It's the x-ray machine for my tooth. Are you trying to get a piece? I can sit farther back.

[01:11]

Does it hurt? Does it feel comfortable? This morning, we're going to study the... Can you hear me? No? The microphone is only for recording. Yeah, that's true. Okay. This morning, we're going to study the Hogyo Zanmai of Tozan Ryokai Daisho. There are many translations now of the Hokyo Zamae.

[02:21]

Cleary's translation was the first one. We used that for a long time, and then it kept being modified. And now, at some point, we had a translation committee that redid the Hokyo Zamae. The version we use now, here at Tatsuhara, is somewhere in between. I don't know. It's close to clearly, but it's not quite. I don't know. Anyway, so as we study, we'll compare various translations. One of the problems is that Hokien's MI is a little bit inscrutable. And so every translator has their own idea of how to present it.

[03:24]

If you've ever done any translating, you realize that the translation is partly the original, has partly the original meaning of the translation, and partly the translator's understanding. So I don't say that this translation is right and this translation is wrong, or this translation is good and this translation is bad. Every translation has something that the other translations don't have. So it's good to compare translations. Because when you compare, you start to bring out the meaning. Because as it says in the Hokyos, the meaning is not in the words. So in this class, I would like us to kind of see if we can bring out the meaning of the words, or the meaning underneath the words.

[04:32]

because actually the meaning comes from ourselves. It doesn't come from outside. The words or the poem itself is evocative. It's not necessarily pouring information into you. So, you know, the word education means to bring forth something, not to fill your head with things. Although, filling your head with things is part of education. We tend to think of a well-educated person as someone who knows a lot. But in Zen, A well-educated person is someone who can bring forth something when needed, on each moment. Because you have studied yourself thoroughly, or you continue to study yourself thoroughly.

[05:38]

There's no end to studying ourself. So, We have a number of translations. We have Master Sheng Yen's translation in the Infinite Mirror. I think this is probably the most popular book because it's almost the only commentary that's published. Clary's latest translation, as far as I know, is published in the Five Houses of Zen. And that's an interesting translation. If you followed Clary's translations, as he's modified them over the years, you find this is very interesting, except that toward the end he kind of falls down, I think.

[06:40]

And then there's Bill Powell's translation in the record of Dongshan, or Tozan. I like to use the Japanese names because it's consistent with the way Suzuki Roshi used them and the way I was brought up in Zen Center using the Japanese, but now everything is Chinese, so it can be confusing. But I'll go back and forth. Dongshan is Chinese. This is a picture of Tozan crossing the stream and saying his reflection. in the stream. So those are good texts. There are other translations. But if you want to study the meaning of the Hokyo Zamai, you should study branching streams, flow in the dark.

[07:55]

which Michael Winger and I edited. Plug for myself. Because the Hokyo Zamai is based on the Sando Kai. The Sando Kai of Sekito. And the Sondokai is based on the Sixth Ancestor's teaching. So the Sixth Ancestor's Platform Sutra is like the foundation. And Sekito was a disciple of Seigen. And Seigen was the foremost dharma heir of the sixth ancestor, Daikon Eno. Daisho. So it's, this is, when the sutra opens, when the son, Hokyo Zenmai, the opening statement is, now you have this.

[09:13]

It's, take care of it. So it's a kind of transmission document in our school. So, Sekito, when he seems to have composed the Sandokai, it contains the elements from the main elements of the Platform Sutra and transmits them to his students, or his Dharma heirs. And then, through Yakusan, Igen, and Unguan Donjo, the teaching comes down to Tozan, Yokai. And Tozan composes the Hokyo Zamae, the Jewel Mirror, or Infinite Mirror, or however you call it, Samadhi. So it's not just out of thin air, but all these poems or teachings are connected and expanded, and they're really talking also about the same thing, but in ways that make the teaching accessible.

[10:43]

So Hokyo Zanmai, I believe, is a kind of expanded commentary on Sandokai, among other things. So, Master Sheng Yan, who lives in New York, Chinese Zen Master, who lives in New York, and also in Taiwan. He has several monasteries in Taiwan, but he has a practice place in New York City. He's a very nice gentleman, actually. And he's... So, I just want to read his introduction, a little bit of his... part of his introduction to his commentary.

