I vow to take students of The Sutra of Just Words. Good morning. I'm surprised to see so many people here. Somehow I thought everybody was gone, but I guess it's just that the avid is gone. A bunch of people. This is the beginning of practice period at Tassajara. Mel will be leading that practice period, and he's gone down with some older students to get it started. So there's a group of people who are down there for this week. And then I'm sort of pinch-hitting this week for Mel, and other people will pinch-hit later in the practice period when he's gone. So we'll be giving lectures, and we'll be taking turns filling in the Doksan calendar.

[01:05]

So if you sign up for Doksan this week, you'll get me. If you sign up next week, you'll get Meili or Alan. And our names are all on there, so you know what you're getting. Did everybody or almost everybody get a copy of the Sando Kai? How many didn't get a copy? Maybe people could sort of share if we don't have quite enough copies. Also, the suture books have it. It's right at the back. Yeah, the suture books have it, but they have a slightly different version of it. What I've copied out is the old one. And with my apologies to the teachers of no preference, I prefer this translation. I have no... intelligent basis for preferring it. I just like the sound of it better. So let's just start by reading it together.

[02:13]

and all the elements of the universe. that fact won't necessarily derive from the great reality. The words high and low are used relatively. Within the light there is darkness, but do not be attached to that darkness.

[03:52]

Within the darkness there is light, but do not be caught by that light. Light and darkness are a pair, like the foot before and the foot behind in walking. Sekito Kisen, who wrote this poem, was a great-grandson of the Sixth Patriarch.

[05:09]

And at the time that he wrote it, there, as you may gather from the first stanza, was a bit of sectarian infighting in the Zen community. And he wrote this poem to give people a feeling of the essence of Buddhism and the essence of practice, the essence beyond petty details and sectarian conflict. The title, Sandokai, means something like the song of the common thread or the merging of unity and different, or the merging of the essential and the phenomenal.

[06:15]

Suzuki Roshi talked about seeing the essential or the universal or big mind, and he described The way we see things is in big mind, as things as it is. When you drop your categories and your ideas about things and your preferences about things, your desires about things, you see each thing as it is. You see things as they are. And the big picture, the little things in the big picture, that's things as it is. It's sort of an idiomatic, peculiar use of English that Suzuki Roshi made up, but it works in its own grammatical way.

[07:27]

So things as it is is the big picture. It's the big mind, the universal. And things as they are is each of us in all the particulars, in all their details. And of course in Buddhism we're all part of the big picture, we all are Buddha, because everything has Buddha nature, and each of us, from the floor, to the Buddha, to the candle, each of us is just a slightly different arrangement of all the same pieces, all the same stuff of life.

[08:31]

So, san is things, or three, and do is sameness, or identity, or one whole being. And kai is to shake hands. So, one thing in many things, all good friends, as Hiroshi said. All originally one. This poem tries to describe reality from these two viewpoints, the viewpoint of the absolute and the viewpoint of the relative, or we could say form and emptiness, or the universal and the personal. So in the first part, he talks about the absolute,

[09:37]

after he sets to rest the sectarian business about the teachers of the North and South. The mind of the Great Sage of India, of course, the Great Sage of India is Shakyamuni Buddha. And Shakyamuni Buddha's mind was transmitted, was conveyed intimately from one disciple to another, from India to China. So each teacher was different. Each teacher had his own personality. But the essence that each teacher transmitted to the next is the same. And this is the essence that Sekito is trying to transmit to us in this poem. And in order to get the essence, in order to experience the essence, to sense it, to be it, we have to not so much get rid of our thoughts and our categories and our opinions, but to take them into account, to know our tendencies.

[11:04]

so that our perception is not so distorted by them. If your tendencies pull you in some direction and you don't know that you're being pulled, then you see things in a very skewed kind of way. If you know that you tend to get pulled in a certain way, then you can take that into account and adjust your perspective. So you see this in zazen very easily because you try to sit up straight and you notice quickly that you have a tendency to slump in a certain direction or to be tight in a certain way or whatever, you know, to fall asleep very easily, whatever your tendency might be. So on the one hand we try to correct our tendency to lean by sitting up straight.

