremely boring, whereas reflections, any kind of reflections, painful or pleasant, are at least interesting.

[03:33]

They capture our attention. In one of the old sutras of the Buddha called the Sharangama Sutra, a great heroic march scripture, the Buddha said, have you heard about Yajñadatta who lived in Shravasti? I guess it was a story about this person in the Buddha's time. Have you heard about her? Yajna Dutta, who one morning held up a mirror to her face, and she fell in love with the face in the mirror. A little bit like the Western myth of narcissists.

[04:40]

And she gazed at the eyes and eyebrows in the mirror, but she got angry because she couldn't see her own face. So she decided she must be some kind of crazy spirit, and she lost control and ran about madly. It's easy to fall in love with these reflections on the mirror and forget our own original face. Even now, when we look for our face, we can't quite see it, can we? Where is our face? It's like this big, empty window that's filled with all of you.

[05:53]

And where your face used to be, it's filled with me and Jizho Bodhisattva and others. So then the Buddha goes on in the sutra to say, the supreme, pure, bright mind originally pervades the universe. It's not something obtained from anyone else. It's yours already. Why then toil at cultivation? making yourself bone-tired trying to gain verification when you already have it.

[06:56]

We look elsewhere, the Buddha said. Yad-nyadatta's head was naturally there. It was naturally her, herself. There was never a time when it wasn't there. Her head was never lost, but her madness and fear arose from false thinking. There's something We all share. Always. That can never be lost. And it's very ordinary and simple. Very free and peaceful.

[07:59]

Always okay. But it doesn't look like anything. When we look for it, all we see is the reflections. This pure, bright, original mind, moment to moment, is appearing as, is coloring itself as this array of colorful appearances. reflections, experiences that often seem to hide the mirror. But of course, reflections on the mirror don't really hide the mirror. They just seem to.

[09:01]

They are the mirror, actually. That's why the rearview mirror on the car says, images in the mirror are actually much, much closer than they appear. They appear out there separate, but they're much closer to us. In fact, these images in the mirror have no distance at all from who we are. So the Jiu Mirror Awareness is a song taught by our 9th century Chinese Zen ancestor, Dungshan. In Japanese, we call him Tozan Ryokai Dayousho.

[10:14]

And he's our founder of our lineage. That's why we call it Soto Zen, named after Dongshan. So this teacher is especially dear to us. He's expressing the unique wind of our house, our particular style of Zen. And when I look at his teachings, I feel like, yeah, there is something, a kind of flavor in his teachings that really has come down to us today. So we've gotten to this line in the song, in this poem, about form and reflection behold each other. You are not it. In truth, it is you. So these central lines of this poem are based on Dongshan's own awakening, his great awakening.

[11:27]

And in order to tell you that story, I think it would be nice to hear some background stories, like a little bit of Dongshan's life, some other stories, to get a sense of what kind of guy he was. And there's very wonderful stories, I feel, in the record of Dungshan. Here's just a few. So when he was a child, very young, but it seems like growing up in a Buddhist family, he had a tutor who was maybe teaching him to read. teaching him to read the Heart Sutra. And so he was hearing what we call the Heart of Great Perfect Wisdom Sutra that we actually recite here every morning.

[12:34]

And many of you have probably heard the Heart Sutra, but it has these lines in the sutra that says... In emptiness, there are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. And that list of nos goes on for quite a while. But little Dungshan, before he was named Dungshan, he questioned his tutor and said, wait, wait, wait a second. The sutra says... There's no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. But he kind of like felt his face. He said, I have eyes, I have ears, I have nose, I have tongue, body, mind. What is that all about in the suture? And his tutor said, I'm sorry, I can't teach you this.

[13:40]

It's too profound. This is like... This is the kind of thing that the Zen people are into. Your question is kind of a Zen question. So maybe later you can practice that. And he did shortly thereafter. I want to understand this. I have eyes and ears, nose. But the Buddha, the great awakened one, says, there's no eyes, no ears, no nose. And if we're trying to understand this now, we might think about this metaphor of the mirror, the empty, unchanging, clear mirror, appearing as multiplicity of images and reflections.

[14:48]

including noses and things like that. So later, Dung San left home and became a monk so he could contemplate these things all the time. And I was impressed in his record that he practiced with like almost all the great teachers of his day. This was the golden age of Zen in China. So he went out traveling from mountain to mountain, meeting with these teachers, and we have the records of his conversations with them. So he met with Nanquan and Guishan. He practiced with them. They're very important early Zen teachers. And then also in his record, after his awakening, he then went out and met with all these other teachers.