[11:56]

So, he says... He calls this a precious mirror. Instead of jewel mirror, jewel, like pearl, it means something precious. It's a metaphor for something precious, among other things. Sometimes it's used literally and sometimes it's used metaphorically. But here he uses the term precious, something valuable. And so the precious mirror, he says, is not an ordinary mirror. So the analogy must be stretched. An ordinary mirror has a finite shape and size, something that you can recognize as borders. It has sides, a front, and a back.

[13:03]

And the precious mirror, however, has no boundaries. It cannot be defined in terms of shape or size. Some early Buddhist masters also used a circle as a symbol of true nature. Recorded incidences often depict disciples asking masters what the Buddha is like, of what self-nature is, or what the essence of the Buddha's teaching is. In one case, a master formed a circle with his fingers and then made a motion of throwing it away. In another case, a different master traced a circle on the ground with a stick and then erased the circle. So the circle represents something that is perfect, but is only a finite symbol.

[14:07]

For this reason, the masters dispose of the circles. One must not form attachments to teachings and confuse symbols with reality. Circles and mirrors are merely symbols of true nature. After they are used to make a point, they must be discarded." Well, in the Hokyo Zamae, we have symbols, we have circles, and the central part of the Hōkōzaimai is what we call the Five Ranks, or Five Positions, or Five Circular Forms. And I'll point that out. In the Tang Dynasty, It was very popular, a very popular way of teaching was to, was through the use of circles.

[15:10]

Thank you. That's better. Was through the use of circles. Isan Master Isan, Ryueyu, Guishan, had a system of 97 circles that he used. There was a Korean teacher, Dr. Seo, who was around in the 60s, and he was a friend of mine. He translated some of Esan's circular forms. I brought him down here one time. I asked Suzuki Roshi, is it okay if I bring him down to give a talk, and he said yes. So I brought him down to give a talk, and we had the dining room over there where the eating area is in the summer.

[16:21]

And he gave a talk standing up. And when he started to talk, we had an earthquake. No, he was saying this. He was saying, a realized master should be able to hear ants walking a mile away. And then there was an earthquake. Just an interesting anecdote. So, and then there are the ten ox-herding pictures, which are the most popular and most familiar circles, circular forms. So, and Tongzhan studied with Isan for a time. And maybe he picked up his circular forms from Issam, the influence from Issam. But here Hsing Yen is saying that we should be careful not to get too attached to the forms.

[17:30]

They're useful in helping us to orient our thinking. One of the problems of the five ranks, well, I should talk to you about the five ranks before I start talking about it. I should introduce that to you before I start talking about it, so I will. So I'll go on. The precious mirror is a symbol of the foundation of all dharmas, the source of all sentient beings, the substance of all Buddhas. many other names and terms referring to the same thing exist. At different times, I may refer to it as self-nature, pure nature, or original nature, or Buddha nature, or essence of mind, or true self, or whatever you want to say that

[18:32]

We use these terms. People say, what's the difference between self-nature and buddha-nature? There's no difference. The difference is in how, is the context in which we use them. So, in one context, you use the buddha-nature, and in another context, you use self-nature, depending on what aspect you want to bring out, or that you want to emphasize. So, in the Avatamsaka Sutra, it is called the One True Dharma Realm. In the Lotus Sutra, it is called the One True Nature. In the Nirvana Sutra, it is called the Great Nirvana, the Secret Store, or Buddha Nature. In the Shurangama Sutra, it is called the Tathagata Garbha, or the Storehouse, the Tathagatastor, the womb matrix.

[19:36]

The consciousness-only school refers to it as the alaya-vijnana, the alaya consciousness, or the great perfect mirror wisdom, which actually we will be studying when we study the five ranks. In the end, however, it is best to remember that they are only names. They point to something, but we shouldn't be attached to them as intellectually. One of the criticisms of the Soto school is that Soto school tends to be somewhat scholarly, and uses, draws on, in the past, unpopular literature for metaphors and Taoist terms and Confucian terms and metaphors.

