I'm going to talk about Suzuki Roshi's teaching from our new book, Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness. I think you all know what that is by now. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about the Sandokai. to maybe elaborate a little on Suzuki Roshi's commentary. So I'm going to start from the beginning. I know I gave a talk once, not long ago, but I can't remember what chapter I talked about. I don't know if you remember, but I'm going to start from the beginning. So he opens his talk by saying, I'm very grateful for this opportunity to talk about the Sandokai.

[01:23]

one of our most important teachings. Its mode of expression is so smooth that you may not feel its deep meaning when you read it." As I read this, I think about Suzuki Roshi's actual language when he was saying this, you know, and this is not exactly what he said, but this is what he meant. He did say that, but you know a lot of the time when he was doing this he was expressing his mind but not necessarily his thought, and so to make this actually, to put coherent and continuous.

[02:30]

People read this and they say, oh, it's very smooth. What was the problem in editing it? That's a great compliment, actually. Well, I don't see any. Why was it a problem? Anyway, I'm glad that it reads very smoothly. This is what he meant. Its motive expression is so smooth that you may not feel its deep meaning when you read it. The author of this poem, Sekito Kisen, or Sekito Musai Daishin, his posthumous name, is the Dharma grandson of the sixth the direct descendant of Seigen Gyoshi, and he explains that, who is considered the seventh ancestor. Among the sixth ancestor's many disciples, the most prominent were Seigen Gyoshi and Nangako Eijo, Nanyue Huaijiang.

[03:39]

His Chinese name didn't get put in here. continued Seigen's lineage as the Soto school. This is all history, a little bit of history. And Master Rinzai Gigen continued Nangako's lineage as the Rinzai school. Soto and Rinzai eventually became the dominant schools of Zen. The way of Seigen and Sekito has a more gentle quality than Nangako's way. Sagan and Nangaku were the two prominent disciples of the sixth ancestor and Sagan was maybe the first and Nangaku the second, if you want to evaluate them in terms of who was first and who was second. So Nangaku's way is more like, he says, the way of Sagan and Sekito, who is the author of the Sado Kai, was about 12 or 13 years old when he visited the sixth ancestor.

[05:08]

In those days in China, you know, a lot of youngsters would become acolytes, Buddhist acolytes. They couldn't be ordained until they were 20 years old, though. But they had a kind of connection. They became students, but not full monks until they were 20 years old. And Sekito visited the sixth ancestor when he was maybe 13 years old. And then Daikan Eino died and Seigen became his first successor, prominent successor. And then Sekito studied with Seigen and became Seigen's student and had Dharma transmission with him. So he says, the way of Sagan and Sekito has a more gentle quality than Nangako's way.

[06:16]

In Japan, we call this the elder brother's way. Thank you. Nangako was more like the second or third son, who was often rather naughty or troublesome. The little kid who's always running around, very charming. And everybody loves him, but he's mischievous. And the older brother is the leader of the way. The firstborn has to find out how to be in the world. And then the younger kids follow in his lead. explored the way, so in a way it's easier for the younger kids to follow, and so the older one is usually more mature and settled, not always.

[07:23]

This is a kind of, you know, way of speaking. So the elder brother may not be so able, not necessarily, or bright, not necessarily, That is our understanding when we talk about Soto and Renzai, anyway. Sometimes Soto is called Memitsu no Kafu, which he says is a very careful and considerate style. But it also means something like family way. Tatsugami Roshi used to talk about Memitsu no Kafu. It means very carefully, you do the family way of Soto Zen, actually. It's like to do everything very carefully, treat things with respect, and see everything as yourself.

[08:28]

In other words, to relate to everything as yourself. it's a very inclusive attitude. We say, there's a saying, the true human body is the whole universe. So to see everything as yourself and as and to treat things very carefully and respectfully, considerably. And so then he says, Sagan's way is to find everything within himself in that family way. It is to realize the great mind that includes everything and to practice accordingly.

[09:32]

So this is where Suzuki Roshi gets his big mind idea, the big idea. And this understanding of big mind is the centerpiece of the Yogacara school. So when you read Suzuki Roshi or listen, you know, practice, he doesn't mention Madhyamaka or Yogacara so much. You know, maybe say something, mention it in passing, but he doesn't say this is the, usually he doesn't say this is the philosophy of this school or this school. He just speaks from his own experience. But behind it is definitely the influence and understanding of these major schools of Mahayana Buddhism.

