Okay, what time is dinner around here? 6.30. 6.30. Okay. Good evening, everybody. So, we're going to have a little seminar and talk about the Hokyo Zamae, and very informal kind of feeling, I hope. And I forget how many meetings. We're going to meet consecutive Tuesdays at 5 o'clock for... Is it five weeks? Something like until early March. So, one of the virtues of having a seminar format

[01:06]

where everybody's sort of initiated, that, in other words, people know the basics stuff, is that it's possible to speak more critically, in other words, about our practice and be a little bit more honest, maybe, or something like that, because when people are new to the practice and the teaching, you kind of want to get across the basic ideas, and it's not effective to criticize the ideas too much, because they don't know what they are yet, so you want to put the ideas out there and make them understood. But then, once you're familiar with Buddhisthad and the practice itself, then I think it's good to be critical and say, what does that really mean, and what about that? I mean, we say that, but what is it really? That kind of attitude, which I hope we can have in a group like this,

[02:08]

where people, like I say, are more initiated into the practice and Buddhisthad. So, and a seminar format means that there's a give and take, and it's not that I'm telling you what the Sondokai says, I mean, what the Hokyo Zamai says, but rather we're discussing it together, and there may be long stretches of time in which other people are talking and I don't say anything. This would be the great thing, if we could have that happening. Although I tend to take responsibility for shepherding the discussion, because it can get dispersed, so I try to shepherd it a little bit. So that's just to give you an idea of what I have in mind in terms of doing a seminar. So having said that, I wanted to, before the discussion begins, actually, I wanted to put out a little bit of background information. This is my, I usually do this at the beginning of classes,

[03:10]

is put out, if it's on a text, put out some background information on the text. So I'd like to do that for the first portion of the meeting tonight, and then after that, get into the text and the discussion. And I guess dinner's at 6.30, so we meet at from 5 to about 6.20 or something like that, until dinner starts. So what I wanted to do to start off with is, first of all, before I even say anything about Hokyo Zamai, I wanted to appreciate Dimshan a little bit with you, because Dimshan is the author of the Hokyo Zamai, and in fact, you'll recognize one moment in Dimshan's early practice where he writes a poem, which actually appears, images from the poem actually appear in the Jurya Myoho Samadhi, and in fact, the image from the story of Tozan,

[04:11]

I'm sure you all know this story, is probably the source image for the idea of the Jurya Myoho Samadhi as a poetic image. So I assume that most of you know a lot of these Dimshan stories, but it's nice to hear them again. You all know that the record of his practice begins with him approaching a Buddhist teacher, hearing the Heart Sutra, and saying, gee, the Heart Sutra says no eyes, no ears, no nose, but I have eyes, I have ears, I have a nose, so what does that mean? And this teacher sends him on to Nanchuan, who sends him on to Greishan, where he has this question, if you recall, about, I heard the teaching about inanimate objects teaching the Dharma, inanimate beings teaching the Dharma.

[05:13]

What about that? And there are many dialogues here about that particular teaching. This is Bill Powell's book, The Record of Dongshan. If you don't have this book, it's probably out of print or something, but it's a great book, really worth having. It's an excellent scholarly translation of Dongshan's record. Dongshan sent to Yunyan. Nanchuan, Nanchuan sends him to Yunyan, right? After they have a long discussion about non-sentient beings preaching the Dharma, which ends with Dongshan saying, I still don't understand. Would the Master please comment? And then Greishan raises his whisk. Do you understand? No, I don't. Please explain. It can never be explained to you by means of the mouth of one born of mother and father. Dongshan said, does the Master have any contemporaries in the way

[06:19]

who might clarify this problem for me? And that's when he sends him to Yunyan, who's living in a cave. And he goes to Yunyan, and again they speak about it. And Dongshan decides to stay with Yunyan, and they have this story together. Dongshan said to Yunyan, I have some habits that I'm not yet eradicated. Yunyan said, what have you been doing about it? What have you been doing to improve? Dongshan replied, I have not concerned myself with the Four Noble Truths. I have not even studied the Four Noble Truths. In other words, I'm not doing anything to improve at all. I'm not going step by step through the teachings. And so Yunyan said, are you joyful yet? Dongshan, it would be untrue to say that I am not joyful.

[07:23]

It is as though I have grasped a bright pearl in a pile of shit. One of the famous sayings of Dongshan, which is probably a really good image for human life, a bright pearl in a pile of shit, or life in general, and a really good image for the hokyo zanmai. Then Dongshan leaves Yunyan. Yunyan says, where are you going? Although I am leaving you, I still haven't decided where I'll stay. You're not going to Hunan, are you? No. You're not returning to your native town, are you? No. When will you return? I'll wait until you have a fixed residence. And this is one of my favorite lines of Dongshan. Yunyan says to him, it will be hard to meet after you leave.

[08:25]

And Dongshan says, it will be hard not to meet. So then, before leaving, Dongshan asks the Master, if after many years someone should ask if I am able to portray the Master's likeness, how should I respond? And the idea here is that portraying the Master's likeness is kind of code for, you know, to indicate the Master's teaching. If someone asks me, you know, what is your teaching? From my heart, what should I say? And Yunyan pauses for a while and says, just this person. And Burial Pile's footnote tells us that just this person was a stock phrase in Chinese criminal law. When someone was accused and was pleading guilty, they would say, just this person. So, what's Yunyan's teaching?

