I've really gotten used to sitting at my dining room table talking into a computer screen. I've not only gotten used to it, but I've really come to be grateful. Grateful that we could continue connecting with one another and to continue to share our affection for the Buddhist teaching and practice. So along with everyone, pretty much all around the world, Green Gulch has been honoring the protocols for safety, for health and safety. And now, thanks to vaccines and to wearing masks and keeping our distance from one another, little by little, we have been able to welcome other people who haven't been living here with us back into the valley.

[01:03]

It's quite exciting, actually, to be doing that. Yesterday, we started a practice period. There's 24 of us in the practice period who will be living together here at Green Gulch for about two months. And then we have the residential staff as well who are supporting this practice. So first of all, I wanted to welcome all of you in the practice period. Some of you have been here for quite a while already. I think a couple of you have been here for over a year, maybe almost two. And then some of you are only here for a few days. But here we are. We are making a practice period together. But I also want to welcome those of you who are joining us online. And I think I might be looking at you right now. Right straight ahead here. Looks like ET. This is the commitment that Green Gulch has made to continuing our relationship with the Great Assembly.

[02:08]

You know, all of those who found their way to join our practice from all parts of the world, really. And we're really grateful for the encouragement we've gotten to continue that relationship. And so I think that's our plan to do that. Thanks to GoPro and the magic of the World Wide Web. So. I think much like our abundant and near relatives, the fungi, we are beginning to link to one another in a more and more intricate weave of relationships. So this morning, I want to use this time to tell you what I had in mind for our practice period about the theme and about how it might help us to connect. Not only to each other, but... perhaps even more deeply into ourselves, all the parts of ourselves, getting to know them, getting to know ourselves deeply and well, or what that part of ourselves that Zen Master Leonard Cohen calls our secret life. So first of all, the theme of the practice period.

[03:13]

When I was asked by the Zen Center Programming Department what I would be teaching this fall, at that time I had been studying one of our Chinese Zen ancestors, His name is Shirto Shi-chan, in Japanese, Sekito Gisen. And I'd been told that this was Suzuki Roshi's favorite Zen ancestor. In fact, at the end of his life, I think about a year and a half before he died, Suzuki Roshi gave 12 lectures down at Tassahara on Shirto's teaching. And those lectures were then collected and transcribed and made into a book called Branching Streams, Flow in the Darkness. You can actually listen to those lectures online. I did that yesterday. It's amazing. So here's Suzuki Roshi teaching. And along with that, you can hear the sound of the crickets and the Tassajara Creek flowing by. It's quite amazing. There's a website called kuk.com, C-U-K-E, which represents the nickname that Suzuki Roshi's teacher gave to him when he was a young mump.

[04:24]

He called him Crooked Cucumber. So kuk.com, but also the San Francisco Zen Center website has those lectures as well. So I think what was really moving to me during the time I was studying shirto, I was reading and listening to Suzuki Roshi's talks, was that living thread of connection that I felt to those Zen teachers long, long ago, long before I was born, before my parents were born, who just like me, and just like you, have been longing for an end to our suffering. As the Buddha himself said, I teach two things. I teach suffering, and I teach the end of suffering. I think suffering, as we all know, comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes. There's our personal suffering, and then there's our institutional suffering. which I got a chance to talk about quite a bit with our board of directors all day yesterday.

[05:28]

There's national suffering and environmental, cultural, emotional, physical suffering. And as living beings, I think at one time or another, we will all most likely pass through them all. And some of you may be doing that right now. So finding a pathway for not only meeting people, our suffering, but lessening the suffering is the challenge that we face throughout our life. And for that reason, there are many clues that have been passed down to us by our Buddha ancestors about the pathway. What it is, how to find it, clues in the form of stories, stone carvings, paintings, statuary, temples, and even of clothing. And right there in the middle of our room, in the main altar, is a statue of Manjushri Bodhisattva, the Bodhisattva of wisdom.

