Nice to see you all. So since it's such a nice warm day, I want to talk today about snow in a silver bowl, which is actually what I always talk about. So first I want to do some background and some review and talk about the practice of suchness, which I talked about here last month and which I've been talking about Wednesday morning and evening. in our other places, which Val heard me talk about a lot in Chicago. So in some sense, our practice is the practice of suchness, the practice of just facing reality as it is, the reality of our life, the reality of our suffering, the reality of the world around us, as it arises moment after moment, inhale after exhale.

[01:00]

So I've been talking about the early Chinese Soto lineage and the founder Dong Shan and the story about his meeting with his teacher. And when he left his teacher, he asked, what is the teaching? If someone asks me about your teaching after you're gone, what is the the essence of your teaching. And his teacher, Yun Yun, was silent for a little while and then said, just this is it. Just this is it. So our practice is about how we meet and how we take care of just this. As it arises, with the birds singing, And the next breath, as we sit upright on our cushion, and as we go out and meet the circumstances of our life, just this is it.

[02:07]

So again, this isn't passive, just acceptance of things as they are. It's a kind of dynamic practice. How do we do this practice of suchness or thusness? So in the beginning of the song of the Jewel Marrow Samadhi, which we've I'm talking about especially Wednesday mornings in San Rafael. Dong Shan, the Chinese Soto Zen founder says, the dharma of suchness, the teaching of the reality of suchness, is intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it, preserve it well. So this practice is not about finding something you don't already have or acquiring something new or getting something or even exactly transforming your awareness and reaching some higher new state of consciousness. It's about just meeting the world as it is and our life as it is. And of course, as it is means that we are not separate from the world. And so it's a responsive practice.

[03:14]

It's a kind of dynamic practice and it's a big problem. How do we take care of just this? So there's this story I talked about last month that after Dongshan became a teacher and he told the story to his monks about leaving his teacher and his teacher saying, just this is it. One of his monks asked him, at that time, did your teacher, Yunyan, know it is or not? And Dongshan said, if he did not know what it is, how could he have been able to say it? If he did know what it is, how could he be willing to say it? So anything I say may miss the mark.

[04:26]

Anything I say is not it. And yet, we can talk about it. We communicate about it. intimately, closely, we respond to each other in words and in gestures, as we breathe, as we do walking meditation together. Always there is just this. So Dogen said about this later, how could he have understood to speak thus? A bright star appears, and the great thousand worlds brighten. And then about how would he be willing to speak thus, part of what Dogen said is, the ancient mirror is round and bright.

[05:31]

The ancient mirror is round and bright, illuminating, upright, and inclined. Mysterious mechanism revolves on high, both naturally arriving within together. So there are these two sides to suchness, or these two aspects of suchness. There is upright and there is inclined. Or we could say ultimately true and phenomenal, conventional world. So when we sit, we get some taste of this upright, of this ultimate reality, of this and this and just this. And it's connected with everything in the whole world. And it's not separate from anything. But in Buddhism, our practice is not just to realize this oneness, but actually to

[06:40]

bring it back into our breath and our posture and our relationships and our work and our activity in the world. So there's the upright and then there's the inclined. How do we meet each other? How do we take care of justice? So Dogen says again, the ancient mirror is round and bright, illuminating upright and inclined. So both sides are actually there in this. He uses the metaphor of the ancient mirror, but it's actually just the wall we face. We always face this wall. It's there when we're sitting Zazen, even if it looks like a chair. It's there when we get up and walk.

[07:41]

It's there when we try and take care of our friends and family. It's there when we are doing our jobs. It's there when we wake in the morning. It's there as we're falling asleep. And it includes both sides, upright and inclined. ultimately true and provisionally true. So in Buddhism we don't say that the ultimate truth is true and the conventional reality is just a delusion. The conventional reality we recognize as a kind of reality, but we bring our sense, our experience, our little taste of the ultimately true into interaction with into the dance with the conventional world and its reality. So some Zen practitioners, you know, go down into the mountains and valleys and they spend three months doing a practice period or may go off into a monastery.

[08:52]

And for some people that's right. And other people work downtown in high-rises in the financial district and still that upright can be there. We each have our own rhythm and our own way of doing it, and it changes. So this suchness is alive. When you truly see suchness, you will realize that we meet it again and again and again. It's not about getting some understanding and then you've got it. drop body and mind. We sit upright in the middle of suchness, and then there's another breath, and we do it again. And then we fall down and have to get up and make mistakes. So, in a way, this is kind of good news. It's not just a one-time thing.

