Does everyone have the versions that I, the material? Okay. Well, I have two versions that I gave you. One is This is the new translation from the translating committee sponsored by the Soto School. And the other is a translation that Gil Franzdahl and I did a couple of years ago. And There are various translations, maybe, I don't know how many, four or five. Thomas Cleary has recently done a new translation, not a new translation, a revision of his.

[01:04]

For many years, we chanted Cleary's translation at Zen Center, and then we've replaced it with this new one. And I think it would be a good idea if we chanted the Hokyo Zamae before we start studying it. Yes? I believe what we do have are the Cleary translation and then your translation with Gil, and the latter one is the one that's No, there's a third one, besides the Cleary. I gave you the Cleary. Well, the other one we have in our sutra book. Please pass out the sutra books.

[02:09]

I should have given you that one. For some reason, I didn't. Give me a sutra book, too. Okay.

[03:13]

There are many names for this sutra. This sutra is very poetically put together and there's very little that's prosaic in this poem. It's not a poem exactly, but it's a song, It goes by many names, but I'll just use the name I have here. The Precious Mirror Samadhi. The dharma, and we'll chant together. The dharma of us is intimately transmitted by Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it, preserve it well. A silver bowl filled with snow, a heron hidden in the moon.

[04:24]

Taken as similar, they are not the same. Not distinguished, their places are known. The meaning does not reside in the words, but a pivotal moment brings it forth. Move and you are trapped. Miss and you fall into doubt and vacillation. Turning away and touching are both wrong. is like a massive fire. Just to portray it in literary form is to stain it with defilement. In darkest night it is perfectly clear. In the light of dawn it is hidden. It is a standard for all things. Its use removes all suffering. Although it is not constructed, it is not beyond words. Like facing a precious mirror, form and reflection behold each other. You are not it, but in truth, it is you. Like a newborn child, it is fully endowed with five aspects. No going, no coming, no arising, no biting.

[05:30]

Ba-ba-wa-wa. Is there anything said or not? In the end, it says nothing, for the words are not yet right. In the hexagram, man, child, The permutations make five. Like the taste of the five-flavored herb, like the five-pronged Vajra, wondrously embraced within the complete, drumming and singing begin together. Penetrate the source and travel the pathways. Embrace the territory and treasure the roads. Would you do well to respect this? Do not neglect it. Natural and wondrous, it is not a matter of delusion or enlightenment. Within causes and conditions, time and season, it is serene and illuminating. So minute it enters where there is no gap. So vast it transcends dimension. A hair's breadth's deviation and you are out of tune.

[06:35]

Now there are sudden and gradual in which teachings and approaches arise. With teachings and approaches distinguished, each has its standard. Whether teachings and approaches are mastered or not, reality constantly flows, outside still and inside trembling, like tethered colts or cowering rats. The ancient sages grieved for them and offered them the Dharma. Led by their inverted views, they take black for white. When inverted thinking stops, the firm mind actually... If you are following the ancient tracks, please observe the sages of the past. On the plate of the tree for ten kalpas, like a battle-scarred tiger, like a horse with shanks gone grey, because some are vulgar, jeweled tables and ornate robes.

[07:35]

With his archer's skill, he hit the mark at a hundred paces. But when arrows meet head-on, how could it be a matter of skill? The wooden man starts to sing, the stone woman gets up dancing. It is not reached by feelings or consciousness. How could it involve deliberation? Ministers serve their lords. Children obey their parents. Not obeying is not filial. Failure to serve is no help. With practice hidden, function secretly, go fool like an idiot. Just to continue in this way... I have a newer translation that I'm working for. It's not a newer translation, it's a revision another revision of the newer one. So it keeps going on and on. In our translation of liturgy, the translations are continuously being revised.

[08:48]

So that's nice. It means that there is no definitive translation for anything. We get used to a certain translation after we've been chanting it for years and then a new revision is introduced and it makes us sick because we cherish certain phrases that we've been used to chanting for so long, and then when the change comes, we don't like it. Most people don't. But I think these changes are pretty good from the old one, and it keeps changing, and we keep working on it. So at any rate, I chose the Jewel Mirror Samadhi because it's something that is close to us. We've been chanting it for years at Zen Center, and here we chant it in the morning as one of our chants.

