day of Sashin. And some of us are rather new to Sashin and some of us haven't sat Sashin for a long time. And about this time it's easy to start getting a little bit restless. So I want to encourage you to sit very still. We come to a point in Sushi where either we become restless or our legs start to hurt or our back hurts or it's just hard to sit still and we come up against certain barriers.

[01:03]

And this is actually where this phase of sitting is very critical. There's always the temptation to move. And you feel, I can't do this. Actually, you can do it, but you have to have a lot of determination. And if you continue with real determination, your experience of Sashin will be very gratifying and satisfying.

[02:13]

So, I want to encourage you to really sit still. There's really only one way to go, and that's to become more and more still. When you have difficulty, our immediate reaction to difficulty is to find a way out. But the only way we can get through this difficulty is to find the way in. So, instead of trying to find out how to escape it, Since there's no place to go, just become what you are. Just become totally what's happening.

[03:21]

Then there's no... Even though you have some pain or some restlessness or some problem, you become the problem. you become what's happening, then there's no problem. But until you reach that point, you have a big problem. So, number one problem is resistance. And as I said yesterday, Anticipation. Anticipation causes restlessness. So, we're constantly in ceching, waking up to the present.

[04:30]

As soon as you slip out of the present, for an instant, you have a problem. As long as you stay in the moment, as long as you stay in the present completely, one with the present situation, moment after moment, you can accept yourself and you can accept your situation. If you try, not just try to escape, but look for some way out, you know, get restless, try to move this or move that. Moving doesn't help. Moving just makes it worse. As you probably have experienced.

[05:32]

Just to sit still. Just give up. Eventually you have to just give up. And when you give up, you can move freely. Of course, I'm not speaking to everyone because most of you know this. So we have to find the comfort within ourself, not by changing our circumstances. When you take a position, although it may be the same old position in which you experience a great deal of discomfort, just stay in that position.

[06:59]

That's your vehicle. And you just ride it out. And eventually you will fit into it. I want to talk today about Tozan Ryokai Zenji's Five Ranks. Are you familiar? Maybe you're familiar with Tozan's Five Ranks. Tozan, of course, is our ancestor from

[08:11]

whom we get the name for the Soto school, Cao Duong in China. Sozon, that's his Japanese name. Sozon, Tozon was a very famous teacher in China. And his pupil Sozon, He and his people, Sozon, they combine the names. It should be Toso, because Tozon is first and Sozon is second, but they turn it around. Soto, because it sounds better. But that's probably where their name comes from. left us a kind of outline of how to exist in enlightened practice.

[09:26]

And it's called the Five Ranks. And the Five Ranks were a very famous outline. And at some point in the history of Chinese and Japanese Zen, they got kind of intellectualized, over-intellectualized, and they were dropped. But Haku and Zenji was picked up on the five ranks and used them in his Koan system. It's called, they're called the Go-I Koans. Five Koans. And they're very important for Rinzai Zen, even though originally our five ranks are a tool of the Soto school.

[10:31]

But all that doesn't make any difference at all. Just a little background. So the five ranks, so-called five ranks, are really like five positions or five rungs or five descriptions of practice. And I'll try to explain them in a way that's not too intellectual, but they are intellectual. The practice is not, but the study is.

[11:34]

The first one is that the five ranks have to do with form and emptiness, or The real and the seeming, or the real and the apparent. The real is like emptiness, and the apparent is like form. So they're usually not called form and emptiness, but the real and the apparent, or the real and the seeming, apparent. reality and appearances. And in Chinese, shou is the real or the absolute, and hen is the seeming or phenomenal side.

[12:41]

So the first one is called hen in show, or the apparent within the real. And the second one is called show in hen, or the real within the apparent. And the third one is him coming out of show, or the apparent coming from the real, or the absolute. And these are the three fundamental bases. This is the fundamental base, the three legs. The first one is like emptiness is emptiness.

[13:53]

And the second one is like form is form. And the third one is form is emptiness and emptiness is form. I'll talk about the other two separately. So, the first one, where the apparent is in the real, is form is emptiness. And when we sit in zazen, form is emptiness. we go beyond all form, but not to the extent that there is no form. Form is there. Otherwise, we would have to eliminate the him from the sho and say, it's just sho, just emptiness.

[15:06]

But there has to be some emptiness, some form to contain that emptiness. And when we sit in zazen, just enough form, to contain that emptiness. Just enough. This rank is also called dying the great death. Some of us have not died the great death yet, so we're still moving around. It means all forms are illusory.

[16:09]

going beyond form, going way beyond form, beyond seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, going to the very essence of existence. And the other side is Emptiness is form. Where there is just activity. Just complete life of activity. But that life of activity also has some... remembers emptiness. Just activity, in the usual sense, has no recollection of emptiness.

[17:30]

But in this sense, enlightened sense, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. This is the other side of the great emptiness, which is total immersion in form, total immersion in action. So this side is the samadhi of no form. This side is the total samadhi of action. total engagement in the world, forgetting all about emptiness, except that emptiness is there within all that activity.

