I'm talking to Sashin about serene illumination meditation, or silent illumination meditation. This is the way of talking about this from great 12th century Chinese master in the Soto tradition, Hongzhe, from material I translated in Cultivating the Empty Field, and he talked about this silent or serene illumination that we're practicing here. And I talked about it yesterday in terms of the backward step, so I want to review a little bit of that, and then also talk about this settling and quiet radiance that we are sitting in the middle of, or that's sitting in the middle of us. So, I'll review and read a little bit of what I talked about yesterday.

[01:08]

He says, with the depths clear, utterly silent, thoroughly illuminate the source, empty and spirited, vast and bright. So he says to illuminate, to shine our light. Another way to talk about that is to give our attention. So as we sit, as we inhale and exhale, as we look at the wall, as thoughts and feelings arise, always something is receiving our attention. So, he gives, I think, very practical instructions about how to attend to this in the midst of this situation where thoughts and feelings are sometimes racing around. So he says, utterly silent, and utterly silent doesn't mean that we try to eliminate all

[02:21]

sounds so that we can hear the sound of the air conditioning, maybe we can hear the sound of our own breathing, or the rustling of our muscles, or our moving, or whatever. But we don't try and add to the sound. So there are some zendos where there's a lot of sound going on out front. Sometimes there are, where we used to sit in Bolinas, there would be homeless people sitting out on the front of the church talking sometimes. Anyway, we can try and find a space where it's really utterly silent. But actually, if we're looking for utter silence outside us, we'll never find it. So people at Tassajara, where it's way back in the mountains, sometimes object when the

[03:27]

generator's on, because they can hear the sound. There's always some sound, but he's not talking about that kind of sound. With the depths clear, utterly silent, thoroughly illuminate the source, empty and spirited, vast and bright, even though you have lucidly scrutinized your image and no shadow or echo meets it, searching throughout you see that still you have distinguished between the merits of a hundred undertakings. So this is a kind of endless process, as our thoughts and feelings race around and we just settle and attend to the inner moon glow that is also here when we quiet down. Still we can see more and more subtly what our mind is doing as it's running around in thoughts and feelings, is making distinctions between the merits of a hundred undertakings.

[04:32]

The way our mind is, is always to be judging and evaluating, and this is better than that, and that's better than this, and gee, I should sit this way rather than that way, or even in this situation where there's really nothing to do, we just sit and do nothing. We've all chosen to forsake all the wonders of, all the wonderful things happening out there on a Saturday in Chicago and wonderful 90 plus degree weather to just sit here and do nothing in the midst of this air-conditioned room, too bad. So there's nothing really to do, we're just sitting here and you can't do it right, you can't do it wrong, and yet still part of the attention is to notice that still we are distinguishing between the merits of a hundred undertakings. So he says, then you must take the backward step and directly reach the middle of the

[05:35]

circle from where light issues forth. So this backward step is what we were talking about yesterday, this turning the light within, we say sometimes, turning the light within to illuminate the self. It means to, we sit with our eyes open, but we're not focusing on some point on the brick or some point on the wall, whichever side you're sitting on, or the floor, but even when we're, even with our eyes open, we're aware of the floor, the carpet or the brick in front of us, but our attention is focused on something, there's a turn, we're turning within, our attention is turning within, and we're shining our light within. So we think of light as the sun or the moon or the lamps, but actually light is quality of everything.

[06:36]

It's the quality of your attention, your eyes are radiating light, this is the truth that we see in, as we experience this serene illumination, so he says, please take the backward step, turn the light within, and directly reach the middle of the circle from where light issues forth. So we could talk about, so this light is a kind of metaphor, it's also, there's illumination there, but we could talk about it through various metaphors, the point is just quiet, down, don't worry about the noises outside or the noises in your head, just enjoy your breathing.

