Good morning, everyone. Welcome. So for new people, I'm Taigen Leighton, the guiding teacher at Ancient Dragons Zen Gate. Welcome, everyone. I'm going to speak today about one of our key texts in what is currently called Soto Zen, and this is the song of the Samadhi by Dongshan, who we could say is the founder of our lineage in China. He lived 807 to 869. There will not be a test, but I've spoken about this song, this text many times. We will be chanting it at the end of the talk. And this is part of a series. I spoke about this a few weeks ago about the Dharma of Suchness,

[01:05]

and that talk is on our website on the podcast page, so you can look at it again. But I want to review a little bit just to start. David Ray, maybe you could just share screen the first half of the first page, whatever. A little lower if you could. Yeah, good. Okay. So just as a review, the focus of this teaching poem or song is the first two lines. The Dharma of Suchness is intimately transmitted by Buddhists and ancestors. Now you have it, preserve it well. So the subject of this whole song is the Dharma of Suchness, the teaching or practice or reality of just this, of this Suchness, of this immediacy, this immediate presence that we face when we

[02:07]

face the wall in Zazen, that includes everything. So this teaching or reality of Suchness is exactly what is transmitted or conveyed by all the Buddhists and ancestors. So, in China, this was a transmission text. And I don't think we have any copies of this text before around 1000 or so in written down. But of course, as it was an important transmission text, it was memorized. And as songs can be memorized. And so this is, originally, this was, when it says now you have it, preserve it well, that was conveyed to lineage holders in the Chinese Xiaotong, it's called in Chinese, Soto in

[03:10]

Japanese lineage. But starting, oh, sometime in the 1600s, in Japan, it started to be part of our regular liturgy. So when we chant this, the Dharma of Suchness, this reality of awareness of presence is conveyed by Buddhists and ancestors. That's what Buddhists and ancestors teach. And now you have it, preserve it well. So in some very real sense, what our practice is about is taking care of this awareness, this teaching, this reality of just this, this suchness, and how do we take care of it. And so this whole, it's two pages in our translation, this whole teachings poem is about how to take care of this teaching of suchness. And just to put some more context in it, at the bottom of what you can see on the screen,

[04:12]

it is like facing a precious mirror, form and reflection, behold, each other, you are not it, but in truth, it is you. So that's the second most important couple in this song. And again, this is a review of the talk that I gave a few weeks ago. But this you are not it, but in truth, it is you goes back to a story about Dongshan, the founder of our school, our lineage in China. And the story is that he when he was leaving his teacher Yunyan to go out on pilgrimage, he asked his teacher, if somebody asks me later on, what is the, what is your Dharma? What is your essential teaching? What should I say? And after a pause, Yunyan said, just this is it. And Dongshan didn't know what to say. He left. And as he was on his way, he was crossing a stream and he looked down on the stream,

[05:13]

and he saw his reflection in the stream and realized what all this was about. And he said, I am not it, but it actually is me. And here in this song, it's you are not it, but in truth, it is you. So I called Dongshan the founder of our lineage in China, in Japan, in the 1200s, the founder of our lineage who brought this from China to Japan is Ehei Dogen. And in one of his primary writings, Genjo Koan, he says, to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things, that's delusion. That everything arises and experiences itself as awakening. So that's another way of saying you are not it. Our small self to put it that way, our ego self is not this reality of suchness, but this reality of suchness, everything arising

[06:16]

together, we are part of that. We're not separate from that. So it actually is you. So I spoke about this at length in the previous talk, I think it was January 9th, it's on our website. And so this is just by way of review. But this dynamic of the way in which we, well, there are many themes in this long teaching poem. The primary one is just, how do we take care of this reality of suchness? How do we preserve it? How do we pass it along? And of course, Dongshan, what I call Dongshan the founder of our lineage in China, we could take it back to Bodhidharma, who brought Zen, Chan, and Chinese from India to China, back to Shakyamuni Buddha and all of his wonderful sutras that he spoke. And many Japanese and other

[07:17]

Asian teachers who came to America in our particular lineage, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, who founded San Francisco Zen Center, where I trained. And there's numbers of his writings and talks, but Zen mind, beginner's mind is maybe primary. At any rate, we are not it, but it is us. We are not this reality of suchness in terms of our personal agendas and personal resume and all of that, but it actually is us. So as I said, there are many themes about how we take care of this in this teaching poem. What I want to focus on today is the use of language and related to that, how the ultimate response in our life, in our practice, in our difficult world. Other themes just to mention, again, the teacher-student relationship,

[08:21]

more about the principle of response, and also the five-fold interaction, which I'm not going to go into today, but the relationship between the ultimate reality, the universal awareness that we get a taste of in our Zazen and the particular phenomenal situation, our own Dharma positions in our life and in this world. So that's a whole complex process and teaching. But I want to focus today on language and how to use language and how language is used and how language is not the point. So a little further down in, no, keep it where it is, David, thank you. At the top of that now, the line, the meaning does not reside in the words, but a pivotal moment brings it forth. So this is a key teaching. The meaning, what's translated, so there's many ways to translate this

[09:32]

line. The meaning, that Chinese character also means intention, it also means mind. We could say the heart of the matter is not, cannot be expressed in words. It's beyond our verbalizations for very good reasons. And I can go on about that, but our language is subject, verb, object. And we naturally, based on our language, objectify things of the world. Everything out there is objects, dead objects that we can manipulate, you know, to exploit and to get what we want from the world, to manipulate. And we do this with people, we do this with the minerals and oil and the

[10:34]

earth. We see everything out there as dead objects. So of course, the meaning is not in the words, the intention, the mind, the heart is not in language. Language supports our delusion. And yet we, here I am talking, and we do use language, and there's a huge body of Zen literature, which is supposedly beyond words and letters. But a pivotal moment brings it forth. So David, you can take away the screen share for now. So this line, a pivotal moment brings it forth, is very interesting and very complex. So, pivotal moment, the one of the character there is Ki in Sino-Japanese. It's the character in

[11:38]

one of Dogen's writings, Zenki, total dynamic activity. It's also the last character in my teacher Tenshin Zenki's name. It means a lot of things. It's one of, a lot of Chinese characters have many meanings, this one particularly. So that pivotal moment also could be rendered or seen as the arrival of energy. The energetic moment brings it forth, even though this meaning, this heart is not something that can be put into words. It does respond. So part of what I want to talk about today is just how this energetic mind, intention, heart responds to our practice. So a pivotal moment brings it forth.

