This morning I'm going to continue my commentary on Suzuki Roshi's commentary on Shirdu's Sandokai, which appears in Branching Streams, Flow in the Darkness, and we translate as the Harmony of Difference and Equality, one of the earliest Zen poems in China. And it's been some time since I talked about it, but I'm gonna continue my talk, and you can just pick it up wherever you are. But I'm going to read up to the place where I'm going to read the poem up to the place where I'm going to speak about it.

[01:34]

The mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted from west to east. While human faculties are sharp or dull, the way has no northern or southern ancestors. The spiritual source shines clear in the light. The branching streams flow on in the dark. Grasping at things is surely delusion. According with sameness is still not enlightenment. All the objects of the senses interact and yet do not. Interacting brings involvement, otherwise each keeps its place. Sights vary in quality and form. Sounds differ as pleasing or harsh. Refined and common speech come together in the dark. Clear and murky phrases are distinguished in the light. The four elements return to their natures just as a child turns to its mother. Fire heats, wind moves, water wets, earth is solid, eye and sight, ear and sound, nose and smell, tongue and taste.

[02:45]

Thus, for each and every thing, depending on these roots, the leaves spread forth. Trunk and branches share the essence. Revered and common, each has its speech. In the light there is darkness, but don't take it as darkness. In the dark there is light, but don't see it as light. Light and dark oppose one another, like front and back foot in walking. Each of the myriad things has its merit expressed according to function and place. Phenomena exist like box and lid joining. Principle accords like arrow points meeting. Hearing the words, understand the meaning. Don't set up standards of your own. If you don't understand the way right before you, how will you know the path as you walk? Practice is not a matter of far or near, but if you are confused, mountains and rivers block your way. I respectfully urge you who study the mystery, don't pass your days and nights in vain."

[03:46]

Well, that's the whole poem. I always say I'm going to read up to the place and then I read the whole poem, which I think is a good idea. And the last time I talked about this part of the commentary, in the light there is darkness, but don't take it as darkness. In the light, in the dark there is light, but don't see it as light. So this poem is about opposites and about the oneness of opposites and the oneness of the duality of opposites and the duality of that oneness. So in Zen and in Buddhism,

[04:47]

non-duality is always emphasized and it's emphasized so much that we mistakenly think that only non-duality is important, but it's also important to understand that duality is also And because we live in a dualistic world, it's hard to see the oneness of duality. So Buddhism, Buddhist practice, emphasizes the realm of non-duality. But we should also be careful And this poem goes back and forth, giving us an understanding from both sides.

[06:05]

So every phrase of the poem gives us an understanding, gives us a view from duality and a view from non-duality. moments, activity, and phenomena from the point of view of both duality and non-duality, then we have an enlightened mind. So Asekhito speaks of dark and light. In the light, everything is revealed in its dualistic nature. in the dark everything is revealed as oneness. So these terms dark and light refer to differentiation and oneness.

[07:12]

So I'm going to just read the short part that I talked about last time without explaining it or commenting on it. So Suzuki Roshi's commentary on this part of the poem, he says, first I will talk about the two terms in Japanese, Light means the relative dualistic world of words, the thinking world, the visible world in which we live. Darkness refers to the Absolute where there is no exchange value, or materialistic value, or even spiritual value, the world that our words and thinking mind cannot reach. Living in the realm of duality, we must have a good understanding of the Absolute, which we may think of as a deity, But in Buddhism, we do not have any particular idea about a deity.

[08:27]

The absolute is the absolute because it is beyond our intellectual or dualistic thinking. We cannot deny this world of the absolute. Many people say that Buddhism is atheism because we have no particular idea of God. We know there is the absolute, but we know it is beyond the limit of our thinking mind, so we don't say so much about it. That is what we mean by an or darkness. And in Japanese, mechu ni atatte anari, in the light there is darkness. This is a literal translation. This is the first line of these four lines, in the light there is darkness. This is a literal translation, but the literal translation doesn't make much sense. To say there is light in darkness is a contradiction, right? It doesn't make much sense. So we must understand the actual meaning of Ari, there is. There are two characters for there is.