[09:53]

It's endless lifetime practice, lifetimes of practice. It's a way of engaging our deepest reality and expressing it. So I've also talked about Satsang as a kind of performance art. We are always expressing just this. If our posture is lousy, that's the way we're expressing it. If we're sleeping and nodding off, still that's the suchness we're expressing. So it's up to each of us how we want to express that uprightness and that kindly inclined way of meeting and interacting with the world and sharing our sense of uprightness with the world. So Dogen also says, the mysterious mechanism revolves on high, both naturally arising within together.

[10:58]

So there's this dance between the upright and the inclined. They're constantly swirling around. And there's a process and there's a kind of, you know, there are ways of seeing how that works. But the main way is, again, just this practice of paying attention and taking another breath and appreciating this life, including all of the pain involved in being a human being, and all of the pain and cruelty involved in living in this dreadful world. So when we can bring our uprightness into this world of suffering, it does make a difference.

[12:01]

And when we can lean over and say a kind word to someone, it does make a difference. So all of this is background to what I want to talk about today. So I want to use, actually, some of you know I've been translating this long work of Dogen's with the short talks he gave in the Dharma Hall. And this is the last one he gave. This is his last teaching that is recorded anyway. So the various parts of it. Well, I'll just read it first, and then I'll talk about it. And some of them are references, and I'll go back to them. So in Ching Yuan's White House Tavern, three cups of wine.

[13:03]

On Shih Tzu's red fireplace, one flake of snow. A flower blooming on a monk's staff has merit. Smiling on our sitting cushions, there's nothing lacking. At this very time, Zen students, what do you say? After a pause, Dogen said, what we call karma creates the triple world. Realizing these stories makes the one mind. Nagarjuna received a person with a bowl of water. Kanadeva approached the way holding a needle. So this is a story about going back to India. So I've been talking about the early Chinese ancestors and the lineage. But our school, along with being called the school of Dongshan or Dogen or the Soto school, is also sometimes called the school of Kanadeva. So he says in here, realizing these stories make the one mind.

[14:07]

So I like to talk about these old stories, but really these old stories are ways of talking about something that's happening in our bodies and minds right now. They're stories about the one mind that we are carrying forward. And actually, historically, it's pretty doubtful that Nagarjuna and Kanadeva thought about this in the same way they thought about it in China. And we don't know, really, if these stories were, you know, most of these stories weren't invented until a couple centuries or so after Dongshan and after the early Chinese ancestors. And yet, well, they weren't written down until then anyway. Maybe they were kept alive early. But the point is, these stories have been kept alive as part of a tradition for a thousand years now. And they tell us something. So excuse all these funny Chinese and Indian names and these old stories.

[15:10]

And if they're dead for you, then just please enjoy your sitting, as I mentioned them. And yet, parts of them anyway have something to do with how we take on the suffering of the world right now. So before I get back to Nagarjuna and Kanadeva, he starts off by talking about Qingyuan, who was the, according to the story, was the teacher after the sixth ancestor in the lineage that goes to the Sutta lineage. And there's some stories about him, but we don't know so much. But anyway, he starts off, Dogen starts off by saying, in Qingyuan's White House tavern, three cups of wine. And this was a saying by one of Dongshan students And I guess there was this something called the White House that Tsingyuan lived in or near. So there have been many White Houses before the Enron White House, and there will be many more later on.

[16:11]

And so it's kind of encouraging to me. Anyway, in this one, apparently there was a tavern. And maybe that happens in all White Houses. But anyway, in Tsingyuan's White House tavern, Sarshan, who lived some while later, actually, said that he had three cups of wine, but he says that not a drop wet his lips. That's kind of like saying he had three cups of wine and didn't feel drunk at all. Anyway, he's talking about tasting the truth of this old teacher soberly. Then the next line is, on Shito's red fireplace, one flake of snow. So Shito is, in Japanese, his name is Sekito. And you know about him because we sometimes chant the harmony of difference and sameness, which he wrote, or the song of the grass hut, which he also wrote.

