Good evening, everyone, and welcome. We're in the middle of a practice commitment period, a couple of months, and we've been talking about an old Zen text from the 9th century called the Precious Mara Samadhi or the Jewel Mara Samadhi. And the chant that we did tonight is kind of a precursor to that, the harmony of difference and sameness. And I want to talk this evening about a line from the Jewel Mara Samadhi that relates to this earlier text. A silver bowl filled with snow, a heron hidden in the moon, taken as similar or they are not the same, not distinguished, their places are known. But before I talk about the silver bowl filled with snow, just to note that today is Earth Day, so happy Earth Day.

[01:07]

And there would be lots of things to say about that if I weren't talking about the Jewel Mary Samadhi. unrelated but of course we know the Earth is very challenged now and there are many issues to talk about, dangers from the tar sands and the Keystone Pipeline and fracking and nuclear power and I'll talk more about all of that after our practice commitment period is finished, but I just wanted to say that also there are many people who are working to protect the Earth, so who are doing as, you know, as, so the Cholmere Samadhi talks about failure to serve is no help. Fortunately, there are lots of people who are helping, so just to say that. So this text we chanted tonight, the Harmony of Sameness and Difference, is by another teacher in our lineage a few generations before, Dong Shan, who wrote the Jewel Mary Samadhi, the teacher who wrote the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, who also wrote the Song of the Grass Hut, we sometimes chant this, named Shito or Sekito in Japanese.

[02:31]

This is kind of background directly to the ritual merasamadhi. So these lines I want to talk about tonight, a silver bowl filled with snow, a heron hidden in the moon, taken as similar or literally, well, looking at the characters, taken as similar or they look similar, but they're not equal. They're mixed together, but we know their places. We know where each one is. So these are very strange, evocative images, and there's stories about them. The silver bowl filled with snow, I particularly want to talk about tonight. And we'll have some time for discussion, too. But first I'll say a little bit about the heron hidden in the moon. The moon is an old image in Zen for wholeness, for perfection, for fullness, for enlightenment.

[03:42]

And sometimes they talk about the full moon and the crescent moon and various aspects of the moon, but usually when they just say the moon, they're talking about the full round moon and the wholeness of that moon. And often in As I've spoken about before, the moon is kind of more evocative and is seen more truly when it's not completely seen. When it's seen through a haze or through a mist, or often in East Asian paintings, you'll see the moon with some reeds or something growing in front of it. But here it's a heron hidden in the moon. And the point is that herons are white. And so if you imagine a heron flying and there's this heron hidden in the moon. And actually in East Asia, as I spoke about recently, there's a rabbit in the moon.

[04:49]

We see a man in the moon, but in East Asia we see a rabbit in the moon. But if you see the heron flying across the moon, Well, if you get one snapshot, you might actually not notice the heron, but actually, you know, you can tell the heron's there. And yet, there's just this white wash. So we can distinguish them, and yet they're sort of the same. So what this is talking about is this kind of, tension between the way in which we are all one and the way in which everything is different. So sameness has to do with, we could say, emptiness, with oneness. There are many ways in which the distinctions, when we see

[05:59]

as Hongshuo talks about in this precious merit samadhi, the dharma of thusness, the reality of thusness. We are all just one. And yet, there are these particulars, there are these differences. Our human minds races, rushes to the distinctions. So initially, all we see is distinctions. When we start to settle down, and calm down, and settle down, we can start to see this wholeness, this sameness. But what the Jomara Samadhi is about is this, actually there's this tension. We can't say one, we can't say two. And Shinto started to talk about it in the chant we just chanted, and when Ulamar Samadhi goes into it further, we can see Dogen, when he came back from China to Japan, was asked what he brought, and he said, eyes horizontal, nose vertical.

[07:13]

We were all the same that way. And yet, if we look around face-to-face, we're all different. So there's this tension. And this tension that Śruta started to talk about in the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, between that which is universally true and the particulars, is what is one of the things that the General Marisimati is about, and it gets developed into what's called the five ranks, and I'll come back to that towards the end this evening. So one way to see this is the oneness of the heron and the moon. They're both white. The other way, this other image is the silver bowl filled with snow. And this is a more complicated image. Literally, it's snow piled up, snow filling abundantly, snow abundant in a silver bowl.

