Okay, so we have a little more than an hour. This I know is, at least for me, one of the kind of sleepiest times of the day. So there's probably a natural tendency now to get more into the silence than the illumination. But actually, the practice of silent illumination or of just sitting, is about finding the balance of the two. So I encourage you to bring forth your questions. Maybe we'll go through this, not take so long with this, but partly going through some of these aspects of Hongzhe's teaching as a way of understanding the texture of just sitting. and the terrain of just sitting. Just sitting is another way of expressing this serene illumination.

[01:01]

So the things we've talked about already, the objectless as opposed to object meditation, and the Buddha nature teaching, and the nature metaphors as opposed to seeing that there's something required of us, these are all parts of the texture of just sitting as a practice. of dropping body and mind as a practice. So I do want to just go through this text, maybe particularly focusing on some points and some of the references that aren't so obvious. maybe spend most of the rest of the time just opening this book at random, which I like to do and some of you have said you like to do, and just kind of working out with what Hongshu is saying about serene illumination. Maybe going back to some of the other poems, but also I want to encourage you to raise questions or make statements or comment or respond.

[02:10]

So I've presented most of the stuff that I wanted to kind of get across, and now I want to kind of have a conversation, all of us together, about this. Having said that, I'll go back to where we were in the text. So he says, what is this wonder? So I was talking about wonder or questioning or the sense of awe as the side of awareness or prashna or illumination that comes together with settling and serenity and silence. So alertly seeing through confusion is the way of silent illumination and the origin of subtle radiance. So the subtle side is maybe the settled side. But again, there's the practice instruction or the suggestion towards alertness and towards seeing through, this ongoing questioning.

[03:17]

So it's not that the questioning is then is not about getting an answer, it's about the question itself. And sometimes responses come up and then there's more questioning. So Dogen too in his teachings talking about dropping body and mind or just sitting again and again, he says to his students, do you completely understand this? Please investigate this. There's something that is required of you in just sitting, even though there's nothing to get. There is this ongoing, what is this? This ongoing, what is this that thus comes? This ongoing need to actually pay attention to the suchness in front of you. So this is the side, we could say, of illumination. And then he has this reference to the aspect of balance of the universal and the particular, which isn't exactly the same as the balancing of serenity and illumination, but it's kind of some of the same dynamics.

[04:28]

Vision penetrating into subtle radiances, weaving gold on a jade loom. Again, this is an alchemical reference Hongzhe's first comment on the story about just this is it by Dongshan, he says something like, the jade machine revolves bringing forth real and apparent, bringing forth the ultimate and the particular. So this is an image for this process, this five-fold process of integration. integration of, in this case, the upright and the inclined. This, again, is just another image for the universal and the particular. Or as Hogan Sun was saying earlier, the vertical dimension of the teaching authority from both the great Buddha ancestors, but also in your own awareness.

[05:31]

Am I really doing this? You know, this questioning that you have to ask yourself as well. is this, how is this it? How do I express this? And then the inclined is the side of seeing Buddha nature in everything, of being with Buddha nature in everything. So there's this balancing and this interacting and this integration that is the process of our practice, kind of endless process. So it's not just that there are these five ranks and you kind of move up on them. They're all going at once. It's a kind of, wheel of interaction of the ultimate and the particular situation that comes afresh in front of us in each breath. So again, please ask or raise your hands if you have comments. He says, not depending on sense faculty and object at the right time they interact.

[06:36]

So again, this goes back to our exercise this morning, the meditation this morning, looking at the texture, at the intricacy of seeing and color or hearing and sound. And when we see this fully, we don't get caught in one or the other. We don't depend on one or the other. At the right time, they interact. So this is another kind of balancing, another kind of Integration. Drink the medicine of good views, beat the poison-smeared drum. I mentioned that before, that this refers to the Dharma drum, which is from the metaphor of this drum that apparently they had in ancient China that was smeared with poison. And if you heard the drum beat, you would be poisoned and killed. So it's some ancient fable, I suppose. I don't know if there's some way to do that scientifically. But anyway, as an image,

[07:38]

it refers to our hearing the Dharma. So how do we hear the Dharma? How do we hear the poison smear drum? How do we get enough of the poison to actually integrate with the Dharma, integrate with our own experience of Buddha nature? And this isn't just about listening to Dharma talks, although that's what Buddhists do. So your listening to Dharma talks is the Dharma talk. It's not that the person speaking has it and you don't. Your listening to it is where it's happening. So he says, killing and giving life are up to you. This is kind of an image for stopping and illumination, for serenity and illumination. Yeah, and it refers to, again, using energy or taking care of our own energy in zazen.