[12:45]

Pivot is an interesting word, and it's used a lot in this aspect of our tradition in Chinese and Japanese Zen. There's a space and a time and a place where something shifts. There's a pivot. Sometimes we might feel that in Zazen, where we're sitting facing the wall and we maybe feel dull or bored, or maybe our mind is racing around. But at some point, we might just, there might be a pause and we just are there in this dharma of suchness. So this pivotal moment also could be rendered as the inquiring impulse. So this character ki means many, many things. It means a loom like in weaving. It means the operation, operations. It means the fundamental

[13:49]

workings of the world. There's many ways to translate that character. So this pivotal moment brings it forth. It's not something we can figure out exactly, or even necessarily study, but we might recognize it when we bring forth some questions, some deep question about what are we doing here? What is the meaning of this life? This is this pivotal moment that brings it forth. So just our energy looking into how is this? What is the point of our practice? What are we doing here? How does this affect our life? How can we express this awareness in our everyday activity? All those kinds of questions. This has been translated as the questioning student brings

[14:57]

it forth. So all of those meanings are there. A pivotal moment brings it forth, even though this meaning or mind is not something that can be caught in words, even though I'm talking about it. So that's the central line for the talk today, but there's more to say about it in this poem. A little further down, it says, although it is not constructed, it is not beyond words. So this meaning, this fundamental heart-mind is this. Our deepest intention is not conditioned. It's not constructed. It's not something we make up. It comes from someplace deeper. Although what is not constructed is not beyond words.

[15:57]

So Dongshan is saying that actually we can use words to convey it. This is why Zen teaching is often expressed in poems, in nature imagery, in these teaching stories called koans sometimes, which kind of bend our awareness or change our way of thinking or turn how we usually see things. So it's not beyond words. We can use words to point to it the way poetry points to something, even though we'll see more about that, even though it's not something that we can define or put down or put in some linear or literal framework. A little further up in this, it says,

[17:00]

well, this is about the principle of response. Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a match and fire. If we turn away from this dharma of suchness, if we say, oh, I can't, you know, people come to Zazen and think, oh, this is not something I can do. And it's challenging to just, it's amazing how challenging it is to just sit still and face the wall for 30 or 40 minutes. You know, you would think that in some ways it's the simplest thing in the world. Just sit, try not to move, keep your eyes open a little bit. And yet, we all know that, and some of you may be here for the first time, and maybe this is your first time sitting, I'm not sure, but there's something about it that's very tricky. And why and how it's very tricky is not so obvious. Part of it is just that we see our thoughts and feelings coming up. And

[18:12]

sometimes we don't like it. And we have to get, we have to become intimate and familiar with ourselves and everything. This is the process of sustained sitting. Anyway, I want to continue with some of the lines in this song, the song of suchness. The song of the jewel mirror. The jewel mirror being, you know, in some ways referring to that stream that Dongshan looked down in and saw that Sihai's reflection and said, I'm not that, but it actually is me. That's me. And all of reality, the suchness of reality is you. You're included in it, each one of us. And yet, my ideas about it and my program of who me is, that's not it. So there's this funny dynamic there. But continuing about this,

[19:17]

about this process of how it relates to language and how we can be aware of this operation is working in our lives and in our practice. Another line in this teaching poem says, led by our inverted views, we take black for white. When inverted thinking stops, the affirming mind naturally accords. So inverted thinking is like what I was describing in terms of how language conditions are thinking. We think we are separate from all that stuff out there. And, you know, we're trained in our consumerist society to get all of it, to get more of it, to get more stuff for me. You know,

[20:22]

that's this competitive consumerist society that we're all conditioned in. And it's in some ways the function of not just our corrupt society, but the way this can be corrupted or can be twisted, can be of black to white. We don't have the wholeness of reality. So right after that, David, maybe you can put up the middle of the second page just so people can see the lines I'm referring to. So it's down the second page. And it says, led by their inverted views, they take black for white. When inverted thinking stops, the affirming mind naturally accords.

[21:27]

If you want to follow in the ancient tracks, please observe the sages of the past. Yeah. So I've been talking, I was talking about the ancestors, Dongshan, and Bodhidharma, and Shakyamuni Buddha, and Dogen, and Suzuki Roshi. But this is referring to a story from the Lotus Sutra. It says, if you want to follow in the ancient tracks, please observe the sages of the past. One on the verge of realizing the Buddha way contemplated a tree for 10 kalpas. So this refers to a particular Buddha. And his story is in the Lotus Sutra. And this is from a long time ago. Many world systems ago. I forget his name, but it's the long name that's in the Lotus Sutra. But he was just at the point of total awakening, unsurpassed, complete awakening, the awakening Shakyamuni Buddha experienced when he looked at the morning

[22:34]

star in the story we know. And this Buddha was just on the verge of total realization, which means to say he was pretty, pretty far awake already. And it says, contemplated a tree for 10 kalpas. So just a historical footnote. In China and Japan, as Zen evolved, we sit together in meditation halls. And, you know, this is something that we really miss here at Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, our temple that we had for 12 years in North Central Center, Chicago, we had to abandon when the lease expired at the end of last year. Well, at the end of 2020. Because it wasn't very COVID friendly. So we lost our living space, our temple sitting space,

