After Bodhidharma and the Sixth Ancestor, five generations later, we've talked about the Sixth Ancestor and then Seigen Gyoshi in Japanese. And then Sekito Kisen is the one who wrote the Harmony of Difference and Sameness and the Song of the Grass Hut, both of which we've chanted at times. I was going to read something else that he said. Our teaching has been handed down by the ancient Buddhas. We do not speak of meditation or spiritual progress, only the arrival at the knowledge and vision of Buddhahood. Mind itself is Buddha. Mind, Buddha, sentient beings, enlightenment, affliction, are all different names for the same thing. So he's saying here, it's not a matter of practice or spiritual progress, it's just realizing the vision of Buddhahood. Mind itself is Buddha.

[01:02]

Mind, Buddha, ascension beings, enlightenment, affliction are all different names for the same thing. And that's not how we usually think. We usually think of enlightenment as the opposite of affliction. But actually, it's all, as he says, different names for the same thing. You should know that your own mind's aware essence is neither finite nor eternal. By nature, neither defiled nor pure, it is still and complete. It is the same in ordinary people and saints responding effectively without patterns, apart from mind, intellect, discriminating consciousness. The three realms of desire, form, and formlessness in the six states of being, animals, hell beings, hungry ghosts, titans, human beings, and devas or gods, heavenly beings, are only manifestations of your own mind. the moon in the water, images in the mirror, how can there be any birth or death? If you can realize this, you will be complete in every way.

[02:04]

And one of his main disciples was named Yaoshan, in Japanese, we say Yaksani again. We'll talk about him more next week. But this says, once as Yaoshan was sitting, his teacher Shita saw him and asked, what are you doing here? Yaoshan said, I'm not doing anything. Shuddha said, then you were just idly sitting. Yashan said, if I were idly sitting, that would be doing something. Shuddha said, you said you were not doing, what aren't you doing? Yashan said, even the saints don't know. So it's pretty hard for us not to get caught in some idea of doing, that we're doing something, that we're accomplishing something. We're really pro, our whole, basic human consciousness is geared towards, in some sense, making progress. This isn't just a Western idea. There's a Western kind of development of it, but our basic approach to the world is to try and

[03:14]

This is just a basic human approach is to try, the world of karma is to try and get what we think will make us happy and to get rid of the stuff that we think makes us unhappy. This is just, this is how the world works, this is samsara. So, the practice that Chateau or Sekito is talking about is just realizing Buddha right now. Or as George said, see the love there that's sleeping. It's not about making spiritual progress. And yet, it's as part of the way our karmic being is wired, you know, we can't, it's hard not to think in that way. It's hard not to make judgments about, well, gee, am I, you know, getting better at this? Am I, whatever it is we're doing, you know. And yet at the same time, even though we see the karmic consciousness working, we can also see, that's why he says that enlightenment and affliction are names for the same thing.

[04:23]

Exactly. So if we see that that, that the world is spinning, you know, the world is turning, as Church says, and that the world turning means that we are, that we're in this dance of trying to, or trying to rearrange the world or prevent ourselves from being rearranged by the world or you know that that's when we can just acknowledge that then we can that's actually also seeing this possibility of just Buddha mind realizing the possibility of seeing how we are already whole as we are and then our grasping after the things of the world, it weakens. We still see that mechanism working, but we're not, so the realization is immediate. We can see our wholeness.

[05:27]

So I think you've all had a sense of that at times while you're sitting. You wouldn't keep coming back otherwise. You may not be able to say for yourself how that is, but we get a glimpse of, oh yeah, it's okay to be me, it's okay, this is the way the world is. Now it's not a passive it's okay, it's like, it's okay and we still do have work to do in the world. Taking precepts or taking bodhisattva vows is that we see that the world is churning and we see that we need to help awaken the love in the world and in ourselves. But it's not exactly the same thing as kind of getting something or buying and selling something or making spiritual progress. It's important to see that we do have a tendency to approach spirituality but also just everything in our life in that grasping way.

