Tonight's chant is Harmony of Difference and Sameness. I will share my screen. We will be starting with the repentance verse, which we'll do three times, and then I will announce the chant, and we can all chant it together. All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion born from body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow.

[01:02]

All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion born from body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. The harmony of difference and sameness, The mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted from east to west. While human faculties are sharp or dull, the way has no northern or southern ancestors. The spiritual source shines clear in the light. The branching streams flow on in the dark. Grasping at things is surely delusion. According with sameness is still not enlightenment. All the objects of the senses interact, and yet they do not.

[02:06]

Interacting brings involvement. Otherwise, each keeps its place. Sights vary in quality and form. Sounds differs, pleasing or harsh. Refined and common speech come together in the dark. Clear and murky phrases are distinguished in the light. The four elements return to their natures just as a child turns to its mother. Fire heats. Wind moves. Water wets. Earth is solid. Eye incites. Ear and sounds. Nose and smells. Taste and tongue. With thus, with each and everything, depending on these roots, the leaves spread forth. Trunk and branches share the essence, revered and common. Each has its speech. In the light there is darkness, but don't take it as darkness. In the dark there is light, but don't see it as light. Light and darkness oppose one another like the front and back foot in walking. Each of the myriad things has its merit expressed according to function and place.

[03:10]

Phenomena exist. Box and lid fit. Principle responds. Arrow points meet. Hearing the words, understand the meaning. Don't set up standards of your own. If you don't understand the way right before you, how will you know the path as you walk? Progress is not a matter of far or near, but if you are confused, mountains and rivers block your way. I respectfully urge you who study the mystery, do not pass your days and nights in vain. May all awakened beings extend with true compassion their luminous mirror wisdom. With full awareness we have chanted the harmony of difference and sameness. We dedicate this merit to our original ancestor in India, a great teacher, Shakyamuni Buddha. Our first woman ancestor, great teacher, Maha Prajapati.

[04:15]

Our first ancestor in China, great teacher, Bodhidharma. Our first ancestor in Japan, great teacher, Eihei Dogen. Our first ancestor in America, great teacher, Shogako Shunryu. The perfect wisdom, Bodhisattva Manjushri. To the well-being of all those afflicted with ills and to peace pervading for all peoples of the world, gratefully we offer this virtue to all beings. All Buddhas throughout space and time. All honored ones, Bodhisattvas, Mahasattvas. Wisdom beyond wisdom. Thank you all.

[05:35]

Good evening. I would like to continue this evening on a theme that our guest speaker yesterday morning, Dale Wright, who some of you heard started about non-duality. And this evening I want to talk about the ultimate non-duality or the non-duality of duality and non-duality. So some of you were here yesterday morning when Dale Wright, who's a very fine scholar and a practitioner, was here from Southern California and talked about the Vimalakirti Sutra and one of the really seminal texts about non-duality from the Vimalakirti Sutra.

[06:39]

And actually, I'm going to refer to it really as a way of talking about some of the primary dualities. So he quoted the chapter on the Dharma door of non-duality. And just to echo his recommendation for the Robert Thurman translation of that sutra. And it's a very entertaining sutra. There's a lot that happens in it. He went into it some. I won't go into that. But one of the central chapters, the most famous chapters, is a challenge to a number of bodhisattvas gathered in Vimalakirti's room. And it's really a very entertaining sutra, one of the most entertaining. But anyway, they're asked, the bodhisattvas, to please express how they entered the Dharma gates.

[07:47]

So we talk about entering Dharma gates in our bodhisattva vows, the Dharma gate of non-duality. And so I want to actually, and these are great bodhisattvas, and I want to actually just refer to a few of them as a way of talking about dualities. So they talk about various dualities that they have claimed that they say they have transcended. So just for example, the duality of distraction and attention, which some of you have probably faced in your zazen. The duality, excuse me, of grasping and non-grasping. The duality of happiness and misery, certainly an apparent duality. The duality of self and selflessness.

