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 from people like you. So we've got two sets of handouts there. There's some of the old child, some of the current child books. So hands up who wasn't here on Saturday, part one. Oh, I love you. Okay. A brief recapitulation on what we talked about in part one. So we were looking at the lineage of Chinese ancestors, which starts with Bodhidharma. And we got it back. We just brushed up to Sekito Kisen in the first part. So Bodhidharma is traditionally recognized in our lineage as the first ancestor in China, even though Buddhism was incredibly widespread by the time he got there. And part of the reason may have been that he was there. person who we put the emphasis on Zazen and kind of founded this particular style of Zen.

[01:04]

And also, you know, potentially because he was, you know, an independent teacher who did not have truck with the emperor. He was not kind of a court-appointed or emperor-appointed teacher, as many of them were. So we looked at one of his teachings, which is the Wake Up Sermon, which is, yeah, it's a very exaltatory, is the word I like to use, piece of work. full of instructions and encouragement. Wake up, yeah, the wake up thing. And this is actually only the first part of a longer thing. There are some lines that I particularly underlined last time. About a third of the way down, anyone capable of reflection is bound to see that the nature of greed, anger and delusion is the Buddha nature. And then about halfway down, not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting or lying down, everything you do is Zen. And towards the bottom, delusion means mortality and awareness means Buddhahood.

[02:05]

They're not the same and they're not different. It's just that people distinguish delusion from awareness. So, you know, Bodhidharma is kicking us off in the right direction. We've jumped a couple of generations to Kenji Sosa, who was a, you know, slightly not very well-known figure who may or may not have written the Xinxing Ming, the affirming faith in mind. a century or so maybe 70 to 100 years after Bodhidharma if you want to turn the page to the next thing so this is a fairly well known piece and there are lots of different translations on it again it's a verse piece and so some of the translations will bring out the poetic aspect of it and some of them will be a little bit more prosaic and this again is fairly instructional the first line is I think very well known the great way is not difficult to those who have no preferences and talking a lot about duality and oneness and how to avoid falling into traps of either duality or oneness and I particularly like the line right towards the end of the second page to live in this realisation is to be without anxiety about non-perfection or stand to remember a lot of the time

[03:22]

So then we kind of did leapfrog over the sixth ancestor, even though the sixth ancestor is probably the most important figure in all of Chinese Buddhism, because from him, various schools, the five schools of Zen that flourished in the golden age of Zen, they all came through him. And he was a very pivotal figure, and he wrote the Platform Sutra, or he may not have written it, maybe one of his disciples wrote it, but this is, again, a summation of what the... philosophy of the Zen school was at that time. In the same way, the Wicca sermon may or may not have been written by Bodhidharma, but gives us a representation of what was being thought about at the time. So Daikan Aida was traditionally said to be spontaneously awoken by hearing just one line of the Diamond Sutra. And so again, this is not a scholar, not a philosopher, not somebody who's well-read or anything like that. He was just an illiterate woodcutter, but he still managed to attain enlightenment. And so with the story that, you know, maybe you all know and is certainly available in many of the collections, such as Zen's Chinese Heritage and Transmission of the Light, which are all included in a bibliography, which I have if you want to copy that.

[04:40]

There's a famous story of him going to the Fifth Ancestor because he asked the monk who was beside the Dharma Sutra where he learned his teachings from, and he said the Fifth Ancestor, so he went off to see the Fifth Ancestor, and then there's the Poetic battle between him and the head monk and supposedly Daikan Eno won. And then we have the southern school against the northern school. We took a little sidestep into Yoko Daishi, who wrote a wonderful thing called the Shodoka that most people don't know. That's the third sheet on that section. Actually, there's 52 verses of it. It's a very long, wonderful thing. And again, Yoko Daishi is someone who is basically spontaneously enlightened. and then went to the sixth ancestor for verification of his understanding and received it on the spot. And again, their exchange is really wonderful, and it's also very well known in these collections. And I passed this book around, which is the comic book version of it, which I like, especially when it's the bookmark page, because it gives you the sense of the characters that these people have. You know, Yoko Daishi, well, the sixth ancestor calls him conceited right at the beginning, but then is appreciative of his understanding.

[05:48]

And then Yukadashi goes his own way. But I wrote this wonderful long piece called The Shodokka, which is very important in a lot of Zen traditions. And you'd hear the Japanese teachers talking about it. But we don't seem to study it in our lineage for some reason. Maybe because it's too long. But it's well worth checking out. And there is this book, which has wonderful commentary by Kurosawaki, which, again, is very idiosyncratic. It does also appear in the Poetry of Enlightenment, which is translated by Chan Master Sheng Yen. Highly recommend it. And this is the first verse on this, you know, don't you see that person of the way who has gone beyond all learning, who is completely at ease and has nothing left to do. So instead of these kind of like hard instructions like work hard, do this, do this, he's just saying, okay, we've got it. It's all fine. You can just relax. And ignorance itself, in reality, is Buddha nature.

[06:49]

Our empty illusory body is the body of the Dharma, or the Dharmakaya. Which is pretty much what Bodhi Dharma was saying as well, interestingly enough. Leaping ahead two generations, we get to Sekito Kisen. And there are two pieces by Sekito Kisen that we're going to look at, which makes him kind of the big guy in this class. And the first one is the Song of the Grassroot Hermitage, which some of you may know, which is kind of a very personal poem. To me, it kind of echoes a little bit of the Shulokar, the Song of Enlightenment. In a sense, he's just saying, you know, I built a grass hut where there's nothing of value. After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap. He's like, he's not working hard to do this. He's already done his work. Just sitting with head covered, all things are at rest. Thus, this mountain monk doesn't understand at all. Living here, he no longer works to get free. So he's completely understood his own nature. And this is his way of talking about it or expressing it, I would say, not even explaining it or having other people do it.