[08:39]

Settling, seeing when we're bubbling around and we need to settle. Seeing when we can allow illumination or insight or prajna to arise. So killing and giving life are up to you. Yeah. Also, one of the images that's used for this process is from stillness, our true life arises. So you may have heard that when the wooden man starts to sing, the still woman gets up dancing. This is one expression of that. From being willing to just sit and settle and be quiet. arises this true deeper energy, not the energy of our discursive cognitive mind, but this deeper space.

[09:41]

So there are many, many images of this in Zen poetry. One is a dragon howls in a withered tree. from stillness comes forth this deeper vitality. So killing and giving life is also about that process of finding our true vitality. Yes? So the killing would be killing a subject object or killing and discursive. I don't want to say killing discursive, letting go of discursive thought and giving life this energy that would come forth. That's part of it, yeah. So this is poetry. This is a song, a poetic song. These images work on different ways. So yes, all of the things that we can say about it are part of what's going on. And the point of it is not to get some correct analysis or figure out what Hongzhe means particularly, but how does it, how do you respond to it?

[10:47]

How does it bring forth something in you that allows you to see more fully the dynamic of just sitting, of dropping body and mind? We'll get it in the library. It's conditional, what this means that this author said. Then you actually go to ask the author of their life and say, no, no, I had this in mind, a specific incident in their life or something that you could know nothing about. But it doesn't mean that it was wrong. It means something to you and it helps you practice in life. Or people will say, people come up to me after a Dharma talk and say, I just love it when you said blah, [...] it meant so much to me. And I go, Especially if the talk was recent. I know I never said that. They heard something completely different from what I said. But it's okay, because it meant a lot to them and they can pull it into practice. This is a... I would interpret it as a... And again, this is just a personal interpretation.

[11:50]

It's a directive. It says, drink the medicine quickly. Beat the poisons from your drum. So that's a directive. This is what you have to do in practice. When they interact, that is, the medicine and the poison interact, then it's along the lines of what you were saying, Jogan. Killing and giving life are up to you, so what you decide to let wither away in yourself, like your anger, and what you decide to give life to, what benefits the Dharma or benefits you and others. Yes, and your responsibility for your own practice. Nobody can practice for you. And yet this is the dynamic of what's going on in your just sitting practice. Yeah, and that's explicitly there. Yeah, I remember that. Well, the Chinese character for that, yeah. Yeah, it was startling. Yeah, but it actually was there.

[12:57]

So again, and then there's also the side of going back to the dragon howling in a withered tree. One of Hongzhe's early teachers, Kumufa Cheng, his name means dead wood. There's another teacher a little before him whose Zendo is called the Dead Stump Hall because they sat like dead stumps. So this image of just stillness and just stopping. Out of that comes our vitality and energy and illumination. The Howling Dragon, yeah. There's so many, Dogen also, for his New Year's discourses, he says a couple times, the plum blossoms on the same dead branches last year.

[14:01]

This kind of life coming forth from stillness. So this has to do also with not just the dynamics of our sitting practice, but also of monastic regulations and this kind of sangha practice we do. There's a couple of different main metaphors for training. One of them is the lattice. A twining vine grows on a lattice which has vertical and horizontal slats. But the vine doesn't grow like this. There's this wildness to it. It keeps coming back to the lattice. The monastery, the schedule and all the other forms and the bells and all of the things we do are the structure on which our practice grows. That's one way. Another way, and this may seem more extreme and is not to be done at home but only with the supervision of a teacher, is the snake in bamboo.

[15:14]

Do you know that? So that's another way of talking about the structures of practice. So both of them, both the lattice and the snake and bamboo refer to, also we can see that in the killing and giving life of just sitting. Sometimes, so like Tangaria or something like, some structure like that where we're required to take on some rigid structure, some structure that It's not just supporting our vitality, but feels restrictive. The deeper life comes from that. So the idea of the snake going into a bamboo tube and it can't wriggle around anymore. And yet, something grows out of that. There's also the flower growing out of the top of a monk's staff or various images like this. And this directly relates to this serene illumination. From our serenity and silence and settling comes forth this awareness, this deeper life and vitality.