[10:35]

So when he speaks about emptiness, he's speaking from the point of view of the understanding of the Madhyamaka school. And when he's talking about big mind, he's speaking from the point of view of the Vijnanavada school, of the Yogacara school. The Madhyamaka school of Nagarjuna emphasizes emptiness and negativity, the negation of everything. All existence is empty. And the Yogacara school comes from the other side and talks about the inclusiveness of everything in big mind. And it has a kind of substantialistic feeling, whereas the Madhyamaka school has a non-substantialistic feeling.

[11:52]

And so these two schools complement each other, these two philosophies complement each other in a wonderful way. is, the is, is not school, the is school, the empty school, the fullness school, and the Yogacara school was criticized by the Madhyamaka school as being a little bit on the substantialistic side, leaning toward a substantial permanent entity, which actually is not there, but is suspiciously, you know, you can sniff it out and find something there. So Suzuki Roshi is talking about, when he's talking about big mind, he's talking from the point of view of the Yogacara school, but he's talking about from his own experience.

[12:58]

So the wonderful thing about the way he speaks is it's always from his own experience, but if you are familiar with the doctrines of those schools then you can see how that underlies his understanding and where he's coming from when he's speaking, but he always speaks from his own experience. And then Sagan, the Sandokai, is speaking pretty much from the point of view of Yogacara understanding, Vijnanavada understanding. He's talking about big mind. Suzuki Roshi construes it as big mind. So he says, Sagan's way is to find everything within himself, within his big mind.

[14:07]

It is to realize the great mind or big mind that includes everything and to practice according to that understanding. So Suzuki Goshi always one of his main themes was that we should always let go of small mind and always be within. Our activity should always be within big mind. So then he says, our effort in Zen is to observe everything as it is. To observe everything as it is. He didn't yet say things as it is. He says that a little later. So he uses two terms. He says everything as it is, and then he uses the phrase things as it is. So everything as it is, means everything, you see everything as it is, which is okay.

[15:12]

Later he uses the term things as it is, which is kind of the tension between plurality and singleness and singularity. So he said, yet even though we say so, even though we say to observe everything as it is, We are not necessarily observing everything as it is. We may think that we're observing everything as it is, maybe even without thinking about it. We have some idea about how things are, about what a thing is, but we don't usually look behind or go further in our ordinary thinking to what is it So our thinking is usually an activity, usually on a superficial level or simply the level of interaction and expediency.

[16:26]

We say, here is my friend, over there is the mountain, and way up there is the moon. But your friend is not only your friend. The mountain is not only the mountain, and the moon is not only the moon. If we think, I am here and the moon is over there, that is a dualistic way of observing things. To go to San Francisco, we have to cross over the Tassajara Mountains. That is our usual understanding, but that's not a Buddhist way of observing things. We find the mountain or the moon or our friend or San Francisco within ourselves right here. That is big mind within which everything exists. So this is a little bit radical way of thinking. or observing things.

[17:33]

Of course, you know, if you're in Tassajara and you wanna go to San Francisco, you have to go over that mountain. And you only have to take a vehicle and sometimes it's snowing and you have to put on the chains in the snow and freeze your fingers. And all that's real, feels real. And it takes time to get there. But at the same time, it all exists in our big mind. So existing in big mind, when we say things exist in the mind, it's not the little mind, they exist in the big mind. Everything exists in the big mind as an aspect of big mind. So The small mind is the conceptualizing mind, the mind of imagination.

[18:36]

So in the mind of imagination, imagination creates the world. Even though there is, things seem to exist apart from our imagination, still for us, for each one of us, the world is created through our imagination. This is part of the Yogacara understanding, is that there are three natures. I talked about this before. I think I talked about it in our class. The nature of imagination, parikrapita, the nature of dependency, paritantra, and the true nature of reality, which is parinispana.

