I want to talk about bowing and chanting. We talked last night about bowing and chanting. So that's what we'll do this morning. Yesterday, last night, I talked about this position, which is gassho. It's called gassho, putting your fingers, palms, and thumbs together. And now I'd like to talk about how we, when we have service, we do prostration. So I'll talk a little bit about that. You can see the ribbon. When we're having service, we do nine bows.

[01:07]

And when we do the bows, I don't know if everybody can see me, but I'll do something over here and I'll do something over here. But when we bow, you go down and put one knee down first and then the other. And then we put our forehead, touch our forehead to the floor, and with our palms together like this, we lift our elbows, and the back of our hands are on the floor too. And then we lift our hands like this, as if we're holding something in our hands, to about the level of our ears. And you try to keep your behind down so that you're not sticking up in the air.

[02:12]

My old teacher used to call it ego, to leave your behind sticking up in the air. So you put your forehead, touch your forehead, and lift your hands at the same time. Lifting your hands is like lifting Buddha's feet, or you can say, making an offering. So some people kind of go like this. There are various ways that people have of doing this, but actually to just lift your hands like this, straight, touch your forehead. Formal bow, a more formal bow is when you touch your hip three times at the same time that you're lifting your palm. So I'll show you one time over here, and then I'll show you one time over there. You put your palms together in Gratiot, and then... That's a little hard, but... And... Put your elbows and the backs of your hands on the floor and touch your forehead.

[03:24]

And then lift your palms. And then stand up. OK. Do you have any questions? No. You touch your forehead. Yeah, you touch your forehead to the floor. It's not going to be up. Is it a matter of which knee goes down first? Do you try to hoist yourself back up without touching? Well, if you can come back up without using your hands.

[04:27]

The thing is, when you're bowing is a kind of graceful act. And if you can balance your body as you're bowing and coming back up, you feel good. You feel good. You feel that you have some control over your body and some balance, sense of balance. So when you're bowing, it's good to make an effort to, if you go straight down and then when you're running like this. And then put your knees down. You have much more control of your body. If you're trying to bend forward at the same time you're putting your knees down, then you don't have any balance, and you have to use your hands. I use my hands because I don't have my big robot arm.

[05:29]

It's easier for me to go up and down with my full robot arm. Just because of the weight, and it's easier to control. But with the sleeves like this, and looking at it, I'll leave my hands on it. My balance isn't good. But strictly speaking, you can go down and come up without using your hands. But it's OK to use your hands. Sometimes I use my hands. And if you don't have such a good sense of balance, just use your hands. That's not the point. That's a subtlety. So bowing is like an offering. You're expressing some very deep connection with the universe. So sometimes people say, well, what do we bow to? That's a good point. Because we're always bowing to this or that.

[06:31]

And during service, we face the altar. And now the altar is as old. old stone Buddha from Gandhara. But even though this ancient Buddha from Gandhara is very worthy, it's just a symbol of our higher nature. It's not a god or some deity. It just symbolizes our true nature, our higher nature. So when we bow to such an object, it's not the object that we're bowing to. We're bowing to ourself. So the bow is a great act. When we bow, we don't have any thought in our mind about I am bowing to just bow.

[07:39]

So we can also bow to each other, and we can bow to teacups, and mimes, and quotes, and dogs, and cats, and pillar, and post. No problem, because everything is ourself. But if you think that the pillar is something apart from yourself, then you have trouble bowing. Or if you think that the figure on the altar is something apart from yourself, then you have total power. But, since everything is our self, no problem. We don't bow to our ego. That's not what we mean by bowing to our self. The purpose of reality is to realize that everything is your self. That although we have some feeling of individuality, That's not our true self.

[08:45]

Our true self includes everything, and is part of everything, and is everything. So whatever without you, we can say, this is myself. So this is a very important fundamental point in Buddhism. And that's why bowing is an important part of our practice, to actually acknowledge our oneness with ourselves. Everything is separate and has its own existence. And at the same time, everything is part of everything else. So we thought of a cushion, a very familiar feeling As I said, any time you want to ask a question while I'm talking, please feel free to do so.

