I think this is my last talk as Shuso, so I'm going to take another crack at Tozan. Tozan received the Dharma from Ngan after he practiced with several other teachers. As Tozan was getting ready to leave his teacher, Ngan asked, where are you going? Tozan said, although I don't yet know where I'm going, I'm leaving." Tōzan, or Ungan, said, you're not going back to your old village, are you? Tōzan said, no. When will you return, asked Ungan. I'll wait till you have a final residence, said Tōzan. Ungan said fondly, after you leave, it may be hard for us to meet again.

[01:01]

Tozan said, actually, it will be hard for us not to see each other. Just before he left, Tozan asked, if after many years, someone should ask me, can you still recall your teacher's true face? How shall I respond? Wingan was silent for a long time and then replied, Just this one. Tozan was lost in thought. Finally, Ngun said, you have assumed the burden of this great matter. Be very careful. Tozan left his teacher pretty confused. Later, as he was crossing the river, He saw his image reflected.

[02:05]

He experienced a great awakening about the meaning of this last exchange with Ngun. And he composed a verse. Don't seek for teaching outside yourself, or far from it you'll stray. Today as I walk alone, wherever I go I meet myself. He is just me, though I am not he. When you understand, who you yourself actually are, your own true way, is perfectly clear. When Tozan left his teacher and said, actually, it will be hard for us not to see each other, he knew his oneness with his teacher. He knew that the teacher wasn't outside himself and would always be with him.

[03:07]

You would meet him everywhere. Because the one mind we share with our teacher and with everyone manifests everywhere as everything, it is hard not to meet our teacher wherever we go. Each moment that we meet completely connects us with the universe and with the personal at the same time. And this experience is so personal and so intimate, so inarticulate It's hard to say anything coherent about it. When Tozan asked how he should portray his teacher, the teacher said, tell them, just this one is, or just this one.

[04:22]

One translation says, just this person. Tozan didn't understand. He understood his teacher in relation to himself as a student. And he understood that they had shared one mind. But he didn't know ungan in himself. And he didn't fully know himself yet. When he saw his reflection in the water, It was different than seeing himself reflected in his teacher's eyes. He saw his clear mind reflecting the light of the universe. This is not seeing with the eyes. You remember the earlier story about Tozan. One of his earlier questions was about inanimate

[05:29]

beings teaching the Dharma. And he went around to many, many teachers asking about this teaching which is in the sutras about the inanimate, preaching the Dharma. And he said he couldn't hear it and he wanted to understand. And when he finally got it, he said, isn't it wonderful The reason I didn't get it was that I was listening with my ears. You can only hear it with your eyes. The teaching, you can't hear it with your ears. You can't see it with your eyes. The little prince said, the essential, you can't see it with your eyes. It can only be seen with the heart. brings us back to where we started this practice period.

[06:37]

Joshu asked his teacher, what is the way? Nansen said, ordinary mind is the way. Should I seek it? If you seek it, it will get farther from you. But how can I get anywhere if I don't seek it? So we each have to find our way through seeking and not seeking, through knowing and not knowing. And essentially, this is something that each one of us has to do alone. But our understanding becomes real, realization, when it actualizes itself in some relationship, as when two arrow points meet in mid-air.

[07:51]

Wherever I go, I meet myself. What is the self that I meet? How do we understand the true self? Is it what we see? Is it what we do? Is this myself? When I look in the mirror, what do I see? How is self different from other? And how is it not different? In the darkness there is light, and in the light there is darkness.

[08:56]

Sekito says light and darkness are a pair, like the foot before and the foot behind. in walking. This is true of all the dualities. In strength there's vulnerability, and in vulnerability there's strength. Stillness in motion, and motion in stillness. spent the rest of his life integrating and understanding 1 and 2. 1, not 2. Not 1, not 2. And all his later work talks about that in great detail and refinement.