[09:55]

If you come in the afternoon, you may never have heard it. It is part of our liturgy, and so I always like to have us have some understanding of what it is that we're chanting. And this is a pretty long song. And Toza and Ryokai, Master Dengshan in Chinese, Dengshan Liangjie Deng, was the mountain that he resided on, Mount Dung, and Shan means mountain, and his name is Liang Che, but we refer to him as Dung Shan, and in Japanese as Tozan, Tozan Ryokai. And Tozan is considered the founder of our school in China,

[11:04]

and Tozan had several good disciples, one of whom was Sozan, who later recited on Mount Tso. And it seems like they put the two names together because as a name for the school. So Sozan and Tozan should be Toso, but it doesn't sound good. It doesn't sound right to say Toso. It sounds better to say Soto in Japanese and Cao Dong in Chinese. rather than Dung Tso. So this seems to be where the derivation of the term Soto school comes from.

[12:09]

But some people say that it comes from the Sixth Ancestors Temple. But I like to think of it as coming from Sozon and Tozon. So this Precious Mirror Samadhi is based on, somewhat, on the Sandokai of Sekito. Sekito Kisen was a young disciple of the Sixth Ancestor and later became, when he died, became a disciple of Seigen, Gyoshi. And Sekito wrote the Sando Kai, which we have been chanting for many years. And the Sando Kai is a kind of precursor of the Hokyo Zamae.

[13:19]

A lot of the elements in the Sando Kai appear in the Hokyo Zamae. like some of the images, like the two arrows meeting, and the light and the dark. So this seems to be a theme in the school. And we trace our lineage of the Soto school back through Sekito and Seigen to the sixth ancestor. So I want to say that there is very little commentary in English on this Precious Mirror Samadhi. There's one commentary by Master Sheng Yen where he comments on both the Sandokai and Hokyo Zamai.

[14:28]

And it's this book called The Infinite Mirror. His commentaries are not bad, but it's a little different. And his treatment of the five ranks, which I'll talk about later, is a little different. And the only other commentaries are like footnotes from translators. There may be a commentary I don't know about. So it's kind of a little difficult to, you know, you have to kind of glean. I've had to kind of glean information from here and there and various footnotes and passages and intuitions. So we can explore this together.

[15:34]

So I'll present this material. and then we can discuss it. But I want to say that this song is like an exposition of practice. It's like a map of practice, a layout of what Tozan's understanding of practice is. and also of the whole lineage of Soto school before him. And the central part of it is the five ranks or the five positions, which I don't want to go into now, but the five positions or five ranks

[16:54]

of the song, and you wouldn't recognize it right off unless you were familiar with it. And it's where he talks about, he makes a reference to the I Ching, which is not a Buddhist text, but a kind of ancient, one of the ancient Chinese books, the Book of Changes. So Soto Zen is somewhat based on scholarship, practice and scholarship, and literary reference. So I think the Soto school monks were pretty well educated and they had a pretty sophisticated education and in their teaching they made references to various texts both in Buddhism and outside of Buddhism.

[18:22]

And one of the texts that has been used as a kind of referential material is the Book of Changes, the I Ching. So down here, it says, in the six lines of the double li hexagram, the partial and complete yield to each other. And that whole paragraph there is in reference to the I Ching. And it also is in reference to, it's the five ranks of Tozan. And to study the five ranks is the heart of this piece. the rest of it is a kind of commentary on the five ranks.

[19:26]

So I thought at first, well maybe we should study the five ranks and then study the piece. But I've decided to study the piece and when we come to the five ranks that'll open up and we can go back and see the references. and the five ranks open up the realm of consciousness. And it's related to the realm of the eight and nine consciousnesses of psychology in Buddhism. So, I'm going to start just talking about the piece.

[20:29]

The Precious Mirror Samadhi. I'm just talking about the title. The Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, it's also called. Jewel mirror actually is more literal, I think. Jewel, in the Chinese, has various meanings besides just being a piece of rock. It's used metaphorically for something precious, for something like reflecting, something which has many sides in which you can, you know, a precious jewel or has many facets, and so you can look at the various facets, you know. And in Buddhadharma, various terms have facets, various concepts have many facets.

