Good morning. Good morning. I would like to introduce our guest speaker today, Tai Ren Dan Layton. And the first thing to say about Tai Ren is that he is an old friend of the family. He practiced at San Francisco Zen Center, all three temples, Asahara Zen Center, and Great Gulch. starting in the 80s and lived with many of us, and began his translation and scholarship. And he, in 2007, moved to Chicago, where he was the guiding teacher of the Ancient Dragon Zen Gate group. He focuses there on creating practice and training programs that are accessible to people in that area.

[01:06]

He's an author, scholar, and translator of many, many Zen books about famous teachers and lots of dōgen. And today he's here to celebrate the publication of his newest book, just this is it, Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness. And he'll be talking with us about that book, and there will be a book event afterwards in the dining room. Oh, and another thing about Taigen is that he has always been a very active activist. Thank you very much, Rosalie. It's wonderful to be back in the Bay Area and to be back at Zen Center here. So I want to talk today about some of our family jewels. Probably many of you have heard about Dogen, the 13th century Japanese monk who brought this tradition from China to Japan, and of course about Suzuki Roshi who brought it in the 60s to San Francisco.

[02:17]

Dongshan, who lived in the 800s, is considered the founder of this lineage and tradition, teaching tradition. Zhao Dong in Chinese, Soto in Japanese. Many of you may know him from the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, which is attributed to him, a teaching poem that we often chant. And also there's his Five Degrees teaching, sometimes translated as the Five Ranks. I mention them, there's chapters on them at the end of the book, but mostly I'm focusing on the stories. So, Zen is a tradition of storytelling and commenting on stories. I want to talk about a couple of the stories about Dong Shan this morning. The first one, when he was a student, leaving his teacher, and then there are many stories about him when he was a teacher. A lot of them deal with connecting with the unconditioned or ultimate or universal reality in our life, in this particular life.

[03:25]

Some of them talk about, one of them I'm going to try and get to later, talks about the path and Dongshan's critique of the path as something that one does in progressing in stages. So, I'll come back to that, but first I want to tell the, maybe the central story about Dong Shan, there's so many, but when he was leaving, his teacher, Yun Yang, before departing, Dong Shan asked his teacher, Later on, if I'm asked to describe your reality, or your teaching, or your dharma, what should I say? How should I respond? And Yun Yan paused. And then said, just this is it. And there's actually another way to interpret what he said, which I'll come back to later. Dongshan, you know, didn't, was there to say to that.

[04:31]

He left, and he was wandering across, wading across a stream, and he looked down and saw his reflection. And suddenly he understood Yunyan. He awakened to Yunyan's meaning. And he wrote a verse, Just don't seek from others, or you'll be far estranged from self. I now go on alone, but everywhere I meet it. It now is me. I now am not it. One must understand in this way to merge with suchness. So all these stories are about how we practice and engage suchness, the immediate reality. of the next breath and of our whole life present now as you are sitting. How do we engage and merge and meet with suchness and integrate with suchness?

[05:32]

There is this very short key line which in many ways to me encapsulates all of Soto Zen. It now is me. I now am not it. So this is very subtle, and there's, you know, I could give many talks about just that line, but what did he, what did that mean? And what did union mean? So just this is it, that this could be just the context of their talking together, the presence together of teacher and student. Just that interactive presence is it. This might also refer to Dongshan's inquiry, his question. Just the student asking about the teacher's reality is the point. So you might do that sometime. Ask your teacher, what is it? What is your dharma? What is your reality? Beyond that though, just this refers more universally to the simplicity and immediacy of reality here now.

[06:39]

beyond our human conceptualizations and discriminations. So after Yun Yan said just as is it, he said, you now are in charge of the great matter. You must be most thorough going. So for all of us, the challenge is how do we take care of this wonderful jewel of Zazen and awareness and our connection with interconnectedness? It now is me. I now am not it. So when he looked into the stream, he could see that the image was him. Yet he could not be reduced to that simple representation in the water. The relationship of true reality to image or reflection or depiction is what's the issue here. What is our relationship to this ultimate suchness, this universal deep reality that is always here and that we at least taste or glimpse in our zazen, in our upright sitting.

