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 evening. It is lovely to see you all, albeit in extraordinarily soft focus because I'm having a bit of a... an issue with glasses, which means I can either wear reading glasses and see my notes or I can wear other glasses and see all of you. So I figured in the service of trying to give the best talk possible, I should wear my reading glasses. I would like to welcome everybody who's joining us online. I am so pleased that you have come from the four corners of the planet to come and sit with us. And it's so wonderful that technology is allowing us now to share the San Francisco Zen Center with all of you and our Dharma talks. Thank you so much for watching this talk this evening.

[01:03]

My name is Kim Kogen Daiho Hart. And I would like to thank firstly Tanto Genkyoko Timothy Wicks. He's the head of practice here, and he invited me to give this talk. Thank you very much. As well as the abbot, Marco Volkel, who I believe at the moment is down at Sasahara, supporting the Sangha down in our monastery in the Big Sur. And of course, to my beloved teacher, Ryushin Paul Heller, who has been guiding me with his firm warm hand for about the last... 13 years now. So very grateful to all of you and to all my friends and all of you are my teachers here too. And I very much welcome any feedback about this talk afterwards or if you'd like to talk to me more about it afterwards over the next few days or weeks, I'd be very, very happy to talk with you. So in the spirit of go big or go home, tonight we're going to

[02:06]

about the two aspects of non-dual reality. I'm actually going to talk about how the practice of Zen meditation trains us in freedom, in freeing us from the tyranny of our habitual responses, our conditioning, and our fundamental misunderstanding often of what reality is, that how things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise. which is a wonderful saying from the Buddha. Things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise. And I'm going to repeat that a few times over the course of this talk because that's really the takeaway that I want you guys to have it really sort of get absorbed and for you to take it away with you. So what is freedom? I don't know. Is freedom. The sound of one hand is freedom. body and mind falls away is freedom.

[03:10]

When I asked my teacher, Ryushin, what freedom is, he said it was an appropriate response to the moment, something that is so simple, but really not so easy always. So the roots of understanding and learning how to practice with freedom is born out of one of the most fundamental teachings of Buddhism, which is the teachings of the two truths, the not one and not two truths. that things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise. The relative and the absolute. To put it succinctly, every inside has an outside, every outside has an inside, and while they are different, they go together. This is the absolute and the relative, the two truths of the world. Now, the relative truth of the world is something that... we're all very familiar with and really we're... It's the sort of ordinary way, shall we say, that we see things.

[04:14]

I am me, you are you, the cat is the cat, the cat's mother is the cat's mother, and we're all distinct. Light is light, dark is dark. And we often use language as a way to navigate this relative world. It's a tool... of the relative and it actually takes us even further away from what is actually happening a lot of the time. Language and the relative nature of the world helps us define and navigate our way through it. Language gives us definitions, it helps reify things, we give it some kind of actual reality as distinct to something else and It's something we really are quite familiar with. Language, in many ways, and the relative, is a map that we use to navigate the world, but it is not the territory.

[05:15]

The map is not the territory. Language and the relative world is a very useful map, but it is not the territory. So practicing Zazen actually helps us to get in touch with... this tendency that we have of reifying the world through language and through concepts and through our tendency to see the world through a relative sort of pair of glasses, if you will, relative view. When I sit Zazen, I have the opportunity to allow the mind to settle, notice what comes up, notice at what point I begin to reify it, give it a name, define it in some way, and thereby consider that I understand it and put it aside and go back into my dream world. So we could take something relative, like an apple. If I say the word apple to you, some of you might imagine a red apple or a green apple, or given that we're in San Francisco, perhaps a computer.

[06:20]

But when you taste that apple, that is the absolute. That is the expression of the moment coming up, right there and then, an expression... passing and fleeting through time, and it is you, the apple, this expression, this taste, but actually the you and the apple and the expression, the taste, are not distinct one from the other. The apple is a concept and is a thing that is distinct, and then there is the experience that is being experienced, and this is the absolute. So the map is not... territory. And this is something that we learn a fair bit about in Zen, this non-reliance on words. And I was really considering the nature of language and how it's pointing to something underneath it and how it can catch us out sometimes. And it reminded me of a story of a good friend of mine. Sorry, I'm getting my sleeves caught up here.