[10:15]

So we have a certain kind of form. Our Japanese practice is very formal. But that formality has two sides, one side makes us feel a little bit restricted. On the other side, there's lots of freedom. That restriction gives us lots of freedom. And when we do something well, we feel pretty good. When we don't do something so well, we don't feel so good. So the form gives us a way to do something. And we can do it pretty well. So when we bow, we just pay attention to bowing as well as we can, just to do one thing simply and well. Pretty good. Usually, we're trying to do many things, and we don't do them so well.

[11:17]

But to just focus on doing one thing and doing it well, doing it with wholehearted, some simple act so that we can bow and unbow wholeheartedly and sincerely without any idea about it, just giving ourself clear. This is our offering to the universe. And when this bow is our offering, simple offering to the universe without anything behind it, then we can also carry that same attitude into Whatever we do. So bowing and zazen are not two different things. Sitting cross-legged on a cushion would say sitting in zen. Sitting in bowing. Bowing.

[12:20]

And zazen itself is an operant. You don't say, what do I get from zazen? As long as you're saying, what do I get from zazen, it's not zazen. Nothing, just as an offer itself. Just a wholehearted offer in order to experience pure being, pure existence. And when we can have that same energy in our daily life, then we understand in terms of the reason for our existence, or how we exist with everything. So how we exist with everything is to realize our interconnection with everything.

[13:33]

Ultimately, how do you bow without bowing? When the students are here for the practice period, during the fall, and the winter, and the spring, Tassajara doesn't feel like it does now. There are no guests, no eating and dining that the students eat. They resemble the use of their tables. And it's the one that's out in Puyallup. And it's very cold. And sometimes the sun goes down certain times of the year. The sun doesn't come up until maybe 10 o'clock in the morning, 9.30, maybe 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock. And then it goes down sometimes 3 or 4 o'clock. So it's a very different feeling here. And the students are practicing with each other, and just paying attention to this sizing, and work, and balance, and so forth.

[14:53]

And sometimes the students will go out to Monterey, and go to the grocery store, and when the clerk doesn't let them change the size, how do they explain We don't usually do that, but how do you carry that feeling without doing it? It's a little odd. But how do you carry on that connection with people bowing without bowing? Or sitting without sitting? So bowing is a very important part of the practice. Side bend, bowing. And I want to talk a little bit about chanting. Talk a little bit about the chants. But before I talk about the chants, I want to talk a little bit about how we chant.

[16:04]

The old chants mostly come from India. Almost everything comes from ancient India, and some of it from China. Buddhism came to China in around the first century. And the first Buddhism, Buddha was born about 500 years before the first century. And Buddhism got going. in the first couple hundred years before the first century. And some peasants came to China around the first century. And Buddhism started growing in China around the second or third century. And by the sixth century, it was really very strong. And Zen appeared around the seventh century, sixth or seventh century. And so most of the sutras, Buddhist sutras and teachings, come from India.

[17:22]

And the Chinese were very eager to have this teaching from India. And they developed their own style. So some of their style comes to us from China. into Japan, from Japan to us. So a lot of the things that we chant are kind of third-hand, from India to China to Japan. And people in India or China wouldn't really recognize them as coming from this country, necessarily, because of the transformation in language, but not the transformation of these means, essentially. And now we've translated things into English. A lot of our chants were translated into English. But some things were left untranslated, maybe transliterated, so that in each country people could chant in their own idiom.

[18:25]

But some things were left untranslated, although they were transliterated. The sutras were mostly translated into Chinese. But the dharanis, the so-called dharanis, mostly weren't translated. Or if they were translated, the translations weren't changed. So I'll talk a little bit about sutras and dharanis. Sutra. is a document that's supposed to be Buddha's words. And in Buddha's canon, there are thousands of sutras. And we know that these words weren't written down as Buddha spoke them, of course. As a matter of fact, the writing of the Buddha's sutras didn't appear until several hundred years after Buddha's passing away.

[19:29]

The Indians, ancient Indians, developed remarkable memory. The writing system, although they had a writing system, both in Pali and Sanskrit, the memorization was, because writing wasn't so widespread, memorization was really encouraged. who are trained to memorize long sutras and long passages and memorable things. And even today, in some of the Burma and Thailand, there are monks who are trained to memorize word for word whole sutras and books. So the sutras. were finally written down three or four hundred years after Buddha passed away.

