This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. So, happy summer solstice, which we'll celebrate in a little while. in the courtyard with Abbott Ed. And while we're on the subject of people we're celebrating with, I want to say that this is the, today, the summer solstice, is the last day of a six-week practice period that Shinki, Mark, over there in the doorway, and I have been co-leading.

[01:00]

And I want to thank Abbott Ed and senior Dharma teachers Blanche and Paul for their support during this practice period. Thank you for inviting us and thank you for supporting us. And I also want to thank the Tanto, the head of practice, Rosalie Curtis, who may not have been able to fit into this room. Oh, there you are. Hi. Anshin, peaceful heart, Rosalie Curtis, who's been so supportive, and our kind of affinity group leaders and supporting teachers, Conan and Aaron, who are sitting together over here. Thank you so much. And the participants, both the ones in this room, and the ones who are watching via live stream or blissfully sleeping or out enjoying the first day of summer.

[02:05]

Everyone. And I want to thank the residents for supporting the practice period, the commuters who commute in and help take care of the temple with presence and practice. And I also want to thank the new people. and the people who support with Beginner's Mind, and the people who support by answering the phone, by taking the reservations and making sure that classes and other events can happen, by cooking the food, by enthusiastically leading the volunteers, and by taking care of... cats and dogs and people and work and just all the things that go into an event of this type. That all said, you know, don't you just hate it when you read a book and you're trying to read the book and the person is going on and on about the acknowledgements?

[03:16]

It's just kind of lame, but, you know, but it's true. It's actually true. It couldn't happen. if it weren't for everyone's enthusiastic participation and support. So, that said. This practice period, we've been working with the theme of come as you are. And in particular, we've been trying to cultivate a fertile field. for the understanding of our daily life through the practice of loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic or empathetic joy, and equanimity. So for the people who have not actually been in the room or heard all the talks so far, our story so far is that those four practices of friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity

[04:24]

are some of the foundation practices of Buddhism and of Zen. Although in most fields of study in Buddhism, they're very carefully explained. And in Zen, you know, Zen tends to have a lot that's implicit and transmitted through example or because of the situation you're in. So Zen practice... Unlike this talk in which the lecturer has to blurt out all the family secrets, in most situations in Zen, you're kind of thrown in with a lot of other people who are trying something, and that's called the koan or public case or example of everyday life. The situations here are somewhat simplified. So it's easier to understand what the factors are and to practice friendliness or compassion on purpose.

[05:28]

The situation's a little simpler and easier to see because it's set up specifically for this purpose. But having introduced these practices, Some of us in the practice period, the online participants in particular, were speaking on Tuesday about these four practices. And one of the participants, who's in the Southwest, said, equanimity is being presented as the fourth out of four, the culmination of the three others. But isn't it necessary? for friendliness, compassion, and sympathetic joy? Don't you have to have equanimity for those practices even to make sense to you and be accessible to you as purposeful practices?

[06:33]

And so I realize that we haven't yet, with the exception of Marx's Sashin talk yesterday, but we haven't yet really talked about the holographic nature of these positive practices, nor have we talked so much about the relationship of these practices to the two main arms of Zen practice, wisdom and compassion. So Mark introduced it yesterday, but today I'd like to speak on the same theme. And so the basic theme of this talk, and the title I thought for it is, It is just us, the mirror, the mirror. So it is just us comes from a poem by Tozan Ryokai, who's one of the kind of root teachers of this school of Zen.

[07:39]

And Tozan Ryokai was a very talented child. who was early recognized by a teacher as having potential. He went to study with one teacher and finished his studies with that teacher, and then that teacher sent him to another teacher to continue. The teacher he got sent to was named Yunyan. And so Dongshan, or Tozan, studied with Yunyan, or Umung, for a long time. And at a certain point in his practice, the teacher, Yunyan, decided that they were done. And he told Tozan that it was time. And Tozan said... Basically, I imagine him saying something like, Oh. But when he had absorbed

[08:44]

that it's time. He said, in future years, when someone asks me how I remember you, or what's the most important thing by which I remember you, what should I say? And Yun Yan said, just this, just this. And Tozan didn't understand. And Yunyan continued, now that you have it, please take care of it well. And Tozan, Dongshan, still didn't understand. He was very puzzled. And at midnight,

[09:46]

Yunyan gave him the transmission, gave Dongshan the transmission, and he still didn't understand. Now, this is normal. But then, after he had packed up his rucksack, Tozan did, Dongshan did, he packed up his rucksack and started on his way out the temple gate. The first thing that happened was that he crossed a stream and his reflection shone up at him. And, you know, he had an enormous waking up experience. And he said, this is a translation or interpretation, interpretive translation of his poem based on one that Suzuki Roshi made. he looked at what just had happened and he said, oh, don't see the world or yourself as an object or far from it you stray.

