It's wonderful to be here back at my home temple of Green Gulch. Hi everyone. So this morning I'm going to be talking about one of our great ancestors and some of the stories about him. His name is Dongshan Liangjie, or Tozan Ryokai in Japanese, and he lived in the 800s in China. So he's considered the founder of this, of what we call Soto Zen, this particular teaching tradition. In China, Dogen, Heihei Dogen, who you've probably heard of also if you've been around here, is the founder of the Japanese branch in 1200s in Japan, and then Suzuki Roshi brought it here. in the 1960s, and now we have San Francisco Zen Center in Green Gulch.

[01:06]

So, it feels to me like there's a kind of continuity, or there's some, well, maybe there's a development and a shift, but also there's an underlying continuity in our practice here and our teaching tradition that goes all the way back. So Dongshan is best known maybe for the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, which is chanted here sometimes, I believe, and also for the Five Degrees teaching, sometimes called the Five Ranks. So I'm talking here about this new book that is just coming out, called Just This Is It, Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness. I have chapters on this, but mostly I focus on the stories about Dongshan, and I want to talk about two of those this morning. There are many different stories about Dongshan, and some of them I talk about in this book.

[02:16]

The first one is about the nature of suchness and the nature of self and non-self, and I'll come back to that. Then there are also many stories about how we meet that in our everyday activity, how we meet ultimate reality and unconditioned universal reality, right here in the particulars of our life and our problems and our situations. There's also stories about the path, but Dongshan has a very strong attitude that the path is not some step-by-step progression that eventually will get somewhere else, which is the destination of the path. It's all here, now, right around your seat. So the first story is about when Dongshan was leaving his teacher, whose name was Yunyan in Chinese, and he'd been studying with him for a while, and Dongshan

[03:21]

Before he left, he went and talked to his teacher and said, Later on, if I'm asked to describe your reality, or your teaching, your Dharma, what should I say? How should I respond? And Nyan-Nyan paused. And then he said, Just this is it. And Dongshan didn't have anything to say at that point. What would you say? But then Yongyan, his teacher, said, You are now in charge of this great matter. You must be most thorough going. Please be careful. And Dongshan left, and as he was going, he was waiting across a stream. and there's a picture of it on the cover, and fortunately there was someone there to photograph it.

[04:26]

No, actually, it's a painting from much later. And he looked at his reflection in the stream, and he understood what Yun-Yun was getting at. And then Dong Shan said, just don't seek from others, or you will be far estranged from self. I now go on alone everywhere I meet it, So we say dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them everywhere. I meet this truth. And then he said, it now is me. I now am not it. One must understand in this way to merge with suchness. So one of the themes of the stories is about how we find and meet and engage with what we sometimes call suchness or thusness. Just this, this reality. right in front of us as we sit facing the wall and facing ourselves, upright, resisting the impulses to squirm or move around, just sitting upright and being present with whatever's coming up and paying attention.

[05:38]

Just this is it. And he said, It now is me. I now am not it. So that's kind of the core of, I would say, all of Soto Zen. Just that sentence. It now is me. I now am not it. So when Yunyan said, just this is it, well, it evokes kind of mindfulness meditation and just being present with this situation here now. But he might have been saying that just this dialogue between Dongshan and Yunyan, that was it. just the teacher and student talking. Or he might have been saying that the student asking about the teacher's reality is it. But more simply, it refers to the universal, to the immediacy of reality.

[06:43]

Here, now, just this is it. Beyond all of our human conceptualizations and discriminations and calculations and deliberations, just this. So there are other ways to understand this story, and I'll come back to that, but just this is it. And then, it now is me, I now am not it, presents us with a kind of dynamic interaction. And we can see that from many perspectives. Gazing at his reflection in the stream, Dongshan could see that this image was him, yet he could not be reduced to the representation in the water. So the relationship of true reality to image, reflection, or depiction is at work various ways here. These reflections are not themselves ultimate reality.