[21:40]

The word emptiness has many facets. So you look at it from one point of view, and then you can look at it from another point of view. And Buddhism itself is like a gem with many facets. So sometimes it's called the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, and sometimes Precious Mirror, which is a derivation. Sometimes it's called infinite mirror samadhi. Clearly he doesn't like to even call it samadhi. He says samadhi may sound too mysterious to people and turn them off, but samadhi means concentration.

[22:44]

And it means being one with. So sometimes it's called the boundless mirror. So there are all these different facets for the name. And all of them are good and correct, depending on how you want to look at it. In our translation, we called it Song of the Bright Mirror Samadhi. So the mirror is like a source. The mirror mind, the mirror wisdom is like So something, this mirror reflects everything as it is.

[23:48]

Something that reflects reality. It is reality and it reflects reality. So you could call it actually the precious source samadhi. So the mirror is wholeness and without partiality. So the mirror is very precious, very wonderful, and we have this feeling that we should be one with this mirror. So the sutra starts out, the dharma of thusness is intimately transmitted by Buddhas and ancestors.

[25:10]

Dharma of thusness is okay, thusness, or as it isness, the dharma of reality, thusness. just as it is. Ultimate reality, the Dharma of ultimate reality is intimately transmitted by Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it, preserve it well. So it's generally believed that Tozan, this is Tozan's gift to Sozon, his disciple. This is his transmission gatha or transmission poem to his disciple, Sozon.

[26:19]

And Sozon also played with the five ranks. So, Tozon and Sozon had various versions of the five ranks which they developed together or independently. So he says, now you have it, so preserve it well. Sozon hasn't really given anything to Sozon. He's simply confirming Sozon's understanding. Now you have it. Of course, you've always had it. Now you recognize that you have it, is what he means. Now that you're under, through your understanding, you realize that you have it, so please preserve it well, keep it well, and don't let it be cut off.

[27:41]

Don't let it be covered by, as Sheng Yen says, vexations. It, you know, is, we keep talking around it. You can't really put your, there's no language, nothing in language that will describe it. So we say it and now you have it. It is intimately transmitted. Now you have it. Preserve it well. So this word it is not a noun But even though it is not a description, we know what it is, even though we can't describe it.

[29:10]

So it is like everything. Everything is it. But there is nothing that you can point to that totally describes it. But wherever you point, that's it. So the word it is not so bad. Um... So it is not something that comes or goes, but it can be obscured.

[30:41]

So when we make an effort to let go of attachment, it becomes uncovered. It reveals itself. So it is something that we are, as Dogen says, we are all Buddha nature. But Buddha nature is another name for it. but we simply need to let it be revealed. People sometimes say, I don't get along with people very well, or I'm afraid of people,

[32:10]

can't relate very well. What should I do? And I think the best thing to do is to see everyone as Buddha nature. To actually see the Buddha nature in whoever you're relating to That way we continually wake up. We're continually waking up and connecting to ourself through each other. I think that was Suzuki Roshi's gift. was that he could see the Buddha nature in everyone.

[33:24]

He woke up to his Buddha nature, to it, and he could see it everywhere in everyone. That's how he preserved it. So the Dharma of thusness, or it as it is, is intimately transmitted by Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it. Preserve it well. Then, a silver bowl filled with snow, a heron hidden in the moon, Taken as similar, they are not the same. Not distinguished, their places are known. Silver bowl is like, is a little bit like snow.

[34:29]

If you put snow into a silver bowl, they're both on the light side, right? Silver bowl is, white and the snow is white, but they're a little different. Even though they have this similarity, they're still different. Snow is snow, silver bowl is silver bowl, yet when you put them together, you can see that they're the same and yet you can see that they're different. And a heron hidden in the moon is like, a heron is white and the moon is white. So, although these are just two examples of hiddenness and revelation and merging.

[35:34]

Suzuki Yoshi, when he gave his first jukai, said, you should be like a white bird in the snow. That's how you should, your attitude should be like a white bird in the snow. Taking on the color of blending with people, blending with everything, being one with everything. So the bowl is like the host, and the snow is like the guest. In the Tosan's five ranks, there are various designations for the absolute and the relative. the host and the guest, the prince and the minister.