[08:32]

Well, snow and silver, snow's white, right? But as it starts to melt, as it glistens, if you imagine one of the silver, round silver bowls in the kitchen, one of the mixing bowls, snow filling up like a snow cone. And maybe the snow is kind of a little bit, a little bit melting, a little bit. So is it full like this or is it full like this? That's not an insignificant question. And if we look at it, can you see through the snow to the silver? Well, can we see through this? Is it silver or is it snow? Well, okay, there's a story about this, and it has to do with our lineage. And this is a rather involved story. But it's a story that's in one of the great Koan collections, the Blueprint Record.

[09:37]

It's case number 13. And it's actually, and I'm only going to read a little bit, refer to a little bit of this story. But it's about a teacher named Ba Ling, who was a successor of a great teaching in Yunnan, not in the Soto lineage, but a related lineage. And a monk asked him, what is the school of Kanadeva? And Ba Ling said, piling up snow in a silver bowl. So I want to talk about Kanadeva, because he is one of our ancestors in India. So this gets complicated. But we are from the school of Kanadeva. Kanadeva was a successor to the great teacher Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna, so I'll jump ahead a little bit. Nagarjuna was one of the great, great teachers of Buddhism in India, and he's considered the master of emptiness teaching.

[10:44]

But he's actually, he's in all of the lineages. all of the later Buddhist schools consider Nagarjuna one of their great patriarchs and ancestors. So the Tibetan schools and the Pure Land schools and Zen. Of course, the history of Zen in India, Indians weren't concerned about history so much. It's just not part of Indian culture. So we don't really know who were the teachers who kept alive this practice tradition that we do now in India. Later on in China, they made up stories about different Indian ancestors, and we check those sometimes as a lineage of ancestors. There were many people who kept alive the tradition, women as well as men. But anyway, Nagarjuna was one of the great, great Buddhist teachers. And we don't even know exactly when he lived, maybe in the 200s, but give or take a century.

[11:51]

But he was a master of emptiness teaching, and he was a master of Buddhist philosophy. And Kaneda was one of his successors. So according to the Zen legends and Zen lore, we are the branch of, we are from the school of Nagarjuna that came through Kanadeva. So this is a story about Kanadeva that has to do with snow and a solar bulb. So it's a little background. But I want to start with the introduction to this story in the Book of Record. This is sort of poetic, and anyway, I don't know, I just liked it. It says, clouds are frozen over the Great Plains, but the whole world is not hidden. When snow covers the white flowers, it's hard to distinguish the outlines. Its coldness is as cold as snow and ice. Its fineness is as fine as rice powder.

[12:53]

Its depths are hard for even a Buddha's eye to peer into. Its secrets are impossible for demons and outsiders to fathom. The introductions are the story about Ba Ling saying that Conrad David's school is piling up snow when he saw the ball. So again, this has to do with these whiter shades of pale or these many different aspects of white. Clouds are frozen over the great plains, but the whole world is not hidden. When snow covers the white flowers, it's hard to distinguish the outlines. Its coldness is as cold as snow and ice. Its fineness is as fine as rice powder. Its depths are hard for even a Buddha's eye to peer into. Its secrets are impossible for demons and outsiders to fathom." So this gets to this question about how do we distinguish when everything looks the same?

[13:59]

Of course, we start from everything looks different, and then, you know, As we start sitting practice, we start to see how things are the same. So there's a whole bunch of stories in here about Kanadeva, who before he even met Nagarjuna, was this wild character who was engaged in various debates with various Buddhists. Anyway, it's a very colorful character. The great teacher Matsu said, whenever there are words and phrases, this is the Kanadeva school. Just this he considered to be principle. So he was very skilled at debating. He was very skilled at using language, which is kind of ironic given how he finally met and became a successor of Nagarjuna. And so I'm going to tell that story from a teaching from one of the Japanese Soto teachers.