[07:51]

But suchness fully includes The ultimate reality fully includes any image or depiction or expression we might venture to offer. So this, it now is me, I now am not it, is very subtle. This has to do with the teaching of self and non-self. The teaching of non-self is a basic Buddhist teaching. It doesn't mean that you don't have a self, or that you should get rid of your ego. What it means is that all of the stories that you tell, all the identifications you have about the person sitting on your cushion or chair right now, are kind of illusions. And yet, we take care of them. But they're illusions, and we need to study and explore and discover what that means. I now am not it, but it now is me. It's very subtle. So how do we understand this?

[08:57]

Well, just to start with, I am not it, there's a phrase a thousand years later from a French symbolist poet named Artur Rimbaud. who said, Je et un autre, or in English, I is an other. And this also presents us with a great teaching about non-self. I is an other. And it's true. Whenever we have some I, it becomes some thing. So usually, our usual way of thinking about the world and acting in the world is that we see people around us, we see things around us. And this cup is an object, it's outside me, we think, even though it provides me with water. But we see self, we have this illusion of self, and then we see others. And when we make up an I, as soon as Rimbaud saw this I, he realized that I is also another.

[10:00]

So this is kind of the basic way we violate the first precept. We kill the world. We make it into dead objects. We think that the things around us and the people around us, and even I, are just others, objects. So this is our usual human way of thinking, and we have to come to grips with and reconcile with that. I am not it. Whenever we imagine an I, I becomes another. Rimbaud also said, it is wrong to say, I think. One ought to say, people think me. So I'm up here speaking, but actually it's all of you who are giving this talk. So I am not it. But the it now is me means that Each of us, in our own particular limited way, with our own particular limited ideas and stories about what's happening, are totally pieces of the ultimate, the universal, of suchness right now.

[11:13]

This suchness in this room right now depends on each one of you and each one of us. So, in the book I make, I give commentaries myself and have commentaries from many, many were the people, including many from A. H. Dogen, who lived in the 1200s, and he had a comment on this line, I now am not it, it now is me, in his writing called Genjo Kōan. Do you also chant that here sometimes? So he said, Dogen said, to carry the self forward and experience myriad things is delusion. So that's I am not it. that myriad things come forth and experience the self is awakening. So it now is me. You are not is, is implied as the self projecting itself and your own stories and your own sense of identification and sense of reality onto whatever there is out there.

[12:22]

Out there, so called out there. And that is a kind of reality. So this world of objects, this is how we think, our ordinary way of thinking anyway. But also, myriad things come forth and experience themselves, and Dogen says that's awakening. So it now is me. So this is describing suchness, and suchness actually is the interaction of those two, all of it. That there is this ultimate, that now is each one of us, and that also I'm not it. One very easy misunderstanding of that last part

[13:24]

carrying yourself forward to experience myriad things, that is awakening, or it now is me, is that we can think that's outside, too. We can turn that into an object. We can turn suchness into an object. Suchness is not a thing, just like emptiness is not a thing. Emptiness is the way things are. Suchness is the way things are. So that the myriad things come forth, the so-called things come forth, and experience themselves together. You are part of that. So we don't control the myriad things, and yet we're responsible for everything right now, each one of us, in our own particular limited way. Just this or suchness is not passive. It's very dynamic. It's alive. It's alive. And actually, we are alive. So it's not one of the traditional traps in Buddhist practices to think that just this means to accept everything just as it is, and that's enough.

[14:36]

It actually is you. So each of us needs to express that in some way. And it may be just sitting quietly. In fact, that's our main practice. So it's not that you have to go around trying to fix things, but we are part of the it that is now you. So this is a very subtle story, and it works in various ways, and we see it echoed in various ways. In our actual practice and in all the other stories, part of what's going on with these stories, these are our kind of family jewels, our treasures, and it's up to us to bring them alive. So we can look at the many commentaries about them. But going back to the initial story, There's something funny going on with the language there.

[15:44]

When Yunyan said, just this is it, that pronoun that I translated just now as it can be an impersonal pronoun in Chinese. It also could be personal, like It now is him, or it now is her. So Dongshan's saying could be translated as, just this person. Just this person. Just you, as it is, sitting there. Just this person. And the same for Dongshan's poem. where he says, I now go on alone. Everywhere I meet it, that it is a different pronoun, but it also can be personal or impersonal. So everywhere I meet him, you could say. So he now is me. I now am not him. There's a teaching here about teaching.