[07:53]

But, you know, his instruction is let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk innocent. You know, so it's an invitation to, you know, to try not trying so hard, which is somewhat, you know, counterintuitive to the way we want to be, but is, you know, I think his position is worth remembering. I say this is a very personal term. It's a very deep and wonderful one. But then the one that we know much better and the one that we're going to talk about next is the Harmony Difference and Equality, the San Do Kai, which is in the current chant books. So I didn't bother copying out many copies of it since we already have it in the chant books. And there are still a few more chant books at the back. And there are also the old chant books, Raven, on the left. There's a couple of those if people want to have a look at those, which will be helpful further on. So the reason there are old chant books and new chant books is that there was a translation conference back in the late 90s where we decided on standard translations of things.

[08:56]

This one didn't change, which is good, because I think it's a really nice translation. So one way we're looking at this is by all chanting it together, which is what we do every five days anyway. So we'd like to do that if everyone has that open and available to them. And maybe even if you have it memorized, which I think most or some of us do, then it's good to be looking at the text. That's why I brought these along. Harmony of difference and equality. The light of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted from west to east, while human faculties are shackled all the way as no northern or southern ancestors. The spiritual source shines clear in the light. The writing streams flow in the dark. Grasping at things is surely delusion according to what is saying. This is still not enlightenment. All the objects of the senses interact. do not interact and brings involvement otherwise each keeps its place sights vary quality and forms sounds different as pleasing or hard to refine their knowledge each comes together in the dark clear and murky races are distinguished in the light that for knowledge returns to their natures just as a child turns to his mother fire his queen moves water wet there is solid eye inside his ear and sounds notes and smells tongues and his subsolution everything depending on

[10:24]

these ruthily spread forth drunken branches share the essence prepared and common each has a speech in the light there is darkness but don't take it as darkness in the dark there is light you don't see it as light light and dark it closes one another like the front and back footed walking each of the myriad things as it is may express according to question and place phenomena insist thoughts and live fit principle responds error points mediating the words understand the meaning don't set up So... For me this has a great expositionary quality. It doesn't feel so much like an instruction but it's saying this is how it is. And how is it?

[11:25]

It's the harmony of difference and equality. There are other translations of the title, one of which is the merging of difference and saneness, which gives you a very similar feeling. You'll also see it referred to as the inquiry into matching halves, which has a different kind of feeling. Can I offer a translation that I've heard? Please. Which is coincidence of opposites. I think that's caused Tanamashi, actually. That has a very different feeling again, actually. Coincidence makes it sound like it's a fluke, but an opposites is also a different feeling from harmony. Interesting. Shihako talks about the Sandokai in Living by Vow, a chapter in that, which is very well worth exploring. He explains that there's the character for difference and the character for equality. And the third character, the kai in Sandokai, has a meaning of a tally in the way that when merchants did business, they would write things on a tally board, split it in half, and then when it came to exchange the contract, they would put the two halves back together again.

[12:29]

So that's a kind of matching halves idea, I think. And also this has a sense of like two parts of one whole. So some of the context for which Sekhto is writing this. So you can see he was... You know, a couple of generations after Daikon, but he studied with the sixth ancestor when he was a young man, you know, in his adolescence probably. And then after the sixth ancestor died, he studied with Sagan, who was one of the sixth ancestor's principal disciples, although there were many others. So, you know, there's a very strong overlap in terms of time and understanding. And one of the things he's addressing is... you know, the supposed schism between the northern and the southern school that was provoked after the fifth ancestor and Daikan going off to the south in the head monk shen shu staying in the north with the gradual school. So there was this supposed split in the ranks of Zen, which had been, up until then, supposedly just like one straight line.

[13:30]

And, you know, one of the things he's saying is, you know, if we go back to my great sage of India, there is just one thing, and there is no northern or southern ancestors. So there's, you know, there's something of a conciliatory part of this but also like sitting out the stall for you know the style that he's espousing and I will come back to this but I want to jump on to Tozan Ryokai who was born 15 years after Sekito died and I was thinking about this so I'm sure there are some of you in this room who were born 15 years after Suzuki Roshi died and he died in 1971 so if any of you were born in the mid 80s It's the same kind of relation between you and Suzuki Roshi as Tozan and Sekito. It's like you didn't meet him, but the way he's talked about now, he's still very close to us. So that was kind of interesting for me to think about it in those ways. There are two teachers between Sekito and Tozan, there's Yaku-san and Ungan.

[14:36]

Again, Yaku-san we don't know a huge amount about. Ungan, there are a lot of koan stories about him. He's Yunmian in Chinese, and he and his Dharma brother Da Wu did a lot of stuff together over the years. And one of the things that's kind of characteristic is that Da Wu was the one who understood everything, and Yunmian really didn't get it for a long time. And there's even one story where Da Wu was hearing Yunmian's answer and biting his fingers because he can't believe his Dharma brother was being so stupid. Nevertheless, you know, Yunmian eventually got it. And then the idea is that Hokkien Zamaikar, the song of the Dio Mirasamati, was part of his transmission to Tozan. And who was talking about these? You weren't talking about these stories. Who was talking about these stories just recently? In the lecture? Who was giving a lecture just recently and talking about these stories? Linda Ruth. Linda Ruth, thank you, yes. Venerable teacher. She was talking about some of these stories between Yunyan and Tozan in terms of how... how they talk to each other.