[20:45]

And so sometimes the meaning of things becomes really obscure when you read literature from the Soto school, Zao Dong school. And you kind of have to know the background in order to get the meaning. And so sometimes in the past the literary quality of the Soto school has created a kind of obscure, esoteric literature, and that's always been criticized. And one of the problems with the five ranks within this poem is that it has led to a lot of obscure kind of confusion as to the meaning.

[21:57]

So Dogen himself, you know, didn't, he was not attracted to the five ranks. But Hakuen Zenji, in the 17th century, thought that this was the cat's meadow, the five ranks. And Hakuen, you know, was a no-nonsense person. And Hakon was the teacher who revived the Rinzai school in Japan in the 17th century through the use of koan study, mostly. But he incorporated the five ranks as the end of koan study in his system.

[23:06]

So it's interesting, but Dogen also, although Dogen put down the five ranks, Dogen incorporated the five ranks in different ways into his teaching, and he expressed it in his own way. So it's very interesting. So when we study the Hokyo Zanmai, some people say, well, you know, the Hokyo Zanmai is a kind of interesting poem, but it doesn't really grab you, you know, as Zen, the way other things would. It's kind of prosaic. Some commentators would say, well, it's just for beginners, you know, just something for beginners, the five ranks anyway.

[24:12]

But these are people who look for the meaning outside. if you allow the teaching to stimulate your education, you will find the deep meaning within both the Hokyo Zanmai and the Five Ranks. So, then he says, from what we know of the meaning of precious mirror, it would seem that the Song of the Precious Mirror would suffice as a title. Yet Dongshan calls his poem the Song of the Precious Mirror Samadhi. Samadhi, like Precious Mirror, has special meaning in the context of Dongshan's title.

[25:17]

Samadhi refers to the power of the Precious Mirror which manifests only when one attains the most profound level of Samadhi. At this stage, all attachments fall away. The power that manifests is twofold. It benefits oneself by removing vexations, and it benefits others by helping them find their own precious mirror. This is the power, the samadhi, or the precious mirror. So samadhi, we talk about samadhi power. That's a kind of phrase. But what is samadhi? So as we study this, the meaning of the term samadhi will come out. Samadhi literally means a kind of concentration. But the way it's applied, the root is concentration. But immersion or connection or

[26:23]

one-pointedness or the continually renewed presence or perception of each moment as it arises. dual concentration with our fundamental nature. In non-duality we find samadhi. But Samadhi, clearly he didn't like to use the word Samadhi in his first title. He used the word awareness. He said because it sounds exotic.

[27:29]

Just like Nirvana sounds exotic, it sounds like some great thing, you know? And Samadhi sounds like some far-out state of mind. But Buddha calls it the norm. It's just that we have trouble finding the norm. What is the norm? This is what Buddha continually says. All I did was find a norm. Not something special. Suzuki Roshi's classic mantra was nothing special. Nothing special. People want something special. You know, we read the literature of Zen, and we get all those examples of explosive Kensho, you know, and lightning-like this and that.

[28:39]

It's great, you know, exciting, exciting literature. Gets you all riled up, you know, which is good. But we say, Master Isan said, Gaining enlightenment is like walking in a fog. After a while you reach down and you see that your clothes are wet, unaware. But Kensho, you know, can be like a flash of lightning. It can also be like a gentle brook. It can be like leaves fluttering in the wind. Or it can be like a landslide. There is no special way that it is. When we come to, we say, our practice begins with enlightenment.

[29:49]

Our practice actually begins with Kensho. Do you remember that? No. You don't remember your kinship because you thought it was something else. You thought that you were eating plain food when you were actually eating candy, but you didn't know it. As soon as we come to, you know, it's interesting, when we hear all of the we-seeking mind talks, and somebody's, you know, been smoking dope, and they've been, you know, carousing, and they can't get their life together, and then they come to sit Zazen, what's this? Then they're hooked on Zazen. Suddenly, they realize, even if they can't do it, that there's something here.

[31:01]

That's their Kensho. The reason that we're all here is because we've all had Kensho. The moment we sat down on the cushion. Or maybe the next time we sat down on the cushion. And then, gradual practice. After that, it's not the only opening you have, but that's an opening. We've all had that opening, otherwise we wouldn't be here. We may not know what it is. We may don't recognize it necessarily. We may recognize it. We may understand it. That's why we say practice. and realization, practice and enlightenment go together. Enlightenment supports our practice, and practice stimulates enlightenment. So, let's look at this thing.