[16:49]

So Dongshan said that about his teacher. But part of suchness, in some mysterious way, is that it includes something about how to convey that, how to offer that, how to share that or express that in the world. So Jungian also said, you are now responsible. In charge of this great matter, you must be most thoroughgoing. Something about this suchness itself has to do with how it is conveyed. So a lot of the stories about Dongshan are about him as a teacher later and all the various subtle ways in which he was helping his students to understand or to realize or to express suchness for themselves. So again, he also said, if you search outside, don't seek from others or you'll be far estranged from self. your responsibility to the myriad things coming forth and experiencing themselves is to somehow feel that, express that.

[18:07]

When we sit zazen, we get a glimpse of that, maybe out of the corner of our cushion or something. It's what brought you all here. even if you're here for the first time, some interest in how to live clearly and uprightly. But also, everywhere I meet him, I am not him, but he now is me. We can play with this story in lots and lots of ways. There are lots of implications to this. And that's part of how these stories work too, that over the centuries, and still today, many people comment on these stories. So Suzuki Roshi, our founder in America, who founded San Francisco Zen Center, had a different take on this story, and it's helpful, I think.

[19:11]

So he was telling this story once at Tassajara. So this is from the wonderful Suzuki Roshi archives that the Zen Center has. And he said, He was talking about this same story, about Dongshan leaving Yunnan, and he said that this is the practice, this suchness is the practice of everywhere meeting oneself. So he paraphrased the story to say, 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. 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 warm-hearted feeling, that's you. So this is another spin on how the self is transformed and how the self is reflected, and how those reflections are you.

[20:20]

So this is a story about each one of us. These stories that we tell from a thousand years ago or whatever, we keep telling them because they're about us. And actually, just as a footnote, we don't really know what Dongshan said. The scholars think that a lot of the great sayings from the 800s, from Dongshan and Zhaozhou and so forth, maybe they were made up in the 1000s or 1100s or at least embellished. It doesn't really matter. It's possible that the stories were kept alive person to person, but they weren't written down for quite a while later sometimes. But this is still Dongshan, all these stories. We don't know if he actually wrote the Shakespeare plays or if somebody else by the same name wrote them, but still we study the plays. We enjoy the plays. We go watch. So, same with Dongshan. There's all these stories, and this is our family legacy.

[21:22]

These are stories that are about our practice, our teaching tradition, that we're now keeping alive here today. So Suzuki Roshi also said, I think this may have been several days later or weeks later, when he was back at City Center, he said, don't try to see yourself objectively. as if there was some I that is an object. Don't try to see yourself objectively. And then he read that other line, I go my own way, wherever I go I meet myself. So this story is about each one of us, too. And all those images of ourselves, they're not us, and yet there's this really dynamic, tender relationship going on. I like the saying by the British poet William Blake, who said, everything that can be imagined is an image of the truth.

[22:28]

So we see, we have stories about ourself, and they're not me, they're not it, but we identify with some self, and that's not ultimately true, and yet, there's this interesting dynamic that's at work in this teaching of non-self. So I want to tell one of the other stories about Dongshan. So a lot of the stories are about how we meet this ultimate suchness, this ultimate reality, You know, anything I say about it isn't it, right? But how do we meet the unconditioned, that which is not caught up in our conditioning, in our ideas about ourselves and the world? So there are numbers of stories about that. One of them, a monk came to Dongshan and asked, which of the three bodies of Buddha does not fall into any category?

[23:38]

Dongson said, I am always close to this. So that final this, I am always close to this, might just refer to that kind of Buddha body that's beyond categories, or it might refer to the whole question, not falling into some conditioned reality. These three bodies of Buddha, so some of you know, there's technical names for them, the Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, what they mean, as Buddhism developed, there were many ways of trying to express what is Buddha. So this was one of them that developed, and now we have, we could say many Buddhas, not just three bodies, but anyway. So one of them is the historical incarnated body of Buddha, a particular person, like Shakyamuni Buddha, who is Buddha. Another is the Dharmakaya, which is everything in the whole universe, and everything beyond the universe, and everything you think, and everything you feel and see, and everything, all of your ideas and feelings, and every object you can imagine, as Buddha, as the body of Buddha that is all of phenomena, but kind of imbued with this awakened