[15:06]

But the last thing I'll mention from this case. has to do with this teacher, Bali, who was asked by his teacher, who said to his teacher, Yonnan, that I have three turning words. And this was his dharma. He said, what is the path a clear-eyed person falls into a well? What is the sword so sharp it cuts a hair blown against it? Each branch of coral upholds the moon. And then he said, what is the school of Kanadeva? piling up snow on a silver bull. So these were his three turning phrases that young men affirmed. So I can come back to those if anyone's interested. There's much more in this case, but I just wanted to introduce Kanadeva with that. So Kanadeva is in our lineage. He's one of the names that we chant.

[16:08]

He's the one after Nagarjuna, who supposedly is in the Zen lineage. So the story about Kanadeva and Nagarjuna is interesting. And this directly has to do with the snow and a silver bull. So this is from the transmission of the lamp, a text by Keizan, who was a few generations after Dogen and considered the second founder Soto Zen in Japan. And I'm going to read more from this. And this is directly about Kanadeva and when he met Nagarjuna. So the first part, Kanadeva visited the great master Nagarjuna. Knowing that he was a person of wisdom, Nagarjuna sent an attendant out to place a bowl full of water in front of Kanadeva. Just as the latter was about to reach the gate,

[17:10]

There are different versions of the story, so I'll talk about that in a bit. Nagarjuna then wants to see what Kanadeva would do. Kanadeva took a needle, and Thomas Cleary's translation here says, he placed the needle on the surface of the water and brought it with him to meet Nagarjuna. Happily, they had a meeting of minds. Now, all the other translations say, and actually, I don't know about this. I actually picture it myself as they sat down together. And Nagarjuna took a bowl of water and pushed it in front of Kanadeva. And Kanadeva took out a needle. And the text actually says he placed it in a bowl of water. Now, Tom Fury is quite a bright fellow. He says he placed it on the surface of the water. Other text says he placed it into the water. So that's a question. So I'll just leave you to consider, did the needle float on the top of the water, or did it go into the water?

[18:16]

That's a significant question for our lineage. But at any rate, there's different versions of this. But top theory thinks that it floated on the surface of the water. Anyway, there's more that's said in this text, and I'm going to read it. a lot of it. This is, so again, this is the image. There's a bowl of water and there's this guy, Kanadeva, and I guess he, you know, he must have had, it must have been, I imagine it was a sewing needle and he sewed his, he was used to sewing his robes. I don't know if he was a sewing teacher, but anyway, he was, he had this needle and he pulled it out. So, so, so again, Our school is called the School of Kanadeva. The whole school of Zen is called the School of Kanadeva sometimes. And in his talk about this story, Kezon said, it was like piling snow in a silver bowl, hiding a heron in the moonlight. Quoting the Jewel Mary Samadhi, he says, Kanadeva especially upheld and expounded the religious way, and eventually it was known throughout India as the School of Kanadeva.

[19:24]

like piling snow in a silver bowl, hiding a heron in the moonlight. Because it was like this, when Nagarjuna and Kanadeva saw each other, a bowl full of water was immediately placed before the seat. Could inside and outside exist? Since it was a full bowl, there was no lack. So he makes the point of saying this bowl was filled with water. This is also still water. clear, absolutely clear, pure throughout, expansive filling, it is aware and radiant. Therefore, Kanadeva put a needle on the water and met with understanding." So, one point is that Nagarjuna placed this bowl of water in front of Kanadeva, Kanadeva took a needle out, again, here he says he put it on the water, Others say, put it in the water.

[20:26]

But he took a needle and put it in the water. And because of that, Nagarjuna accepted him as a successor. Now, Kaizan says, it is necessary to reach the very bottom and the very top. There is no ultimate or phenomenal. Reaching this point, teacher and disciple can hardly be distinguished. When you array them, they're not the same. When you mix them, they're not the same. There are no traces. When you mix them together, there are no traces. Again, this is from exactly, taken as similar, they are not the same, not distinguished, their places are known. This matter is manifested by the raising of eyebrows and making of eyes. This matter is shown by seeing color and hearing sound. Therefore, there is nothing to name sound and color and no seeing or hearing to abandon. Round and bright, without form, it is like the transparency of clear water. It is like penetrating through the spiritual source and seeking the spiritual sword.

