Good morning. I hope you will accept the state of our lighting right now, just for trying not to add any warmth to the environment in here. Can you turn it up a little bit? Is this any better? Yes, it's a little louder. Thank you. So on Labor Day weekends, for the last number of years, we've had a study retreat. And this is our study retreat for 2017. We are working with a text that we used to chant quite regularly, the Jewel Mirror Samadhi by Tungshan Yangshe or Tozan Ryokai. And actually, I've set it up.

[01:01]

I'm going to give to Karen and Ken. Our lunch service is going to be the Chomera Samadhi. We'll all chant it. It's still in our chant books on page 16. And so it's good to look at these things. kind of intellectually and in terms of practice, and it's also really good just to chant it. And just, these are, so this is called the Song of the Jewel Mirror of Savadhi. And, you know, it fits in with, there's a number of texts that are considered songs in Chinese. There's, Earlier than this, there's the Song of Faith and Mind, which we know as the Xin Xin Ming, from like the 7th century.

[02:10]

And there's the Song of Enlightenment, the Shodoka, which is chanted in Rinzai tradition from the 8th century. The Song of the Grass Hut, which is by Sekito Kisen, who also wrote the Sandokai, composed the Sandokai. And that's also in the late 8th century. And then in Japan, a wonderful text called the Song of Zazen by Hakuin, which is relatively late. It's actually mid-18th century. And this, Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi is about the 9th century, 8th, 9th century, but its provenance is murky. You know, it's ascribed to our ancestor, Dengxian, who I will speak about and tell you a little, tell you some stories about him.

[03:19]

And yet it doesn't appear until, it actually doesn't appear as a text until about the 12th century, at that point described to Deng Xian. So this morning I'll talk about a couple of points, a couple of significant points in the, in this text and then in the afternoon we'll go into more detail on some of the images and some of the points. This is really just scratching the surface. I blithely selected this as a topic for this for the study retreat and then and sent it into the newsletter and then I started reading it and realizing that I have a lot of work to do and I have not completed that work just to be forewarned.

[04:30]

So Ostensibly, this is referred to as a, before Dogen Zenji, this was one of the documents that was given as a transmission, as verification of Dharma transmission. There were, before Dogen, three poems or texts that were that were given to someone on recognition of their awakening, recognition of the Dharma being transmitted to them from teacher to student. And those were the Sandokai, which we know pretty well, right? By Shito or Sekito Kisen.

[05:32]

which is sometimes translated as the merging of difference and sameness. And that was, and the second one is this, the Hokyo Samadhi, the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi. And that was about 150 years later, four generations after Sekheto. And the third document or text that was transmitted at times was also from Dungshan. It was what we translate as the five ranks or the five positions or the five modes. And Sojan has taught about all of these over the years, but we haven't talked about them for a while. And the five, I like to call them the five positions, rather than the five ranks, because they're not really, to my mind, they're not really hierarchical.

[06:43]

But they are, as we'll see, particularly this afternoon, they are kind of embedded in a more poetic form. They're embedded in the song of the Jhulmir Samadhi. So I want to start by talking about Dungsan, because he's one of our principal ancestors, actually. The Soto school, the Japanese word Soto, the To in Soto is Tozan, Tungshan. And the So is his disciple Sozan, Kaushan. So I think just they did it that way because Soto sounds better than Dozo, I guess, you know.

[07:48]

But they are really our principal ancestors and our lineage that we chant, we chanted this morning, really flows from Dungsan. It continues from Dungsan. It leads from the sixth ancestor, Huining, to Dungsan and then proceeds to right down to Suzuki Roshi and Sojin Roshi. Dungsan was a very able and bright young man, and he went to his first teacher, or one of his early teachers, Guishan, and he brought him a question. He had heard or he had read that both sentient and insentient beings preach the Dharma.

[08:57]

And we know about sentient beings preaching the Dharma. I am trying to do that right now. But in sentient beings, preaching the Dharma was hard to get one's mind around. And Greishan replied with a verse from the Avatamsaka Sutra. And that was... Dushan didn't get it. It was beyond his understanding. So Greishan said, you know what? You should go study with Yunnan. He can help you. I can't teach you anymore. And so he sent Tungshan to another prominent teacher at the time, Yunyan. And Tungshan asked him the same question.