[07:51]

And I would say even for those of you who are here for the first time, just whatever it was that brought you, your concern, your interest, your caring about the quality of your life, in some way that has to do with some glimpse of suchness. So this, it now is me, I now am not it, is very subtle and has to do with the relationship of the limited I, our egoistic, self-clinging I, to all-encompassing, universal nature. And any individual I is simply a particular partial expression of that. So there's these two sides. I now am not it. So we have to know that. We have to study this I with all its greed, hate and delusion and self-grasping. But also, it now is me. Each of us is completely a particular expression of wholeness and of the universal.

[08:55]

So, this it now is me, I now am not it, it's this very rich tapestry to look at this subtle interrelationship of this self with the wholeness of totality. And this small self is an integral part of that. This situation right now would not be what it is without, if any one of you were not here. It now is me, I now am not it. It's very subtle. And it informs the teaching of non-self. I now am not it. So non-self doesn't mean that we don't have a self, it means that the self, you know, all the stories we have about a self, all of our, you know, identifications are not ultimately real. And yet, we have to take care of them. The other side, it now is me, is this deeper context for seeing the full reality in which we engage phenomena and we have the capacity to act responsibly.

[10:17]

This suchness is not passive. It is alive. It is dynamic. One way of talking about I Now I'm Not It is more modern from the French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud who said in one of his writings, I is an other. This expresses the illusory constructed nature of our conventional so-called self, our so-called identity, based on the usual way of human thinking and seeing separation between self and other, between subject and object. We think that the world is out there and we think that there are others out there. This is very deep in our language and in our whole way of thinking.

[11:18]

the sense of separate self and others. It's subject and object. It's integral in our language. We can't think otherwise in some ways. This is part of how we see things. But Rimbaud says, I is another. And that's very interesting because when we say, when we see, as soon as we say I, I is indeed another. And part of our practice is to see that self and to see the process of how we construct a self. Whenever we imagine an I, I becomes yet one of more other. So we have to gently see through this construction, not to get rid of the I again, not to get rid of our ego, but to see its illusory quality and to not be caught by it. So Rambo also said, it is wrong to say, I think, or not to say, people think me. So you're all giving this talk. Thank you.

[12:25]

It now is me. I now am not. It is really subtle. There's so much to say about it. One commentary on it is from Dogen, who in his Genjo Koan, that many of you may know, says, to carry the self forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That's, I'm not it. We do that. That's our usual way of being. We carry this self, this identity, this story we have about ourself and the world out into everything we engage with. But Dogen also says that myriad things come forth and experience the self. That's awakening. So that's it now is me. So when the myriad things come forth and experience themselves, you're included. That doesn't happen out there somewhere. That's not yet another object. Everything arises right now. And it is you.

[13:29]

So, again, so many things to say about this. One of the main things, just to say this again, that just this, this suchness, this immediacy of our engagement with the tenderness and fragility and richness of this situation, It's not static. Suchness is alive. Just this is alive. It's constantly changing. It's not like you can figure out suchness and then you know what it is and you've got it. Even if you experience some thorough, deep realization about just this, you need to keep paying attention. Upright sitting is alive. Sometimes we feel inhale, sometimes exhale, sometimes the space after inhale, sometimes the space after exhale. One danger of hearing this, just this is it, is to think that it's passive.

[14:41]

Like, if I just accept everything as it is, that would be it. But that's a trap. Just this includes your own responses to what's around you and your own caring and Seeing problems and having some response and if that is grounded in your investigation of I am not it, then you can act with a little more space and flexibility and more options. You can see when and how you are starting to project yourself onto whatever the situation is. respond as the particular part of suchness that you is. So another aspect of this story, I want to pause because this is so subtle.

[15:47]

It now is me. I now am not it. There's this rich dynamic and it's not that there's one then there's the other. Our practice is about integrating our sense of how We are separate because we do feel that. If we're honest, we feel like separate, estranged beings. And maybe we have friends who we feel connected with, but there's always somebody out there who is different, who is other, who is from a different country or a different race or a different religion. We separate. We think we're separate from others. This is how we actually think and we have to admit it and acknowledge it to ourselves and study it and forgive ourselves for being human beings. Sometimes that's not easy. We all have particular needs.

[16:54]

Sometimes we need to have a drink of water. We all have particular spaces in the world. And yet, it now is me. So the whole thing, everything, the universal sense of reality, suchness. Suchness is kind of the flip side of emptiness. You may have heard more about emptiness than suchness, but it's just a positive way of talking about the same thing. And suchness is not a thing that you can get, just like emptiness is not a thing. Suchness is the way things is. It's just this. So this just this is it is very subtle. I've been... studying this story since I first heard it from my teacher in this room and in the dining room 35 years ago. There is this endless subtlety to how is it that we are connected and not connected and how do we play with that dynamic.

