Today, I'm going to continue my talk on Suzuki Roshi's commentary on Sekito's, Shoito's, Sandokai poem. So I'll read the poem first. Instead of reading the usual version, I'm going to read the version that Michael Wenger and I put together from Suzuki Roshi's Sandokan lectures.

[01:09]

We took the way he expressed his, we took his expressions and kind of made a translation from them. And so I'm going to read that one today. It's in the book. The mind of the great sage of India was handed down closely from west to east. People may discriminate the dull from the keen, but in the true way, there is no ancestor of north or south. The true source is pure and stainless. The branch streams flow in the dark. Clutching at things is delusion. To recognize the truth is not always enlightenment either. The five sense gates and the five sense objects are interdependent and absolutely independent, interrelated endlessly. Yet each stays in its own position. Things have various natures, various forms.

[02:15]

There is good and bad taste, sound and feeling. In darkness, superior and inferior cannot be distinguished. In brightness, the duality of pure and impure is apparent. The four elements resume their nature as a child has its mother. Fire is hot, wind blows, water wets, the earth is solid. For eyes, there is color and form. For ears there is sound, for the nose there is smell, and for the tongue there is taste. Each being comes out from the root, as branches and leaves come out from the trunk. Both root and end should return to their original nature. The words we use are different, good and bad, respectful and mean. But through these words, we should understand the absolute being or source of the teaching. Within brightness, actually, there is utter darkness. But you should not meet someone just with darkness. Within darkness, there is brightness, but you should not see others only with the eyes of brightness.

[03:20]

Darkness and brightness stand with each other, like one foot forward and the other behind in walking. Everything, all beings, have their own virtue. You should know how to apply this truth. Things and emptiness are like a container and its cover fitting together, like two arrows meeting head-on. When you listen to the words, you should understand the source of the teaching. Don't establish your own rules. If you don't practice in your everyday life as you walk, how can you know the way? The goal is neither far nor near. If you stick to the idea of good or bad, you will be separated from the way by high mountains or big rivers. Seekers of the truth, don't spend your time in vain." So last time we came to the, I talked about that the lines light and dark oppose one another like front and back foot and walking.

[04:21]

Or we could say light and dark alternate with one another. We're like front and back foot in walking. And of course, the Sandokai is the harmony of difference and unity. That's the meaning of it. title. This is a poem from the 8th century, the 9th century in China, and it's really talking about the oneness of the one and the many, the oneness of oneness and duality, the absolute realm and the relative realm, the phenomenal realm, and the all-encompassing oneness of things.

[05:30]

So, I only talked about half the lecture last time, and I don't want to go through it, but I'll just start where I left off last time. He's talking about this metaphor or simile of walking as being like the alternating nature of Dark and light. Dark means absolute or all-encompassing. And light means, stands for individuation or the many things. When you turn on the light, you see all the things in the room. And when you turn the light off, you don't see the individual things. Everything merges into one. So dark means one and light means many things.

[06:38]

It doesn't mean good and bad, or good or evil. It simply means the absolute realm and the relative realm. He's also talking about, in this chapter, how we compare ourselves to things and about weakness and strength and how what we usually take as strength can be weakness and what we usually take as weakness can be strength. So the question is, what is strength and what is weakness? Sometimes we feel that to be hard and strict is strength. But that can also be weakness. And sometimes we feel that yielding is weakness, but actually yielding can be strength. Like the way grass bends in the wind is actually the strength of the grass.

[07:50]

And the way a tall tree snaps in the wind, even though it looks very strong, is its weakness. So here he's talking about women and men. This is always a very delicate subject to talk about. You can talk about men all you want, but when you talk about women you have to put up your arm like this, excuse me, but I'll talk about women. So Suzuki Roshi had this kind of problem, you know, when he came to America, of women and men practicing together, which is not usual in Japan or Asia, and the whole relationship between men and women

[08:58]

and between men and women in practice is totally different. So when he came to America he was very open to people and how they wanted to do things and of course the women wanted to practice equally with the men and the men felt that was okay and so he just allowed that to happen, but it was a problem for him because of his background and not having related But he actually saw our problems and understood us much better than we understood ourselves. So when he talks about men and women, he talks about men and women being equal because they're different. If you make everything the same, then there's no way to relate. and the strength of men is in being completely who you are and the strength of a woman is to be completely who you are.

