Good evening and welcome. So yesterday was the day we celebrate as the anniversary of the great enlightenment and achievement of Buddhahood of Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha who lived in Northeastern India, what's now Northeastern India, about 2,500 years ago. And yesterday we completed what's called Rohatsu Sesshin in Japanese, our annual retreat. We do it for five days. Some places they do seven days of celebration of the Buddhist enlightenment. So all around the world and all around America as well, people were meditating intensively. And here we were. talking about working with this particular text, this chant that we did tonight, the Song of the Jewel Marrow Samadhi.

[01:11]

So if you want to open your chant book to page 10 and 11, I'll be referring to some of it. You don't need to, but I want to kind of somewhat do a review of some of what we talked about in session. Some of you were here for that, or parts of it, and some of you weren't. We had a lot of people here for the five days, or parts of the five days. So I want to talk a little bit about, review a little bit about what we talked about, but also talk about why this text is important. to us and for our particular branch of Buddhism. So maybe I'll just start with how we worked with it in this intensive meditation retreat we just finished. So this song or poem

[02:20]

was composed in the ninth century by a teacher named Dongshan Liangjie in Japanese, Tozan Ryokai in Chinese, and Tozan Ryokai in Japanese. And our branch of Zen, Soto Zen, is named after him. The To is from Tozan, part of his name. What I focused on and what we worked with this last five days is how lines in this text, first of all, function as koans. So you may have read about koans in Zen. And if you did, you probably have an erroneous idea about what they are. So koans classically are All teaching stories, often from the 700s and 800s, from Dongshan's time, are dialogues between great teachers, classic teachers, and their students.

[03:37]

But sometimes they're more recent. And we also understand them as sometimes just situations in life. one branch of Zen students pass through a curriculum of koans that is assigned. And so that often they're understood or they're thought to be like nonsense riddles that you have to pass through. And that's not at all what they are. They're teaching stories. And in our tradition in Soto Zen, coming from the founder of that tradition in Japan, a monk named Dogen in the 1200s, and from this lineage that started with Shinri Suzuki Roshi in California in the 1960s. We work with these stories not to try and figure them out or finish them, but to let them become part of our practice

[04:44]

body, we could say. So we also talked about these lines as instructions in zazen, this meditation we were just doing. So many of the lines in this text, in this song, in this long poem, are very deep suggestions stories, messages that we could use as instructions for our zazen, but also that we can work with as koans, which means that we can let them, not to figure them out, but to allow them to become part of our zazen. And they become part of how we C, our practice awareness.

[05:47]

So the two lines that I focused on, so the five days of sitting, the talks I gave on those will soon be on our website. But the two most crucial lines of the whole text are the very first two lines, first of all, the Dharma of Suchness. Dharma means teaching or reality or truth of Suchness, which is the experience of just this, of this experience, facing the wall, facing ourselves, being present and upright in our body and mind. The Dharma of Suchness is intimately transmitted or entrusted by Buddhists and ancestors. Now you have it, preserve it well. So this is not something that we need to figure out or acquire through some fancy experience or through many hours of meditation or through lots of study of texts or listening to talks.

[06:53]

Now you have it. That's the basic understanding in our tradition, that this is something that is already present. But our practice, our lifetime of practice, is to take care of it, preserve it well. So it's not something we have to acquire. So these first two lines, one can spend a lot of time with and sit with and allow this to be present in our awareness. The dharma of suchness, the teaching of suchness, this reality is intimately, closely, tenderly, carefully conveyed and trusted by all the Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it. Preserve it well. The second most important, I would say, line in this whole two pages text is in the middle of the first page.

[07:57]

Like facing a precious mirror, form and reflection behold each other. You are not it, but in truth it is you. Both of these lines I'm pointing out are from a story about Dong Shan and his teacher. And briefly, when he was about to leave his teacher, he asked what his teacher's main teaching was, and his teacher His name was Yun Yan, said, just this is it. Just this. So that's another way of talking about suchness, this experience of presence, this deep awareness of just this. And then after a pause, this teacher said to Dongshan, now you are in charge of this. Please be careful. Keep it alive. And so this has been transmitted in this lineage from you know, the 800s through China, through Japan, now to California, and now to Chicago.

[09:00]

Later, Dongshan didn't have anything to say. Later, he was crossing a stream, wading across a stream, and he looked in the stream, and he saw his reflection, and he realize, oh, I am not this, but it actually is me. So this is a very deep and subtle truth. And he says it here, you are not it, but in truth it is you. So we could spend the rest of the time now talking about this, and we spent a lot of time on this in the last five days, but I'll just leave that for now. There are copies of this out front. You can take it home if you want to spend time with it. But I want to talk about some more of these lines, and then also just talk about why this whole poem is very important to our practice here. But I'll just mention some other lines that we can see as as koans or as meditation instructions.