[32:13]

I talked about Shen Yen's Infinite Mirror, and Clare's Five Houses of Zen, and Powell's Record of Dongsha. I didn't talk about Chan and Zen teaching, second series by Charles Luck. And Charles Luck, who died some years ago, was one of the early translators of Zen into English. His second series, he explains, he translates the Hokyo Zen-mai, and lays out the diagram of the five ranks within it. And I will give you a handout of that. One of the problems I've had is putting a study book together, because a lot of material

[33:51]

and deciding what to put in it and what not to put in, and the fact that we can't copy anything here, and everything has to go out to be copied en masse. So, I will have something for us next time, I hope, too. Is it second series? Second series, yeah. Well, it's called Chan and Zen Teaching. There are three books, one, two, and three, and that's the middle one, where he talks about the five schools of Zen. Okay, so I have my... I did this class in 1992, 1999, and I had my notes on Cleary's original translation. So you have to kind of... It's not that different, but... I'll try to bring out... Oh yeah, here's our translation.

[34:54]

Okay. So there are many, as I said, ways to describe this jeweled mirror, bright mirror, infinite mirror, precious mirror, boundless mirror. And I think Shen Yen did that pretty well, described what it could be. Gil Fransdal and I did a translation some years ago, which I like a lot, and we called it the Bright Mirror Samadhi, Song of the Bright Mirror Samadhi. So in Cleary's teaching, translation, he says, the teaching of vastness, which is what we have here, the teaching of vastness has been intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors.

[36:11]

I changed that to ancestors instead of patriarchs. We always like to do that. Has been intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it, so keep it well. That's pretty close to what we have here. The teaching of thusness. We also see the dharma of thusness. That's another, that's more literal. Some translators like to translate everything into English. They don't like to, as much as possible, they like to use the English translation. I like to use the Sanskrit words as much as possible. Instead of dumbing us down, I would rather that we learn the terms and the terms become part of our language.

[37:22]

Dharma is actually part of English language. becoming a part of English language, even though a lot of people don't know what it means. I remember being on Telegraph Avenue one time, and there was an advertisement for something dharma. And this girl said to her friend, what does dharma mean? What is dharma? Little by little, people learn what it means. So we translated it as the dharma of just this. which we're trying to get as close as possible to the meaning of that term. Vestness, or I like to use the term it. It is a word that applies to anything, but has no meaning of its own. There is no it. But I like to use it as a noun for it.

[38:29]

In the poem of the Five Ranks, it says, the name of the emperor is taboo, meaning you can't really You were never supposed to use the term in China, the name of the emperor. No one could ever pronounce or could ever say the name of the emperor because it was too sacred, you know, for the common people to say. It's very Jewish, actually. You're not supposed to say the name of the deity. It's secret. But here we're talking about something that's close to the jewel mirror, that thing which cannot be expressed in words. So it says it cannot be expressed in words, and if you try to express it in words, the more you try, you think you got it, but you don't have it.

[39:40]

So the dharma of, You know? So I like the word it because I can point to anything and say, you know, this is it and that's it and everything has a name but at the same time everything is it. So this is like, you know, re and g. in Japanese. Ri is the essence, and Ji is the phenomenal. If you read the Sando Kai lectures of Suzuki Roshi, he explains all this very well. Ri is the ultimate, the Buddha nature, and Ji is the expression. Essence and function.

[40:48]

That's very Chinese. Essence and function. Like the essence is that which is still and which is like Vairochana, you know, the source of light. That's ri. And ji is the phenomenal. And so re and g are really the same thing. And this is what, even though they're different, they're the same thing. So the differences, the sameness is difference and the difference is sameness, which is what this poem is bringing out. Cleary in his last translation, translates it as the teaching or the dharma of as it is. That's good. The dharma of as it is, I like.

