And so we have copies and then we pass them out. So I thought maybe we'd chant it first and get into it and then we can talk about it. Khenmey Jukku Dhananjogam. Kham se on namo bhutsu yo bhutsu enyo bhutsu enbu fo so enjo rakuta jo choden. Kham se on boden. Kham se on It's fun to chant, isn't it? This is a kind of very joyous little sutra, and very upbeat.

[01:13]

Daibosatsu Zen Monastery, Kongo-ji, Edo Roshi's place in New York, when it opened on the 4th of July, we had a seven-day Sashin, which I attended, and they chanted this every day, all the time. And they would just chant it, you know, scream and yell it, and, you know, with all their might, you know, to as a kind of way of doing something wholeheartedly. It's not necessary to chant it like that, but I thought it was very interesting that they put their whole body-mind into it in that way. But it's good to chant it with whole body-mind.

[02:38]

But there are various ways to do that. So, I'll talk about that as I proceed here. So, Enmei Juku Kanongyo. Enmei means, this is the title of the sutra, Enmei means extending life or some, it's translated in various ways. Prolonging life is one translation. Extending life, eternal life, endless dimensions of this moment is another translation. I like continuous life, but you know, Eternalism is a nice term, but it has other connotations, so it doesn't always hit the mark in Buddhism.

[03:45]

Although we know it has a certain nice sound, a nice ring to it, but it's more like continuous life, or endless life, life which is unceasing regardless of how we perceive it. or how we understand it. And jikku means ten phrases or ten lines. So if you count the number of lines in the sutra, you'll see that there are ten. Even though, to say ten phrases, the first phrase would be kanzeyo, which isn't exactly a phrase, it's more of a word or a name. But anyway, ten lines, maybe. Ten phrases. And Kanon is Kanzeon, or Avalokiteśvara.

[04:54]

And Gyo is the Sutra. Like Hanyashimyo is the Heart Sutra. So, something like endless life, ten phrase, avalokiteshvara sutra. And you can think of the ten phrases or ten lines as ten aspects, ten ways of viewing or expressing or understanding. the endless dimensions of life. In any one moment, each moment has its own past and future.

[06:03]

So how do we look at the flow of time and life? When we think about time, there's continuous time and discontinuous time. Discontinuous time is like time divisions. January, February, March, April, May. One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock. Yesterday and tomorrow. These are all divisions of time, which are superimposed over continuous time. And continuous time doesn't have any divisions. It's just this moment, which is always just this moment. And usually we're only aware of discontinuous time.

[07:07]

We're bred to pay attention to discontinuous time. When we're babies, we're not concerned about time at all. But as we grow up, we learn to pay attention to the divisions of discontinuous time, and it's very helpful and necessary. But we have to remember that it's something that's superimposed on continuous time. And when we say to understand or to seek enlightenment, it means to understand or realize discontinuous time as the basis of continuous time, or continuous time as the basis of discontinuous time. This sutra expresses the various aspects of, not continuous and discontinuous time exactly, but the source of Buddha and the activity of Buddha.

[08:44]

So the sutra opens by saying, Kanzeon, this one name, Kanzeon. And as we know, Kanzeon is in China, they say, they say Kuan Yin. Kanzeon in Japanese and Avalokiteshvara in India. Kan means to penetrate. or to illuminate, or to understand in some way, beyond the intellect. And ze is the world, and on is sound. So penetrate, world, sound. Or as we say, avalokiteshvara, here's the cries of the world, and becomes the cries of the world. Compassion.

[09:50]

So, compassion means to suffer with. Compassion is suffering, strictly speaking. To suffer with. To understand the suffering of other beings as your own suffering. So this is the life of kanzayon, which is our own life. Each one of us is Avalokiteshvara. We use some model called Avalokiteshvara as a model, but actually we're talking about ourselves, not some celestial Buddha out in space somewhere, or some ideal model. We're really talking about our own practice, our own life, when we talk about Kamsayong or Avalokiteshvara. Avalokiteshvara, or Kanzhaya, Huan Yin in China, became like Mary in Catholicism, who is the embodiment of mercy.

[10:59]

And so, you know, in Catholicism people pray to Mary, who is very compassionate. And in China, the Buddhists would pray to Avalokiteshvara, Kuan Yin, to bestow benevolence on them. So this is kind of devotional Buddhism. Zen is also devotional, but it's devotion to practice, devotion to Buddha through practice So we don't have so many devotional or supplication practices. Because Buddha is not something outside of us. Sounds like fun.

[12:03]

Buddha is not something outside of us. So our effort is to be one with ourselves, one with Buddha, one with the universe. And so there's great devotion in this, but it's a different kind of devotion, different aspect of devotion. So instead of supplicating Avalokiteshvara or Karnan, we bring forth Karnan in our, we make the effort to bring forth kannan within our practice, and we always fail, which is wonderful. We always fall great failures, but don't worry. The effort is what's important. So, you could say that kanzeon is the mind with which we practice.