[15:37]

And that gets reflected in the text of the Jorah Samadhi. And there is, again, a strong overlap of theme with slight differences. So what I want to do is chant this now. And what we're going to do is not the version that's in the current chant book, but the one that's in the handout or the old chant book. which is called the Song of the Precious Mera Samadhi. And this is just to kind of keep you on your toes a little bit because, you know, we get used to one form of words. And actually, it's kind of handy sometimes to get a different form of words. So if you have memorized this in the current version, you might get a little thrown by this. So let's try this. Song of the Precious Mera Samadhi. That doesn't necessarily transmit a vibe of it as an ancestor's now you're at it preserving what all the syllables filled with snow and hair and hidden in the moon taken as a similar they're not the same I'll distinguish their places or down the meaning does not reside in the words but a pivotal moment brings it forth moving your abstractness and you fall into that of the imagination stirring away and touching are both wrong for it is like a mask

[16:54]

fire just to portray it in literary form is sustained with the fire with the dark side it is perfectly clear in the light of dawn it is hidden it is a standard for all things its use removes all suffering although it is not constructed it is not the odd words like facing a precious mirror for many people should be told each other you are not it is truth it is you like a newborn child it is fully endowed with five aspects known No going, no coming, no arising, no abiding, blah, blah, blah, blah. It says nothing for the words of not yet bright. The new nation hexagram of parents and real to direct pile that they make. Three, the permutations make five. Like the taste of the five flavors of life. Like the five pronged vajra wondrously embraced with me. drumming and singing begin together. Penetrate the source and travel the pathways.

[17:55]

Embrace the territory and treasure the world. You will do well to respect this. Do not neglect it. Natural and wondrous. It is not a matter of delusion or enlightenment within causes. Conditions, time and season. It is serene and good-making. So my lead enters, whether it's a gap. So the box, it transcends dimension and spreads deviation. If you are out of the kitchen now, they are suddenly gradual. If teachings and approaches arise, when teachings and approaches are distinguished, each has its savior. But if teachings and approaches are mastered or not, reality constantly flows. The sky is still inside, trembling like tethered coats or towered grass. The ancient sages read for them and offer them the Dharma. Led by their inverted views, they say black for white when inverted thinking stops the affirming mind naturally accord if you want to follow in the ancient tracks please observe the sages of the past one of the virtual realizing the Buddha way contemplated a tree-sized and kalpas like a battle-scarred tiger like a horse with shiny scum-graded cuts of our cloak of jeweled tables and horned robes because some are wide-eyed cats and white oxen widows arch of skill ye hit the mark at a hundred paces of whenever

[19:19]

I'm not going to be a matter of shit of the wooded man. It's about to sing the song when it gets up dancing. It is not reached by feelings or consciousness. How did it involve deliberation ministers? So devil or his children lay their parents not evading. It's not filial. Failure to self is no help with practice fit. secretly like a fool, like an idiot, just to do this continuously is called the house within the house. So, you know, chanting those back to back, you can see how much overlap there is in kind of imagery and things like that. But, you know, there is a slight, you know, difference in what they're talking about and how they're approaching things. So, if we go back to the harmony, difference, and equality, you know, I think the title really does say it all. and a lot of it is his ways of bringing that forward in poetic metaphor. Now, I've heard that of the five schools that were starting to flourish around that time, you know, one thing to distinguish them was how they dealt with the difference between phenomena and the noumenal, or the noumenal, or principle and phenomena, and the difference and equality.

[20:37]

So these two aspects... which Buddhism has spent a lot of time looking at over the centuries. Again, in the Chinese school, there was particular ways of looking at it. And here he's basically saying these are entirely overlapping phenomena, things happening at the same time. So if you can understand things in that way, then you're clear in your understanding. So is that clear to everybody? Or do we need some explanation? Yeah, it's not easy to get your head around. I was reading one of my favorite Thai meditation teachers from Southern School, and it was interesting because he talks about defilements as enemies all the time, how to work with them, how to get rid of them, until he says, like, at the very end, then you can, if you really understand it right, then you can regard them as friends. It was just an interesting way of holding. Anyway. So we can go, let's go through the harmony difference in quantity kind of more line by line and see where, see how he brings out the thing.

[21:45]

So, you know, and the other things that we've looked at so far, it often still talks about the way, you know, right at the very beginning, like this is what the way is. And here he's like reaching back and saying, the mind of the great sage of India. So he's talking about Buddha's original understanding, which as we talked about last time, you know, they're in... Chinese culture, they wanted to establish authenticity and a sense of lineage and they kind of created or backdated this whole lineage going all the way back to Buddha where the supposedly mind-to-mind transmission was unbroken all the way through 27 generations until we get to Bodhidharma, I can't remember, or 34. So the idea is that Bodhidharma was the direct inheritor of Buddha's direct complete understanding. Now whether all the characters in those stories, and again these are all in the Transmission of Light, which I would encourage you all to read, written by Kezan Jokin, who is the third ancestor after Dogen. Whether all those people existed and whether all those things actually happened is another matter.

[22:47]

Nevertheless, the idea was that what was being propagated at the time was exactly the same as Buddha's understanding. And so he's saying the mind is intimately transmitted from west to east. And the song that Jomira Samadhi starts in pretty much the same way. The Dharma of Duskness is intimately transmitted by Buddhas and ancestors. So then there's this thing, and again, Rev was talking about this about a month ago. What is the Dharma of Duskness, and how is it intimately transmitted? So this is, you know, the very beginning question that we have to ponder. But then, you know, both of them go on to say, you know, Secretary says it right away, the way it has no northern and southern ancestors, and Jesus is saying, Secretary says it on the second page, you know, Now there are sudden and gradual in which teachings and approaches arise. When teachings and approaches are distinguished, each has a standard. Whether the teachings and approaches are mastered or not, reality constantly flows. So they're both saying, look, okay, we have these different schools now, but there is only one teaching, regardless of the way it's presented.

