Good evening. Good evening. So we've been studying this song, Precious Mary Samadhi, and tonight I want to talk about actually one of my favorite sections. Wonderously embraced within the real, drumming and singing begin together, penetrate the source and travel the pathways, embrace the territory, and treasure the roads, you would do well to respect this, do not neglect it. And actually, the last two of those lines are amongst the most difficult to translate in this whole long poem, so I'm gonna talk about that. But first I'll just take it sort of at face value of the translation. So wondrously embraced within the real, drumming and singing begin together.

[01:05]

So for those of you who were here yesterday, I talked about how the five ranks so-called appear in this teaching poem, and I won't go into that in detail, but that's about the balance of the aspect of ultimate reality, or universal reality, particulars, sameness and difference. So some of you are here. And in terms of how they appear in this text, this reel here is the fifth. So in some sense, we could say this is the ultimate reality. But actually, this is the ultimate balancing of an integration of the ultimate truth and the particular reality, the phenomenal reality. And it doesn't really matter in terms of this. So this is the reality, wondrously embraced within the reality, within reality.

[02:12]

Drumming and singing begin together. wondrously embraced or included or inserted within the true, within the real, within the correct, within this integration of the universal and particular, within this ultimate reality that includes all the particulars. Drumming and singing begin together. So this drumming and singing, these two characters actually can be translated in a lot of ways. But the point is the immediacy. So I think in the first translation that I knew of this from Thomas Cleary, he said, inquiry and response come up together. And that's a good translation, too.

[03:13]

So these two characters, ko and shou, is one way to say them in Sino-Japanese, question and answer come up together. They also could mean literally drumming and singing or call and response. It's that sense of, or it also can mean hitting and yelling. You know, if I hit, well, he might yell. Maybe he wouldn't, maybe he would just take it stoically. But anyway, this kind of sense of immediacy. Within the reel, drumming and singing begin together. It kind of foreshadows the wooden men singing, the stone women dancing. In reality, it's not like there's cause and then there's effect. They come up together. Call and response, drumming and singing, question and answer, inquiry and response.

[04:14]

As soon as there's a question, the response is there. And this is all talking about this teaching our Dharma, our reality of thusness or suchness in this deep reality that we get some sense of in our practice that we've been talking about for the last two months. When we embrace this, when we embrace the wonder of this reality, this ultimate reality as it integrates with our life, There's this immediacy in which call and response arrive together, inquiry and response arrive together. So that's the basic meaning of this first line, which I really love. And that line is fairly straightforward. Actually, the meaning is really deep. This is like, and this recalls the line, the meaning does not, earlier on in the poem, the meaning does not reside in the words, but a pivotal moment

[05:21]

brings it forth. There is a meaning to this dharma of sessions. And this pivotal moment, which also could be translated as this arrival of energy, this inquiry, brings forth this meaning. So this is pointing to how it arrives together with the drumming and the singing, the call and response. So there's more to say about that, and I hope you have some comments. But I want to talk about the next two lines and then get into why they're so different. Well, I know this translation is something that I was involved with with a number of other good scholars, and there was a committee that approved it and all that stuff. But these two lines are subtle. Penetrate the source and travel the pathways. Embrace the territory and treasure the roads is the first one. And again, just to take it at face value, penetrate the source.

[06:25]

We talk about the source in Zen. And actually, my name, Taigen, means ultimate source. I read the translation when he gave me that name. So we talk about the source in various ways. And of course, in Buddhism, there's no source as such. There's no starting point. creator deity, but yet in each moment there's a source. So Dogen, the founder in Japan, his name means source of the way. It's a different gen than gen in Taigen. The gen in Taigen means, it's more kind of physical or graphic or concrete. It's the source of a spring in the mountain. And we talk about the source as in practice in terms of the source of our experience.

[07:28]

So there's this wonderful old poem by a Tang Dynasty poet, roughly contemporary with what Dong Shaner talks about. I won't do the whole poem, but there's one line. follow the stream back to its source, and sit and wait for the time when clouds arise. And this is an actual meditation instruction to, Hogetsu's other name is Kigan, to return to the source, to actually sit with, sit and still, and settle. And this is a practice that's, you know, maybe it's hard to do in one period of zazen when we sit longer, as we will do, some of us, next weekend. You can come back to this place where you can actually see your, sometimes, sensations and thoughts arising.

