Well it takes a little bit of time to get settled in this seat. Today I want to talk about a fascicle of Dogon by the name of the Eternal Mirror. But before I'm doing that I wanted to acknowledge that today is the 9th of May and tomorrow will be the... June. Past and present are one. Tomorrow will be the 10th of May and it will be a month since... May we still with us. Tomorrow will be the 10th of June. It will be a month since Meili's passing into Parinirvana.

[01:08]

And I wanted to honor her, both her absence and her presence. Because actually, she's still here with us. And, you know, those who die always leave their presence with us, especially in our hearts. And so if we, from the point of view of our love for them, for those who died, how they were special or how we treasured them, we grieve for them because they represented something precious for us and we saw ourselves reflected in them we identified with them and then it feels like it's a loss of a part of ourselves when they die so we grieve and miss them but

[02:27]

from the point of view of big mind or big self, from the point of view of emptiness or eternity we already are what and who everybody else is so here we don't set apart life and death or self and other and The self is in the other, in those whom we love and identify and recognize, and they are in ourselves. And there's death in life. Maile died, but there's life in death. Maile didn't die. Where is she? So, Meili may live.

[03:37]

You know, the Bible says, I set life and death before you. Choose life so that you and your children may live. And I know that Meili always chose life. So that's how I know that she still lives. Meili was a mei. She died in mei and she was a mei. A will. You know, where there's a will, there's a Meili. Or there's a mei. Si se puede. Yes, we can. You know, that's sort of the core of practice. Samantabhadra, Bodhisattva practice. Yes, we can. Yes, we practice.

[04:37]

And so it is. And May is also the beginning of spring. And May Lee carried the spring in her eyebrow. So whenever you want to see her, just Look at your eyebrow. And there you'll see Meili. You have a long one. and so with the eternal mirror you know Dogen is known for having an impenetrable style and sometimes I hear actually people also say that referring to Suzuki Roshi as like in branch and streams as being difficult to understand or

[06:08]

beginner's Zen mind, beginner's mind is being too mystical but Dogen represents sort of the ultimate impenetrability but he's so impenetrable because he's Dogen and Zen and Zen Koans use language in a different kind of way non-ordinary use of language the way we usually used to speak. We usually speak, language is always binary, so we see the world through this binary world, binary way. And so when the world is presented to us in a way which is not binary, it is very disconcerting and we don't understand and we demand an explanation. So Dogon is using more the evocative and provocative use of language rather than the explicative.

[07:16]

So that's very frustrating but is very poetic also at the same time. And actually what helps us understand is the actual practice. The actual practice of Zazen opens up our understanding of Dogon and illuminates a kind of path of understanding through Dogon. And so the more we can sit with the impossible, the more we can read what's impossible to read and the more we can speak about what's impossible to speak about. So how do we speak about what's impossible to speak about? That's a good question. Or how do we read or listen to what's impossible? So that was sort of the slogan of Paris 1968.

[08:19]

The student's slogan was, be realistic, ask for the impossible. So that's like Zen and Dogen. It's impossible. How can you do this? How can you write like that? How can you think like that? So, without the experience of Zazen, it's impossible to read Dogon. So we have to be able to tolerate being in this place of not understanding and not knowing. That's very humbling because usually we want to understand and we're only interested in something if we understand it. And if whoever can present things in a way that we can assimilate things into what we already know and only discover the old and tired image that we have of ourselves in what we're being fed, then if that doesn't happen then we feel frustrated.

[09:26]

and not so happy. So we have to kind of be woken up of our slumber and part of that is not understanding so much. Also what makes it difficult is there's this more stylistic thing is that there are so many historical references that are lost from the text so that if we understood the context of the things that are being said then it would be much more easier to understand and in Dogon also both reason and intuition are in communion with one another you can't tell them apart So usually we like to split apart reason and intuition, split it into science for reason and intuition into religion and people who identify with a spiritual point of view reject reason as something intellectual and scientists reject spirituality as something, you know, it's fantasy or nonsense.

[10:50]

and also scientists want to talk about the body and matter and religion wants to talk about the mind and spirit so and we've been going through this in western culture for 300 years have this split between the body and the mind reason and intuition but in Zazen, in Zen we realize the mind and the body so the mind is posture we realize our mind and zazen through the body through posture and then the body is realized in the mind you know in the mind we have all these fears and desires and hungers and unmet needs which are all different forms that the body expresses itself in our mind So when we work with the body and the mind in this way, then we may discover what Dogen called dropping off body and mind.