[19:40]

And this middle nature, the dependent nature, is like interdependence. everything is dependent on everything else, so that there's no central soul to things, but simply interdependent conjunctions, which is the creative matrix for what we call our life. And the imagined nature, nature of imagination, puts together a world out of the dependent parts of our life so that we perceive

[20:44]

the various aspects of phenomena, and then we create a world out of that, out of that raw material. But we can create any kind of a world, therefore we have different societies, People have different ways of doing things. People have different ways of perceiving the world. It's interesting how the Asian world is like the opposite. People perceive things in an opposite way in many ways from the Western sphere, hemisphere. Sometimes it's just backwards. So we create our own worlds and we have our own ideas about what's what out of this raw material.

[21:49]

So there's really nothing fixed, but we do agree on reality. And sometimes we look at someone and say, that person's crazy because they haven't agreed on the agreed upon reality. but nevertheless, they have their own reality. So some realities work better than others. So we try to come to agreements on what realities work better than others so that we can all live in peace and harmony, but we don't all agree on that. So we think, here is my friend, but he's more than just my friend, right? This idea of my friend is only one aspect of this person, one small aspect.

[22:56]

And the mountain, what is a mountain? The mountain means something to my imagination, but that doesn't mean that that's what the mountain is. So your friend is not only your friend. The mountain is not only the mountain, and the moon is not only the moon. If we think, I am here and the mountain is over there, that is a dualistic way of observing things. To go to San Francisco, we do have to cross over the Tassajara Mountains. That is our usual understanding, but that is not the Buddhist way of observing things. we find the mountain or the moon or our friend or San Francisco within ourselves right here. That is the big mind with it, which everything exists. So when the mind of imagination is quiet, then we realize that everything exists within the big mind, including myself.

[24:02]

So we do see things from our point of view, but when we let go of the self-centered point of view, then we can observe from the bigger point of view or the point of view of big mind, which includes everything. So big mind or true mind, this is also called the mirror mind. the great mirror of wisdom, which sees everything just as it is, because the small mind is the discriminating mind, which compartmentalizes and identifies on the basis of partiality. So that discriminating mind will never observe things as it is, as they are. Hard to observe things as they really are.

[25:13]

So the mind of partiality is an obscurant. It's a mind covering. In the Heart Sutra it's called mind covering. which obscures seeing, obscures the mirror. So we say when the alaya vijnana, which is a Yogacara concept, the storehouse consciousness is purified, it becomes the mirror wisdom, which sees everything just as it is, without partiality. So, he says, even though we think we are looking at things as they are,

[26:29]

to see everything as it is. We're not really doing that. He says, okay, now let's look at the title, Sandokai. What does it mean? San literally means three. Ichi, ni, san, right, in Japanese. You know, it's a Chinese term. I don't know what the term is in Chinese. I don't know how to count in Chinese. But here it means things. So three, it's like more than two. It means things. And dou is sameness or identity. To identify one thing with another is dou. It also refers to oneness or one's whole being or equality. When the ego, the seventh consciousness is purified, it becomes the wisdom of equality where we see that the equality of all things clearly.

[27:45]

So he says to identify with one thing, And one thing with another is do. It also refers to oneness or one's whole being, which here means big mind, great mind, or big mind. So our understanding is that there is one whole being that includes everything. That's Yogacara philosophy. And that the many things are found in the one whole being. Although we say many beings, they are actually the many parts of one whole being that includes everything. If you say many, it is many. And if you say one, it is one. Doesn't matter. Many and one are different ways of describing one whole being. In Yogacara, if you, understanding, if you look at the house,

[28:49]

The house is built of many parts. So when you point to the, any one part of the house, you point to the whole house. So you say, this is the house. and you can point to the whole thing and you can say, this is the house. But you can also point to the floor and you can say, this is the house. Or you can point to the beam and you can say, this is the house. So the part is the whole, and the whole is made up of many parts. But the whole is the whole, and the parts are the parts. So there's also a saying, you know, if you take the end of a cloth, the cloth has four corners, so you take one corner of the cloth and pull it and all the other corners, the rest of the cloth comes with it.

[30:02]

So he says, to completely understand the relationship between one great whole being and the many facets of that one great whole being is kai. San do kai. Kai means to shake hands. You have a feeling of friendship. You feel that the two of you are one. In the same way, this one great whole being and the many things are good friends. or more than good friends, because they are originally one. Therefore, like shaking hands, we say, kai, hi, how are you? This is the meaning of the poem's title, what is many, what is one? And what is the oneness, one and many? I think somewhere in the Bible it says, closer than hands and feet.

