Thank you. Mark, you asked what we talked about last week. Probably everyone has a slightly different answer to this. We talked a little bit about reading and how the classical The first part of the test was more of a unit. We had some discussion about how many people were separated or were not separated, things like that. And when we looked at the famous story about the mirror as West End, in Bodhi there's essentially no tree, the mirror rests on West End.

[01:17]

Originally not one, it's a rare congestion. We're definitely talking there on the side of emptiness. And our practice talks a lot about emptiness. The whole practice of our religion is subject to emptiness. But because so, this is form detection. But now, at the very end of last week, we started to be able to notice what emptiness is. It's form. Pardon me, you said no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. Right. Also can eyes, these eyes, these ears, this nose, this mouth, this body, this... And that's what this part has to do with.

[02:34]

And I thought a little bit about last week, and I thought it might be nice to Stay a little closer to the heart, especially up here in the 3D bit. So I thought I'd kind of take a paragraph by paragraph. And backing up to the last paragraph that we wrote last time. On the top of page 3. Zen Master Nangaku's words, even though it is not shining like a mirror, you cannot delude others one bit, which refers back to the previous dialogue, which I don't want to go back to right now. It means there is no reflection, no deception. There's, I'm not sure where it is, but here, in one of the discussions of emptiness, I was sitting next to the teacher or something, so, there's emptiness.

[03:59]

What about practice? What about realization? And the teacher's answer is, it's not that there is no practice and no realization. It's just that they cannot apply it. A good answer. So emptiness doesn't mean that something doesn't exist. If you hold your object, grab your title. You can grab your eyeball, but it won't be an eye anymore.

[04:59]

It'll be a mass of bloody flesh. And you can grab it. And the eye can't grab itself. The eye can't grab itself. So this is actually... actually liberating. another way of saying that is, we're not trapped. and the other side of this, of course, is that we all feel trapped in this body, in this structure, in this condition. so we learn how to deal with that. But fundamentally, there's no deception.

[06:06]

The learning practice that the ocean is strong can never disclose deceit. It's a sort of puzzling statement. You see, talk about it. But if you stop and think about it, what would happen when the ocean dried up? Is it a seabed anymore? It was, but it can't disclose it because it's turned into something else. A seabed only exists in relationship to the ocean. What this means is delusion doesn't turn into the ocean. So, the essence of, or one of the crucial points of Doge's teaching is, we don't meditate in order to become enlightened.

[07:12]

Our meditation and our practice is an expression of the meaning of enlightenment, which was, is, and always will be. And the typical voting fashion is that this is an unbreakable immoval. This is the truth. Alright, another way of saying it. You're already enlightened! Get it off already! Stop seeking. And he says, at the same time, learn further in practice. From the image, the mirror is formed. So in a way, in the first sentence, he says, there's no reflection.

[08:13]

There's no mirror. There's no image. And he says, from the image, the mirror is formed. Put it the opposite way, the mirror creates the image, allows the image to move forward. But, no image, no mirror. No practice, no Buddha. Illusion and enlightenment are like a sail. A hundred thousand myriads of shining mirrors bunching together. Just this moment of delusion is illuminated and cleared of destruction. So, you can't escape, just like you can't escape your life.

[09:31]

This is it. I think I mentioned it last time. The literal translation of this is delusion, delusion, point, point. Just a point, a point, a point, just sort of like a delusion, delusion, now, now. Or wake up. So the next dialogue, sure. The first one is, if we cast the mirror into a Buddha image, where will its light go?

[10:31]

So the it is referring to the image, the Buddha image. But the monk is the person saying it that way, but the teacher and the master says, your face before you became a monk. Where have those features gone? Which is, let's say, the mirror is your face before you became a monk. The Buddha image is your face now that you've become a practitioner. So where's your face from before you became a monk? which was actually your original face. And this all comes back, you trace it back to the story of Kaya Shasta being born with a mirror, and then he becomes a monk, and the mirror vanishes. Okay, so after transmutation, why does it take your face?

[11:44]

That's how I like it better. Yeah. Or another way of putting it in later English. OK. So I've taken the preset. So I've started to sit sa zen. Why isn't everything wonderful? That's right. I mean, what's the matter? Why aren't I shining? What is shining? What do I think shining means? Oh, why aren't I shining? Why aren't I enlightened? Why aren't I saintly? Why aren't I not in pain? Why aren't I happy? Why aren't I crying all the time? Why do I still get angry? Why do I still get down? Good question.