[23:51]

I can't remember, are we so-so considered a sudden or gradual school? So, yeah, northern or southern? We're pretty much a sudden school. A sudden, so we're considered... Wait, is that... Southern is the gradual? No, Southern is the Southern. Yeah, Northern is the more gradual. Okay. But, you know, I mean, if we're going to make distinctions. So then, after the initial four lines, Secretary gets into the spiritual source, shines clear and light. So he's setting up these different images, the darkness and the light and the oneness and the many. and kind of mixing them up in the same way that Tozan also says, taking a similar, they're not the same, not distinguished, their places are known. So the spiritual source is the one noumenal essence, but it shines clear in the light, and the light is supposedly representative of distinctions. And then the branching streams, which are the various phenomenon, flow in the dark, and the dark is supposedly the idea of the oneness or unity.

[24:59]

So he's saying both of these things are happening at the same time. There is no difference between the spiritual source shining in the light or the branching streams flowing in the dark. These phenomena and principle are both happening all at the same time within unity and difference. The next few lines, grasping at things is surely delusion. I think we know that and we've heard this many times, especially in the Xin Xin Ming, like if you're stuck with phenomena of dimensional understandings, you're not going to understand anything. And he says, according with sameness is still not enlightenment. So just sticking with the idea of unity, like, oh, I've had this amazing experience of oneness, that's amazing. That's still not enlightenment. And if we get time to have a quick look at the Fukanza Zengi, Dogen says very much the same thing at the beginning. You might think you're enlightened, but really you're only just playing in the entranceway. The next four lines, Shohaku has a very lovely point here. All the objects that senses interact, and yet do not.

[25:59]

Interacting brings involvement. There's 15 characters that Sekito uses. And he says that these 15 characters express the whole of reality, which is a pretty amazing proposition. So all the objects that senses interact, and yet do not. Interacting brings involvement. Otherwise, speech keeps its place. So this is kind of this sense of intermingling, interdependence. You know, we have senses and the objects. We have eye and sight, ear and sounds, nose and smells, tongue and taste, as he says further down. So we're engaged in reality, and at the same time, everything has its independent place. So again, both of these things are happening at the same time. We're always interconnected, and there's always the distinct identity of everything. So this is what he kind of posits in line after line. Can we come up with a question now? What's the hand? I've seen... other translations of this, but I can't quite recall what they said for those few lines. Well, there is a somewhat different translation in this, which is useful to look at for some of the... But, you know, he says, each sense and every field interact and do not interact.

[27:11]

When interacting, they also merge, otherwise they remain in their own states. So again, this idea of, like, Connection and independence both happening at the same time. I don't know if there are any better translations throughout than that. And again, talking about the different phenomena. Sights vary in quality and form. Sounds differ as pleasing or harsh. So things have their own characteristics. But within that, they come together in the dark. They're all part of one unity. And clear and murky phrases are distinguished in the light. So everything has its own characteristic again. Is this making sense to people? So the four elements are fairly big in Chinese thinking. And he says they return to their nature. This is what in everything has its own properties. Fire heats, wind moves, water works, earth is solid. In the same way iron sights, ear and sows, nose and smells, tongue and taste. So everything has its own characteristic, and everything is always interacting with everything else.

[28:17]

Is everyone looking mystified? Because there's a way that it makes sense, and if it doesn't make sense, then it doesn't make sense. And I don't know if this is a way I can explain it. And if you ask a question, I can explain it differently. In terms of this context, where does the greater good and evil come into play here? I think he would say that good and evil are just... You could put good and evil in for, say, refined and common speech. or clear and murky phrases. So these are just, you know, distinctions that we make. And on one level, they're ultimately part of one whole, and they have their own appearance and their own manifestation. I would say they're, you know, temporarily arising phenomenon, probably. Can we go back to the line, the four elements return to their natures just as a child turns to its mother? Mm-hmm. Can you explain how... I see how the four elements return to their natures, but I don't really see how a child turning to its mother is a parallel for that.

[29:33]

I think it's just talking about naturalness, you know, the naturalness of the phenomenon. So, you know, if a child is lost or stuck, what does it want? It usually wants its mother. That's just like an instinctive response, an instinctive connection that is made. Even though child and mother are two separate things, there is a strong connection between them. Child turning to its source. Yeah, you could say that. So then we get to, in a way, the crux of the thing. In the light there is darkness, but don't take it as darkness. In the dark there is light, but don't see it as light. Like in dark, oppose one another like the front and back foot in walking. Now, Jacque says this slightly differently. I think it's kind of handy. Light and dark are relative to one another, like forward or backward steps. So I think the idea of opposing each other gives us some sense of, you know, things being in conflict or anything.

[30:37]

But there is, again, just constant relational between the absolute and the phenomenal, and the absolute and phenomenal. So there's the dark, which is the absolute, and... So within phenomena, within the light, there is darkness. But if we don't take it as darkness, it's like don't just think of it in relation to phenomena. There is phenomena and there is the absolute, but you can't just take them in relation with each other. I think that's how he's saying that, and vice versa as well. And so they're constantly in relation like the front and back foot in walking. And my favorite line is, each of the myriad things has its merit expressed to go into functional places. It's very helpful to remember this sometimes, I think. Would you consider this whole surprise a position actually beyond the whole, you know, the concept of becoming? I mean, it seems to present an aesthetic picture.

[31:40]

No, I think it's a constantly, constant manifestation picture. So everything is always constantly manifesting as reality and as phenomena. And as ultimate, you know, noumenon, or the absolute and phenomena. No, I'm just looking at it as a container. Does it have becoming inside? Does it have becoming? Yes. Ooh, that's a tricky question. I may have to get back to you on that one. Thank you. What do you think he says? Tactics. Because I think if you're seeing it as darkness, you're separating it from its relational aspect. With light. With light, yeah. But in a sense, you know, it's hard not to because they are always in relation to each other. But they also have their own absolute, you know, this is kind of the entanglement of both things happening at the same time. And I'm not sure I completely get what he's trying to say there.