[36:41]

These are designations for absolute and relative. So the bowl is like the host and the snow is like the guest. The bowl or the host, encompasses the snow, the bull holds the snow. It's like, yeah, but take a break soon. Is that what you wanted to say? It's like the mother and a child. Suzuki Roshi also used to say zazen is like sitting in your mother's lap, or like a baby bird sitting in the nest, coming home, being one with things.

[37:59]

So, a silver bowl filled with snow, inherent hidden in the moonlight. Although they're two, they're one. And although they're one, they're two. Taken as similar, they are not the same. Not distinguished, their places are known. It's like, When they're arrayed, you can see the difference. When they're side by side, you can see the difference. But when they're together, it looks the same. So things are one, and yet they're two. And yet not one, and yet not two. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. Form is form. Emptiness is emptiness. Now, do you have any questions thus far?

[39:18]

It has no special shape or form, right? It is just it, right? I mean, unless you point to something, it has no identifiable mark, right? But then I say, that's it. Then it has an identifiable mark. It's called a lamp. This is it. But this is also it. Everything I point to can be it. And yet, it has no identifiable mark. And at the same time, whatever I point to is it. Would it be fair to say that nothing you can think of is it? So you can't think about it? Not very successfully anyway? There's no concept that will that will encompass it, will identify it. That's why what?

[40:41]

No, you can't. You can't conceive of it without a mark. A mark means it's identifying characteristic. So it's time to take a little break, bathroom break, a stretch break, and five minutes. So here he's talking about the silver bowl filled with snow, the heron hidden in the moon. Taken as similar, they are not the same, not distinguished, their places are known. So he's talking about the absolute and the relative. the phenomenal and the real, and the relationship.

[41:45]

And this sets the tone for the whole piece. So the rest is commentary on the absolute and the relative and their relationship, but it also talks about teaching and what's possible and what's not, and how we understand things. And when we study the five ranks, you can see how the five ranks relate to this. So then he says, the meaning does not reside in the words, but a pivotal moment brings it forth. There are various translations for that.

[42:53]

meaning does not reside in the words is universal, but I think that it's pretty literal to say, yet it meets the inquiring student. The meaning does not reside in the words, It's like, and here it says, but a pivotal moment brings it forth. That's interesting when you have different takes. But yet, one has to use words to talk about the meaning. So here, the meaning here is, of course, we know that the reality is beyond the words.

[44:09]

But the meaning here is that the words, that there's, we shouldn't just, we have to get beyond the words. We have to understand what the words are actually pointing to. Suzuki Roshi used to say, we read the other side of the page. We say, we read between the lines. Our expression is, we read between the lines. Japanese expression is, we read the other side of the page, which is like, you know, to get what what's actually being pointed to, rather than just sticking with the words. If you just stick with the words, it's not there. And also, for a teacher, there are no fixed methods. Sometimes, when there are a lot of students, it looks like there are methods.

[45:22]

If you have a big school, then you have methods. But the advantage of having a small practice place with fewer students means that the teacher can respond to each person's situation individually because each student has a totally different situation and must be responded to according to where they are and who they are. Sometimes people give different teachings to different students. And sometimes I give different teachings to different students, but mostly we stay with Zazen. Zazen will straighten you out. But there are, each person has their own particular situation which must be responded to.

[46:34]

Sometimes if a person is very angry or doesn't know how to relate, I'll give them metta meditation, which is very good. They need to learn loving kindness or compassion or how to be sympathetic with others, or how to maintain equanimity. But there still are no fixed methods. So one must respond to each person without any fixed idea. That's how teaching has to happen in Zen, otherwise it becomes dead. When it just becomes a method, it just becomes dead. So, that's why the Chinese Zen teachers were so outrageous, because they just responded intuitively to various students.

[47:52]

But then, their teaching became methods. So they were dead when they became methods for other people. So we say to give medicine according to the illness. We have to give cough medicine to somebody who is suffering from a broken leg. But cough medicine tastes pretty good. After my cough, I was still taking my cough medicine. So we have to be careful.