[25:09]

generative capacity. So that's Dharmakaya, that's the second body of Buddha, and then there's a third body which is like Amida Buddha and the Medicine Buddha and many other Buddhas in that are venerated in Asian Buddhism, and some here. These are beings that, thanks to their practice, have entered into kind of meditative heavens and are around, they're kind of spirits. Anyway, this is a traditional teaching about different kinds of Buddha, three bodies of Buddha, and this monk is asking this It might seem like a silly question, but it's an interesting question. Which of these doesn't fall into any categories? Dongshan said, I'm always close to this. It's also kind of an ironic question. Even to distinguish bodies of Buddha is to create categories. So how does Buddha not fall into categories?

[26:14]

Into this and not that, and that and not this. Already we're dividing up the world. But one point of the question is the search for that which might go beyond categories, beyond our conditions or limitations. And there are other stories that Dongshan has about this. He tells his students at the end of a practice period, go now, leave the monastery and go someplace where there's not a blade of grass for 10,000 miles. And one teacher commented, as soon as you step out the gate, of course, there's grass. And actually, it means weeds. It didn't have lawns in China. And another teacher said, even before you go out the gate, there's weeds. So while you're sitting on your cushion, mine weeds appear. Anyway. So how do we not get caught up in conditions and limitations and stages of practice?

[27:20]

So many stories, he talks about justice and such, and it says right here. It's not about something that you will, you know, if you practice long enough, eventually you'll experience, you know, eventually you'll realize. No, it's right here now. And of course that can develop and unfold in our life of practice, but our practice isn't about trying to get someplace else. But that's actually the focus of other stories. So, okay, Dongshan said, I'm always close to this, or it could be read as, I'm always intimate with this. In his introduction to the story, Wansong, so the Book of Serenity, tells the story, and those are stories and verses by Hongzhe, the great teacher in the 1100s, and then they were put together by a later teacher in Wansong. In his introduction to the story, he says, he refers to some of the teachers who he mentions in the commentary, but then he says,

[28:29]

The ancient sayings were so subtle. Where is the technique to help people? So all of these stories and all of these, you know, they're not just word games or something. They're about how do we help ourselves and each other and others to let go of, to be free of suffering, to awaken to this suchness. These stories are tricky, and some of them might appeal to you, and some of them might be just abstruse. So skip those. Go to the... or ask a teacher about them or something. But anyway, we have all these... this legacy of all these stories to play with. So how do the stories about Dongshan exemplify compassion? How are they helpful? So this, I'm always close to this, is really interesting.

[29:35]

And Wang Song in his commentary also quotes another poem that says, this closeness is heart-rending if you search outside. Remember Dong Shan said, if you look outside, you get far away from self. Then this poem says, why does the ultimate familiarity seem like enmity? So this is kind of teaching about various levels of intimacy, various aspects of intimacy. This closeness is heart-rending if you search outside. Why does the ultimate familiarity seem like enmity? Enmity is a kind of a more polite word maybe for hostility or aggression even. But still, staying close, Dronchana says, I'm always close to this. He's pointing to a kind of intimacy, or perhaps various kinds of intimacy, where we are vulnerable to having our hearts broken.

[30:45]

That's one traditional description of the Bodhisattva. She's willing to have her heart broken again and again. We are willing to be in the world, in the boat of suffering, just to help and to ask, where's the technique to help people? So staying close, remaining present in the middle of uncertainty, discomfort, vulnerability, requires a kind of patience. and a capacity that actually is very empowering if it is sustained. So if we're willing to stay close to that tenderness of not knowing who we are, of knowing that suchness is us, but just this is us, but how do we take care of that? If we're willing to sit in the middle of the question of all of the difficulties and problems that are part of our everyday life during the week, then just stay present and upright.