[15:57]

And we have those conversations too. So I appreciate that about him. He didn't just feel like, I got it. Let's see, even if I feel like I got it, let's converse. Let's meet with these other teachers and turn the Dharma together. So his main teacher, he did practice with several for a while, but he ended up staying with Yunyan for a while and inheriting Yunyan's Dharma. That's Ungang Dongjo Dayosho in our lineage. And one time, In his early training, he came to his teacher, Dongshan, our hero today, came to his teacher, Yunyan, and said, I still have some habits that I haven't let go of.

[17:08]

It's nice to confess such things to our teachers. I still have some habits that I have a hard time letting go of. And Yunnan said, well, tell me how you're practicing. It's nice when teachers ask, tell me how you're practicing. And Dungshan said, well, I haven't even been concerned with the Four Noble Truths. Like, you know, what is suffering and the end of suffering? most basic issue. And I haven't really even been so concerned with that. Maybe another kind of confession. And Yun Yan said, well, are you joyful yet? How are your practices going? You've been practicing a while.

[18:12]

Are you joyful yet? And Young Dong Shan said, It's not that I'm not joyful. It's like finding a bright jewel in a pile of shit. Wonderful teaching. Maybe too much to say, I'm joyful, but it's not that I'm not joyful. It's like finding this clear little shining spot of mirror in the midst of these stinky reflections. Dengshan continued to practice with his teacher, Yunnan, and one time said,

[19:20]

to his teacher. I want the teacher's eyes. I think I recall being inspired by that many years ago, going to my teacher and requesting the same. I don't remember how the conversation went. But in this case, Dongshan said, I want the teacher's eyes. And Yunyan said, where have yours gone? And Dongshan said, I never had them. And Yunyan said, if you did have them, where would you put them? Dongshan was silent. Didn't know how to respond. And Yunyan, the teacher said, Isn't it the eyes that want the eyes?

[20:24]

I think Suzuki Roshi says somewhere, it's wisdom which is seeking wisdom. And so the teacher says, isn't it the eyes that want the eyes? And Dungshan said... that's not my eye. And Yan Yan said, okay, forget it, get out of here. He was trying to, I think his teacher was trying to gently open his student to his own eyes, but he stubbornly wouldn't have any of it. So maybe occasionally his dear teacher would say, get out, end of conversation. Of course, there were many more conversations.

[21:28]

Teachers sometimes can be hard on us, and sometimes that's hard, but sometimes later we appreciate it. So at some point, Dungshan was getting ready to leave his teacher after many years, which happens. And I think to practice elsewhere, maybe it was to visit other teachers. That's in fact what he did do. But I think, I feel that with his teacher's great blessing and support, The teacher said to Dongshan, after you leave, it will be hard to meet again. And student Dongshan said, actually, it will be hard not to meet.

[22:50]

sometimes takes the form of some particular person, but that's a kind of limited version of the teacher. Important, but not complete understanding of the teacher. Later, I think this was after his teacher, Yun Yang, had died, and it was at a monthly memorial service for his teacher, which is a tradition. Like here, we still do a monthly memorial service for

[23:52]

the founder, Suzuki Roshi, make offerings to the founding teacher. And so at that time, they were at this memorial for Dongshan's teacher, Yunyan, and a monk asked Dongshan why he honored his teacher, Yunyan, so highly. especially because he also practiced with all these other great teachers. And Dongshan said, I don't esteem my late teacher's virtue, his virtuous conduct, or esteem his Dharma teaching, even. I only value the fact that he didn't explain everything for me. Maybe surprising, right?

[24:58]

We might be frustrated with our teachers who don't explain everything for us. Why don't they give it to us straightforwardly? We might feel. But the main reason Dongshan honored his teacher is that he didn't explain everything. And the monk went on to ask Dongshan, well, do you agree with your teacher or not? Do you agree with everything he says and does? And Dongshan said, I half agree and half don't agree. And the monk said, why don't you completely agree with him if you honor him so much? And Dongshan said, if I completely agreed with him, I would be unfaithful to my teacher. So these are some wonderful stories about Dongshan and his teacher.

[26:10]

They had many intimate conversations like this. And other Zen teachers of that time did a lot of shouting and hitting people with sticks, like Lin Ji was kind of known for that. But I don't think anywhere in the record, long record of Dung Shan, he never seems to shout or hit anyone. Something about his gentle, subtle style that formed, I think, a kind of gentle, subtle lineage that we practice within. here today. So that was our background for the story, Dongshan's awakening. There were several other kind of like openings and insights that are in the record before this time.

