Good morning. Can you hear back there? Good. Well, we are well into the practice period that Sojan Roshi is leading and that Andrea is serving as a shuso at Sojan's right hand. And it seems like a couple of themes have been marked out for this practice period, and I'm going to try to talk about them to some extent, but hopefully different, coming from a different tact than Sojan Roshi and the shiso. We've been talking, there have been sort of two signal koans that have come up in the first couple of weeks. is surgeons in search of Russia's class.

[01:03]

Somehow in the last two months, I don't know exactly the last few months. I don't know exactly how it came up, but you've developed a passion and an interest for looking at the various manifestations of light. All right. All right. OK. So it's not in the last two months. and that may either simultaneously come from or be the cause of the fact that in an earlier turning of this life itself Sojin was a painter and painters deal in light light and color form and the form in essence. So the koan that he began, I'm just going to read a little bit, I'm not going to, I'm just going to refer to this, it's case 86 of the blue cliff record.

[02:15]

Zen master Yunmin gave an instruction saying, everyone has his or her own light. If you want to see it, you can't. The darkness is dark, dark. Now, what is your light? And there's a further unwinding of this koan, but he's been talking about that. But every person has his or her own light. The koan that he gave The Shuso to talk about is from case 19 in the Wumankan, in which Joshu, Jiaozhou, the famous Zen master, at the time a young man, I believe, of about 19, asked his teacher, Nansen, what is the way?

[03:21]

And Nansen, or what is the Tao, Tao or Do translates as, we translate it as way, it's actually more, I think it's more complex than that. But, what is the way? And Nansen replied, ordinary mind is the way. And there, again I'm not going to explicate this cause that's your job, but that word ordinary is Maybe it's ordinary, maybe it's not so ordinary, whatever it means. So ordinary mind is the way. And Joshu asked, shall I try to seek after it? And Nansen replied, if you try for it, you will become separated from it. So these I think are, these are threads that are weaving together in our practice period.

[04:24]

So I'm going to talk about and vocalize in various ways about light and perhaps about darkness today. I was thinking in discussions with a couple of people who've been around here for a long time, one person's question was, why are we studying this? What's the use of it? It didn't resonate with this person, the question of light. I'm paraphrasing people. Another person the next day said, oh, this is the most exciting thing we've ever studied. I'm so glad we're studying this. This is completely relevant to my life. I'm so glad. So there's your question. It brackets the range of concern.

[05:35]

But it's helped me to think, well, what does this mean to me? For some reason, two things that came very quickly to mind. One was the purported last words of Goethe, the German Poet, novelist, playwright. When he died in 1832, his last words were, more light. Now, actually, he wanted the servant to open the shutters. But he said, he called to a servant and said, more light. And then he traced a word in the air. and he moved in his chair, and then he died, leaving behind a kind of this literary koan.

[06:50]

His last words were koan, more light. What was it that he was seeking? What was it that he had manifested all of his life? and that he was not ready to do without even at the last moment. I think my attitude towards light and the utility of it is probably most best articulated in a song. And you all know it. I'm going to sing it. You're going to sing it. And we will be relieved from our ordinary chanting style, which is, I often like to characterize it as, our chanting style is one note that goes flat.

[08:00]

This has a melody, and you can... You will all know it. Why when you move from one room to another, Because the guitar always re-tunes itself, or de-tunes itself. Well, this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.

[09:09]

Yes, this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. Well, everywhere I go, I'm gonna let it shine. Yes, everywhere I go, I'm gonna let it shine. Sing louder than that. Everywhere I go, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine. You gotta sing so they can hear you at the Harriet Tubman house. Well, when I see my neighbor coming, I'm gonna let it shine. Yes, when I see my neighbor coming, I'm gonna let it shine, I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

[10:14]

Will this be like mine? I'm gonna let it shine Yes, this be like mine I'm gonna let it shine This be like mine I'm gonna let it shine Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine Well, when I'm in the sand, oh, I'm gonna let it shine. Yes, when I'm in the sand, oh, I'm gonna let it shine. When I'm in the sand, oh, I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. One more time. Well, this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. If this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. If this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.

[11:23]

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. So just some background on the song. The song was written by a gentleman by the name of Harry Dixon Loews in about 1920. It was written as a gospel children's song. People think it's a very old song, but actually it's not a spiritual. It was composed in the 20s, but it's still embedded in the rhetoric and language of the gospel tradition. And then it sort of made its appearance. It was collected by this guy named John Lomax in Texas in 1939 for the Library of Congress.