[07:38]

And please don't try to force yourself to sit through some excruciating pain, we have chairs in the back, you can get up in the middle of a period, if you need to, to use them, change your position if you need to, just do it quietly. So the point is to just be here and settle, and then turn this attention within, and yet in what I was reading yesterday, he keeps pointing to how we have to kind of attend to the way our mind is making judgments, he says, outstanding and independent, still you must abandon pretexts for merit, carefully discern that naming engenders beings and that these rise and fall with intricacy. So as we're sitting, settling, turning the light within, bathing in the glow of

[08:46]

the wordless inner presence beneath your cushions and chairs, around your cushions and chairs, within your throat and chest and belly, shoulder blades and knees even, still this process, this is what the Buddha discovered under the Bodhi tree when he awakened this process of the twelvefold chain of causation, carefully discern that naming engenders beings, we do this, we have, even in the middle of this sashaying bath of settling into the glow, that we can start to feel or hear or taste, there is still this process of naming, our

[09:56]

mind does this, words come forth and this produces beings and these rise and fall with intricacy. So he doesn't say to get rid of that, he just says carefully discern that this is happening. So part of turning the light within is to see that, so you don't have to figure anything out or do anything about this, just see that words, thoughts, feelings arise and fall with intricacy, they go away too and then won't come up. And you don't have to do anything about them, you don't have to maneuver them, you don't have to get rid of them, just turn the light within in a way that allows you to settle beneath them without ignoring them, just, oh yeah, this is going on. So he says traveling the world, meeting conditions, the self joyfully enters Samadhi in all

[10:59]

delusions and accepts its function, which is to empty out the self, so as not to be full of oneself. So as we inhale and exhale, we meet the various conditions, each moment. So in old Buddhist philosophy they say that there's 62 million, I'm so bad with numbers, I think it's 62,185,082 moments in a second. In each moment, conditions are arising, I don't know how they figured out that number.

[12:03]

Anyway, these are the conditions that we meet as we sit and face the wall and face ourselves and turn the light, attend to the light, which means also attending to our process of naming, which engenders beings, or the intricacy of our looking for pretexts for merit, thinking, oh, I'll have a really good period of Zazen now, or that was a common period of Zazen, all those kinds of thoughts, they happen. People actually do think that way sometimes, it happens. But just take another breath, please. Just feel your inhale through your whole body, feel how you're inhaling light and exhaling light. So the self joyfully enters Samadhi in all delusions. So this is, again, a reference to the self-fulfilling Samadhi that Dogen talks about.

[13:10]

And the self-fulfilling or enjoying itself, the etymology of it is the self accepting its function. So each of us has an assigned seat. Sometimes we may move to a chair or back to a cushion or whatever, but your job for this session is just to enjoy completely turning the light on, being Kevin or Nathan or Eric, Merit, that's your job, that's your function. Can you take on this body's light, bless you, sneezes and all, as you sit and turn the light within. And then he says this function is to empty out the self, so as not to be full of yourself. So this turning the light within is also just letting go, letting go of our whole trying to

[14:17]

hold on to the pretext for Merit, let go of this naming that engenders beings so intricately. It doesn't mean try and stop or crush it, letting go doesn't mean destroy it, it just means let go, it'll come back again. But sometimes you may feel something, but you may not even feel it, you may not even be aware as you're turning the light within that there's this space between the naming and the engendering of thought beings. This may happen too, or you may be aware of it, you may just feel the light. But then as soon as you have a thought about it, even a thought before the names, well, that's okay, that's just what goes on. But there are these spaces, so if there's 62,185,082 moments in a second,

[15:20]

some of those moments are just happening without you're doing anything about them. Probably a whole lot of those moments are there without you're trying to figure out anything or needing to figure out anything. So he says the empty valley receives the clouds. When we empty ourself of ourself, when we're not trying to make our experience into something else, when we're not trying to better ourself, we're not trying to get more enlightened or more deluded or whatever, when we're just enjoying the glow of our breathing in and out, we can receive the clouds, we can receive the nourishment of the coolness of this cynical air condition.