[13:12]

You know, in the Heart Sutra we say, kan-ji-zai, bo-satsu-gyo. Kan-ji-zai is also an aspect of Huan-yin, or Kanon. Kan-ji-zai is to penetrate the self. When Avalokitesvara was practicing deeply Prajnaparamita, His effort was to penetrate prajna, to penetrate to the deepest level of the Self. So, there are many different aspects of Avalokiteshvara and Kanon. And one of the nicest aspects is that Kanon appears in various situations, in various guises. So, if you see everyone as Karnan, then you can see everyone as your teacher.

[14:33]

And you can realize that Karnan is always helping you. Kalan could be your automobile mechanic, or a person in the grocery store, or your mother, or someone who really scolds you roundly. So, our Kutisvara, or Kalan, appears in all kinds of guises. Not disguises, but guises. many different faces, and we should be able to see Kanaan in all the faces. So, the next phrase is Namo Butsu.

[15:45]

Namu means something like homage. And Butsu is Buddha. It also can be one with Buddha. To pay homage to Buddha is to be one with Buddha. So, Nama, Nama, Namu, Butsu. You know, first of all, the sutra says kanze yon, and then it says homage to Buddha. So, what's the connection? There should be some connection. So, my feeling is that the connection is with the mind of kanze yon, we pay homage to Buddha. Buddha has, of course, which Buddha are we talking about?

[16:52]

Buddha has many aspects. So we talk about three aspects. Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya. These are the three bodies of Buddha. Dharmakaya is your nature. Your underlying, original nature. Sambhogakaya is your wisdom, mind of wisdom, which seeks itself. And Nirmanakaya Buddha is the Buddha who is acting in various circumstances in the world. So Nirmanakaya Buddha is your activity. So, to be one with these three aspects of yourself as Buddha.

[17:56]

Namu Butsu, homage to the three bodies of Buddha, which are the embodiment of my own Buddha nature. So it's not just historical Buddha or some idea about Buddha. It's like bringing forth Buddha. Homage to Buddha means bring forth Buddha. There's a story that Suzuki Roshi once told about a young boy and his father. the father was very poor and he was kind of old. And he had this young son who he was bringing up, but he felt he was getting so old that he wanted to turn him over to his friend in the monastery, monk in the monastery.

[19:04]

But he taught the boy a lot, a little bit about practice before he did that. And he taught him how to hit the bells. And he said, every time you sound the bell, you produce a Buddha. This is all I'm going to tell you about. This is all the instruction I'm going to give you about sounding the bell. Every time you sound the bell, a Buddha is produced. So when the boy went into the monastery, At some point, he had the job of hitting the bell. And when he hit the bell, the abbot heard the bell and he said, who's that that hit the bell? Bring him here. So the monk brought the boy.

[20:09]

the sound of the bell?" I said, yes. He said, where did you learn to do that? He said, my father said, whenever you hit the sound of the bell, a Buddha is produced. So I thought that's a very nice story to go with this phrase. So then the third line is, who is. Yo-butsu-in, yo means with, and butsu of course is Buddha, and u is is or to have, and in means direct cause or original cause. So it means with Buddha we have direct cause, or direct affinity, or the origin, the original origin is Buddha.

[21:34]

In this case, Dharmakaya Buddha, the fundamental Buddha nature. There is a direct cause and then there are associated causes for everything. A direct cause for a tree would be a seed. And the indirect causes would be watering, fertilizer, sun, and so forth. So for every manifestation there is a direct cause and there are contributing causes. which, without the contributing causes, it doesn't happen. So, yo-butsu-u-in means we have a direct... Buddha nature is the direct cause of our existence. And the Buddha seed is

[22:42]

the direct cause of our existence. Even though seed here just means, there's no Buddha seed like a bean or something like that. So we have to be careful with this word seed. Dogen Zenji says, be careful with this word seed. It's a kind of metaphor. Because if we start talking about seed, then we start thinking about maybe soul or some essential thing. But when we talk about Buddha seed, it means ability. We have all the equipment. Intrinsically, we have the equipment, but experientially, it's hard to understand it. So yes, we are Buddha intrinsically, but we're not necessarily Buddha experientially. And this is two very important aspects.

[23:46]

So, essentially, we are Buddha. That's what it means. Essentially, we are Buddha. And then the fourth line is, yo butsu en, which means, with Buddha, there is affinity, or there are supporting causes. That's the other side. with Buddha there are supporting causes. So the first line is, intrinsically we are Buddha. And the fourth line says, but unless we have some cooperating causes to make it manifest, it doesn't manifest. And so, supporting causes, or indirect causes, or contributing causes, and also, I mean, karmic causes.