[17:57]

The other way of reading this story is also relevant. there's a pronoun in just this is it the it can be read as impersonal which is how I've been talking about it and also Dongshan's poem where he says it now is me I now I'm not it that it can be read as impersonal but it also can be read as a personal pronoun so some translations of this say that Yun Yang said just this person And Dong Shan in his verse said, he now is me, I now am not him. So it actually doesn't matter what the historical person Dong Shan intended, whether he intended it or him, both are there. And we don't even really know so much about, historically, some of the stories about Dongshan and all the other Tang masters, Zhaozhou and Nanchuan, and all these great figures. We don't know if they actually said those things or some scholars think they were written down a few centuries later.

[19:03]

And that really doesn't matter. Dongshan is not some, he is what was a person who lived in the 800s, but also for a thousand years, we've been studying these and stuttering with these stories about Dongshan. So even if somebody else with the same name wrote Shakespeare's plays, we still study them. And that doesn't really matter. Dongshan is this figure, and part of this study of suchness just this is it, is that it's integrally connected to how it's conveyed. So after saying, just this is it, Yun Yan said, you now carry this, you now are in charge of this, please be careful, please take care of it. And part of this tradition of suchness that

[20:05]

is alive in this room and in this place and in our teaching tradition is both the engagement with suchness, but how is it conveyed? How do we receive it? So the relationship between teacher and student is also very much part of this. So when Dongshan's verse might be read, I now go on alone, but everywhere I meet him. He now is me. I now am not him. So How do we express it now is me in our life? How do we express I now am not it in our life? How do we receive it? How do we share it? How does that inform our responsibility in the world and all the different situations we have in the world?

[21:07]

So I'll just read kind of what I just said, but in some elemental sense, the teaching about suchness is itself inextricably involved with how this teaching is maintained and passed along. Issues of teaching style and the subtle process of conveying and sustaining this awareness of suchness are not separate from our engagement with the suchness of reality. So the stories about Dongshan, there are many stories, this is a story about him and his teacher, but there are many stories about him when he was a teacher and how he engaged his students. Also, deal with this issue. How are we connected to suchness, to ultimate reality, to the universal, to the unconditioned? And, again, it's very subtle in the various ways of understanding it. I'll read Suzuki Roshi's commentary, part of his commentary about this story.

[22:11]

So this is from the wonderful Suzuki Roshi archives that Zen Center has. So when he discussed just this, he discussed it as the practice of everywhere meeting oneself. This is from a talk he gave at Tassajara, where he emphasized the importance of warmhearted kindness to oneself as well as others. He paraphrased Dongshan's verse as saying, don't try to figure out who you are. If you try to figure out who you are, what you understand will be far away from you. You will have just an image of yourself. And then he said, actually, you are in the river. You may say that it is just a shadow or a reflection of yourself, but if you look carefully with warmhearted feeling, that is you. So I'm not it, but that image is you. reminds me of one of my favorite sayings from the British poet William Blake, who said, anything that can be imagined is an image of the truth.

[23:17]

So, you're not them, but in some ways all those stories that you tell are you, but they're also just stories. The stories are not suchness, but it's this very subtle dynamic. Suzuki Roshi also said, This was a little while later. I think maybe that was a talk here. He said, don't try to see yourself objectively. And he read Dong Shan's lines after seeing his reflection. I go my own way. Wherever I go, I meet myself. So this is also a story about how we meet ourself and both sides of that. So there's a whole lot more I can say about that, but I wanted to tell another story. So again, there are stories that emphasize this relationship to the unconditioned, to what do we do when we step out of the monastery after a practice period.

[24:27]

How do we go to a place where there's no conditioning? Well, we are caught by everything, but how do we meet that? But there's also a number of stories. I want to tell one of these, which is about Dongshan's commentaries on the path. So our conventional way of thinking about practice and the path and maybe most of what we do is that we're making progress and we're going through stages and if you pass second grade you get into third grade and so forth. We think that way and a lot of how things work in our culture and in other cultures is like that. And a lot of how we are in our everyday activity is about kind of manipulating other things out there. Again, when we have others, then we're making the world an object. And we can make, and as Rimbaud said, I become another.