[06:29]

And there in front of him is Shakyamuni Buddha, both of them sitting upright in meditation posture. So that's a clue. That's a big clue. And next to me over here are Jizo and Tara, Bodhisattvas of compassion, poised to respond to the cries of the world, which is what bodhisattvas do in the buddha's first sermon he talked about a pathway that he had found following a very long period of asceticism and of meditation and he discovered that pathway for himself and surprisingly i think for me and for maybe all of us that pathway isn't about going somewhere and it's not about going somewhere else it's about carefully studying who we are, how we think, how we feel, what we see, what we believe, and how we behave in the world.

[07:31]

In other words, the Buddha discovered the pathway, and it begins on the inside of ourselves, starting at the bottom of our feet and going up and out through the top of our heads. And it tingles as it moves. I think you can feel that right now, the tingling. We're alive. That's another big clue. So from this small corner of the world where we are sitting right now, here at Green Gulch Farm in the year 2021, we can study the elements of the path using these clues that the ancestors have left to us to help guide us as we sit, as we walk, and especially as we meet one another along the path. Some of those elements, like Shurto's teaching, will require us to engage in thinking, in pondering, and in inquiring.

[08:34]

Those are the wisdom teachings. Other teachings ask us to engage with our feelings, our concern for others, our longing for connection and for love. Those are the compassion teachings. And there's still others, teachings that... show us how to make good use of our bodies for work, for meditation, for growing our skills, for rest, and for play. The story of Shurto's Awakening, which is found in a classic Soto Zen text called The Transmission of Light, a collection by Kezan Jokin, who is a third-generation descendant from Dogen Zenji, is a wisdom teaching. These are wisdom teachings. Wisdom in the service of compassion. So one of the things that I like best about Shurto's Awakening story was that his realization about himself and about the world had come to him in a dream.

[09:38]

And in that dream, Shurto saw himself riding on a sea turtle with his sixth Chinese Zen ancestor, Hui Nong. Just the two of them there. giant sea turtle. And the turtle was riding on the great ocean of reality itself. Now, how fun is that? So I don't know about all of you, but there certainly have been a couple of very powerful dreams that I've had in my life that changed the course of my life. And I actually believe brought me here. So I would say that the theme of the practice period is really about the course of our lives, you know, that brought us here to this place at this time. And that also where we're going to go next. So it's about the path and about the choices that we make along the way. Branching streams flow in the darkness. In order to help us making those choices, hopefully good choices.

[10:46]

These wisdom teachings were left by the Buddhists and ancestors out of their great compassion for helping us to find the way. So one such teaching is the Sandokai, Sandokai, the poem that Shirto wrote after he awoke from his dream. So that's what I'm going to be talking about this morning and for the next eight weeks as we travel this pathway together. Cherto refers to this in one of the last verses of his poem. If you don't understand the way right before you, how will you know the path as you walk? If you don't understand the way right before you, how will you know the path as you walk? Progress is not a matter of far or near, but if you are confused, mountains and rivers block your way. I respectfully urge you who study the mystery, Do not pass your days and nights in vain.

[11:48]

That last line is on the Han. I don't know if you've noticed that. But right there on the Han, that many of you will be hitting during the practice period. Do not pass your days and nights in vain. Awake, awake. Don't waste your life. The title of Shurto's poem, Sandokai, has been translated into English in a number of different ways. using harmony of difference and equality, but there is also the identity of the ultimate and the relative, or the harmony of the many, the many and the one. So in beginning to study this teaching together, I thought it would be useful to tell you how the Buddha understands the way that we learn things and how we study. In fact, learning things and knowing things was Shurto's specialty too. He knew a lot. And it was a very important part of the story of his awakening. So the first step in how we learn things, and in this case, we're talking about the truth or the Dharma as taught by the Buddha, is called Shrittamai Prajna.