[24:53]

So, this yin and en, yobutsu yin and yobutsu en. Together, they mean, in men, means karmic causes. Karma means volitional actions which lead to further manifestations of our own life. You know, there's a, did you ever see The Good Earth? It's a book by Pearl Buck. I saw half of the movie recently. I didn't see the whole thing, but somehow I almost saw half. But it's a story about, in China, the fortunes of this family.

[25:59]

I won't go into the whole thing, but it's during a time of drought and famine, and people had nothing at all to eat. Nothing. And they were, you know, somebody caught a woman boiling mud in the pot and suspected they had something real to eat. So the farmer's wife was in a situation where she found a peach seed and she was in a situation where she found a pouch full of jewels and when she came home She gave the jewels to her husband, who was very naive, you know. And that whole, you know, having this pouch full of jewels made him an enormously wealthy person.

[27:00]

But he didn't know how to deal with it. And he thought that he was really happy and wealthy. that he felt that he really had something. And the wife, of course he took the jewels away from the wife, and the wife had the peach seed. And she planted the peach seed. And then every day she watered the peach seed. And the peach seed would grow a little bit every day, and now a little bit every year. And I didn't see the end of the movie. But I never. You can guess what happens. You can make up your own conclusions with the movie. So, the seed is the direct cause and the watering and the sunshine and the love is the indirect cause to make it grow.

[28:05]

So, we should know which is valuable and which is not. So then, the fifth line is, Bu, Po, So, N. Bu is Buddha, Po is Dharma, and So is Sangha. And N means contributing cause. So Buddha, Dharma, Sangha are also contributing causes. Buddha means oneness of everything. Sangha means diversity of everything. And sangha means the harmony between the universe, the oneness and the diversity of everything.

[29:06]

So this is bu-ko-so-en. By the way, if you ever have any questions, you can feel free to ask them while I'm talking. JO, RAKU, GA, JO. JO means something like eternal, and RAKU is joyful, GA is self, and JO is purity. So it's something like eternal, joyful, self, purity. But we have to be careful that we understand that in a non-dualistic way. The opposite of eternal is impermanent. And the opposite of joyful is suffering. And the opposite of self is no-self. And the opposite of purity is defilement. So if you have one,

[30:11]

you also have the other side. So the eternal here is the eternal, which also includes impermanence. And the joyful here is the joyful, which also includes suffering. And the self here also is the no-self. includes the no-self. And purity here includes defilement. You see, the pure is always within the impure. So it's the non-dualistic, eternal, joyful self of purity which Then, the seventh line is cho nen kanze yan.

[31:28]

Cho is morning, and nen is mind or thought. And kanze yan is kanze yan. So, morning, mind, or thought. morning mind is one with kanzeyan. Morning, in the morning, our mind is one with kanzeyan. It means something like thought after thought is kanzeyan. And morning also can have the meaning maybe of beginning, you know. mind, maybe, waking mind. There are various connotations to it, or subtle meanings to this kind of word. And it also can be evoking tanzeon.

[32:36]

Evoking means bringing forth. And we actually do this every morning when we have service. We bring forth the mind of prasna, we bring forth the mind of kamsayana, ahodhita-svaha. When we offer incense, every morning we offer incense and then we do service and chant. And this offering is like, not invoking, but bringing forth, evoking. In the Heart Sutra, we invite Prajnaparamita to join our practice. We invite Buddha to join our practice. We evoke the spirit of Prajna. And we invite Avalokiteśvara to participate in our practice. We evoke the spirit within ourselves.

[33:40]

We're going to ask somebody to come down and bring it forth from ourself. And so this is maybe something like morning mind, one with avalokiteshvara or hansayana. And men also, the word men has the feeling of right now, the thought of the mind clear mind of this moment. And bonen kanzeon means evening mind, one with kanzeon. So morning mind and evening mind. So from morning to evening, right? Thought after thought is bringing forth the mind of kanzeon. Kanzeon, mind of kanzeon is big mind. not the little mind, although the little mind is also buddha-mind.

[34:49]

It comes from somewhere. It's also buddha-nature. But in our practice, we turn our small mind toward big mind. This is the mind of Kanzayon. to turn small mind over to big mind. He said, you be the boss. Please, big mind, you be the boss. This is the mind that comes in. And then, the ninth line is nen nen ju shin hi. Instead of one men, we have two men. Men, men. So, men, men is like a big emphasis on the mind of this moment. It doesn't mean just mind, it means the thought of the mind of this very moment.