[32:46]

Just this last line, you know, it seems sort of in opposition in a certain way to relaxing back in the grass huts and, you know, and I just wondered about your understanding of it. How is it not relaxing? How is it not relaxing? Because each and everything has its merit, especially if it wouldn't be functional in a place. I mean, that's just like, great, everything is, you know, is functional and useful. But he's saying... We're respectfully urging you to study the mystery. Oh, that's a little bit further. We haven't got quite that far yet. So the final images that you use, the principal phenomenon exists, box and lid fit, principal responds, arrow points meet. And the arrow points meet is a kind of from a Chinese story of the archery student who tried to surpass his teacher. and try to surprise him and, by some accounts, kill him because he didn't want a rival. So he tried to surprise his teacher by firing an arrow at him, but his teacher was already ready, fired an arrow back in mid-air.

[33:50]

So it's a nice analogy for the teacher-student relationship, in some senses. Not that you're trying to kill your teacher, but there is this perfect meeting. And it's something that Tozan also uses in an imagery. When arrow points meet head-on, how could it be a matter of skill? And I think that has to do with, again, the transmission of the mind, the intimate transmission. So phenomena existing and principle responding is like box and lid fitting and like arrow points meeting. So these things are happening as this natural function. in their natural place. So then, you know, he's saying, hearing the words, understand the meaning. So, you know, these are all just words that he's offering us to try and understand this. But we have to go beyond, you know, looking at these as words and actually take in what is being presented in terms of like, how do we meet reality?

[34:54]

What is the reality that we're meeting? And the reality we're meeting is that everything is a phenomenon and everything is part of the ultimate reality as well. drawing from the in don't take light as darkness in dark there's light don't see it as light and from maybe the the natural thing and then this concept of constant contact that the error points are meeting that the senses are interacting with objects and and yet separate from them somehow but In the Jumira Samadhi, I'd like to bring it up again later, the servants serving their lord. And I'd read something about that, that that was sort of a view of almost like karma, that the principle responds that one thing is inseparable from the next thing.

[36:03]

Not obeying that is the confusion. And so then natural action is the not trying. Don't twist yourself up to see the light that is present in darkness. Or the other way around. Or that is the... in the light there's darkness, don't take it. Yeah, I hadn't thought of it in terms of twisting it, making a special effort to do that. Yeah, it seems to me that, you know, but it's, don't take it, don't see it as light is phrased the same way as, do not neglect this. Maybe so, maybe so. We can get to that when we get to the John Mason Maradie, possibly. So maybe these two lines might also help Muhammad.

[37:05]

If you don't understand the way right before you, how will you know the path as you walk? So again, this is not like something external, like way out there on some boundary or something. It's like the way right before you. So in each moment, the way is right before you. And so the path as you walk is the progression or is becoming through that field of interrelated phenomena and noumena. Does that make sense? Possibly. The progress is not a matter of far or near. So again, you know, this is not, you know, the idea, there aren't stages on the way to doing this. This is already present, already happening. And it's a question of can you relate to it in this particular way? And that's studying the mystery and not passing it. There isn't nights in vain. So, you know, as Dogen says in Phukans of Zengi, like leaving a seat, in your own home to wander in vain through the dusty realms of other lands. It's like, it's all right here in front of you. And it's all presented in this way.

[38:07]

And he's trying to say, this is how it is. Can you see it in this way? Mike? I was always wondering, like the woodland starts the same. Oh yeah, we'll get to that almost. I think we have time to get to that. Although I might not give you a good answer to it. I'm sure this is the right answer. Maybe before we move on, I just have one poem that's in my head that I read a little earlier from taking from Trunk to Branches, Share the Essence. It says, Chop down the tree, still no blossom, where is spring? Something like that. Well, that's still the essence of the tree. Yeah. spring is still happening without the tree of the blossom. Looking for the blossom in the chop-down figures. But that's also perfectly possible.

[39:08]

Shall we move on to the dual mirror samadhi? Okay. So, some of you may or may not know the idea of the five ranks and this kind of development that became supposedly part of the Soto School Tozan is one of the founders of. So possibly this is a transmission teaching that Yunnan gave to Tozan, possibly it's a transmission teaching that Tozan gave to Ungan Donjo, who was the successor, and Kaoshan Sozan, who was the So in Soto. So there's a slightly different function to this, maybe that it's aimed somewhat at teaching, or explaining a little bit more what the transmission of the teaching is. And yet within that, and certainly Sozan, who is not one of the direct descendants that we chant in our lineage, but is one of Sozan's other descendants, talked about this idea of five ranks. I'm not going to get too sidetracked by that. If you want to learn more about the five ranks, it's very much in Charlie Piccone's dual mirror study.

[40:16]

There is a book that an Australian teacher has written all about this, which I have read, and if you can make a compelling case where I should give it to you, I would give it to you. I'm going to read it again. And also, Tygan Leighton's book, which I would recommend slightly more highly, talks a lot about the five ranks. And for me, there's a little bit about, well, if this is a sudden school, why do we have ranks? And after Reb was here giving his talk about the teaching of dustness, I said to him, you know, well, I enjoy the teaching of darkness, but I'm still a bit confused by the five ranks. And he said, well, I'd advise you to skip the five ranks business and just concentrate on the teaching of darkness. Because, you know, even if I say what the five ranks are, you're going to start, like, thinking about, well, where do I fall in that? What does this mean? Where's the progression? And for me, I don't know that they're an especially helpful tool. I think part of what they may be intended to is for, you know, the teachers to kind of place a temporary label on their students, like, oh, I see this student has reached, you know, or is currently working or mainly working at this rank.