[06:29]

And the more we can see the grasping, seeing the grasping is renunciation. Seeing our own personal habit of grasping is renunciation. Seeing it more and more clearly. Then we can say, oh, I don't need to do that. So part of the ceremony we'll do January 5th is a part of renunciation. It's part of taking refuge. But it's not renunciation in some way of you know, taking on some martyrdom or something or suffering. It's like actually seeing, oh yeah, this is how I am. I have this karmic habit of greed, hate, and delusion. I grasp after things. I try and push things away. I get confused by things. And just to be willing to face that world that's turning, we can unfold our love. We can see the possibility that Even in horrible, difficult, cruel, diluted times, there's love sleeping everywhere, and that actually it's a wonderful opportunity to express that in our own lives with whoever we are in contact with.

[07:46]

So that's not the way that Sekito talks about it, but that's actually what he's getting at when he says that enlightenment and affliction are one. So in the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, I think the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, which is chanted regularly in Soto Zen, and the Song of the Grass Hut, which hasn't been chanted that much in Soto Zen, but now a few places are chanting it, they kind of complement each other. So I've talked about these two. I'm not going to go into any detail about them. There's not so much time tonight, but I wanted to say a little bit just kind of as an overview of them and their basic importance. The Harmony of Difference and Sameness is talking about kind of basic Buddhist and basic Soto Zen polarity. So in a way, this is the background of all of Soto Zen philosophy, that there are these two sides.

[08:55]

to our practice. They're seeing how we're all the same. As Dogen says, eyes horizontal, nose vertical. Seeing how we are all, you know, going back to George Harrison's song, we've all been inverted. We've all been diluted from seeing the love there that's sleeping. So there's the side of sameness, which is seeing also seeing our wholeness seeing how seeing how we practice together seeing how emptiness could also be called emptiness seeing how all the distinctions we make between this and that and this thing that I want and this thing that I dislike that actually everything is totally interconnected and totally empty of separate substantial existence. So this is So I'm saying this very quickly, this insight into prajna or wisdom or emptiness, this insight into sameness is very deep, but it's half of our practice.

[10:07]

And we need to kind of deepen and develop and unfold both sides. The other side is that when we are informed by that seeing into emptiness, wholeness, interconnectedness, sameness, Those are all different ways of talking about the same thing. When we see that side, then we come back and look at the differences and we actually make distinctions between things in the world and how to unfold our love and generate kindness with the different aspects of the world, with the different aspects of our own life, in our own different activities, in different ways. to know the distinction, to actually be willing to face the side of the differences, but informed by the sameness. And then the, so San in Japanese is difference, particularities.

[11:09]

It's also the San of study, to study the differences. Do is sameness. Kai is here translated as harmony, but it's kind of, it's an interesting Chinese character. It means how things fit together. They fit together, and it actually, etymologically, it comes from a, I think in China they had a kind of contract where they would break a tile and then the two people would have, each have a half, and they would, but then they could fit together and they would know that it would match. So it's kind of about things fitting together, sort of see the way in which difference and sameness fit together. This is kind of the basic philosophical aspect of Soto-sen, and it's the basis of our practice. This poem that Sekito also wrote called The Song of the Grass Hut, I have a feeling, I feel like this is his own expression of his own practice, his own way of doing that.

[12:12]

So, he's talking about building a space of practice. He says, I built a grass hut where there's nothing of value. After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap. So, this is his way of expressing the harmony of difference and sameness. Now, literally, he did actually build a grass hut on top of a rock, and that's where he gets his name from. His name means above the rock, or it could be translated as rock head or stone head. But I've seen pictures of the rock where his hut was. His hut's no longer there. It did perish, as he indicates. But he finds his own space for practicing. Now, you know, it looks like he was a, like he had the hut up in the mountains as a hermit or something, but actually there were, he had many students. So this hut was probably attached to a monastery where there were, near a monastery where he taught and practiced and so forth. So he wasn't hiding from people. But that was where he built his space of practice. So we all have to build a space of practice. And he talks about He talks about it in various ways.