[09:28]

Just this person. Guilty, but maybe also, like, responsible. Completely responsible. This is my teaching. I am completely responsible, I think, in a cosmic sense, you know. Each one of our lives is completely responsible for everything. And Dongshan heard this and he was lost in thought. And he didn't say anything. And Yunyan said to him, Acharya, having assumed the burden of this great matter, you must be very cautious. So, Dongshan still didn't get it, still didn't embrace the Master's words here. And yet, he nevertheless went on his way. And this is the famous story. When he was crossing a river, he looked at his image in the water, and this is when he experienced a great awakening, particularly as to the meaning of the Master's words,

[10:30]

just this person. And on experiencing this awakening moment, he composed the following verse. Earnestly avoid seeking without, lest it recede far from you. Today I am walking alone, yet everywhere I meet him. He is now no other than myself, but I am not now him. It must be understood in this way in order to merge with suchness. So, earnestly avoid seeking without, lest it recede from you. Today I am walking alone, yet everywhere I meet him. He is now no other than myself, but I am not now him. So, everything is none other than myself. Although I am alone, in fact, because I am alone, completely alone, I see that all things are my actual self.

[11:34]

The self that I most truly am is not locked and set here, but is all the things that come forward to me in the course of my time. But if I self-identify with that, if I say, oh, I am, it is me, he is me, but I am not him. If I project myself outward to own all this stuff that defines me moment by moment and self-identify with it, self-define it, want it, possess it, then that's not right. So, my ego is nothing but everything that surrounds me, but if I project my ego onto everything, that's around me, it's not it. So, that's the poem, that reflection, seeing his face in the mirror and understanding this, his face in the water, and understanding this is, I think, and Masanaga says too in his commentary

[12:37]

that this is probably the impulse for the image of the dual mirror samadhi. And then, later on, he conducts a memorial service for Yun-Yun after Yun-Yun has passed away. And this is also one of my favorite stories of Dung-Chon. Somebody says, well, you studied with all these other teachers and you didn't really receive any teaching from Yun-Yun, so why are you having a memorial service for him now? And he says, it is not my former master's virtue or dharma that I esteem, only that he did not tell me anything. That's why I appreciate him so much. And that's one of my favorite lines from Dung-Chon. Anyway, that's just a little bit of a flavor of Dung-Chon's story. And then, of course, after that he goes on to teach himself in many, many stories

[13:37]

from his teaching days. But that's his beginning. So, the pearl in the pot of shit and the... How does it go? I am he. He is me, but I am not him. Those two expressions are pretty much the story of the Hokyo Zanmai. Because the issue in the Hokyo Zanmai is the dialectic between the relative and absolute, same as Sandokai. And in a way you could say that the Hokyo Zanmai is a restatement in a just, you know, another, basically another poem that speaks of the same matter as the Sandokai two generations later, Sekito Kisen, who would appear to have written the Sandokai,

[14:38]

was two generations before Tozon. And it's a very typical Soto Shu thing to recite those two poems. In fact, priests are supposed to recite them every day, whether they go to service or not, they're supposed to recite it every single day because it's the heart of the teaching, particularly of the Soto line of Zen. And this issue of dialectic between relative and absolute is the main thing in Soto Zen. And that's, relative and absolute is maybe to put it philosophically, to put it psychologically, the same thing. In terms of personal psychology, you could say it's the dialectic between the perfection of our lives and the imperfection of our lives. You know, that our lives, just as they are, are absolutely perfect, and just as they are, are messed up. You know, and so neither one of those two things

[15:42]

is true, and neither one of those two things is false, exactly. But the relationship, the dynamic relationship between them is the whole issue of our practice. And this seems to be the issue, it seems like, in any religion, really. And it seems like the issue of being a human being is not beating ourselves up for our imperfections, and on the other hand, not going around thinking that we can't do any wrong. So we have to improve, and at the same time recognize, see that mirror, see our own reflection in that mirror, and see that we ourselves, as we are, are perfect. So there are various expressions of this absolute relative, perfection, imperfection, unity and difference, in the sense that what's relative

[16:42]

talks about the differences between things. Everything appears quite different from each other, and the absolute, everything is really the same. In fact, Horitsu was making some calligraphy today, and he had, he read a couple of phrases. One was the bamboo, the pine tree is not, the literal translation was pine tree is not old or new color. Bamboo has upper and lower nodes. In other words, the pine tree is always the same. Pine tree is always the same. Bamboo has nodes one above the other. So there's difference, even to the point of hierarchy, even where this is higher than that or better than this. And at the same time, there's unity. So this is very common,

[17:46]

and many poems are quoted from I've never heard those particular phrases before, but he was writing them out for me in my calligraphy lesson today. He was showing me that. So how these two can be appropriately used and skillfully work together into a life is the subject of these teachings, and the subject of Soto Zen, it seems to me. And so it's diversity and unity, and I was thinking that there's also a kind of a political element to all this, too, in a sense, although I don't mean it in terms of Democrats or Republicans, but in terms of our heart, how are you going to really acknowledge the diversity, say, in a person, in an individual? Like, you have opposite things going on in you, right? You're a wonderful, sincere Zen student, and you love to drink beer and go to the movies, and so forth and so on.