[23:36]

thanks to COVID. And we're all sitting in this pandemic now and learning a lot of things about reality and the world and our practice thanks to it. But it's not the same as sitting together the zoom. So David, you could take away the share screen now when you're ready. This, this zoom world that we practice in where we see many faces and names. And we can see each other, you know, pretty well on the zoom page. This is a practice place. This is a meditation hall in a way. But many of us still miss the our temple on Irving Park Road. And up to about a month ago, we were renting space in a Lutheran church and sitting together for about five weeks, Sunday morning and Monday evening. And it was wonderful for many of us just to be sitting together in person. And because again, because of COVID, we had to take a break from that. And we're still waiting

[24:44]

to see when we can go back to that, to sitting in person. But again, on the verge of realizing the Buddha way, this Buddha, who did become a full Buddha contemplated, first contemplated a tree for 10 kalpas. And before there were meditation halls. In India, the monks practice was when well, they gathered together in the rainy season, but otherwise they wandered around throughout India, or Northeast, what's now Northeast India was where they were, where they were hanging out. But they wandered far and wide and, but when they would go to each of them on their own would go to meditate. They would sit facing a tree, they would sit down. So our traditions relationship to trees is huge and very important. They would instead of there was no, there was no meditation hall where they sat together,

[25:44]

but they each would sit and face a particular tree. So it's like spacing the wall. And so the story about this, this particular Buddha whose name is very long, and I I forgot to look it up, but I probably couldn't pronounce it anyway. But he sat for 10 kalpas, looking at this tree just on the edge of becoming a full Buddha. So this is an important story for us about, well, it's about responses. It's about the limitations of language, too. So we can say this is Bodhisattva practice, not to fully become a Buddha, but to stay in the world and respond to the difficulties of our personal suffering, of the suffering of our friends and neighbors, of all the people who have been lost through this pandemic, and all the ways

[26:48]

in which we are lost from having lost so much from this pandemic, and, you know, all the other difficulties of the world through the ages. So just on the verge of becoming a full Buddha, this Buddha just sat there and faced the tree. And this story is mentioned here because it's a wonderful example for us in some ways, looking back at following the ancient sages, following their tracks, observe the sages of the past. So again, this is strange and something about not being caught by language, being willing to just

[27:48]

to be uncomfortable sometimes, to not know exactly, to not have all the answers. This is our life. This is our practice. And yet it responds. So there's this impossibility of pinning it down in language. And yet there's some way in which it expresses itself to us. This is really important and again, difficult to pin down. So one of the other places in the Song of the Precious Mirror, the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, right after it says, you are not it, but in truth it is you, going back to Dongshan's seeing his reflection in the rippling stream. It says, like a newborn child, it is fully endowed

[28:51]

with five aspects, no going, no coming, no arising, no abiding. This refers to the fivefold integration of the universal or ultimate with our particular situation in this phenomenal world. And so there are many fives in this teaching poem and that's a whole different Dharma talk. But right then it says, Baba Wawa, a transliteration of the Sino-Japanese, Baba Wawa, is anything said or not? In the end it says nothing for the words are not yet right. Well, our words are not yet right. My words today are not yet right. They're, and we have with us, is Amaya there, Ko? Yeah, so we have with us one of these babes in the world. I don't know. You don't have to get her to show everyone. It's okay, Ko.

[29:54]

But oh, there she is. So it's just like a babe in the world. Ko, has she uttered anything yet? Made any utterances? Doggy. Doggy. Oh, that's a good one. And I think she's named her cow Ba. Ba, Baba Wawa. So language doesn't, can't quite get it. And so this is, so Dongshan here is using the metaphor of children who are not yet speaking, not yet speaking in the usual way that we think of speaking. They don't have the grammar. They don't have all the vocabulary. But, you know, doggy, that's pretty good. So, but is anything said or not? So this is like all of us and my babbling here. It's not yet right. But maybe

[30:59]

the point is just to convey something about how we practice with the limitations of our language. So there's another story from the sixth ancestor, Huining, who is another founder of our lineage, we could say. This is the sixth Chinese ancestor. A student came to him and Huining said to him, what is this that thus comes? Very funny way of saying, who are you? What is this that thus comes? And Nanyue, who became one of the two great successors to the sixth ancestor, was baffled. He didn't know what to say. You know, in these teaching stories, sometimes it seems like they're talking back and forth very quickly. Sometimes there's a space, there's a, you know, a response might happen sometime after the question. In this case, the teaching story tells us that Nanyue went to the meditation

[32:03]

hall and sat like an iron rod for eight years. So they tell us it was eight years before the next part of the story. The next part of the story is the student Nanyue came back to the sixth ancestor and said, when I first came, you asked me, what is this that thus comes? Now I can, now I can give you a response. And then he said, anything I say misses the mark. So this is the point, one of the points of this, of the theme of language in the Song of the Jewel Mare Samadhi. Anything I say misses the mark. And, but then the sixth ancestor said to Nanyue, so is there practice realization or not? If the, if we can't, if it all, anything we say misses the mark, can we practice? Can we

[33:04]

find full awareness or not? And Nanyue proved that he hadn't wasted his time. He said, it's not that there's no practice realization, it's just that it can't be defiled. So all of our language, all of the huge libraries full of commentaries on these Zen teaching stories and commentaries on those commentaries and commentaries on those, they miss the mark. And yet the actual practice and the actual awareness of realization, no matter how bad your words are, no matter how limited they are, you can't mess it up. It's there. It's here. It's right in the stream that we look at. It's right in the experience of what you see in the wall, or if you want to go out and sit in front of a tree,

[34:13]

it's a little cold to do that here in Chicago. There's a lot of snow, but it's here. This awareness, this awakeness is possible. It happens. It's actually always here. It's the nature of reality. It's this Dharma, this teaching, this reality of suchness that is always here. So, and, you know, speaking of the pandemic and the limitations of sitting facing a bunch of boxes with faces in them or names in them, you know, there are great lessons from this pandemic. There are great lessons about limitation and awareness. Right now here on these screens,

[35:13]

there are people from Michigan, California, and Massachusetts, Indiana, and Ohio, and Missouri. And I'm probably missing some. Maybe there are other people I don't know where you're coming from. But, and there's a lot of us here in Chicago too. This reality of interconnectedness, another way of talking about the Dharma of suchness, this reality has been demonstrated to us through this terrible pandemic. So it took away our temple, but also we're now, we now have with us people from all these different places. And we also realize our interconnectedness through the pandemic itself, through the virus. If we don't share the vaccines with people in Africa and South Asia, new variants will come

[36:22]

like this Omicron that's here now. So we're really interconnected in such deep ways. And so this is a lesson of this, a teaching from this, an awareness from this. And at the same time, there is the awareness of all of the terrible suffering just in this country. So how do we, so the question then is, how do we connect with that? How do we bring it into our lives, into our relationships with the people around us, into our responses to the difficulties of our world? So there are other lines in this teaching poem that help us again to see principles of response.