[10:07]

There's no need to compare who's best or who's strongest or who's right or who's wrong, but when we take on each other's roles then it causes some problem. So he says, women may not be physically as strong as men. And that may be, you know, people say, well, I'm not sure that's true. It's not always true. Nothing is always true. But generally, physically, women may not be physically as strong as men. Because of that, they are often stronger than men. Actually, we don't know who is stronger. When we have our own completely independent nature, our strength is absolutely equal with everyone else's.

[11:09]

If you are involved in comparing who is stronger, you or I, then you don't have real strength. When you are completely independent, one with your own nature, You are an absolute power in a relative situation. I've always had a problem with women and shoulder pads. That's my problem. I admit that it's my problem. But I don't see it as strength. I see when we expose our shoulders the way they are, to me that's beautiful and then that beauty is their strength. So he's saying, you know, it's just to be

[12:22]

who you really are is where your strength lies. There's no need to compare you to anything else because you are absolutely yourself. And when you are absolutely yourself, then you have your strength in every relative situation. No one can compete with you or compare with you. it's only when we start comparing ourselves do we have the problem. You know, when we sit in meditation, in zazen, everyone is in a different place. I don't mean seat, but everyone is, some people can sit with their legs crossed, some people have to sit in a chair, some people can't straighten their back, and other people look like they're, you know, some kind of

[13:25]

wonderful Buddha when they're sitting. And so we look around, we say, gee, you know, he sits so well, you know, and here am I struggling, you know. So you start comparing yourself. As soon as you do that, you lose your strength. You are completely who you are, in the place where you are, at the moment where you are, doing the best you can. then there's no way to compare you with somebody else. So although we are inspired by others, we shouldn't compare ourselves to others. Then you can relax and enjoy everyone's practice without competing. We feel that competition creates a kind of expertise. it furthers our ambitions, makes us more alert and more strong, and in some way it does.

[14:33]

Competition is like that, but actually cooperation and mutual promotion is far more advantageous. When we promote each other and when we encourage each other, It's much more productive than when we compete with each other. Although competition has its place. It's egotistical, becomes very egotistical. When we promote each other, we forget ourself. And when we forget ourself, we become ourself. the more we try to promote ourself, the further we get away from being ourself. So there's also the problem of dependency

[15:48]

and independency, which he talks about in this talk. When we feel dependent, that may feel like weakness, but everyone is totally dependent on everyone else and on everything else. When we feel independent, which is a feeling that we do have, we're in a dangerous position. don't realize how much we're supported by everything around us and our life depends on the support of everything around us. So to be dependent and independent at the same time, which is kind of in between.

[16:53]

It encompasses both dependent and independent. Each of us, we really want to feel independent, but at the same time, we're totally dependent. So when you realize that you're totally dependent, then you can be really independent because you know what you rely on and you know who you are. So he says, I want to talk about women a little bit more and men. I've talked about this before, when I first started practicing in San Francisco at Sokoji Temple in the early 60s, Suzuki Roshi had set up the zendo so that the women were sitting on one side and the men were sitting on the other side.

[17:58]

And it seemed natural to us, somehow, it was nice. And when we'd stand up from zazen and adjust our cushion and bow, and then we'd turn around and bow, we'd turn around and the men and the women would bow to each other. And that was really a nice feeling because it was like you're recognizing each other's practice. And then one day someone said, well, I don't think that's a good idea. I think this is America. We should all be practicing mixing up. So ever since then, it's been mixed up. I really think that women are finding their way in a male-dominated practice. For centuries, the practice has been dominated by men and although there have been women practices, they've been very subordinate.

