I have vowed to taste the truth of the Tathāgatā's words. Good morning. Good morning. Well, here we are, another sunny Saturday. We are sitting indoors. I've been noticing the San Francisco seasonal change. We don't really have the seasons like they do in some parts of the country. This is definitely a feeling of fall to me. I've lived here all my life and I can feel it. Also, I can see it. To me, there's a change in the light,

[01:01]

something of the quality of the light at this time of year. I think it's very beautiful. This reminds me that the year is ending and the sunlight is changing. I was going out with my friend Angie the other night. We've been studying tea together for several years. Once a week, we'd go out to my teacher's house, our teacher's house. She lives out on 6th Avenue, near there. And as we left here, left the block, I'm driving and I said, Well, it's dark. And she said, Yeah, it's going to get darker. I said, What do you mean? It's going to get darker. I said, How can it get any darker? It's already dark. Well, she said, Until the 21st of December, every day is going to be shorter. But, I mean, OK, that was fine.

[02:06]

But I really enjoyed toying with this idea. It's going to get darker when it's already dark. And somehow it's been sticking with me. I kind of like it. It's going to get darker. Because we were going to see Mrs. Ueda, Ueda-sensei, who is our Japanese, of course, tea teacher. And so we used some Japanese words in the ceremony. And since I've been thinking of that darkness, I thought about the Japanese language that when you say good evening, you say konbanwa, which literally means it's dark. If there's any Japanese speakers here, please forgive my butchering of any of this language that I say right now. And like when you say good night to somebody, you say oyasumi nisai, which means have a dark sleep. And that's pretty neat.

[03:06]

What it means is like, you know, have a black sleep. Sumi is like ink. And sumis don't have any dreams. Have a good rest. Anyway. What I'm going to do today is read a song. It's called A Song of Meditation. And it's by Hakuin Zenji. Hakuin lived in the 17th century. And some say that he... This isn't working very well. Up to his time, Zen in Japan still had a lot of Chinese flavors to it. Of course, it came from China. But they give Hakuin the credit for making Zen completely Japanese. So he...

[04:08]

I don't want to say he popularized it, but he made it available to the folks, to the people. And the other great teacher of that time was Muso Seiki. And he was a teacher of the emperor. Pretty high stuff. But Hakuin kind of brought it out to the people. It wasn't necessarily just for aristocrats. And anyway, if you look at his... He's left a lot of paintings for us. Ink drawings. And they're quite warm and humorous and human. And, you know, right here, nothing really fancy, far out about him. Actually, I recommend, if you haven't seen any of his drawings, we have some books in the library. And they're really very great drawings. Ink drawings. But let's get to his words. He lived during the time of 1685 to 1768.

[05:11]

He acknowledges being a part of the Renzai lineage. He's not in our Soto lineage. But that doesn't mean we can't study him. Okay. The Song of Meditation. All beings are, from the very beginning, Buddhas. It's like water and ice. Apart from water, no ice. Outside living beings, no Buddhas. Not knowing it is near, they seek it afar. What a pity. It's like one in the water who cries out for thirst. It's like the child of a rich house who has strayed away among the poor. The course of our circling through the six worlds is that we are on the dark paths of ignorance.

[06:18]

Dark path upon dark path, treading. When shall we escape from birth and death? The Zen meditation of the Mahayana is beyond all our praise. Giving and morality and the other perfections, taking of the name, repentance, discipline, and the many other right actions, all come back to the practice of meditation. By the merit of a single sitting, he destroys innumerable accumulated sins. How should there be wrong paths for him? The pure land paradise is not far. When in reverence this truth is heard even once, one who praises it and gladly embraces it, it has merit without end. How much more one who turns within and confirms directly one's own true nature, then one's own nature is no nature,

[07:19]

such as transcended vain words. The gate opens and cause and effect are one. Straight one's the way, not two, not three. Taking as form the form of no form, going or returning, he is ever at home. Taking as thought the thought of no thought, singing and dancing, all is the voice of truth. Wide is the heaven of boundless samadhi, radiant the full moon of fourfold wisdom. What remains to be sought? Nirvana is clear before one. This very place, the lotus paradise, this very body, the Buddha. Well, that's it. I'm not going to leave, yet.