[25:28]

I is another when we hold on to that I. So this is kind of how we violate the first precept by killing everything, seeing everything as objects. But we do see that way. How do we acknowledge that? Well, part of this is Dongshan's critique of various versions of spiritual practice. It's very common to think that if you practice long enough, eventually you will have some understanding, or maybe you'll have some great flashy experience, or something like that. Or if you study long enough, you will know something. And that's actually not our way. We can include that, and I'll come back to that. But in some ways, this practice from our tradition is we start on the mountaintop. Just this, just sit. Whatever happens. Pay attention. Be there. Take another breath.

[26:29]

Check your posture. But it's not about making progress and getting high. There are many systems within Buddhism and even within Zen and in other spiritual traditions where you go through various stages and you get higher or whatever. But this practice isn't about getting high because we start at the mountaintop. So there's a story about that. A monk came to see Dongshan and Dongshan asked the monk, where have you come from? The monk said, from wandering in the mountains. Dongshan said, did you reach the peak? The monk said, yes. Then Dongshan asked if there was anyone on the peak. The monk said, no, there was not. Dongshan said, if so, then you did not reach the peak. If there was no one there, you weren't either. No way.

[27:32]

But this monk was, we don't know his name, but he was pretty cool. He said, if I did not reach the peak, how could I have known there was no one there? So then Dong Xuan asked why he had not remained on the mountaintop. And the monk replied honestly that he would have been so inclined. It was nice up there. He could hang out and it was just, you know, clear and cool and wonderful and spacious and just this all the time. But he said there was someone from the West who would not have approved. So maybe he was referring to Bodhidharma or maybe to Buddha. So, the monk knew that it was not okay to just stay on the mountain, on the peak. Dong Shan praised the monk, saying, I'd wondered about this fellow. So, again, there's a lot to say about this story, but it really has a lot to do with our practice.

[28:41]

In many numbers of the stories, Dong Shan criticized the idea that, you know, first you have to take this step and then that step and then there and then there and, you know, go through various stages. I think when we come to practice we think that. First I have to go and visit city center and then maybe I will go and live there. Maybe then I will go and live at Tassajara and be up in the mountains and it will all be wonderful. Anyway, there are all kinds of ways in which we think that there are stages that we have to get through. Then eventually, ah, wonderful experience, flashing lights. Anyway, this practice is not about getting high. So, and it's not about making progress, we just start right on the mountaintop. As soon as you walk in the door here, something brought you in and that something has something to do with this and this and this and just this. It's a very difficult practice because we want to know more information, we want to see how we got there, but just this is it.

[29:49]

So it's kind of challenging and difficult. And sometimes we do say, oh, please count your breaths, or I tell people to use mantra, or listen to the ambient sound. There's all kinds of things we can do, because we want to have something we can do. But really, just this is it. We can enjoy the bird singing without identifying each bird. Although, you know, if you're into birds and you can identify them, that's great. But, there's another story. Dongshan's, one of his major disciples was named Yunzhu Daoying. We said his name in Japanese this morning, Ongodoyo Daoyosho. So Dongshan had numbers of interesting disciples, but this was the one from whom Arlene and Zhendogen comes from. And, So, one time, where does it start?

[30:59]

Once Dongshan asked Yunzhu where he'd been, and Yunzhu replied that he'd been walking in the mountains. Dongshan asked, he didn't ask about the peak, he said, oh, did you find a mountain to reside on? And Yunzhu said, categorically, none of them were suitable for residing. Dongshan inquired if Yongzhu had visited all of the mountains in the country. And Yongzhu said, no, I hadn't. So Dongshan said, well, you must have found an entry path. And Yongshan proclaimed emphatically, no, there is no path. Dongshan said, if there's no path, I wonder how you've come to lay eyes on this old monk. And Yongzhu said, If there were a path, then a mountain would stand between us. And Dongshan approved this saying and said that not even 10,000 people could hold down Yunzhu.

[32:02]

So the very idea of a path implies separation. There's some distance in space or time that we need to traverse to get to a particular destination. Yunzhu just thus disdains any path and affirms his present communion with Dongshan. Right here, right now, here we are. Though Yunzhu is not Dongshan, Dongshan actually is him. No need to travel to some meeting place somewhere else. So it's okay if you follow various paths or if you try and make progress in some particular endeavor or area or even think that you're making progress in your Zen practice. It's okay if you have that idea. But actually, just this is about being present right here. Being present right here doesn't mean cutting away all of past and future.