[12:26]

Actually, that recording is online. I listened to it the other day. It's just gorgeous. Slightly different melody. It's a young African-American woman singing. It is so sweet and, you know, just cuts right to the heart. And then it was incorporated into, it sort of made its way into the civil rights movement by way of a place called the Highlander Center outside of Knoxville, Tennessee, and then became, as did We Shall Overcome and We Shall Not Be Moved, all of which were traditional songs. sort of entered through this process of dissemination. But where the psalm comes from, I think, is very interesting. I didn't know the verse of Gospel, and I think it's relevant to what we're talking about. From the Gospel of Matthew 5.16,

[13:31]

This kind of resonates with what we've been talking about. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before people. that they may see fine works and give glory to God who is in heaven. So I really appreciated hearing, reading this verse, you are the light of the world, a city on the hill cannot be hidden. This is the same kind of spiritual language I think that we find in in Yunmin, saying everyone has his own mind.

[14:41]

There's a resonance there that I think it flows through all of the, so many of the spiritual traditions, all the spiritual traditions. And it's also true, Catherine reminded me about, you know, so the Buddha here, has a halo. This is a very common iconographic element in Buddhism, but you also find it, I was doing a little research, of course we can recognize it from medieval Renaissance painting, where all the Christian religious figures have halos, but you also see it in Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Indian iconography.

[15:47]

You know, sometimes highly stylized, but where did that come from? That came from, I believe, people perceiving the people perceiving the light that each of us particularly they were seeing it in these religious figures but in our way of thinking everyone carries or embodies this light and the light I think I think one of the reasons that we are studying this is simultaneously to understand ourselves this is what I'm studying anyway to understand myself even though I cannot see my own light I can't see it you can't see it but if you look really carefully

[17:03]

even in the ordinary things of our day sometimes you can see, you can catch a glimpse of the reflection of your light in others and you can very clearly see their light so we may not, as some people actually see these halos and auras I'm not I'm not one of them, but this matter of each being having their own life is compelling to me. In the song, there's an activity implied in the light. This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

[18:11]

It's there. I'm going to uncover it. You know, it's interesting, I was looking merging of unity or difference. And it's like, some kinds of Zen topics, whenever you Google them, at this point in time, often the first or second or third thing that comes up, if you're talking about the Sandakai or some Soto text, is a lecture by Sojin Roshi, that comes up very frequently. I don't know if any of you have done those searches. So there's a lecture that that you gave in Rohatsu Seshina of 2000 and where you were referring to, what you said was, I think it is very important to always look at the other side or look underneath this covering, this emotional or intellectual covering.

[19:31]

So in order to let your light, this little light of mine shine, I have to remove the coverings, which means I have to see what they are. This is precisely the activity, this is the main activity we do in this room. removing the coverings, removing the husk and shell of our thinking, of our beliefs, of the ideas that we have about our personality. These ideas that we have, all they do is mask the light. And what the song is saying, this little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

[20:33]

In the gospel, Christ is saying, you are the light of the world. So you have to remove these coverings of various afflictions of mind, greed, anger, delusion, in our terms, in order to let that light shine forth. And when that light shines forth, then it's a liberative force for all beings. So this light, what Sojourner Motion was calling, as we were studying at the Fast School of Dogens last week, divine light or radiance, the divine, whatever we call divine, without getting into a lot of technicalities, lives, it is manifested within us and comes forth from us. And it's interesting because there's a lot of... I went through a whole bunch of songs.

[21:35]

And I realized that they all... They all were talking from the other direction. I won't say they were talking about something else. But some of my favorite songs... There's a gospel song called Light from the Lighthouse. Let it shine on me, let it shine on me, let the light from the lighthouse shine on me. That's the divine light from outside shining, perhaps resonating so that you come alive and meet it with your own light. But it's still, there's some directionality from above. another song similar to Krishna, let the light shine down on me. It's like, it's not saying what Jesus is saying here, you are the light of the world.

[22:37]

He's saying you have to become a vessel for this light that God is shining down on you. And that's not That's not particularly our way. That's actually not what we're working on. We're working on this matter of being the light of the world ourselves. Let that light shine down. Let that light shine from within. That light that actually exists everywhere. That pervades the universe. As a child, I was afraid of the darkness. I slept in a room and I had to have the light on in the bathroom.