[16:20]

The empty valley receives the clouds, the cold stream cleanses the moon. So actually, this is one of Hongzhe's wonderful nature images of the stream flowing down the mountain and there's the reflection of the moon in it, but it's also a metaphor for how it is that we sit quietly, illuminated, and this cool stream of inhale and exhale, of thoughts and feelings and engendering being, in some way this cleanses the moon, this cleanses the light. We don't try and get rid of the stream of our thoughts, the stream of our feelings, the stream of our karma and being. We let go of it. But also, in the letting go, we actually cleanse the moon. We allow the moon to shine more brightly.

[17:25]

This is the process of awakening. This is the process of settling. So that was a review of yesterday. So now I'll talk a little more about another aspect of this. So again, starting from Hongzhe, he says, everything everywhere comes back to the olden ground. Not a hair has been shifted, bent, or raised up. So we talked about this a little bit yesterday in discussion. Everything everywhere comes back to the olden ground.

[18:28]

So from the point of view of Buddhist teaching and Buddhist lore, the fact that you're sitting here today, I know at least a couple of you, this is your first all-day sitting, but the fact that you're here means that this is really the olden ground, that we've all done this together many times. Everything everywhere comes back to the olden ground. There's something familiar about paying attention to how it is we're paying attention. There's something deeply familiar to us as human beings about this process of settling, this process of breathing in and breathing out. And yet, as was mentioned yesterday, it's also fresh.

[19:41]

It's different. Each of those moments is different and unique. Each inhale and each exhale is really a new configuration, a new particular context for you to settle in this olden ground that Hongzhe is talking about. We have the new particulars of this situation of our life in June 2007. Here we are in Chicago and there are the particulars, and it's a new situation. It's brand new. This has never happened before, ever. And yet, this is happening anew

[20:50]

back in this olden ground where we've been many times. Hard to talk about this, but both sides are there. There's this deep familiarity with this quality of illumination that Hongzhe is talking about. And yet, it's up to each of us. It doesn't happen kind of automatically. It happens thanks to this great effort of just paying attention. So, it's not some special kind of attention, but it's again and again. Turn the light back. See how your breath is, how your posture is, how the thoughts and the names are engendering beings with great intricacy. Settle into this possibility of radiance.

[21:54]

So, Hongzhe then says, despite a hundred uglinesses or a thousand stupidities, and we all know about that, the upright cauldron is naturally beneficent. So, this upright cauldron is the other side of the taking a backward step. There is motion. It's not still and static, this situation of the olden ground. It's alive. It's moving. It's shimmering. And we turn the light within. We turn our attention to this whole process of and we settle and settle, breathe and enjoy our breathing as we settle into this possibility, this reality of radiance. And how this works, the other side of this is this upright cauldron. So, this is an image from Taoist alchemy, which

[23:05]

is one of the backgrounds of Chinese Zen, that this was part of the culture for Hongzhe and for people he was talking to. I don't know how many of them had actually practiced, done the meditation practices involved, but it's part of cultural awareness. So, the cauldron is an old image. It's in the I Ching for cooking, for stewing. Many things are in the cauldron. In many traditional cultures, there's a big pot and sometimes more things are thrown in the pot and people eat from it and it all stews together. We don't know exactly what's in the cauldron, but it's this upright cauldron and it's a passage from the I Ching about it.

[24:16]

This is from a Buddhist commentary on the Book of Changes or I Chings. To change things, nothing compares to the cauldron. This is the vessel used to refine the wise, forge sages, cook Buddhas, and purify adepts. How could it not be very auspicious and developmental? So, this is an image for our Zazen that Hongzhe is kind of just throwing off, throwing into the stew here. This practice of uprightness, in some ways, again, it's not that it happens exactly automatically. It requires our renewing our uprightness, finding our balance, attending to our posture, paying attention. And yet, beyond our naming and the beings that engenders, beyond

[25:22]

our intricate rising and falling and searching out pretexts for merit, all that evaluating and categorizing that our mind is trained to do, something else is happening. Some Buddhas are being cooked. So, this cauldron, this image of the cauldron, again, it relates to Taoist processes of meditation that focus on particular energy channels and raising the energy in certain ways and working with it in certain ways and relates to particular energy centers in the meditation body. Instead, we don't focus on that in so particular a way. And it's very individual, so if you have some question about