[11:00]

Today, I walk alone. Whichever way I turn, I meet myself. He is just me. though I am not he. If you understand that you as an object is not you yourself, then you have your own true way. So I am just he. He is not me. So later, he wrote a long poem, or this poem is attributed to him. It's not certain whether he actually wrote it or whether it's a collection of his teachings compiled by future generations who attribute it to him.

[12:07]

But our tradition is that Dongshan wrote this poem. It's called The Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi. And we... have recited it only once this practice period. So probably the practice period participants have memorized it as little as everyone else in the room. But you can find it on San Francisco Zen Center's website. There's a section on daily chants and sutras where you can find it. And you can also find it in the chat book that we use every day. And I believe we chant it on... Thursdays? I believe we chanted on Thursdays or here. Yeah. So if you want to hear the poem being chanted by people and chant it yourself in a group of people and dedicate that chant to the benefit of all beings, then come to morning service probably on Thursdays.

[13:12]

Okay? And you can. So... This poem is immensely wide and immensely deep, and it is about the ways in which reality and ourselves interact, the ways in which wisdom and compassion interact. And it's written in a kind of a coded language that takes a while to understand, but I think the beginning of the poem and a few phrases can be very easily understood. So I'll just read a little bit of it. The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it, so keep it well. Now you have it, so keep it well.

[14:17]

hiding a heron in the moonlight. Taken as similar, they're not the same. When you mix them, you know where they are. So if somebody were to fill a silver bowl with snow, and you could see the beautiful brightness of the silver and the beautiful shiny sparkliness of the snow, Sparkliness is a quality that snow and silver share. But if you say, oh, those are sparklies, you know the difference between snow and the bowl that the snow is in. No one has to teach you that they're different. You just know. And the same, you know, if you see a heron, And if you don't have associations, like we have an association about a heron, a blue heron who comes to the courtyard and dines on the fish in the fountain.

[15:26]

So we have an association. So when we think heron, we think fountain, perhaps. But if you don't have those associations, and forget I ever told you about the fountain. But if you don't have those associations and you see the beautiful moonlight color of a heron and the beautiful moonlight color of moonlight, you'd say, oh, moonlight color is shared by both. But you know the difference between a heron and a moon. One flies across the other, right? The moon never flies in front of a heron that I've seen, usually, in usual life, right? And it says, it is like facing a jewel mirror.

[16:29]

Form and image behold each other. You are not it. In truth, it is you. And there are some other sections to this that you might like easily. Like... I'll read some later if I have time. But, you know, those phrases about what it's like, it means that between ultimate reality or... it, and relative or conventional reality, which is us or this. They're relationships. We can tell the difference between the ultimate and the relative. We can tell the difference between things. But they all share the taste of ultimate reality.

[17:34]

In truth, ultimate reality... flowers and bears fruit as this, as sound, as food, as summer, you know? And we can tell the difference between things, but everything shares the same nature 100% and all the way through. And so that brings us to... and why it's not just the culmination of the four divine abidings, friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, but why it's kind of a foundation for all of them as well. It's holographic. It includes the others. So the definition of upeksha is... impartiality or equality.

[18:38]

But we could also see it as the ability of us to access the quality of great or big. We say big mind, small mind. Big mind meaning this, small mind meaning us. And how do we access big mind? Well, if some things are good to us, only good to us and some things are only bad to us, or if some things are only bright to us and other things are only dark to us, then the world is divided up. But if we understand that the brightness or shadowedness or the smallness or largeness of things is an expression of one nature, one ultimate nature, It's not that there's a thing that we can point to because things really are different. But if we understand how everything arises from possibility, possibility, then how we treat it, even though the skill that we have to use to approach everything is different,

[20:01]

there's a quality of acceptance and a quality of response rather than reaction that we can find. Hope it's making sense so far. So upeksha, equanimity, is the gateway to the quality of greatness in everyday life. So... I'm also indebted to somebody here in San Francisco who asked yesterday, well, equanimity, doesn't that make everything flat? You know? Doesn't that make everything the same? And I would like to point to, there's a couple poems that Leanne had some books that she lent to me once, and this was in one of them. Calvin Luther Martin's The Way of the Human Being. And In the first chapter of that book, the author writes about some Navajo poems, some ancient Navajo poems.