[12:49]

And so, trying to get that point across, trying to get that point across, Seto says, To experience our real selves is the same as facing the eternal mirror. Whatever appears is reflected. Crucial. Peaceable. Passable. Whatever appears is reflected. If a Chinese person comes, the Chinese person is reflected. If a foreigner comes, the foreigner is reflected. It comes throughout. Passable. So a clear mirror is appearing in front of a clear mirror.

[14:03]

What happens when you place two mirrors up against one another? It's actually a sort of nice image. What do the mirrors see or create? And you can't get in between them, right? Because then it's different. You're testing two mirrors up against one another. The teacher said, whatever is there, will be there. Another translation of that is, the order in which I am working. It's a person in person. When a Clear River comes and faces a Clear River, you and I are facing each other.

[15:15]

You're a Clear River. Each of us is a Clear River. So, here we are. Clear River faces a Clear River. What happens? and there's a foreigner in the Chinaman boat, whatever is there will be hidden. That's another way of saying it. Belinda and Bob have disappeared. Our original selves, unconstrained by our ego-identities, have lost importance. And Gensha said, please ask me a question. This is very important when Gensha says, please ask me a question.

[16:22]

We'll come back to this, but Gensha isn't just sort of, okay, let's try it again. But Seppel asked him, okay, if all of a sudden there's been a murder, here's what happens. To which I ask you, is Seppel confined to Genshin's proposal, or is he asking something different? Don't worry about that. But Genshin's reply very wonderful. All of a sudden, we remember first what happened. Grapes, hundreds of pieces, clear mirror, faces, clear mirror, and instead of Bob and Mark disappear, you know, oh my God, we're stuck here in the middle of all this stuff.

[17:30]

cups, and glasses, and paper, and do you understand me, and do you like me, and do I like me, and do I like you, and all this, the millions of things which flip through our minds and our feelings and desires, thoughts and sensations, all those fragments of our experience, which is how we experience things, right? thought by thought, fragment by fragment. So, this next section of the passaport, it pieces this poem apart. So I think what I'd like to do is go on a little bit further. And it gets difficult in this area because Dogen sort of wanders away, comes back, and sometimes it's hard to follow the thread of the argument.

[18:49]

Let us experience and practice what sepulchral means of learning is sepulchral eternal learning. The meaning of is the same as basic. The eternal mirror is that form and formlessness subsume each other. There's a poem that says, health and sickness subsume. The whole world is medicine. One is medicine itself. [...]

[19:52]

One is medicine itself. [...] One is medicine like a positron and an electron, like matter and antimatter meet. It means they cancel each other out, but in their meeting, each includes the other, and because each includes the other, they dissolve each other, like matter into it. That's right. Facing is utterly beyond inside and outside.

[20:57]

It is the self as a pearl spinning in a bowl. In other words, the true self finds itself and has to move itself along. I don't want to spend five or ten years working on that one, right? I think it might be worth reading the two other translations to get some flavor of what's being said here. The meaning of, it is the same as face of the eternal mirror, is that one form transcends all opposition. There is neither inside nor outside. It is our pure self.

[21:58]

In other words, self will be cast off. Ishijima processes, in the words, like one face of the eternal mirror. One face means the mirror's borders have been eliminated forever and it is utterly beyond inside and outside. It is the self as a crow spinning in a bowl. I purposefully use the term true self, why is it so passive and so false? I don't think it's so false. What's meant to be true is to study the self. To study the self is to get the self. To get the self is to realize the self. To realize the self is to [...] realize the self is

[23:01]

Each object has a subject. It's very hard to compile. You have to compile it. You have to exercise. You have to compile it again and again. This whole piece is full of contradictions. But that's the nature of our life. Not contradictions, but paradoxes, where both sides are proven. But they say nothing can be, but they are.

[24:09]

Whatever appears will be reflected means if a foreigner comes to port, it will be reflected, and if a Chinese comes, the Chinese will be reflected. It is said that the Chinese have been in the world since the very beginning, but if that goes worse, now the Chinese, through the virtues of China Mirror, have made a man of it. Because the present China Man is not the China Man, the China Man appears. So, So if I come before you, and you see me, you go, oh, there's a guy. There's a man. And I'm a type.