[27:15]

But this was the story of his great awakening. So it was after Dengshan left his teacher. Well, actually, the story just before he left. The story goes like just before Dengshan's leaving. he asks his teacher, Yunyan, later on, if I'm asked how to describe your reality, teacher, or your true dharma teacher, if I'm asked about that, how should I respond? And after pausing for a while, Yunyan said,

[28:17]

Just this is it. And Dungshan was silently contemplating that. The record said he was lost in thought, trying to understand. Why did he say, just this is it? And as he was lost in thought, teacher Yunyan said, Dengshan now, he wasn't named Dengshan yet, Liangzhe, now you are in charge of this great matter. You must be most thoroughgoing. And with that, Dengshan left his teacher without further comment with his straw sandals walked down the path over mountains and rivers.

[29:27]

Where he was going, we don't know. Maybe going to visit other teachers, but he was out in rural China, and he was wading across a stream, probably a stream that wasn't running very fast, and he looked down and saw his reflection. in the stream. And he had a great awakening to the meaning of his last exchange with his teacher. He had great satori, which means understanding realization upon seeing his reflection in the stream. And so he wrote an awakening verse which is a Zen tradition, before forgetting all about it, record it for posterity.

[30:33]

Now we have it. We can keep it well. So Dungshan's awakening verse, upon seeing his reflection, just don't seek from others or you will be far estranged from yourself. I now go on alone, yet everywhere I meet it. It now is me, I now am not it. One must understand like this, to merge with suchness, thusness. And part of the play in this poem too is this it, everywhere I meet it, could also be translated as him or her.

[31:49]

So it could be referring to his teacher. because he had this awakening to the meaning of this final exchange with the teacher, in which case we could translate it. Don't seek from others, or you'll be far estranged from yourself. I now go on alone, yet everywhere I meet him, everywhere I meet my teacher. He now is me, but I'm not him. one must understand like this to merge with thusness the way it is. And for those of you who know the Jewel Mirror Awareness Song, that the lines that we've gotten to in the poem seem to be based on this awakening poem of Dungshan. The line in the poem is, form and reflection behold each other.

[33:01]

You are not it. In reality, it is you. Almost the same. It's a variation on his awakening poem. and his awakening was seeing a reflection of himself in the stream. I once visited Dungshan's temple in central China, and it's still a very rural area. It was a pilgrimage that some of us from Zen Center here did to Allah. our great Chinese ancestors' temples around China with my teacher and others. And mostly, you know, we would just take our tour bus to the temple and go visit.

[34:09]

But Dungshan was like, we almost didn't make it. It was a very rough dirt road, long, very... ungraded, rough dirt road, a little bit like Tassajara for people who've been there. It was out in the mountains, and our bus that we were using was like, I'm not going to drive on that road. We can't go there. But some of us were determined. I think it was an optional trip. This is going to be rough, but those who want can do this. this one to Dungshan's temple, but you're going to have to stand in the back of this little pickup truck for an hour or two, crowded together while we try to navigate these rough dirt roads. And so we did make it to Dungshan's temple where there were just a few monks there. It's quite much smaller than Green Gulch.

[35:10]

This is the founder of the... Dungshan lineage in China, but the temple's kind of run down. And we got there, and the few monks who were there heard, I think the story, as I recall, we were the first Westerners to ever visit Dungshan, this group, because it's pretty remote. And so they came out with firecrackers, as they sometimes do in China to kind of celebrate. So they're like, as we drove up, it's like, whoa. They're like, welcome. But then there's a path from where the truck parked up to the temple. And it was across this stream. And there's a bridge across the stream. which is supposedly the place where this incident happened, the incident called Great Satori of Dungshan.

[36:18]

And the bridge is called Encountering It Bridge, or Meeting Him Bridge, Meeting It Bridge, from the poem. Everywhere I go, I now go on alone, yet everywhere I meet it, or everywhere I encounter it. I go on alone, yet everywhere I meet it. So there's still the meeting it bridge across this little creek, really. It's a small creek. And then there's Dongshan's temple on Mount Dong. So it It was already called that, and Dungshan took the name of his mountain. But I think those of us there thought that was interesting, because we have this story, this 9th century record, that he had this awakening kind of off in the mountains.