[08:23]

I feel like it. I mean, how can I say anything? When I decided to use this as a topic today, I got it out of this book here, and in this book, it has like ten chapters on this poem, and it's a series of lectures that someone gave, and here I'm going to try to give one lecture, one talk, and I'm feeling very funny right now, but I'll try. All beings are from the very beginning Buddhas. Some of us just recently have been studying with Mel some of Dogen's writing on Buddha nature, and it's pretty difficult stuff to try to understand. The trouble is, the more you try to understand,

[09:25]

the more difficult it gets. But Dogen uses the term all sentient beings are Buddha nature, and usually in his, Dogen's way, he's always fooling around with the language of Chinese character that's used for that. Usually it says all beings have Buddha nature, but Dogen says all beings are Buddha nature. He's trying to make it clear to us, to try to get this feeling of that no separation, not to get into this dualism that we have something. You can't have something that you are already. It's not like gaining something. So here, Hakuin uses the term like water and ice, and that works pretty well. He says apart from water, no ice. So if you look at the ice as being what we are, as being thinking we're not Buddha, and we're all frozen and stiff, and we're not Buddha, I'm not Buddha, I'm no good.

[10:28]

And then if you start sitting and you melt this ice down, it becomes water. And water flows and conforms to things, and it doesn't have much trouble. Water is a big metaphor in Taoism also. Water finds the way to move rocks and stuff like that. It doesn't have any resistance, but yet it's very powerful. Anyway, this idea of using water and ice, ice and water, you can't have the water without the ice. I mean, you're not going to have ice without water, and you can't have any water. Anyway, blah, blah. Another writing they use, this idea of saying that all beings are Buddha, is like in the ocean and waves. Now, you know, can you have the ocean without the waves and the waves without the ocean? And where are the waves

[11:31]

when there aren't any waves? The ocean is there, and the waves come and go, but they're always there, always part of it. So, outside living beings, no Buddhas. I used to, I liked the term, all beings. Maybe I'm getting too picky there, but, like, Dogen sometimes talks about grass and rocks being Buddha nature. So that doesn't leave anything out. Sometimes the term is used, sentient beings. But I like it when you don't use that, you say, beings. And does a rock have Buddha nature? No. Yes.

[12:33]

Not knowing it is near, they seek it afar. What a pity. This kind of example has been used for many, many things. Searching, going on journeys, going on quests. You go on for months and months, years and years, and you discover this something. Sometimes these great stories, they go on for so long, the quester has forgotten why they're on the quest. They've gone that long. Usually at the end, in many of them, when they find what they're looking for, they're back in familiar territory again. They're back where they started from. There's one you probably have heard many times, but I'll repeat it anyway. I think it's from the Hasidic tradition. It's about, I think it was a rabbi or something

[13:38]

was told that there was a great treasure in this town. The next town over, it was under a bridge. So he went over to find the treasure. When he got there, there were soldiers guarding the bridge. So he was afraid to go down. There's a lot looking for this, getting what the soldiers were there for. So he hung around a few days and kept looking, waiting for them to go away, and they never went away. Finally, one of the soldiers noticed him coming back all the time. He said, what are you doing? He said, well, I heard there was a treasure here. Some certain name of the treasure, some precious stone or something like that. So he went to this town, the next town over, and he gave him directions to where to find it, what street to take, how many doors to go down, and all that. And he said it's in that building.

[14:39]

So he followed the map and went back, got to his own town, counted the doors and the steps in front of his own house, went in, and the treasure was under his hearth, and it's just something about the idea of all beings being Buddha. We think we're not. We think we're all messed up, and we don't believe it. He talks about the child of the rich house. This is a reference to the chapter in the Lotus Sutra about the son who leaves home and goes away and then comes back, wanders back many years later and is recognized by the king. And the king recognizes him, but it takes quite a struggle to get him to believe that he has all this wealth that is his. And this is also kind of like we have this treasure already.