[25:11]

I'm a member of a category. A man who's so tall, he has a slightly more gasp. A man. An American. But that doesn't see me. This particular man is talking to you right now. And in fact, there's no such thing as an American. That's an ideal type. There's only you, [...] and me. And so the eternal mirror doesn't reflect ideal types, categories. It reflects concrete reality.

[26:12]

Not a Chinaman, but this person who happens to be Chinese. And because our true self really responds to the immediate reality of the person in front of us. We can appear to each other, we can only appear to each other as ourselves on a certain level. We put on different masks and we all have filters and all of that. But fundamentally, The eternal mirror reflects what is within you. When Seppel said, whatever is there will be hidden, it means that the mirror is all over the eyes itself.

[27:19]

Well, so, okay, two mirrors face each other separately. The foreigner's there, the Chinese is there, they become mirrors, two mirrors are facing each other, suddenly there's no foreigner, there's no Chinese, and there's not even any mirror, you know? Because if the mirror were there, it would get in the way. It's sort of like being Sazen. If you try to do Sazen, you get in the way. The more you try to do Sazen, the more Christian you're not seeing. Like I said, this has to stop.

[28:35]

Another way of saying how to be healthy is just get out of the way. Just don't hinder your true self. We say the mountain doesn't hinder the white cloud. So you're sitting there, you're doing sausage. Okay. Great. Breathing. Think not thinking.

[29:36]

I think I'm thinking that I'm not thinking. No wait, I'm thinking that I'm not thinking. So all the time there's all this weird stuff going on, right? And at the same time, your thought is completely pure. And, right. So that's the lack of hindrance. There's never any hindrance. There's a true deal sometimes, like, concentrating, like, hey, I had said to you, there's no hindrance. But there are. And then Gensha says, Gensha says, we will break into hundreds of pieces.

[30:46]

He expresses the truth of that. And I wish now, to now ask Gensha, give me back the pieces. Give me a concrete fragment. Will you return it to America? Right here, Dogen is addressing that mirror. And he's looking for... dharma. Okay, here's all this stuff. I've messed with your mind long enough. Someone come up here and give me a fragment of the mirror. Show me your true self. You're going to try and present yourself as someone pure and empty. Okay, so moving on a little bit. In the age of the Yellow Emperor there were twelve mirrors, which according to his ancestors were gifts from the heavens.

[31:52]

Andy talks a bit now about the twelve mirrors. 12 hours, months, and years were mirrors which could illuminate the past and present. If the 12 hours were not mirrors, how would it be possible to illuminate the past? If the 12 hours were not mirrors, how would it be possible to illuminate the present? 12 hours, 12 months, 12 years, 12 times, 12 forms, 12 mirrors. This is being time. Past and present are what the 12 hours consume. Consume, use. I use the word consume. I took some liberties here.

[32:59]

If you've read Dogen's fascicle, Uchi, he says, the self is infinite. Now, this is a very profound statement. And we tend to think of time as part of time. And that's the same word, but it's not the same thing. We know from modern physics that time and space, and matter, and energy, and time, are all instantly related.

[34:12]

That we live in a universe of space and time. The fabric of the universe is space and time. It's very hard to get our mind around that. How can space and time end? But if you think of the self as time, what else is the self? But time is not something you measure. Time is something that you live. The time of your life is your life. It's not from 1915 to 1999. The time of your life is always unique.

[35:13]

And the length of it, in a certain sense, is irrelevant. We'll get into this later on when we talk about the size of the botch. However big the hibachi is, it's the complete hibachi. However big the tamale is, or the enchilada, it's the whole enchilada. So, you know. Why is it that you don't want them to just go waste away? They say they'll go waste away. Yeah. Right. It's the same thing as saying, don't close your left, don't close your right. Down. But I don't know that I agree with that.

[36:31]

I mean, on the one hand, that's true. But on the other hand, you can't waste power. You let your existence go to waste. That's right. That's what I'm saying. You're existing fully in the world? Yeah. Even if you don't know. That's right. But that's the point, you don't know. That's the problem. And so it doesn't mean you don't know. You're knowing it is enlightenment. You're knowing that you're deluded. As soon as you start right, as soon as you start measuring, you're in the world of discrimination.