[18:47]

And so within oneself, how do you integrate one's own diversity? And within us, human family, how do you integrate the fact that some people are really different? We can't smush it all together and say, well, we're all alike. We're really different. And how does that, how can you honor that, and at the same time recognize that we're also all alike if we're humans, not only humans, but if we exist, we're all almost the same, right? Existence is a pretty big unifying factor. So, anyway, that's just a little bit about Tarzan and a little bit about the general issue that we're going to be looking at. And all the images of the poem are different ways of getting us to look at this dialectic from slightly different angles. And I hope that in our conversations, it'll be about not only the thought that the poem is pointing us to, but what does it actually,

[19:50]

how does it actually manifest in our Zazen practice as well as in our daily life practice. So, I have a bunch of, I guess, I don't know which one we ended up with, but we gave everybody a handout of various versions. There's actually a number of different versions. I've got here one by Rejo Masunaga in a very, very early book, The Soto Approach to Zen. And so that's one translation. And then, of course, there's one by Thomas Clu that we translate, I mean, that we chant in service. Then there's one by Master Sheng Lin, and I'm going to use this book a fair amount because he has a lot of interesting things to say. This is a pretty good book, The Infinite Mirror, which is a commentary and translation of both the Sanbōkai and Hokyōzanmei. Interestingly, he works from the Chinese without reference to the Japanese text, so it comes out

[20:50]

a little bit different. So that's another translation. Karl Tanahashi had a translation in The Essential Zen, a book that he edited, which is a collection of various pieces from here and there. And Bill Powell, the book that I told you about a minute ago, The Record of Dingshan, it appears in here, because Dingshan's the author, so the full text of the Hokyōzanmei appears in Powell's book with notes. And what other translations are there? There's more. Oh, G.O. Kennett has one in Sailing Water by the River. And so we'll kind of do a certain amount of translation hopping. And I also have

[21:52]

the characters, the Chinese characters and dictionary definitions of them. So between all that, we're going to try to read around because, you know, when you get down real close in, there's subtleties that are brought out by different translations. So we'll try to get down to that level of it. Okay, so I wanted to talk a little bit about the title first. And I'll give you two references that are, I think, pretty interesting, if you want to follow them up. Then in Volume 3 of the Nishiyama translation of Shōbō Genzo, it's probably elsewhere, but I only looked it up in this one translation, has a fascicle called Kōmyō. I think it's called Kōmyō. Kōmyō.

[22:54]

No, not Kōmyō. Kōkyō. Kōkyō. Which translates as the ancient mirror. So it's not quite the same as the jewel mirror, but it's the ancient mirror. And it's a fairly long fascicle. And it's all about different examples, instances in the tradition, and the use of the concept or image or mirror. So he tells a number of different stories and comments on them that have to do with different times teacher and disciple engaged in dialogue about the way using the image of a mirror. So I'm not going to discuss it much, but I just put it to your attention if you want to read it. Might be interesting. At the end of it, he discusses probably the most famous of all such dialogues, which is the one with Basō and Nangako, who is the same

[23:56]

as Tozan's teacher, I think. Excuse me. Not so. Wrong. Different guy. Nonsense. Anyway, you know about why are you sitting there for? I'm sitting zazen to become a Buddha. Why are you polishing that tile? I'm polishing the tile to make a mirror. How can you make a mirror out of a tile? How can you make a Buddha out of sitting zazen? So, here's Dōgen's comment. This is a very famous comment by Dōgen on that story. Let's see. We must understand that when the polished tile is the mirror, Basō is Buddha. When Basō is Buddha, Basō directly becomes Basō. When Basō is Basō, his zazen directly becomes zazen. So polishing the tile to make the mirror,

[24:57]

which in the story sounds like an absurdity, he says here, is the essence of the Buddhas and patriarchs. And that is a famous saying from Suzuki Roshi that you're familiar with. When you are you, zazen is zazen. It comes from here. So when you are for yourself, as you are with your imperfections, with your pile of shit, then Buddha is Buddha. And the tile is a mirror. Accordingly, the tile becomes the ancient mirror. And when we polish the mirror, we will find untainted and pure practice. This is done not because there is dust on the tile, but simply to polish the tile for its own sake. In this, the virtue of becoming the mirror will be realized. This is the basis of the practice and observation of the Buddhas and ancestors. If we cannot make the mirror by polishing the tile,

[25:59]

we cannot make the mirror even by polishing the mirror. Who understands this? So this is an argument, I would say, for gradual polishing style of practice, except not seeing it as gradual polishing practice toward a perfect mirror, but seeing that the tile is already a mirror and we are just doing it to do it. He is encouraging us to do polishing kind of practice, hitting on it kind of practice, or improving kind of practice, and not to understand it as improving, but rather to understand it as already the mirror. So anyway, there is a reference to the ancient... So there is a bunch of references to the mirror. You can look them up and think about it. The mirror, you know, the mirror... Of course, the idea is that the dual mirror is a perfect