[13:00]

Prajna. Prajna means wisdom. And Shritta means hearing or listening. Shrittamai Prajna, the wisdom that comes from hearing. So right now, You are hearing me talk about the Dharma. And some part of you already knows what that is. It's already familiar to you. That familiar part is your innate wisdom. You and I were born with wisdom and born from wisdom. And it's the wisdom that brought us here to study and to practice the Buddhist teaching. Even though wisdom that we're born with is somehow recognized, we recognize it, it calls to us. It's like a familiar face. However, the face is in a kind of ancient and dusty mirror. It's not so clear. And we still think it's coming from outside of ourselves, from somewhere or from someone else.

[14:04]

Thus have I heard, as Ananda said of the Buddha's teaching, thus have I heard. The second type of wisdom or learning is called Chintamai Prajna. Prajna, again, wisdom, meaning the wisdom that comes from study. I think a lot of us have spent a great deal of our lives studying various things. All through school, we were taught many things, and then we were tested on those things to see if we had remembered any of it, at least long enough to take the test. So this wisdom of study is the work that we do. as though inside of ourselves. You know, the work of writing things down, of reading, memorizing, chanting, questioning, and pondering. So as part of our practice period, part of the schedule, we have an hour of time each day for all of us to sit together quietly and study the teaching. Chintamaya Prajna.

[15:05]

So studying these teachings and finding questions of your own, either for me or for the other teachers who are here or for each other. That's one of the things that we're here to do, you know, ponder. The third type of learning is the wisdom of becoming. Bhavanamaya, prashna, prashna, wisdom. Becoming wisdom. Following a somewhat lengthy period of hearing and studying, we may find... that we have become somewhat magically the Buddhist teaching, you know, that we give beneficial answers to our friends without knowing where those answers are coming from, without knowing how this all works. There's a saying I remember hearing when I first came to Zen Center quite a number of years ago now, and then I began my own prolonged period of study. Someone said, well, when the Zen saying, when the student is ready,

[16:07]

The teacher appears. And I remember thinking, oh, I want to be ready when the teacher comes. I want to be ready for that. It never occurred to me that I would be sitting here talking like I'm doing today. That is trying to encourage all of you in any way that I can to come up here and do this yourselves. And yet that's what the Buddha meant for us to do. This is a teaching lineage. Maha-Kashapa smiled at the Buddha, and the Buddha smiled back, warm hand to warm hand, generation after generation, for 2,500 years, passing the good news along from one to the next for the benefit of all beings. So if the first type of wisdom is hearing, coming as if from outside, and the second is study, that silent working within, Then the third type of wisdom is the offering of what is on the inside out.

[17:13]

And with that, the wheel of the Dharma turns once again. So listening, studying, becoming. Listening, studying, becoming. So once we learn, then we learn and then we teach. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. When the teacher is ready, the student appears. A few Sundays ago, September 21st, I spoke about Shurto's enlightenment story. And as I said then, one of the main features of his story has to do with the sequence of learning and how at the end of his studies, there was still another important step for him to take. The one, as the Zen saying goes, is off the top of a 100-foot pole. So if climbing the pole and accumulating knowledge is important to us and to our life as students of the Dharma, it's what we learn on the way down that really matters.

[18:24]

Once we jump, there's another Zen saying, the secret is in learning how to fly. So as I also said in that earlier lecture, Shurto's own search for awakening had crystallized over many years into an intellectual understanding of the Dharma centered in the region of his head. The place where we say, well, I know, I know that. And it seems to be that it was quite a ways from his heart. So Shurto was confident in his understanding of the Dharma as he met with, and indeed he challenged, Master Sagan Gyoshi, who would soon become his teacher. During their meeting, Shurto gave quick and clever answers to each of the questions that Sagan threw at him. Questions like, where are you from? To which Shurto shot back, from the place of the sixth ancestor. This way he established his credentials, like one of us letting people know that we got our doctorates at Harvard.