[10:03]

the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, the poem about the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, and Five Ranks, and the poems about the Five Ranks. I'll explore this and are studied by students, have been studied by students in both the Soto and the Rinzai tradition ever since. I'd like to read you just one of the poems. in the Five Ranks. The Five Ranks is about the relationship between the real and the The important thing about Tozan's teaching is that it came down to us as the unity of practice and enlightenment through Dogon and the unity of practice in everyday life.

[11:49]

through Suzuki Roshi. Tozan talked about this in maybe terms that are not so personal to us, about the absolute and the relative and the phenomenal and the actual. And Suzuki Roshi talked about it in very everyday terms, about sitting and standing as the manifestation of the one mind. And we took that into our culture and our experience and we did a lot of stuff with it which tends to be tends to take a sort of psychological and interpersonal and certain cultural forms.

[12:58]

Po-Zan investigated the inner penetration of the sacred and the profane within the narrow confines of monastic life in 9th century China. And we're investigating the same problems in a vast field of cultural and personal experience that are available to us here. So the task is the same, but the ingredients that we have to work with are quite different. My own life has been an attempt to reconcile, to understand, and to integrate opposites that present themselves to me in terms of the maternal and the monastic, or the masculine and the feminine.

[14:07]

So I've struggled with wanting to practice, and wanting to practice in a very traditional way, feeling very connected with the questions asked by the ancient Zen teachers, and at the same time having to follow my own way, and follow their way, and it looked very different. Once I asked Mel in Doksan, my legs hurt real bad, and I said to him, he'd been lecturing about some very profound subject, and I said to him, what is this

[15:22]

posture, this physical posture, which is so painful to me, what does it have to do with this wonderful teaching, which I like so much better than I like the pain in my legs?" And he said, when you cross your legs, this is bringing together the masculine and the feminine within yourself. And whatever comes of that union, please treat it as you would treat your own child. So how do I treat my own child? I watch and listen and hold it. try to see what is this in front of me not in terms of my own needs and desires but in terms of what is actually in front of me, justice trying to get my own preferences, small self, out of the way

[16:51]

Today is our 22nd wedding anniversary. And my husband gave me this ring, which is a Moebius strip. And he said it was a Zen ring, not two. So as a priest, a Zen student, I'm not supposed to adorn myself with pretty things. I'm actually not supposed to wear jewelry at all. So if I decide that it's okay for me to wear an extra ring, that may be okay, but if I think that I've solved the problem of the sacred and the profane, I'm in big trouble.

[18:25]

If I decide that it's not okay and that I should be more pure, if I would have chosen to literally leave home, to follow the way, rather than to leave home without leaving home, would that have been more right, less right? I don't think. It's a question of what you do, although one's behavior has to be in accord with reality, otherwise we're just creating more karma. But we tend, in this culture, at this time, I think,

[19:35]

to confuse being integrated as a person with being able to do a lot of diverse stuff. And those may be related, but they may not. So women, as women we tend to think, I certainly tend to think that I should be able to do all the things that I want to do, that I should be able to have children, a good relationship, and practice, and work that is satisfying. So is that an expression of some kind of integration, or is that just some greedy mind that thinks it can have everything?

[20:45]

Not one and not two. When we practice in accord with what is, and begin to get our desire and small mind a little bit out of the way becomes, what we need to actually do, becomes more clear. And the minute we try and get a hold of it and say, ah, came out right that time, I should do that, So I can't, on the one hand, depend on Tozan or Mel or anyone to show me the way.

[22:01]

I can't ignore the fact that they're not me. At the same time, I can't ignore that they are not different, that we are all made of the same stuff. And as I stumble along to find my way And think about this great tradition which I'm trying to fit myself into and live in accord with. I wonder, you know, on Monday I was talking about Tozan having left home and left his mother dying of grief on his doorstep.