[12:08]

But the point is not so much to sit up straight or to get it right. The point is to be very observant about what it is that's going on. And zazen is a very convenient and close and encapsulated way to really get a close look, because there's not so much else going on. It's all quiet, and there's nothing else happening. And often we think that in order to see things clearly we have to get rid of our thoughts, and we have to get rid of our desires, all this stuff that's always coming up in zazen, that we have to get rid of it somehow, and then we'll have this clarity, and we'll see some light or we'll get the big picture all of a sudden. And although that kind of thing may happen, it's not because we get rid of all this stuff.

[13:18]

There's no place to get rid of it. There's an infinite supply of it. The mind just keeps generating all this stuff. Suzuki Roshi says, big mind. In Zazen, to let our mind be like the sky. The sky is not upset by the birds flying through. The sky isn't even upset by airplanes, thunder, lightning. The sky just lets whatever it is pass through. So, to let the mind be like the sky. That's Meili's Dharma name, actually, is Vast Sky Mind. There's a koan about this that is a bit later.

[14:21]

It's one of the koans about Joshu. And a monk asks Joshu, does the baby Does the newborn baby have the sixth consciousness? The sixth consciousness is discriminating awareness. Well, any of you who have spent any time around infants know that they don't have the capacity, they don't have the cognitive wherewithal to discriminate this from that, or green from blue, or any of that stuff. So why would anybody ask this question? Does the newborn baby? have the sixth consciousness. Well, of course, every newborn baby is born, every normal newborn baby is born with the equipment to develop that capacity. And we all are, as adults, somewhat encumbered by that capacity to discriminate.

[15:26]

So, what What this koan kind of points us to is, you know, what happened to that newborn baby that you were? What happened to that mind? Knowing what you know now, having the mature brain function to be able to discriminate this from that, can we retrieve that baby mind in which the potential is there, ready to be actualized, in which discriminating awareness can arise when it's time and when it's appropriate. So not to get rid of discriminating awareness or that consciousness, we need them all, but to put it in perspective and to know which consciousness you're using to be conscious of your consciousness.

[16:30]

of your state of mind. And Joshu's answer was something like, it's like throwing a ball onto a stream, moment to moment, non-stop flow. So that's another kind of picture of what big mind is like. So as I talk about this, particularly as I talk about the mind and the absolute and all this enlightened type stuff, please keep in mind the line of Tozant that we read this morning in the Jewel Mirror Samadhi. The Jewel Mirror Samadhi is another poem, a later poem,

[17:32]

is in some ways an elaboration of this one, or development of this one. I was tossed on this whole concept of the merging of oneness and manyness. That was very central for him. And he says, just to depict it in literary form is to relegate it to defilement. This means even to talk about this stuff. is a travesty. There is nothing that we can really say. So keeping in mind that there is nothing to be said, every Saturday morning we have a lecture anyway. One of the ways that this particular practice confronts us with the problem of sameness and uniqueness is in our forms.

[18:40]

This is a very formal practice in which we have lots of occasion to all of us do exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. And many of us react to this as kind of, at first, as kind of an assault on our uniqueness. Especially as Americans, we like to be individualistic and we like to do it, I like to do it my way, please. And so we have lots of ideas and reactions and feelings about this, these kinds of Japanese forms which force us into sameness. And they force us into sameness really as an opportunity for us to experience and to express our oneness, our commonality, our connection with the universal, to commune with the Source altogether.

[19:55]

And even when we're completely joined with the ritual forms, doing them completely and wholeheartedly with no resistance, no separation, each of us does it in our own way. We can't help it, because each of us is completely unique. Each body, mind, completely unique. And how wonderful! So many expressions of the great reality. So many opportunities to see the range of our uniqueness, our collective uniqueness

[20:57]

and to look inside, to observe our relationship to our own feelings and thoughts, to what goes on inside, to what our connection is. So Zen doesn't so much discount individuality, I think, as to try to put it in a perspective. In his first lecture on the Sando Kai, Suzuki Roshi gave a series of lectures on the Sando Kai at Tassajara before he died, and I didn't hear them in person. I read the ones that were published, and they're quite hard to follow, partly because we didn't have the whole translation then.