[19:34]

And then Sagan says to him, holding up his whisk, do they have this at the six ancestors' place? No, said Sheraton. Not at his place. Not even in India. In this way, he established his intellectual understanding that whatever it is that's being asked about has got to be right here and right now, at the place where he is. Next question, Sagan... is starting to close in on him. He says, well, you haven't been to India, have you? And Shurto replies, no, but if I had, it would be there. So I don't know if you can hear Shurto's confidence or not, but that's the part that Sagan, out of great compassion, continues to close in on. So then he says to the young man, that's enough. Now say more. That's enough.

[20:39]

Now say more. Not able to find another foothold for himself intellectually, Sherto challenges back. You too should say a half teacher. Don't rely on me. So what happens next in this story is Sherto's awakening by not another exchange of words, but when Sagan is holding up his whisk, This talking then stops, and he hits Sherto in the face with the whisk. I think it was kind of gentle. And Kezan, who's the author of Transmission of Light, says that this whisk, since ancient times, was used to give a clue or to initiate an action that would make a student abandon sidetracks by giving them an immediate instruction, right here and right now, just as he did in his case. And with that, Shurto was greatly enlightened.

[21:40]

In that moment of sensory experience, the train of Shurto's thought immediately ground to a halt. Sagan has helped him to know his original mind, his original head, his true nature, and thereby to experience this great awakening. Just this is it. Just this is it. Wow. This story is a really good example of the Zen tradition, in the Zen tradition of performing enlightenment. Zen really is performance art. The stage set, the costuming, the lighting, all very good. This is a performance of intimacy and of immediacy with this place and with these people who we are with right now. So without the benefit of a sound or a thought or a gesture, we're all right here, right now together. It's amazing.

[22:42]

How is it possible? Nobody knows. Kezan then tells us that Chirito's Great Awakening took place in two stages, very much including the three stages of learning that I mentioned just a moment before. The first stage is called the stage of vision. Pretty good vision, pretty good understanding. And this stage includes both the teaching of listening and of studying. Studying, śrttamai prajna, chintamai prajna. Stage of vision. And this is what he was demonstrating when he first met with his Zen teacher, Sagan. And he does, it's when Sagan is doing a lot of, Shurto is doing a lot of clever talking. Stage of vision. And the next stage, the stage of being or becoming the Dharma, Bhavanamai Prajna, takes place when the master hits him with a whisk. No more talking. Stop it.

[23:50]

The Sandokai, which Shurto had written after his dream of the sea turtle, contains these same teaching elements as well. The same teaching elements that the Buddha gave to his students, the five ascetics, shortly after his own awakening, a teaching called The Two Truths. The truth of what we know and the truth of what we are. Sea turtles of knowledge and oceans of reality. These two truths are foundational to an understanding of not only Shurto's poem, but of our life itself. When the Dalai Lama was asked, what's the best place for a beginner to start studying the Dharma. He replied, the teaching of the two truths. So I'm not one to argue with the Dalai Lama. So here's a little bit more about the teaching of the two truths as they appear in the story of Shurto's dream of awakening. What Shurto himself understood from his own dream was that the ocean of reality represented the inconceivable, immeasurable, ineffable

[25:00]

an all-inclusive process of creation itself, also known as the ultimate truth or the source. And that the six ancestor and himself riding on the sea turtle of knowledge in their awakened state were like great round mirrors, perfectly reflecting that reality in every moment. Sometimes thinking what is reflected is good. Sometimes thinking what's reflected is bad. But either way, the mirror and its reflections never miss. Just this is it. So that's the relative truth. The truth about our relationships, our interconnectedness, and our intellectual understanding of our true identity as the all-inclusive ocean of reality itself. The great mother of all the Buddhas. When Shurto went on to write his poem about his understanding, he entitled the poem San Do Kai, meaning, as I said earlier, the merging or harmonizing of these two truths, of the ocean with the turtle, with the people, with the sea birds, with the sky, with all things.