[08:52]

The duality of matter and voidness. The duality of, let's see, the four elements and space element, matter and space. And there are many others here. And each of the bodhisattvas talks about how they confronted this duality and got beyond it. And finally, Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, who is kind of the questioner of the Malakirti, the great enlightened layman in Buddha's time, according to the sutra, said,

[09:53]

Good sirs, you have all spoken well. Nevertheless, all your explanations are themselves dualistic. To know no one teaching, to express nothing, to say nothing, to explain nothing, to announce nothing, to indicate nothing, and to designate nothing, that is the entrance into non-duality. So then the Crown Prince Manjushri, the great bodhisattva of wisdom, turns to the Malakirti, the great enlightened layman, and says, We have all given our own teachings, noble sir. Now may you elucidate the teaching of the entrance into the principle of non-duality. Thereupon, Malakirti kept his silence, saying nothing at all. So Dale Wright talked about this yesterday, and this is known as the great thunderous silence of the Malakirti, not saying anything. So that's a very popular expression of non-duality in Zen,

[10:55]

and of course we have been sitting in silence, expressing non-duality. But actually, in our tradition, it's not quite good enough. So, what is non-duality? What is true non-duality? We tend to think, it's easy to think of non-duality as the opposite of all those dualities. But the ultimate non-duality is not the opposite of duality. And we tend to think that ultimate non-duality is like oneness, as opposed to the dualities of this and that, good and bad, pure and impure, distraction and attention and so forth. So I think that's pretty common, that spiritual seekers look for oneness.

[12:00]

So, that's not the goal of our practice. There are many spiritual practices that do seek for unity, oneness. So, this song is called Harmony of Difference and Sameness, that we have just chanted. One of the key lines says that things and objects and duality is surely delusion, but according with sameness is still not enlightenment. So, merging with sameness, merging with oneness is still not awakening. And to talk about duality and non-duality in terms of difference and sameness clarifies things. So, sameness is all things are the same, all things are one, all things are equal.

[13:08]

Difference, of course, we know, making distinctions. And yet, the ultimate non-duality, the non-duality in the Soto tradition, Dogen talks about this a lot, who brought this tradition to Japan, but it goes back to Shito or Sekito who wrote the Harmony of Difference and Sameness. He lived in the 700s. The point is to harmonize these two sides of sameness and difference. So, of course, people in the world grasp after things, grasp after differences, make distinctions, try and judge and assess different qualities and grade things, grade accomplishments, grade different qualities of things, make distinctions.

[14:12]

And I think when we come to spiritual practice, we see that that kind of competitiveness that that leads to does not lead to ultimate relief of suffering. And so we might want, you know, sameness, but that's not it either. So, this harmonizing of sameness and difference is actually an important point. We can talk about these two sides in various ways. So, in our tradition, the side of sameness or oneness, you know, we can talk about that in terms of the, sometimes it's talked about in terms of the absolute, which is a little philosophical. I like talking about it in terms of the universal or the ultimate. And part of what Zazen and practice on and off the cushion offers us is some sense of that,

[15:16]

some sense of something that goes beyond the universal, the ultimate. The other side, the differences are, we could say, call them the particulars or the phenomenal world, phenomenon. So, a few generations after Shuto, who wrote the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, was Dongshan, Tozan in Japanese, who wrote the Jewel Marriage Samadhi, we also chant sometimes. And that introduces a whole teaching of the five degrees or five ranks, that's kind of the background of Shuto Zen. The point of that is, again, this integration of sameness and difference. The point of our practice is to get some sense of the ultimate, of the universal, which we do. You know, if you sit, if you do this Zazen practice regularly, we have some taste of that.

