Our dharma seminar continues with the first week of exploring the Jewel Mirror Samadhi with Kanho Chris.
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Talk Notes
The Jewel Mirror Samādhi is kind of hard to decode on a purely intellectual basis and it on the other hand I really love that poem and on the third hand it's just a really important Zen text. So I thought to inhabit that text versus studying it, we should chant it at the beginning of each seminar for next four weeks. And it is on page 29.
Song of the Jewel Mirror Samādhi and please all join in with the chanting.
The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it so keep it well. Filling a silver bowl with snow. Hiding a heron in the moonlight. Taken as similar, they are not the same. When you mix them, you know where they are. The meaning is not in the words. The response to the inquiring impulse move and you were trapped. Miss and you fall into doubt and vacillation. Turning away and touching are both wrong. For it is like a massive fire. Just to depict it in literary form is to stain it with defilement. It is bright just at midnight. It doesn't appear at dawn. It acts as a guide for beings. Its use removes all pains. Although it is not fabricated, it is not without speech. It is like facing a jewel mirror. Form and image behold each other. You are not it. In truth, it is you. Like a babe in the world in five aspects complete. It does not go or come nor rise nor stand. Baba wawa is there anything said or not ultimately does not apprehend anything because its speech is not yet correct. It is like the six lines of the illumination hexagram. Relative and ultimate interact. Piled up, they make three. The complete transformation makes five. It is like the taste of the five-flavored herb. Like a diamond thunderbolt suddenly included within the true inquiry and response come up together. Communing with the source. Travel the pathways. Embrace the territory and treasure the road. Respecting this is fortunate. Do not neglect it. Naturally real yet inconceivable. It is not was in the province of delusion nor enlightenment. With causal conditions, time and season quiescently it shines bright. In its fineness it fits into spacelessness. In its greatness it is utterly beyond location. A hairsbreadth's deviation will fail to accord with the proper attunement. Now there are sudden and gradual in which teachings and approaches arise. Once basic approaches are distinguished then there are guiding rules. But even though the basis is reached and the approach comprehended, true eternity still flows outwardly still while inwardly moving like a tethered cold, a trapped rat. The ancient sages pitied them and bestowed upon them the teaching to their delusions they called black as white. When erroneous imagination cease, the acquiescent mind realizes itself. If you want to conform to the ancient way, please observe the ages of former times. When about to fulfill the way of Buddhahood, one gazed at a tree for 10 eons like a battle-scared tiger, like a horse with shanks gone gray. Because there is the common, there are jewel pedestals, fine clothing. Because there is the startlingly different, there are housecat and cow. Ye with his archer skill could hit a target at a 100 paces. But when arrow points meet head on, what has this to do with the power of skill? When the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up dancing. It's not was in reach of feeling or discrimination. How could it admit of consideration in thought? Ministers served their lords. Children obey their parents. Not obeying is not filial and not serving is no help. Practice secretly. Working within like a fool, like an idiot. Just to continue in this way is called the host within the host.
So obviously I won't be able to get through this in four weeks. So, I've just picked out some lines
because when we first encounter a text like the Jewel Mirror Samādhi, it can feel disorienting. The language is clear. Each each word individually makes sense, but when we put it together, we struggle. The phrases seem meaningful, but they resist being assembled into a stable understanding. This is frustrating, especially for our minds that are trained to be so on the spot. We try to connect ideas and to arrive somewhere to have some results.
So our usual reading aims us towards clarity. We read in order to understand. Well, I'm just going to ask you to give that up for the next month. It does serve us in many areas of our life. But with a text like this, it becomes a limitation.
We may even try to translate it into Zen concepts. We may go, "Oh, this is about non-duality or oh this is about emptiness. I got it." But in doing so, we replace its living strangeness into something that is settled. And we all know what happens when something is settled. We kind of put it aside and the mind goes wandering. So please keep it alive as a question because once it's settled its magic stops working. So my invitation tonight is to approach it differently. Not as a problem to solve but as something to sense into. This kind of sensing is more quiet than thinking. It is closer how to we listen to music or poetry or bird song.
And when we sense something, let's not immediately name it and label it. Let the words arrive without rushing to organize them. Notice the images. Notice their beauty. Herons in the moonlight. Allow yourself not to understand.