[18:37]

So this is kind of theoretical, form on one side, emptiness on the other. But in order to, it's really one thing, but in order to explain it, we have to differentiate. between Form and Emptiness. And the third one, Form is Form and Emptiness is Emptiness, is that total action in the world based on Emptiness. Where going back and forth, is no problem. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Equal.

[19:38]

And this is actually where we live our life, our practice. It's called the coming from within the going to, the going to within the coming from. The coming from within the going to, the going to within the coming from. Total freedom. Coming to within... Coming from within the going to, the going to within the coming from.

[20:43]

It's like this. It's a perfect equilibrium of form and emptiness. Not so easy to achieve. In our practice, we come to the zendo and turn away from all active life. That's the first one. Then we go out into the world and just completely engage in activity. That's the second one. But those two activities are brought together by the third one.

[21:57]

And the third one is our actual activity, integrated activity. So when you have that integrated activity, there's no difference between coming to the Zindo and engaging in activity in the world. No difference at all. except in one spot you do one thing, and in another spot you do another thing. It means that whatever activity you engage in, you're completely at home. completely one with.

[23:14]

So that in this endo, you experience great activity. And in the world, you experience great stillness within your activity. And then the other two ranks, the fourth rank is the integration of activity with activity. That means that you actually express your practice in a way that expresses your vows.

[24:22]

You live your life of practice in a way that expresses your vows. In other words, you live your life for the sake of all sentient beings. If you're a lay person, then you live your life as in accordance with lay practice. If you're a teacher, then you set up your way of teaching. And you really make perfect or develop your way of life as a Buddhist or a Zen student or someone who practices. That's the area within which you train yourself and express in the world, in a worldly way, your understanding and your practice and you share it with others.

[25:39]

And the fifth rank is called the perfection of all the rest. And that's the point where you no longer care about Zen or Buddhism or practice or enlightenment or delusion, but because because of your state of mind, whatever you do expresses all that. And you don't have to make an effort to do it. And that's sometimes expressed as foolish old man who

[26:53]

bumbles around, can't find his glasses, but in his bumbling and his stumbling, he inadvertently brings sentient beings to enlightenment without trying or without thinking about it or without doing anything special. That's the fifth rank. And Hakuin uses a poem to express that one, which is, he hires foolish, wise men. And up on his mountaintop, he hires foolish, wise men, and he and they together fill up the well with snow. Filling up the well with snow is like useless activity.

[28:03]

But just over and over again, you do some useless activity. These five ranks are not necessarily step-by-step. Sometimes we think of them as step... There is a kind of step-like quality, but they just express five stages of how we actually practice and what our practice is based on. And we go round and round and we don't stay in one spot. But sometimes we practice them all together. Sometimes we practice them one at a time. Sometimes we see them one at a time or differentiate them.

[29:19]

And the five ranks really represent the basis for an outline of Kozan's teaching and our practice, Zen practice. And we've never studied the five ranks. Oh, we did a long time ago. Remember, we have a little study on them. But it's good to be familiar with this kind of understanding, this kind of study.

[30:23]

Even though we don't talk about five ranks specifically, We're always talking about them anyway, you know, in a non-formulated way. But to put what we talk about and how we practice and think into perspective, you can look at our practice through the eyes of the five ranks. One thing about the five ranks is that you see a balanced view of practice. And it's easy to see our practice from one point of view or another point of view and leave out things that we should think about.

[31:24]

put into practice. And the five ranks also correspond to what's called the four wisdoms. The four wisdoms are the great round mirror wisdom. That's the first one. That corresponds to the first rank of form is emptiness. And the second one is the Create equality wisdom where all forms are seen as equal, as forms of emptiness.

[32:42]

That corresponds to the second rank of form is form. And the third rank and the third wisdom is the wisdom of seeing everything as it is, recognizing each thing just as it is, and appreciating everything just as it is.

[33:52]

And the fourth wisdom corresponds to the fourth rank and the fifth rank. And that's the wisdom of action. Or the wisdom which is corresponds to our activity, bodily action and sensory action. So mirror wisdom is the wisdom which is present and just reflects everything without thinking, without acting.

[35:47]

Just reflects reality completely. And the second wisdom reflects reality in all of its different forms and realizes that all those forms are a form of emptiness. and the sameness of all forms in that sense. They all have one root.

[36:53]

All forms have one root. Great equality wisdom. And the third wisdom, which corresponds to form is emptiness and emptiness is form, appreciates everything just as it is. It sees long things as long, short things as short. Men as men, women as women. And the fourth wisdom is the wisdom that we put into action.

[37:58]

I want to say in the first rank, everything is taken away. When in the first rank, there's no man, no woman, no name, no fame, no special position. And then in the second rank, you are married or Jane. You're a man or woman. You have a certain position in the world, and so forth. These two sides. Emptiness is emptiness, form is form, and then form is emptiness, emptiness is form. The coming from, within the going to, the going to, within the coming from.

[39:11]

Back and forth. In a never-ending intertwining. Okay. Thank you.

[39:34]

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