[23:45]

and even in that with that small amount of illumination I felt that the darkness was very close and in that darkness was everything fearful that I could conceivably imagine and I'm remembering now that every, I think probably until I was six or seven, I slept in a room upstairs in the house and at some point in the night I would call my father who was sleeping downstairs and I needed him for reassurance and so he would come upstairs and basically just put me back to bed but he would bring he would bring the light of his presence the light of his confidence the light of his love into the room and dispel the fears that I found in the darkness for some reason I was thinking of that today

[25:14]

And now I find the darkness very comforting. So there's, in Zen there's a couple of ways that we talk about light and darkness. They seem to be, you could imagine them as contradictory, but they aren't. And we talk about, in this way that we've been talking in our classes, we're actually talking about light as enlightenment. as the activity of enlightenment. As we're saying, it's not like you're looking, you're aspiring to reach a place where I'm just sitting here, oh, just glowing and radiating, and isn't it good? And everybody will benefit from my radiant presence. I don't think that's happened yet, right? This light comes with obligation of activity.

[26:24]

It comes with the Bodhisattva's vow to save all beings. And even though you don't know how to do that, and it's an impossibly vast task, one is continually coming from one's own inner resources to bring that forth, and to allow some light even if you can't see it yourself, to allow some light to enter into the lives of people who need it. To be, in a sense, you know, we have one of our texts that we read is called The Transmission of Light, and it's the record of how It's a record of our lineage, how this enlightened nature was transmitted from one person to the other. And I think this is what is not the rarefied work of just these Zen masters, but it's the ordinary way of our Zen life.

[27:39]

Ordinary mind is the way. that ordinary mind was just my father responding to my call from the top of the stairs every night and never showing the slightest irritation or annoyance or, you know, I've been called out of his bed in the middle of the night never had any feeling that this was burdensome to him. And so he would come. That is the transmission of life. Each of us is capable of doing this in an infinite number of ways in our life. And in that sense, dispelling which was not necessarily, that's not the true darkness.

[28:50]

But it's what, as a child, I was worried over what I felt rising. So, we talk about, in one sense we talk about light as enlightenment, as enlightened activity, and we talk about darkness as delusion. When we chant the Sandokaya, the merging of difference and unity, that is a text that kind of unpacks and also deconstructs this notion that we have of light as differentiation, so in the light you can see everything in its uniqueness and difference, and darkness as So light is differentiation or relativeness, and darkness as kind of unification or sameness or absolute.

[29:56]

It's not, these are not, so in the Sanda Gaya, the verse, the part that's there is light, but don't see it as light. Light and darkness oppose one another, like front and back foot in walking. I'm not crazy about that translation actually, oppose. You could also say light and darkness complete one another, like front and back foot in walking. If you don't have two feet, Well, you can hop, but you can't walk. So, the complete activity involves both of these aspects. I would recommend to you

[30:59]

Sandokai. And he talks about the words in Japanese implying this very close, he says, there is a very close relationship between light and darkness. But it's also, he then goes on, there's a wonderful metaphor he talks about, preparing, I guess they were preparing food for Ed Brown's wedding. So in the light, you may dish out various foods separately, putting them on different plates. This is soup, this is salad, this is dessert. That's the light. This is the light of differentiation. But when you eat, various foods we mix up in your tummy, then there is no soup, no bread, no dessert.

[32:25]

At that time, they all work together. So in the darkness of your belly, as you're churning around with the digestive juices, there is activity. And that activity is taking place in the darkness. when it isn't in your tummy, it is darkness. But even in darkness there is still lettuce and soup and everything. The food is the same only as it changes its form. Only as it changes its form does it start to work. In utter darkness things happen that way. So, we can't separate this light and dark quite so clearly. And yet we have to manifest We have to manifest this light. I'm going to close with a poem that Bob Roosevelt gave me, sent me this week.

[33:31]

I don't know, there's lots to talk about. Also, just, anyway, I was thinking also today of, in the realm of activity, the Dylan Thomas poem. do not go gentle into that good night. Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." I'm not going to read that whole poem, but it's just It's exactly what Goethe was saying. More light. How do you bring forth light as long as you're alive? In every moment. But the poem... I'm a little distracted. The poem that Bob sent me... And where is it? Oh, here it is. It's by Wendell Berry.