[16:23]

And maybe you get more of a taste of it if you do Sashin or longer sittings, but just in regular everyday or regular sittings, we get some sense of that. But then the point isn't to merge with sameness. The point isn't to realize oneness and attach to oneness, but to integrate that, to harmonize that with the phenomenal world, with all the differences, all the distinctions that are part of our life. So this harmonizing difference and sameness and this integration of the universal and the particulars is the point, is the dynamic, the dialectic of our practice. And the five degrees is a way of talking about the five-fold aspect of that,

[17:28]

which is expressed in the Song of the Jewel Meru Samadhi, the Song of the Precious Meru Samadhi. So Dogen talks about it as well. Wade, could you put up the screen share of the Genjo Ko on just the first paragraph? So Dogen talks about it. Dogen specifically does not recommend the five degrees as a system, because in the history of Soto, and actually it's used in Rinzai too, in its basic dynamic of Zen practice in a way, the basic philosophical background, but it can become too much of a formula. And can everybody see that? I don't know, Wade, if you can magnify that some. If not, that's okay. But I'll read it too. So this is the beginning of one of Dogen's – thank you, that's great, perfect –

[18:36]

one of Dogen's most famous writings. We chant this sometimes too. It's longer, so we don't chant it as often. So Dogen says, As all things are buddhahood, there is delusion and realization, practice, birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings. This is the side of distinctions. There's buddhas and there's sentient beings. There's buddhas and there's deluded beings, we can say. This is the side of difference. All things are the expression of this. So there's delusion and realization. There's delusion and awakening. There's birth, there's death. Of course, this is the world we live in. It's not that this is not true, but this is the world of differences. Then he says, As the myriad things are without an abiding self,

[19:37]

as there is – we have the teaching of non-self, and Dale talked about this yesterday too, and for those of you who weren't there, it will be eventually on the website and is worth listening to. As there is – as all things, all the ten thousand things, everything is without a fixed substantial abiding self. There's no eternal fixed self. We know that. Nothing can be pinned down. Everything is dependent on everything else. Therefore, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient beings, no birth, no death. This is the side of emptiness or of – we could say of sameness, of everything is set the same in that it is – there are no distinctions.

[20:39]

Then Dogen goes on to say, The Buddha way is basically leaping clear of the many and the one. The many and the one is difference and sameness. It's not one. So Thich Nhat Hanh says not one, not two. The non-duality of many and one, the non-duality of sameness and difference, the non-duality of duality and non-duality. We don't get stuck on either side. This is the basic teaching of non-duality. Thus, there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas. We come back to our conventional reality, realizing that it is not a function of either sameness or difference. But then Dogen twists this.

[21:42]

He says, Yet inattachment blossoms full and in aversion roots spread. So this is important. Inattachment blossoms full. We have attachment. We love the beautiful flowers in spring, all the beautiful flowers of our life, all of the things that we realize beauty in, all the things, all of the random acts of kindness that bring us joy. And in aversion we'd spread when we have distaste, when we feel dislike, then this spreads. Hate begets hatred. So there's a practical aspect to this. This non-duality of duality and non-duality. Again, the basic point is that non-duality is not about getting rid of dualities.

[22:45]

So the silence in the Vimalakirti Sutra seems to say that you enter the door of non-duality. Now, I'm not saying that that's what's going on in the Vimalakirti Sutra, but one can feel it as, Oh, if we just get rid of it, get past these dualities of attachment and distraction and so forth, purity and impurity, then we are in non-duality. But this non-duality of these dualities and non-duality, it's subtle. Getting past our idea of as being something separate from the dualities is a little dangerous. So, wait, I think we don't need the key. I think the point is... Thank you very much. So even though we see this,

[23:48]

yet in attachment, blossoms fall and aversion would spread. So the practical aspect of this is that non-attachment is not the opposite of attachment, just like non-duality is not the opposite of duality. So, practically speaking, in our ordinary everyday life, as conventional beings, as ordinary human beings, even if we have been practicing a long time, we do have attachments. We do have karmic realities. We do have selves in some sense, limited selves. We also maybe have, from some Buddha's point of view, ultimate selves. We are part of some ultimate self. But even in terms of our ego self, we chanted the ancient twisted karma, repentance verse at the beginning. We acknowledge that we have ancient twisted karma.