[37:35]

So towards the end of this teaching poem, it says, uh, the wooden man starts to sing. The stone woman gets up dancing. So another theme in this, in this, uh, long, long teaching song is about the rival of energy about how, um, from our, from our stillness, from our calm, from our, um, equanimity from our practice of uh, settledness and finding some way to support that, um, energy comes. So there are many, there are many Zen sayings like this, the wooden man starts to sing, the stone woman gets up dancing. We also say dragons howl on a withered tree or the plum blossoms on the same withered branches

[38:40]

last year. Out of this stillness, out of this settledness, out of the resilience we can find and the equanimity from just sitting and really facing ourselves, really facing all of this, facing the wall, facing a tree, whatever, however we do it and sustaining it over time, because sometimes there are these dramatic experiences that the stories sometimes talk about, but there's also just the settling into this dharma of suchness. From that stillness, from that settledness, wooden man can start to sing and the stone woman can get up to dance. This is actually a lively practice, even though it looks like there's just this, you know, these zombies sitting in stillness and silence in the meditation hall. Actually,

[39:42]

this is about finding this energy, this pivotal moment, and allowing it to express itself through us. So Dogen emphasized expressiveness as well as settledness. How do we express this reality of this old Buddha sitting for 10 kalpas? Kalpa is a very, very, very, very long time. Does everybody know what a kalpa is? Anybody not know? Okay, I won't say because I didn't see any hands up, but somebody's waving. Mary Lou, a kalpa, and Eileen too. A kalpa is a very long period of time. There's lots of descriptions of how long it is. One description is if a bird has in its talons a silk scarf and flies over the top of Mount Everest once every hundred years, the time it takes to wear down the mountain completely is a kalpa.

[40:45]

So that's a long time. And in traditional Buddhist cosmology, in traditional Indian cosmology, there are, well, there are many kalpas. There's a kalpa where the world arises, a kalpa where it stays kind of stable, a kalpa where it just decreases or falls apart, just like empires fall apart, as we're seeing. And then there's the empty kalpa in between before the next big bang. Anyway, so this is talking about a long time. 10 kalpas is how long this Buddha sat just on the edge of total Buddhahood, but not quite going over the edge. So the line I mentioned, the wooden man starts to sing, the stone woman gets up to dance, and then it says it is not reached by feelings

[41:49]

or consciousness. How could it involve deliberations? So, you know, I see many very smart people, very, very cultivated people here. And, and, you know, figuring things out and deliberating has its value. But that, that doesn't get it to this, it doesn't get to the dharma of suchness. We can connect with the dharma of suchness, but we can't deliberate and pin it down and figure it out. And, you know, put up a flowchart on the wall about it. That's not the kind of thing it is. So, so the meaning does not reside in the words, but this questioning energy, this arrival of energy can bring it forth. And that's what we're doing here. Sitting still,

[42:54]

studying these old teachings, which may support, which, you know, the point isn't to, you know, memorize. I mean, I have taught this stuff academically, but that's not the point. The point is, how does it support our practice? These old teaching stories, these old Zen songs, how do they support us to actually practice with our body and mind in our activity in the world? So the last line I will mention from this song, and then we can have some discussion. Dongshan says, wondrously embraced within the real, drumming and singing begin together. So we are wondrously embraced within the real. We can't, you know, we can't get out of the dharma of suchness. Suchness includes everything. This is the wholeness of our lives that we get tastes of in our practice if we stick to it. If we just continue to show up in Zazen, in this

[44:02]

meditation. It's wondrously embraced within the real and Dongshan says drumming and singing begin together. So this is this principle of response. These characters that are translated here, that are translated here as drumming and singing, could also be translated in other ways. It's like hitting and yelling. It's this instant, immediate response. When the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up to dance. This drumming and singing, this call and response, this taste of this pivotal moment brings it forth. And we do respond. So the question really is how to respond to all of the difficulties of our life and the difficulties of the world and to each other and how to do that. You know, we have these

[45:08]

Bodhisattva precepts, these principles, guidelines for how to express Buddha. And so this call and response, this response to this immediate response, it's not something that we can figure out. You know, we might have all kinds of strategies about how to take care of various problems and issues in our life and in the world. And that's fine. That may have its use. But ultimately, it's about just this immediate response coming from our settled awareness. So the meaning isn't in the words or in the deliberations or calculations, but our inquiry, our energy, this pivotal moment, this settledness right here

[46:10]

is a pivot that allows a response from the ultimate meaning. So I've talked too much, as the song says, but I'm interested in hearing what you have to say. And whatever you think you want to say, you know, it's not going to be perfect. It's not going to get it exactly. Anything you say is going to miss the mark, as Nanyue said to the Sixth Ancestor. And still, we talk with each other. This is how we respond to each other. This is how we get a sense of what it's all about. And even though the meaning is not in the words, it does come forth as we try and as we express ourselves in various ways. So I will stop. And I want to hear any comments or questions or responses you might have. If I can see you on screen, you can just raise your hand. If you're not visible,

[47:14]

you can go to the participants window on the bottom. And at the bottom of that, there's a raise hand function. So David Ray, would you please help me call on people? So please feel free. Comments, questions, responses. Dylan has a question, and he has put it in chat because of technical reasons. So here is Dylan's question for you, Taigan. It says, the song says the meaning does not reside in the words, but a moment brings it forth. Does the meaning reside in interaction with art and or in the process of creative activity? Can breakthrough occur by line of the Diamond Sutra? Does the meaning reside in the activity of seeing or hearing of sentient beings or the vision and hearing of insentient beings? If the meaning doesn't reside there, how could there be meaning in Dongshan seeing his reflection in the stream? If so, why would meaning then reside in the words?