[08:30]

So the source in Buddhism is not something that happened 6,000 years ago or 6 billion years ago. It's happening all the time. Anyway, penetrate the source and then travel the pathways. What's the process? How do we follow the process of our lives? So this is also about the ultimate or the universal. The ultimate and then the process or the particulars. Penetrate the source and travel the pathways. Embrace the territory. Just like we embrace the real here, embrace the territory. Where do we live? Where do we practice? And treasure the roads. The roads is another graphic image, but it also implies the roadways, the avenues, the processes of our life.

[09:33]

Penetrate the source and travel the pathways. Embrace the territory and treasure the roads. So that's the translation we came to, literally what it says. So penetrate the source and travel the pathways. The two verbs there, penetrate and travel, actually it's the same word, to, which means a number of things. It does mean penetrate. It does mean travel. It does mean reach, connect, transmit. a variety of meanings. And then the first object is source, but it's also shu, as in Soto Shu also. It means the essence, it means the origin, it means the source. It also is used for a sect or school like Soto Shu. So this is a very, again, this can be translated in lots of different ways. The word that we translated there as pathways, as in travel the pathways,

[10:38]

is one of the words that means path or way or process. And so there are a variety of different translations of this line. And then the next part, embrace the territory and treasure the rose. Again, the verb there is the same. So this is a poem. And in Chinese poetry, they use parallel structure, and that's four character lines. And part of what makes a poem is the repetition. So in this case, in this particular line, the two characters that we translated as embrace and treasure, it's the same character. And it's a complicated character that means to include or insert. But it can be translated as embrace or treasure also. And the two characters that We translate it as territory and roads.

[11:41]

Again, the territory is, well, it could mean district, or there's a lot of meanings to that. And the other one is a different character that means path or way. So I give you the translation, which I think is more helpful than trying to give you the literal reading. One, I forgot to bring some of the stranger readings So I'll give you a couple of alternate readings just for fun. Let's see here.

[12:43]

This is one of the very early translations. Yeah. The real is wonderfully inclusive. Both it and the seeming should be brought out. For guests and hosts are intermutable by direct pointing and expedient teaching. Devotion to it will earn blessings, and no account should it be offended. So that's another translation of the same three lines. Powell's translation from the Record of Dongshan. secretly held within the real rhythm and song arise together.

[13:52]

Penetration to the source, penetration of the byways, grasping the connecting link, grasping the root, acting with circumspection is auspicious, there is no contradiction. So that's actually just a tiny taste of the variety of different translations that are available of these three lines. The last one, you would do well to respect this, do not neglect it. Again, I think this is a good translation, obviously, because this is the one that I was involved in myself. So what this means, please do respect this whole process, this whole, the Dharma of thusness and the whole process it's talking about. don't neglect it, and that character for neglect could also mean offend or violate it or transgress it.

[14:53]

This character that means, actually a combination of two characters that can mean respectfulness, that we took as respectfulness, actually the first character also means to miss it or to make a mistake, as well as respectfulness. So these Chinese characters have many layers of meaning. This is why translating Chinese poetry is such an interesting project. Some of the translations say about this line something like, making mistakes is auspicious. Please do that, something like that. Or missing it is auspicious. Okay, you have these three lines and some of the variant possibilities on it. I still think that, so we don't know what Dongshan mean, meant by this. We don't even know if Dongshan, the first time that this Song of the Precious Mirror Samadhi ever, that we have any record of it is in the early 1100s.

[16:01]

Dongshan lived in the 800s. So we don't know if Dongshan himself actually wrote this. You know, scholars say, well, probably not. Theoretically, there was some oral transmission of it. It's been studied since then as the work of Dongshan, and it's part of our tradition, whoever wrote it. Okay, so we have these three lines that have to do with the whole rest of this text that we've been studying, and I think these three lines are wonderful. And I want to hear your comments on them. But again, wondrously embraced within reality. Call and response. Drumming and singing. Question and response. Come up together. Penetrating the source, traveling the pathways involved in this whole process. Embrace the territory. treasure the roads, being involved in this whole process, and really seeing where you are.

[17:08]

You would do well to respect this, do not neglect it. How do we respect the process? But also be aware of these other overtones of it. I recommend making mistakes. don't try and be perfect. So that's, you know, maybe that's another meaning that might be an interpretation of this. So, comments, responses, questions. Laurel. So I've been reading translated Chinese poetry recently and always say by introduction, we can translate the meaning, but we can't translate the rhyme and all of that. But that's a huge important part of this.