[17:13]

So the story about that is, oh, yeah. This was a student. It was said by a student of Shito, and when they met, Chateau asked the student if he wanted an eye-opening. The student said, yes. And Chateau raised his foot. The student made a prostration. And when Chateau asked why, the student said, one flake of snow on the red fireplace. So it does happen sometimes that students come to teachers and ask for an eye-opening. And sometimes they do something. But it's just one flake of snow on a fireplace. So it's funny, you know, that little flake of snow on top of, right in the middle of a fireplace. How does it stay there without melting? When he says fireplace, it might have been like they used like hibachis, you know, to warm the rooms in those times.

[18:23]

So it might have been like an iron container with a fire inside to keep them warm. Anyway, one flake of snow on the red fireplace. He goes on and says, a flower blooming on a monk's staff has merit. So sometimes, talking about springtime, Dogen says that, or early spring, Dogen says, the plums blossom on the same withered branches last year. So somehow, even in the midst of our difficulties, even in the midst of sitting upright and still 30 minutes or 40 minutes or one day or breath after breath a flower can bloom. So this practice is about how we find the life that is this deep life that is beyond life and death that is part of this

[19:33]

revolving mechanism that brings forth both upright and inclined. So there are lots of sayings about this in Zen. When the wooden man begins to sing, this young woman gets up to dance. Or the darkest hour is just before the dawn. So facing suchness, you know, it's painful. The first noble truth is that our life is suffering. And if we look around at the world, it's really horrible. Whatever suffering all of us are having is nothing compared to people in Israel and Palestine and many other places in the world. And we feel helpless. What can we do? The whole world feels helpless.

[20:36]

But this sermon on getting up to dance is about how we find the energy to continue facing the wall, to continue appreciating just this, to continue dancing and interacting with just this. So Dogen says, smiling on our sitting cushion, there is nothing lacking. So I have seen some of you sitting on your cushions and smiling. I've seen that. And I've also seen some of you sitting on your cushions with your knees hurting or in some pain. They're not separate. If you can be upright in the middle of your pain, there's nothing lacking. If you can find a smile in the middle of the joy of being just the person you are, there's nothing lacking.

[21:50]

So this may not seem as entertaining as going to the movies, but still, there is this possibility of realizing that nothing is lacking, or even seeing that there's lots lacking, that there is something missing, and still smiling. And even if there's something missing, there's nothing lacking. We have this opportunity to be ourselves right now, today, actually. So Dogen goes on and says, at this very time, students, what do you see? And then he paused. And then he said, what we call karma creates the triple world. Realizing these stories make the one mind. So this whole world is created by this karma. Actually, it just means action, activity. We act in the world. We respond. And it creates the triple world, which is the world of desire, which is where we live, basically, and then the world of form, which is

[23:04]

the world we sometimes see in meditation, where things are very intensely as they are. And then there's the world of formless world, which is, you know, very high states of consciousness, maybe. Still, it's all the world of conditioning. It's all just the result of cause and effect. It's all the world of karma. And in early Buddhism, they talked about getting free from karma, reaching nirvana. And they used to think that Nirvana was, and nirvana literally means cessation, it means doing away with. So, you might think that if we just obliterate this world, you know, if they use all the nuclear weapons, they're getting ready, you know, and just the world is gone, that that would be nirvana. But in the Bodhisattva path and in the Zen school, we don't say that. We don't say that enlightenment is getting a lobotomy. We actually see how there is the possibility of awakening, and the possibility of uprightness, and the possibility of smiling right in the middle of being a human being.

[24:17]

What we call karma creates the triple world. Realizing these stories makes the one mind. Maybe he's talking about, and I used that line to talk about how we use these old Zen fables. But it's also realizing an awakening to the stories of karma, the stories we tell to ourselves about who we are and what the world is, and all the ways in which we've been injured and damaged, and all of the ways in which we have had wonderful accomplishments, and all of the ways in which We feel frustrated in all the ways in which we feel, you know, wrongfully accused or unjustly treated, all the ways in which we feel satisfaction and joy. All of that is the world of karma. And it's not that we try and get rid of that, but if we can just see it without having to move, just taking the next breath and remaining upright in the middle of it, we have this one mind, this one mind that has

[25:34]

as many forms as there are people in this room, and as there are birds singing in Bolinas today, and car doors slamming. So, there's this story about Nagarjuna and Kanadeva, and that's what I wanted to talk about today, so now maybe we're ready. So, Dogen says, Nagarjuna received a person with a bowl of water. Kanadeva approached the way holding a needle. So Nagarjuna is a great historical Indian Buddhist philosopher. He lived, oh, around the 200s in northern India. We don't know exactly. Maybe there were a few Nagarjunas because the dates we have for him go on for a couple of hundred years. I don't know. Anyway, but he was a great philosopher of emptiness and of Madhyamaka, those of you who know about Buddhist, branches of Buddhism. And he taught about all the different kinds of emptiness. And we might think of suchness and emptiness as kind of opposite sides, flip sides.