[48:22]

I'm going to put this question in chat so that we can all see it because it's got some words in it. Well, yes, the meaning resides everywhere, actually. It doesn't reside just in the words. It doesn't reside in our linguistic logic, but it's always available. And yes, the examples that you mentioned, Dylan, are very pertinent. It's in the creative activity. It's in poetry. It's in painting. It's in our breathing, when we enjoy our inhale and exhale. It's there. And yes, it can be expressed. Sometimes it can even be expressed in words in some of these old teaching songs, but we can't get ahold of it there. The point is that it's ungraspable. So what is the meaning of an abstract expressionist painting?

[49:25]

If you were to define it in some limited way, that's not it. And in our responses to each other, that's not exactly it either. And yet, it's everywhere. It's always available. So our practice is not about figuring out something new or discovering something or having some wonderful new experience. It's about realizing something that was always here from before your parents were born, as they say. So yes, all the things you said are good examples of how to appreciate, enjoy, connect with, and express the dharma of suchness,

[50:26]

and all kinds of creative. So Satsang is very much connected with creativity. And that can be formal creativity. So we have artists and musicians and writers in our Sangha, but it's also the creativity of cooking or gardening or taking a long walk. All of these are ways of expressing this. So thank you, Dylan. Did you have any follow-up? No. Okay. So Aishan and Robert Odell, I see in the participants' window, and maybe other people with hands raised, but Aishan first. Actually, Robert was first. So I'm going to pause. Okay, Robert. Hi. Yeah, I was just wondering if you could spend a little bit more time unpacking the character

[51:29]

that's translated as ki or genki. Because if I'm doing it, if I'm doing my understanding correctly of that character, I feel like I'm bringing a lot to the table that might miss the mark more than it needs to, with the understanding of ki or chi. Okay. I'm going to look up in my notes and see exactly, because I have all these characters written down. And there's so many meanings to that character that they're here somewhere. But I think I hit the major ones. That is energy. Hold on. I have to see where I am. Okay. Oh, it's back further. It's the workings, like the workings of a machine. So Tom Cleary, a brilliant translator who passed away this year, translated shomugen

[52:34]

as genki, as the whole works. So it's the workings of everything. It's it's also energy. It's also ki. Well, is it the same ki as in Aikido or Tai Chi? I'm not certain, but I think probably. Yeah. No, actually, it's not. It's not. One of my biggest questions. No, it's not. There's another character that's pronounced in Sino-Japanese ki that's about, it's a kind of specific kind of spiritual energy.

[53:41]

This ki is function, capacity, energy. You can refer to the student, refer to activity, or just the workings, and even the workings of the whole universe. So it has all those meanings. And Chinese characters often have a lot of overtones and various meanings, which makes translation interesting and difficult. So a number of hands. A follow-up question, Robert, or was that, does that help? No, it's just, it was just limiting. Thank you. Sure. Aisha is next, and there's a number of people after. I had more, both comment and question about words and meaning. Someone asked me once to describe the Dharma in my own words, and I gave them some answer. But what I really wish

[54:42]

I had said was, if I used my own words, no one could understand me. Because our words, the words in the language that we use are shared, and the meanings are shared, and the meanings can be different, even within our language. But the meanings can be very different, person to person, like Ko's daughter has her own word now for cow. And along with that, there are many different ways of knowing things. We can know things intellectually, or we can know things experientially, or we can know things emotionally, or we can know things procedurally. And some of, I think, studying myself can involve applying, finding words to describe our experience, because that helps us to understand our experience. But I've always been curious about this, about whether we actually need to apply words to our experience, or if we can just let our experience

[55:44]

be. And it came up once at a January intensive, where I and someone else asked Reb this, and Reb said, no, you have to bring your intellect and your words to the experience. You can't just let things be amorphous. But I never asked the follow-up question of why. So I remain wondering, you know, why do we need to find words for these experiences? And the best I've come up with is because it does help us to understand our experience, but language is so limited. You know, we continue to have experiences that go beyond our capacity for language. Good. Thank you. Yes. So, we use words, we have to use words to convey something to each other. And yet, of course, when you, so for, just for example, what popped out to me,

[56:50]

you said the word experience, people here might have different understandings or different awarenesses of what that refers to. And there could be many different ways that it refers to things. So, yeah, language is amorphous, it is imprecise, even though, you know, English has become a dominant language in the world, because it is better at precision, you know, it's better for giving instruction manuals and for engineering than some other languages, although other languages managed to do it. So, but yes, you use the word awareness. And our awareness, you know, is conditioned by our language, the way I was talking about before,

[57:51]

that we tend to think in terms of subjects verbing objects. So, we want to manipulate things, or we think in terms of, you know, not being verbed by subjects out there. But we see the world as outside, but our actual awareness, and this is why Zaz, this is one of the ways in which Zaz and is so valuable, because as we sit, inhaling, and exhaling, and facing the wall and facing ourselves, and not moving. Although, you know, of course, our body is always moving, and our muscles are alive, but we have different senses, we have awareness based on sounds. We have awareness based on how we hear the various textures of the wall in front of us,