[19:10]

So in America, And I think that women need to have their own style. The style of practice has been very affected by women's practice. So when people from the old country come here, it's a little bit shocking to them to see men and women practicing equally together and to see women being the leaders and abbots of temples and so forth, where men are practicing. Today, this weekend, there's a women's conference at Zen Center in San Francisco. And I think that's a good thing. Women have their own sashins. And someone said, we should have more women's sashins.

[20:13]

And I think that's a good idea. I think women should find their own way so that when the men and women come together they feel more equal because us women are finding our own nature and practice. Now, we also have some men's sushins, but we only have them once in a while. because the men aren't so worried because they're already dominant. But now, where do I fit in? See, I'm the abbot, so I'm the abbot of both the men and the women side, so I should be able to go to women's sashins as well as men's sashins. So this is a wonderful koan. If I go to women's sashins, I should be able to do that.

[21:21]

I should be invited to come to women's sashins because I'm the abbot. And I should also be invited to go to men's sashins because I've been doing a lot of sashins. But that's okay. But it's an interesting problem. If I just go to men's sashins because I'm a man, then there's something missing. It's a very interesting problem. It's not a problem for me, actually. I'm happy to go to women's sushis. Ramakrishna, who was very popular, his disciples wrote this long book about him, when he was in India, decided that he wanted to see what it was like to be a woman. So he put on women's clothes and spent a year or two just practicing with women, sewing and cooking and doing all the things with the women.

[22:28]

And he became a woman for that period of time. It's nice to have that kind of flexibility so you understand what's going on. So men, I mean women, come into a men's space and take on male characteristics in a lot of ways. So it's interesting to see what would happen on the other side, for men to come into a women's space and take on some of those characteristics and see what would happen. I think that's interesting speculation. What does it feel like to be a woman? Of course, you know, some of us males are far off on the feminine side, some females are far off on the masculine side.

[23:36]

already, but a great many males don't know what it's like to feel like a woman, you know, to get inside that skin and know what goes on. So then he says, then he comes back to light and darkness. He says, so light and darkness, although they are a pair of opposites, are equal. as when one footstep is ahead and the other is behind. He talked about this before. When you walk, the step ahead immediately becomes the step behind. Is a step with your right foot the step ahead or the step behind? Which is it? Which is brightness and which is darkness? It is difficult to tell. So this applies to all opposites. But specifically, he's talking about brightness and darkness as the absolute infuses the relative, and the relative is an expression of the absolute.

[24:50]

So sometimes it's light, sometimes dark. And when you're really not self-conscious, you don't know which it is. So he says, when you're walking, there is no foot ahead or behind. If you stop walking and think about it, sometimes the right foot may be ahead and the left foot may be behind. But when your feet are actually walking, you are actually practicing the way. There is no light or darkness, no foot ahead or no foot behind. If I say that you should just sit Zazen without thinking, you may feel that you should not have any thoughts. This is the great problem people have in Zazen. Sit Zazen without thinking doesn't mean that you should not have thoughts. The koan of Zazen is, think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? He says, beyond thinking.

[25:55]

Actually, he says, beyond thinking or not thinking. you may feel that you should not have any thoughts. You will be caught by the idea that the right foot is ahead and the left foot is behind. Then you cannot walk anymore. When you are actually walking, you have no idea of left or right foot. But if you are self-consciously aware of right foot or left foot, you can't walk or run. So in other words, when you are one with your activity, you don't think about which is ahead, even though you're aware of the feet. But as soon as you stop to think about it, it's like if you're walking a tightrope, the right foot, the left foot, you're aware. But as soon as you become self-conscious, you fall. There's two kinds of self-consciousness that I usually think about.

[27:00]

One is the self-consciousness which is isolating. and the other is the self-consciousness which includes everything. So self-consciousness that's isolating is when you think of yourself as distinct from everything else. This is independence without realizing dependency. When you think that you're only independent, then that's isolation. And that self-consciousness doesn't allow you to do anything, because you have no relation to things. But the other self-consciousness is where you see everything as yourself. You're conscious of the whole universe as yourself. This is called enlightenment. Then wherever you fall, you're caught, or every place is a safe place.