[41:20]

And there's the idea, like, are these successive things? Are they kind of codependent things? There are, you know, wonderful symbols, which I think are in, which you can see in here, which is supposedly still part of, you know, teaching esoteric parts that you may get to later on in life. Which, if you're going to be excited by that kind of stuff, look at Tygen's book. But otherwise, you know, I would say we can leave it aside without... Tygen's book doesn't say five ranks. He says five positions. And lots of people say five positions. This is true. When Mel taught this Jomir Samadhi here, we were all given one of those Jomir Samadhi study guides, actually. Mm-hmm. But he emphasized that it's not progressive. There's two sets of verses, one of which describes five positions you can be in.

[42:24]

One of them does have a slightly more progressive feel to it, and supposedly those were interconnected as part of the teaching thing. But I think that's an important thing to remember. There's not a stage like, well, I've checked off stage one, now I'm at rank two, now I'm at rank three. positions you can be in, in that idea of Dharma positions, which I do like. It's like, where are you manifesting in the world right now? You know, what is the world looking like for you right now? In the, in the old days, a long, long time ago, when I first had to get glasses, I went to an optometrist and he had a big box full of gloves and he put them together. He said, how's this? You know, he said, Now I'll try this. Now I'll look through these. Try this. What does that look like? And I think I find it helpful to think of the five physicians as a teaching like that. I'll try looking at reality like this. Jennifer.

[43:29]

Light it, so I'm not really going back. In the final time, we would use a different translation. Something like, when the relative meets the absolute, it's like a box on its lid. Meaning a kind of lettered box that's so well fitted that it's quite seamless. And that when the absolute meets the relative, it's like two arrow points meeting high in the air. And it's very much like a description of positions. It's how the relative is meeting the absolute. And is that different from how the absolute is? It's kind of neat to say, but it's lost in the translation that it's used to. Just curiosity. No, I think that's where we get into the idea that the five schools have different ways of looking at it.

[44:34]

our reality and the ultimate phenomena, interact it. OK, we're ready for some looking at the preface. Again, if you want to take the character chapters and look at the other chapters, I think this can be divided into about six different parts. Just on a poetic point of view, the sound of Kai is you know, 44 lines with 5 characters each in Japanese and Chinese, and in 94 lines, 4 characters. So there's, you know, it's a different poetic form, but it is, you know, it is, again, poetry. And sometimes we have chance of it in Japanese, previously. So there is a Japanese version of it in the Okuosamae card. It is the song, and that's the song part. So beginning, you know, as we said, the Dharma of Usness is intimately transmitted. So now you have it, preserve it well.

[45:34]

This was, you know, what Yunnan said to Dongshan. But it's also, you know, like, it's not just Yunnan and Dongshan. It's like, it's transmitted all the way from Buddha, and it's still being transmitted to us. So we have it. We should be preserving it well. This is, you know, something for us to remember. And then, you know, the difference and similarity thing, with the silver bowl filled with snow, heron and the moon. You know, they're not the same, but, you know, at the same time, they're not... When they're not distinguished, their places are known. They're things that look similar, but they each have their own qualities. And this line I talked about in my talk a few weeks ago, which I think most of you are here for. So the meaning does not reside in the words, but a pivotal moment brings it forth. All the other translations we use now is it responds to the inquiring impulse. So again, this is the dynamic quality. The meaning of any of this isn't in what's written down here anywhere. Meaning of it is like, what happens when you're meeting reality in this moment? Are you meeting it? Maybe this is where Catherine's from, but are you meeting it with a sense of, this is absolute reality, or are you meeting it in a sense of like, oh, here's a bunch of phenomena happening, or are you seeing both of these things intermingling at the same time?

[46:43]

So, you know, it's the moment that makes this reality. It's not anything that's written down. It's the moment, your lived moment right now, that makes this happen. And as he says, move and you attract and miss and you fall into dowsing and vacillation. So it's meeting the moment and not moving, not missing it. And turning away and touching are both wrong. So again, grasping, aversion, just as we heard back in the Xin Xin Ming, that's going to lead you astray. So you're just straight up meeting this moment head on. And then this next line, just to portray it in literary form is sustained with defilement. One thing I wrote that was kind of helpful about that is, understanding that is, if it is only portrayed in literary form, that's stating it with defilement. So it's like, not that we, you know, it's like, yes, if the words are not yet right later on, it's like, you know, it's not that we can't, well, we can't portray it in literary form, we can try to, and we have to try to, because that's part of how the teaching gets transmitted.

[47:55]

It's not the only way the teaching gets translated, but it's part of the way. But if all we're doing is looking in the words, like the secular was saying, if you're just looking at the words, you have to go beyond that to see what the meaning is. So they're saying just to portray it in literary form, it's to stay in it with the power. So we have to go beyond the writing for this. So in darkest night it's perfectly clear and the night of dawn is hidden, it sounds very much like the sound of a cry to me. Again, very similar. which are light and dark and difference and unity. And as he says, it's not beyond words. So words are going to help you, but it's not the only thing that happens. And so like facing a precious mirror, form and reflection, behold each other, you are not it, but in truth it is you. So again, this is referring to Dong Shan's own One of Dongshan's enlightenment stories where he was having left his teacher who said, you know, now you have it, preserve it well.

[48:58]

He was still pondering on this and saw his reflection and had this realization, you know, that he wasn't separate from his teacher. Everywhere I go, I meet him. And this is one of the things where, with the Chinese, personal pronouns, you know, are not necessarily specified. So this line can also be read, you are not him, but he is you. But in truth, he is here. So this can be thought of referring to Dong Shan and his teacher. Like, he is not his teacher, but at the same time, his teacher is him. So this is that kind of intimate transmission. And like a newborn child, the five aspects. This is a reference to how the Tathagata is seen in terms of no going, no coming, no arising, no abiding, and not actually saying anything either. One word that Buddha is referred to is like, he didn't come, he didn't go, he didn't arise, he didn't abide, and ultimately he did not say anything.