I know this may feel like some kind of failure. There's a subtle discomfort in not knowing what something means. But that discomfort is important because it loosens the habit of grasping for certainty. It opens a space where something else may be able to appear.
The text might work in a different way. A line or a phrase may stay with you and make you wonder.
Something resonates somewhere that you cannot quite define. It may return to you later in a completely ordinary context
and suddenly it may feel alive in a totally different way. Not explained but recognized.
That's why chanting it can be so powerful. When we chant, we are not trying to interpret. We are allowing the body and breath to carry words. The text goes through us, but not as a coherent storyline.
It settles somewhere beneath deliberate thoughts. And this is where the desire to make sense of it becomes most subtle. It doesn't disappear. It just tries to sneak in underneath everything.
Let us please notice the moment where our mind is trying to hold on to something to grasp meaning to come to conclusions. And instead of believing our thoughts and following that movement for certainty, we can stop. We can let the question remain the question without grasping for the answer. This is not passive. It is just a different kind of engagement. We don't abandon understanding. We are allowing that understanding to emerge more organically and sometimes totally not in the form that we expect. This text doesn't give us much solid stuff to hang on to anyway. It invites us into a way of being that is less depending on the certainty. We're not standing outside the teaching trying to comprehend it. We are participating. The confusion, the resistance, the moments of clarity and losing it all again. All this is part of our encounter with the chant.
And this is not something that is explained. It is something that is experienced.
And it's very strange. It feels lived immediate and quietly trustworthy.
From Dongshan who wrote this poem to Dogen the founder of our lineage to contemporary teachers. This is one of the ways we can use to approach a text
And talking about failings, my watch died. So if someone could give me a heads up before we are like 15 minutes before the end that would be very helpful. But now back to the jewel mirror samadhi. It definitely is a poem about reality that refuses to explain itself.
It comes to us from Dongshan Liangjie in the 9th century in China. He is one foundational teacher.
He found, he was a co-founder of what was later known as the Caodong school dong Dongshan. So that school transformed and Soto was one of its offsprings.
This text therefore is part of our family story, our family history,
but it does not behave like something we can easily access and it kind of resists explanation and interpretation. It doesn't guide us step by step. It doesn't tell us what to think. Instead, it points. And that pointing is subtle.
The title can give us a bit of the feeling it's trying to transmit. Jewel mirror. A mirror reflects everything clearly. It doesn't matter whether it's a good-looking person or a blank wall. The mirror does not care. Its job is just to reflect. It shows things as they are.
The ritual suggests something precious, something luminous and somebody points towards meditative state. See already we try to understand what it's trying to tell us.
It's a clarity that reflects everything. A way of being that is intimate with everything.
So again, we try do try to understand it and there's nothing wrong with that habit.
And when we say this is about non-duality, about emptiness, we replace again the living strangeness of this poem with something we know or that we think we have an int intellectual grasp on.
So let's not try to treat this as something to figure out, but as something to sense into. Let us stand inside of the poem and look out from it. Again, it's quieter than thinking.
So,
let's take a look at the opening. The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it, so keep it well. And already these two lines kind of like pull the carpet out from under us.
If this teaching has been intimately communicated, then it's already here. Nothing is missing. And yet, if we are honest, it does not feel that way. But let's not explain it. I want to ask a simple question. If it is already here, what un interferes with our understanding?
What happens if we stop treating like a problem we need to solve?
Just notice it.
Now you have it. So keep it well. And there's something very striking there.
Please pay attention. It does not say you will have it someday. It does not say if you practice long enough you will attain it. It does not even say you almost got it. It says very plainly, you have it now. Keep it well. We are not moving towards something that's missing because we are good as we are. And we could use a little improvement. Okay. But we are complete just the way we're sitting here.
So now the followup, if we already have it, why doesn't it feel that way? What do we overlook? What do we dismiss? What is too ordinary to be recognized as valuable?
It spells it out. It's here. So the issue is not attainment. It is recognition.
Or perhaps in a more s subtle way. It's a kind of trust and keep it well.
We usually think of keeping as something to hold on to, preserving it, putting it on a shelf, look it, dust it, you know, we got it.
But if this is not an object, not a thing you can grasp, then keeping it cannot mean holding it tightly.
It might mean something closer to not turning away, not overlooking, not replacing what is here with something more dramatic, more spiritual, a zen thing.
Maybe it's fine just the way it is without trying to improve it or escape from it.