[23:20]

And I was saying that we need to take that story very seriously. We need to take the matter, as Ungon said, the great matter. We need to be very careful of the matter of birth and death. Our determination needs to be that strong. But it's not necessary for us to take that story, maybe literally, in order to take it seriously. I don't know if it was the right thing for Tozan to leave his mother to die on his doorstep. I know that it wouldn't be the right thing for me to do that. It's probably not fair for me to judge Tozan I think that Tozan's Enlightenment poem, which is celebrated by Shuso's in our tradition, is the beginning, one of his beginning expressions of understanding himself as he actually is.

[24:52]

And we're given this as she sows, because we are also at the beginning of our understanding and have a life ahead to refine and integrate. And hopefully I will look back at what I said today and what I thought was clear and see how very confused I was. Tomorrow we'll have Shiso ceremony, and everyone is invited. For those of you who haven't been to one before, or have been to some of our other question and answer ceremonies, this is a question and answer kind of ceremony.

[25:58]

and everyone will have an opportunity to ask me a question. Thursday we had a ceremony where the abbot answered the questions. And in that type of ceremony the feeling is that the abbot's understanding is well established and the student is sort of more on the spot to come up with a good question. Traditionally, the feeling of shuso ceremony is that it's sort of a final exam for the shuso, and people probe the shuso's understanding, particularly of the koan or story that was the subject of the practice period. Since koan study is not the main thing here, it tends to be more of a dialogue rather than Dharmic combat.

[27:01]

But please feel free to push me. I won't be offended. People in the practice period are encouraged to ask a question. or to express your own understanding of what we've been working with. And if you're not in the practice period, but you are practicing, you can ask a question if you want to, but you don't have to. And there will be some guests, some friends of mine who aren't Zen students, and they don't have to ask questions. I appreciate having had the opportunity to do this with all of you and am torn between feeling that it's quite wonderful that a housewife and professional person like myself should be allowed to

[28:23]

follow this tradition and to be shuso, which is the sort of thing that was reserved for celibate monks until pretty recently. Sometimes I think that's wonderful and sometimes I think that it's really pretty arrogant and foolish of me to try and do something that people who are giving it their full attention had a really hard time with. And so I'm not so sure that we won't go back to the old way someday, looking back on our foolishness and seeing that it wasn't what we thought. So I too will leave my training somewhat confused.

[29:32]

And I hope that I will see my true face in the water one day. Maybe you'd like to ask some questions or say something? Yeah. What is the old way? The old way? Well, literally, the old way, of course, is leaving home, shaving your head. And I did shave my head. But that's the question, isn't it? What is the way? What is the true way? If you don't take it literally, how do you take it? Metaphorically.

[30:37]

Does that mean you get to make up your own meaning? I'm not sure. See, if we get to make up our own meaning, we get to take it however we want, see the metaphor, a lot of different metaphors you can see. That's a big responsibility. So please be careful of it. Thank you. Richard? I thought we were making up our own meaning all the time, and that was part of the big problem. Is it part of the big problem, or is it a wonderful opportunity?

[31:50]

I'm not sure whether it wishes, but it seems like that's where it is. That's where I am in the middle of now. Maybe it's both, but there it is. How are you doing with it? It depends upon the season. I keep coming back. I keep reaffirming my practice. That's the best way. You're keeping at it. Meryl? I thought the purpose of practice was to see reality literally. What would that be?

[32:52]

What would reality literally mean? That's the purpose of practice, to answer that question. It is. Good question. See, if Tozan saw his face, in the water. And he saw what you and I see when we look in the mirror. Just a face. And he thought, that's me. And he wouldn't be any different from Narcissus who looked in the water and saw a face and thought it was somebody. But you're not wrong. I don't think you're wrong, but the purpose of practice is to see reality. And when we embed our own meaning, we should embed it in relation to that understanding of literal reality.

[34:00]

Absolute reality. Yeah, like the Sandokaisa, don't set up your own standards. Well, that's another lecture. That's a whole other story. About animate and inanimate beings. Is that a duality? Animate and inanimate?