[12:13]

So the eternal mirror refers to the round mirror of wisdom. what Darwin calls the round mirror of wisdom that reflects everything without distortion, things as they are. So it symbolizes the purity of the mind, our original mind, and the intuition of how we see things as they are without the distortions of our wants and fears. and the distortions of the images that we get attached to in terms of who we are and who others are or what others see in us or what we see in others. So there's always that play of images that sort of interferes with seeing things as they are. So it also symbolizes compassion because compassion means that everything that appears in front of us, everything that appears in front of the mirror is self.

[13:41]

So we are everything that appears in front of our mirror. So then, whatever we do to others, we do to ourselves, like the Bible says. Don't do to others what you wouldn't do to yourself. Or love yourself, love your neighbor as yourself. Or love yourself as your neighbor. That's all the compassion, the compassionate mirror. but more fundamentally the mirror also symbolizes buddha nature that as the heart sutra says things in their own being are empty and everything is arising or appearing and disappearing in this great mirror and this is a reference to the

[14:53]

the Surangama Sutra. In the Surangama Sutra, Buddha talks about the round mirror of wisdom and he says that the light of samadhi, samadhi practice transmutes the eighth consciousness or all the seeds of mind that condition us to behave in certain ways and condition our karma is being transformed in this great light of the surangama samadhi and so the practice transforms the the alaya the eighth consciousness into the round mirror of wisdom talks about the alaya consciousness as a mirror which reflects perception.

[16:07]

And this he does sort of to break the self-evident illusion of the world so that what we usually perceive to be the world in perception it's only a reflection of the alaya consciousness. So that's how it's all reality is a dream that's being dreamt by the alaya consciousness. So it's all a reflection in the mirror of our mind. So all the objects of the senses are projections of alaya. So they're objects of mind more than objects of reality. And this is all a world that we have constructed through our individual and collective karma.

[17:17]

So we're born into the world through our own individual karma and then the world that we live in is one that we as a group and as a species have constructed collectively and then that's how we come to see what we recognize to be our world. But in itself, in its own being, it's empty. So we can think of it as a as a kind of the alaya is like the film the negative film in a movie all the memories all the residues of all past actions and those are all organized in a link in a series like a film and then the film camera is the mind itself.

[18:28]

And the light in the camera is the brightness of the alaya consciousness, which then projects what's in the store consciousness, meaning in the film, projected into a screen, and then we see the world as we see it. So in a way it's like going to the movies. So now let me go into Dogen's text.

[19:52]

I don't know if that was helpful or not. It was sort of a background onto what's behind some of the stories in Dogen. Because Zen puts the abstract thought of Indian Buddhism The teaching of the Surangama is part of the Yogacara Buddhism and the Madhyamika school, Nagarjuna. And all the abstract speculative Buddhist thought of India, it's sort of put into practical stories in the Chinese and Japanese tradition. which reflects sort of the Chinese and Japanese culture which is much more pragmatic in the same way that in some ways American culture is more pragmatic than European culture which is more speculative.

[20:58]

So he starts with What all the Buddhas and all the ancestors have received and retained and transmitted one-to-one is the eternal mirror. They have the same view, meaning the same view of reality, and the same face, meaning the original face, the same image, meaning the same human form, and the same caste, meaning the same flesh and bones. They share the same state and realize the same experience. It says a foreigner appears, a foreigner is reflected, 108,000 of them. A China man appears, a China man is reflected for a moment and for 10,000 years. I think the Chinese and the Japanese were very sensitive to foreigners.

[22:18]

They had a strong kind of differentiated sense of cultural identity. And so reflecting a foreigner is like reflecting the other. So who is this other? Who is this foreigner? So with the mirror wisdom then this foreigner is none other than myself. Which I think was something difficult for the Chinese and Japanese culture to swallow. Even today, even to this day. I think in Japan a foreigner is very much a foreigner. The past appears, the past is reflected. The present appears, the present is reflected.

[23:21]

So that was that kind of, at the beginning I was confusing May and June, you know, sort of past and present. So it's a reflection of past and present. Is it now? Was it then? A Buddha appears, a Buddha is reflected. An ancestor appears, an ancestor is reflected. So in the eternal mirror, we're one with all the ancestors. It's all the same flesh and bones. It's all the same mind and body. So all the ancestors are right here with us. And he says, the 18th ancestor, the venerable Gayasata, is a man from the kingdom of Magadha in the western regions. His family name is Uzuran, his father's name is Tengai, and his mother's name is Hosho.