[07:27]

A good friend of mine came into a big inheritance. This was in the 90s and I was living in London. And she was supposed to go to the south of France to a beautiful little town called Antibes and have a fabulous week away with her fiancé. But regrettably, her and her fiancé broke up. It was just all very sad. But she still had this week planned away with this big inheritance with hotels paid for and all of that. And she invited me and asked if I'd like to go along with her instead. So I was like, absolutely. So we went to this restaurant and you know, under the shadow of these huge yachts and being served very fancy French food by a French waiter in tails and white gloves. And he served us this cheese platter and he put it down on the table and I tasted this. I tasted one of the things, I put it on a little cracker and I tasted it. I was like, oh! And I beckoned the waiter over and I said, this cheese is fabulous. What cheese is this? And he was like, that cheese, madame, is butter.

[08:28]

I'm sure he's still dining out on that because there's English people who have just no notion about cheese and butter. But it really showed me how we navigate with a map that can just sometimes be really entirely unreliable. And the experience I had, the taste, was what it was. And I hadn't defined it as cheese. I had defined it as butter, so I didn't taste it as butter. I defined it as cheese in a certain way. I almost tasted it as cheese because of that. There's this distinction, you know? And what can we rely on there? Spoiler, you can't rely on any of it. It's all empty. So I thought this was very interesting. And it also shows me that the visceral experience that we have when we're sitting in Zazen or when we're in the world that we can access through our five senses is really so precious. You know, in this case, it was my sense of taste.

[09:33]

Often it can be, you know, your sight or sound, smell, all of that. And the other thing, of course, about it is that it comes into being and it passes away. The taste comes up and it passes. The sound moves into our sphere and it comes up out of emptiness, out of silence, excuse me, and returns to silence. Avalokiteshvara, who is the Bodhisattva of Compassion, also known as Kanon in Japanese and Kuan Yin in Chinese. I like to add that because it took me years before I realized that we were talking about the same person whenever we used these different words. She was speaking to Shariputra in the Heart Sutra. Shariputra was Buddha's top student. And in the Heart Sutra... the Prajnaparamita, which is the root chant of the Soto Zen school, she talks about form and emptiness, the absolute and the relative.

[10:42]

And her overwhelming invocation is form is exactly emptiness, emptiness is exactly form. And we chant it, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no taste, no body, no sight, no sound, no smell, no taste. Form is exactly emptiness. Emptiness is exactly form. So form is empty, and empty is form, which is empty. So this is something to consider. Because oftentimes there's a sense, I'll be talking to you about the map, and say, well, don't be fooled. It's pointing to something. Don't be fooled by it. It's not the territory. As though somehow the... The territory has any kind of real hard and fast reality. But it doesn't. Neither does, because neither form nor emptiness has any kind of abiding self that exists through time unchanged.

[11:47]

They're both constantly changing. Form arises from emptiness. Like I said before, for every outside, there is an inside. For the inside, there is an outside. And although they are different, they go together. We can say the same about sound. Sound. There is sound that exists in stillness. They are distinct from one another, sound and stillness, and although they are different, they go together because sound does not exist without silence. Sorry, not stillness, silence. Sound does not exist without silence, and silence does not exist without sound. So yes, we have this tendency to reify and solidify the world around us constantly. We do it through concepts, we do it through language, and Zazen can really help us.

[12:51]

and we have an opportunity to look at that space before the reifying happens. I'll give you an example. So within this zendo, and I'm sure within most zendos, the spirit of the space is to try and make it as unstimulating to the mind as possible. I mean, that's one of the underlying reasons. It's blacks, wood. you know, cream on the walls. These are unstimulating colors. Lighting tends to be soft when we sit sazen in the morning. There's no windows with, you know, strong winds blowing through. The temperature is just so. So the space can be as unstimulating to the mind and therefore create the conditions for stillness and for awakening. But one of the things that's really quite difficult to tamp down in any way is sound. Now, I have had the experience of being in an entirely silent sendo.

[13:54]

I was in Northern Europe. It was snowing, and they have phenomenally well-insulated houses. I believe I was in Switzerland, and it was snowing outside, and it was so silent that it felt like pressure on my ears, and that really was quite an extraordinary experience. But for most sitting in most sendos, that is not the way, and particularly not in this sendo. We're in the middle of the city here in San Francisco, and... We'll often hear sirens, we'll hear motorbikes, we hear all sorts of things. So what will happen is when we're sitting in Zazen, facing the wall, unlike our Rinzai brothers who face the middle of the room, we face the wall, so visually we're unlikely to be engaged or simulate or activated in any way, but there'll be a sound of a motorbike that'll come past. And it'll start as a sound that we have not yet identified, but then before long we're like, oh, okay, that's a motorbike. And then we just put it to the side. We know what that is. That's a motorbike. And then we go back to doing whatever it is that we were doing.