[21:07]

So let's just listen to this voice for a moment. With beauty before me, I walk. With beauty behind me, I walk. With beauty above me, I walk. With beauty below me, I walk. From the east, beauty has been restored. From the south, beauty has been restored. From the west, beauty has been restored. From the north, beauty has been restored. From the zenith of the sky, beauty has been restored. From the nadir of the earth, beauty has been restored. From all around me, beauty has been restored.

[22:08]

Do you hear it? The unique breeze of reality. Can you hear it? Here's another Navajo... voice the mountains I become part of it the herbs the fir tree I become part of it the morning mists the clouds the gathering waters, I become part of it. The wilderness, the dew drops, the pollen, I become part of it.

[23:13]

So, equanimity is not flat. Equanimity is joyful and appreciative and continuous And healing, it heals us and it heals the earth. But it's the part of the social emotions in which it's natural or easy to access the quality of the great from the small. So let's... Look at the equanimity hidden in compassion, for instance. And so what I'm contrasting here is compassion or great compassion. You understand? Equal or equanimous, is that even a word?

[24:18]

Equal compassion or impartial compassion? So ordinary compassion... can arise from the absence of aversion towards pain, right? But great compassion not only doesn't avert from pain, but also it has no ignorance. It's completely wise. Do you have a feeling for the difference? Where ordinary compassion... I see you, some you, and you're in pain, and I don't avert from that. I feel empathy towards it instead. But with great compassion, not only don't I avert from you, but I understand and know your pain. It's not just a generalized feeling.

[25:20]

It's understanding or wisdom about... So, you know, compassion is kind of, let's say, it's not one-dimensional, but let's say it has the dimension of realizing the truth of suffering and empathizing with it in another human being. But great compassion does not just realize the truth of suffering, but realizes that suffering has a beginning and has an end. and how it ends. That's why it's great. Great compassion holds within it the possibility of great freedom. It doesn't destroy the boundaries between oneself and another person. It transcends them. Ordinary compassion, you can have compassion for a person or a thing.

[26:25]

an animal. But in great compassion, the subject is not one person, but all people, all beings, the whole world, above me, below me, behind me, in front of me, you know, in all the directions. You know, in service, when we chant, the chants, we say, all Buddhas, ten directions, three times. all beings, bodhisattvas who are great beings, who are awakening beings, mahasattvas who are realized beings, wisdom beyond wisdom. So that's shorthand for above me, below me, to the left of me, to the right of me, forward of me, behind me, I walk, I give. anything positive from this chant, I give, I receive, I give, I receive, I give.

[27:33]

Equanimity means you're not just concerned with what's in front of you, you're concerned with what's behind you, above you, below you, preceding you, beyond you, now. All of those dimensions are included in great equanimity, in great anything. And equanimity is the quality of impartiality. It's not like, okay, I really love the present, but forget about the past. You know? But the past is the present. You can't forget about the past. You can dedicate the past or transform the past. Same. I really love... the people on my right, they're all going to get M&Ms, but the people on my left are going to get lumps of coal. You know? It's like, what's the point? Right? If we're interested in great awakening, we have to develop a great mind.

[28:39]

And so, not to belabor or take too much time. How am I doing on time, by the way? Anyone know? Ten minutes? Okay, great. But, this quality of knowing and being known, it's not a static quality like, I know you. It's not like that. It's a quality of gentle and kind of touching human inquiry. Like, what just happened? Or like, what's happening now? Or like, how are you, really? So it's gentle, it's touching, it's human. Or like, I like Paul Kivel's question, if I really knew you, I would know. If you really knew me, you would know.

[29:44]

The kind of inquiry that creates a sense of safety and harmony among people. So it says, The meaning is not in the words, but a pivotal moment brings it forth. Let's see. No, it says in this translation, the meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse. Okay? What is? subtly included within the true inquiry and response come up together. It's like, you know, when Dogen, the founder of our school in Japan, met his teacher, Ru Jing, in China. Ru Jing said, the Japanese words for it are, Kano Doko.