[49:58]

So this could be taken from, as infants we all have Buddha nature, and we're all kind of manifesting it then, and then we throw up a discriminating consciousness and we lose that kind of thing. But ultimately it's in here, and we can access it again. Can you say that again? What are the five aspects? Going, coming, arising, abiding, and speaking. It's like, is there any speaking or not? So we can talk a lot, but it's not actually saying anything. Professor Mark Blum was here. Anyway, he talked to Nirvana Sutra. That's from Nirvana Sutra. Thank you. Nirvana Sutra influenced all Ify Buddhism. That's an example. Excellent. All right, then we get to finally start. In the illumination, a hexagram, apparent, real, interact, piled up, there may be three of the permutations, make five, at the face of the face, they've been heard about the five-pronged vajra, wondrously embraced within the real, drumming and singing begin together, penetrate the source, travel the pathways, embrace the territory and treasure the road, you do well to respect this, do not neglect it.

[51:04]

So again, hexagrams, trigrams, things like that, they're all in here. They're all in here, and they're all in the other one too. So I think, you know, Part of what I think about this is Dongshan was using this because it's something that people would have been very familiar with, in the same way that we might have references to, I don't know, Shakespeare or the Bible. He's kind of saying, using the esoteric imagery of the I Ching, which a lot of people will have had some understanding with, to make his point about either the five aspects or the five ranks or the five positions. So the illumination hexagram... So in trigrams, there are broken lines, unbroken lines, and broken lines. And the illumination hectogram is solid line, broken line, solid line, solid line, broken line, solid line.

[52:06]

So it has this very particular quality. All these things have qualities. And again, if you want to read all about them, fully enumerated in Charlie's book and in these other books. I don't think we have time to go into all of that. But I think he chose this particular one because it was said to be the most stable hexagram in terms of the qualities these things have. And yeah, there are many different interpretations. One of the meanings for it is fire. One of the other meanings is clinging, which doesn't sound like a very Zen thing to have the quality. But this was what he chose. So there are, you know, there are permutations you can make out of this to have other qualities. So these lines are very particular I Ching references, which, you know, I don't think we need to get bogged down in so much, but obviously a part of how, you know, the teaching is being presented in that culture. So the five-flavoured Herob, I've heard different versions. The Hisop, Hisandra, maybe there are other ones people have heard, you know, which is a, you know, a brass...

[53:12]

Shiso? Shiso, yes, which has all the five flavors at once, supposedly. And a vajra, do you all know what a vajra looks like? So it's a little hand thing that has a central core and then four outer prongs that kind of meet in the middle and then bend out and then meet at both ends as well. So again, kind of a symbolic thing. Um, penetrate the source, travel the pathways, embrace the territory and treasure the roads. To me, it kind of feels like, you know, understanding the way right before you, you know, and knowing the pathways you walk. It's like, it's right here and it's right in front of you and it's extending everywhere. Territory in the roads, the source and the pathways. Seems we're running short on time, where should we move to? So if you turn the page to outside still and inside trembling, I think this is interesting because when we're chanting it, it's not so easy to make these breaks, but there are, I think, very particular breaks in what he's talking about.

[54:19]

So the stuff before that is talking about the suchness and the justness, even though the teachings and approaches arise. But once he gets to outside still and inside trembling, he's talking about how teachers are responding to or like noticing their students or classifying their students. So, you know, he's talking about these people who may look kind of calm or convincing on the outside, but they're actually kind of trembling on the inside, like tethered coats or cowering rats, which I think is great imagery. This is one of the translations I prefer than the current one that we're using. He says, the ancient sages grieve for them and offer them the dharma. Led by their inverted views, they take black for white. So again, you know, we're all familiar with the idea of inverted views. You know, that line comes up in the heart sutra. So like when you're not understanding things fully you think black is white but when that inverted thinking stops the affirming mind naturally accords this affirming mind I think is very similar to what is being talked about in the Xin Xin Ming it's just kind of naturally not falling to one side or the other but landing naturally with what's happening so if you want to follow in the ancient tracts please observe the sages of the past and this is

[55:35]

Something that Dogon picked up was, says very explicitly in the Fukunza Zengi as well, you know, when he starts up in his questions about, you know, the way he's originally perfect and all evading, why do we need to practice, which was his original practice question. You know, the first thing he comes up is, well, Buddha sat, and even though Buddha was already enlightened, he sat for six years, and Bodhidharma, you know, he sat for nine years, so please observe these sages of former times. And like Sekhita is saying, don't set up standards of your own. So like, this is the way that we're transmitting to you. So follow these examples. One on the verge of realizing the Buddha way contemplate the tree for 10 kalpas. That's a story from the Lotus Sutra with a Buddha whose name is very long and I can't remember how to pronounce it. But it's like, you know, this is, you know, this is how some practice. Because some are vulgar dual tables and ornate robes, this is also a Lotus Sutra reference. The prodigal son. who was kind of scrounging around in the dirt while there were jewel tables and ornate robes available to him in his family.

[56:35]

He didn't recognize them. The next line, some are wide-eyed cats and white oxen. This is a story from Nang Kwan, what his Japanese name is, which is saying, you know, human beings aren't so sure about Buddha, you know, Buddha nature, but cats and white oxen have no problem with Buddha nature. So this is Talking about different kinds of students and different kinds of expedient means you can use to communicate to them. Now, when a wooden man begins to sing, a stone woman gets up dancing. So the wooden man is, in some ways, it's supposedly like a natural person. But then there's also, in some imagery, it's kind of the bodhisattva who's doing exactly what is he's being asked to do. The stone woman is, you know, the idea is it's a barren, you know, woman who is not fertile, but I think that, you know, he's kind of turning this language on his head a little bit, saying even though we don't expect these things to, these people to kind of get up and do things, they do get up and do things, so I don't have a really clear sense of what that's supposed to mean, there are different interpretations on it, so again, if you want to investigate further, I would try one of these books, but...