[41:51]

It reflects Suzuki Roshi's saying of things as it is. When you talk about the essence of There was this phrase which expresses both the essence and the function in the same sentence. But when we hear that, it sounds like, well, wait a minute, it's not proper English. Things as it is. Things is plural and it is singular, right? So it's not good English, but it's good dharma. things as it is. The dharma of things as it is is many and the one, as a koan. That's his koan, I believe his basic koan, things as it is.

[42:57]

It's kind of like in Dogen's Think Not Thinking. So we translated it as the Dharma of just this. Just this, I like that a lot, has been intimately entrusted from Buddhas and ancestors. Communicate, here it says communicated, but communicated sounds like one person's telling another something, right? Dharma transmission is not somebody telling somebody something else. It's recognizing someone's ability or someone's understanding. So entrustment, I feel, is a better term. Well, in our school we have what we call Dharma Transmission.

[44:09]

And in the Dharma Transmission, Dharma Transmission happens. Dharma Transmission is not a ceremony. But there is a ceremony called Dharma Transmission. Dharma Transmission is when the teacher and the student have the same understanding, and the teacher recognizes the student's understanding, and the student recognizes the teacher's understanding, and they are in accord. And then, if it's appropriate, at some point the teacher will give the student the ceremony of Dharma transmission, which recognizes publicly, both privately and publicly, that person's understanding and authorizes the person to teach or to be independent. So a lot of people, I think there were a lot of people who had Suzuki Roshi's dharma transmission in actuality, but he only had time to have a ceremony with one person.

[45:27]

of Dharma transmission. So this Hokyo Zanmai opens with the statement of Dharma transmission. And it's recognizing and trusting Tozan's Sozon and Ungo, Ungo Doyo, in the lineage we don't chant Sozon's name, we chant the name Ungo Doyo. Ungo Doyo was the deshi of Tozon who kept, who continued the line, continued the school. Whereas Sozan, his line died out right away, but Sozan was maybe too, you know, it's interesting, some students will,

[46:58]

go one way and some students will go another way. Probably Ungo was a very practical kind of person, and knew how to teach other people, and knew how to organize, and a good student. Whereas Sozon was very bright, very brilliant, and he continued to elucidate or obscure, however you want to see it, Tozan's teachings of the five ranks. So he's actually quite famous. But I don't think he was the kind of person who could continue the school. He was not concerned with that, he was concerned with other things. So, different personality. But we think of Tozan and Sozan, the names To and So as being the name of the school, except that the characters are reversed because it's easier to say Soto than Toso.

[48:12]

Sounds better. Or in Asian language, the sound has a lot to do with the way you put the words together. characters. So Soto in Japanese sounds better than Toso, Cao Dong, Dong Cao, would probably sound funny in Chinese. So they put the name of the disciple before them. But the other, there's also speculation that there was, Cao is also, comes from the sixth ancestor, one of his names, Soke, the name of his monastery. So anyway, Sozan is far more famous than Ungo Doyo, but Ungo Doyo is the one in the lineage that we chant.

[49:21]

So he says, the Dharma of just this, or as it is, has been intimately entrusted from Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have that. Now that you have it, take good care of it. Keep it well. This is exactly what we say in our Dharma Transmission Ceremony. Not exactly like that, but you have it, please take care of it. Don't let it get lost. So, Dan, he says, filling a silver bowl with snow. Let's see, here's what he says. Filling a silver bowl with snow, hiding a heron in the moonlight. Taken as similar, they're not the same. When you mix them, you know where they are. Their uniqueness is known.

[50:28]

I remember when Suzuki Roshi did the first lay ordination in Zen Center, 1970 actually, He gave a little talk, which I have, I didn't bring it with me, but he says, you should be like a white bird in the snow. You should be like a white bird in the snow, meaning not to be conspicuous, not to stand out in some way, but to fulfill your place where you are, to fulfill your function completely where you are without standing out in some way or without ego. He said, to be ordained means to help people. We don't do it for your own satisfaction or to make you some special person or to make you stand out in some way

[51:36]

as someone who has a raksu, or a Buddhist robe. But he said, I'm doing this just to encourage everyone to practice, and that your ordination will encourage other people. So you shouldn't try to stand out in some way as an accomplished person. And at the end of the Hokyosamae, you know, it says, just practice like an idiot, right? Just don't try to be something special. Just completely do the work. Just totally immerse yourself in the practice like an idiot. We say in, I remember, Katagiri Roshi used to say, You know, in order to be a Zen priest, you have to be a little bit stupid.