[28:03]

As I have said, before you chew your food, there is rice, pickle, and soup. They're all laid out on the plate, especially in Japanese food. Japanese don't mix things. They mix things a little bit, but they don't mix their food up like we do. And everything is laid out very individually on the plate in a kind of beautiful way, artistic way. That's the nature of Japanese cuisine or food, you know. And then when you have chewed your food, there is no pickle, no rice, no soup. After you mix the food in your mouth, it will be digested in your tummy and it will serve its purpose. It says only when it starts to lose its form, does it serve its purpose. There's an interesting statement. As long as it's on the plate, it's just something to observe.

[29:17]

But when you put it in your mouth and start chewing it, it all becomes, it loses its identity, singular identity, and it interacts with all the other juices and things, and then becomes energy. So when we lose something, we also gain something. when our form starts to transform, which it's always doing, then energy exists. So after you mix the food in your mouth, it will be digested in your tummy and will serve its purpose. Even so, we should serve one thing after So it's not like you should mix up all your food first. One thing, you eat one thing, and then the next, and you enjoy it.

[30:23]

I remember in the old days, people were just discovering brown rice, and they were chewing their food and discovering whole wheat, and they asked Suzuki Roshi, Do you chew your rice a hundred times at each bite? He said, well, if I do that, I won't be able to enjoy my food. So I just enjoy it and then let it take its course. He said, there is an order, but even though there is an order, you should chew your food and mix it or else the food will not serve its purpose. It's necessary to think about it. to have a recipe, but it is also necessary to chew and mix everything up. So we go to all this trouble of making these meals, and then we eat them and chew them all up.

[31:25]

So it's kind of like, why make the bed if you're going to go back and mess it up? Or why do anything if you're gonna die? So this is a very good interpretation of reality, he says, and a good illustration of how we practice our way and of the kind of activity that is going on in our everyday lives. So with these lines, Sekito's interpretation of reality in the light of independency is completed. So it does bring up that question, you know, create something if it's just going to be uncreated, or if we're gonna lose it. And in some way, it's good not to create too many things that we become attached to.

[32:28]

But if you know how to let go of things, then attachment is okay. You know, attachment brings up our sense of self. Grasping, desire, grasping and attachment are the big problems of our life. We latch on to things, we want things, we can't have them. Even though we have them, we can't have them for very long. And even our own life, you know, we become attached to our own life and we can't have it for very long. But if we realize how to let go, as well as how to take up, then attachment is okay. But the problem with it is that it's hard to let go of.

[33:32]

Things are hard to let go of. So maybe better not to want too much. But at the same time, how to flow with things, you know? So that really nothing belongs to us. If we realize that nothing belongs to us, it's much easier to take what comes and let it go. Matter of fact, this is what we do when we sit in zazen. We let things come and we let them go. Feelings come up. And they go, thoughts come up, and they go, we don't attach or cling to anything. But when it's there, it's there. When it's gone, it's gone. So, for this moment, we make our nice lunch, and we put everything on the plate.

[34:43]

and appreciate this moment through this activity. So we can appreciate our life moment by moment through the quality of our activity. And we create things and we destroy them. But compassionately, we destroy things compassionately, that's the difference. So we appreciate things and we have respect for things and we use them and they use us. We allow ourselves to be used. The extreme of this use is some of these old Buddhist legend stories of the Buddha or his disciples feeding themselves to the hungry tigress.

[35:47]

It's like sharing yourself, but it's an extreme story. I don't recommend it. But sometimes we have to sacrifice ourself for things in various ways, and we do through our selfless activity. But it's not really sacrifice. It's simply doing the right thing in the moment. Do you have any questions? Oh, Peter. Being a late practitioner, I sometimes feel the signals are very nail-bound.

[36:59]

So, am I male-dominated or is it woman-dominated? I don't think ... are you or is it ... you say, am I male-dominated? Well, it depends on your perspective. You're sitting there and Miriam is sitting there, so from your perspective it doesn't look like it, but from her perspective it might. So it's good to get many views. If I'm not careful then I think it's not male-dominated, but if I'm careful then I think, well, maybe it is. So we should not be, even though I think that there's a lot of equality, we shouldn't be, what's that word?