[09:31]

Japanese, ari and zai. When we say there is something on the table or on the earth or in Tassajara, something on or in something, we use zai. And when we say, I have two hands, in Japanese we use ari. Actually, we say, there are these two hands, Part of the character for Ari means flesh or skin. This shows a very close relationship between light and darkness, like the relationship between my skin and myself. Well, I don't want to explain it. The English sentence, in the light there is darkness, sounds more dualistic. I have my skin, you may say, or I have my hand, but your hand or your skin is a part of you, so actually it is not dualistic.

[10:35]

Skin is you yourself, your hands are your hands. In English you say, I have two hands, but your hands may feel funny when you say this. Oh, we are a part of you, What do you mean? Do you mean you have two more hands besides us? If possible, I think there should be another way of expressing this in English. I think that's where I ended last time. So this time I want to talk about the rest. In these lines, Ari means there is a very close relationship between light and darkness. And actually, darkness itself is light. Darkness or brightness is within your mind. In your mind, you have some standard or measurement of how bright or dark this room is.

[11:39]

Right? If it is unusually bright, you may say the room is bright. If it is unusually dark, you may say it is dark. But you can say, this room is bright. And at the same time, someone else may say, this room is very dark. Someone who comes from San Francisco at night may say, oh, Tassajara is very dark. But someone who comes here from a cave may say, Tassajara is very bright, like a capital city. The idea of light or dark is within ourselves. Because we have some standard, we say light or dark, but actually light is darkness and darkness is light. This is the meaning, this is the sense of the meaning of Sekhito's expression. So you can say the same thing about many opposites, good and bad.

[12:42]

Sometimes we say someone is very bad, and someone else may think, oh, he's very good. Or you may have something to eat that you don't like, and you say, this is not so good. But someone else may like it. They think, this is really good. This happens all the time. So things are not necessarily what we say they are, but we attach to our opinion about them, our judgments about them. Someone may be very wealthy, but appear to be very wealthy, but in another sense they're very poor. Someone may appear to be very poor, but in essence they're quite wealthy. So within light is darkness, within darkness is light.

[13:52]

Don't be attached to one side or the other. Don't be attached to the relative side or the absolute side. Within death there is life, and within life there is death. This is very important and very closely related. In our world, we consider our world the light side, and we consider death the dark side. But it's just a matter of perspective. Because we use ourself as a standard, we use ourself as a standard and we judge everything from that standard. So we have to be very careful.

[14:55]

Even though we say darkness, it does not mean nothing is there. When you have light, you can see many things, such as Caucasians and Japanese, men and women, stones and trees. When these things appear in the light, When we say darkness or world of the absolute, which is beyond our thinking, you may think this is a world quite different from our human world. But this is also a mistake. If you understand darkness in that way, it is not the darkness that's meant here. Some of you are preparing food for Ed and Meg's wedding. This was at Tassajara in 1970. summer of 1970, and Suzuki Roshi did a wedding for Ed Brown and his wife Meg. You may dish out, and people were making a lot of food, you know, everybody's busy preparing for the wedding and making food and so forth.

[16:01]

He says, you may dish out various foods separately, putting them on different plates. This is soup, this is salad, this is dessert. That is the light. But when you eat, the various foods will be mixed up in your tummy. Then there is no soup, no bread, no dessert, no salad. At that time, they all work together. when the various items are on the plate, they are not yet working, so it is not yet actually food. It's potentially food, but it's not actually food yet, just like your car sitting out there in the street, and it's potentially an automobile, but it's not really an automobile until you step on the starter and drive away.

[17:04]

And Dogen talks about the boat. The person steps into the boat, takes hold of the tiller, raises the sail, and then the boat is the boat. And you and the boat are totally the boat. Without you, the boat is not a boat. And without the boat, without actualizing the boat as your vehicle, It's not yet a boat, but when it is a boat you and the boat are totally one piece. So when the various items are on the plate they are not yet working, so it is not yet actually food, it is light. That's a kind of unintended He said, it is light. He said, it's in the light side. But he said, it is light. It is. Everything is light. When it is in your tummy, it is darkness.