[10:07]

Turning away and touching are both wrong, about a quarter of the way down, for it is like a massive fire. This is, we could say, a koan, but also it's also an instruction. Turning away from our experience, turning away from our life, trying to deny All the thoughts and feelings that come up in meditation, turning away, doesn't work. Trying to get a hold of it also doesn't work. Trying to figure it out and grasp it and control it also doesn't work. It's like a massive fire. And another teaching story says that all Buddhas sit right in the middle of fire. This doesn't mean they aren't burning themselves up. It's a metaphor. There are other lines almost to the bottom of the first page. Wondrously embraced within the real, drumming and singing begin together.

[11:13]

Call and response. There's this immediacy to our awareness. Drumming and singing begin together. It's like the line, almost near the end, the wooden man starts to sing. The stone woman gets up dancing. out of our stillness, out of sitting still and present and upright, something happens. But it's not a matter of, it's not reached by feelings or consciousness. How could it involve deliberation? This is not something we can figure out. Something happens. It comes up from something very deep. reality constantly flows. There's something that happens that's very deep. So there are many lines in here that we could take as actual satsang instructions or as teaching stories to inform our meditation.

[12:26]

But there's also, in this long poem, many lines that refer to, well, three things that I'll mention that make this an important text for us. One is the teacher-student relationship. So it talks in the very first line about this reality, this teaching of suchness being intimately entrusted by all the Buddhas and ancestors. and to take good care of it, to preserve it well. When Buddhism was traveled from India to China, in all the different cultures that Buddhism has traveled into as it's moved from India to China and moved from India to Tibet, it also moved from India to South Asia, Theravada Buddhism, and moved from China

[13:31]

Japan, to Korea and Japan, now to the West. But in each culture, it takes on some of the forms of that culture. In China, it integrated with Confucianism. And in China, unlike India, history and lineage are very, very important. So we could say that Chan, which is the Chinese name for Zen, Zen is the Japanese word. And it means meditation, because that's the main practice. But we could say that Chan or Zen is Confucian Buddhism. It's informed by this sense of lineage and the importance of the teacher-student relationship. And we see that very much in this text a few hundred years after. really the beginning of what we could say is Chan or Zen. So there are many lines in here about the teacher-student interaction and that relationship.

[14:36]

And in many ways, this whole song or poem is about relationship and intimacy. So that's one thing, and I'll come back to that. Another thing is just the use of language, how language works and doesn't work. So a few lines down, the meaning does not reside in the words, but a pivotal moment brings it forth. And that phrase, a pivotal moment, can be translated in many ways. It also means the energy of the inquiring student, or the arrival of energy, or the workings of, actually, the whole universe, or the mechanism of that, allows it to come forth. So it's not a matter of the particular words. It's the energy of inquiry. It's the pivot of a particular moment of energy.

[15:38]

just to portray it a few lines later, just to portray it in literary form is to stain it with defilement. Only making some great literary work like this is to defile it. The meaning is not just in the words. Then a few lines later, it says, although it is not constructed, it is not beyond words. We can use words to point to it. It can't be contained with words, Poetry and these Koan dialogues can help indicate something that can convey it. So there are many places in this long poem that are talking about how to use and how not to use language. So there are many, many lines, many verses in here that have to do with how language works and doesn't work, talking about teachings and approaches on the second page, and whether they are mastered or not is not the point, the reality.

[17:01]

The truth constantly flows. But there's another thing that's going on here, and I want to start with that. That is very important. So there's a bunch of fives towards the bottom of the first page, and that's about a particular teaching. So I'm covering a lot of a lot of material rather quickly. And you can check. I wrote a book about this guy Dong Shan called Just This Is It, Dong Shan and the Practice of Suchness. And there's a chapter about this poem, this verse. So you can look at that for more information. But there's one of the key, We could say philosophical teachings about that's the background of Soto Zen.

[18:04]

And we could say just Zen generally. And that comes out of a lot of East Asian philosophical contexts is called the five degrees or sometimes the five ranks. And this text, this song, is considered kind of the origin of that. And it doesn't get into it explicitly, but it suggests it, and then a lot of commentary was based on it. But without getting into the specifics of that, what that's about is very important. It's about this interaction between what's sometimes called in Indian Buddhism the two truths. But there's a five-fold interaction. And it's at the heart of our practice. So on the one hand, there's the ultimate universal truth or reality. And on the other hand, there's our conventional, provisional reality, our everyday, the everyday world.