[16:18]

So upright and inclined yield to each other. Light and dark are interdependent. Again, this interaction. Oh, I'm further along than that. Through the gate, the self emerges and the branches bear fruit. Again, this is like the monk staff flowering. Only silence is the supreme speech, only illumination the universal response. Responding without falling into achievement, or ranks or status, speaking without involving listeners. So we express ourselves on our cushions, regardless of who's paying attention. In all of our practice activities, we are speaking the Dharma. We are expressing the Dharma, each in our own way. And it doesn't matter how many people are there paying attention. The 10,000 forms majestically glisten and expound the Dharma.

[17:21]

And this next part, he goes directly into... Okay. I did. Well, it's there. We don't talk a lot in the Zenda. Occasionally, you know, sometimes I'll say something in the middle of Zazen, not very long. Not always, it's just sometimes something will come up that I want to say. But we have silence, and how do we get to that deeper stillness? So there are, you know, snake and bamboo ways, and there are lattice ways. Yeah, but I think you're right. In Suki Roshi lineage, we tend to be more granting side. But we have both. Both are necessary. So I was going to say before, the other side of Tangario, where you just sit for five to 10 days, no kin-hin, no moving.

[18:31]

One of the teachers I really liked, who I practiced with in Japan, he's now the abbot of Hokyoji, which is an important training temple near Eheiji, to Nakashinkai Roshi, but he had a little Sodo, a little monk's hall, outside Kyoto, near Kameoka in the mountains, in this little rice, tiny little rice village. He was up on the hill, and he built this Sodo. He had been a senior monk at Eheji before. He was actually invited by Suzuki Roshi to come over when he invited Katagiri Roshi in Kobuchino, and he was a young monk then, and he was taking care of the Tokyo branch of Eheji. But anyway, his schedule for his sashi, and he has this monk's hall where you sleep and where you sit and so forth, but his schedule for for Sashin, from breakfast to lunch, and from lunch to dinner, there's no bells, nothing, no dharma talk, nothing, just whenever you feel like it, you can get up and do kinhen, or you can go to use the bathroom, or whatever, or you can just sit for several hours without moving.

[19:45]

And he said he got that from practicing with someone in India, he traveled a bit, and he said, this is Buddha's schedule. So, you know, both are in that. I like that attitude. Yet, in some ways, sometimes it helps to have the teacher say, stop, don't move, shut up. Sometimes, it helps to say, okay, it's up to you. Please try and be quiet. So either way, there is this balance of silence and illumination. And for different students at different times, these different approaches are helpful. And I sometimes say that if you're in excruciating pain, please move if you need to, if that'll help. So it shouldn't be about excruciating pain. We should take care of our bodies, but also try and settle.

[20:52]

But on some level, I guess I'm a little bit on the side of it's the student's responsibility. No matter what the teacher says, the student really has to take it on or not. But again, it's not that there's one right way and what works is different at different times. Well, I was going to skip a little bit through this, but again, I welcome comments and questions and responses. The point about the balancing of these two sides of coming out of shamatha, or stopping, and vipassana, or illumination, insight. He makes very clear, he says, if illumination neglects serenity, then aggressiveness appears. So insight, awareness, without the settling, without the stopping, without the serenity, can be very pushy.

[22:02]

There's a kind of inner aggressiveness that comes. The other side, if serenity neglects illumination, then there's just murkiness and that's wasted teaching. So clearly he's talking about how do we balance these two aspects of just sitting. So in a way, those are key lines in terms of this process of silent illumination. Again, as I said at the beginning, Hongxue doesn't mention silent illumination very often aside from this poem, even though he's in some ways most known for this as a kind of meditation praxis. He doesn't talk about it a lot in those terms. He talks about it in the ways we've been looking at in the other practice instructions. But one of the main points here is just this dynamic of balancing the two sides of settling and awareness or energy. And one of the things I emphasize is a kind of creative energy, that zazen, or just sitting, is a kind of form of creative expression.

[23:14]

each of you as you're sitting are performing this dance of Zazen, and connecting with this inner energy of creativity. All of you have some form of creative expression outside the zendo, too. In everyday ways, you all make jizos or cook. Washing the dishes can be a form of creative expression. In everyday activity, to find our creative energy, is a kind of balancing to the creative energy of zazen. So whatever your creative activities are off your cushion, that supports this process of silent illumination and vice versa. So a lot of my students are Some of my students have particular creative activities, sculpting or writing or painting, but it could be cooking or gardening.