[18:11]

So I was wondering, for those three lines, could you read them in Chinese for us? I do not have to. Oh, so you read it, but you don't speak it? I can read you the Japanese reading of it. So I don't know the Chinese, but there's a Japanese way of chanting it. So we used to chant this at San Francisco Center in Japanese. It's been a long time since I've done it, but I can read you that. And that's how, and it's actually, you could say Sino-Japanese, because there's a Japanese way of chanting the Chinese, or saying the Chinese characters. So those three lines in Sino-Japanese, and this is the way it's chanted in in Japan, in Japanese temples. That's Japanese though, that's not Chinese. I was listening, and I meant for... I can do it again if you want.

[19:29]

I don't know if you'll be able to do it, but did it have the repetition of the characters that you were talking about, where it went one, two, one, two, or something like that? Yeah, that would be... I'm just wondering how much of a meaning is in the form? You know, with some poetry, the form is such a big part of it. I don't know. No. Well, you can get that without the sound. Because in some ways, Chinese poetry is easier to translate than Japanese because of the parallel structure. So there are four-line forms and five-line forms and seven-line forms. And if you can see the grammar and the sense of one line that helps you with the next line. You translated the same word differently in both of those cases.

[20:36]

Yeah, because in English, repetition in Chinese or Japanese doesn't sound... If you translate Chinese or Japanese, but even more Chinese poetry, Very literally, it sounds like baby talk because it's repeating the same word. It doesn't sound that way in the original. But in English, if there's that much repetition, it sounds funny. So it actually makes more sense in English to translate it with some of the different meanings of the same word. In terms of getting the sense of it and having it be more poetic in English. So it's complicated. Jim? I don't know enough about Chinese to be able to even answer that. In Chinese there's inflections, and so there's, and I don't know enough spoken Chinese to even answer that question.

[21:47]

It's an inflected language, and that does have something to do with how they play off each other. But in Japanese, the sound is... So in Japanese, mostly does short poetry. So this is a Sino-Japanese translation of a long Chinese poem, which happens. So we're getting kind of technical. But in Japanese, the sound is different. It's a very different language, even though it uses some of the same characters. But the whole structure of the language is very different. And it's a different sound to it. So I don't know if that responds to your question at all. Does anybody here know Chinese? Not too good. I'm sorry. Any responses just to the meaning of this in terms of how it fits into what we've been talking about, about the dharma of suchness and the practice of suchness?

[23:00]

Bill? I guess to go back a week ago, when we were talking about some of the Confucianists I wonder if the roads and pathways are simply there to be discovered and kind of follow the rules since, or if there's something more there about appreciating simply the paths that one has taken. Yeah, the image of the road or the path is very important. You know, it's hard to actually separate Taoism and Confucianism and Chinese Buddhism because they're so interwoven. None of the words that are translated here as roads or paths are the Tao, actually, which has this very significant meaning.

[24:10]

But that is part of what's kind of implied in any of these other meanings of road or pathways, that there's this process, this path, the Tao. So yeah, that is significant. It's not just any old path. It means the way of living, and it implies the practice, it implies, you know, the Dao, the word, the character for the Dao, Do in Japanese, was used as a translation for all of Buddhism, for enlightenment as well as the path towards enlightenment. So all of these other characters that are used here that are not the Tao particularly, but that mean path or way or process or road, there's several different characters that, well, a few different characters here that have that implication are also evoking something of that.

[25:30]

And part of what's going on in this whole poem is talking about, you know, how, well, there's, going back to the first line, the dharma, the teaching, the reality of suchness or thusness is intimately transmitted. The Buddhism answers just now you have it, preserve it well. How do we take care of this experience that the teaching provides, but also that we, taste in Dzogchen, how is that process of experiencing it and incorporating it, this is what this whole poem is about, and how do we feel that. You know, Taoism is also about alchemical meditation, this process of developing energy, developing awareness,

[26:33]

So there are overtones of all of that through here. It may not be directly what's being talked about, but just in terms of those kinds of terms, there's just an overtone of that. Yes, Jerry, hi. Well, mine, embrace the territory and treasure them where it grows, gives me a sense of sort of enjoyment to look around and take in the whole view and not to run through that line in a beginner's mind. Give your cow a large pasture and look around and see the whole territory and take it all in. Be part of it. Yeah, yeah. Every step of the path is it. Yeah, I think that is the feeling of that.

[27:36]

Right here is the point. It's not about getting somewhere else. It's this is it, just this is it. And enjoying it, yeah. Thank you for putting in that work. Considering the light above the pathways and the worlds, I thought of the fantastic castle city, the parable of the fantastic castle city and the Lotus Sutra, and about that pathway in particular, and I think I've missed it a little bit, but I don't hear a lot of the Lotus Sutra

[28:49]

Because the poem as a whole kind of sounds like it's focused more on the experience of the individual. Can you respond to that? Yeah. Yeah, I can. And partly when you say the Lotus Sutra, I think what I hear you asking is about the Bodhisattva idea. Yes. More than specifically the Lotus Sutra. So I'm thinking about this and working with this and writing about it as we're studying it. There is this one specific reference to the Lotus Sutra and I think it comes in right where that idea of the Bodhisattva, you know, just take a step back. And Dogen talks about the Lotus Sutra specifically a lot. There's not as much about the Lotus Sutra specifically in Chinese Chan texts and in the koans.