[19:12]

what we all know when we step out into the streets in the world of Chicago. So this is something that we're very much in touch with, practicing here in this small storefront temple in the middle of North Chicago. But there's also this background universal ultimate truth reality, underlying reality, underlying awareness that we start to get in touch with when we do this practice of suchness, of meditation, and for our guests for our new visitors tonight. I recommend doing this regularly to really benefit from it, doing it several times a week at least.

[20:15]

It's easier to do it when you're together with other people sitting facing the wall and there's an energy that you may have felt. doing it together with others. But even just in your home, sitting facing a wall, being present and upright, you know, you don't have to sit for 30 or 40 minutes like we do here. You could just sit for 15 minutes or 20 minutes. And doing it regularly several times a week, you start to feel this background could say space, or awareness, or sense of this ultimate reality. But our practice is not to reach some special ultimate awareness. So as it says on the second page, it is not a matter of delusion or enlightenment. There's both. confused, deluded awareness and our awakened awareness are part of reality.

[21:24]

Both are our conventional, provisional perceptions and awareness of the particulars of our everyday world. That's the kind of reality. And then also, as we become more familiar with it, this ultimate universal Absolute. So it's talked about here, about three quarters of the way down the first page, in terms of inclined and upright. So there are many ways it's talked about. So towards the end, it's talked about in terms of ministers and lords, or vassals and lords sometimes, or guests and hosts. There's many metaphors that are used in Zen talk about These two are guest and host. But the inclined and upright are the absolute and the relative.

[22:28]

The ultimate truth, the upright truth, and the inclined. So there's both the people who are living in residential monastic situations I lived for a few years in a monastery deep in the mountains in California. Living in such a place, one becomes steeped in this experience of ultimate universal reality. But the point isn't to just see that. So how does one bring that into everyday activity? How does one share that in our ordinary world, in the particulars of our ordinary perception and in the everyday world?

[23:30]

And how do they integrate? So this business of the five. the permutations make five, there is a five-fold process in which these awarenesses interact, and there's a whole philosophy about that, which was developed based on, starting from this poem. But the point isn't to understand that whole dialectical philosophy, but just to be aware that we touch this deeper sense of reality through meditation and spiritual practice. But the point of that isn't to become some expert at that or to have some deep understanding of that. That might happen. But how do we bring that into our interaction in the world? How do we use that to be helpful in the world? So we had some discussion during this retreat this week about what does it mean ministers serve lords and children obey their parents.

[24:40]

And actually in the original Chinese it's children obey their fathers because it was a patriarchal society and even more than our present patriarchal society. So how do we How do we understand that in terms of failure to serve is no help? How do we actually serve and help with our personal and communal situation in the world we are in? So that's one of the important parts of this text. Again, going back, there's how do we use language to do that? Again, the line towards the bottom, towards the end. It is not reached by feelings or consciousness. How could it involve deliberation? So linear, literal calculations are not how this works. And then, just going back a little bit,

[25:42]

that teacher and student, there are many things in here about teachers and students and that relationship which is so important in Zen. So the very beginning of the whole song, you know, the yin-yang talking to Dongshan, now you have it, saying, confirming that now you have it, preserve it well, take good care of it. But then Dongshan realizing that I am not it, but it actually is me. And these pronouns, you and it in that line, could be read as I am not him, referring to his teacher, but he actually is me. So this relationship is very subtle. There are other places in the song that talk about the talk about this relationship and the intimacy involved in that.

[26:45]

The subtlety of it... Well, the story about the... Towards the end, the arrows meeting head-on... Towards the end, it talks about Archer's skill. Arrows meeting head-on has to do with the intimacy of this meeting of And the affirming mind naturally accords. The actual meeting, in Zen they talk about, it's talked about mind to mind transmission or warm hand to warm hand, the actual meeting of teacher and student that happens generation to generation. But as we chant this, it's actually, Also, communal, so we say in Buddhism we say there are three treasures.

[27:51]

There's the Buddha, which the teacher represents. There's the Dharma, which is the teaching and all the different teachings. And this also means the truth of the law, the scriptures about the teaching. And then Sangha, which means community. So when we chant this, there's also the idea of Sangha, that we are taking care of it. Dillon was saying this during the Sershin, that when we bow, we are bowing for all the people who have been in this room in the past. We've been in this temple space for, well, since 2009, beginning of 2009, and for all the people who will be here in the future. And for all the people who have done this practice, going all the way back to Dongshan and Dogen and Suzuki Roshi.

[28:53]

How do we take care of this? And that's a matter of doing this communally. So anyway, I can keep babbling, but I won't. So I'll pause for questions and comments and responses. And we'll have more informal time later over tea and cookies if you have other just more basic questions. So comments, questions, responses. Yes, Michael. A little louder and slower, please. Because you were here for five days working with this, but not everybody has seen this before. So it is not reached by feelings of consciousness.