[52:43]

In order to be a good practitioner, you should be a little bit stupid. Not too bright. No showing off. So, snow in a silver bowl. Snow, but this has various meanings. You can draw various meanings from what he's saying here. There's the intellectual meaning, or the meaning of, which is, you know, showing the structure of things, and then there's the meaning for yourself. The silver bowl is like something that's used over and over again. The snow is ephemeral. The snow, you know, comes and goes. It's like clouds, right? But the bowl is used over and over again. So the bowl is like your true nature.

[53:49]

And the snow is your activity. So I like to think of the bowl as essence. Essence of mind. The sixth ancestor always talks about essence of mind. You should never stray from your essence of mind. In all of your activity, never stray from your essence of mind. So essence of mind like the bowl and snow is like your activity, your ephemeral moment to moment activity. And so the bowl contains the snow. The bowl of essence of mind is the container for all of our activity. Suzuki Roshi says, you should always do all of your activity within big mind. Big mind includes everything. Your big mind should include everything.

[54:53]

Small mind, is we tend to think of small mind and big mind, bowl and snow, or moonlight and harem. Moonlight is the same thing. The moon is usually a symbol of enlightenment, and enlightenment means big mind. And the heron is white. So this is just two metaphors for the same thing. The moon is always the moon, but the heron just flies through it, flies back and forth. So in all of our activity, the background is big mind. and the foreground is our activity. So we never stray from our big mind. Small mind is not bad.

[55:58]

Small mind is an expression of big mind. Big mind expresses itself through small mind. So our small mind is very valuable. We say, get rid of ego. You can't get rid of ego. You can't cut off ego. Even though the book will say, cut it off at the root and never let it grow again, blah, blah, blah. But you can't do that. You can't cut off ego. Ego is an expression of the jewel mirror. Ego is an expression of our big mind, of big mind, which is beyond ego. We have to have a sense of self. There's ego and there's self. We're two people, ego and self.

[57:01]

Self is Buddha. Ego is what's added on. Ego is our acquired persona. And self is our big mind or is our natural persona. So when ego and persona, ego and person or myself, my ordinary self and Buddha work together, that's called integration. It's only when ego is trying to find its own satisfaction and strays from essence of mind that we talk of ego. But ego is always there. Self is always there. We have to have a self, otherwise we can't eat, we can't walk, we can't think, we can't do anything.

[58:04]

So desire is important. In Buddhism they say, Get rid of desire. You can't get rid of desire. Desire is the energy that turns things. So we take desire and channel it. And when we channel it, in practice, it's called way-seeking mind. We give our way-seeking mind talk. When you listen to our way-seeking mind talk, everyone is totally beautiful. because we tell the story of how we've taken desire and channel it into big mind, or channel it into way-seeking mind, even though we have trouble doing that. We all have trouble taking our desire and channeling it into a way-seeking mind.

[59:05]

But the more trouble we have, the more benefit we have when we can do that. Because big ego, big desire is big Buddha. That's why we love troublemakers. Suzuki Roshi used to say, you should be a little bit mischievous. A good student is usually a little bit mischievous because a good student has big desire and it's hard to control, really hard to control all that desire. But when you channel it and make that effort, that's practice, that's enlightenment.

[60:13]

That's practice enlightenment. You take your big desire and turn it toward way-seeking mind. And then it's not called desire anymore. It's called way-seeking mind. So desire gets absorbed into the path. And so you have full control of it. and you let it go. So it's not inhibiting desire, it's using it, rather than letting it use you, even though from time to time it gets out of hand. So we have something called forgiveness. So, snow contained in a silver bowl, a heron concealed in the moonlight.

[61:20]

They are similar, but not the same. Because big mind and small mind, when you array them, we say, well, this is just small mind, and that's big mind. But when you put them together, you can't tell the difference. They're really one thing. They're one and two. Somebody asked me a question about one and two. Not one, not two. That's a very famous statement, right? In Buddhism, in Zen, it's a very famous statement. Not one, not two. That's what this means. It's not one, and it's not two. And it's one, and it's two. Not one, not two means both one and two. But if you say it's one, that's not right because it's also two.