[10:06]

And Yunyan replied in pretty much word for word as, Gresham did, although this time, rather than quoting the Avatamsaka Sutra, he quoted the Amitabha Sutra, the Pure Land Sutra. And that said, streams, birds, trees, and forests all chant the Buddha and the Dharma. And when Dungsan heard that, he had an opening experience, an awakening. And he composed the following verse or gatha. He said, How wonderful, how very wonderful! The teaching of the inanimate is inconceivable. If you listen with your ears, you won't understand. Hearing with your eyes, then you know it.

[11:11]

So that was his initiation, his first encounter with yunyan, but it was not yet his full enlightenment. He studied for a number of years with yunyan, and finally it was time for him to move on. And as he prepared to go on this journey into the unknown, Yunyan, who was quite elderly, said, After our separation, it will be difficult for us to meet again. Dungsan said, It will be difficult for us not to meet. But after your death, if someone asks me to describe you, what should I tell them? And Yunyen thought for a while, and he said, depending on the translation, just this one is.

[12:27]

Just this one is. Or, another translation is, just this is it. Just this is it. Right here, right now. Tungshan, when he heard this, he remained silent for a long time. He still had doubts. It didn't relieve him of his, I think, his sense of anxiety, his sense of being troubled about leaving his teacher. And in his silence, Yunyan said, you need to be very careful. for you are carrying an important thing." And Tungsan was puzzled by this enigmatic statement, and he began his travels, and he kept it in mind.

[13:35]

And one day, while crossing a very calm, placid body of water, He looked in and he saw his image reflected in it, and suddenly he understood his teacher's words. All of his doubts were clarified, and he offered this famous verse. Don't seek from others, or you will be estranged from yourself. As I travel alone, I meet Him everywhere. He is what I am now, but I am not what He is. One must understand in such a way to merge with suchness. Let me read that again.

[14:41]

Don't seek from others. In other words, don't look to get your understanding from someone else, or you'll be estranged. You'll be distanced from yourself. As I travel alone, I meet Him everywhere. Who is Him? He is what I am now, but I am not what He is. In a sense, this is saying, not one, not two, same and different. One must understand in such a way, in this way, to merge with suchness. So this kind of, all of this, this verse sets the stage

[15:45]

for jewel-mirror samadhi, as we'll get to it. It's a wonderful verse, and I was thinking about it yesterday, and thinking how this vrgata and this experience that Tungshan had is kind of the complete inverse of a sort of foundational, really major myth in the Western tradition, the myth of Narcissus. I just want to read you this, and I'm not going to go into it that much. So Narcissus was a hunter in Greek mythology. He was the son of a river god and a nymph. He was a very beautiful young man. And everywhere he went, people fell in love with him.

[16:51]

One day, he was hunting in the woods, and the nymph Echo saw him and immediately fell for him. Narcissus sensed that someone was following him, and Echo eventually revealed herself, and she tried to hug him. And he pushed her away and told her not to bother him. And in despair, In the myth then, Echo roamed those woods for the rest of her life, and she sort of faded away, and all that remained of her was what we call an echo, a faint sound. Meanwhile, one of the other, there were a lot of gods floating around, one of the gods, Nemesis,

[17:57]

the goddess of retribution and revenge. There's a good gig. None of us are applying for that job, I think. She heard what happened, and she decided to punish Narcissus. So she led him to a pool, just as Dung San was led to a pool and looked in the water and saw his reflection. When he looked in the water and saw his reflection, he was awakened to the interconnection and the interbeing of all existence. Narcissus saw his own reflection in the water and he fell in love with it. He didn't realize at the beginning it was his reflection. And after a while, when he understood it, he fell into despair that the love that he felt could never materialize.

[19:05]

And so he committed suicide. So, these are two radically different perceptions of reality and responses to reality. And I am deeply grateful that the tradition that we have is one of opening rather than one of self-love. But they both exist within us. And I just offer that as something to consider. I don't have a large or complicated case. These are human potentials that exist for us. But we're going to take up one rather than the other right here. So after he became a teacher on Mount Dong, did you guys who went to China, did you go to Dongshan, to that mountain?