[34:33]

It's very short. To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark, go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings. To go in the dark with the light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark, go without sight, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings. Maybe there's time for just a few comments or thoughts on your part. I'm not going to tie this all together. You opened with a rhetorical question about why is it that your guitar changed its tune when it went to another root.

[35:42]

And what came up for me is a question for you, which is, why do we change our tune when we leave this room? Oh, that's a good question. I don't think it's the same answer, though. Although maybe it is. The guitar changed its tuning because it essentially went from a warm space up in my attic got knocked, so it's causes and conditions. That's true for us. It's also causes and conditions, right? But the guitar has no delusions, I don't think. It depends on whether you think it's a sentient being or not. It's a responsive being. But we think there's a difference between this room

[36:44]

and outside this room, right? We think that, oh, maybe things are more special or more rarefied or something. There's some difference that we think of between this room and outside this room, and then even more outside the gate, which is why our practice, when we leave this room, Ordinary Zen practice, you would turn towards the altar and bow, as if you were finishing something and moving from one space to another. And our practice, that I think was Sogen Roshi's invention, was we stand at the door and basically we give a little shashu bow. And the door is just a portal. actually, we're just moving from one room of the world into another.

[37:48]

We acknowledge that we're going through a portal, but it's not different. So that's kind of where I would go with that. I wanted to tell my favorite flight story from Zen. It's in Kazu's book about Hakuin. So he was giving a lecture and this uneducated, illiterate old lady, she's listening in the back row, and he's telling that if you have some kind of experience, then this light will fill your whole body and everything will be light. So she goes home, and she's washing pots and pans, and she has this experience. Wow! She goes rushing over to the monastery, and she rushes up to Hakuin, and she says, it happened to I! And she's still got a pot in her hand, and she says, it happened! The light just came crashing through my body and everything's all light. So he says, kind of squinting, he says, you're no light up your asshole.

[38:51]

And she goes, hey man, you're not enlightened yet. And the rest is commentary. Someone else? You brought to mind a scene in a video on M.C. Richards, and she's talking about a plant. Who is she? M.C. Richards did a book during the 60s called Central Range. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And my husband, friends and friends of hers, very late in her life, and we got this wonderful video. But in it, she's talking about a plant. The plant having this great spread above the ground and also the plant having this great spread below the ground in the darkness is pretty much equal to what's up above. And she said there is a point, and the point is conceded to be one cell thickness between where the plant reaches for the dark and where it reaches for the light.

[40:04]

And that one cell, she said, is where all creativity starts. There's another thing that I'm remembering, thank you for that, Akin Roshi often talked about, I think he talked about that book and that work, and the concept that I think he drew from it, if I'm remembering correctly, was complementarity. That the complementarity of dark and light, how these things work together to create the whole without one or another of which it would be incomplete. Is there anything you would like to add before we close? Well, when you were talking about the koan of Ordinary Mind is the Way, and you talked about You said if you go for it, you know, you don't go for it.

[41:19]

That's what I say. But I think you forgot to say if you don't go for it. Right. No, I didn't say that. I won. Yeah. Maybe you did. You're saving it. Yeah, I was saving it for you. I didn't want to. I didn't want. But but you're right. It was incomplete. But could you just say that? But if you don't go for it, nothing happens. Right. Right. So, yes, I wasn't trying to. Well, no, I didn't. Right. But it's sometimes when you say something, we say something, you know, we're talking about one aspect of them. We want to get on with it. We forget to say. Right. Right. Thank you. Two more. Then we have to stop. Michael. But in the same vein, you were talking about removing what hides the light, the greed, the anger, many other things.

[42:20]

And to remove them, you have to be close to them, you have to be with them. It's the same kind of paradox. Yes, and I think the paradox where I would take it also, and I thought this even as I was talking, is There's light within those states as well. There's light even within affliction, even within our greed, within our anger. There's light if we can turn it. If we can see it as light, as energy, then we can benefit others. If not, then we're caught in that path. You said you didn't like this one versus translations on the high, like front and back.

[43:21]

Opposed from the opposing one another. A word, an alternative that occurred to me is juxtapose. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that those the front and back foot to each other in some way, and we meet them both. They're not in conflict. They're not in conflict. Opposed connotation. I don't know what the actual word is in the Chinese. Well, thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of this day and this holiday weekend, right? And we'll meet. Two nights to linger in the darkness. for his Texas students.

[44:19]

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