[35:57]

Not this big mind. So, now mind in Jew means follow. Shin is mind and ki arises. So thought after thought, now mind, thought after thought of now mind arises as the mind of karma, kanzeon. So he's emphasizing this over, huh? I can't hear you. Follow. Yeah, what thought follows thought, one after the other. So, then the last line is nen nen fu ri shin. Here we have nen nen again, which is, is now thought, and fu means is not, and ri is separate

[37:10]

And shen, of course, is big mind, buddha mind. So, this now mind, thought, is not separate from big mind. Or don't separate it from big mind. So, the citra is saying something like, actualize or realize, realize your intrinsic buddhimature. Realize and express your intrinsic buddhimature. Actualize it. It's there with everyone. We all have it. Bring it forth as the mind of kanzeyan. So, translations, there are various translations, none of which are completely satisfactory.

[38:24]

But the one that seems to come closest is Tetsagin Glassman's. He says, Konzeon, at one with Buddha. Directly Buddha, also indirectly Buddha. And indirectly, Buddha-Dharma-Sangha, joyful, pure, eternal being. Morning mind is kanzeon, evening mind is kanzeon. Nen-nen arises from mind." He didn't translate that. This now mind is not... This now mind arises from mind. In other words, this thought after thought of this moment arises from big mind. And men, men is not separate from big mind. So that's the sutra. That's what it's saying. And that's my commentary on it. And it can be translated in a better way.

[39:28]

But I appreciate the translation. It's helped me to understand it. In November, the Sato school, Shumucho, has invited some of us to go to Japan to start a translating team, I think you might call it. And the first thing we're going to do, work on, the first thing we want to work on is some of these translations of our sutras and things that we use a lot. and see if we can come up with really translations that everybody can agree on and that really work well. So that's something that I'm looking forward to. And it should be an ongoing kind of thing of participating with people from our side and people from Japanese scholars.

[40:38]

So I think it's nice for us to know what the sutras are that we're chanting. And last time I was here I went through the Heart Sutra, and this time this one. Maybe next time I'll go through something else. But do you have any questions? Do you understand it? Well, mantras we usually don't translate. This is called a sutra, yo. So, I've never heard that about this one. Often we don't translate things because they don't speak well in English. I think that's the biggest reason for not translating.

[41:46]

But dharanis are a little different. Durrani are very ancient chants which, with the words, have kind of hidden meanings or magical incantations, you know? And if you translate them, it's not, you can't translate them because the meaning is not in the words. We translate them as kind of relics and faith. The Dai He Shin Durrani, which we chant a lot, we chant every day, is a Durrani. And it's also a Durrani evocative of Avalokiteśvara, the compassionate Durrani. Durrani of the compassionate Avalokiteśvara is what it is. And there is a translation.

[42:47]

kind of meaningless. It just looks like Indian. It doesn't look particularly Buddhist. It just looks like some Indian stuff that was put together. But, you know, people don't try to translate the Dharma, usually. They only do it when someone says, come on, you know, what does it mean? Well, okay, here are the words, but the words don't go together to mean anything particularly. So, that's the thing with Dharanis. And I see a Dharani as evocative, like the Dahishindhara of what you could draw, without needing to translate it. I feel that any sutra, or anything that we chant, the main thing about it is to chant it wholeheartedly, and then you understand the meaning. If you chant it wholeheartedly, the meaning will be evoked. uh so i like it when we chant the dahi shindirani a little bit quick so it doesn't slow down by any get tired anymore you know when we chant i have to say don't slow down as soon as you start slowing down as soon as the muthugio starts going you know start going to sleep and then why is the chanting getting so hard why is it so hard to chant well because little by little the feet is slowing down

[44:17]

And so you're running, but you're going backwards instead of forward. So, you can't do that, you know. It takes all the energy out of the chant. And then people go, why are we doing this? Why are we chanting? Why do we have to do service? But when it works, when there's, you know, the rhythm is right and the feeling is right, then you get carried along with it. and you realize something, something is evoked. So we should try to have that kind of spirit when we chant. What does, maybe in practical terms, what does it mean that compassion functions in everyday life, like here at Tassajara?

[45:19]

What would that look like or be like then? Well, it means trying to see the causes behind things. What is it that makes this person angry at me? What is it that evokes this? makes that response. Why is that happening? That's compassion. Compassion is to try and see the other side. To make an effort to see the other side of the page. You have to read the other side of the page. There's a term for it, which I can't remember, but it's called reading the other side of the page. Not just reacting to something that happens to you. But trying to understand what's really going on. When you make the effort to understand what's really going on, then you withhold your anger, even though it may come up.

[46:21]

You put it aside and try to understand. And so understanding, the effort to understand takes the prime seat. And then anger is down here. the lower seat. So you should always put compassion in the higher seat. And make room for anger. It's down here. No, it's there. It's okay. really fun.

[47:49]

So, That's it.

[48:11]

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