[20:23]

Has anyone been there? I think there still is a living temple there. So every year, of course, he did a memorial service for his teacher, just as we do during Rohatsu Sesshin, when we do a memorial celebrating Suzuki Roshi's life and his passing. And one of the monks asked Tungshan, what teachings did you receive from Yunyan? And Tungshan said, although I was with him, he offered me no teaching. The monk said, if he did not teach you, why do you conduct these memorial services? Tungshan said, it is not for his moral character or for his Dharma teaching that I honor him, only that he never told me anything openly.

[21:39]

In other words, he let me figure it out for myself, because that's the only way to understand that really matters. And I do think that our teachers have inherited this way. They let us figure it out for themselves, and sometimes we are exasperated with them. It's like, tell me already. It's like, I'm coming to you for help. Tell me what I should do. No. You have to figure it out. You have to have your own awakening. You have to make your own mistakes. So in 869, Tungshan announced that he was about to die. And like many of the ancient Zen masters, he had a remarkable passing.

[22:51]

He shaved his head, and he bathed, and he put on fresh robes, and he said goodbye to all of his disciples, and he passed away. Meanwhile, while that happened, the monks were like crying and weeping and wailing in their grief, and Dengshan opened his eyes, And he said, the hearts of homeless monks should not be dependent on things. This is true practice. What use is there in grieving when this troublesome life comes to rest in death? So he died, but then he woke up again. This is his resurrection.

[23:55]

But for his resurrection, what he said, he ordered the head monk to prepare what's called a stupidity purifying feast or fool's feast that was designed to rebuke his assembly for their attachment to him. And so their demonstrations of affection continued while he postponed his death for a week. And he let the, you know, you can imagine, let the wild party unfold there, you know, and what happened during that stupidity purifying priesthood. They had to get really stupid before they could purify anything. And on the last day, he entered the dining hall and had a small meal, and he said, I'm all right.

[25:06]

I'm about to leave, and when I leave, please, you should all keep quiet. And he returned to his rooms, and he bathed. And he dressed and he sat down in Zazen and he passed away. So that's some background about Dengxian. So I wanna change gears and go to, to talk a little about the, By the way, this lecture may go a little longer than usual since we're doing study, but I hope you will find it interesting. So as I said, the story is that he inherited this text.

[26:08]

It was a transmission text that was handed to him by Yunyan. And it's a beautiful text. It consists of 94 lines. 94 four-character lines that are arranged in couplets. And each couplet has an end rhyme that meets with all of the others. So I'd like to talk about just a few aspects of it this morning. And I'll begin with both the title and the first line. And then I want to talk about the subject of it. So the subject, it's a continuation. The subject you could see as in the first lines, what he says is, the Dharma of thusness is intimately transmitted by Buddhas and ancestors.

[27:16]

Now you have it, so preserve it well. That is the, You know, that's what it's all about. And then the question is, the rest of the poem is an explication of what is the teaching of thusness? What is thusness? How does it manifest? And the context in which that is unpacked is really in many ways, if you read them next to each other, a continuation of the Sandokai, of the merging of different sameness. And we have a whole lot of, we've got a lot of kind of dualities that we use to define that that relationship.

[28:19]

So sometimes we talk about the relative and the absolute, which has been a controversial matter in this room over the years. We can talk about it as difference and sameness. We can talk about it as Sandokai does, as also as light and dark, as apparent and real. relative, well I said relative and absolute, guest and host, subject and ruler. Master Sheng Yan, Chan master, talks about it as vexation and wisdom. So all these are just dualistic or dual frameworks of the nature of reality. And what the poem does, we'll see as we go into it, is just again and again, it's one after another metaphor that is contextualizing, pointing us towards different ways that we might see

[29:31]

this duality, however we want to frame it. I will say that I'm partial, and I'll come to this and talk about this more, I'm really partial to guest and host, which to me implies relationship in a way that doesn't contain necessarily a hierarchical imagery. But I'll come back to that. So this is the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi. And that... Samadhi means concentration or meditation or just kind of dwelling in the state.