[30:05]

So you're asking if that means that even beings without ordinary are kind of consciousness? There are many places where teachers say it's not a matter of that. that there are plenty of Buddhas besides human beings. So our idea of consciousness is not all there is to consciousness. Is that what you're referring to? Yeah. So Dogen talks about water and how water is seen differently by humans than by fish and by dragons, for example. So yeah, our sense of consciousness and of intelligence and of awareness is limited by our human perceptions. That's a kind of basic teaching in Zen.

[31:10]

And one of the things that happens, I don't know what it felt like to you to do this practice for the first time. But one of the things we see is that our mind is, you know, there's many thoughts. Or maybe there weren't. Maybe you didn't have any thoughts the whole time you were sitting. But usually there's some thoughts. Or maybe many thoughts. And just to see that there's many thoughts is part of the point that, you know, one of the great Japanese and teachers of the last century said that while you're sitting, your stomach continues to secrete digestive juices and your brain continues to secrete thoughts. So we don't have to identify with all those thoughts. We can just keep sitting and allow the thoughts to come and go and let them go and more will come. So yeah, our idea of consciousness is part of our human limitation of consciousness. So yeah. is essentially independent of any observation that it might integrate into itself as part of its constructed meaning.

[32:13]

And that's necessarily the case if we were to impose the language logically on the situation. It's impossible to relate the observation of anything to a particular consciousness, which then requires that the consciousness is an instant only to the individual who possesses it. and the first two lines are another line that you had mentioned. And that is a, I mean, I don't want to use the word deliberately, but. Well, sure. You can use that. You could use that word if you wanted. We can use lots of words. And then, of course, we could spend hours just trying to figure out what we mean. But yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, no, no. I mean, the language is a curious thing, especially when it's and one of my favorites, and I think part of it is... Me too. ...is that it's very, very certain about the nature of truth as something that is a form of intimacy, first and foremost.

[33:21]

Yes. As opposed to something independent of the self. And that suggests many, many colorful things about how truth is obtained in the world and how it is shared as a gift between our fellows. Yes, within causes and conditions, time and season, it is serene and illuminating. It happens right within. That's part of the integration. It's part of the particulars of the phenomenal world. It doesn't exist somewhere on some mountaintop somewhere in the Himalayas or something. And the limitations of human consciousness and perception You know, it's important to realize, so, I mean, for example, which I haven't talked about in a little while, but they've recently discovered that the octopus is one of the most intelligent animals on the planet. They're very short-lived, so I don't know if they don't, haven't written books or anything, but they're very, very, they're very intelligent.

[34:30]

I mean, they're short-lived compared to us, but they're very intelligent animals. It's been documented, so. They might have read books with other readings. We don't know. Yeah, they may be smarter than reading. Anyway, other comments or questions or thoughts? Yes, Jen. What you just said about how people's minds think of something I always think of a boxer who has an opponent and he knows what that opponent is going to do before the opponent knows what he's going to do.

[35:34]

And his sense of what is going on is so acute that he can be, and he doesn't know himself how he predicts. Right. And I think, you know, the thing about octopi that I think is so amazing, or one of them, I just looked up the mimic octopus, you know, images of the mimic octopus. And here's a type of octopus that takes off its eight legs and swells them up near its head and lets them drift behind its head And then it can extend one of its tentacles so that it looks like a water snake.

[36:37]

It's called a mimic octopus, and it does many, many things. And then there's a very amusing story of the people who had an octopus inside of an aquarium, and they couldn't keep it in there. Oh, they escape, they're very, yeah. Yes. I like that bumper sticker, don't believe everything you think. But there's a Zen story about this, which is the teacher was asked, what are you? It's actually the teacher of the teacher of the person who wrote this.

[37:41]

But the student said, what are you thinking about sitting there so still? And he said, I'm thinking of not thinking. And the student said, how do you think of not thinking? And he says, beyond thinking, which The point being just that there's thinking, there's not thinking. And then there's something deeper, which is when we're sitting, we start to sense a kind of awareness. It's like that boxer or some other athletes who have some instinctual sense of, like, baseball hitters who know what pitch is coming. They have some sense of what's going on that they can't know, you can't know what, it's not based on feelings, it's not based on, as this says, it's not. Yeah, it's not based on feelings or consciousness and does not involve deliberation. It's just a sense, a kind of awareness that is physical or something.

[38:44]

It's not our thinking. So yeah, so there's a lot going on in this poem or verse. And so I just wanted to say a little bit about that as a kind of finishing up of our session and just encouraging you to spend more time with it. And we'll close formally with the four bodhisattva vows.

[39:12]

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