[24:49]

We acknowledge that we are human beings. So this is a practice not for super beings, but actually for human beings. How can we acknowledge our humanity that we do have attachments? So the point of non-duality and non-attachment is not to get rid of all of our attachments. Maybe some of our attachments fall away. Sometimes that happens. But again, the opposite of attachment is not non-attachment. But seeing through our attachments, not being caught by our attachments, becoming intimate with our attachments, acknowledging our attachments, and not needing to act on our attachments. So being caught in our attachments is like being stuck in emptiness,

[25:49]

or stuck in oneness. And this happens. In some ways, I have chosen to teach in a non-residential sangha in the middle of a big city, or back when we had a temple in the middle of a big city. But even now in Zoom, we're all in the world, not in some mountain monastery. We're in the world. So it's a little harder to get stuck in emptiness or non-attachment. We're not sitting 10 hours a day. But still, this is a traditional Zen sickness. We should beware. We should not try and get free of duality, but see that this non-duality of duality and non-duality which is to say, practically speaking,

[26:53]

befriend your attachments. It doesn't mean act on your attachments, necessarily. It doesn't mean, you know, we have precepts to guide us in how not to cause harm based on our attachments. But how do we see this balance, this harmonizing of difference and sameness? So, this way of integrating our sense, our taste, our subtle or, you know, feeling of something back there, this background, ultimate possibility,

[27:59]

something, some universal sense of our deep, deep, deep connectedness with the wholeness of the world, with each other, with Sangha, with all the Sanghas. And then the particular difficulties, problems, challenges of our world, our own lives, our own ancient twisted karmas, the differences and the distinctions. So, non-attachment and non-duality does not mean getting rid of your cognitive sense, your cognitive capacity, your ability to make distinctions and discern, but it means not being caught by it. So, this process, this is a lifelong process, this process of bringing together, integrating, harmonizing

[29:01]

our sense of something deeper, our sense of something that goes beyond, with the practicalities of how do we function in our everyday activities, in this complicated, difficult world, even at difficult, strange times, like when we have pandemics and, and difficult conflicts in our society and so forth. So, this is the kind of deeper non-duality. And it's a lifelong process of integrating and bringing this together. And this is, this is the tradition that we're in, this practice of finding our way to work these together. And it's not about doing it perfectly because that's, maybe that's not possible.

[30:02]

A great American yogi said, if the world were perfect, it wouldn't be. So, trying to, aiming at perfection isn't it either. And yet, how do we live in our lives, in our skins, in this world, you know, in a way that feels upright, that feels like we're finding, you know, wavering maybe, but finding some balance of not forgetting, or, you know, it's not even a matter of holding on to something back there. It's a matter of just some sense of something deeper, something that goes beyond, some ultimate, and yet also paying attention to what's going on with the differences and how do we try and be helpful rather than harmful. So our Bodhisattva precepts are all about pointing towards how to be helpful within the distinctions

[31:07]

with some sense of that background wholeness. So, maybe that's enough to say about this ultimate non-duality. I'm interested in your comments, questions, responses. So, please feel free. Reflections. Yes, Mike. Thank you very much for your talk. That first paragraph of Benjo-Khan has always made me feel like I'm hitting my head against a wall. It was very illuminating and kind of helping me understand that a little bit better. The whole concept of harmony, as you were talking about, for me, I'm a musician, so I gravitated naturally towards the musical concept of harmony,

[32:10]

and it seemed to make a very nice idea in my head, just the idea of how when you have different voices or different parts in music, they're not the same. Not everyone is always carrying the same tune, and not everyone is singing five different pieces of music at the same time. The idea of harmony is that the voices or parts are interrelated with each other, and harmony can include dissonance. So, it's not nice, pleasant-sounding harmonies all the time. It's voices that are bumping up against each other and creating friction. And what we might think of as harmony in the West is very different from what someone in Ethiopia or Japan or something might consider harmonious. So, for me, it gave me a really nice image

[33:12]

of what harmony means and kind of exemplifying that concept. So, I just wanted to share that. And thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So, this is not like some perfect harmony or static harmony. It's a living process. And we find our way to this harmony by maybe going off-key sometimes or by allowing dissonance, allowing new harmonies to emerge. And so, sangha is the place where we are all working at this from our own, with our own voices, and then how do we learn from each other or bump up against each other. And then checking with a teacher or a spiritual friend