[13:14]

And so this is kind of the practical aspect of the harmony of difference and sameness. He says, let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk innocent. So the point of our practice is actually just to relax, to find the space where we can move freely and unfold our love and express our own particular unique expression of our own wholeness and kindness and insight in our activity. And that, you know, you can make it sound very kind of highfalutin philosophical, but there's a way in which it's just relaxed completely. It's kind of down to earth. He says, thousands of words and all the interpretations are just to free you from obstructions. Don't separate from this skin bag here and now. Stay right here with exactly with your own greed, hate and delusion, this skin bag, this, this. So, you know, in some ways, you know, the way that while my guitar gently weeps, that song of George's kind of has a has a little bit of a feeling of

[14:30]

And again, maybe I'm generalizing here, but I feel like in Hinduism the emphasis is more to get beyond this world of suffering to kind of really, the unfolding of love happens as we kind of transcend this. And I think in the end it comes to the same thing, but the emphasis in Buddhism and Zen is to actually meet the world as it is, including our own greed, hate, and delusion, this skin bag. So that's acknowledging the world we're in. But then we act in the world. And we may act in the world by just building a grass hut. And that's important. We have to find our own space of practice. Where can we function? So we've actually, all of us have built a grass hut here in the basement of this church on California Street. We have a space of practice. We come together. And we each have our own way in which we have a kind of space of practice in our life outside this, too. But they're not separate.

[15:32]

And we're now trying to develop this as a song, just to build a grass hut. And eventually, like everything else, he says, the middling or lowly can't help wondering, will this hut perish or not? But he says perishable or not, the original master is present. So if we are expressing this kind of Buddha's love, then we don't have to worry about will it perish or not. We might try and keep it going, but the point isn't to build something that's permanent and eternal, because there's nothing like that, actually. Things change. huge buildings topple and yet the point so when he says in that other thing I read that all that's important is the arrival at the knowledge and vision of Buddhahood

[16:48]

You should know that your own mind's aware essence is neither finite nor eternal. So forth. Anyway, just to arrive at the knowledge and vision of Buddhahood, that's seeing that the original master is present. So we meet this possibility of Buddha in ourselves and all beings. That's the point. So anyway, these two poems that he left us are from the 700s are two aspects of seeing how we do this, how we unfold this, without getting caught in what stage are we at or worrying about whether this is good enough. In some sense, we look and see, oh, can we do something? Can we do more? Maybe it's okay. But the doing more is not about getting something new, it's about expressing what's already here, this possibility.

[17:52]

Even in the middle of a world that's corrupt and violent and cruel, there's still this possibility. I'm seeing how this leads to Suzuki Roshi's comment that you're all perfect just as you are and there's none of you that can stand alone. Exactly. He challenges you that it's enough just to sit. But he also challenges you to go to the grass hut, to shine the light within, to meet the ancient masters. And so he's encouraging you to just be with. That's both. We're perfect just as we are and yet we all have work to do. But if you think you have work to do and you're a mess,

[18:56]

It's harder to do the work. If you see that you can get discouraged, you can kind of give up. He says, don't give up. Just turn around a light to shine within, then just return. We see the side of, it's okay to be completely present in this skin bag here and now, in this mess, this karmic mess that we are. And actually, there's no alternative. We can try and run away from ourselves. But actually, to be present, it's okay. All of you, all of us can be ourselves. Just this person. And when we do that, though, the other side, the part that's really the mystery is that naturally, when we're actually meeting ourselves, we do unfold this possibility of awareness and kindness and sharing and generosity. and patience and all of those practices that we, you know, we have to work at them, but it's there in our, when we actually are willing to be who we are.

[20:14]

Then in our own world, in our own space of practice, in our own grass hut, we find ways to be kind. We find ways to share this. You don't have to kind of try and figure out how to be, how to unfold your love. You just allow this possibility to be in everything you do. And then we see the ways in which we are caught in obstruction. So we come back, so the practice of renunciation in Buddhism is to keep coming back to seeing our ancient twisted karma. It's not that we get rid of the karma, we live right in the middle of the karma and try and see through it. And then that does loosen the hold, loosen the grasp. So maybe it's time to stop, unless there's any last responses or thoughts. Why don't we close with the Bodhisattva vows.

[21:24]

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