[26:38]

Emptiness, when we hear about emptiness, it sounds like nothingness. And it's not nothingness. It's actually that each separate thing is empty of separateness. There can be no Janine without Liz, and vice versa. We are not separate, actually. Not a single thing is separate. This depends on everything in the whole world. Janine, you're such a rascal. I was talking to her. So, Nagarjuna talked about 18 kinds of emptiness. He talked about the emptiness of emptiness, which is very important. He talked about the danger of getting attached to emptiness. So anyway, this is this old Indian Buddhist philosophy. And I don't like it much, actually. Kind of gives me a headache. I have to admit.

[27:40]

Don't tell my teacher I said that. But anyway, Nagarjuna was this great Indian philosopher. And actually, all of Buddhism, or at least all of Mahayana Buddhism, since Nagarjuna, claim him as one of their ancestors. The Pure Land School, and the Yogacara School, and the Madhyamaka School, and the Zen School, he's on the list of Zen ancestors. But there's this guy Kanadeva, who was one of his students, and we're called the School of Kanadeva. And actually, they say that Kanadeva was very good at debating. He had a whole system. I guess it's a little bit like maybe what they do in Tibetan Buddhism now. But there was a whole system of debates in old Indian Buddhism. Anyway, Kanadeva was good at debating, they say. So this is the school that is willing to talk about all of this. of Kanadeva. But there's this story about what happened when Nagarjuna met Kanadeva. Nagarjuna received a person with a bowl of water.

[28:43]

Kanadeva approached the way holding a needle. So the story is Nagarjuna was sitting there and Kanadeva came in to visit. And Nagarjuna presented him with a bowl of water. And Kanadeva took a needle and dropped it. and Nagarjuna approved him. This was the beginning of the school of Kanadeva. So just this image, a bowl of water and a needle, is what I want to talk about today. So there's a story later on One of Yun Men's disciples, I think, was asked by a monk, what is the school of Kanadeva? And the teacher said, piling up snow in a silver bowl. So I don't know.

[29:52]

I'm not sure what color the bowl was. Was it a silver bowl? Was it porcelain? Was the water filled to the brim? I sort of picture it as like a round silver bowl. And there's the needle. So do you see the needle floating on the surface, or does it go to the bottom? You like it on the surface? Uh-huh. Right. There's that thing with the magnet. That's right. That's right. It could be a magnet. pointing to Juneau. Who thinks that the needle goes to the bottom? No? You see it at the bottom of the bowl? So please consider this, this needle in a bowl of water, this snow in a silver bowl.

[30:54]

So the teaching is just a bowl of water. Maybe it's just a bowl of cherries, but that's too much. A silver ball filled with snow. So in the Song of the Precious Mara Samadhi, which I mentioned before, which starts with the Dharma of Suchness being intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors, a few lines later on it says, A silver bowl filled with snow, a heron hidden in the moon. Taken as similar, they are not the same. Not distinguished, their places are known. So if we actually saw a silver bowl filled with snow, in a way, it's the same color. In a way, it's just the silver of the snow and the silver of the ball. And yet, we know the difference. They like to paint pictures of the moon with something in front. So we can really appreciate the roundness of the moon.

[31:59]

And a heron is white like the white moon. So sometimes herons fly in front of the moon. And yet we can sort of tell. And yet they are the same color. So there's this relationship between sameness and difference, between upright and inclined or partial, between the ultimate truth and the particulars of the phenomenal world of our human life. So the teaching is just this bowl of water. Nagarjuna presented to the student a bowl of water. And he accepted the student because the student dropped in a needle. So I can't tell you whether it's floating on the top or on the bottom or upright. or swirling around. And yet, there's a needle in the bowl of water. So each of us, we find the Dharma, and it's this very refreshing, wonderful, calm ocean.