[37:55]

And one of the interesting things about mirrors is they have infinite depth. So... Yes. Okay. Okay. That's, that's. That's classical. Let's come back to that.

[39:00]

But it's a very good question. So one of the reasons I think that we're getting into this here is that the issue of time comes up in this here and there. Notice that Gensha says, if a clear mirror appears, he doesn't say if a clear mirror appears, what happens? He says, if all of a sudden a clear mirror appears, what happens? And everything is all of a sudden. If things occur gradually, they're occurring Gradually, all of a sudden, or all of a sudden gradually, everything appears this instant by instant.

[40:01]

Our language is linear, so it's very hard to express. It makes it sound like one instant follows another, which is not quite right. So, the reason I use the word consume, past and present are one of the twelve hours of consume, is the idea that your life burns up itself completely, moment by moment. The time is totally filled, empty. It's all there. And it's, you know, that moment is gone, It's totally used up. And so we're... This is what birth and death...

[41:06]

The inhalation and the exhalation are just a convenient way to hold the signal. I'm not sure what you're asking. You might want to think of it as a There's another way of using the word moment, which has to do with the pivot point. The physics of the moment of reflection, the moment of balance. It's a physical thing.

[42:20]

It's where everything intersects. And so, as a point is the intersection of lines, and a point is dimensionless, a moment is dimensionless. So, the point of all this is that It says, this story is a folktale, but it's true that the form of each time is the eternal mirror. So, if you think of yourself as crystallized time, that you are time made form, that constitutes the eternal mirror. as opposed to the mirror.

[43:21]

Yes, we're now talking exactly. We're now talking about the eternal mirror. And we're going to talk about the clear mirror versus the eternal mirror. So it's the eternal we're talking about in time. And what is eternity? And Dogen says it's in the reality of the 12 hours during which the China man appears. We can only peer in time. So then, Dogen goes on And the Yellow Emperor asks Hosei of Mount Kodo about the way. And I was talking with Mel about this. And he said, the translation of Nishijima is so good, you shouldn't use that.

[44:26]

I don't think I'd agree with him. And then the Yellow Emperor crawls forward on Kodo Mountain and asks Hosei about the way. And he goes, oh, please, tell me. It's got that real flavor to it. And then there's this fairly lengthy section on the mirror is the basis of yin and yang, regulates the body, there's three types of mirror, the heavens, the earth, the human beings. These mirrors not seeing and not hearing harmonize body and mind. We're getting into Daoist philosophy here. Daoism is very concerned with eternal life, and how it's going to achieve that.

[45:31]

As assured of quiet purity, we did not foremost deluge and tax the body or agitate the spirit with norm in this way. In one of the translations, It's basically, if you live according to the mirror, you will be able to live long. So I took the liberty of translating live long in this way as giving just like turning One of the definition, one of the... Yeah, it's pretty good. Mirrors in ancient China and Japan were criteriums and they were used as

[46:42]

standards. This is the way things should be done. Things should measure up in a certain way. The mirror was a symbol of this. Like, this is the good. This is the pure or the right. And so you govern the earth and regulate the way according to the standard of right conduct, right speech, and what not. So if you're clear about how to do that, you're a master. You rule the heavens and the earth. This is very valid. According to popular belief, Emperor Taiso had a mirror made for the reflection of these people. It was said the Emperor Taiso treats human beings as mirror fundamentally, fully eliminates all problems of peace and danger, reason and disorder.

[47:50]

And I have to say, when I read this, I was thinking, this would be amazing. If our political leaders treated human beings as murderers, I mean, what would happen if we treated Iraq as murderers? What would happen if we created voters? If elected officials created voters, they'd mirror us in the background. What would happen if, as voters, we saw elected officials in ourselves? It would be, and it is, very illuminating.

[48:53]

But we project things to those people out there, as if we didn't have any responsibility for producing them. Very comforting. But we all did. You know, we all elected for the book. Not the book, but I got elected. Well, by maintaining a certain kind of lifestyle, by not going out and doing certain kinds of campaigning, I mean, there's all kinds of karma by which I contribute to things being the way they are in ways that I don't like and dissociate myself from.