[26:28]

how meditation energy seems to be going in your particular body-mind, please tell them we can talk about it. But there are techniques for working with this energy. But really, the basic thing that Hangzhi is saying is that it's naturally beneficent. We can trust Zazen. This uprightness allows our energy to circulate. And as we inhale and as we exhale, actually, oxygen flows through our whole body. So, we may think that it's only our lungs involved in breathing, but actually, every bit of our body is receiving the circulation of our inhale and exhale. So, how do we take care of this upright cauldron? How do we attend to that? So, Hangzhi continues, Zaojo's responses, wash out your bowl and drink your tea,

[27:46]

do not require making arrangements. From the beginning, they have always been perfectly apparent. So, some of you have been able to come to the classes I've been doing, sometimes Thursday evenings now, about Zaojo, Joshu in Japanese. And I think a week from today, I'm going to be at his old temple in China. So, he lived 1,200 years ago, and he lived to be 120, 1,200 years ago. Sometimes numbers are pleasing, anyway. And there are many, many, many, many stories about him, about his dialogues with other teachers or with students or responding to practitioners. And there's something about them because they're very, very simple and direct and also very deep.

[28:51]

So, Hangzhi here refers to two of these. And each of them has many levels, and they're very practical, matter-of-fact stories, very simple and direct. And also, they relate to this upright cauldron of Zaojo. So, the first story, a monk came and asked Zaojo for instruction. And Zaojo said, Have you had breakfast? And the monk said, Yes. And Zaojo said, Please wash out your bowls. So, here in the situation we have now, we'll be having lunch and dinner downstairs in the

[30:00]

cafeteria. In traditional Zen sessions, many of you have eaten, it's called oyoki, where we eat in bowls and there's servers come in and serve the food. And then you wash out your bowl right there where you're sitting and keep the bowls where you are. So, maybe eventually we'll have a meditation hall space and we can do that kind of practice. But after we eat silently downstairs at the Senegal also, we take our dishes to the dish area for the bowls to be washed out. But he's not just talking about that. Have you had your breakfast? And have you been nourished and fed by this upright cauldron of Zaojo?

[31:04]

And this monk was able to say very clearly, Yes, I had breakfast. So, how do we take care of the cauldron? How do we wash our bowls? So, it's also a matter of taking care of the cushions we use, or the chairs we use, straightening them out, brushing them off, respecting each thing. How do we take care of the cauldron of our belly and chest and throat and back and neck? How do we appreciate our breathing? How do we pay attention to this process of attending to the light, of turning the light with it? How do we feel the energy of

[32:17]

this upright cauldron? So, this is a kind of different way of looking at the process of settling that we're in than the pretext for merit or the naming and gendering beings. It's a kind of process of attending that's different. He mentions another story. He refers to another story. Again, I told it yesterday. A monk came to Zaojo and Zaojo said, Oh, have you been here before? And the monk said, Yes. And Zaojo said, Oh,

[33:28]

then please have a cup of tea. And then another monk came. And Zaojo said, Oh, have you been here before? And the monk said, No, I've never been here. And Zaojo said, Oh, please have a cup of tea. And the director who was there helping Zaojo said, Wait, those two monks who were here, they had different answers. And he said the same thing. And Zaojo said, Director, please have a cup of tea. And so whether you think you've been here to the olden ground before or not, please have a cup of tea. Refresh yourself. Allow the energy to circulate. Turn the light within. So Eric, did Ron talk about either of those stories last night? Uh, no, we didn't. Eric's been doing some special cha-cha stuff.