And that's not so easy because the habit of looking elsewhere is very strong.
So this is both reassuring and unsettling.
You already have it. So, what are you going to do with it? This is a good question. So, I think we should talk about it a little bit. And since my watch is dead, could someone please time and 3 minutes each person. And if you could no just triads. And if you could maybe send the people in Zoom into a breakout room after I ask a question and this is what I like us to talk about any version of it, anything that comes close. What is it that is already present in your life right now? And where do you most tend to overlook it or dismiss it or move past it? Why do you dismiss yourself sometimes so readily? I'll repeat it. What is it that is already present in your life right now?
And how do you overlook it or dismiss it or move past it without recognizing it or valuing it? Why do you sometimes dismiss even yourself? If you could go into triads and each person will have three minutes and that means each person will have the full three minutes without interruption. If you run out of words just be quiet maybe you will have the most brilliant thought in the last five seconds.
Three, three, groups of three, please.
Is there someone without a partner?
Come on, figure it out, guys. One, two, three.
First person, please begin.
Next person, please.
Please thank your partners and you can either stay in that place or you can go back to your old seat. Doesn't matter too much.
And one thing that is important about this type of sharing,
One thing that's really important about this type of sharing is that we honor the trust that the people extend to us and that we don't talk about it. We don't even bring it up with the person who originally shared with us. I mean you can ask would you be willing to talk about this more but please treat it like something precious and fragile.
So the next line that I wanted to pick up from this chant is move and you are trapped miss and you fall into doubt and vacillation. And and now comes the the cool part. Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a massive fire. Just to depict it in literary form is to stain it with defilement. There's something really uncompromising about this passage. Imagine yourself.
You can't turn away from it and you cannot touch it. So what do you do?
You can't come to logical conclusions.
Are you stuck in that place?
So we usually assume that if I can't touch it and get closer to it, then I should get away from it. Or if I shouldn't get away from it, then maybe I should get closer. But it's a raging fire.
If one approach is wrong does not mean that the opposite is true.
If grasping is a problem, we should let go. If getting involved is a problem, we should step back. Dongshan removes both options. If you touch, you're caught. And if you turn away, you're also caught. You are exactly where you are. What is left? This is where I find that the teaching becomes very intimate because I'm beginning to notice how often I move in these two directions instead of checking out where I really am.
So we reach towards something trying to secure it, understand it, hold on to it or we pull back, avoiding, dismissing, numbing out, staying at a distance.
But both create separation. Move away from being intimate.
Both are escape and in both cases we are no longer simply with what is happening with reality with what is really there.
The interesting thing is Dongshan does not give us any third option. He just ends it there. But he is pointing towards something subtle, towards something that does not add or subtract, not reaching in, not pulling away. Just this this breath, this sound, this moment of contact, this seeing another person, this very moment, not as something to hold, not as something to reject.
This sounds really simple but trust me it ain't easy because the habit to move toward or away is very strong. It's very, very strong conditioning. So practice is not about finding the correct position. It is about noticing the moment when we want to start to move. And gently, very gently, not following that impulse, letting experience be exactly as it is without interference.
So, your homework, if you want to take it up and I can have it posted on our website, is can you recall a moment where you either try to grasp and hold on to an experience or push it away? What might it have been like if you had stayed with it without moving toward or away or in this next week something happens that you either like a whole lot or not at all. Don't move move towards it or away. Just sense what's going on.
So, and I will ask to have that posted on our website as question of the week.
And I would like to end tonight with a little poem also by Dongshan and we'll talk about it more. It's about the five ranks
which has a lot to do with this poem. In the third watch of the night before the moon appears. No wonder when we meet there is no recognition. Still cherished in my heart is the beauty of earlier days. A sleepy eyed grandma encounters herself in an old mirror. Clearly she sees her face but it doesn't resemble her at all. Too bad with a muddled head she tries to recognize her reflection. With nothingness there is a path leading away from the dust of the world. Even if you observe the taboo on the present emperor's name, you will surpass that eloquent one of your who silenced every tongue.
When two blades cross points, there is no need to withdraw. The master swordsman is like the lotus pluming in the fire. Such a man has in and of himself a heavens soaring spirit. Who dares to equal him? Who falls into neither being nor non-being? All men want to leave the current of ordinary life, but he after all comes back to sit among the coals and ashes.