[14:57]

But there is an opportunity in there with the mind very still that we can hear the sound of the motorbike just for what it is before we identify it and define it as distinct from anything else around us. So we could hear it just as a sound. And sometimes we get that gift because sometimes there's a sound and I can't quite identify it. And I'm like, is that a dog howling? What is that sound? And that's a point when, you know, all the senses are awake and you're like, well, the problem is you're now trying to reify and identify it because, you know, everything feels a little bit like on shaky ground because we don't like to not know. We don't like this not knowing. We want things to be understood and unchanging and clearly defined. And, oh, no, it's just truck brakes coming down Page Street. That's all that is. And then once again, that's what that is. Boom, we put it aside.

[16:00]

We've got this, you know. But there is an opportunity in there. Before we reify and identify, before we start mapping this reality, there's an opportunity there to rest with the absolute, which is that sound that's coming up. I was going to read this to you. I got myself a little bit out of order, but I think it's still valuable. This is a lovely little book called Zen and Japanese Buddhism by D.T. Suzuki. Not the Suzuki Roshi who founded this temple, but another great scholar. And once San Francisco Zen Center was setting out its library and was offering up a number of books, and I managed to grab this little gem. But just talking again about words. I should have said this a little bit sooner, but I'm just going to reference it anyway. Zen's motto is no reliance on words.

[17:00]

There are a hindrance in Zen. Why? Because words are representations and not realities. And realities are what is most highly valued in Zen. If words are needed in Zen, they are of the same value as coins in trading. We cannot wear coins to keep the cold away. We cannot eat coins to quench thirst or appease hunger. Coins are to be turned into real food or real wool and real water when they are of real value to life. We are constantly forgetting this homely truth and never cease hoarding money. And in a similar manner, we memorize words and play with concepts and think that we are wise. Wise, quotes, which are in the book here, indeed we are. But this kind of wisdom never avails when dealing with the realities of life. So our Zen practice really is about getting underneath those words. Before we reify and define things as distinct from one another, what is actually happening in the world? Things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise.

[18:03]

Also in the Genjo Koan, Dogen writes, now Dogen... The Genjo Kon is a wonderful fascicle written by Dogen. He was a 12th century philosopher and in many ways started the Soto Zen school in Japan, as I said, in the 12th century. But here, very briefly, he talks about how when we can hear things, before we reify them and give them some kind of defined and absolute, not absolute, defined reality, They are infinite in variety. Anyway, this is a short bit that he maybe says it better than me. He says, for example, when you sail out in a boat into the midst of an ocean where no land is in sight and you view the four directions, the ocean looks circular and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square.

[19:03]

Its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. So what he's saying here is like, well, for me, I'm standing in a boat, I'm looking out, and I'm seeing it as round. But I'm forgetting that this is me, a human being with these kind of eyes, looking out at this point in time, and this is how things look. But it's infinite in variety. If I was a fish, it would be like a palace. I'd be swimming in the water, and the ocean is a different thing. If I was on a different planet, I'd look back, and the planet Earth, all its oceans, would look like a jewel. So when we can see things from beyond our own very narrow perspective, the world is a much different place. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time, and 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. And this is really Dogen's, you know, encouragement to practice.

[20:06]

In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they might look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety. Whole worlds are there, infinite in variety. So our notion that, well, that is a truck's brakes, is about this much of the truth. It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet and in a drop of water. So for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Genjo Koan, I really do implore you, go and read it. It's about three pages. It's fantastic. So truth itself does not communicate in language. The sound of the rain needs no translation. So also, like I mentioned before in the Heart Sutra, where... Avalokiteshvara was talking to Shariputra and talking about form and emptiness, they were saying, no nose, no eyes, no taste, no... You know it.

[21:13]

No eyes, no nose, no taste, no... What comes after? No eyes, no... Come on, people. All right. It'll be a homework for everybody who's online. Basically, the point is, I'm thinking specifically here about features of the face. Because I am a portraitist, I paint these enormous portraits, and I wanted to consider, what does he mean by no nose? I mean, like, I'm painting this nose that's about this big, and I can see there's a nose. What does it mean, no nose? I can see it. I can say it, and I know what a nose is. But when it came to painting the nose, when it came to actually being in touch with the nose, I couldn't tell where its edges were. Like, where is the edge of the nose? Where does the nose end and the cheek begin when you are painting a nose? Where does that happen? And that's when I realized that all the definitions I've given around nose were entirely invented. In reality, they did not exist.

