So, during this Sashin, I'm going to comment on Sekito Kisen's Sandokai, which we chant periodically. But before I do that today, I want to talk a little bit about, I just want to present you with some understanding of what in Buddhadharma we mean by emptiness. So it came up in my class the other night about how one describes emptiness, how you describe something that doesn't exist. special characteristic features that can be described.

[01:24]

So, nevertheless, in the Prajnaparamita there are twenty or eighteen ways to understand emptiness. So, this wonderful teacher One of the early teachers in America, I think in the 50s, Sokeon Sasaki, presented these to us and has a commentary on each one. I'm only going to name the 18 shunyata. Shunyata is what we say emptiness, but it's shunyata. So emptiness is just how we can kind of think about shunyata. So he says, the 18 shunyatas is a stiff lecture.

[02:27]

I have been teaching for six years in New York, that's 1936, and this is the first time I'm speaking about them. These emptinesses are explained by Shakyamuni Buddha in the Maha Prajnaparamita Sutra, that is the large sutra, Prajnaparamita, As many, many. There's one in 25,000 lines and so forth. Heart Sutra is just a short version. So in this sutra the Buddha said to his disciple Shariputra, Oh Shariputra, if you wish to stay within the 18 shunyatas, practice prajnaparamita. to a practiced Prasanthi Paramita for eight years, and now we have 600 volumes of what happened. I hope you will understand this lecture. It is really only for an audience that is expert in Buddhism.

[03:33]

The 18 shunyatas are as follows. Inside is empty. Outside is empty. Inside and outside are empty. Undoing phenomena is empty. Your own nature is empty. All existence is empty. One's own appearance is empty. The ungraspable is empty. Nonexistence is empty. Existence is empty. Nonexisting existence is empty. So those are the 18 shunyatas. And we could study those sometime, but not now. Not until you are all expert. Suzuki Roshi, of course, in 1970, as most of you know, because we have this book, The French Extreme Flow in the Darkness.

[04:52]

which Michael Wenger and I edited some years ago. I was Suzuki Roshi's chi-chef during the twelve lectures that he gave in 1970 at Tassajara on Saki-dose and Sando-kai. So we only have seven days and there are twelve chapters 12 talks. So I'm going to have to limit myself to what I talk about and maybe refer to two talks at each time. But I hope to give us some understanding, help us to understand I think it probably would be good if we chanted it every day instead of something else.

[05:59]

So we'll figure that out. So I'm not going to read everything that Suzuki Roshi says. That would take too long. And besides, I have to give my own interpretation. according to the couplets. Basically, this Nathurkaya is in couplets, like the mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted from west to east. That's one couplet. The next couplet would be, while human faculties are sharp or dull, there is no So the first talk is about the mind of the great sage of India being intimately transmitted from west to east.

[07:14]

So we know that the mind of the great sage of India, of course, is Shakyamuni Buddha. And intimately transmitted from west to east means from high India to China, but Sekito, of course, was Chinese. Sekito was also originally a disciple of the sixth ancestor, Daikan Ino, who inspired the Platform Sutra. So you must be familiar with it, right? Most of you. Who's familiar with it?

[08:16]

Hmm, not so many. Anyway. So, why did Sekito write this Sandokai? young when the sixth ancestor died. So, he became a student of Seigen Gyoshi Daisho. Remember? Seigen Gyoshi Daisho. Sekitoki Sen Daisho. So, Sekitoki became Seigen's student as a young man. And Seigen and Nangaku were the sixth ancestor's two main disciples.

[09:20]

The Seigen line ends in the Soto school and the Nangaku line ends in the Rinzai school. So those are the two main lines from the sixth ancestor. We don't mention Nangaku in our lineage, except in our Ketsumiyaku it's there, because Dogen included both Rinzai and Soto in his Ketsumiyaku, his blood lineage, which you received when you got your Rakshasa. So, there are several themes that run through the Sandokai. One is, Sekito seems to have written the Sandokai in order to express his understanding of the non-dual relationship between

[10:35]

Daikan Edo and Jinju, who was considered to be the receptionist of the Fifth Ancestor's Dharma. If you know that story, you understand what I'm saying. If you don't know the story, I can't explain it too much because So he says, I'm very grateful for this opportunity to talk about the Sandhokai, one of our most important teachings. Its mode of expression is so smooth that you may not feel its deep meaning when you read it. Sometimes it's been criticized as kind of not so poetic. who was considered the seventh ancestor.