[18:10]

But even in darkness, there is still lettuce and soup and everything. The food is the same, but only as it changes its form does it starts to work. In utter darkness, things happen that way. This is the realm of transformation. Things are only working in transformation. It's like gasoline. Gasoline is this liquid, but as soon as it hits that spark, it becomes energy, turns into energy and loses its shape and form. and becomes very powerful energy. So, thinking about this, in the realm of birth and death, we have this life form, but all life forms turn into energy, which feed other life forms.

[19:20]

continually feeding other life forms. Life is just continuously feeding on itself. The forms of life are continually feeding on each other and creating this dynamic universe. If we try to keep or hold on to this form, we stop the energy, stop the flow. So in the realm of birth and death, how does this work? If we think that death is only annihilation, that can't be right. But because we identify with our human form, we think that everything's over. We tend to think that it's all over when this form disappears. the disappearance of this form contributes to a different kind of energy, another kind of energy, which we don't know what that is.

[20:34]

But we have to have faith that we are more than just this form. In Zen saying, the true human body is the whole universe. That just sounds like a saying, you know, oh yeah, that sounds pretty good. But it's actually true. You should experience that. So the food is the same, but only as it changes its form does it start to work. In utter darkness, things happen that way. In light you feel good, you feel as if you have a special dish in front of you, but the food is not serving its purpose yet, so it has to be destroyed before it can work.

[21:35]

When you don't know what you are doing, actually you are actually fully, I'm sorry, when you don't know what you are doing, actually you are acting fully you are not yet working. So just thinking about something is not yet transforming. One has to actualize the thought. So we dream, this is a world of dreams. And we dream up something and then we act it out. We dream and we act it out and we dream. So we live in this dream and then we act out our dreams. Until we act them out, they're only dreams. When you start to work, both the dark side and the light side are there. When you are actually practicing the Buddhist way, there is a light side and a dark side, and the relationship between light and darkness is this Ari relationship.

[22:44]

Like the relationship between skin and body, you cannot actually say which is skin and which is body, or you can't say which is the dark side and which is the light side. When there's total harmony beyond thinking, which includes thinking, but is not limited to thinking, when the thought and the activity are totally one piece, then you can't say which is the dark side and which is the light side. So this is the principle of zazen. When we sit in zazen, body and mind are harmonized. So the thought of zazen is the thought in your mind. That's why we say, not stop thinking, but go beyond thinking, so that the thought that you have, the thought in Zazen is the thought of Zazen, not the thought of washing the dishes or making a shopping list.

[24:00]

The thought in Zazen is the thought of Zazen, so that the thought and the activity are totally one. And when the thought and the activity are totally the same, the dark and the light are indistinguishable. There's no duality. Or the duality is the same as the oneness, and the oneness is the same as the duality. So then he goes on with a poem in Japanese, Anso omote o koto nakare, but don't take it as darkness. That's what that means. Nakare means do not. Mote means with, and Anso means dark side or dark outlook. The character o means to meet, implying that you treat the person you meet as a friend.

[25:04]

implying that you treat the person you meet as a friend. You meet or encounter the way clouds meet a mountain. Here is a Tassajara mountain and there are clouds, and the clouds from the ocean will meet the mountain. This kind of relationship is O. You should not meet people just with the understanding of darkness. you meet your friend with your eyes shut, ignoring how old he is or how handsome he is, ignoring all his characteristics, you will not meet your friend. That is just a one-sided understanding because in the darkness there is light. Even though the relationship between you and your friend is very intimate, still your friend is who he is and you are who you are. Usually this is the way we meet people, but I think what he's saying here is don't just rely on the intimacy of your relationship, which is oneness.

[26:14]

like a husband and a wife are supposed to be one when they get married. He says this, even though the relationship between you and your friend is very intimate, still your friend is who he is and you are you. Maybe the relationship is like husband and wife. Husband is husband and wife is wife. That is a real relationship. Don't meet your friend without the understanding of light or duality. a close relationship is dark because if your relationship is very close you are one with the other person but still you are you and your friend is who he is. So in other words I think he's saying don't take the establishment of your relationship for granted. You should make an effort to see the Often in families, people take each other for granted because they have this close, dark relationship, intimate relationship, and so they don't see the other person clearly, and someone else will come and they'll see very clearly.