[22:16]

And that is your form and your emptiness coming up simultaneously. The relative is a mental construction with which we scaffold. reality. But don't be confused. They are both empty. Things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise. Now, I'm going to keep saying this because I really want to jar us all out of our comfortable state of certainty that we have about the way the world is. If you don't understand the way right before you, how will you know the path as you walk? And when we can see that all phenomenal expression is an expression of time, And we can see that it is fleeting, and therefore the fleeting nature of reality, we can recognize that meeting that moment is the doorway to freedom. And it references back to what Ryushin said, where he said an appropriate response to the moment. In order to have an appropriate response to the moment, you need to meet that moment.

[23:20]

So the quote, things are not what they seem to be. nor are they otherwise, is referring, it comes from the Langavatara Sutra, and it's kind of baffling because it appears to defy logic. Things are not X, but things are also not, not X. It's kind of the logic of not. And again, it's a similar thing we see once again in the Prajnaparamita Sutra, the Heart of Great Perfect Wisdom Sutra. And it's a refutation of the customary distinction between reality and appearance. There's many teachings, not within Buddhism necessarily, but often you'll hear, well, things aren't what they seem, and there is some kind of notion that they're not what they seem because actually if you look carefully, you'll see what they actually are. And what's so revolutionary about things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise, is that, yeah, they're not appearances, but... what they're pointing to also has no hard and fast reality unchanging through time.

[24:26]

So things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise. They are phenomenal expressions in time. They lack any hard and fast reality. And that's ultimately, and this is a tough one, but that's ultimately because of the non-difference between nirvana and samsara. Now nirvana is kind of the heavenly state in a certain sense. Difficult to describe. But where we can say samsara is the cycle of birth and death, you know, the karmic cycle of birth and death, nirvana in a certain way is its opposite. It's kind of a heavenly state. And there's a saying in the Prajnaparamita that samsara is nirvana grasped and nirvana is samsara released. Now I'll say that again. Samsara is nirvana grasped. And what that means is samsara, the cycle of birth and death, this never-ending karmic cycle, is nirvana grasped in the sense that, okay, I know what nirvana is.

[25:33]

I've understood it. It is this. This is what it is. It is a solid, reified thing that I understand. And by defining it as such and grasping it and defining it, you're still within the cycle of birth and death, and you're still within samsara. Nirvana... is samsara released. Nirvana, the heavenly state, is when we can see and accept the state of things coming into birth and dying, constantly changing, and our hand is open. It's beautiful, the harmony of difference and equality, where it kind of, in a certain sense, references this. This is, in Japanese, called the sandokai. It's a beautiful poem. Also not very long, and for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, I encourage you to read it. Just a small little section I'm going to read out of it. Grasping at things is surely delusion. According with sameness is still not enlightenment. And this is what we're referencing here. Grasping at things is surely delusion.

[26:35]

But saying that everything is all one, according with sameness, is still not enlightenment. That's still not enlightenment. All the objects of the senses interact and yet do not. Interacting brings involvement, so that is the activity, time, rising and falling. Otherwise, each keeps its place. Sights vary in quality and form. Sounds differ as pleasing or harsh. Refined and common speech come together in the dark. Clear and murky phrases are distinguished in the light. Now, refined and common speech come together in the dark. Oftentimes, the darkness is kind of a metaphor for the absolute because you cannot see the edges of things. Everything becomes one. Clear and murky phrases are distinguished in the light. Within the relative truth, everything is defined and distinct. And we have night and day. Much like every outside has an inside and every inside has an outside, night and day is the same. They're different, but they go together. So things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise.

[27:39]

This is a story I discovered while I was actually researching for giving this talk. And... I thought it was really quite moving and I wanted to share it with you because like I was talking about before, how we can have these experiences through the visceral sense, visceral experiences through the senses, through seeing or through hearing and hearing the zendo often, more often than not through hearing. I learned that Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, actually their awakening or her awakening experience was through sound. And, um, I'm going to share with you how that happened. According to Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, one can attain enlightenment simply by perceiving the sounds of the world as they rise and fall in conjunction with the ebb and flow of the ocean. By simply observing... Okay, sorry.

[28:54]

Now, someone asked as to how the Bodhisattva of compassion attained the way, the flow of nature, and became enlightened by simply observing the ebb and tide. And to this, it is said, the Bodhisattva, while practicing by the sea, contemplated the sound as it increased, decreased, and coming to a stop, occurring simultaneously with the ebb tide. She pondered very deeply... at the root of all causes, and finally attained enlightenment by understanding that all existence is subject to coming and going, birth and death, rise and decay, and is hence impermanent. However, the hearing aspect is by itself boundless, timeless, and is beyond the realm of birth and death. Now, I found this really fascinating, so I really want to share it with you, and I want you to consider this and maybe come and talk to me about it at some point. Goes on to say, others who are non-practitioners can hear, but they do not hear deeply enough.