[21:32]

The point appears everywhere, clear and bright, it pervades the mind. Water, too, pierces mountains with its flow and inundates the skies. So water is very powerful. The Grand Canyon is created by water. A needle penetrates a bag and pierces a sea, yet water is, after all, not destroyed by anything. How could there be any tracks made in it? And a needle, to other things, is harder than a diamond. Do not entertain a dualistic understanding of this. Just swallow up, spit out, and think carefully and thoroughly. Even if you feel clear and pure, empty and fluid, right then, There must be a pervading firmness. The disasters of water, fire, and wind cannot impinge upon it, nor will the eons of becoming, subsistence, decay, and emptiness affect it."

[22:34]

So let me say a little bit about this needle in water. And then I'll just finish with Kezan's capping phrase about this. So, you know, Nagarjuna was a great philosopher and, again, talked about emptiness and the emptiness of emptiness, and he talked about the 18 kinds of emptiness and their most dangerous attachment, which is the attachment to emptiness. We can say the most dangerous attachment is the attachment to oneness. Now, of course, we know about the dangers of attachment to particulars and our whole society running around trying to consume as much as it can and being attached to materialistic things and particulars. But we've all seen through this. We're here. We're not concerned. We've seen through that at least a little bit. We're concerned with spiritual practice and life or else we wouldn't be here.

[23:41]

So, the other side is to see there's a wholeness. We've seen the moon. We've all glimpsed it, at least. But there's a warning that the Garjana made about the attachment to non-attachment. So it's not that we can escape from the particulars. So, part of what's going on here in this dance of sameness and difference is how do we integrate seeing oneness with seeing difference, with returning to difference, with, you know, steadying, finding calm, finding a place of steadiness and calm on our cushions, which of course, you know, this takes time. This is the work of Zen practice. But, you know, and maybe it's not such a problem being in a lay sangha in Chicago, we've got plenty of things to distract us, and we don't have to worry so much about getting attached to emptiness or non-attachment.

[24:51]

And yet, this is this tradition that we're part of that warns us, and Nagarjuna particularly warned us about that. But here comes Kanadeva, and Nagarjuna offers him this water, this bowl of water, peaceful. Encounter David, what does he do? He drops a needle. So, what is this dance between particular and universal? So, you know, we could see the water as this kind of calm, universal, and the needle as sharp and penetrating, particular. So, part of what this has to do with So this is at the beginning of the song, the Precious Marriage Samadhi. Later on it starts talking about five, five flavored herbs and the permutations of the fiveness of the fire hexagram and so forth and five different kinds of ways in which newborn children are like the Buddha and there's various interactions of this universal

[26:08]

wholeness that we can glimpse and particulars and how they interact. So the point isn't to figure out that formula and get it down or anything like that. It's to see that there is this interactive possibility of bringing wholeness into our world, into our life, into the particulars of each of our lives. That's what this is about. So, Conor David dropped a needle in a bowl of water for us. So, Kezan at the end of talking about the story in the previous translation says, I have another humble saying to explain this story. And his verse is, one needle fishes all the waters of the ocean. Wherever it goes, the ferocious dragon can hardly conceal its body.

[27:14]

So, snow in a silver bowl. Needles in a silver bowl. Anybody ever read Cat's Cradle? There's an image there of... What's it called? Ice Nine? It's the kind of ice that you drop in water and the whole ocean turns to ice. And I sort of think about that with this silver ball. But we don't want to do that. So... Again, you know, part of the point of these end poems is just to play with these images and to see, you know, how do we use these stories and images to see how to bring our life to life.

[28:19]

And I'm sorry if I've, you know, puzzled or confused anyone. But I'll stop there. Any responses, comments, questions, whatever. Jim? I'm not sure where he goes, but I'm taking with this notion of the needle on the water and the needle in the water. The commentator who has the needle fishing the ocean That's right, yeah, surface tension and the needle points, is it point north? True north?

[29:20]

Point south. Point south? In China. In China? That's how they do it. Ah, this is a story from China. No, actually it's from India. Of course, India and China have different species of dragons, I think. So yeah, I think all the other translations I've seen, it goes in the water clear, but Tom Cleary's a very bright guy. He says it's on the water. I don't know. I'll leave that to you, just saying. Are there other reflections on the snow in a silver ball? I was curious about the hair hidden in the moon. What about it? Is the hair considered to be a masculine or feminine character, do you know? I think there are male and female herons. I don't know. Anybody? From what I understand.