[35:03]

For sure. Absolutely. How could it be otherwise? You're going to be good at this. It's been practiced. grammar was so cute, but things as it is have to include literal and metaphorical. That's just not a duality. He used to talk about things as it is and things as they are. We thought his grammar was just cute. And it was cute, but somehow things as it is was the big picture. And things as they are is sort of what arises.

[36:06]

Things as it is was the actual, and things as they are is the phenomenon that we can see. And he put the emphasis on things as it is, on the actual. And all the teachers do, because what we get caught by is what we see by appearances. Sometimes it seems like Zen teaching is a little heavy on the absolute side. And we have some kind of reaction to that. But we tend to be, I mean, everybody tends to be kind of heavy on the personal, on the phenomenal, because that's where most of our experience is. Well, yeah, that is where language lives.

[37:23]

In one of Tozan's poems, the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, he says, it's like a baby. True experience. It's like a baby. Baba wawa. That's all you can really say. Baba wawa. That's one of my favorites. the title of her book about her death from cancer, there's always something. And so that leads me to my follow-up question. I don't think it's funny. I think it's serious. As Gilda Radner says, there's always something.

[38:26]

I think it's serious, but it's also funny. So why isn't it funny? So is the difference intentionality? What is the difference when the same words come out of two different mouths, but one has a weight of the Dharma behind it and the other is just Something in the moment. I'm getting myself caught. Do you like things that are serious better? I like them both. So maybe Mel needs to work on his sense of humor. He's a funny guy. He's funny enough as he is. There you are.

[39:34]

But it's not funny when Mel says something else. It's funny, but not when he says things like that. So wherever you go, you're meeting your teacher. You cannot escape it. Did they use the right word? I was thinking about Tozan and, well, the literal and the metaphorical, and I really don't know about the literal because, yeah, it's a disturbing story, and one wasn't there in the literal. But it occurred to me that one metaphor, that one metaphorical meaning that it has for me And that is that Tozan's mother is really Tozan. And that she represents not necessarily the feminine side of him, but the old self.

[40:43]

And self that doesn't want to let go. And it's the reactive self. And maybe that's not our way at this time to shut the door, because then maybe there are really repercussions. You have maybe to work some more gradual way. I don't know. But it just seemed that seeing it that way may be useful to think of how attached one is to one's old way of life, one's habits, and that one has also a loyalty and a real love for that old self, or old great combination of things.

[41:48]

But it's almost as if, if one is able to be great at some point, that one can go back and embrace them. So there's always something that you have to give up, something that you have to let go of. And that's what you started talking about, that he had to let go of his old self and that emotional attachment, what it says in the story. So can we do that? can we cut off emotional attachment, can we let go of that, and go on having relationships with people? And I think for us, at this time and place, that's a real important question. And I think if we look at it that way, as you were saying, as a metaphor of the old self, or the small self, or the habitual self,

[42:58]

Then, it's not like we're making something up, that we're just making up from scratch, that's just based on our own preference. This is the teaching. You have to give up the small self. And so, can we give up the small self and have relationships, intimate relationships, family kinds of relationships? Joko Beck talks about how relationships don't work. There's a chapter called, Relationships Don't Work. And what she talks about in that chapter, essentially, is all the difficulties we have with intimate relationships. And that they don't work because we won't give up our small self. And what her understanding of it is that we We have to give up small self in order to function in ordinary relationships, in ordinary domestic kinds of relationships.

[44:05]

And I don't think that that's, although she says it in a radical way, I don't think that's so different from the traditional teaching. After all, our own wedding ceremony, which is pretty old, based on traditional Buddhist wedding ceremonies, What is it? It's just the precepts and a statement about being married true nature to true nature. It's an admonition to understand true nature and to use your circumstances to investigate. Just that. It's not any different from the priest ordination ceremony or the lay ordination ceremony. There's only really one teaching, one practice in Buddhism. Well, maybe that's enough for today.

[45:09]

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