[20:40]

And then they were translated into Chinese when Buddhism came to China. And what we chant is the Japanese transliteration of the Chinese chants. And when we chant, say, the Heart Sutra, kan, ji, zai, bo, zo, fu, yo, that's a transliteration of the Chinese or Indian sutra. And the sutra is translated into English. Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva, Sakyamuni Buddha, Sarasvati. That's our English translation of that sutra. So we chant, in a sense of it, we only chant one sutra. And that's the Prajnaparamita. or die of suture or heart suture. And we chant in both Japanese transliteration and English.

[21:43]

When you say heart, do you mean heart of the anecholy? Heart? Heart. OK, I'll explain heart later. So what's the point of chanting in Japanese transliteration? I'll explain that later. Why don't you just let me take you You can't tell all your fellow aliens are really wasting. So the sutra, as this heart's objective, we translate that. Because it's important to know what the words are and the meaning of the sutra. meaning of the sujata in the words, as an intellectual meaning. The Dharanis, on the other hand, were words that were put together in ancient India.

[22:46]

They were very powerful words put together to create a certain atmosphere, We call it a spell. In the ancient world, it used to be a spell. It's not magic, although magic was part of the ancient world's way of doing things. But the spell was evocative, or the tyranny was not an invocation, but an evocation. calling forth a spirit or something. But evoking is like calling forth our spirit. Not something from outside, but bringing forth something in ourselves. So the Dharanis were words that were put together in a certain way that evoked a certain powerful feeling.

[23:55]

And the Dharanis are kind of like relics the ancient beginnings of Buddhism. And those, because the words, the power of the words, not so much the meaning of the words, but the power of the words themselves, was what the Dalai Lama is about, they weren't translated into Chinese. Although they were transliterated into Chinese, so Chinese could pronounce the word. And then when the Dharanis came to Japan, they weren't translated, but were transliterated from the Japanese. And so we don't translate the Dharanis. They're just powerful symbols or syllables that are put together to evoke a strong evocation. And the Dharanis that we chant are

[25:00]

We chant the Daya I Ching Dharani, which means dharani of great compassion. And this dharani is to evoke compassion. It's Avalokiteshvara's compassion. Avalokiteshvara is, in China, it's called guanyin. And in Japan, kanmon. And it's the embodiment of compassion. It's the most popular bodhisattva in China and Japan. Of course, it's popular in Jishwa with Kuan Yin and Karma. And because this is the merciful aspect of our nature. So this Durrani, we chant, Dai He Shindurani. And this is an evocation of compassion. which we just chant it in a very powerful way in order to bring forth compassion and healing.

[26:10]

We don't try to make somethings up. We just do the chanting. And then there's the Shosai Meo Kichijo dharana, which is very short. And that dharana is, we say, to avert disasters. It's not that by chanting we will avert disasters. It's that we send forth this feeling or evoke this They're walking presented. It doesn't mean they will. They're walking. But this is our expression for the world. So we just chant, slowly, as they're put together. And it's our way of connecting with the ancient past.

[27:22]

So there's the Sutra, and then there are the Dharams. And then we chant some poems, Chinese poems. One of the Chinese poems is called The Unity of Merging of Difference and Unity, which is a poem by one of the ancestors, which is translated. We can't have translation. But that's more of a poem. It is a poem. And then there's another poem that we translate by Tozan Ryokai, another one of the ancestors, called the Jewel Bearer Samadhi or Awareness.

[28:30]

which we chanted this morning. And those are the poems which express the unity in diversity, and the diversity of unity, the singleness of the many things, and the diversity of the one thing. So that's what the Heart Sutra's talking about also. But they each express it in a different way. And we express it when we talk. And we express it when we sit down. And we express it when we serve each other. And we express it through breathing. And then we express it in the bathroom. So. Then one of the other chants we do is where we chant the names of the ancestors, Buddhist ancestors, starting with seven Buddhas.

[29:54]

We say seven Buddhas before Buddha, but actually that includes Shakyamuni Buddha. But it means that the ancient Buddhists thought Their understanding was that Shakyamuni Buddha, who we generally recognize when we say Buddha, who was born 2,500 years ago, was not the first Buddha. But there have always been Buddhas in the innumerable past. But we say seven in order to narrow it down so that we can actually find something. We couldn't chant all of the names. We'd just chant seven, which represents all of the ancient Buddhists. And when Shakyamuni Buddha found his path, he said, this is the ancient path that I have rediscovered. It's not something that I invented.