[30:41]

And the dual mirror is a sense of oneness. And yet there's oneness and the mirror also implies implies difference. This goes back to, I think, to Tungshan's poem, where he says, he is what I am now, but I am not who he is. And he said, remember, he created this poem after seeing his reflection mirrored in a body of water. So when you see yourself in a mirror, you are seeing a version of yourself. You're seeing a version of whatever is reflected in the mirror.

[31:43]

And we'll see as we go on, in some particulars of the poem, it's not identical with the thing itself, which we can't describe. The thing itself is the essence. If it wasn't for a mirror, for example, we could never see the back of our head. Can't be done. It's there, you know, I know it's there. I can feel that fuzzy hair in the back of my head, but I can't see it actually unless I have two mirrors, right? So I've got one in back of me and then one in front of me so that I can see the reflection. So what I'm seeing when I see the back of my head, is that reality or is it

[32:47]

an illusion. So in one of his commentaries, Maezumi Roshi says, the jewel is one's true entity. The mirror, the objective spheres, reflect the parts of one's own life. And samādhi is the unity, the Buddha's wisdom that the Buddha spoke at the moment of his enlightenment when he said, how wondrous, all beings have the Tathāgata's wisdom and virtue. So this intimacy of the dual mirror samādhi realizing our true nature, that our true nature, which is beyond our understanding and beyond our expression, and the phenomenal world are meeting right here as my life.

[34:03]

In commenting on the title, Sochen Roshi says, Samadhi is being one with. The jewel has many facets. Buddhism is like a gem with many sides. The mirror is like the source. It reflects reality. It is reality. The mirror is wholeness without partiality. The mirror has no mind. It makes no discriminations. It simply reflects seeing things as it is. The mirror is precious and we should be one with it. But I would add that the mirror is also... Whatever we see in the mirror is incomplete. You can never see everything in a mirror. You can never see everything, period. But the mirror, when held up from a variety of different angles,

[35:13]

allows us to see things that we don't see ordinarily. And that mirror is cultivated in our zazen, in our experience of Zen practice. So we come to the first lines, which is, The teaching of thusness or the dharma of thusness is intimately transmitted by Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it. Preserve it well. So what is he speaking of when he speaks of suchness? To me, it's interesting. I've been speaking with Taigen Leighton, who wrote a wonderful book about Dungsan called Just This Is It. And he has an extensive commentary on this poem in it.

[36:19]

And as we were talking, we sort of, there's a sense in which, you know, we talk a lot about emptiness in this room, and we explore emptiness we're bringing it forth every day when we chant the Heart Sutra, which is an exploration of emptiness. So in that sense, emptiness that's spoken of there to my mind is that things are empty of a fundamental identity. They're empty of self. They're empty of self-nature. All dharmas are empty of self-nature. All dharmas are co-created and co-composed, and our life is like that.

[37:22]

There's very little that we can... There's no moment that I can point to that where I can say, OK, this is the crystallization of my life. Every moment is created out of causes and conditions, and so it is empty of self nature. Thusness, which in is translated as, it's a translation of tatagata or tatata. And thusness is to me the flip side of emptiness.

[38:27]

You know, if reality, if the self, if everything that we see is empty of self-nature in a fixed or definable way, then suchness or thusness is the implication that it is full of everything. Full of everything. that all causes and conditions come to bear on this moment and co-creates us. There's a wonderful... The Thai Theravada teacher, Ajahn Buddhadasa, whose perspective is very close to Zen, writes about this, I think thusness as the flip side of emptiness.

[39:36]

He writes, the things which delude us are all the things which cause discrimination and duality to arise in us. Good, evil, happiness, sadness, win, lose, love, hate, and so forth. There are many pairs of opposites in this world. By not seeing ta-ta-ta, we allow these things to trick us into believing in duality. So we dislike, we like, we get into this-that, liking-disliking, hot-cold, male-female, defiled-enlightened. This delusion causes all our problems. Trapped in these oppositions, we can't see the truth of things. We fall into liking and disliking, which in turn leads to further defilements, because we don't see ta-ta-ta.

