This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations by people like you. Welcome to Soryuji Green Dragon Temple, Green Gulch Farm. where we're just learning a new system, and may it always be so. So it is a significant time of the year. This is the time of the winter solstice. It's been about two days. Well, one day. I know friends of mine were up on Mount Tam yesterday morning.

[01:04]

It seems kind of loud and a little bit muffled. I should speak more highly. Raise my voice. More high hand. That's too far away. Much better. All right. Thank you. Winter solstice. And it's full moon today also. High tides. And minus tides.

[02:08]

I'm reminded from time to time that not everyone knows what winter solstice means. In fact, someone at Tassajara just a couple of weeks ago asked me, what's the difference between stars and planets? I thought, okay. Here's an adult person asking a good question, which I tend to assume that... that we all know, but winter solstice is the time of the longest dark and the shortest sunlight. In the northern hemisphere, it is right at this time of year, December the 21st or 2nd. And I was just beginning to say some friends of mine, And I have been going up on Mount Tam every year, hiking, doing a dark candlelight vigil and facing towards the east on a flank of the mountain and silently waiting for the sun, for the dawn.

[03:35]

Is there anyone here who was up there yesterday? I don't see any hands. So they're all recovering. Sitting for a couple of hours in the cold, cold morning. And I did not make it up there myself this year. I just returned a few days ago from Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. Zen Shinji, Zen Mind Temple, which is one of the three places, three locations of San Francisco Zen Center. And so many of you have been to Tassajara. I know, I see a few faces of people who just came, who just finished the Ango, the practice period. How many people here have been at Tassajara?

[04:40]

Raise your hand. It looks like 25%, 30% of the gathering here. So Tassajara is in the mountains. And in the summer it's open for guests and retreats. for people to come in for short periods of time but in the fall and winter we close it for more concentrated practice and so people at Tassajara completed about 90 days of retreat and during that time we were studying various things. We were studying our own bodies, our own breaths, bringing mindful awareness to many hours of sitting in the Zen Do.

[05:47]

And we were also studying a poem written by a Zen teacher in the eighth century. And I want to talk a little bit today about some of the phrases that are in that poem. The Zen teacher is Sekito Kisen, that's the Japanese reading, Shito Shichan, maybe my poor Chinese. And the title of the poem in Japanese is San Do Kai. And in English, translated variously. Now, currently, we translate it as harmony of difference and equality. Previously, we translated it the merging of difference and unity.

[06:53]

And actually, we've reversed the characters because the san do cai. San is... multiplicity, the many. The whole phenomenal world actually is represented by the San in Sandokai. And the Do is oneness or sameness. More technically, we could say that that's noumena. in contrast to phenomena. So the sun would be phenomena and the do would be noumena. And the kai is the image of shaking hands, the image of both the one and the many being in accord, being completely in agreement.

[08:00]

And of course, this is our human attempt to understand the reality that we live in, which we can't quite fathom, actually. What we can see and what we can describe is all on the side of what we may say is the bright side. What is illuminated by... our consciousness. And there is some understanding that's behind this particular poem that there is a lot of the world that we don't fathom. That's not accessible to our senses. But we do have to understand that the world, we do have to understand our universe by our senses. by our smell and taste and touch and what we see, and by our consciousness, what we can perceive and put together in some coherent fashion with our intellect.

[09:16]

So the Sandokai actually was written at a time in China when Zen was becoming more, it's like more clearly established. Shito Shijian was eighth ancestor in our lineage, eighth ancestor in China. So this was after Buddhism moved from India to China. And it was based on how to understand Buddhist teaching actually. needed to be understood in terms that were already available. And so they used mostly Taoist terms, mostly. And in fact, Sandokai is the title of a poem that had been previously written as a Taoist text.