[22:00]

We chanted it in Japanese, and so we'd have the Japanese in front of us, and he'd say, OK, well, these words mean so and so and so. And it took many lectures to get through the first couple of lines, as he gave the possible translations for the many characters, and then would go off on various ramblings. But while he was preparing one of these lectures, apparently the first one, somebody came and asked him about self-respect. Or nowadays we would probably say self-esteem. That's our phrase. And he said that actually, this was about that too, that Zazen, really builds our self-respect by giving us a way to observe our tendencies and to not be caught by them.

[23:10]

Our physical tendencies, our mental and emotional tendencies. Zazen is our effort to be fully present with whatever it is that's happening internally. as well as externally, without making it either bigger or smaller than it is, but to just be with it exactly as it is, and to see it exactly as it is, no bigger, no smaller. And to really be with our thinking, with whatever it is, not to try to stop our thinking, but just to allow our thinking, So really to attend to all this activity that makes up the self with great respect and complete attention.

[24:12]

Let your ears, letting your ears hear the birds, the cars, letting your eyes see the other people, the little bugs, dust on the floor, letting the mind think, without trying to do this, but just allowing the processes to go on, just as you allow your breath to come and go, you allow your blood to flow, and your heart to beat, without trying to interfere. So the stanza about the spiritual source shining clearly in the light, branching streams flow in the darkness, to be attached to things, this is delusion, but just to understand

[25:24]

that all is one is not enough. This is very important. He's trying to remind us that if you have a real clear, accurate perception of anything, of many things, that's only one side. And just to see that all is one, just to be merged, and to let go of all the distinctions and boundaries and be merged. That's not enough either. That one has to have that kind of fluid perspective that includes both sides, oneness and manyness. Sometimes form is in the foreground and emptiness is more the background. Sometimes emptiness is more the foreground. Forms are more the background. but not to get caught in whatever perspective is foreground at that moment.

[26:29]

Because everything is interdependent, as well as independent, you couldn't have the one And the central image here is dark and light. The dark makes all forms one. And in brightness, dualistic distinctions become apparent. Then in the next, the beginning of the next stanza, he starts talking about the particulars. The four elements return to their nature, like a child to its mother. And he's very specific. One of the things I like so much about this poem is the way in which it's at the same time so specific and so evocative. The nose, the eyes, see, the ears, hear, and of course this is like the Heart Sutra, all the senses. Each is independent of the other, but the different leaves come from the same root.

[27:40]

The root of our senses. is in our sensory equipment and in our consciousness and in our connection. Cause and effect both necessarily derive from the great reality. Immediately he takes you from your sense perceptions, your body, straight to the original source, straight to the universal. No gap from the universal to the personal, from the personal back to the universal. And then the words high and low are used relatively. That's how he tells us about relative. But we all know about relative, so he doesn't have to explain it too much. And then immediately he goes into the integration.

[28:46]

And this is This is important because it's so much the foundation, I think, of Soto Zen and of Suzuki Roshi's teaching, the integration of light and dark, of form and emptiness, of practice in everyday life. Usually we talk about it as practice in everyday life, and it sounds very simple, and it is very simple. This is the elaboration or the foundation. I don't want to say philosophical because it's not exactly philosophical, but this is the map for which the particulars of our zazen practice and our effort to be present in everyday life are the territories.

[29:48]

This is the aerial map. So this is my favorite part. Within the light there is darkness, but do not be attached to that darkness. Within the darkness there is light, but do not be caught by that light. Light and darkness are a pair, like the foot before and the foot behind in walking." So from something very abstract, something very hard to grasp, we get an image that you can't miss. We all have that experience of how our two feet work together in walking. Each thing has its own intrinsic value and is related to everything else in function and position.

[30:56]

Ordinary life fits the Absolute as a box in its lid. The Absolute works together with the relative like two arrows meeting in mid-air. So that's practice in everyday life. Two arrows meeting in mid-air. When your zazen mind and your ordinary mind fit like a box and it's lidded. When you and I are completely present in this moment. When in the present our consciousness and our activity meet like two arrows meeting in mid-air.