[11:55]

Among the sixth ancestor's many disciples, the most prominent were Seigen Yoshi and Nangaku Eijo. Later, Master Tozan, remember Tozan? Tozan Ryokai continued Seigen's lineage as the Soto school, and Master Rinzai continued So, then he says, Soto Zen sometimes is called medmittsu no kafu, a very careful and considerate style. Sagan's way is to find everything within himself. It is so to realize the great mind that includes everything and to practice accordingly. So, when he says, Sagan's way is to find everything within himself and to realize the great mind that includes everything and to practice accordingly, this is what Suzuki Roshi called big mind, and what Daikan Eno calls essence of mind, what Dongen calls shikantaza, and

[13:25]

So, one of the reasons for creating this poem was to resolve, to bring the reality of the argument that was created in who was the true, about who was the true ancestor from the fifth patriarch. And the other reason is to present his understanding of the oneness of big mind and small mind or essence and function or the one and the many. So, the Sandokai, Suzuki Roshi talks about the Sandokai.

[14:36]

He says, let us look at the title of the Sandokai. San literally means three, but here it means things. Ichi, ni, san. San means three, but it actually means multiplicity here. Many things. If you have one, That's not multiplicity. If you have two, that's the beginning, but it's still in the middle. When you have three, that's true multiplicity. And you can keep going on from there. So San literally means three, but here it means things. And Do means sameness. But to identify one thing with another refers to oneness or one's whole being, which here means big mind, great mind. So Dao is great mind, one big thing which includes everything.

[15:41]

It includes three, it includes some, Dao includes some. So our understanding is there is one whole being that includes everything, and that the many things are found in the one whole being. So, although we say many things, they are actually the many parts of one whole being that includes everything. If you say many, it is many, and if you say one, it is one. Many and one are the different ways of describing one whole being. being is Kai. Kai means to shake hands. Hi, I'm Kai. You have a feeling of friendship. You feel that the two of you are one. In the same way, this one great whole being and the many things are good friends.

[16:44]

This is the meaning of the poem's title. What is many and what is one? And what is the oneness of one and many? So that's the essential meaning of Samdokai. That's the title. Samdokai. The oneness. It was almost impossible to translate the title. I think that we But what is the best? Nobody knows. Because every time you try to translate the title, it's not quite right, not perfect to convey the meaning.

[18:01]

So if we go back to the mind of the great sage of India, we're talking about essence Essence of mind. When we talk about Buddha and Dharma, in that sense, Buddha means essence. It means the fundamental. And Dharma means that which is expressed. In other words, Buddha is non-duality. Dharma is about duality. Dharma is dualistic. But Buddha-Dharma is non-dualistic. So, our essential being includes everything and is one.

[19:10]

But the way it multiplicity. So the one thing expresses itself as multiplicity and multiplicity are the children of the one thing. The expressions of the one thing. You running around is an expression of emptiness. Whatever you do is an expression of the essential. As an individual activity compared to other individual activities. So, Sando Kai talks about form and emptiness in terms of dark and light, big mind and small mind, and it further is amplified by Tojo and Ryokai in the Hokkyo Zamai. So, Nitta Rinpoche says that originally Sando Kai was the title of a Taoist

[20:16]

When a Buddhist eats a vegetable, it is Buddhist food. And when a vegetarian eats it, it is a vegetarian food. Still, it's just food. And then he talks about how a Buddhist eats, which I don't want to go into, but it's very interesting. He said, we just eat what's offered. We don't eat according to calories or, you know, health and things like that. We just need it. That's non-discriminating mind. That's great and wonderful, but still there should be room for discriminating mind. So I don't buy that totally. because he actually encouraged us to eat brown rice and healthy food.

[21:47]

Not a big variety, but we should eat healthy food. Like in the monastery, you know, it's not healthy food. But ideally, that's great. But practically, it's not so good. So in an idealistic sense, we should follow that. But in a practical sense, we should be careful about what we eat. Because when we get sick, someone else has to take care of us. So that's not so good. So we should be healthy enough to take care of ourselves and not make people dependent on us. Anyway. We don't choose it because it is yin or yang, acid or alkahine, and simply to eat food is our practice.

[23:16]

We don't eat just to support ourselves. As we say in our meal chant, to practice our way we eat this food. This is how big mind is included in our practice. To think this is just a vegetable is not our understanding. We must treat things as part of ourselves, within our practice and within big mind. Small mind is the mind that is under the limitation of desires, or some particular emotional covering, or the discrimination of good and bad. So for the most part, even though we are observing things as it is, actually we are not. Because of our habitual way of doing things, our habitual way of naming and identifying and so forth, we tend to not be able to see beneath the cover of our imagination and our conditioned way of thinking that we know what something is.

[24:42]

and we have an idea about each other, we don't really know each other at all. And even though we think we know what things are, we don't really know what things are at all. We know something, but mostly our perceptions are covered by thought coverings. We don't know anything. We don't know what anything is. We just sit and let everything fall away so that clarity in seeing, hearing, tasting, touching is free of thought companies. And then we can be at ease. That's why he said, don't think and stop your thinking.