[10:20]

Now in the Sandokai then, so we have Sandokai, the the harmony of difference and equality, the coming together of what is actually already together. It's a recognition that in our human attempts to describe things, we separate. We separate things. And that the practice that we do This practice of Zazen, a meditation practice, is a recognition that, one way of understanding is, this is a recognition that the totality of our experience is not just contained in our mental activity. Our experience is actually including consciousness, awareness that precedes

[11:28]

our conceptual activity. In other words, what we actually notice directly with our senses before we put it into a particular framework, we recognize that that experience is perhaps closer to understanding reality than the understanding that we have with our intellect. So Sandokai puts the two together. The world that we actually separate out by our thinking minds and the world of one total reality that occurs before our thinking minds get engaged. And it confirms that both of these are actually one. There is actually one reality. Universe.

[12:29]

That's the word universe. Une means one. And in the Sandokai, in the middle of it, it has a phrase saying, in light there is darkness, but don't regard it as darkness. In darkness there is light, but don't regard it as light. Light and dark oppose one another, like the front and back foot in walking. So light and dark, in this understanding, are a little different than our usual thinking. I know if you're thinking in terms of Star Wars, the dark is the evil side, right? What is it? You know, don't go over to the dark side, Luke. But here darkness actually refers to the totality from which various things arise.

[13:39]

The darkness is understood as source. There are many things in darkness, but you don't actually know what they are. If we turned off all the lights in this room and closed the windows from the outside, It would be pretty dark. And you wouldn't be able to see anyone. You wouldn't be able to hear me. Even though you couldn't see, still many things are here. And then if you shine a light, you can pick out different faces. This is kind of the way our mind usually works, right? That we pick out, that we focus on something and that's what we see and that's what we tend to relate to. Sandokai says, in the light there is darkness, but don't regard it as darkness. So even in what we usually think of as light, there is this, say source.

[14:46]

So I was thinking about this yesterday and my brother who lives in Indiana, and I were talking on the phone in, actually, no, Southern Illinois. He lives in Carbondale, Illinois. He said, did you know there was just something reported on Reuters that there's this, in some galaxy, galaxy 3C103, something like that. 271 maybe. But anyway, in this galaxy, people are noticing there is a black hole moving through the galaxy and taking things into it. So it's actually creating a furrow of darkness through this distant galaxy. And I didn't take the time to go follow up and catch the details.

[15:51]

as we understand them. But it actually reminds me that we live illuminated here and this day in this universe, which is, you can't say, can you really say is it dark? Is it light? At night at Tassajara, the stars are particularly brilliant. In the mountains, the air is soft and clear. So every morning I've been getting up, looking up, noticing, particularly noticing Orion, which is easy and clear for me to pick out. And remembering that we are just a tiny speck. This planet Earth is just a tiny speck. in this vast universe.

[16:52]

And we can say that, but at the same time, it's pretty hard to accept. It's pretty hard to actually accept because we're always thinking in terms of ourselves. Even the solstice, we're just noticing, oh, okay, the days get shorter and darker and darker and we would maybe like things to brighten up a bit. So we have some concern. It affects our emotional state as the days get shorter and shorter. Many people notice a kind of feeling a poignancy that comes with the autumn moving towards winter. And then we put up lights and particularly cultures in the Northern hemisphere have created for centuries, many centuries have created

[18:11]

rituals and ceremonies involving light. The winter solstice is when the tilt of the earth, if this is the axis of the earth and let's see, and if my head is the sun, right? And the earth tilts like this. It's going around the sun. And when it gets over here, it's tilted the farthest away. The northern part of it is tilted the farthest away from the sun. So that's today. And as it continues around then, over here, then this is the summer solstice. when the northern part is tilted towards the sun.

[19:16]

And as it comes around here, then it's equal. Top, north pole, south pole are both equal. So that's the equinox. The spring, we have one in the spring and the other one in the fall. Yeah, in the fall. So it makes a big difference to us. And it makes a big difference to the people over here. You know, they're on the other end. So while we're having the winter solstice down in Australia, New Zealand, they're having summer solstice. It must be confusing for people who are going back and forth to go from, you can fly from winter to summer. I haven't done that, but I imagine it would be confusing. It would take my whole metabolism a few days to adjust.