[62:22]

If you say it's two, that's not right because it's one. So this is one of those things that you don't monkey with. You just let it be, you know? We want to figure things out. We want everything to land in our explanation box. But it's good to just leave certain things unexplained because you know it, you know what it means. As soon as you hear it, you know what it means. Or if you don't know what it means, just let it be there and it'll reveal its meaning. But if you try to explain it, you say, oh, I know what that is. And then you lose it. So the kitchen has to go and do something, right? Okay. And when am I supposed to stop? 10.30. 10.30. Okay. So then it goes on to say,

[63:26]

Its meaning does not abide in the words. The meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse. If you're excited, it becomes a pitfall. And if you miss it, you fall into retrospective hesitation. The Hokyo Zama is composed in couplets. And apparently, it was composed in a kind of folk style of poetry. And the end of one couplet would lead into the next couplet. So if you do this in Chinese, probably the flow of one couplet into the next enhances the meaning. but translating it into English becomes very clumsy.

[64:42]

In our translation, we said, its meaning does not abide in the words, yet it meets the inquiring student. Hasty action creates a pitfall. To miss is to linger in consideration. You know, there are two ways of translating things. One is the impersonal way, and the other is the personal way. If you translate something impersonally, you know, it looks like out there was in some way, you know, the misunderstanding. But if you translate it personally, it's like, it's more like it meets you, you know, it's about you. It's not about some, it's not about some doctrine. It's about you. So we put it into a more personal context. So its meaning does not abide in the words, yet it meets the inquiring student, which is you.

[65:48]

And hasty action creates a pitfall. When you're excited, it becomes a pitfall. It's okay, but something about hasty action, you know, wanting something too much. I think this applies to wanting enlightenment. The thought of enlightenment or the desire for enlightenment is good, very good. I mean, that's what, you know, there's a goal called enlightenment, but When we seek, when we practice to seek enlightenment, it becomes egotistical because we want something. And when we really want something, then the means becomes different than the goal. We don't think about the means.

[66:53]

Well, okay, in order to get enlightenment, I have to practice. So, okay, I'll practice until I get enlightenment. And then we just think practice is just a means to enlightenment. In five years, I'll do this for five years, and then, you know, if I don't get enlightened, I don't know what I'll do, but. I've been doing this for 10 years, and I haven't gotten enlightened yet. I hear people say that. I've been doing this for 20 years and I haven't gotten enlightened yet. The reason they haven't gotten enlightened is because they don't realize that the practice itself is the enlightenment. They're looking for something out there that's called enlightenment. And you can't find that because there's nothing that exists out there that's called enlightenment. Enlightenment is where you are doing what you're doing right now. It's not out there someplace. There's not an end product called enlightenment.

[67:54]

There's Kensho opening up, the curtain opens, and you get a glimpse of something, and then the curtain closes again. You say, well, wait a minute. You get your nose caught in the curtain. But those are glimpses of something, you know, reality. But you're already in reality. Reality is always there. And so this is one of the things that, one of the ways that this document is talking about, that the jewel mirror, which is enlightenment, another term for enlightenment, is always there. It's always there. The only thing that obscures it is the clouds, the cloudy way of perception, cloudy way of thinking.

[68:59]

There's a term called the hazy moon of enlightenment. The moon, of course, is enlightenment. It stands for enlightenment. But the clouds are always going, drifting by, you know. And so it's a hazy moon. We kind of see it, you know, but... And then every once in a while, phew, you know, the clouds part and then you see the moon, you know, and say, ah, I got it. And then the clouds come back again. It's like that. So we should be having Kensho experiences all the time. And you do. But the problem is, when we have these Kensho experiences, we think that it's supposed to be something dramatic. So you don't realize necessarily that wonderful feeling or insight that you had when you were in the kitchen cutting tomatoes. was a wonderful opening experience, but it was subtle.