[30:57]

And this is the path that all of the ancient Buddhists have followed. So the names of the Buddhists that We chant the seven names, including Shakyamuni Buddha. And then all of the ancestors in India were a kind of lineage from one to another. Maybe it's not exactly accurate, but take that into consideration. And then there are all the ancestors in China who followed each other. And then they're all of the, not all of the ancestors of Japan, but a number, a good number, all the way up to our particular ancestor, Shizugiyoshi, who was the founder of our temple. So we trace the lineage from our teacher through, all the way through to Shakyamuni Buddha and books of this ancient path.

[32:09]

So that's what we say. that I ever showed in this great, crazy story. It's not all of it, but it's a line going from the ancient past recognize that connection. Buddhism isn't a dharma. It's something that's just kind of thought up. One of the reasons that we, well, when I started practicing about 1964, Suzuki was at, Sokoji Temple on Bush Street, San Francisco.

[33:13]

And Katagiri Roshi, we called him Katagiri Roshi, Katagiri Sensei, was his assistant. He came in 1964, too. And he did a monk for a long, long time. And he came to help Suzuki Roshi. And we used to chant just the Heart Sutra in Japanese three times. That was our service. There was no English translation. And we all enjoy chanting in Japanese. Actually, chanting in Japanese is very satisfying, because the syllables roll into language and rolls off of the ears. And I think you can put a lot of power into chanting. And it becomes an expression of something. It's harder to do it in English. English is, we have so many connecting words.

[34:15]

Our language is just so different. And so Japanese, Chinese, and the Indian language, you can put syllables together and the connection, understand the connection. It's very awkward to just put the syllables together the meaningful syllables together in English, because they're so used to connecting words. So it becomes rather clumsy to chant in English. Our translations, we're always working with the translations to make them more chantable. And sometimes our translations for chanting It is designed, the way we put it is designed to make it more chantable rather than just meaningful in an intellectual way. But still, it's a long way to go. So we keep the Japanese chanting as well as the English chanting so that we can experience both.

[35:25]

And also, it's a way of appreciating where our chanting comes from, where our practice comes from. Sometimes people say, well, why don't we just do everything in English? Eventually, we probably will. But for now, we're still in a very early stage of transition between the practice of other countries and our own practice. Even though we've come a long way, we're still like babies. So we still need to nourish ourselves the whole way until we're independent. But I think we make a good effort to be independent. We all need something, and we need to appreciate where our practice comes from and not cut it off.

[36:31]

possibly really appreciating changing another language. If you only have changed another language, and then you start to change English, you realize how clumsy it is to just change English, and how wonderful and fun it is to have your own language. That's a lot of talking. Do you have any questions? Yeah, we did it this morning. You weren't here. We can hand out the suture cards and take a look at what's going on in the book here. We have a file in the staff office.

[37:47]

Staff office, that is. 1C. I'll just get them and bring them to the regular office. Now you notice, if you turn to the first page, this is called the Great Wisdom Beyond Wisdom Heart Sutra, which I was talking about in the beginning.

[38:52]

This is the translation of the Heart Sutra. Now I'll talk a little bit about the Heart Sutra. Prajnaparamita is the Indian Sanskrit term meaning wisdom to cross to the other shore. And there was a whole body of prajnaparamita citrus, which was a development in Buddhism around the first century when these citrus started to appear. In Buddhism, there are many expressions of what Buddha taught. Without going into it too deeply, there's a very narrow understanding of what Buddha taught, and there's a very wide understanding of what Buddha taught, developed understanding.

[39:56]

And you say, one is the Hinayana, and the other is Mahayana. Hinayana means small, and maha means great. And Ahimyana is like the narrow vehicle or narrow way of understanding Buddhist practice and its understanding. And Mahayana way is large, broad understanding of Buddhist practice and its way of understanding. So this Prajnaparamita Sutra appeared as the vehicle for the Mahayana, the development of the Mahayana, around the first century, which was the expanded, broader understanding of Buddhism, which took root in India and spread to most of the other countries, China, Japan.