[30:46]

Kano is the intimate communion between Buddha's and sentient beings. And the ability to hear this is cultivated through the practice of equality. The realization of this equality is called the great perfect mirror wisdom in which form and image behold each other. It's like you look at the world or at someone, someone or the world looks at you. You look at the ultimate, the ultimate looks at you. It doesn't just look at you. You are an expression of the ultimate, just as if the ultimate were a scientist using the gloves of you to conduct an experiment and get to know the world. But it's not that the ultimate and you or I are different from each other.

[31:50]

It's not like there's an ultimate who's a scientist standing back. So words fail. But equanimity is the study of this. The practice of equanimity is the study of this point. How do the ultimate and the relative interact? Well, you know, if we look at any one of us any one of us sits down, sits still, and sits for a long time, what we will find is not what we expect. You know? We'll find possibility. We'll find responsiveness beyond our definition of ourself. Or if the ultimate world sits for long enough, what it develops is... Us, trees, seasons, tatami mats, and so on.

[32:52]

But a tatami mat is just a tatami mat. It's not some other thing. The ultimate is just the ultimate. It's not some other... It's not a thing called the ultimate that we can hang up in our room after seshin, right? It's not like that at all. after we sit for a long time. We're not going to get like an ultimate certificate that then we can carry around with us. Okay, the ultimate, I have seen it. It is mine. Not like that. Ultimate is more like, you know, one of my practice buddies and I were talking about cats and dogs yesterday. Ultimate is more like a cat. It's not like a dog. And then we were talking about, well, how do you train a cat? I was talking about puppy training, puppy training with delusion.

[33:57]

So when I'm deluded, one of the things I do is, and that's every moment of every day, basically. So when I'm deluded, I hold my delusion up to my face and I go, no. It's not that... the delusion is bad, it's just not ultimately where I want to be. So, no. That's a mirror. No. That's puppy training. But how do you train a cat? You know? It's more like training a cat. So we were talking about, well, what do you do? So I leave you with that koan. How do you train the cat of the truth of ultimate, the coexistence of ultimate and relative life?

[35:04]

You know, what will you do? Now you have it, so keep it well. Good luck with that. And I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with it because, you know, what I do with it, it hasn't covered the whole situation so far. There's plenty of ultimate and relative truth left over that I have not fathomed. So I look forward to seeing how you work with it. So I'd like to... Just think about another little bit of this poem, which is what happens when this is realized. And I think there's a story about an archer who was studying with a teacher.

[36:09]

Thank you. Have fun in the kitchen. So his name was Yi. And he had the skill of a great archer, and he could hit a target at 100 paces. He could get a bullseye. But one day, he shot as his teacher. And the story doesn't say whether this was on purpose. whether the teacher had said, no, one time too many, maybe, or whether it was by accident. Ah, oh no, there goes the arrow. Oh no. But the teacher whipped out his bow and shot the arrow and it pierced exactly the point of his student's arrow and both arrows fell to earth. Okay, and another example of this story is

[37:11]

It doesn't sound like it's the same story, but one day Coben was teaching archery. Coben Chino Roshi, who is a great, great practice friend of ours here at San Francisco Zen Center. A human, funny, devoted, wise, sometimes infuriating person who was such a amazing teacher. But in this story, he was teaching archery. He set himself up perfectly. It took a while. And then he whipped around and shot an arrow into the middle of the sea and said, perfect. That's the other side. And in the poem it said... Ye, with his archer's skill, could hit a target at a hundred paces.

[38:13]

But when arrow points mead head on, what has this to do with the power of skill? When the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up dancing. It's not within reach of feeling or discrimination. How could it admit of consideration in thought? In other words, our thoughts don't reach it. But a wooden man... sings, and a stone woman dances. So that's a very happy moment indeed. So I just want to say equanimity, the understanding of this greatness, is not flat. It's responsive, equally responsive, equally present, equally admitting, equally resolved. And because of that, the mind and the body have the ability to appreciate and be a suitable vessel for big mind, at least for a moment.

[39:24]

Practice secretly, working within like a fool, like an idiot, just to continue in this way. is called the host within the host. So thank you very much for your attention, and let's enjoy summer. Okay? Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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