[24:27]

His mother once has a dream in which she sees a great God approaching her and holding a big mirror. This sort of mythology. Then she becomes pregnant after she sees this big mirror. Seven days later she gives birth to the teacher. Here it says the master, you know, but I personally don't like the word master so much, because master is also master and slave, you know, it's sort of feudal, it's part of feudal culture, that zip into Zen. And if there's something about Buddhism, it's about leaving the place of the master empty. So really, originally, the Buddha was represented by an empty chair, rather than a full image.

[25:32]

Although the emptiness is form too, but it's a question of emphasis. Even when he's a newborn, the skin of the teacher's body is like polished lapis lazuli. And even before he's bathed, he's naturally fragrant and clean. So this may be so or it may be symbolic. Symbolic for the unborn, the purity of a Buddha nature, what's not conditioned. It's not conditioned, it's clean, has no strong smells. So from his childhood, he loves quietness. His words are different from those of ordinary children. Since his birth, a clear and bright round mirror has naturally been living with him.

[26:36]

A round mirror means a round mirror. That's Dogen. Overstating the soul, you know. suchness. It is a matter rare through the ages. That it has lived with him does not mean that the round mirror was also born from his mother's womb. So it appears with his birth and yet is not born from the womb. So this again is the unborn. that Buddha nature both appears and disappears with birth, and both appears and disappears with death. And you can't separate them. You know, is there Buddha nature before birth?

[27:39]

You can't say. Is Buddha nature just birth? No, because it's unborn. So which one is it? So death also is both the disappearance of Buddha and the appearance of Buddha. So that's the Buddha's parinirvana is nirvana. Both the appearance, the disappearance and appearance of Buddha. The master was born from the womb and as the master appeared from the womb, the round mirror came and naturally manifested itself before the teacher and became like an everyday tool. The form of this round mirror is not ordinary. When the child approaches, he seems to be holding up the round mirror before him with both hands.

[28:42]

Yet the child's face is not hidden. So he's holding the mirror in front of his face and yet if you look at him, since the mirror is not an object, it's more like a window, you see right through it. So that means this child is maintaining his or her mind pure because there's no fixed image that represents the self. because usually over time and conditioning especially in childhood we come to identify with particular images that are reflected to us from the other the way we want to be loved by our mother or father and then we identify with those images and then we see the world through those images and then we have to come into practice to wipe

[29:46]

the mirror clean of images and actually that's one way of looking at what we're doing in Zazen. We're wiping the mirror clean from all the images that we have, our favorite and hated images that we have of ourselves and others and which actually separates us. So his face is not hidden because this mirror is clean. When the child goes away he seems to be going with a round mirror on his back. Yet the child's body is not hidden. When the child sleeps the round mirror covers him like a flowery canopy. That's sweet, isn't it? It's like a hoopa, you know.

[30:52]

Or the flowery canopy of Buddha's birthday, right? We have in Buddha's birthday, we have a little image of a child Buddha with a canopy of flowers on top. So that's like the round mirror. Whenever the child sits up straight, the round mirror is there in front of him. In sum, it follows all his movements and demeanors, active and passive. What is more, he's able to see all Buddhist facts, the Buddhist facts of the past, future and present by looking into the round mirror. So this is like, you know, all the sutras are right under our feet or they're all in our nostrils. So if we look into the mirror then we see all the sutras and we can recite from them even without having read them.

[32:02]

At the same time all problems and issues of the heavens above and the human world come cloudlessly to the surface of the round mirror. So this is sort of the understanding of the mundane and the supramundane or the human nature and Buddha nature of all things of the human realm. For example, to see by looking in this round mirror is even more clear than to attain illumination of the past and illumination of the present by reading sutras and texts. So that's sort of the seeing directly into our nature. That's the Zen school. We don't emphasize sutra reading so much. We emphasize the actual practice of the mirror itself.

[33:10]

Although Dogen will tell us later that the sutras are also a mirror, if you read them in that way. Then he says, nevertheless, once the child has left home and received the precepts, the round mirror never appears before him again. So, once the child leaves home, the mirror is carried. The child leaves with a mirror in him or her. So that's the other side, that we carry all the teachings in us. Just like once we come into the Zen Do and we practice, then we take the light of the temple gate with us into the world. So we carry the mirror with us.