[27:01]

mirror that reflects exactly what is in front of it without distortion. Whereas our ordinary human way of being is that everything we see is distorted by our preconceptions, our karma, our wishes, our desires, our confusions. We don't really see anything as it is in its suchness. But the dual mirror will reflect everything exactly as it is. Oh, another really famous instance of the use of the mirror in the literature is the famous one with the Sixth Ancestor, right? The verse written on the door where Shenshu says, the mind is like a mirror, the body is like a mirror stand, we should always polish the mirror. And the Sixth Ancestor says, there is no mirror, there is no stand and from the first

[28:04]

everything is perfect, why should we polish anything? And Dogen's synthesis of those two positions is in that section that I just read to you. Polish the mirror, understand that it's not there to begin with, but polish it just to do it. Anyway, so the dual mirror is this perfect mirror that reflects everything exactly as it is without any distortion to the bottom, in other words, things as they are, which is all capitals, right? Capital T, capital A, capital T, capital A, things as they are, meaning not just psychologically, not just not psychologically distorted, but not distorted by any sort of human agency. Everything is in their aspect as total Buddhadharma. That's what the dual mirror reflects. So, another thing that you can

[29:07]

look up, because the dual mirror also was systematized and discussed at length in this whole fairly complicated mind-only school of teaching about the eight consciousnesses and the four cognitions and all that. So, that's written up in Zen Dust, and it's re-translated here in this new book I just got the other day that's clearly just put out called Kensho, The Heart of Zen. And there's a section in here which is a translation of an essay by Hakuin, which talks about the four cognitions. And the first of the four cognitions is the universal mirror cognition. And that's where the Hokyo Zan line comes in. This consciousness, the cognition, perceives things as they are without conceptual glosses, as if the mind

[30:08]

were a mirror impartially reflecting whatever comes before it. That's the first of the four cognitions. The concept in the mind-only school is that there's eight consciousnesses, the sixth sense consciousness, then ego consciousness, and then storehouse consciousness, which is like trans-personal. And enlightenment in this school is described as... And Zen school definitely has a lot of this thought in it because the early Zen guys, Bodhidharma down to the sixth ancestor transmitted this particular teaching. And historically, you know, they know this. So it's very Zen, you know. So anyway, the idea is that enlightenment or satori, or let's say enlightenment, leaving aside the question of how satori fits into that, but enlightenment is a turning around, that's what they call it, is a revolution or a revulsion or a revision, turning around

[31:09]

of the consciousness so that the same consciousness is there, but now it's turned around, turned away from ego and toward things as they are. And then, as a result of that turning around, these four cognitions arise in the practitioner. And so the first one is the universal mirror cognition, and the second one is the cognition of equality. And this is Cleary's speaking here. Insight into the universal essence of things. Emptiness. Seeing the empty nature of all things. Third is subtle observing cognition, which observes differentiation. So you can see how this is quite related to the teaching of Hokyo Zanmai. Fourth cognition is practical cognition, refers to action in harmony with the insight and knowledge realized

[32:10]

through the other three forms of cognition. Altogether these four constitute the total integrity of the enlightened mind. And then in the body of the text Hakuin also relates these to the eight consciousnesses and the three bodies of Buddha. So if you're interested, a nice thing to do, which I would have done today if I had time, was make a big chart, you know, I like to do stuff like that. Make a big chart, how the three bodies and the four cognitions and all that all fit together. So that's fun, you know, it's not, I mean, I don't think we need to lose sleep over it or anything, but it's another conceptualization of the idea of integration of these insights and different angles on the insights and then integration of them into living. So all of that stuff is behind the image of the jewel mirror, that's what I'm trying to say. When you hear jewel mirror samadhi, you hear all of that, all of that is in there.

[33:11]

All the different references to the mirrors from the past and this teaching about the Vijnapti, Maitreya, so forth. And then the samadhi part, you know, jewel mirror samadhi, we all know that word, but just to make one small point about it, that you may or may not appreciate is the fact that the concept of samadhi, like many other Buddhist concepts, underwent, you know, a tremendous stretching and pulling from its earliest use through the Mahayana period. And its earliest use, it was a technical term for concentration, it meant literally, you know, one-pointedness of mind, which is what the word literally means. But then you read these Mahayana sutras, which have, you know, like I think the 100,000-line Prajnaparamita Sutra has page after page after page

[34:12]

of samadhis, named samadhis, like the samadhi of the lion's roar, the samadhi of the bottom of the ocean, the samadhi of the great dragon king who subdues all, the samadhi of understanding all things without ever knowing them, the samadhi of the blue meanies and, you know, on and on and on, pages of these things. And when you read all those, you kind of get the idea that they've gone beyond, you know, the notion of one-pointed concentration into some other kind of cosmic realms. So the term samadhi becomes very big and very stretchiest, maybe to mean a kind of powerful cognition that encompasses a particular realm or all realms. So this is the cognition, that samadhi, characteristic of the dual mirror, the samadhi of really seeing things as they are. So suchness and such, the relationship

[35:14]

of suchness and difference in unity and perfection, imperfection and all those antinomies is the topic of the dual mirror samadhi. So that's something about the title. Yeah? Do you know other translations of the word samadhi? One-pointed concentration would be one-pointed... Are there some other translations that you think are close to... Well, absorption. And there are some people who translate the dual mirror samadhi as dual mirror awareness, although that's a little bit interpretive. Anybody else know others? Other translations, other things you've heard that are translations for samadhi? Trance? Concentration, yeah? Balance?