[32:05]

Just each breath moment. I'll never forget the first time I heard this poem in English after having recited it for years in Japanese. I'd been away from Zen Center for a number of years, and when I came back, things had been translated, and it was quite a revelation. And I remember standing here one morning on the fourth of the month, when we have the Suzuki Roshi memorial service, and I think now we all chant the Sando Kai together during that service, At that time, one person read it, and Pat McMahon read it. He has a very wonderful voice, and he read it very beautifully. And I remember just listening to it.

[33:11]

It just hit me like a thunderbolt. Oh, of course. How amazing. And that's what Sisyphus Roshi was talking about. Just dive in. It was quite wonderful. And it's remained my favorite poem. It made it clear to me how profound and how deep is our casual saying, oh, practice in everyday life. We try to make them one thing. This is very vast. task and very immediate at the same time. So just dive in.

[34:11]

Don't waste time. The last line, Do not vainly pass through sunshine and shadows, it has various translations And one of which is don't waste your life or don't let your life be in vain. On the Han at Tassajara, the Han is a wooden board that's struck with a mallet to let people know it's time to come for the next thing. The calligraphy on the Han says, you know, great is the problem of life and death. Wake up, wake up and don't waste time. There is no time to waste.

[35:18]

We don't know how long we have. So we can't we can't fool around with, oh, this is very difficult practice, it will take me my whole life to master, and I'll just try and do this. I mean, that's true, of course, that we won't master it even in one lifetime, perhaps. But at the same time, we don't have any time to waste. We particularly don't have time to waste in being separate, in separating what we do in zazen from the rest of our life. The great sage of India and the other teachers transmitted their understanding to us out of kindness, to help us.

[36:26]

And having heard the teaching, we have some responsibility to actualize it, to help each other. It's not... They were trying to help us, but practice isn't so that we can feel better. We may feel better, we may not. But the great problem of life and death is each of our essential problem. That's where each of us joins in the universe. There's a koan that jumped out of the book and grabbed me recently that seems to me to sum this all up.

[37:47]

Joshu asked Tosu, what if a man who has died the great death comes back to life again? And Tosu said, He shouldn't go by night. He must get there in daylight. What if a man who has died the great death comes back to life again? He must not go by night. He must get there in daylight. The great death, of course, is awakening, awakening to the truth of this moment, to understanding our uniqueness and our oneness, to understanding big mind, but more than understanding

[39:04]

to live it, to actualize it, to really mix it up. Merging is almost too tidy. I think of it almost as putting it in the blender. The flavors all merge. the pieces, the ingredients, all the same size, one whole flavor emerges. And that flavor of, or that fragrance of truth of the great reality permeating our whole life.

[40:12]

You have to go in daylight, you have to live your life. Go to work, deal with your car, your family. These are the activities of of daylight, where all the particulars come up and all the stuff of life can come to tribute. And this is where we have a chance, really, to meet the great reality. head-on, moment after moment. So the great death, or understanding, or enlightenment, or samadhi, or whatever you want to call it, is not our goal.

[41:30]

if we have some deep understanding, that may be the beginning of something. But, you know, in koan study, you go to the teacher and you present your koan, and you say something in response to it, and the teacher checks your understanding with checking questions. In Soto practice, it's life that provides you with the checking questions. It's your roommate or your child or your spouse that will have the checking question that really challenges you. So, when you have died the great death,

[42:42]

and you come back to life, come back to, when you've sat sashin and then gone back to work, you have to go in daylight, where everybody can see you, and you have to go start naked. Reading the above lines, you should have grasped the great reality. Do not set up your own standards. If you do not see the way, you do not see it, though you're actually walking on it. This is Dogen's, where you're already enlightened from the beginning. When you walk the way, it is not near. It is not far, but if you're deluded, you're mountains and rivers away from it.

[43:47]

I say respectfully to those who seek the way, do not vainly pass through sunshine and shadows. Please stay awake.

[43:59]

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