[48:58]

But I like this pivotal moment, bringing it forth. I think that's a very nice statement. Just at the right moment, a turning word or a situation can open the mind to realization. There are many examples of that. Kyozan's sweeping sweeping the monument, sweeping at the monument and the stone hitting the bamboo. Bing! That's a kind of pivotal moment. And then it goes on to say, move and you are trapped.

[50:08]

Miss and you fall into doubt and vacillation. move and you're trapped, that's a little bit extreme. But the other translation says, oh yes. Hasty action creates a pitfall. To miss is to linger in consideration. You know, Nonsense, Master Nonsense Koan. This reminds me of Nonsense Koan, case 19 in the booklet record, ordinary mind is the way. Joshu asked Nansen, what is the way?

[51:15]

Ordinary mind is the way, Nansen replied. Shall I try to seek after it, Joshu asked. If you try it, if you try to seek after it, you will become separated from it, responded Nansen. How can I know the way unless I try for it, persisted Joshu. Nansen said, the way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion, and not knowing is confusion, or not being conscious. When you have really reached the true way beyond doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can it be talked about on the level of right and wrong? With these words, Joshu came to a sudden realization. So if you try for it, should I seek after it? If you try for it, you'll become separated from it. But if I don't try for it, then what? Or if you don't try for it, then you're just not conscious, not aware.

[52:20]

So, move when you are trapped. Miss and you fall into doubt and vacillation. Nonsense Koan seems to address this part. So turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a massive fire. Turning away and touching, it's like, shall I go after it, or shall I turn away? It, here we have it again. It is like a massive fire. So how does one approach it? You can't ignore it. You want to. You want it. And yet, it's too hot.

[53:28]

You can't really approach it. So what do you do? That's the koan. Move and you are trapped. Miss and you fall into doubt and vacillation. Turning away and touching are both wrong. Word is like a massive fire. If you go after it, you stumble by. And if you don't go after it, you're just ignoring something. It also refers to, on another level, turning away and touching kind of refer to either clinging to words or rejecting words. But I don't, that's kind of a weak level. I think the stronger level is turning away and touching it.

[54:29]

You know, if you see it as something outside of yourself or something separate, then it's a problem. You can never reach it. You can never grasp it. So one has to be it. We say, if you want the tiger's cub, you have to go into the tiger's cave. It's like in Zazen. You have to be Zazen. You can't be separate from what you're doing. You have to totally enter into If there's something outside of what you're doing, then you create impurity, an impure situation. So, in order to, in order to,

[55:32]

in order to approach the fire, you have to be the fire. So just to portray it in literary form is to stain it with defilement. So we're always standing it with defilement. We have so many books on Zen. Zen is supposed to be without books, right? But there are more books on Zen than anything else. But that's not bad. It's just that we should see beyond the words. What?

[56:47]

Can I ask something? Oh, of course. Yes. Well, not only do we have a lot of Zen books, but we have a lot of pretend Zen books. We have books about Zen tennis and Zen burritos. You know what I'm talking about. How do we We don't want to burn books. Everyone has to have their say. And sometimes a phony book can lead somebody to a genuine practice. There are many stories like that in Buddhism, like a story of somebody play-acting, fooling around with people, and somebody put, I think it was a prostitute,

[58:15]

And then somebody put some robes on this prostitute in fun, in a jest. You know, they were dancing around. And because of that act, she later became a nun. It reformed her. I don't know whether that's good or bad. But, you know, that's the story. There's a wonderful statement, you know, I need to practice to attain the precious mirror, although the precious mirror is not something I attain through practice. A great koan. I need to practice to attain the precious mirror, but the precious mirror is not something I can attain through practice. So, running after enlightenment and ignoring enlightenment.

[59:23]

You can't run after it and you can't ignore it. All you can do is just practice. Practice takes care of all those aspects, to just practice without any expectations. At the same time, You can't practice without raising the thought of enlightenment. And you can't practice trying to get enlightenment. So just practice. It's like when you actually attain realization, all the thought of realization disappears.

[60:31]

So rather than trying to attain something, just to clean up your act and practice is to reveal the precious mirror. You know, to the mirror has to, the mirror is like oneness, and yet oneness is not, as it says in the Sandokai, is not yet realization. There has to be something else, Someone asked Master Gensha, what does one do with the precious mirror?