[58:55]

or a tree, if you're facing a tree. We have awareness based on physical sensation. Tension in our muscles, in our knees, or our shoulders, or whatever. These are all part of the Dharma of suchness, part of reality. And we have different awarenesses of it. Smell, taste, all of these things are part of the actual awareness as we are sitting. And, you know, we have words for some of these things, but the words are, you know, pretty imprecise. And as you correctly point out, they mean somewhat different things to different people. Still, we can use words, as Rip said, because, especially, you know, especially in Zen talk, and poetry, and nature imagery, as I said, in these stories, they point to something that goes beyond the words,

[59:58]

something that responds to the inner questions of our life. So, thank you for that. Did you have any follow-up questions, or does that help? No, that does help. Thank you. You're welcome. So, we have a number of other people. Yvette? Hi, good morning. Before I speak, I see Paul on his iPad, raising his actual hand, so. Oh, okay. So, Paul, go ahead, Zengi, before Yvette. Good afternoon, folks. I have a number of things to say. One is that, about the Samadhi. We, especially in the West, we have such a tendency to think that Samadhi is a commodity, like it exists, like there is something there, that there's a there to it. It's the absence of,

[61:01]

it's the absence. That's why nothing can cling to it. That's why nothing can be, it can't be soiled, because it doesn't, it's the absence, not the form of something. It's nothing, nothing that, it's not going to make us smarter, or prettier, or richer, or more likable, or, Samadhi doesn't do anything for you like that. It's not a, it's not something, it's not something you can shine, put on the wall. It's an absence, and it's not, and it's not gained by some sort of insight, or some sudden insight, or some way of all of a sudden, you know, understanding things. It's a lot of hard work. That's what the, that's what the form and emptiness, that's what the emptiness is form, that you have to go through all the steps and stages, which we're not allowed to say, but it's the truth anyway. Let's see, it's not Buddhist priesthood, I was supposed to talk about steps and stages, but it's true. It's a lot of work. You can't, you can't get there without

[62:03]

doing the work, and it takes a lot of work, and it usually takes a coach to help you go do the work, and it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's not an instantaneous kind of thing, and as for words, I fought with Rev, with Henshin Roshi for years about words. I finally understood, I finally understood just, just in the last few years that, that he was always in words, and I was always in action, that, that words, you have, it's just like the Genjo Koan, you have to have the words, you have to accept the words, you have to put the words on so that you can forget the words. If you don't have the words, you can't forget them. So, words, words are very important, but then once you, once you've established the word, then you can turn loose of the word, and, and, and let, and let, let the nature of all things explain themselves. Anyway, that's what I'll say. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's not that we can't talk about steps and stages,

[63:07]

but that's not the point, just to say that. There are, so, particularly in our lineage, it's about not being caught by stages, and the whole thing is about not being caught, to not, not get caught by our particular patterns of greed or anger or confusion, to see them and not react based on them, but also with the language that we're talking about today, and in language, to not get caught by some particular verbal formulation, some idea of steps and stages, which are just, you know, that's, it's not, it's really not helpful to, it's not about reaching some, it's not about getting high. I mean, it, you know, you may get high from sitting, but that's not the point. The point is to sustain it, as Paul was talking about. How do we find a way to just keep showing up in our

[64:12]

life? So, there was something else I was going to say. I lost it. There is this response. I mean, that's part of what the, that's a big part of what the song of the Jewel Marrow Samadhi is about, that there is this way that reality responds to our caring, and we can't pin it down in words, but, you know, we talk about it sometimes just to kind of encourage each other. So, in our tradition, we do study sutras. You know, there's a, there is a slogan that's supposed to be from Bodhidharma, it's much later, but that Zen is direct pointing to mind beyond words and letters. Beyond words and letters doesn't mean that we get rid of all words and letters. It doesn't mean we just remain mute and silent the rest of our life, but we don't get caught by some particular verbal formulation.

[65:14]

Any particular verbal formulation is very limited. It's, it may be helpful. So, the point is of studying these old teaching songs and stories and studying the sutras is not to get some understanding so you can get a better grade or whatever, or so you can get a, you know, you can get some approval from some Zen teacher or whatever. The point is, how does it encourage us to sustain our practice? So, these songs, these teachings, these stories, these words from the Buddha and the sutras are encouragements for us to sustain our practice. So, thank you, Paul. Yvette, and Yvette, I don't know if I've met you before, where are you coming to us from? Yes. Hi, everyone. I am here from Santa Fe, and the land of the Pueblo people, ancestral Tewa land here, and yes, so I just completed the

[66:22]

ongo with Upaya. Oh, good. And so, I, you know, that ended yesterday. And so, anyone who wants a whole month of the Jewel Mirror, go ahead and go check it out. But I had seen your opening talk, and I listened to it again yesterday, in between the, before the closing council. And I, I took you up on your invite to come in and listen. And so, I was so happy that you were going to talk about the Jewel Mirror again, and go to this theme of beyond words, because, you know, that's, that's kind of a tough one to wrap your, you know, wordy brain around. But so, this has been great, and I appreciate it. And, and I just wanted to say hi from Santa Fe and, and my appreciation for being able to have one more day of the Jewel Mirror. So, thank you. Yeah, I spoke at the first talk of this practice period that my friend Joan Halifax

[67:22]

was doing at Upaya, and talked about the Jewel Mirror Samadhisam. And so, I'm talking about it here as well. And there's a number who have been to. So anyway, yeah, two, three, four, at least seven different states are appearing here. Anyway, Yvette, thank you for attending. And you're welcome to come to any of the Ancient Dragon, all of you are welcome to come to any of the Ancient Dragon programs, you can zoom in from wherever you are. So, thank you. Thank you. Kathy, did you have your hand up? Yes, thank you. A few different things. I've enjoyed these two talks very much. They've been helpful to me on the Jewel Mirror. A couple things. One is, as Nancy was talking, I was

[68:29]

thinking about the fact that there's research that shows that people who speak multiple languages have more cultural sensitivity than people who only speak one language. And so, I think that's interesting, because it speaks to how language must change us, you know, makes different the interaction that it makes possible, maybe both with ourselves and with others. I do think it has an impact on us. But that was an interesting conversation. The other thing that I wanted to say is, I have been viewing more Dharma talks by Thich Nhat Hanh this week, and wanted to pay tribute to him, because I think, you know, and one being on the show, the radio show On Being this morning, he spoke, if you want to look it up. But when it comes to what to do with this, you know,