[30:34]

I know there's a different, I actually, I know there are different characters for some birds. There are different characters for male and female. For example, there's a different character for male and female phoenixes. You happen to have the character for male phoenix in your name. Yes, here's one. I'm a little bit confused about the mechanics of the image itself, because if you refer So it kind of refers to the oneness, but it says you can still tell them apart. Exactly.

[31:36]

But with the heron in the moon, it seems, in a way, I mean, there's that bird hidden, which is strange. But it's just the opposite. Because if you think about it, if you're looking at a full moon and a heron flies across it, it will not appear as white. It will appear as black. And so that even though they're... anything that appears in front of the moon is going to appear, you're going to see the shadow side, it's going to be black. So it seems like the opposite because you know that there's a oneness, they're both white, but what actually you're confronted with is the difference. But it doesn't seem like a poem saying that because it makes I don't know, I've never actually seen a heron in front of the moon. But you've seen many other things in front of the moon. They don't just lie at night. Anything you put in front of a bright light will... Oh, I see what you're saying.

[32:42]

I mean, it's not an important point, but I just don't quite understand. Yeah, well, they're using these images poetically. Actually, the character that says, a heron, the verb that's for hidden also means treasure. A heron is treasure. I don't know. I think you're right. I think the image breaks down, and what he's going for is the sanctuary. Right. I mean, it's almost the opposite. Yeah, it's opposite of the stone in the silver bowl because what's formless is mounded up and it's taken form. But it's sitting in the silver bowl and it doesn't, it's a polished silver bowl, there will be a reflection. And so there's an interaction there between forms reflecting each other and showing their similarity. It's a little different. I mean, I guess the question is, you know, We talk about them as if they're equivalent, and it seems like they might be complementary in the sense that one is talking about losing sight of oneness, and one is possibly talking about losing sight of difference, and sort of playing between how you avoid.

[33:58]

I don't think that's right. It's like the poem, generally. It goes back and forth between those images. OK. where one is more predominant in one region, and immediately after, there's another one where the emptiness, the inherent is being swallowed up in the sense of emptiness. You can see it, but the emphasis is not on this. And the point is just the tension between things that are sort of the same, but they're not, and things that are sort of different, but not. And that's really the point of the image, I think. Again, is the needle silver? It goes into the silver bowl. I don't know if they had silver needles in India at that time.

[35:00]

Well, the bowl, I don't know. I wasn't there. But the bowl in the Jomar Samadhi is sober. I was going to ask a question. So the needle on top of the water, the needle is supported by the water. And you might look at the water and say, well, what holds up the needle? What holds it in particular? And it's the whole vastness. Yeah, I think the needle in the wall and the water is a really interesting image for, There's lots of different ways to talk about this, the universal and the particular, the ultimate and phenomena, and that's what's at issue here, ultimate truth and then each particular event, each particular thing that is it, so this foreshadows

[36:10]

You are not it, it actually is you. The needle is not the water, but the water is actually the needle. Well, anyway, I don't know how to translate it exactly, but this tension between each of us as individuals and the fact of our wholeness together, or the fact of our each being a reflection of everything, an example of everything. Like the image of Indra's neck, where he's jeweled, reflects everything. Other comments or questions? Ah, Laura. So the very first time I ever sat Zazen, the talk was about the bull with silver bowl with snow. So I sat and my legs hurt so bad and then I heard the stock and it was the most interesting thing I'd ever heard in my whole life.

[37:18]

Even though I didn't understand it at all. And so here I am. So thank you. So great. It might have been given by you. It was in Northern California. I don't know where it was. It was a long time ago. I used to live in Northern California a long time ago. So it's actually time for the 440sat to announce, but I just feel like We need one more needle. Bill? Well, I was thinking of the song in Cat's Cradle of Baconin, the crazy religious figure.

[38:25]

How is that the Chinese dentist and the British queen, they all fit together in the same machine, And I can probably remember some more of the verses or the chorus of something like, nice, nice, very nice, so many people in the same device. It's got a little inner being going on before the ice nine hits. Well, let's hope that we can protect the Earth from all the ice nine.

[39:03]

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