[31:12]

It is closer than hands and feet. Originally, Sandokai was the title of a Taoist book. Sikhito used the same title for his poem, which describes Buddha's teaching. What is the difference between Taoist teachings and Buddha's teachings? There are many similarities. When a Buddhist reads it, it is a Buddhist book. And when a Taoist reads it, it is a Taoist text. Yet it is actually the same thing. When a Buddhist eats a vegetable, it is Buddhist food. And when a vegetarian eats a vegetable, it is vegetarian food. But sometimes Buddhists are vegetarians. Too good a contrast. But still, it is just food. Maybe if you go to a Chinese restaurant, it's just all vegetables, but we call it Chinese food.

[32:23]

When you go to a Mexican restaurant, the same stuff, but it's called Mexican food. But Buddhism and Taoism, Taoism of course, when Buddhism came to China, there was no Taoism. There was Tao as a kind of philosophy and there were Taoists who were looking for the essence of life, the immortality of life. But the closest thing to Buddhism in China at the time was the Taoists and their philosophy. And so the Buddhists used Taoist terms to explain Buddhism. and for a couple hundred years Buddhism was explained in terms of using Daoist terms and Daoist examples.

[33:29]

So a lot of people thought that Buddhism and Daoism were the same and then later when Kumarajiva came and translated the sutras they made this division between the Daoists and the Buddhists clear. Taoism, of course, really influenced Buddhism in China. So a lot of people still think that Taoism is the same as Buddhism, but it's not, although there are many similarities. And so the Taoists will read a certain book according to their understanding, and Buddhists will read the same book according to their understanding. So that's the title of a Taoist book, and you can see how the Taoists and Buddhists had some similar thought trains. And then he talks about food.

[34:39]

I'm just going to talk a little bit more. I know there's time. As Buddhists, we do not eat a particular vegetable just because it has some special nourishing quality or choose it because it is yin or yang, acid or alkaline. Simply to eat food is our practice. Well, this is a monastic idea, you know, in China and Japan. In the monasteries, the food was very poor. A lot of rice, some vegetables. And in India, people depended entirely, monks depended entirely on contributions. And in China, a little better. The Chinese monks actually did field work, had their own fields, and raised their own vegetables. Not so much in Japan. Japanese monasteries, I think they depended more on contributions and begging.

[35:47]

And, you know, the poor, really poor. And the monks would get very sick and die early. But this is just, you know, part of like, just eating food to practice, not worrying about it being healthy. In America, we changed all that. And Tassajara was the first Zen monastery, and so he spent years perfecting diet. And Suzuki Roshi, a lot of us thought that Suzuki Roshi died young because he had to eat our brown rice. But he did it cheerfully. And he talks about eating brown rice. When you eat brown rice, you chew it and the flavor starts to come out. As you chew the brown rice, you begin to see the flavor, feel the flavor, just like practice.

[36:51]

The more you chew it, the more you chew your practice, the more the flavor of it comes out. a wonderful lecture on brown rice. So we have different outlook and our outlook comes somewhat from our culture of taking care of our body and being healthy. And so it's an interesting contrast between our way of feeding ourself and the kind of traditional Buddhist monk's way of just accepting what comes along and not worrying about whether it's this or that but just eating what comes in your bowl. And we get to be a little too There are good things about both sides and there are not such good things about both sides.

[37:54]

So whichever you choose has its good qualities and its problems. And Suzuki Roshi died young of liver cancer. So maybe it's not such a good idea to follow that way. Anyway, he says, but this is true, he says, simply to eat food is our practice. We don't eat just to support ourselves. As we say in our meal chant, to practice our way, we eat this food. So eating the food is simply to practice the way, just enough so that you can practice the way. And then he says, this is how big mind is included in our practice.

[38:55]

To think this is just a vegetable is not our understanding. When we look at this, it's not just a vegetable. We must treat things as part of ourselves within our practice and within big mind. Small mind is the mind that is under the limitation of desires or some particular emotional covering or the discrimination of good and bad. So for the most part, even though we think we are observing things as it is, here he starts using that term, things as it is, actually we are not. Why? Why? Because our discrimination or our desires, because of our discrimination or desires, the Buddhist way is to try hard to let go of this kind of emotional discrimination of good and bad and let go of our prejudices and to see things as it is. So I'll leave it off there.

[39:59]

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