[20:21]

And if I was a tree, it would probably take me a little longer to adjust. I'd get very confused, right? If I was particularly a tree that's losing its leaves, going dormant, over the winter here, and then to be suddenly taken to the opposite. I don't actually, I haven't really thought about that until now. So, the idea in the Sando Akai, well, let me just say a little more about the sun. It's a big deal. It's a bigger deal than most of us actually usually that everything in this room is sunlight. Can I think of any exceptions here? Everyone's body in this room is made of sunlight.

[21:27]

The wood here is made of sunlight. Of course, the lights Ah, yes, lights. We have a switch. You know, we switch on the lights, right? Two days ago, I came here from Tassajara, and when I went to bed, it was raining, and I woke up at my usual time, 3.20 in the morning, which is Tassajara schedule. I woke up at 3.20, and I thought, well, okay, I can do a little work on my desk. And I reached over and switched the light switch and nothing happened. And I switched it again. I thought, hmm, must be a faulty switch. I went over to another light switch and switched that one. Nothing happened. And then it occurred to me that with the storm, the rain and the wind, that there was a power outage.

[22:34]

You say power outage. and realize that we are actually so connected to a whole grid of producing light. And where does it come from? It comes from the sun. But the light that we're using here and the light that we're using in our cars to drive here is light that was captured by plants. millions of years ago. So there was a whole time, as I understand it, about 400 million years ago and for maybe 70 to 100 or more million years. Can you think of that? We can say a million years, but it's so far beyond our experience as human beings that it's not really possible to grasp. But during that time,

[23:36]

There were lots of plants who grew vigorously because everything was warm. That was a time that the globe was warm. And the plants, all these plants kept taking the carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it into their own bodies, into their leaves, into their stems. Plants can do this and we can't. We can't directly absorb the sunlight and turn it into our own bodies. So it took a long time for the plants to make our place habitable for us. And they took the carbon out of the atmosphere and put it into themselves. And later it turned, it was compressed

[24:37]

into coal and into oil. At the time the Sandokai was written, people hadn't started using coal yet, as far as I know. People started using coal about 900 years ago. And it's only been in the last 150 years or so that we've been using oil. And since we've been using oil, we've gotten quite excited about it. And they're using it more and more every day. And more and more people are getting excited. And there are more and more people supported by using oil. So this is sunlight that we are... Basically mining, you could say. We are mining sunlight as a form of coal or as a form of oil.

[25:43]

So I think of this on winter solstice. I think of how much sunlight is available for us to sustain our activity. And most of you know, I think, that a lot of what we're doing is not sustainable. not sustainable over say the next 100 years. Maybe not even for the next 20 years. We don't really know. But we do know that our human tendency is to think about our immediate comfort and not be so concerned about what's gonna happen. What are the longer term karmic consequences of that? So on winter solstice, I think of this and I think that part of our practice and teaching is to live in a way that is in harmony, the harmony of difference and equality.

[26:54]

So how can we actually live in harmony means that we take the whole into account. So it's long been an intention of Buddhist practitioners to take the whole phenomenal world into account and to live in relationship to that. So that means actually living with an open mind that actually sees things as it is. founder of San Francisco Zen Center, Suzuki Roshi liked the phrase, things as it is, because things as it is combines the San and Sandokai with the Do and Sandokai, the many and the one combined.

[28:00]

So when you see someone even, you can't really say, that you're separate, but you also can't ignore the fact that you are separate, that you each have an independent existence. So in our sitting practice, at Tassajara, we've been working with relationship. And as people left Pasahara during this time of interim to go visit families and friends and things, we were saying how to live in harmony with family and friends after being sequestered away, some 40 odd people living together very intimately for three months.

[29:10]

and now going out into a very busy world. The thought that we had was that it could actually be helpful for us just to be, to take what we have cultivated in our bodies, the peace and compassion that we've cultivated in our own bodies and minds and just take that without any particular intention. to do anything, but just to be present with others. And there were two reports. One person from previous practice periods, one person said when he went home after this practice period, he realized that he was already connected with his family and he didn't really have to do anything except be there and just be helpful. In the past, he felt that he had to, he really experienced himself as being separate from his family, and he was always getting into arguments.