[15:40]

It's already here, right now. And it's there for our use. But words are cheap. The chorus of us circling through the six worlds is that we are on the dark paths of ignorance, dark path upon dark path treading. That's always stayed with me. I must be in some kind of darkness thing, because I really like this image of a dark path upon dark path treading. I see this kind of image. But what this, you know what they say, dark paths of ignorance. One in the Hindu philosophy, they used the term Maya, Maya, and meaning that's about illusion,

[16:41]

which of what we are in, it's like a dream. And what we're here is being covered with illusion. Interesting thing in the root of the word, or the use of the word Maya, is also the word they use for art, painting, sculpture. That's what makes Sanskrit really a pretty neat language. When you think about what is painting, what is sculpture, it's illusion. Another interesting thing, I teach Buddhist art, so I usually teach the Hindu cosmology at the beginning of it. Buddha's mother, Buddha's mom, her name was Maya. And that's always kind of struck me. I don't know if it's just coincidence, I don't think so. But here Shakyamuni said, when Darther, the prince, was born of someone whose name

[17:45]

was ignorance, which is also used as an illusion, Maya. I won't get into that too much, but this thing of treading the dark path after dark path of ignorance in the dream. We have that song back from the 50s, I guess, Life is but a Dream. And so we are trying to wake up. The word Buddha itself means awake. So we come to Nizendo to try to wake up sometimes. Sometimes we go to sleep, more asleep. This dark path after dark path, the idea of dreams

[18:47]

is kind of fascinating also. There's been a lot of poetry written about dreams. And sometimes they tell one of the most famous ones is Zhuangzi's butterfly poem. Zhuangzi, I guess you all know, if you don't know, he was a great Taoist teacher, 5th century Chinese. And he wrote that last night I dreamt I was a butterfly. And I woke up and then I wondered if I was dreaming of the butterfly or was the butterfly dreaming of me? That poem has always been very helpful to me. Who's dreaming who? Is Buddha dreaming you? Are you dreaming Buddha? And then there's some poems

[19:49]

about dreaming, of dreaming and telling somebody of a dream. And then this dream telling about a dream goes on and on like this. And some of those images also kind of get into infinite type of images. I used to remember, do they still have that pet milk can with the, there's a cow on the can and on the cow there's a can around the cow's neck hanging on a strap. And on that can there's a cow and it goes on. I was fascinated with that. They used to give out samples and I remember I had this little pet milk can sample, little tiny thing, like a toy, you know. And I used to sit around and look at that cow and kind of get lost. And then I started going to barber shops. That's even more, you get into the barber shops. I guess the barber shop are only the old-fashioned ones that are like,

[20:58]

no, [...] no. It's kind of this endless illusion, endless Maya, that we're in. And it's skipping to the end now. I'm not going to be able to go over one of these lines. We could go on for ten weeks on this. This is such a wonderful, I actually recommend it so much if you haven't read it. Because it covers all of Buddhism. And just a short, I don't know how many lines, but not many. And it's all there. Another one of my favorites.

[22:00]

Straight runs the way. Not two, not three. When I, I was brought to this temple by Suzuki Roshi's book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I came here to buy a copy. But the reason I wanted to buy a copy, I read a blurb, sort of like pre-publication advertisement they put out on poster form. And there was a quote from the book and it said, I didn't look it up, I should have the exact quote, I hate to paraphrase, but something like, our practice is like a straight iron rail going off into infinity. And I saw that image when I read that and I said, that's what I want to do. I didn't, I still am not quite sure

[23:04]

why that showed me the idea of this. It almost gave me kind of a chilly feeling. Oh my God. And this iron path, hard, cold, and you take it, just go off. Didn't seem very exciting. Wasn't promised me any kind of Buddha nature or anything at all, just said, our practice is like a straight iron rail. And I guess there's something like Hakun says this here, not two, not three. And maybe that drew me to decide to do this single rail going. So. I mentioned this to Kobin Chino quite a few years later when I was at Tassajar. And then he, you know, he smiled and he said, but you know, he said, you take that rail,

[24:05]

you go, you go and go. And then eventually you come back. Oh. That's Kobin. So maybe he saw what I was kind of desiring, this getaway, take this rail off into infinity. Oh, wonderful. I can escape now. No. But it does describe the practice. And it's one. Taking as form the form of no form. Going or returning he's ever at home. Taking as thought the thought of no thought. Singing and dancing all is the voice of truth.

[25:07]

Wide is the heaven of boundless Samadhi. Radiant the full moon of the fourfold wisdom. What remains to be sought? Nirvana is clear before him. This very place, the lotus paradise. This very body of the Buddha. Thank you.

[25:39]

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