[33:05]

That's also right here. Just this. So, you know, there's this idea in Zen of sudden awakening. And some people get confused and think that has to do with eventually, in the future, obtaining some flashy experience or getting some understanding or becoming an enlightened person. And sometimes realization of suchness or the fullness and tenderness and fragility of just this reality, sometimes it arises quite abruptly. But it's always here. It's always here. It's not about getting somewhere else sometime in the future. Now, practically speaking, sitting up here on the mountaintop, even in Haight Valley. Practically speaking, we might, you know, go back down and follow the pathways, you know, and trace those.

[34:12]

And it's okay, if you want to, to do some path of progress where you can imagine you're getting somewhere. But the direct apprehension of suchness is objectless and open, spacious and panoramic. It's always right here. So sometimes we try and get back to the source of the stream, but at any point along the stream you can stop and sit and really enjoy the presence there. But practically speaking, You know, some people want to have a step-by-step practice. So there are in Buddhism many of those and, you know, we can use those. And it's okay if you want to do that. And it's okay if you want to share those with people for whom it would be helpful. And so then maybe you want to study those even. And one may even joyfully engage with such objects and stages as the awakened play and background adornments of the practice of suchness.

[35:14]

So the mountaintop includes all the paths down from the mountaintop. So that's okay, you can do that. So how do we see the limits of this limited self? And our idea of self? And our stories of self? So part of this actual practice of suchness is studying how we think we're separate from suchness. Of course, how could that be? Just this is it. And yet, we imagine that we're not good enough, or we see our own patterns of grasping, or anger and confusion, or frustration, or fear, or whatever, and say, oh no, that can't be the mountaintop.

[36:18]

That can't be just this. You're not it, but it actually is you. It includes any story you have about how you're not you. But that doesn't mean that you're all of it, because it's beyond any object. Any particular is a total expression of the whole, and yet Dogen says to study the way is to study the self. So we see our own patterns of grasping and confusion and anger and so forth. And the more you become friends with yourself and engage that and get to know that I who is not it, in some ways you then are less caught by it and can appreciate that it now is me. So this applies to everything, not just to people, but whatever you have, whatever you think is an object, including to mountains.

[37:29]

So I'll close with a story about mountains. In this book I have many examples. later people commenting on the stories of Dongshan as well as my own comments, but I have comments by Hong Zhe, the great 12th century Chinese Soto teacher, and by Dogen, and by Suzuki Roshi. But I also have comments by modern people, relatively modern people, like Jack London, and Lewis Carroll, and Bob Dylan, and Bill McKibben, and Grace Slick, and Hank Williams, and Joni Mitchell. The point of these stories is that they're family treasures, and we keep them alive in each generation, or in each new culture. How do we take these stories and make them part of our practice? So the last comment I'll give on this story about on the mountaintop is from a Scottish mystic named Donovan Leach.

[38:33]

And he said, first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. Actually, he sang it. So even a mountain has no fixed mountain identity. The mountain is not it. And yet, it is the mountain. So, what does he mean? Well, there's an old Zen saying, I think Donovan says it better, but early in his practice this fellow said that mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers. Later he saw that After he had an intimate knowledge and had seen suchness, he said, I saw that mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers. But when he saw suchness more deeply, he said, now I see that mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. Well, first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. The no mountain is not about mountain top removal to get coal or paving over paradise, paving over everything, which some people try and do now.

[39:37]

It's about the richness of the mountain, which is us. Donovan has a couple of other comments that maybe we can relate to. It now is me, I now am not it. So he said, sing it in the song, the lock upon my garden gates a snail, that's what it is. So, I am not it. The caterpillar sheds his skin to find a butterfly within. It now is me. First there's a mountain, then there's no mountain, then there is. So there's this wonderful, subtle dynamic of our personal engagement with suchness. Just this is it. And our practice is to sit upright and be present in the middle of this suchness.

[40:40]

And thoughts come up and feelings come up and that's not it. And yet, it is you. It is each one of us. And we do this together because of course we're not separate from the point of view of this suchness. There's no separation. So our practice is about how do we take that reality that we actually can settle into by sustained practice and bring it alive and respond to all of the so-called objects in the world. And we have a responsibility for that because it now is me. So it's up to each one of us to allow suchness to flower. And of course, suchness is alive and our experience and appreciation of suchness is dynamic and unfolds. So please enjoy suchness.

[41:45]

Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:12]

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