[30:20]

And after being at Tassajara, he went and visited his family, and he just naturally started being helpful, washing the dishes, seeing how he could participate harmoniously. Someone else said that, They went back on a vacation from Tassajara. This was a couple of years ago. And I won't give the name of the person, but I'll say the person's name is Sally. So Sally was watching television with her parents during vacation. And then a commercial came on, an advertisement for some mood altering drug. some medication. And the father turned to Sally and said, Sally, you ought to take that. It would fix what's wrong with you. And Sally noticed that she was able to stay in the room.

[31:34]

Whereas before, a statement like that would have been so painful for her, she couldn't stand it. And she would have jumped up and ran out of the room and slammed the door. So there's something about this practice of sitting still, realizing that everything is connected, completely interconnected, and that what appears as separate is actually only one little piece of a totality. that is already being held by the totality. And so as we sit and cultivating a stability of mind that includes everything, then when something arises that seems so distressing, you may discover that now you have the capacity to be present with it. And not only that, in this case, Sally,

[32:42]

sat there and then what happened was after a while, the father said, I'm sorry I said that. So there was just some time that in some space that afforded an opportunity for listening that hadn't been there before in that in that family. And so this, we say, it's not that big a deal. It's one of the fruits of practice, we say, that naturally occur. We don't sit or zazen with the idea, oh, this is going to resolve that situation over there. But in the sitting itself, the realization of how oneness and two-ness are already included in one's body and mind, it becomes a palpable experience.

[33:55]

And over time, people become able to be present with what is and simply see things as it is. Now this, near the end of this practice period, there was an intensive seven day session. I think the people leaving are really disgusted with this talk. No, I know they're cooking lunch. Thank you for taking care of us. So there was a seven day session and in the morning we sit for one hour and in the middle of the hour, there's a little bell that rings, which is an interval, which is a chance for people to change their posture.

[35:04]

And I was sitting there, I think this was the third day of the session and I was just sitting there and the little bell rang and I'm sitting in the room facing out into the room. Most of the people are sitting facing the wall. And across from me is the altar, like this altar here with Manjushri, the figure here. Atasahara, it's not as far away. And the figure is Buddha, a stone Buddha figure with hands like this. And I just glanced up, the little bell rang and people were moving around a little bit. I glanced up and from the lap of Buddha, I saw two little eyes looking right back at me. Bright, beady, black eyes. And that changed my state of mind. I had to accept the fact that my state of mind was changed by seeing a mouse sitting in the lap of Buddha.

[36:12]

I hadn't seen a mouse there before. So we made eye contact. And then I felt some tension in my body. And I remembered when I was four or five years old, going into the corn crib. This was on a farm in Kansas and going into a corn crib and catching a mouse in my hands. And then the mouse bit me. And I let the mouse go, right? But that mouse bite, memory stayed with me, right? So seeing this mouse sitting up here in the lap of Buddha, I noticed this little tension in my body that came up. Not so sure I want to have a mouse running around. But I just continued sitting. We had another half hour of this period. And the mouse scurried all around the altar during that time, ran up and down, investigated the little flower offering, which had some grasses in it.

[37:43]

I thought maybe he's gonna eat the grass seeds And then at some point he disappeared. And I noticed someone else sitting over on the other side of the zendo jumped. So I could see kind of various people as the mouse made its way around the zendo. They kind of straightened up a little bit. But no one... No one said anything. We continued our silent sitting. And during that time, I realized that the scurrying of the mouse was part of the stillness of the zendo. That the actual, the scurrying of the mouse actually is its stillness. That the mouse running around is running around

[38:44]

in a completely peaceful universe, just doing what mice do. It was my own mind that was reacting. My own mind that was separating myself and actually trying to kind of get some emotional distance from the mouse. That was my own universe that I was creating. And it was kind of a screen in between me and the mouse. that the mouse wasn't being completely and fully received by me because I was throwing up this little screen of my own memory, my own tension. This mouse. And then I actually developed some compassion for the mouse that I'd held in my hand before. That poor little mouse. No wonder he bit me. Poor little mouse, and here's this huge giant capturing him.