[37:30]

There aren't any other temples around. So then it's kind of like he just walked like another 100 yards and built the temple. That part's not really recorded there, right? But it's kind of, you go there, if that's truly the place, it's kind of like, well, where is there to go now? I might as well just stay here because everywhere I go, I need it. I need walk no further. So that's a little personalized addendum, footnote to the story. So... In the song of the junior samadhi awareness, Dengshan writes, it. There's a lot of the word it in this song, but that's just to make English sentences out of Chinese.

[38:37]

But if we say, what is this it? It's suchness. It's the way it is. How is it? How is it today? Well, it's like facing a dual mirror. We can't really say what it is, but in when we're talking about ultimate truth in Buddha Dharma. We can't really say it directly, but we can say what it's like. We can use metaphors and similes. I think very helpful. The Buddha used them a lot too. And this is a really good metaphor, I feel. It's, what is it? At least what's it like? Well, it's like facing a jewel mirror.

[39:41]

Form and reflection behold each other. So for those of you who've been hearing about this jewel mirror for a while, you might notice that we're adding in something extra now in this central verse of the poem. Did you notice? There's three things going on now. There's three parts of the situation. Do you notice, did anyone notice the difference? We've been mostly talking about the relationship of the reflections and the mirror. All these reflections that we see and hear and smell and taste and feel and think, every possible experience in the realm of sentient experience is, I would understand, reflections in this metaphor.

[40:45]

And these reflections in their true nature are actually just the mirror awareness itself. The unchanging mirror is expressing itself as constantly changing appearances. Our ordinary awareness right now is unchanging, spacious, colorless, sizeless, timeless, ungraspable, yet ever present, awake awareness. But we don't quite see it or feel it like that. Because when we look at this mirror, all we see is all this stuff and all these sounds. These are the play of awareness, but the unchanging aspect seems to be hidden by the changing stuff, the content.

[41:57]

So that's what we've been exploring. There's these images and this mirror. That's like two things, the relationship of two things. called reflections and mirror, that are neither the same, neither exactly the same, because one's called reflections and one's called mirror, nor are they really different, because you can't separate the reflections from the mirror. I've been droning on about this kind of thing all week, and so maybe getting used to exploring that. But now we're adding in a third... aspect here, right? Form and image behold each other. The poem says, it's like facing a jewel mirror. Form and image behold each other. It's a little different.

[42:58]

I mean, it's a new dimension to explore now, right? Because we have some form looking at a reflection in the mirror and the mirror. So I think it gets a little more dynamic, you might say. And I think these lines of the, and I would say that the central lines of this Jewel Mirror Samadhi song is almost like a koan, I feel like. you can really sit with this one verse for the rest of a lifetime. And I've been sitting with it for a while and turning it over and over. It's challenging. It's dynamic. It's alive. So... And it seemed like this was Dungshan's experience, his great Satori in the river there, too.

[44:02]

So... How can we unpack this metaphor? It's a metaphor. It's like facing a jewel mirror. Form, and form here in Chinese is not like rupa skanda. It actually, the word is more like shape or appearance or figure. A little bit more, a little bit less solid than form. Form, actually. But form's okay. That's another translation. We might say appearing form. Something. It doesn't even say person, but that could be it since. Form and image or reflection. Those are two translations of that word. I think reflection, since we're talking about a mirror, works nicely. Form and reflection, the image on the mirror. Behold each other. So we have a viewer, a viewed reflection, and a mirror.

[45:09]

So there's three things. How can we unpack the metaphor? So as I was just describing, the reflection on the mirror is the world of experience that's appearing. Multisensory. human life coming packaged as colors, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, which means any bodily feeling, emotions and thoughts. These are called experiences that are made of mirror. And then what is this form that's beholding the images? That's the, I would say, the new piece we could add in here. and it's an important piece of our life, we could say, is the sense of subjectivity.

[46:11]

Me, who I feel is me. We say there's not really some self here on this side, but there is definitely a sense of perceiving. Is it like the sense of subjectivity? We might call, like, the sense of being a viewer, a hearer, an experiencer. Over here, that's relating to these images on the mirror that seem to be over there, but actually something about this mirror is really who we are. The mirror is really who we are, but we feel as if I'm something in addition to that. There's some perceiver in addition to just the sphere of awareness.

[47:15]

We feel as if there's an experiencer in addition to the sphere of experiencing. And so I think that's one way we could understand the sense of the experiencer. When I look for my face, I can't find it, but I still feel like there's something over here, experiencing the images over there. So, we've been talking more about the objective sphere of experiences. colors and sounds and thoughts and feelings are just awareness. But this is really important to now turn around and look at. Also, the sense of the experiencer is nothing more than the same dual mirror awareness.