[36:16]

Well, balance sounds interpretive in a way, but I think that one of the things, to me, one of the connotations of the word samadhi is intensity. Samadhi doesn't seem to refer to a kind of a casual, everyday state of mind. However you look at it, all these samadhis that are listed in the Prajnaparamita Sutra are all highly superlative, intense states of mind. There's nothing like going to the grocery store and forgetting your shopping bag samadhi. It doesn't have that in there. It's all things that are very superlative, very intense kind of moments. This connotation is integrating interest. Integrating interest? How do you mean? Something like that. It doesn't have the connotation of love that's superlative or sometimes superior.

[37:17]

Superior, yeah. Isn't sam, the same like in samyama, isn't that like con, you know, like our previous one. With? Yeah. So a heightened state of mind. A mind with heightened capabilities. Anyway, so that's all by way of kind of like warming us up to the task at hand here. So, I was thinking that the method that we could use is just to take a phrase, you know, starting at the beginning, and look at the characters, look at a couple of different translations, and I could make a brief comment and then we could discuss it.

[38:19]

And then when it feels like we exhausted that one, you know, we'll go on to the next one. Some of them maybe we don't have much to say about, some of them we may go on for quite a while. And I'm going to be relaxed about the prospect of going through the whole thing. I don't really care, myself, if we go through the whole thing. We could take a talk of ourselves in a couple of weeks and if we feel a compulsion to go through the whole thing, we could try to move faster, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm not really worried about it. So is that okay as a method? Then we could try that. So, in the beginning, the first, this nice piece of work here has it divided into little sections, little phrases with Chinese and Japanese characters. And it says, Nyo Ze No Ho Butsu So Mitsu Ni Fusu. The first

[39:25]

character means like or as. This Dharma. Nyo, like Nyorai, which is the Nyorai means Tathagata. So it's like or as in the sense of such, just this, like this, just as this. This, so that could be either this Dharma, or it could be just like in English, this Dharma or the Dharma of this. So it could be understood as this particular Dharma, like a casual phrase, or this could be raised up, the Dharma of thusness. So the one that clearly translates is the teaching of thusness, but other translations just say this Dharma. Then it says, Be their ancestors, and then this wonderful word, Mitsu, which means intimately, closely, or secretly.

[40:25]

And then Fu, which means to entrust. So, the Dharma of thusness, or this Dharma, has been intimately entrusted to us, maybe, by the Buddhas and ancestors. Or you could say, I think you could say, you could mean it, this Dharma of suchness, or this Dharma, is what the Buddha and ancestors deeply trust. So, transmission is what, transmit is how clearly it translates it, but transmit here has a sense of entrust, which is actually what the word transmit means. So to transmit the Dharma is actually to entrust someone. So, that's a pretty good

[41:29]

thing, you know, to me, because it emphasizes the part that there's a mutual trust and entrustment of something precious rather than a passing on, a giving, although there is that too. So that's the first line. This Dharma of the Buddha and ancestors, and intimately, the idea of intimately, as you know, intimately is a great Zen buzzword, intimately meaning so close, you know, there's no separation. And secretly, in the sense that it can't be known, because if it were known, if it could be spoken of, if it could be casually brought forward, then it wouldn't really be intimate. It's a secret in the sense of, you could know what this is, but we're not telling you, we're keeping it a secret.

[42:29]

Not like that, but secret in the sense that it's inherently so close that it couldn't be known. Do you understand what I mean? How these words would mean the same thing. Intimately, you could... Is that in any of these translations? Let's see. Let me read a bunch of the different translations of the beginning. Masananda, who translates it into into prose, begins with a little sentence that says, the Buddhas and ancestors have directly handed down this basic truth, colon. That's how he handles that. So he uses the word directly, instead of intimately. And he uses handed down instead of entrust or transmit. Well, I think it's interesting to look at various ones. You have some there, right?