[26:15]

San means literally three in Japanese, or many things, and Do means sameness or one, oneness. as in one's whole being, as in the great mind or the all-inclusive mind of the Buddha. So although we talk and talk and talk about many things, those things are all part of one whole being, as is talking itself. In one of the many talks on the Sandokai that Suzuki Roshi gave, he said that many and the one are different ways to describe one whole being, To completely understand the relationship between one whole being and the many facets of the one whole great being is kai. Sando kai. Kai means to shake hands, as in a feeling of friendship. The feeling that the two of us are one, which is truly what we are. Sando kai.

[27:17]

So again, these teachings from the Buddha through the Zen ancestors are encouraging us to study the teachings. the sea turtle, to study ourselves as we're riding on the back of the turtle, and to study the ocean itself, all-inclusive awareness, both while we're awake and in our dreams. The two truths are not something we need to learn, but simply the way we are. Each of us is a unique part of the whole, as Schurto says in his poem, expressed according to function and place. My function this morning, right now, is being expressed by sitting here and talking to you. And soon I'm going to get down from this seat and I'm going to walk back over there to the altar. And I'm going to bow three times in gratitude to those images on our altar of Shakyamuni Buddha and Manjushri Bodhisattva. In great gratitude for this practice and for these teachings and for all of us.

[28:23]

Practicing together. Yesterday, those of you in the practice period expressed your practice by sitting together in this room all day long. Giving yourselves time and space to consider your intention toward each other and toward the world. And especially to reflect on the silence and the stillness at the core of our existence. It's always there. silently, waiting for us to visit. Not just to visit, but also to dance, just as the young prince did as he sat under the Bodhi tree, and just as Shurto did as he floated on the back of a turtle with the sixth ancestor, a Buddha with a Buddha. Once we, too, touch base with our core, our oneness and equality, we can reflect on this tiny living world with its multitudes of suffering beings, in which each and every one of them, as different and as unique as they are, has equal value to each and every one of us.

[29:35]

This is what's meant by the harmony of difference and equality. It's what's meant by the mind of the great sage of India. Reflecting on ourselves in this way, as our practice, Suzuki Roshi calls the Buddha's mind, the big mind. That includes everything without exception. Includes our judgments, our selfishness, our anger, our lust. In other words, we cultivate a mind that doesn't mind itself at all. I don't mind. You know, please be my guest. So to close this morning, I want to share another wisdom teaching by our Japanese Zen ancestor, Dogen Zenji. Dogen greatly admired Shirtong. He comments on him in his own teaching. It was many, many hundreds of years later, that living thread. And I don't doubt that he'd heard or read the story about Shurto's awakening. The branching stream had flown on for hundreds of years from Shurto to Yaoshan, to Yaoshan, to Yunnan, Yunnan to Dongshan.

[30:44]

And then it became known as Soto Zen, ever-widening stream. The very style and understanding of the Buddhist teaching that Dogen brought back from China, where he himself had awakened on meeting his own true teacher, Ru Jing, where Dogen had learned to fly from the top of the 100-foot pole, at which time he said to Ru Jing, dropped body and mind. And to which Ru Jing replied, body and mind dropped, meaning now drop that too. This teaching that Dogen later wrote is from a famous lecture he gave called the Genjo Koan, meaning actualizing the fundamental point. Another way of saying bhavanamaya prajna, becoming the teaching, being the teaching, right now, right here in the present moment. This section of the talk is also about riding on the great ocean of reality.

[31:48]

But rather than a sea turtle, Dogen offers us a ride in a boat. When Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it's already sufficient. When Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. For example, when you sail out on a boat to the midst of an ocean where no land is in sight and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular. It doesn't look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this. Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach.

[32:52]

In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they may look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety. Whole worlds are there. It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet or even in a drop of water. Thank you very much for your kind attention. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:47]

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