[40:57]

And the Hinayana took root more in Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka, and Burma, and Thailand, and those countries. Mahayana also. I went to Tibet. But Mahayana and Hinayana go together. Our practice is kind of Hinayana practice with a Mahayana understanding. So books are always present in Buddhism. Monks practice. Strictly speaking, it's kind of Hinayana practice, narrow, limited, direct kind of practice. And Mahayana includes more low people and various ways of understanding Buddhism on a very lofty level. So the Prajnaparamita Sutra

[42:00]

big voice to the expression of the Mahayana. And there was 600 passicles to the Prasangika sutra. This heart sutra is like the heart of the Prasangika sutra. But it's also the heart of Buddhism. And also, it's our own true heart. But heart also means mind. So you can translate this term, shin, either by either mind or heart. And you can think of mind as heart and heart as mind. So when we say mind in Buddhism, we're not talking about our brain or our thinking process, but the mind gets. So mind and heart are the same thing, but if you want to talk in terms If you want to talk in terms of mind, you can say mind.

[43:10]

So it's called heart sutra, or dhyana. Great wisdom, beyond wisdom, heart sutra. And this is the English translation that we do. And then at the bottom, at the end, we say, all Buddhas, ten directions, three times. Three times will be past, present, and future. All beings, Bodhisattvas, Mahasattvas. Mahasattvas are also Bodhisattvas of a certain order. And wisdom beyond wisdom. And Maha-vajna-vajna. That's as much as I want to explain about that sutra at the moment. Then, if you turn the page, it says, makahanya haramitashinyo, which is the same thing in Japanese. And then this is the Japanese version, transliteration of the Heart Sutra, or the Great Wisdom Beyond Wisdom, Heart Sutra.

[44:23]

So, same thing. And jihosanshi is the body. There's a Japanese for all Buddhas and virgins. So, one is Japanese, the other is English, and we chant them alternately. And then, on the next page is the Sho, Sai, Myo, Kichijo, Dharani. That's the Dharani for how our everyday mind is the mind of the universe. is our everyday mind. The mind of the universe is our everyday mind, and our everyday mind is the mind of the universe. That's what it's talking about, basically. And then, if you turn the page, they say, the merging of difference and unity, composed by Sekito Kise,

[45:27]

The mind of the great sage of India is individually communicated between East and West, people, faculty, students, human beings, and so forth. And now the next page is Sandokai. Sandokai is the Japanese version of Jekyll and Hyde. So these are both the same. One is the US, the other is Japanese. Sometimes we chant Sandokai, usually for a memory of our teachers. But mostly we chant in English. emerging with different submissions. And then the song in the next page is the song of a juvenile shaman composed by Tozan Yokai. These are both Chinese teachers. Tozan, like the founder of the so-called Soto tradition in China.

[46:32]

And our former name is called Soto. And then So for his maybe for his student Sozan, and To for Tozan. And then you turn the characters around. It's To Soto. And this we chant in English. And it's maybe too long to change it to Japanese. But this is one chant that we just chanted. So this is one. And then if you turn to the next page, we have Hokyos and Mai in Japanese. And we don't chant that very often. That's the son of the jewel bearer samadhi in Japanese. So for most of the chants in Japanese, we have a translation that we chant in English, but not all of them.

[47:47]

And then the next one, the names of the Buddhas and ancestors, that we do in Japanese transliteration. And after each one is Dai Osho, a great teacher, a great priest, a great monk. Vibhashi Vatsudai Osho, Shukin Vatsudai Osho, Vishakha Vatsudai Osho, and so on. These are the 70 lists. And you look at Vishakha, Vishakha, Vatsudai, Vatsudai. These are all Indian ancestors. And all the Chinese ancestors. and then Japanese and Sikkim. So we come at the bottom of the Shogakukan Shunrin, and that's Suzuki Roshi. That's his concept of Shogakukan Shunrin. And on the very last page is the Gaijin Shundarani, which we don't translate because it's a Dharani.

[48:53]

Now this is the Shin here is compassion. Dai is great. Great compassion. I'll make you this one. And you're saying that these will be a man of my hands? I think we have to. copies that are available. But we don't chant all the chants every day. At one time, our servants could chant all the chants every day.

[49:56]

But we have a little bit shorter service, and we alternate some of the chants every day, so they don't all appear in the day. We chant everything every day? During practice period. During practice period, yeah. Not during the summer. But not everything. Sometimes we'll alternate. Well, then let's collect the part of the path we've been on so far. I didn't bring my schedule with me, but I think it's walking at 11.45.

[51:32]

Let's take a break. And we get 11.45. Maybe we'll have something. And you have 15 minutes of warm-up. That's a wonderful time. That's in about 20 minutes. OK?

[52:01]

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