[43:30]

Do I have a copy? No. You can give me a copy, yeah. And Master Shen Yun has, it is this very dharma the Buddhas and, they also have patriarchs, but I keep saying ancestors. The Buddhas and ancestors, thanks, secretly transmitted. So, yes, transmitted secretly, yeah. What does secrete mean? Is that like, I mean... Secret... That, yeah. ...as opposed to... I think... I thought you said secrete, I thought about secreting fluids or something, which must be a different word, right? No, I know you don't. To make secret. Or something that is... To hide from somebody, right? Something that is hidden. As opposed to making it secret. It's just intimate and hidden. It's hidden, yeah. So this is Mitsu? Mitsu, yeah. Mitsu. It is this very dharma that the Buddhas

[44:36]

and ancestors secretly transmit. And, of course, as we know, intimately communicated is the one we translate usually. Intimately communicated. And Chuck Luck says, such is the esoteric dharma. You can see that they're both legitimate translations. It's a matter of what kind of feeling you want to give to the poem. And what do we got here? Somebody actually went and typed all these out, eh? Wow. G. U. Kennett says the Buddhas and ancestors have all directly handed down this basic

[45:37]

truth. So she uses basic. And she's following Masunaga, I think. Probably she's a pal of Masunaga or something. Early Soto guy who was friendly to Westerners. So she's obviously using his text and following along with him and making improvements where she wants to change it. Because that's what he says. Directly and basic. So they're all good. I mean, it's interesting because they're all giving a different piece of the suggestion in the characters. So what do you want to talk, yeah? Well, I had a friend who had a Dharma name, Mitsunen. Mitsu, yeah. New Hardman, right?

[46:38]

He has Mitsu. Oksan's name is Mitsu, and I had a friend from my New York days whose name was Mitsunen, which means intimate thought. Because he's a great thinker. You know Mitsunen, right? You don't know? Maybe you don't know. Anyway, he and I used to work in a bakery and complain all day long. It was great. So we're... Well, that's the secret now. Yeah. Mitsu, yeah. I think that's a nice... I would want to use it. I think it's a nice name. Intimate words, yeah. Not words. Not words. So that's a big word, you know, and it has all those angles to it. Basic, secret, intimate,

[47:39]

esoteric. So then, you know, you don't have to worry about keeping secrets, right? You can tell everybody exactly what it is, and nobody will understand it, right? So you don't have to worry. Keep it secret. You can be very open, and there's no problem. Everybody understands what they understand, right? So... What else about this beginning? We should probably improve our organization of the chair somehow, because you guys in the back seem so distant. Hi. Are you in the conversation? Are you too far back there? So really that's no problem, right? Pretty simple. So then the next part

[48:42]

says says 何時もこれを 得たる よろしく よくほうごすべし すべし You now now's attained or gain And then the next character is an imperative mood and it says skillfully maintain or protect says you know, clearly says now you have it so keep it well and you know, the different translations Masanaga, you now have it so preserve it well Now that you

[49:51]

have received it, you should guard it carefully Preserve well for you now have. This is all. I don't know where the this is all part comes Anyway this is like two this in itself is like Hokyo Zanmai because you have it implies you already have it how did we get it like we're just reading this poem and all of a sudden we have it because we had it before we had it to begin with so having it situation

[50:52]

protecting it you see what I mean so on one hand the absolute is you have it the absolute is you have it already the relative is don't mess it up you have to do something you have to act you have to so you know yeah so well that's a pretty interesting idea

[52:00]

and I wonder what other people think of that I mean apart from the fact whether or not the poem says that actually doesn't really matter that much this is a thought that bears discussion what about that yeah yeah well I mean like so I'm asking what's dangerous about it I think that if it's intimately communicated if you're just going to take that as a phrase that encompasses all the other phrases then there can be no misunderstanding about it because it's been intimately conveyed there's no separation or merge with it I don't see it where any where there's so it's almost like honoring it well honoring I just don't see anything in this that says that it's dangerous

[53:01]

I mean I just can't see it you know if it's intimately communicated to you then you've got it and it's understood in the mere essence of what it's been intimately yeah you can't mess up you've got it, you understand it so in that sense, what's the danger yeah understanding it possessing it possessing it what would happen oh nihilism traditionally that's the danger that's why these teachings are communicated teacher to teacher student to teacher as opposed to that's certainly in the Prajnaparamita centuries now yeah yeah yeah so one danger is nihilism another danger is possessing it and what's dangerous about that

[54:01]

dangerous to you you might fall down and break your neck is that what you mean you might hurt yourself or someone misunderstand I'm just very interested in exploring this I agree with Kendra that I don't think that it implies that it's dangerous however whether or not it does is not so important the idea that the Dharma could be dangerous to me bears discussing and I would like to know so there's two dangers but I mean maybe we should be more respectful of the dangers here that we're not understanding yeah what I understand is that it needs to be intimately communicated because it's dangerous well because it's not done with that kind of care that you would do intimately because it is very close

[55:09]

to that kind of thing that could be misunderstood it's a powerful teaching and maybe nihilism is what happens or somebody maybe this is a way of describing nihilism somebody just I think of it as more superficial so I don't think of it as nihilism but whatever somebody just says oh it's all one so it's alright it's plain attractive whatever the equivalent of that is that might actually happen so that's what I think it's not that if it isn't it's a problem it needs to be definitely maintained must be of course you could say if it's not intimately communicated it's not the dharma because that's the only way that you could communicate it yeah Michael so keep it well