[25:57]

It doesn't mean not to think, but it simply means let go of the conditioned way that we observe things, which covers their true nature. So that's when he says, to see things as it is. We don't see things as it is. We think we do, but we don't. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. But mostly we see things according to our ideas and our conditioning, which is natural and normal. But it's not necessarily truthful or real. So when I say things as it is, what I mean is to practice If you have a computer, you must enter all the data.

[27:00]

This much desire, this much nourishment, this kind of color, this much weight. We must include our desires as one of the many factors in order to see things as it is. We don't always reflect on our desires. Without stopping to reflect on our selfish judgment, we say, oh, he is good, or she is bad. But someone who is bad to me is not necessarily always bad, and to someone else, he may be our own prejudiced, partial point of view. The poem begins, Chikudo Daisen Doshin, which means the mind of the great sage of India. That is Buddha's big mind that includes everything. The mind we have when we practice Azen is that great mind. We don't try to see anything We stop emotional activity and we just sit.

[28:06]

When he says stop, it doesn't mean stop. It means we don't buy into it. You can't stop emotional activity. You can't stop thinking. But he means, as we know, just let our discriminating mind stop working. We just sit. It's like something happening. Our feelings and thoughts are just like something happening in the vast sky. Whatever kind of bird flies through it, the sky doesn't care. That is the mind transmitted from Buddha to us. Many things happen as you sit. You may hear the sound of a scream. You may think of something, but your mind doesn't care. to them.

[29:20]

We have full appreciation of them at this time. That's all. After zazen we say, good morning. And that way, one after another things will happen to us and we can fully appreciate them. That is the mind transmitted from Buddha and that is the way we practice zazen. So we have no expectation. The mind is just totally open without expectation. So whatever appears is totally new and has no connotations to it. You say, oh, I know who so-and-so is because we experience so-and-so in a certain way and then we make a judgment. But the mind is open and even though we made a judgment yesterday, we don't carry that this person.

[30:22]

And then, you see, when I was preparing this lecture, Someone asked me, what is self-respect? How can we obtain it? Self-respect is not something that you feel you have. When you feel, I have self-respect, that is not self-respect anymore. When you are just you, without thinking or trying to say something special, just saying what's on your mind and how you feel, then there is naturally self-respect. When I am closely related to all of you and to everything, then I am a part of one big whole being. When I feel I have done something, I am almost part of it, but not quite. When you do something without any feeling of having done something, then that is you, yourself. You are completely with everything, everyone, and you don't feel self-conscious.

[31:45]

That's self-respect. When you feel that you are somebody, you have to practice sansen harder. As you know, it is difficult to sit without thinking or feeling. When you don't think or feel, you usually fall asleep. But without sleeping and without thinking, just to be yourself is our practice. When you can do that, you will be able to speak without thinking too much and without having any special purpose. So, there's one little story here. The other day, some of the students said, the other day when I was beating the mokugyo, in Tasa Haraway we had a huge mokugyo. It was like, as big as this ton sitting on about this high, and you'd turn it with two hands. And the other day when I was beating the Mokugyo, a small spider crawled across the top of it.

[32:51]

There was nothing I could do to avoid the spider. I veered off a little to one side to avoid him, but he went right into the structure. It was too powerful for him to escape. And Suzuki Roshi says, you didn't kill him. And the student said, something did. But she said, yeah, but I couldn't stop. And she said, yeah, you know, it can't be helped. Buddha killed him. He made me very happy. Anyway, to live in the world is not easy. You may have to kill somebody, kill something, not somebody. without killing anything.

[34:02]

We can't live depending just on our feelings. Our practice must be deeper than that. That is the strict side of our practice. On the other hand, if it is absolutely necessary, you should stop hitting the Bakugyo, even though it throws everything into confusion. Not so easy. So, that's a good statement. So in the next chapter, 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 ancestor So this is the first time he talks about the northern or southern ancestor.

[35:15]

So Suzuki Roshi is going to explain. In my first talk, I explained the meaning of the title, Sandokai, and the first line, the mind of the great sage of India. I would like to tell you about the background of this poem and why the eighth ancestor in China, Sekito Kisen, wrote it. ancestor announced that he was going to give Dharma transmission to someone. All the monks thought that among them, of course, Jinchu would be the one to receive the transmission. Jinchu was a great scholar and he later went to northern China and became a great teacher. But actually Eno was pounding rice in the corner of the temple, you know, I received the transmission and became the sixth ancestor, eventually. Jinshu's school was called Hokuzen, or Northern Zen, and Eino's school spread to the south and was called Onanzen, or Southern Zen.