[69:31]

he is so to the point, there's such clarity, you know, I think it speaks to his incredible practice that there's such clarity in terms of turning toward the conflict, turning toward the, you know, whether it's, you know, during war, you know, which was what he did at the peace treaties, or now when I think of, you know, why do some people not get vaccinated? Or why do some people do certain things? Or how to deal with the dilemma around how do we deal with crime? Or, you know, how do we support policemen and maintain reasonable practices in that way? He is very

[70:39]

clear in terms of how to turn toward, not turn away from. And I feel like there's a huge empathic part to that, which is extremely important, rather than standing back and labeling, to try to identify and understand where people are coming from. Anyway, I just wanted to say that. Thank you. Thank you very much, Kathy. And I have a number of things to say in response. Yes, about Thich Nhat Hanh. Last Sunday, I believe it's the talk is on our website, Kyoshen Long, one of our practice leaders, spoke about Thich Nhat Hanh and about Bell Hooks, who's also passed recently, another great teacher. And I mentioned some of my experience of Thich Nhat Hanh at a couple of long seminars that they did at Green Gulch and south of there,

[71:49]

one on the Lotus Sutra. He was remarkable. The seminar he did on the Lotus Sutra, as I was sitting there listening to him, I really, really felt like I was on vulture peak listening to the Buddha. It was just, it wasn't some idea, it was just my experience, anyway. But I appreciate your bringing up Thich Nhat Hanh in the context of peacemaking. And I wasn't going to get into this today. But since you mentioned that, I went to a very long seminar yesterday online about our current situation. And so I'll just say a little bit about the situation of nuclear weapons, which many of us think is something that's in the past, but it's actually a very urgent current problem. We have these ICBMs, and they're on trigger here, at least, and the United States

[72:55]

has a policy of first use. If we think somebody else is going to use them, then we will before they do, which is horrible. And so there are some people in Congress trying to stop some of this. It's really an important situation in our world now. And then the other thing is about peace is the whole urging to war and about the Ukraine. As a couple of Congress people have said, war does not solve anything. So this encouragement to go to war in Ukraine that is lasting from all the politicians and from the media, it just reminds me so much of Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. And military solutions are not solutions. So even if diplomacy is difficult,

[73:57]

that's the only way to actually make peace. So Thich Nhat Hanh talked about this a lot in the context of the war in Vietnam. So we're in a very, very dangerous time when people, when the forces of, when the people who profit from war, there are five major corporations that make military weapons, Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, I forget the fifth. They make a huge profit from, the Congress recently expanded the budget for the Pentagon, far beyond what the Pentagon had even asked for. So these companies who get very rich from war are affecting our world situation. So I could say a whole lot more about all of that, but it's something to pay attention to now,

[75:04]

that we need to make peace. And Thich Nhat Hanh talked about this in lots of very helpful ways. So to see a so-called enemy, it doesn't help to try and bring bombers and weapons and tanks to engage them. It's, we need to, you know, this is just like the idea of responding, you know, when there's a, when we have some conflict with, you know, a friend or family member or neighbor, trying to vanquish them is not helpful. How do we find, how do we support that cooperation? Anyway, it's a very significant time in our world about all of this. So thank you, Cathy, for mentioning that and for mentioning Thich Nhat Hanh. Any other questions about the limitations of language, about the Jomar Samadhi, about

[76:10]

the Dharma of Suchness, about how we respond? Can I, can I say something? I couldn't find a way to, I'm sorry, it's Mary Lou. I'm sorry. Hi Mary Lou. It's fine. Good morning, everybody. Is it okay for me to talk or should we? Yes, please, please. Go ahead. Thank you, everyone. And this is such a rich discussion. And I just want to say something about the roots of conflict and that Thich Nhat Hanh addressed this, as Cathy mentioned, and you, Thuy Nhat, just emphasized. Thich Nhat Hanh was once asked in the 1960s, and when he was in the U.S. advocating for an end to the war in Vietnam, why don't you go back to Vietnam and do your work there? And he responded that the roots of the conflict were in the U.S. And so I think that that's still very true for us. The roots of conflict is what we really have to address. And in a fear-driven environment such as now,

[77:13]

I mean, the pandemic has induced or maybe accelerated this fearful energy or atmosphere. And so meditation practice, to me, is so valuable in releasing my own fear. And I think that as you know, spiritual practitioners, the more we can share with others, either on an interpersonal level or on an international level, the necessity of overcoming fear and seeing the roots of the fearful energies in others whom we regard as adversaries. That's really quite essential. And I remember in the 1980s, being a part of the anti-nuclear movement, you know, and the movement was so successful

[78:13]

that Ronald Reagan was elected on the basis of protecting us from, you know, the movement was successful in elevating our awareness of the threat. I would say it was very successful in, you know, in increasing public awareness of the threat of nuclear use and nuclear war, which has been appropriately named MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction. And so the anti-nuclear movement was very successful there. But then Ronald Reagan came in and said, here's the answer. We'll build, you know, a Star Wars type thing, and so it just fed the fear that had been brought to the surface by the anti-nuclear movement. And so without an awareness, you know, of what, like, at least for me personally, of my own, like, what am I afraid of, either in, you know, just a little personal thing, or the climate

[79:20]

collapse, you know, addressing fear and using our practice to help us steady that human emotion is really essential. And so that's obviously one of the things that Thich Nhat Hanh did so successfully and powerfully. I mean, he overcame people who tried to kill him. So I think that that's really, you know, our challenge right now. And maybe it has always been, I don't know. But certainly the presence of nuclear weapons and the continuing nuclear development makes it very urgent. Thank you very much, Mary Lou. Some responses. First of all, practicing with fear. Courage is not about having no fear. It's not about getting rid of fear. We have to face our fears from the place of practice, from the place of settledness, from

[80:26]

enjoying our inhale and exhale, from steadiness and resilience, and not be caught by our fear. What's happening in the world today is fear is being encouraged, and people are encouraging people to be afraid of people who are different than them. So we have to see how we're all part of this dharma of suchness, to put it that way. But see that we do have fears, and our fears for ourselves, for our world, and so forth, and fears of particular other people or whatever, it comes up in our satsang. And courage is about facing that, facing those fears. Going back to Thich Nhat Hanh, he encouraged Martin Luther King to come out against the Vietnam War, which Dr. King did a year to the day from when he was killed, not a coincidence.