[56:11]

or look over it and guard it carefully I think it's emphasizing the preciousness of it not necessarily the danger of it that may be in there but it's more of the preciousness the gratitude you really have for having it be careful how you use it or talk about it yeah I feel that way too it could be it's an interesting thing to think about it could be that when Kalkai brought up the idea of nihilism she brought it up mentioning the Prajnaparamita text which definitely do talk about that danger because the teachings of emptiness seem to more obviously bring up that possibility all things are empty so what the hell kind of thing but I think this teaching doesn't seem to doesn't seem to me to carry with it

[57:13]

at least so much of that dangerous possibility so if there's any hint of danger here I would say it's probably something else although I agree with it I don't hear it in these lines but I thought it was an interesting side point to discuss here I mean like what about it maybe we shouldn't be giving zazen instructions so readily or something like that that's what I'm driving at and of course there are traditions and ways of approaching Buddhism that are very secret and very initiatory you have to you can't do this practice without this initiation without this, for that reason because you don't want to mess up but it seems like Zen in a way as a style is very pretty pretty open, although maybe it's not I don't know, I mean we're open but maybe there's different flavors of Zen and less open there's a lot of Zen dojos that are not open

[58:13]

closed Zen dojos you can't go in unless you're a committed student plenty of Zen dojos like that, not here but in Japan yeah be careful yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah, I think so, yeah Charlie, you haven't spoken yet maybe you're saying it's not to be bandied about or, you know presented incompletely or in circumstances where it can't be presented completely the conditions in the teaching have to be both right or something yeah, especially when you think of the image of the jewel mirror it is a precious it's like a jewel, right, if you close your eyes and think of the jewel mirror, it's this shiny

[59:15]

jewel-like thing which is precious and does need to be handled carefully and skillfully but to preserve it and protect it of course that in a way brings up the opposite aspect, not that it's dangerous but that it is fragile in a way, you know, it can be it needs to be alleviated, yeah anyway, yeah Basia, you were going to say I almost changed my mind because first of all, I was going to say something but then what you just said was more interesting I've always had a warm feeling about this, with the image that I have in my mind, it's almost like father and son standing in a field and the father is turning over the farm to the son it's kind of like, you know, you have it so keep it well you know, you can give it to the son unless the son already has it as a son so there's already that closeness of heart and connection when there's a feeling of confidence they say that it's like a recital so that's how I felt

[60:19]

I always felt affectionate to me and in saying that when we all chanted together there is a feeling that at least we do have it and we all keep it we're all good children you know, with your energy so that's one way yeah, no, that's a nice way to look at it that's nice, you know, like here's this precious thing it's always been yours now in mutual trust you know I give it to you or we receive it take care of it that kind of thing, take good care of it so that's the sense of it, yeah just the point about it being fragile you can't remove something and take care of it I mean, just even polishing or whatever it is it doesn't necessarily just mean maintaining and taking care as opposed to necessarily having to be fragile yes, it doesn't have to be fragile necessarily in a certain way we could say the Dharma isn't fragile it goes on and on, you know, no matter what

[61:21]

and also it's just that the shade of difference in being careful and taking care it's the same words but one sort of has almost for me it means be scared, be scared, yeah be respectful, yeah yeah okay anything else on that, yeah but that's only part of it the other thing is you do have to be you're challenged, you know to take care of it that's what I meant in the beginning when I said, you know on the one hand, the absolute side is you already have it you can't screw it up but then the challenge is you must you know, stand up and act from it to protect it and there you could not protect it well and then it uses the word skillfully

[62:23]

or carefully as if one had to work at it and the other one had to know how to do it okay well maybe yeah this dharma of suchness is what we have or lessness it means lessness is a kind of a real position between emptiness which although it's not non-existence it's also does not emphasize existence, right emptiness, all things are collapsed together and are one in emptiness on the one hand and on the other hand the differentiation and multiplicity of the world

[63:26]

at large with its color and distortion and craziness and in the middle suchness where there are things in their aspect of just as they are so it's almost like suchness is like not the world of emptiness and not the world of differentiation but maybe the world of differentiation purified by the light of emptiness so it's this the teaching of this the teaching of thus that has been handed down and all the stuff we've been saying about it then comes the first of the many images to speak about the relationship between these worlds the world of differentiation the world of the absolute and so on the literal translation of the characters in this next little

[64:26]

section say silver bowl snow pile up or abundant or plentiful then it says bright moon heron hide then it says similar or the same and equal not mix or confuse then know

[65:29]

the realm out of that they get this image filling a silver bowl with snow and hiding a heron in the moonlight that's pretty clear but you can see where the next part it's hard to know exactly what it's saying and I have to confess to you that I never was never cleared it up too much the way they clearly translated it for me anyway when you array them they're not the same when you mix them you know where they are that never helped me that much to understand the import of these lines and then Charles Luke, Luck or how do you say it, Luck? Chuck Luck Philip always calls him Chuck Luck like snow in a silver bowl like an egret in the moonlight an egret all species which are not uniform

[66:31]

can be distinguished when assembled that doesn't help either I don't think forget that I don't see that adds anything to our understanding of this poem or anything else although they are definitely English words and G.U. Kennett says reassembles each other yet these two are not the same that doesn't work that well either Master Shen Yen I think had a good translation or at least his commentary on this is very clear I never really understood it until I read his commentary and I believed it he says like a silver bowl full of snow or an egret hidden against the bright moon they are similar but not identical