[70:09]

So our enlightenment experiences mostly are very subtle, and we don't even recognize them necessarily. It's like little earthquakes going on all the time. You know, we don't know they're going on, but they're going on all the time. So The place to get to in our practice is here. The hardest place to be is here, right now, where you are. Because in a moment, you're going to move. Matter of fact, you're moving right now, even though you're sitting still. We're sitting still, but everything is moving. The hardest place to be is right here, right now. And of course, that's in Zazen, you know.

[71:10]

The trick is, how do you sit still within all that movement called Zazen? Zazen is great dynamic movement called sitting still. How do you be there? Just be there with whatever's happening. That's called integration of the real and the seeming or of the essence and function. That's why we sit Zazen. So this is a document about Zazen, but it's also a document about our daily life, which is called Zazen. So, its meaning does not abide in the words, yet it meets the inquiring student. In other words, we can talk as much as we, you know, we talk, we make a mistake, Suzuki Roshi said, we make a mistake on purpose.

[72:24]

The teacher makes a mistake on purpose because the teacher gives talks. But we know that, even though it's not in the talk, it's not in the words, the words are important. Because the words help you. But we shouldn't be attached to the words. At the end of every lecture, he would say, there's no need to remember what I said. No need to remember what I said, just be there. And we think we're sitting there listening to a lecture, but actually what we're doing is just being there. So hasty action creates a pitfall. So looking for something. And then he said, to miss is to linger in consideration. So these are, you have to do something.

[73:36]

If you don't do something, if you do too much, that's a pitfall. If you don't do anything, then you just fall into depression or whatever. You have to do something, but you have to do something in the right way. So, how do you find the balance between using all your energy and relaxing? This is what we should be thinking about all the time as practice. We think about it in zazen and in our daily life. It's called equanimity or balance of energy, conservation of energy.

[74:40]

Conservation of energy. How you use just the right amount of effort to do the most amount of work. When we sit Zazen, it's called great dynamic activity. And you're using all of your effort to sit up straight and keep your posture. And at the same time, there's no tenseness present. Totally loose and relaxed at the same time that you're using all this effort Total effort. Total effort and total ease at the same time. So there's no imbalance of effort. That's the secret of Zazen. Yes?

[75:43]

Dr. Jiro Watano, the founder of Jiro, said to use a minimum amount of energy for the maximum amount of efficiency. Yeah. Exactly. So in our work, it's the same thing. When you're walking, standing, lying down, working in the kitchen. So Zazen, Ginjo Koan means your activity as it is extended from Zazen. How you, it's not like you lose something that you did in zazen. It's that the same attitude, the same effort that is in zazen is what you express in all of your activity. That's practice realization. As you proceed from the zendo, you maintain the same attitude

[76:50]

and effort in everything else that you do. So, its meaning does not abide in the words, yet it meets the inquiring student. Hasty action creates a pitfall, and to miss is to linger in consideration. That's my understanding. Other people will have a different understanding, but My understanding is oriented toward practice. Say it again. On the last part, the very last sentence, I said, my orientation is toward practice, whereas someone else's commentary may be oriented in some other way. So I think this is a good time to stop.

[77:55]

Yes. I also wanted to say, which I didn't, that any time during the class, you can ask questions. But you should pick a time that's appropriate. Don't interrupt me in the middle of a sentence or something like that. Yeah, you can ask questions anytime, because I don't want to be a monologue, although I enjoy that. Let's see. Although the meaning is not in the words, there are a lot of books here. I have to say, the meaning is in the words.

[79:01]

If you understand that the meaning is not in the words, then you will understand the meaning is in the words. And I didn't get a chance to use the blackboard. I'm sorry that you set it up for me and all that, and I didn't use it. I just want to say three things before we stop. The sutra, or the poem, has got three major sections. One is the first section, down to where it starts talking about the hexagram. Qinglu hexagram. And then that's just a little section, and then there's the rest of the poem. But this part in the middle is the meat, is where all the study is, because that's where, that's talking about the five ranks, the five positions.

[80:08]

So that's why I have the blackboard, but I didn't get around to that. I wanted to just show those three sections, give you a little more orientation. But there are some, I think most people kind of know about this already, right? So there are some people who know a lot about this, and some people who don't know anything. So I'm talking to people who don't know anything. And people that do know something, Um, okay. No doubt. So, okay.

[80:54]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