[57:57]

We're just about at 4.30. I know some people won't have to go. And I feel like I've been talking an awful lot and not taking any questions this time. So if you would like to ask anything or have anything clarified, I might be able to help. What about the last sentence? Practice hidden functions secretly like a fool-looking idiot? I think this is just a very neat instruction. Um, you know, we've heard about how, you know, Daikan and Yokadaishi were, you know, these kind of naturally enlightened people. You know, they didn't necessarily set themselves up as, you know, grand, you know, kind of figures with amazing robes and everything like that. You know, they just went off to be ordinary human beings in the marketplace quite often. Um... you know, in the same way that the occulting picture, you know, ends up returning to the marketplace.

[59:02]

So I think the instruction is like, even though you may have this wonderful understanding of reality, you're not going to show off about it. So just like do that, you know, just act as a natural being. And again, this is maybe a little with Taoism. You know, the previous lines have this kind of Confucian sound to them. It's to serve their lords, children obey their parents. It's kind of like very Confucian. But this is kind of maybe more like a Taoist thing, like just be a natural person. And you don't have to be showing off this understanding. You know, if you're trying to help people, you know, maybe the best thing is just not to show, hey, I'm a great Zen teacher. Just to be an ordinary person. Maybe just to be a fool and idiot. Like, don't take yourself so seriously. And so the host within the host is the fifth of the five positions. So he's saying, like, if you can just keep doing this, then that's where you will be. This stuff all kind of made my head hurt. Yeah.

[60:03]

It does. And it seems like at a lot of points, there's this like deliberately trying not to make sense or trying to say something that doesn't make sense as a way of kind of illustrating the point that he's trying to make. The blah blah blah line where it's like, this is like baby talk. This actually doesn't make sense. And it kind of felt like the wooden and stone with the wood man and the stone woman was like a similar feeling. You can't be conscious of it. You can't feel it. So how on earth do you think that you could actually think about what I'm talking about and understand it? So here's another line of nonsense that confused you. Right. And part of it is, I think, designed to do that in the same way that most koans are designed to stop you thinking about what the sense is. You know, I wrote down next to that line, koantor, you know, this word man, stone woman. It's like if you try to meet it with your logical mind, you're not going to get it very far. And this is part of how to kind of... get you to have a different way of meeting it. Right. You know, which is beyond the words. Right, right.

[61:04]

So it's meeting it with the inquiring impulse. Yeah. Yeah, where's that at? It's right in there. Right in there. It's at the pool. Meet you tomorrow morning. Could you clarify that host for that host? Um, so that's... Okay, I mean... What is the fifth rank or the fifth position? You know, there's many different ways that it's talked about. Integration of the real and the seeming. Absolute achievement, host in host, prince and minister in harmony. So it's like, it's supposed to be being completely in accord with all conditions and circumstances at all times. It's one of the positions. It's one of the positions, yeah. It's always the last one on the list. Absolutely. To be forgotten about. I want to say, this reminded me of the part of the Genjo Owen chanting this morning, when Dogen talks about fish in water and birds in the air, and that says, there are other analogies I could use.

[62:10]

And that doesn't go on to that. Well, I have a great feeling about that line, because the next thing he says is practice enlightenment and people are like this. So my understanding, the way I look at that is like, people are like the fish and the birds. Practice is like swimming or flying. Enlightenment is like the ocean off the sky. So we're practicing in this ocean of enlightenment, or practicing in the sky, however you want to look at it, which is not actually very different from what they're saying here. So every moment there is this opportunity to be in the ocean of enlightenment in which there is the relative and the ultimate always playing out both at the same time And as Shahaka once did it, it's like, I like this. I always remember when he did that at the sashay, it's like, they're not separate things, they're just like right on top of each other all the time like this. That also reminds me of the famous David Foster Wallace commencement speech. This is water based on the old joke of two fish swimming along and an older fish says,

[63:15]

swims past them, two young fish and older fish swims past them and says, how's the water today? And one fish turns the other and says, what's water? Exactly. Yeah, we're already swimming in the ocean. We're like, there's great sages. And now you all know about the amount of money you're doing relative. It's just, it's all in there, folks. Is there a way to get your list of references? Um, Yes, I do have a bibliography. If you want to make coffee and feel that OK. And most of these books belong in the library. If they belong in the library, they're just in the library. I highly recommend this. If you're having trouble with the words, just enjoy the pictures. I really do enjoy it. And this one too. Actually, I had these, I mean, if you're bored of me talking, I had this out for the, you know, in terms of how other people talk about the relative and absolute, you know, there's the Joshu story, and again, which one of the James Cohen stories, where the monk says, what is the meaning of the Buddha Dharma?

[64:27]

Joshu says, the cypress tree out front. And the monk says, please don't use a metaphor involving concrete objects. Okay, I won't refer to anything concrete. So what is the meaning of the Buddha Dharma? The cypress tree out front. So that is where the thing is standing for the particular and the absolute at the same time. So that's to me what that story is about. And quick Tento Chilken reference. This is how I think Dogen talk. These are just two that came out from the day. Being harmonious and pure like this, do not lose either the eye of oneness or the eye that discerns differences. Take one stalk of vegetable to make the six-foot body of Buddha. Invite the six-foot body to make one stalk of vegetable. This is the divine power that causes transformations and the little work that benefits beings. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[65:28]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sscc.org and click giving.

[65:38]

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