[39:55]

And I felt some real sympathy and compassion for that mouse in my memory. And that also helped me to simply appreciate this mouse as something beautiful. And as completely as part, not separate, but completely part of my practice, my meditation, my field, Buddha field, we say. The Buddha field actually includes everything. And the mouse was already included before I noticed it. The mouse was included before the mouse came into the Zendo. And then actually I didn't see the mouse again the next day. So I checked with the Eno, the head of the Zendo and she said, well, we set a little trap and caught the mouse and took it across to the other side of the Creek, Tassahara Creek to the old bathhouse area.

[41:02]

Those of you who know and released the mouse over there. So the mouse, was still included, but in a different space. So we always have to, as human beings, have to contend with this matter of things popping out into our bright field from the background, the background in which everything is already present already present is something that is living now, dying now, born, to be born. And then finding our relationship. What's the appropriate relationship? Only if we can see really the whole picture and the individual

[42:10]

Only if we can see the darkness and the light can we actually understand how to respond appropriately. When we see the darkness and the light together and we actually can go back and forth and we have enough, say, calmness, which would be the darkness in our own body, that we have this wide field of experience that's very stable and include everything that pops up. Then we can actually meet each other. Not just the, say, the bright face of each other, but also the unknown in each other. So just as the Sally's father said, okay, now I'm sorry for what I said.

[43:14]

There's this sense that they could appreciate what was hidden in each other. They might actually be afraid of what was hidden in each other. But now, with some calmness of mind, be able to stay in the room and see each other. This is a big challenge for people actually, to be able to stay in the room, even to stay in the room of your own awareness. And as you sit, if you take up this practice of sitting, you'll notice a tendency to wanna, oh, your mind is going someplace else. Your attention is going someplace else. You're thinking of something in the future. You're thinking of something in the past. It's actually pretty difficult to have your room be big enough, the room of your own mind be big enough to include everything, everything that you yourself are experiencing with your five senses and your consciousness, sixth sense, we say in Buddhism.

[44:34]

I just want to encourage you to, you know, at the time of this time of year, the turning of the year, the point at which it's actually the new year, the new solar year, the new Earth year, and the calendar will catch up in a few days, to take stock. how comfortable you are with darkness, how comfortable you are with light. Are you willing to see the darkness in the light? Are you willing to see the light in the darkness? Are you willing to see what's unknown to accept what you can't see in the person you're friends with? Not to mention the person that you're not so friendly with. And extend that then to people who you don't think that you could even stand to be in the same room with.

[45:37]

In this way we can actually extend this harmonious practice. The other night we had a little party and I guess I've talked long enough. We had a little party and at the end of it, someone reminded me to sing a song. And so the song is called, It's a Wonderful World. And maybe many of you know it, but if we sing it twice, those of you who don't know it the first time can join in the second time. And this is a song that was made famous by Louis Armstrong. One of the greatest musicians of all time, actually. But a very simple song for him. But in the song, in the second verse, I think it's the second verse, there's a reference to the bright day and the dark night.

[46:53]

Dark sacred night, it says. So I'll try to remember it and... Let's see. What's the first word? I see. That's the second verse. Trees of green. I see trees of green, red roses too. Flowers bloom for me and for you. And I say to myself, what a wonderful world. I see sky of blue and clouds of white. The bright blessed day and the dark sacred night. And I say to myself,

[47:55]

What a wonderful world. The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are also in the faces of the people going by. I see friends shaking hands, saying, how do you do? They're really saying, I love you. I hear babies cry. I watch them grow. They'll learn much more than I'll ever know. And I say to myself, what a wonderful world. Yes, I say to myself, what a wonderful world. And then Louis Armstrong goes, oh, yeah. So let's all do that one more time, right?

[48:59]

I see trees of green, red roses too, flowers bloom for me and for you. And I say to myself, what a wonderful world. I see sky of blue and clouds of white, the bright day and the dark sacred night and I say to myself what a wonderful world the colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky are also in the faces of the people going by I see friends shaking hands saying cry.

[50:04]

I watch them grow. They'll learn much more than I'll ever know. And I say to myself, what a wonderful world. Yes, I say to myself, Please appreciate this wonderful world. Thank you for listening. 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.

[51:04]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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