[40:39]

We don't see the oneness, the fullness of everything. What we must see constantly and deeply is continuing. is that good is sankhara, it's a mental formation, and that evil is also a mental formation. The pleasant and unpleasant feelings are both mental formations. Getting and disappearing, losing and winning are all mental formations. There isn't anything which isn't a mental formation. Thus all things are related, all things are tathata. So in this first line of the poem, the teaching of thusness is intimately transmitted

[41:48]

by Buddhas and ancestors. This is like the Sandokaya. Teaching of justice is intimately transmitted from west to east. Is that right? And it's echoing that. So teaching of justice is intimately transmitted by Buddhas and ancestors. So this is, the transmission is taking place to us in the first line of this poem. And then the second line is, now you have it, preserve it well. which means that this is our true nature. That we have it means that we have the opportunity to see ourself and to see all beings as Buddha. And we have to preserve it well because we're often pulled away from that. Yes, all beings are Buddha except for

[42:51]

I don't know where the hell he comes from, but he doesn't come from the Buddha land. But this is actually, this is Sojan's, by the way, I will say, maybe we'll get to study this in depth. This is an incredible compendium, which I can get to you. It is put together by Charlie Piccorni. It's a character by character, line by line analysis of the Chulmira Samadhi, and includes looking at commentaries by written commentaries by quite a number of teachers and transcribed commentaries from Sojan and from Rab and others. But this is what Sojan says, now you have it, preserve it well means to see that all beings are Buddha.

[43:58]

This is a challenge for us. It's a challenge for us in our society today, that's for sure. It's a challenge for us, you know, how do we see the events that unfolded in the streets of Berkeley last Sunday? You know, are the white supremacists Buddha? Are the black bloc Buddha? You know, it's fine, we could, you know, All of the ordinary, well-intentioned people who showed up for those demonstrations, I can see them as Buddha. That's not much of a stretch. But the people who are doing things that I am really troubled by, is that Buddha? This is a really, I think this is a really live question. This is a great question to keep alive for yourself, you know.

[45:05]

How do I hold all beings as Buddha? This is, you know, in a sense, this is what Martin Luther King Jr. was speaking of from very early on when, you know, he talked about Agape. He talked about Agape, which is very similar to Maitri or Metta. He talked about unconditional love for all beings because, to his way of looking, all beings have the embodied form of the divine. We could say all beings are Buddha. We could also say all beings are truly human. And because of that, he was advocating that we love them. But he was not advocating that we like them. And there is a distinction there. And as we see in this poem, it's not obliterating that the thrust of this poem is integrative rather than

[46:25]

drawing lines of distinction. It's yes and rather than yes but. And it's very, to me, it's in line with the teachings that we receive from Sojan Roshi, from Suzuki Roshi, from Dogen, tracing back to Dungsan, that actually our practice is to include everything. Our practice is to include everyone. And if we can't figure out how to do that, and I can't always figure out how to do that, you know, I'll step back And keep that question. Hold that question. Because I take seriously this line. Now I have it. Now you have it. Preserve it well.

[47:34]

How will you hold it? How will you hold this precious life, this precious mind that we've been given? So I think I will pause there and leave some time for questions or discussion. And we will continue looking at some of the particular lines of this poem in the afternoon. But you have some thoughts or anything comes up with you? Yeah, Hiko. It's inanimate objects that are actually the first practice compared to Trump, for example, where we can recognize, ah, the meaning and the entire being of this thing arises for me in this moment.

[48:53]

I see this rock. I see this tree. I see the planets arising for me now. That kind of practice doesn't for self-discipline in efforts to preserve. That is to say, whenever I look at the columns, the stones, the tiles, I think, what is that now? And is the now part of the question that is preserving? Yeah. Well, I think it's true. we can learn from inanimate objects. You know, we can learn from mountains and oceans, and this is what Dogen says, because the ocean accepts all waters, that's why it's great and we can call it an ocean.

[50:00]

It just allows everything to be included in it. And I also remember, I think I was listening to a a Terry Gross interview, and I can't remember who it was with, was talking about early childhood development and relation of parents and children. And she was asking, well, what's the, what is the boundary line for a parent of unconditional love. When does unconditional love shift? When is the element of conditionality injected into it? And the person she was talking to said, well, it's obvious when the child learns to say no. When a being differentiates him or herself from another being, then our relational abilities are challenged.