[34:14]

So we don't need so much the mirroring of the teacher, you know, around us all the time. So there's a phase in life where we need that kind of mirroring, just like we need mirroring from parents, mirroring of the mother and mirroring of the father. But actually that mirroring is empty. We also develop sort of fixed images, you know, and then we we get angry at the teacher, we think the teacher is doing this or doing that, or doing things to annoy you, you know, doing it on purpose, you know, or can't figure it out, you know, is it his problem or is it mine, you know. But actually the mirror is working at various levels at the same time. So when we carry the mirror with us, it means it's not there.

[35:17]

This is an allegory, of course. You know, mirrors, if there was an actual mirror there around the child all the time, in his face or in his back, right? But it's sort of representing that as we're going up, we need this kind of support around us to sustain us. As if those others We're not ourself in some way. We needed ourself to be outside of us, supporting us. What time are we supposed to stop? Okay.

[36:32]

Then he says, on an outing one day, encountering the Venerable Sangha Nandi, Master Gaya Sata directly proceeds before the venerable Samga Nandi and the venerable one asks, that which you have in your hands is expressing what? Here he's referring to sutra. He was carrying a sutra in his hand or book you know this is that which you're carrying in your hand is expressing what? And he says, what we should hear is expressing what, not as a question, and we should learn it as such in practice. So we go to look for the meaning of the sutras in practice. What? So we may read it, we don't understand it, just like don't read, don't understand it, doesn't matter, you know, just go sit zazen. That's the practice that he left behind for us, right? He went looking for the iron treasure, the true law, to China, right?

[37:34]

But he practiced with Zazen. That's what he's transmitting to us, actually. Then we have all his teaching, which we don't understand, but it doesn't matter because we just go and do the practice. And then we carry the question, say what? Dogen, say what? So this is like the question of you know the emperor to Bodhidharma what is the meaning of the what is the highest meaning of the holy sutras right and you expect this great pompous you know answer profound answer you know and Bodhidharma says And so with this final point I will end. So then he goes on to say how this great round mirror is neither wisdom nor reason, neither essence nor form. He says, although we have this concept of a great round mirror and it appears in the teachings of the Bodhisattvas of the ten sacred stages, the three clever stages and so on, it is not the present

[38:48]

because the buddhas may be beyond wisdom buddhas have real wisdom but we do not see real wisdom as buddhas practitioners should remember that to preach about wisdom is never the ultimate preaching of the buddha's truth right so uh the mirror is not an object or the the sixth ancestor said you know he did a second poem that you know the story of the sixth this mirror has no stand, or the translations say there is no mirror, so it's not an object. Hyakujo says there is the incomplete teaching and the complete teaching. The incomplete is, well, we practice to transform greed into kindness and delusion into enlightenment. and then is, well, there's really no enlightenment to attain.

[39:52]

But that's all part of the incomplete teaching. The complete teaching is there's not even a teaching about non-attachment to enlightenment. So this is kind of what Dogen is saying, that the preach about wisdom is never the ultimate preaching of the Buddha's truth. And then there's another story of Seppo and Ganto. Seppo is there with several of his students. And so he asks them a question. He points to a bucket with water. And he says, what is that? And one of the students says, well, when the mind, when the water is clear, you see the moon. And then the next one says, when the water is still, the moon disappears. There's no enlightenment. And then Ganto comes in and kicks the bucket over.

[41:02]

So that's the wisdom beyond wisdom. Nothing to teach. This has all been a big mistake. Thank you very much. And we have time for questions or comments. Yes. What do you mean by our ancestors are still with us? Well, There's been an uninterrupted transmission of Buddha's mind from teacher to disciple for 2,500 years. Yes. What I was saying before was that, you know, when we grieve, we grieve the image of the other as a part of ourself that we've lost.

[42:43]

But in another sense, we already are who the other one is. And because we already are who the other one is, the other one who still lives in us. Right. Right. Right. Well, that, yeah, I mean, the karma, the law of cause and effect of the whole universe is us. And the karma of our family is us and of our society and the species, the animals.

[43:49]

well that's how we that's how we build our world we build our world according to that so that's who we are in some sense not in a fundamental sense That's the, what in Buddhism we call the eighth consciousness, the storehouse consciousness that holds all that. But fundamentally we're Buddha nature. Did you have your hand? Well, kind of, yeah. About how we reflect, or we are reflected in our teachings and In a way it's irreplaceable.