[34:32]

So Hongzhi says about this, these responses do not require making arrangements. From the beginning, they have always been perfectly apparent. This is not some special fancy exotic, you know, oriental, esoteric, inscrutable you know, procedure. So excuse me if these, you know, these fancy images make it seem like that. This is very simple, straightforward. I can't even think of anything more simple and straightforward than just sitting. Of course, we have a particular hand position we use and so forth. But we have the particular form of the meditation hall. But really, it's the most basic activity. So there are various theories about where this came from. Of course, it's been going on. Buddhists have been in every world system, awakening and awakening

[35:44]

and awakening again. But in terms of our planet's history, there's one idea that this comes from hunters who sat waiting, still sit waiting for the game to come into range. Some hunters do tracking, stalking, but more often it's just sitting waiting for something to appear to nourish us. This upright cauldron is like that. So we sit quietly and sometimes messages come. We hear that we should pick up a certain line. Not forget to breathe. Again, Hongju says this has always been perfectly apparent.

[36:46]

And he says, thoroughly observing each thing with the whole eye is a patchwork monk's spontaneous conduct. Or we could just say is the spontaneous conduct of the Zen practitioner. So again, our job is just to pay attention. And find your own steady, settled way to pay attention. And if you realize that you've been groggy and sleepy for the last 20 minutes, fine, just notice that. So it's not that you have to push yourself to sit on the edge of your seat and not miss a thing. With, how many, what did I say, 62 millions? I can't remember the number I said before. With that many moments going on in a second, you're missing a lot already. So don't worry about it.

[37:55]

Just do remember to take another breath, please. Actually, your body will probably remember for you. So somehow, this upright cauldron is working, this cauldron of zazen. And your job is just to show up and pay attention. And notice that your mind is doing all these calculations and, you know, the naming and the beings and all those ideas of merit and good and bad. That's just going on. Don't worry about it. Just take another breath and settle, settle. So there are branches of zen where the master will come around and hit you on the back if you look like you're sleeping at all, or even if you're not, you know, push you to try and see and pay attention in some special way and have some special

[39:05]

or flashy experience of this illumination. But it's okay if there's no neon, you know. This is a subtle light that is part of this upright cauldron. So he says it in another way, in another section, which I'll talk about more tomorrow, but I'll just read you a little of it. So he's really talking about the same thing here. He says, in daytime, the sun, at night, the moon, each in turn does not blind the other. This is how a Zen practitioner steadily practices naturally, without edges or seams. We don't have to prefer the sun or the moon. To gain such steadiness, you must completely

[40:08]

withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas. If you want to be rid of this invisible turmoil, you must just sit through it and let go of everything. Attain fulfillment and illuminate thoroughly, light and shadow, all together for God. So there is this, he calls it, this invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas. And he says to completely withdraw from that. It doesn't mean to crush your thinking. It doesn't mean to get rid of your thinking. Just take this backward step. Settle back down. Let the pounding and weaving of your thoughts just be there. Return to your breathing. Accept your function and be wholly satisfied.

[41:13]

In the entire place, you are not restricted. The whole time, you still mutually respond. So there's this process through which you can be wholly satisfied. Our attention, this process of mutually responding, through our turning the light within, we can feel this light fill our belly or rise up our back or settle into our throat and chest. So the light within and the light without are not separate, actually. So right in light there is darkness, right in darkness there is light.

[42:20]

The solitary boat carries the moon. At night it lodges amid the reed flowers, gently swaying in total brilliance. So if these images and metaphors of light and breath and so forth are helpful to you, enjoy them. If not, just don't worry about it. Just sit. There is this dynamic, mutually responsive, energetic activity happening through your uprightness, through your returning to attention. Gently, persistently,

[43:25]

slowly, And there's this mysterious way in which somehow, through your breathing, through your giving your attention to just being present, settling into this space of breath glow, you know, something is happening. And you don't have to figure it out. But the more we do this, the more we can start to trust that the cauldron is cooking. That through our awareness,

[44:32]

that some light is shed in our own life and in the world. And it makes a difference in the world. So please enjoy your breathing. Don't worry about remembering anything I've said, or that I've just said. Just settle into this upright cauldron. Sometimes it gets a little hot. It's okay to drink some cool water or take a little cool breath. Change your leg position if you need to.

[45:44]

So we'll have time to discuss this later this afternoon. Please enjoy yourself.

[45:52]

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