[31:47]

And take another breath, please. Enjoy your breathing. Enjoy your posture. Just this is it. If we can do this regularly, where we're not trying to push things around, where we're not trying to create more things, but we're just Whatever happens is okay, and we're paying attention. There's this kind of vulnerable intimacy there, this ultimate familiarity, which may seem like enmity. And when we are truly close to someone, some supposed other, whether it's a spouse or a romantic partner or a child or a parent or a teacher or a disciple, when we feel this tension of this closeness in any intimate relationship, the other may feel closer than oneself, yet right in that intimacy we may feel sometimes some enmity, some tension, some, this is too, I can't stand this, it's too close, this is close to my teacher.

[32:52]

So this love-hate tension is familiar in various ways. Staying close isn't easy, whoever are familiar. So Dongshun said, I'm always close to this, about this question of not being caught in categories. So I would ask each of you, what is it that you are willing to be always close with? Which issue in your practice are you willing to stay close with? What are you always close with? What are you always familiar with? So it's worth taking some time to feel what that is for you. So the last thing I want to talk about is just a line in the verse commentary on this story by Hongzhe, who lived in the 1100s and wrote verses about these stories, a number of them from Dongshan, in his collection called The Book of Serenity.

[34:13]

So I'll read the whole verse that Hongzhi said about Dongshan always being close. Not entering the world, not following conditions, in the emptiness of the pot of ages, there's a family tradition. White duckweeds, breeze gentle, evening on an autumn river. An ancient embankment, the boat returns, a single stretch of haze. And maybe I'll read it again. Not entering the world, not following conditions, in the emptiness of the pot of ages, there's a family tradition. White duckweeds breeze gentle evening on an autumn river. An ancient embankment, the boat returns a single stretch of haze. So I really like that poem and I can say a lot about it, but I'm just going to talk about one line. He says, in the emptiness of the pot of ages, there's a family tradition. So the word pot there is like a food pot, and he calls it the pot of ages or the pot of kalpas, and he says there's a family tradition there in the emptiness of that pot.

[35:33]

So this is kind of mysterious. How can we find nourishment from a food pot that is literally empty? In our Buddhist context, maybe this pot is filled with emptiness. which is just the other side of suchness. you know, part of the point of these stories is to play with them, and this word, this empty pot, the word for empty is the same word that's in the Heart Sutra for form and emptiness, but it also means spaciousness, space or sky. So Dogen comments on it in a few places, but in some cases he talks about it in terms of the sky, so we could hear this line as, in the spaciousness of the pot of Kalpas, there's a family tradition, a family legacy. So this family tradition celebrated by Hongxue reflects the spaciousness opened up by our engagement with suchness and Dongshan's engagement with suchness and his looking down into the stream.

[36:47]

Dongshan's lineage, which includes us, is clearly encouraged in this story by the willingness to simply stay close to this question of going beyond categories. How do we find the emptiness of this pot of ages, which is available right here? This spacious pot of... There's not much to it, in a way. Even though there are all kinds of wonderful new developments here at Green Gulch since I last was here. It's wonderful to see. And yet, that's not it. Although it actually is this. How do we see this tension, this interesting space? So the renewal of a spiritual lineage, the meaning of Dongshan's ongoing practice of suchness, can occur only as it is conveyed anew in each new situation, in each age and new culture.

[37:59]

even as it arrives within the world, it must go beyond the current fashions and conventions and conditions and limitations to some depth shared in the primal experience of those who commune with just this, and gaze into its spacious vessel. Just then, some new flower can blossom as such. These stories about Dongshan and his students and his teachers and many other teaching stories are nourishment for us. They're encouragements for us to stay close to our own dynamic engagement with just this. Just this, isn't it? And then how is that conveyed?

[39:03]

And how do we meet it? How do we meet her or him who shares it with us? So we need to make these stories, or what Dongshan is asking of us, I would say, is to make these stories our own. So in the book I have my own commentaries, but I also have commentaries by Dogen and Hongzhe and Suzuki Roshi. but also Jack London and Lewis Carroll and Donovan Leach and Krishnamurti and Bill McKibben. I all have commentaries of theirs on Dongshan stories and Grace Slick and Joni Mitchell and Hank Williams. So the point is to play with these stories, to bring them back to what do they have to do with us? These are not historical artifacts. These are not some philosophical, strange, theoretical expressions.

[40:09]

How do we play with these images and play with bringing them into our own lives and using them? That's what they're for. Thank you all very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:56]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_94.3