[51:15]

Now, sometimes we encounter I mean, I'm thinking of, you know, when I used to work on cars, I encountered engines that frequently said no, you know, but they don't speak as loudly. But we can learn, we can listen and learn The little knows. We can learn how to harmonize with those things as you're talking about and with those materials and how to use them so that we can actually be in close relationship and we can use that as a way of actually working on all of our relationships. But you have to do that consciously. It won't necessarily happen. Thank you. Judy. If I can, I try to share it with somebody else who's there.

[52:58]

And if there's nobody else there, then I have to treat myself as if there's somebody else there. How do I do that? I don't know. It's really happening a lot lately for reasons I won't go into. And I don't know how I do it. I do know that the years of this practice have they're continuously softening me and allowing me to be sympathetic. If I'm sympathetic to myself and I'm sympathetic to others, you know, that's, that's all I can say.

[54:04]

There's no, it's like I don't have a methodology. You know, if I feel like crying, I just let myself cry. Uh, I don't know. Do you, how do you do it? What I've noticed about myself, which is a big surprise, is that I actually have a lot of faith.

[55:09]

I have faith in this practice. I have faith in people that I know and love. And I counsel faith. But I can't tell you how to do that. So, but I can't rely on that. Thank you. Somebody else? Linda. Yeah. Oh yeah, form and emptiness, that's another one, right, yeah. Wait, wait, wait.

[56:26]

Who's this you you're talking about? Yeah, I mean, no, let's, let's, let's focus in here. Did I say that? So I thought, if I get that the fascists and the anti-fascists are all good at it, okay, then yes. And they're all foreign. They're all foreign, which I have to relate to right there, and I have to be something foreign too. Yeah, it's not that they don't exist. I don't... You know, as I said, and I'll talk about it more later, to me, a fruitful way of looking at this is as guest and host, which is a completely fluid relationship.

[57:37]

In any moment, one might be guest, one might be host, one's relationship can shift. And that I don't see that as connected, as kind of bound by necessarily a moral stricture or a form emptiness stricture. They're just like, these are two roles. You know, sometimes you're the guest, sometimes you're host, and the next moment, and we're always partly the guest, we're always partly the host, and the last line of this poem is, whoops. You know, the last lines, I think, speak to your predicament in a way, as you're putting it. Ministers serve their lords.

[58:42]

Parents serve their children. Children serve their parents. Parents serve their children, too. Not obeying is not filial. Failure to serve is no help. Failure to serve is no help. With practice, hidden functions secretly like a fool, like an idiot. Just to do this continuously is called the host within the host. So to me, the host within the host means I am learning how to take care of myself, how to be host to myself, and the guest is an unspoken presence there. And that to me includes, you know, we can argue that ministers serve your Lords, children obey their parents. You know, that's a Confucian, that's a Confucian trope. But it also means that we are in relationship to each other in, in different ways.

[59:47]

And we, you know, which does not exclude right and wrong. you know, the idea of all of this is, you know, where it says failure to serve is no help, there is an underlying, there's an underlying principle of connection and harmonization. And that which leads in the other direction is no help. You know, so this is, you know, it's... If we have bodies, we have these problems. But I really don't think I... I don't think I valorize emptiness above form myself. I see them as having their own qualities, and they also have a completely unified, inseparable nature.

[60:50]

So we will continue. This is always your pressing question, which is great. It's a live question. We'll take one more. and Nazis and fascists and all that. I think we have to really look for the emptiness to see that these are really people and nothing good is going to happen until people change. I mean, even people who we may think is the cause of

[61:57]

Yeah, I think that's right. They just are not going to change on my schedule, you know, and this is why, you know, just also to follow up. I really, there's something really resonant to me in the idea of thusness as you know, of fullness, of ripeness, of completeness, rather than the kind of... kind of the envelope of meaning that exists with the word emptiness. But that's... It's not different either. It's it's it's it's not different. Emptiness is not emptiness. Emptiness is just empty of self nature, which means it's full of everything else. OK.

[63:07]

All right, we'll continue. This is long, I know, and we lost some of the audience, but that's OK. All right. Thank you.

[63:18]

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