[29:58]

They do not listen. While hearing sounds, they only think superficially of what is outside. They fail to realize that the tide has birth and death, but that the nature of hearing transcends birth and death. Although the sound of the tide stops, our nature of hearing goes on. It is unhindered. Even though on a pitch dark night in utter silence, there is awareness of that silence of no sound, it is important to observe that there are two kinds of hearing. One comes and goes in response to stimulation, while the other functions independently of it. The independent characteristic of hearing never vanishes for a second. The nature of hearing is universal and can never be destroyed. Our minds aligns with whatever we deeply observe. If we merely observe birth and death, there shall be birth and death. And if we go a few levels deeper and observe at the root, one shall observe non-birth and non-death.

[31:00]

When we are capable of this observation, there is no birth and no death. So it seems to me that what Avola Kitashvara is pointing to there is a kind of timeless, receptive perception that is all of our birthright if we choose to practice it. So I thought that was really... Quite extraordinary. And I think that that is available to us sitting here and listening to motorbikes and sirens, hearing the ebb and flow of the ocean of the city. In commentary on the gateless gate, case five, up a tree, one day while sweeping up fallen leaves, Zhang Yan, I'm so sorry. I don't know how to pronounce his name. bamboo broom caught a stone and it hit a bamboo stalk thwack. And that thwack awakened the monk who was sweeping. So sound can have an extraordinary effect.

[32:03]

Now I'm going to finish with referencing a wonderful sutra that my bestie in Australia sent me, a dear fellow priest and practitioner, Krista de Castella. And we were talking a few days ago about this talk. And she said, oh, you must be familiar with the Bahiya Sutra. And I'm like, I am not familiar with the Bahiya Sutra. And so she shared it with me. And it's quite a delightful story that I will tell you. So basically... There's this practitioner, Bahia, and he's living in town and he's been practicing quite diligently. And he wanted to ask the Buddha, well, he wanted to find out really if he was a good practitioner and he wanted to have some Dharma taught to him. And he knew that Buddha, the Blessed One, as he's referred to in the sutra, was practicing nearby in a town kind of nearby. And he was like, you know, I'm going to go and I'm going to go find the Buddha and I'm going to ask him. So he got his stuff together and he went over to this town and he went to the monastery. I was quite delighted to see it says, now on that occasion, a large number of monks were doing walking meditation in the open air.

[33:17]

And I'm like, that could totally be us. And he got there and he went to the monks who were doing walking meditation in the open air. And he was like, well, where's the Buddha? And they were like, the Buddha's gone to town. He's doing stuff over in town, which again could totally be us looking for the abbot or whatever. And so he went off to town to go and find the blessed one. And he found him. He was in town. He was doing alms, I think. He was in town for alms. So it's kind of like the begging practice, you know. And he went over and he threw himself down on the floor in front of the Buddha. And he said, teach me the Dharma, oh blessed one. Teach me the Dharma, oh one, well gone. that will be for my long-term welfare and bliss. Please teach me the Dharma. And the Buddha was like, I'm busy doing alms right now, Bahia. This is really not a good time. I'm busy with stuff. So Bahia, once again, you know, it's like, but please, oh, well-gone one. Oh, please, you know, blessed one, please, you know, give me a teaching for my long-term welfare and bliss because something could happen to me.

[34:23]

Like, you know, I could get run over by a cow or something, you know. And... And the Buddha was like, no, no, no, I'm busy with arms. And so the third time, and we do know that in Zen, third time is a charm. The third time, he said, please, something could happen to you, something could happen to me. Please give me a teaching that will be for my long-term welfare and bliss. And this, my friends, is a great teaching. So I'm going to share with you what the Buddha said. He said, then by here, you should train yourself thus. In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only the sensed. In reference to the cognized, only the cognized. That is how you should train yourself. When for you, there will be only the seen in reference to the seen, only the heard in reference to the heard.

[35:26]

only the sensed in reference to the sensed, only the cognized in reference to the cognized, then by here, there is no you in connection with that. When there is no you in connection with that, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor yonder nor between the two. This, just this, is the end of stress. And when a sage has realized this for himself, Then, from form and formless, from bliss and pain, he is freed. 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 Dorma.

[36:28]

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