[50:02]

But part of our practice is realizing that these very things are ultimately, and I take this opportunity to tell you, the guilt. At one point, when I was 14, meditating on our vows, I translated them for myself. And the second vow, delusions are impossible, I vowed to end them. I translated them as, delusions are me. My vow is to take these twists and straighten them out.

[51:11]

So, it's very important in any piece of work we do of social action to treat the enemy Otherwise, you will always create exactly what you don't want to create. Very hard. Psychologically, we like to push the man out of himself. If you don't repeat that, then you'll be walking dead. Now, we could use some people that we don't know exactly.

[52:22]

But, ultimately, it would be more of a way around. So, just to do a paragraph, well, Therefore, he used one of the three points of the mirror to reveal himself. Treating humans as a mirror is to make the mirror into the mirror, to make oneself into the mirror. Well, I hope to get to a certain place, but we'll just get to where we get.

[53:41]

When we watch the coming and going of humanity, the coming has no trace. and they're going in a new direction. We call this the principle of humanism. I mean, there's no traces going in that direction. The past is gone. The future is gone. The present is gone. The past is gone. The future is gone. That's reality. That among people there are those who see and those who do not is like the weather in the universe. This is indeed a natural phenomenon. for the people who see, and the people who don't.

[54:55]

And so, the subject of weather. It's sort of interesting to think of your subject of weather system. The tides, ebbs, flows, winds, rain. You can't predict the weather. It's hard to predict exactly what you're going to do. This is the basis of people, the basis of errors, the basis of the universe. This is coming in appearance. Appearance of the face. Your original face. It doesn't necessarily mean your eyes or your nose. Your original appearance.

[56:00]

The vitality of the mountains and rivers passes through the terrain and away to the oceans. You're a fine virgin land scene. This is very practiced in the earth itself. So we think of the mountains and rivers, the Sierras are three hours away. They're right there. I mean, quite literally, they flow into bed. And our lives are like that. On the one hand, some attributes which are always there, but they're always being expressed through the terrain of our daily life.

[57:01]

The terrain of our mountains and rivers. And this purifies earth and sea. The actions of our daily life. Purify ourselves and the ground of our being. We're constantly working at our home. working out the meaning of our lives in ways which it is impossible to understand completely. So, Emperor Kaiso's way is to fathom the universal by taking sound inference from the beings to understand the One by

[58:08]

striking for many, with hundreds of thousands of fragments. But this doesn't refer only to intellectual knowledge. Then he talks about the treasures of Japan. And One Mirror is one of the great traditions of Japan in Isen. And you know, Tokens can be very parochial sometimes. So I found it rather nice to hear that every nation translates into each other. One is redeveloped. Holding the mirror is holding the nation. And then we come back to the whole issue of time.

[59:17]

Mirrors express the time as it comes, whether past or present. The present expresses the present, and the past expresses the past. Such mirrors are controllable. So, we're getting into eternal here. The eternal doesn't have an issue of a lot of times. It's just whatever appears this moment, appears weekly and forever. The simplest point might also be expressed when a comedian comes in and re-appears in a chat room and the chat room reappears. Or, heaven reflects heaven, people reflect people.

[60:23]

It doesn't matter how cruel it might be, you're going to be human. You're going to be full of errors and farts and goodwill and jealousy. That's the way it is. We learn appearance and coming like this in practice, but we don't know the real meaning of perceptual appearance. We just experience it, meaning directly through the appearance itself. So we need not necessarily learn coming and appearance through perceptual understanding. So in that moment, In that moment, coming and appearing was directly manifested.

[61:37]

All of you met that sound, all of us met that sound immediately. There's nothing conceptual, you can look back on that now. Oh yeah, oneness during the sound, at that moment. What happened? Where were you? Where was I? Where was the sound? What was complete or incomplete? All these words, they don't apply. We just met directly with experience itself. The point of this teaching is that when a foreigner comes, a foreigner is reflected.

[62:41]

Someone smashes the table. The table is smashed. It gets wet. It's not a matter of a foreigner appearing for the sake of appearing, I'm just making a point. It's a specific incident of a foreigner present, [...] The eternal mirror is simply an eternal mirror. But we have to learn this practice. It doesn't help to think about it. It comes when we stub each other.

[63:41]

Or kiss each other.

[63:42]

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