[67:32]

when mingled their difference can be recognized so I wrote down how I understood this at one time and it all made sense at the time let's hope that it still does yes it says here by the way for those of you who are literary buffs the reference to snow in a silver bowl is from the Blue Cliff Record case number 13 which also if my day had gone differently I would have looked up but I know that the case goes what is the Davis sect somebody asks and the teacher responds snow in a silver bowl but that's all I can tell you right now anyway

[68:33]

so the bowl this is basically what Shen Yen says and it really does make sense the bowl and the moon are the absolute you can see that right the bowl which holds everything and the moon which provides light so that all can be seen these are not images of particularities but of holding this big context for everything so this is the absolute the bowl and the moon and the snow and the heron are the particulars, are the relative so the relative you put the relative and the absolute together and of course the image is the obvious thing about the images is that when you put snow in a silver bowl I guess the concept is you wouldn't see it because silver is the same looks like snow so when you put the snow in the silver bowl it would appear to be almost the same thing and when you put

[69:34]

a heron which is white in the moonlight you would barely see it it's hidden in the moonlight so they're very similar so the relative and the absolute when you really see them are very similar and you could miss one for the other you could see the absolute and not it's mostly the absolute that you would see and in a sense be blinded by it right and fail to see the relative because the absolute holds the relative and the relative can all be this is a kind of nihilistic point of view in a way that Kokai was bringing up early so the enlightened person sees them as really the same yet when they're together he can tell the difference so relative and absolute are the same just like snow in a silver bowl

[70:36]

or a heron in the moonlight but when you put them together you can see the difference although they're quite similar and interrelated so one last thing and then I'll see your hand to an ordinary person they may seem very different see the person who doesn't appreciate the absolute for whom the absolute is a dream hasn't had the experience of the absolute would see the heron and the moonlight as being totally different you could never mistake one for the other but the person who experiences the absolute would see them as quite similar not the absolute it's not something very different from the relative and yet, see, could tell them apart appropriately so that's the idea so the ordinary person might see the image of the absolute and the relative as a crow flying across the moon very different or, you know, an apple

[71:41]

in a silver bowl very different but the enlightened person, Sheng Yen says sees the similarity between relative and absolute they are the same actually but when you put them together you can appropriately distinguish because there's a time when one comes from the absolute position and relates to and a lot of dialogues in Zen are like that the trick is are you supposed to now come from the absolute position or the relative position what's appropriate see, you have to know it's almost the same but you have to know when, which one is appropriate so anyway, that's so I put that out there as a concept of what's being said here and then Jeffrey had his hand up first and then Mary that was it? nothing? surely you had something on your mind, Jeffrey Mary, yeah I'm just wondering if this I mean, I know that the Five Rites is in here but is this part of it a reference to the Five Rites? yeah, definitely and the same with the four

[72:42]

cognitions that we talked about a minute earlier there's a number of different systems to discuss this basic move which is the essence of the practice particularly in Soto which is where you come from a place of the relative completely wrapped up in your own stuff and then you develop a taste for seeking out the absolute, like totally letting go of all your baloney and then you see the absolute you completely let go you give up you transcend and you see the oneness of everything and then that's a good beginning because you can't stop there you must then from there reintegrate the relative world into the absolute and then finally come out the other end and just be regular so you can appropriately come forward and attempt dog's herding pictures is the same kind of thing, right?

[73:47]

it's all this journey from the whole saying, mountains are mountains and mountains are not mountains and all that you start from ordinary you end up ordinary but you go through this journey which uncovers the absolute and then folds it back into ordinary life so that's what it's about It was interesting that everyone uses the same bowl but in Canada it uses a silver plate silver plate? I think the plate works better in the literature when you see the bowl in the snow the silver and the white it just doesn't work but if it's a plate a big pile of snow the plate works better but you were saying that the original is a bowl I think so that's what seems to be the dictionary definition of this character is a bowl a silver bowl, yeah yeah, it seems to be

[74:52]

silver bowl, yeah so why does she switch? I don't know let's see, what is Masanaga's translation yeah, see, Masanaga uses plates that's why she uses plates and I think he's just wrong she's trying to make something that fits with his sense of chance ability yeah, I'm sure, because it's very awkward as writing but she must have had an idea she was a musician so she probably has music or something to this, and I bet she wrote it to kind of fit the music yeah yeah right I have no doubt about it

[75:53]

you can tell, yeah when you read it, yeah so how are we doing? are we in sync with that so far? anything else to say? alright then let's go forward with the next or maybe not what time do you have? 6.22, yeah maybe we're better off stopping, huh? because it would be better to stop than to you know, leave it hanging so is this worth doing? is this alright to do like this? ok so think about this

[76:53]

relative and absolute stuff and let's talk about it further before we even go on to the next section next time in terms of Zazen and the actual application of whatever that might be to our life because that's what's being pointed at here so let's remember to talk about that next time and then we'll go on with some more verses so thank you very much

[77:26]

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