[34:14]

is a way to modify the harmony further. But, yeah, so we're each doing this on our own in some radical way, but also with this feedback loop of how does the world tell us when we're not being helpful or when we are being helpful. And it takes practice to do all of that. And it's not about reaching some ultimate state. It's because the world, the whole world around us is obviously changing, you know, this year very chaotically and rapidly. But, yeah, how do we adjust? So, yeah, harmonizing is this living process. Right. Thank you. Other reflections? Thanks, Mike. Other comments? Questions? Yes, Alex. Thank you, Taigen, for a really excellent talk. I do a lot of reading about non-duality

[35:17]

in my sort of less Buddhist, secular philosophy study. And your talk tonight just makes me think just how sort of deep within us these ideas of duality are and how easy it is to look at the world in a sort of dualistic lens. You know, it almost, it certainly seems to me it's like the sort of default natural thing is to think about a thing like this is a cup and it is white and blue. And that's duality right there. It is a substance and there is an accident. And so, you know, the difficulty with thinking of non-duality is, you know, the instant that we, like you were saying, the instant we put non-duality as an opposite of duality, we've just made a new kind of duality. So how can we actually think past this when it's so easy to think in this dualistic way? Or, you know, it's maybe it's not necessarily

[36:19]

about thinking past it. It's not about getting past duality, but how do we integrate it? Yeah, thank you. This is a very important point. So Dale was, yesterday was talking about Dogen having problems with Vimalakirti just because the silence, Vimalakirti's silence is very eloquent, but it's not an ultimate answer. We need language to, or maybe we, maybe music is a better language. But what you're saying, Alex, we think with language and language, I think most languages, I don't know, I'm not very good at languages, but, you know, our language is subject, verb, object. And all right away, there's separation. We're subjects verbing objects, or we're, you know, trying not to be verbed by subjects out there. So there's this, our whole thinking is

[37:21]

based on separation. Now that in itself is not bad, but it forces, it creates duality and distinctions. And of course we need distinctions to be able to function in the world. We need to know when to, what things are good to eat, what things are poisonous, you know, as Dale was saying yesterday. But yeah, so this is why, you know, in Zen, a lot of Zen discourse is in poetry or the koans or language that kind of uncut, undercuts language. How do we use language to undo language and yet convey something that, and yet convey something deeper. So yeah, poetry is, can be very helpful. But we are, as you were saying, Alex,

[38:31]

we're to become part of the process of Zen practice is to become aware of how we get caught by language and by our dualistic thinking. So that, so silence is very helpful. Yes, Amina. I'm thinking about that idea of befriending your attachments and just what that could mean or what it might look like, wondering if it's like an awareness of them, a sort of softness towards them or gentleness towards them, you know, without obviously trying to take them up and attach to them. But yeah, I guess I'm just, I'm wondering about that,

[39:32]

what it means to befriend one's attachments. Yeah, it doesn't mean to indulge them necessarily, but to try to not to, I mean, it's different at different times with different people. It might, you know, befriending, it might be tolerating other people's attachments too, but how do you do that in a way that is not, again, indulging or encouraging them when they're harmful? So to get to know, so Dogen also says in Genjo Koans, a little while after this paragraph I read, to study the way is to study the self. He goes on to say to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be awakened by all things, to be awakened by all things is to drop body and mind and self and others. But the point is to study the self, to get to know the self too.

[40:37]

And this happens naturally in Zazen. As we sit, we see our mind grasping after things. We see our own patterns of responding and desires and aversions. And so that's what I meant by getting to know it, by befriending it, not by indulging it, but just by getting to know your habits and what they're up to. And then when you actually are aware of them, you don't need to react based on, or the more you get to know them, when they come up in everyday activity, you're more able to not react. You can respond. You might act out based on them, but more and more you can choose whether you want to respond based on,

[41:38]

in accord with those habits of reacting or do something different, or you might have more options in how to respond around those habits of thinking. So it's a process. As Dale Wright was saying yesterday, it's a slow process. Sometimes things happen very quickly and you can just drop some habits. That can happen. But most of the time it's a kind of soft, slow process. So in terms of befriending, when I say befriend your habits or your attachments, just get to know them. Don't try and suppress and repress and attack your habits. Attacking your attachments is another kind of attachment.