[27:23]

It's said that a famous person is never famous at home. They always have to go away, and then other people recognize the abilities of that person. And then the person comes back to their home and they, oh yeah, that's right, yeah, I never recognized that about that person. This is very common. So it's hard, because you're so close, it's hard to see, actually, too close. So he's saying you should also see in the light the characteristics and appreciate the characteristics and see clearly of the other person. So when people are married, they oftentimes want too much from each other. And it's important to see the other person as who they are and give them space. whenever I do a wedding, I always say, give each other plenty of space.

[28:29]

Although you're creating this union, you should see each other as individuals and give each other the space to have their own life as well as the life with you. So that people can come to each other as individuals. otherwise we become too absorbed in each other and can't get out of this ball of dependency. And there's a poem which Suzuki Roshi used in Senmai Beginner's Mind, attributed to Tozan. The Blue Mountain, he kind of mentions that here. The blue mountain is the parent of the white clouds. The white cloud is the child of the blue mountain, or the children of the blue mountain. All day long, they depend on each other without being dependent on each other.

[29:38]

He also uses a different version of that in the same lecture to express a little different idea. The third and the fourth lines here are parallel to the first and the second. I'll tell you what that is, remind you of that. In the light there is darkness, but don't take it as darkness. Those are the first two lines. In the dark there is light, but don't see it as light. Those are the second two lines, which are parallel to the first two lines. They say the same thing, but the other way around. In the dark there is light, but don't see it as light. In darkness, even when we are in an intimate relationship, there is the duality of man and woman. This duality is the light, but you should not see others with the eyes of light only, because the other side of light is darkness. Darkness and light are like the two sides of one coin." You should not ignore the light side.

[30:55]

You should see that. But you also should not ignore the dark side. The fact that you are one with everything. That two sides of the coin. So a man is a man, but a man is not a man. A woman is a woman, but a woman is not a woman. When we practice and when we do zazen, there's not a man and there's not a woman at the same time that there is a man and a woman. But there's no emphasis on man or woman. things as they are. When we stand up and start relating, there's man and woman, man is man and woman is woman, and we relate in that way.

[32:03]

So we should not ignore either side. Sometimes we say, well, you know, we practice, we're all the same, and people get annoyed You say, but I'm a man or I'm a woman. You have to recognize that. It's true. We do. So both sides are necessary. So he says, we're liable to be caught by preconceived ideas. If you have a bad experience with somebody, you may think he's a bad person. He is always mean to me. But this may not be so. You are seeing that person with the eyes of light only. You should know why he is mean to you. Because the relationship is so close, so intimate, it is more than a relationship between two persons. It is just one. So when he is angry, you will be angry. When one is angry, the other will be angry.

[33:05]

You need to understand the other side of light, which is darkness. Then, even though you become angry, you will not feel so bad. Oh, he's so angry with me because he is so close to me. When you think he is bad, it is difficult for you to change your idea of him. It may be true that sometimes he is bad, but right now you don't know whether he is good or bad. you have to see. We should not cling to the idea of darkness or light, or good or bad. Often with parents and children, you know, the child will do something really bad and we think, oh, he's so bad. But you know, he's not bad. It's just your idea. You just have this idea. The next moment, everything's changed and, oh, you're so good. We should not cling to the idea of darkness or light. We should not cling to the idea of equality or differentiation.

[34:07]

Most people, once they have a grudge against someone, find it almost impossible to change their feeling. But if we are Buddhists, we should be able to shift our minds from good to bad, from bad to good, from good to bad. If you're able to do so, bad does not mean bad and good does not mean good Good is good and bad is bad. Do you understand? In this way, we should understand the relationship between us. There is a poem, and this is the same poem but expressed in a different way. The mother is the blue mountain and the children are the white clouds. All day long they are together, yet they do not know who is the mother and who are the children. So the mother is the blue mountain and the children are the white clouds. This is distinguished in the light, the duality side. All day long they are together, yet they do not know who is the mother and who is the children.