[81:29]

And there's so much to say about all of that. We do need another anti-nuclear weapons movement in our country now very, very much. We do need a peace movement again. I was part of that during the Vietnam War way back, before most of you were born. Anyway, yeah, it's a dangerous time. So we need to be aware of this. And of course, that brings up all kinds of fears, but we have to face them and respond. And, you know, we can each write to or call our congresspeople and say, please don't support war. Please support diplomacy. There's a lot of forces that are pushing us to war right now. And it's very dangerous. And the nuclear weapons are on hair triggers. And Dr. King said in that speech when he came out against the Vietnam War that

[82:41]

the greatest purveyor of violence in the world is the United States government. It's my own government. So we still have 53% of our national budget is involved with military. And that doesn't include the nuclear weapons, which are part of the energy department, and many millions of dollars going into that. And so the government, people and politicians say we can't afford health care. We can't afford child care. We can't afford to get rid of student debt. We can't afford to take care of housing and education. A tiny, tiny fraction of all the money that's being spent on war by our tax dollars would take care of all that. So in the spirit of Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. King, I'll say that. So it's a large topic, but

[83:41]

please pay attention to what's going on. Please don't be caught by your fear of Ukrainians or Russians or Chinese or, you know, all these people we think are different who are separate from the Dharma of suchness. They're not. Robert O'Dell has his hand up again. Robert, please. Yeah, just on language again. I was really interested in the Baba Wawa because the child that goes Baba Wawa learns to speak. And so I was wondering if the implication was that we also can learn to speak about suchness in the same way that the baby is able to learn to speak about the world, or is there something essential about the Dharma of suchness that evades our articulate direction? Good question. I would say both. We can't capture the reality of just this suchness in words. We can't completely, you know, get a hold of it and put it in a little box. That's not what it's about.

[84:47]

And yet, you know, I'm always interested in, as I asked Ko about Amaya what her first words were, I'm always interested in how babies start to speak, how they put language together, how, you know, Gary Snyder in his wonderful book, The Practice of the Wild, talks about the wildness of language. It's not something that, you know, it's possible for linguists to, you know, see how different languages work. And going back to, I forget who said it, but maybe Kathy about learning different languages. Yes, I agree. I'm very bad at languages, even though I've done some translations. I kind of envy Europeans because they have all these different languages right around them. So they often learn many languages. And I think that does expand our true real awareness, including awareness of suchness. But anyway,

[85:51]

um, yeah, we can, we can learn to speak and we can learn to, you know, write poetry about suchness or something. And also, the point is not to get caught by any particular verbal formulation. So to continue to pay attention and look and not think you've got the final answer. So, thank you for that, Robert. So, I don't see any other hands. Is there any other last, David Ray, did you have a comment or question? I thought I saw something in the chat. Can't hear you. Mute. I just am muting to say no, no, I don't have a question now. Okay, good. Anybody, any other last questions before we do announcements and then our closing chant of the Jewel Marish Samadhi? Can I just say one more thing? It's Mary Lou chiming in. Hi, Mary Lou, please. Yes, go ahead. Just, just, I'm sorry, but I was so

[86:56]

riveted by the services this past week with Thich Nhat Hanh that were all live streamed. And I just want to say that, you know, he suffered a stroke and lost his ability to speak. And so when we're talking about language, I mean, here's a Zen master and was undergoing speech therapy until he finally said no more. And so he voluntarily stopped the process of recovering his ability to speak. And so that in itself was a teaching and that's how it was embraced by his students. And I thought that was very poignant too, that he finally, his final teaching was, you know, speech, it has its value. I mean, he entailed us, but, and it was a prolific writer and poet, but in the end, our learning is beyond words. And so I thought that was beautiful

[88:01]

lesson, final lesson from Thich Nhat Hanh. Yes, thank you very much. Yes, that's right. There have been many great teachers who used other than words, you know, Paul Disko talks a lot about actions as expression and work as teaching. And so, you know, we don't get caught by words. And, you know, I'm also thinking, you mentioned Thich Nhat Hanh's stroke. I'm also thinking of Ram Dass, who was a great spiritual leader in our time. And he had a stroke and he could speak haltingly, but he conveyed more by just sitting there and smiling. So thank you all. Oh, Eileen has her hand up. Eileen, hi. Hi. Oops, let me get myself back here. This is, it's a brief observation, and I,

[89:04]

about babies and speech. And I'll just relate an experience. They, oh, sort of when we had a little window opening where COVID wasn't too bad, and someone had had a baby, and I got to meet the baby for the first time, and the baby was about five months old. Pretty pre-verbal, as we call it. I don't know if pre-verbal is a very good term, because I don't know that being verbal eventually is always the best goal. But anyway, like pre-literate. But this baby and I have the most wonderful, instant connection. I'm not one of these people that loves all babies or relates to this baby. And we've talked for a very long time with our eyes. I am 1000% clear on that. I don't think, I know it's not a projection as much as we can know. So I do find that sometimes

[90:07]

among adults, there's something about, there's something about latching onto that or understanding that as a means of communication before any other language gets piled on top of it. And again, just relating an experience, and I'm sure there are a lot of questions in there. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Amen. And you were talking about pre-verbal, and maybe Thich Nhat Hanh was post-verbal towards the end. So thank you all.

[90:44]

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