[36:21]

Later, after Jinshu's death, Northern Zen became weaker while Southern Zen became stronger. Shenhui, a very alert and active person who denounced Jinshu's Zen pretty strongly. We cannot completely accept his teaching. If you have studied the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor, you know that Jinshu's teaching is harshly denounced there. The sutra may have been compiled by someone under the influence of Kattakujin. Anyway, there was some conflict between Eno's Southern Zen and Jinshu's Northern Zen, and Sekito won why he wrote the Sandokan. So, the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor is full of wonderful teaching, great teaching, and at the same time, there's a lot of additions and so forth, so that it becomes a kind of political tool for somebody.

[37:33]

So the poem begins. the mind of the great sage of India, he's telling us again, is intimately transmitted from west to east. Segito's understanding is that the true teaching of the great sage Shakyamuni Buddha includes both the southern school and the northern school without any contradiction, and although the teaching of the great sage may not be completely understood, still it reaches everywhere. If you have the eyes to see, or the So this is Sekito's point. If you have a teacher, you think, oh, my teacher's great, and our place is wonderful. And then you go someplace else, and you think, oh, that teacher's not so great, that place is not so wonderful. But the people there think, my teacher's great, and this place is wonderful.

[38:42]

Whenever you go to another place, and wrong, we think that we're right and they're wrong. So it's good to value the reality or the truth of whatever is happening. So there are 12 schools of which is okay, but in this particular case, there was a political move for Hsien-Hui to promote the sixth ancestor.

[39:50]

So Hsien-Hsiu's teaching was maybe more Scholarly, he was a great scholar. He was an old man, an older man. And Daikaninu was just a young guy. And everybody thought that Chinshu would be the successor of the Fifth Patriarch. But as it turned out, the Fifth Patriarch, Konin, Daikon Konin, gave the patriarchate to Dagan Eno. So there's that big story about him. Eno is maybe more intuitive. So Suzuki Roshi is saying, is intimately transmitted.

[41:00]

The mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted. Mitsuni means exactly, without a gap between the two. The main purpose of the Sandhukaya is to explain the reality from two sides. What is many and what is one? Many are one and one is many. Even though you may say many, the many things do not exist separately from each other. They are closely related. If so, they are one. Even though they are one, the one appears as many. So many is right and one is right. So one thing appears as many things. It's like, how do you practice this? I remember Tatsugami Roshi, when I was at Tassajara in 1970, I was shuso with him.

[42:11]

He said, we are all one monk. And yet, this one monk has many different bodies. And all these different bodies are interacting with each other, but yet they're all one person. different expressions of the whole. As we practice here today, we're all different expressions of this particular gathering. So this is our world, our universe, and all of us are the parts of this universe, and yet the universe is one thing and many things. So if you say we're many, That's true. If you say we're one, that's also true. The one thing is harmonious to many things, and the many things are harmonious with the one thing because they're the same thing.

[43:18]

So how do we practice this? Are we serving each other? Although we're relating with each other, When we do the service, it's not just individuals doing something by themselves. The Kokyo, the Doan, the Fukudo, and the people chanting are all doing one act together as one thing. It's one thing with many moving parts. And the harmonious activity of listening and not just doing something just by yourself. When we're all completely present with each other, listening and acting together, it's just one organism, one harmonious organism.

[44:34]

It's not two things. It's one complete piece. That's how we practice together, understanding the meaning of the Sandokan. So, there's oneness and there's differentiation. So the next line is, well, human faculties are sharp or dull. It's difficult to translate this passage. It refers to the dispute between the northern school and the southern school.

[45:38]

The clever ones do not always have an advantage at studying or accepting Buddhism. And it is not always the dull person who has difficulty. The dull person is good. because he is dull. You can eat that one. A dull person is good because he is dull. A sharp person is good because he is sharp. Even though you compare, you can't say which one is best. I'm not so sharp, so I understand this pretty well. My master always addressed me as, you crooked cucumber stick arms, with a big smile, and run away. Maybe they were too smart.

[46:41]

Anyway, I wasn't smart enough to run away, so I was caught. So for studying Buddhism, my dullness was an advantage. When all the others went away, I was left alone, my master, and I was very sad. If I had been a smart fellow, I would have run away too, but I had left home by my own choice. Actually, there is no dull person or smart person. The smart person does not always have the advantage. And a dull person is good because he is dull. So this is our understanding. Either way, it's not so easy. So while human faculties are sharp or dull, in the Sandokai, this point is not so important. in order to explain further our understanding of practice and why it is necessary to practice zazen. So, that's too long and involved for this particular talk.

[47:49]

But he does talk about potentiality in quite a wonderful way. So, this is his introduction, and this is the introduction about the meaning of the title, why Sekito wrote this book, not the book, but this poem, to bring his understanding of the dispute between the Daikanyama disciples and Jinju's disciples, and to clarify an ancestor. No special person who is the best one. And to bring our understanding about the absolute and the relative.

[48:55]

is still not enlightened.

[49:19]

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