[38:26]

Content with or complacent about that. What do you say? Smug? Smug. No, not smug. complacent. Smug is too. Yeah, that implies egotistical feeling. I don't think people have egotistical feeling. I think it's more ignorance. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's much softer. In other words, you know, we used to use the stick all the time, you know, waking people up if they wanted it, which is a great practice.

[39:32]

And a lot of women think so, too. But we kind of let go of that, you know, gradually. And I often have, it's not so much, sometimes women would say that, some men say that, though, not necessarily a woman's thing. But I often have women come to me and say, why don't we use the stick? You know, we said we would, you know. So it's hard to say, you know, which is, but there is a softer feeling, you know, and the chanting is not as strong. I mean, there's a tendency in women's chanting to be not quite as, you know, that powerful feeling that men would have. And not melodious, but just softer. And it's just, you know, there's also an undefinable quality that's, you can't say it's this or that, but it's just some undefinable quality.

[40:56]

Well, the reason why, you know, if you have a bunch of young men or women, you can do, the practice is very different, but we have a great variety of people. And just, you know, yesterday I was looking around the zendo and I thought, so-and-so's back is not straight, you know, and so-and-so's slump, but I think maybe I should go and straighten them out, you know. which I used to do all the time. I used to do that all the time. And I think, well, these people can't do that. There are more people sitting in chairs, older people and people with infirmities and so forth. Are you going to say you can't sit? If I put too much emphasis on hard labor, the hard work, there'd just be a certain type of person sitting.

[42:08]

And that's what you have in Japan in the monasteries, young men. So it's not necessarily women, it's more like people. And so to have the practice with such a variety of people in one place, it's like a one-room schoolhouse, where you're teaching first grade and 12th grade at the same time, kind of like that. So you have to be very flexible and accommodating to some people. We used to be not accommodating to anybody. And the fact of the matter is, young women, it's easier for young women to sit in a full lotus than it is for men. There was a study made in Japan that the people who have the easiest time sitting in full lotus are young women, about, you know, Japanese women, about between 17 and 20.

[43:12]

They don't seem to have much trouble doing that. But, you know, it's hard for men, most men, and for a lot of women. Sitting is actually harder for men than it is for women, generally. Of course, I didn't say specifically, always, but generally. Practice is harder for men. But the harder it is, the harder time you have, the more benefit you get out of the practice. So, but... So one person's difficulty is different than another person's difficulty. So each one of us has our own difficulty. And if you face that difficulty, then you have a good practice. But if you avoid the difficulty, then sometimes you wonder, well, what am I doing here?

[44:22]

What's going on? I'm bored. As soon as you're bored, you know that you're not putting enough effort into your practice. You're making a gap. As soon as you face the difficulty that you have and really make effort to get through it, you can't be bored. No way. Did you want to say something, Rebecca? about how strong the chanting is, how strong and clear, and how women's voices can be heard in a way that they cannot be heard when we are all chanting together. The other thing I wanted to say is one of the hardest things that, lessons that I have not learned, is how to use the kiyosaki.

[45:28]

And it was one of the back, where I really like, and somebody else who knows how, used it during sashimi and during other times as well. The first time I used it, I hit Blanche Hartman with the wrong hand. She's still around, she's still around. Well, women's chanting is very strong. That's true. But there's something softer.

[46:32]

But that's really been a lesson to me, You can't imagine what? You probably shouldn't do it. I know. I won't let you. You have to have good aim. Are you telling me that's a fail? Well... You know, men are used to swinging bats.

[47:36]

Mostly women say, I don't want to do this. Some women will do it, but mostly they say, I don't want to do this. So, but we make, you know, we used to make them do it anyway, ask them to do it anyway, because we didn't want to discriminate. But anyway, it's an individual thing, it's not a, like some. Women can use a cue cycle, men can use a cue cycle. It's just that we don't use it much anymore. People don't sleep as much as they used to. No, it's true. In the old days, people used to, except I sleep like this, but most people don't. So we don't, you know, I don't know. Anyway, thank you very much.

[48:34]

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