[30:04]

There's some, but not much. It's very, very important in Japan. And Hakuin also talked about the Lotus Sutra a lot later in his career, a great Kunzai master. Dogen talks about it a lot. So that's one thing. But the Bodhisattva idea, I think I said this here, that it can get lost in a lot of the Zen stories and Zen poetry. It's totally in the background. It's totally the basis of Zen and Chan. And we have all these Bodhisattva figures around. And that's part of Chan and Zen all the way through. But in the Koan literature and so forth, it can get lost a little bit. And I think in some parts of American Zen, it tends to get lost a little bit. It's definitely in here, but it's not in here at the beginning.

[31:05]

And talking yesterday about the five ranks, they're all on the first page of this, which is interesting to me. And then in the second page, it goes into, well, how do we take care of this more, and then the Lotus Sutra does appear. Specifically, one on the verge of realizing the Buddha way contemplated a tree for 10 kalpas. That's a reference to a Buddha in, I'm gonna get it wrong, I think it's chapter 10, but I may be wrong. The Lotus Sutra is a Buddha who literally spent 10 kalpas sitting under the Bodhi tree, right on the verge of achieving Buddhahood, and he doesn't. You know, and there's all these other other future Buddhas who gather around him waiting, oh, when is he going to become a Buddha? Anyway, it's, but that's directly in response, and we talked about this once before, to the problem of suffering. So the tethered colts and cow and rats, I know you

[32:10]

the ancient sages grieved for them and offered them the Dharma. So at that point, this does become the issue of how to respond to suffering, which is what the Bodhisattvas are about. It comes up, and there's a whole teaching about that here. And the point is that the ancient sages, you know, which, and that goes back to, you know, that's a Chinese kind of Confucian kind of phrase, you know, to look at the ancients. And it's pre-Confucian, even as part of Chinese culture, just to look back at the great ancient sages established to, they offered them the Dharma. But by their inverted views, they take black for white, talking about how, common people, that is us, see things backwards. We get caught up in all kinds of twisted thinking, and thinking that we're separate from everybody else and everything else, and thinking that we have to acquire all kinds of things to be happy and so forth.

[33:24]

And then when inverted thinking stops, the affirming mind naturally accords. So, and then it describes this, what happened to this Buddha who contemplated a tree for Jankapos. So anyway, the last part of this Jomar Samadhi is about how to serve, how to follow what, and we discussed about this line about not following is not helpful, I would say. The literal translation is filial, and that goes back to Confucian values. But to practice hidden functions secretly, like a fool, like an idiot, just to do this continuously, to sustain one's practice, is called the host within the host. And actually someone here, an ancient dragon, mentioned to me this Think about practice, hidden, function secretly.

[34:26]

So we're getting away from the lines that we started with, but that in some ways to practice hidden function secretly, like a fool, like an idiot, doesn't mean just to practice anonymously in the world, but to actually even to function secretly from yourself. To allow this to happen without trying to figure it out, you know. without calculating it yourself, to allow this dharma of suchness to work in yourself, to embrace the territory and treasure the road. The word treasure there could also be translated to character as cherish, you know, to allow this process to unfold without even, you know, to allow it to happen hidden from yourself even. I thought that was a really interesting comment that someone made. Anyway, we're a little over time, but all of this is part of these pathways and these roads and penetrating the source is about, you know, how do we help suffering beings?

[35:36]

And the suffering beings on your own, Krishnaji. So, thank you for that question. said, that you observe the formlessness and the ultimate and the between robustness from the road. There are specific fixed things that follow within the territory. The roads are part of the territory, but it's not that you wander around aimlessly and there is a track that you follow. You follow the ancient tracks to follow the ways of the ancient is to be off track in a way, it may still be part of the territory, but it's not the way, in a sense.

[36:45]

And so we are finite, fixed beings. We have form, and we can only express the form within the forms. We can only express the territory by walking the roads. And so, yes, how do we follow the way? And as we've been discussing, how do we follow the way that is the way that is from the source at the same time that we adapted to work in our situation, in our territory?

[37:48]

And this is a great challenge.

[37:50]

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