[48:19]

In the metaphor, we might get into light. talking about it like, there's one mirror over here called the sense of subjectivity, and there's another mirror over there called the sense of objectivity, and they're images of, or a sense of both, a subject over here and an object over there with two mirrors reflecting each other. That's how some people talk. Or we could just say, it's one dual mirror, but form and reflection behold each other. The sense of subjectivity, the hearer and the sound behold each other. And it's not one directional. We usually think it is. It's like I over here am hearing the sound over there and beholding the sound, but here it's more like

[49:26]

also the case that the sound is beholding the hearer. It's inconceivable intimacy. And then these lines, you are not it, in truth it is you. So we could hear it as you in this case could be the sense of subjectivity, the sense of there being some kind of separate experiencer which is really just the one indivisible mirror appearing, feeling as if it's me, it's limited. Was it Maslow or some psychologist a while back had this term, skin-encapsulated ego? Have you ever heard that term? It's not, I don't think, a Buddhist term, but I think it's an American psychological term, maybe from the 60s.

[50:31]

It's a nice way to think it. I feel like I'm a skin-encapsulated ego. In other words, I reside in this bag of skin. But this is not, if we examine our experience, it's not really who we are, right? the felt sense that there's something over here, maybe even in this body, that's me. We could say that's you. So you, Kokyo, are not the mirror. That's like egotistical. You see how that's a little bit off? In one sense, it's true that, yes, Kokyo is the mirror. But for me to think of it as like, wow, I, Kokyo, am like Buddha. It's like a little bit the wrong way. It's not completely untrue, but it's more like it's too much self. It's carrying a self forward and being Buddha.

[51:37]

Whereas instead of saying you are not it, we say in reality it is you. Buddha is Kokyo. That's a little bit more appropriate. And the same for all of you, of course. You are not it to carry your sense of subjectivity forward and verify the mirror as your Buddha is called delusion. But the mirror-like Buddha coming forth and verifying the sense of subjectivity as... It's more Buddha. Awareness is called awakening. You are not it, we might say. Is that it mean the mirror or does it mean the reflection in the mirror? I think both could be true.

[52:39]

You, the sense of subjectivity, is not the reflected. and sounds or the mirror on which they're happening. But the mirror and the sounds that are being reflected actually are you. So this is maybe a little bit much for those arriving and a little bit much maybe for people who've been sitting here for five days. But I invite you to take up the central verses of this song as a kind of koan. I have naturally done that for decades, to be honest. These lines have really, are hard to turn completely. But the more I sit with them, the more they open and reveal some ease

[53:45]

So maybe just share with you this... That's my kind of like fumbling around for coarse words to express this kind of thing. So here's the great teacher from another lineage, Hakuin Zenji, the kind of... 17th, 18th century founder, or reviver, really, of Rinzai Zen in Japan, who was really into Dungshan. So, he was very non-sectarian in this way. So here's his description. I think a really beautiful description of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi. Hakuenzenji. Bodhisattvas of superior capacity.

[54:52]

This is kind of challenging to do. These bodhisattvas dwell within the dusty realm of differentiation or within the six sensory experiences. Bodhisattvas dwell there, constantly practicing amidst an infinite variety of distinctions, reflections on the mirror. They regard all phenomena before their eyes, old and young, high and low, halls and pavilions, verandas and corridors, grasses and trees, mountains and rivers, as the true, pure face of their original self. It is just like seeing one's own face in a bright mirror, As they continue to experience things in this way over months and years, at all times and in all places, all their appearances, sights and sounds and smells, feelings and thoughts, become the jewel mirror of their own house.

[56:12]

And these bodhisattvas become the jewel mirror for those others. So he's making kind of multiple mirrors reflecting each other. Hakuen then says, Dogen, Zenji says, to carry yourself forward to practice and verify the myriad things is delusion. That the myriad things come forth to practice and verify yourself is awakening. Satori. This is exactly what I'm saying. Hakuin says, two mirrors reflecting one another without even the shadow of an image between them. Mind and objects of mind are one and the same. Things and oneself are non-dual. A white horse enters the white reed flowers, filling a silver bowl with snow.

[57:20]

This is called the Jewel Mirror Samadhi. And it's what the Parinirvana Sutra means by Buddha seeing Buddha nature with their own eyes. 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. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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