[45:19]

And our teachers die, and in a way they are irreplaceable. But you said that, you know, she goes on living. Right. If you scratch deeper within you, you'll find Meili. Well, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that. Because... Well, she was reflecting something of you that you weren't ready to realize or to see. No, I was very ready, I was very patient. But in that moment, meaning you needed her, you needed her to reflect that to you. So we need our teachers to reflect Buddha nature to us, but that's just an expedient means. She was reflecting me to myself in a way that other teachers Mm-hmm. Yes. So, that mirror is gone. There is no other mirror like it. Then, do you look for other mirrors?

[46:22]

Do you... Well, who is... who is this other? No. Who... who... that will be your... one of your coins, you know. I had too many already. But that's a fundamental one for you, you know. Who was Meili, you know, that she could reflect that for you? And where is she? And it relates to your remark, which I understood was something like, at a certain point, the practitioner does not need an outer mirror. But if I understand that statement in the practical kind of way that Julia is speaking about,

[47:31]

It's not clear to me that that need for a human being, a bodhisattva, that the need for such mirror or mirrors really ever disappears. That is that we perhaps some image we become ready to accept and no longer need reflected outside. We understand what it is. But then there's another image behind that and another behind that. Right but it's not a fixed image meaning we're always supporting each other and everything is supporting everything else and everything is both mirror and reflection for everything else. So our teacher is everywhere you know so that's why you know separated from his teacher, went down the river and saw his image reflected in the mirror and said, you know, it is me but I'm not it. So am I to understand then that the mirror which is no longer needed is some sense of a fixed mirror, I've got to have my teacher, this teacher, this teacher disappears, I'm lost.

[48:48]

Right, so the teacher is the mirror itself, not the transient form that the reflection may give it. That may change, you know the form reflected may change, but the teacher remains. Yes. The ego is the images in the film. And we look at the film and think, oh, that's me. Right, whereas you could say, well the light and the camera is me, the camera is me, you know, the substance of the film is me, you know, the screen is me.

[50:12]

Yes? And near the end of your talk you said, this is this, something you said, at the end of your talk you said fundamentally we are buddha and that word fundamentally just annoyed me you know like it sounded like a cop out like is there some other layer here oh fundamentally we are buddha forget it you know i don't remember what i said uh that word fundamentally i always hear that coming up oh so it's the word fundamental as if as if there's some other layer here and i looked at you and i said I see the light glinting off your glasses. I see your pink face, you know. Fundamentally, what? Well, fundamentally refers to the foundation.

[51:19]

You know, what holds things together. Well, because it's not, what is it? That's the koan. It's not something. So you can build a fantasy on what that is, but what is it? It's a foundation, but that's, you know, it's a ground, but what's the nature of the ground? Yes? This just sort of came to me, and I think it's related to what you're saying, but I'm not sure I quite understand how. I remember one day, you were walking by my house, and my daughter and I came out. And you were totally struck by how much she'd grown, which everything usually is because she's so tall.

[52:26]

And you looked at her, and your face just... I mean, I can't even describe the feeling, but you said, she's so beautiful. And I looked at her and I thought, she is beautiful. I mean, it's sort of like, she's just my daughter and we just have our life. And there was something about, it wasn't really that she, it was just that she's growing up. And there was something that you were like, so there was some mirror there. There was some way that you, as someone who I don't really even think of knows my daughter that much, but you've seen her when she was much younger. So anyway, there's something there for me about mirrors and how here would be someone who isn't really even in my daughter's life but can suddenly see some light in which she's transformed from this little kid into a flower. Yes. Did you have a teacher who died?

[53:39]

And if so, what was it like? Oh. No, I haven't had a teacher that died. I think... Mel has been my... only teacher, and although I started sitting in Paris with, can't even remember his name, how big of an impression, Deshimaro, that was my first introduction to Zazen, but he wasn't really my teacher, because I saw him a couple of times, heard him speak once, so really Mel has been my only teacher. He's died, but he hasn't died, so he's still around. So, did you want to say something about that?

[54:42]

About the feeling about the teacher dying? No? Yes. mind care or is it just a mirror? Who cares? The Buddha mind. The Buddha mind cares? Or is it just a mirror? Well, mind and heart in Buddhism are the same thing. So the heart cares. Ram, maybe we can continue outside.

[55:47]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[55:49]

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