[42:39]

That's just another expression of attachment. If you're going to launch an attack on your attachments, that's just another way that your attachments are manifesting as attachments. So how can you just breathe into it all and sit still and not react? Does that help? It does, yes. Thank you. This isn't easy. It takes practice, as they say. David Ray. Thanks for this talk, again, very much. Questions are still bubbling up and I'm not sure how to word it, but I'm thinking about the category of being on the way, being someone.

[43:45]

I forget, the chant says something about it too. Can you imagine non-duality as a reason either to say, oh, I'm just where I need to be, and that pretty clearly seems not sufficient. At a certain moment you said, in our tradition, that's not good enough. So I'm just sort of casting about. I'm thinking about how to think about the relationship between, yeah, between non-duality on the one hand and progress, progress on the other. Progress. I know, I know. But it's so easy to say, well, progress is just being attached to making results. So if I said something, oh, what about way-seeking mind?

[44:48]

What's the relationship of non-duality to way-seeking mind? Okay, that's good. Well, in the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, it says, progress is not a matter of far or near, but if you are confused mountains and rivers, block your way. I respectfully urge you to study the mystery. So those who study the mystery, so we're all practicing. That means we're studying this mystery of what it means to be alive. So that's, you know, so way-seeking mind means that we are people of the way. We're wayfarers. We're practitioners of the way. You know, the way comes from the Tao, the Chinese term. But it's, you know, everyone here is practicing the way or else you wouldn't be here. So we're all in the middle of this process somehow.

[45:50]

Even if you just started this recently, something brought you here. So you're in the way. You're on the way. In the way. Funny phrase in English. Sometimes we say deeply in the way. But when you say, oh, have I made progress? Then you're, you know, calculating and judging and seeing what grade you're in. And that's, you know, that's just a matter of making distinctions and trying to accomplish something. And, you know, that's not the point. The point is wherever you are on the way, just how can you find your way right there? There's a later in the Genjo Koan, it says, here is the place, here the way unfolds.

[46:51]

Wherever you are, here is the place. Here the way unfolds. So it's not a matter of is there some better place to be? Oh, would I be better off if I was in California or Japan or China or Tibet? So we have people here from California and Wisconsin, I think. So I don't know, maybe they're better off than the people who are in Illinois. I don't know. But here is the place. Here the way unfolds. Wherever you are. It's not about finding some other place to be. Right here, this skin bag here and now, as Sekito says, this guy who wrote the Harmony of Difference and Sameness also wrote the song of the grass hut that we chant sometimes, which ends, don't separate from the skin bag here and now. It's not about getting to some better place. It's not about reaching some higher state of being or something like that. That's not the point. Here we are. Right where you are right now.

[47:51]

All of this is happening. But our Western idea, I don't know. I don't know about West or East. I don't know. But anyway, consumerist ideas, to put it that way, you know, is that we should get more or better or, you know, whatever. So we think that way. When we start making those distinctions, we think that way. And we should admit that we think that way. That's our ancient twisted karma, born from beginningless greed, hate and delusion through body, speech and mind. So we naturally avow. We do think that way. But progress is not a matter of far or near. Here's the place. Here's the way it unfolds. So, you know, we can, sometimes it's uncomfortable. Sometimes it's miserable. Sometimes it just hurts. Sometimes it's, you know, sometimes we're suffering or sometimes somebody down the street is suffering.

[48:52]

But sometimes we can enjoy it. Joanne? I'm wondering, you know, all the sutras that we seem to study are very old. And yet they seem so smart. And I'm wondering and so beautiful. I'm wondering if there's any modern-day sutras anywhere? Oh, sure. Is there anything recent? There are. Well, you know, do you have any favorite poets, Joanne? Eh. Modern poets? Not really. Oh, okay. Sorry. Or song people, you know, writing lyrics. Okay. Who's a favorite songwriter of yours? Oh, gosh. Anybody. It doesn't have to be the best. Joan Baez maybe pops out of my brain.