[24:24]

We all have something in which we feel some creative satisfaction, and that energy is related to the energy of zazen, that is the side of illumination, that is the side of this arising of energy, which comes out of this settling. And again, there's this balancing of the settling and the awareness. And Hongxue emphasizes that balancing. And then he kind of breaks forth into when silent illumination is fulfilled, when they're completely balanced, the lotus blossoms, the dreamer awakens, a hundred streams flow into the ocean. A thousand ranges face the highest peak. So these poetic images we could talk about, or you could tell me how you hear them. Geese preferring milk? Do they prefer milk? Yeah. And there's a story in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra about a certain kind of geese that when they find milk and water, they can drink only the milk from the water.

[25:30]

So this is about how we find the Dharma in our everyday activity and in our zazen. How do we find the nourishment for our practice? Well, it's some old story from India. He's not an ornithologist, no. So he says the teaching of silent illumination, I would say the practice. The silent illumination penetrates from the highest down to the foundation. Of course, there's no separation between practice and teaching and awakening. The body being emptiness, the arms then express mudra. And then there's this thing about... Sure. Yeah. But the trunk is kind of still while the arms are... fluttering around taking care of all the beings.

[26:36]

So this is another image of this balance of stillness and expression. And then he talks about sharing one pattern. So there's a story, I think it's in the footnote, but this again is a reference to something that Chinese educated people would have known, Chinese story. So it's kind of like referring to Shakespeare or something. But the story is that this fellow Hou found this big piece of jade. inside a rock that he could see that there was jade inside, and he offered it to one of the warlords who was insulted and cut off one of his feet as punishment. So he went and offered it to another warlord who cut off his other foot, and finally offered it to another who realized it was a value and took it. Maybe somebody carried him, I don't know. The point of, anyway, I'm not sure why he has the story in here, but Mr. Zhang Ru was a great, wise minister to, let me look at the footnote and bring up the story.

[27:54]

There was the, The ruler who finally realized that it was a valuable and accepted it, later tried to trade it to a neighboring ruler for 15 cities. But and Zhang Ru was the wise minister who took it to the other warlord. And after he handed over the jewel, he saw that the other king was not going to honor his promise by giving up the cities. He was like the current warlords. Anyway, but Zhang Ru was very sly, and he retrieved the large jewel by trickery. He said he would tell the king where there was a flaw in the rock and the king handed it back to Zhang Ru and he got back to his own. managed to get it back to his own king. The way he did that, it's not in the note, but he kind of held it against a pillar with his body so that if they did anything to him, it would fall and shatter.

[29:05]

So they finally had to let him go. Anyway, I'm not sure why, I don't have all the answers. I'm not sure why Hangzhou mentions it exactly here, I don't know. I suspect it's as he practiced and we see the purity and the value in the Dharma, pointing out the flaws means coming back to the human realm. The human realm that's always been cracked. I suspect that that's part of what it's... Yeah, good. So, I knew one of you would be able to come up with a good response. Thank you, Hogan Sun. So in 10,000 differences, there's one pattern. So this is about the multiplicity and the oneness again, the universal and the particular. And even with the Dharma Jewel, when we put it into practice in the ordinary world of San Francisco or Los Angeles or Klatskanai or wherever, in actually expressing it with particular people, part of our practice is we have to see our own flaws.

[30:13]

We have to practice with that. And yet, the pattern is still there. And this pattern is the pattern of serene illumination, where there's this balance. So the other thing I'll say about it is the last line. Our school's affair hits the mark straight and true, transmitted to all directions without desiring to gain merit or credit. It's the character for merit. So we know from Bodhidharma who spoke to the emperor that there's no merit. Of course, sometimes we, you know, Tell little kids, oh, if you do this practice, you'll get lots of merit. Or if you practice in this way, you'll definitely get enlightened and things like that. But anyway, just to share it without expecting anything, without, So this again is the objective list side again. There's a purpose to it, but it's not about getting anything.

[31:15]

We just do it naturally, like the geese preferring milk. Yes, exactly. Yeah, we have to take care of how things operate and manage.

[31:40]

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