[61:48]

Gensha said, smash it into a thousand pieces. When you smash it into a thousand pieces, each piece reflects. It's like Dogen saying, Even the whole universe, the whole sky is reflected in a dew drop on the grass. Dew drops on the grass are like the precious mirror smashed into uncountable trillions of pieces, each one reflecting. This is the other side of the mirror. Each individual piece of phenomena is expressing it, reflecting it.

[62:53]

Then he says, In the darkest night, it is perfectly clear. In the light of dawn, it is hidden. In the darkest night, it is perfectly clear. In the light of dawn, it is hidden. This is like in a Sando Kai, where Sekito says, within darkness, there is light, and within light, there is darkness, but don't take it as light and don't take it as dark, don't take, don't attach to it as darkness and don't attach to it as light. Light and darkness are a pair, like the foot behind and the foot in front and the foot behind and walking. Light, dark, light, dark, but within the dark there is light and within the light there is dark. Dark and light is like, darkness means oneness.

[64:16]

Everything is, there are no boundaries in the dark. When the lights go out, you don't see anything. You don't see anything individually. But when the lights go on, then everything, all the individual pieces are apparent. So dark and light. Dark actually means purity. It's kind of like the opposite of the way we usually think about it. And light means phenomena, various existences in the relative world. But in the dark, there's no relativity. It's all one. But within the dark, everything still exists. Darkness permeates all existences.

[65:20]

Within the light, there is darkness, but don't see it as darkness. Yes? Well you can use sleep and wakeness as a kind of metaphor in the sense that when one is asleep there's no consciousness of differentiation, unless you're dreaming. But in deep sleep, without dream, there's no consciousness of differentiation. And yet, everything, and yet, life is still there. Well, I'm thinking maybe a little more like in an everyday sense, a transition or I don't know.

[66:29]

No, that's all on this side. It's all on the phenomenal side. both waking and sleeping are on the phenomenal side. So, Master Mumon, in case 84 in the Blue Cliff Record, was talking to his monks. And he says, each one of you, all of us, everyone has their own light. But when you go to see it, it's dark, dark, dark. What is this light? And nobody could answer. And he said, the kitchen pantry, the main gate,

[67:30]

I can't hear you. The last sentence? The kitchen pantry and the gate. What is everyone's light? If you go to catch it, if you want to grasp it or see it, it's dark, dark. What is everyone's light? It's the main, the kitchen pantry and the main gate, the gate. So in the darkest night, it is perfectly clear. I'm going to see what this other one says. At midnight, it is truly bright.

[68:56]

At dawn, it is not apparent." Dogen says, don't try to see this light as the light of a blue flame or or the light of the firefly or some mystical thing. Light itself is revealed in darkness. Don't try to see it as some idea of light. So, The light and darkness, actually, are the mirror. Both light and darkness are the mirror.

[69:59]

But light is one aspect of the mirror, and dark is another aspect of the mirror. So, in the darkness of night is perfect clarity. It's like the moon has two sides. Well, it has one side, of course. Moon only has one side. But there's a dark side and a light side. And when the light side is apparent, you don't see the dark side. Sometimes you see the dark side and the light side together, but in the full moon, you don't see the dark side. And when there's no moon, you don't see the light side. But yet the light side is there. and when the dark side is apparent, and the dark side is there when the light side is apparent, even though, so we say, well, this is dark, and that's light.

[71:01]

But it's only, but even though, it's because we're seeing it from one perspective. But when we see it from a whole perspective, a perspective of wholeness, The dark and the light are both there together in either case. So the phenomenal and the absolute is what it's talking about. Just different ways of talking about this jewel. just another facet of this jewel. So next time, I hope you'll all come back. Next time, I will give you the material for the five ranks.

[72:11]

The most wonderful commentary in the Five Ranks is Hakuin's commentary, and maybe we can go through Hakuin's commentary from the Five Ranks. Do you have any comments? If you have any criticism of my presentation, I'm happy to hear what you have to say. If you think I could do anything better, I'd be happy to hear what you have to say. Oh, I see what you're saying, yeah.

[73:24]

Okay, yeah. I'll make you a copy of that. So there you have it. I'm sorry about that.

[73:31]

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