[49:53]

Joan Baez. Yeah, she's written some. So, yeah, you know, that's what I said before. Poetry, song, you know. You're saying those are sutras? I'm not saying they're sutras. I'm not saying they're not sutras. I'm just saying that whatever inspires us to find our way here and now, whatever inspires us to look more deeply, whatever inspires us to be helpful instead of harmful is food on the way. Whatever helps. So, I don't know, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, The Clash. I don't know. Whatever, you know. Okay, fine. And sutras, you know, are what the Buddha spoke, but, you know, the sutras say that there are Buddhas in every atom and on every blade of

[50:58]

grass. So, there must be Buddhas here now. Buddhas, you know, Buddhas are everywhere and every time. That's what the sutras say. Okay. Does anybody have any modern sutras speakers or poets or truth tellers to call out? Well, I would say maybe in a more literal answer, something like, you know, Wee Reads in My Beginner's Mind by Suzuki Roshi. Yay, Suzuki Roshi. Yeah, yeah. For something more like explicitly Buddhist. You know, but if that had been written 2,000 years ago, it probably would have been deemed a sutra.

[52:03]

It probably would have been attributed to a Buddha and we would be reading it as a sutra. So, in 2,000 years, might that not be attributed to, you know, in a more literal sense of the word sutra? Yeah, you know, that's interesting. So, Buddhism has moved from India 2,500 years ago to Tibet and China. To Japan, to California, maybe to Chicago. I don't know. Now, I don't know. In Dogen's time, would they have been able to even make sense of what Suzuki Roshi said? I don't know. Paul Disko is not here to give his answer. But they might not have made sense of it, you know, because the Dharma, the teaching, awakening itself responds to time and place.

[53:05]

So, in different cultures, it has to express itself in different ways. And we don't hold on to, you know, some particular expression that matches, you know, 2,500 years ago in northern India. Now, of course, we also read, you know, what Buddha said back then. So, I don't know. That's an interesting question. The point is that if Buddha is alive, then how Buddha expresses herself shifts from time to time and place to place. Yeah, well, I think it has to because that's skillful means. It would be unskillful to use the same words to teach all people in all times and all cultures. Yeah. And yet we can look back to what Shinto said in the eighth century and find inspiration. Yes, absolutely. And at the same time, find modern re-articulations,

[54:08]

which you provided for us tonight quite wonderfully. Yeah. And so, you know, and so, for example, Dogen, who lived in the 1200s, refers to his teacher and refers to Hongzhi, who I translated who lived a century before him, as an old Buddha. And they refer to Zhaozhou, Zhaoshu, as an old Buddha. So, I don't know if Homer was an old Buddha, or if David Race got thumbs up there because that's his old Buddha. But anyway, and maybe, you know, some people, maybe there are some people who speak to some of us and not to others. There's some people in our song who don't like Bob Dylan. You know, that's okay. It's all right, Wayne. You're not going to kick me out? No, not at all. Different people have, you know, so that's why there's many teachers.

[55:09]

Douglas? No? Anybody else? We're getting near time to do our closing chant, but we can keep, anybody has anything else to say? Amina? Anybody who hasn't spoken yet? Anyway, just to, in closing, just to see this deeper point of non-duality, that non-duality is not about, it's not as opposed to duality, but this non-duality of difference and sameness, harmonizing. I mean, this is actually pretty subtle. And I think, you know, I don't know if people who haven't sat satsangs

[56:17]

could hear this even. I don't know. To go beyond the usual world of distinctions, you know, we seek some sameness or some wholeness or something, but then to see that that's not, that there's a deeper non-duality. So I wanted to just throw that in the pot tonight. And so thank you all very much. Let's do our four bodhisattva vows and then we'll have announcements. Give me just one moment. Certainly, take five. I'll throw those up on the screen for you all. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them.

[57:20]

Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize it. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize it. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them.

[58:21]

Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize it. I vow to free them. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable.

[58:36]

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