[33:18]

I don't know, was the surface of the water in that bowl? Was it calm and placid, or was it rippling with waves? We don't know that either. And yet, there's this bowl of water, very refreshing, very simple, plain. And yet, we each have our own particular needle. We each have our own way of pointing out something in the middle of ultimate reality. We each have our own particular acupuncture needle to poke into the body of Buddha. So I can't tell you what your needle is like. And yet we each have one. We each have some way. So some people see it as a sewing needle. Some people think it's just a pin.

[34:20]

The point is that when we meet the ultimate reality, there is something that we need to do is too much. Is it an action? Is it karma to put a needle in a bowl of water? And yet the bowl of water is not complete without Somebody told me they thought it was a pine needle. So we each have our own way of meeting just this. Each of us has our own uprightness. We each have, you know, our spines are not perfectly straight. We have curves in our spines. And yet there's a way of finding a balance, a center point where we're sitting upright. And then sometimes we realize we're leaning left or right or forward, leaning forward trying to get something or holding back.

[35:30]

So we constantly have to readjust our own way of being upright. So maybe that needle is floating on the surface trying to find true north all the time. I don't know. The introduction to the story about the snow in a silver bowl in the school of Kanadeva in the Blue Cliff Record says, clouds are frozen over the Great Plains, but the whole world is not hidden. When snow covers the white flowers, it's hard to distinguish the outlines. Its coldness is as cold as snow and ice.

[36:35]

Its fineness is as fine as rice powder. Its depths are hard for even a Buddha's eye to peer into. Its secrets are impossible for demons and outsiders to fathom. But still, there is this snow in a silver bowl, this needle dropping into this clear water. So our relationship to suchness is, as I said, dynamic and active. We each have some way of expressing suchness. So it takes a while to find our own way of expressing it. It takes a while to find our own voice. And of course, you're always doing it right now. So please enjoy your delicious snow cone.

[37:39]

Does anybody have anything to say? Yes? Mm-hmm. Good. So for you, it's a pine needle. I thought pine needle, too, because sewing needle, if the monk was thinking about, ah, what am I going to do to impress the master? I'll just bring this needle with me.

[38:43]

Couldn't have been. He did not know that Nagarjuna... Well, maybe he just carried a sewing needle with him to mend his robes. I don't know. Yeah, actually, there may have been an early Buddhism of seven. I've heard 18. Anyway, there's 18 things. Monk carries. I always carry a corkscrew myself. That's for the three cups of wine. Jeanine? Very good. I hadn't thought of that, but you're right.

[39:44]

Now, they did have metal back there. Well, I don't know. In the Gershwinist time? But yeah, they did use sewing needles. They used bone and they used wood. You're right. No. Good. Yes. So we do make waves when we actually stand up in the world. When you get up from your cushions, It makes a wave through the whole room. It really does. Yes? Yeah, this was a very good response.

[40:47]

And yeah, everything everybody said so far is great, Liz. Right. Yes, so the difference is important, and the same is just important. And yet, without the needle in the bowl of water, it's not complete, as Miriam said. That's right. We see the sameness by the difference. So there's a haiku by Basho Shizukasaya Iwani Shiriiru Seminakoe. He's climbing up a stone kind of not a cliff, but a steep section of stone to get to a temple at the top that he knows about.

[42:13]

And he stops and suddenly there's a shrill of a cicada and he realizes how quiet it was before that. And he didn't really hear the stillness until... So sometimes some of you find yourself, maybe feel distracted by the occasional loud sounds outside on the street of Bolinas. But actually you couldn't hear the silence before and after without them. So we need both. And partly our job when we come to emptiness, when we come to suchness, when we find a bowl of water is, there's something required. Is it different? Is it the same? We can't say. And yet the school of Khanadeva is about that we are willing to talk about this and make endless mistakes.

[43:19]

So are the Israelis and the Palestinians the same or different? It's hard to say. It's very painful. Yes, they're different. and somehow they're the same. We don't know what to do. This is the world we're in. And yet each of us, somewhere, there's some kind of needle for us to drop into the water. So maybe the Khan of David actually only did this once, and yet he kept talking. Any last comments? and who he was was somebody who carried around a needle, some kind of needle.

[44:24]

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