[35:15]

This is the non-distinguished side, the dark side of non-duality. So although they are taught continuously interacting with each other. They know the difference and yet they don't know the difference. There's no difference even though there's a difference. The mountain is the mountain and the white clouds are white clouds floating around the mountain like children. There is the blue mountain and there the white clouds. but they don't know that they are white clouds or blue mountains. Even though they don't know, they know very well, so well that they don't know. That is the experience you will have in your Zazen practice. You will hear insects in the stream. You are sitting and the stream is running and you hear it. Even though you hear it, you have no idea of stream and no idea of zazen.

[36:19]

You are just on the black cushion. You are just there like a blue mountain with white clouds. This kind of relationship is fully explained in these four lines of the Sandokai. lecture, there was a discussion. I haven't talked about the questions, but somebody asked him a question. They said, which translation are you using? And he doesn't answer the question at all. He says, we are using several. A translation cannot be perfect. It is difficult, almost impossible to translate because there are no exact equivalents. Ari here means nothing. There is means there is not. Light means dark, but light doesn't mean anything if it also means dark, right? That is why I said double-edged earlier.

[37:20]

Light, dark, which is it? What is it? He says it's like a double-edged sword. Sandokai is like a double-edged sword. Duality, the other side is oneness. Which is it, oneness or duality? So he's saying, that is why I said it double-edged earlier, light, dark, which is it? What is it? But still, there is both light and dark. There should not be any question on this point, but if you have a question, please ask me if you want to get hit. Do you have any question? Peter. In the Song of the Precious Mirror Samadhi, there's a line that says, taken by their inverted views, they take white for black.

[38:22]

How would that relate to Samadhi? Say it again. The line. The line? Led by their inverted views, they take white for black. Well, I think that means, it's a different, I think it's a different, I mean people are, it generally means there's confusion in People take suffering for enjoyment and enjoyment for suffering. They don't see the difference. They don't understand what causes their suffering.

[39:24]

And so they grab for something hot, not knowing that it will burn them. I think it's more related to that. You said that, I think you said, the dark side is something you can't be understood, and so you don't talk about it. Yeah, he said that. But then you said, and it sounded like an expression of the dark side thing, that the human body is the entire universe. That sounds like a non-dual sort of expression, and you said you should experience it. Yes. If you experience it, that sounds to me like very similar to understanding it. If you experience it and understand it. There's a koan, Mando, in the Book of Records, talking about Bodhidharma. The author says,

[40:31]

I verify Bodhidharma's knowing. I don't verify his understanding. We can know something that's far beyond our understanding. We know it, but we don't understand it. So that's why there's such a thing called investigation, endless investigation. So you know this. This is something that we know intuitively, but it's beyond our understanding. Okay, how about this? I know what you look like. That's not understanding. That's correct. So if I experience that, will I know it the way I know what you look like?

[41:43]

If you experience what? The identity of my body with the entire universe. Yeah, then you'll know who I am. Yeah, see, there's a very interesting thing in the newsletter. I published this little saying of Suzuki Roshi. He said, only when you are totally mortal will you be immortal. In other words, if you want to understand everything, you can't do it by studying the universe. You can only do it by knowing yourself just as you are. So, Dogen says, to study the Buddha Dharma is to study the self, and to study the self is to let go of it, forget it.

[42:55]

And when you forget it, then who are you? So, the way to know is to let go. The more we hang on to our form, the less we can know. So, we're all kind of afraid of dying, you know, we don't want to do that, but it's inevitable, and it's happening all the time. And to be able to open up to that is what our practice is about. So that our energy can actually start working, continue to work in a way it should be working.

[44:05]

So we don't, we say there's no birth, no death. we perceive it as birth and death and we hang on to the form. But if you don't hang on to the form, you just take the next step. Suzuki Roshi in some places always thought that non-duality in the Heart Sutra says form is emptiness and emptiness is form. But he says that non-duality is form is form. And emptiness is emptiness, yeah. And I never understood that. Yeah, that's, in other words, if you just say form is emptiness is emptiness is form, that's still dualistic, even though its intention is to be non-dualistic. So you have to say, form is form, emptiness is emptiness. This is clarified by Dogen. So that's where he's getting that understanding.

[45:09]

If you read Makahanya Haramitsu, which is Dogen's commentary on Heart Sutra, I think he mentions that, he says, form is form, emptiness is emptiness. You have to emphasize the light side as well as the dark side.

[45:29]

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