Our dharma seminar exploring the Jewel Mirror Samadhi continues for part 2 with Kanho Chris.
Stream audio:
Talk Notes
So, before we go any further in the text tonight, I would like to come back where we left off last time in case you weren't here. I offered that maybe we want to contemplate a line or two from the Jewel Mirror Samadhi and hold this with us during the week. I'm curious if anybody took a stab at that. And don't worry if you didn't. Life is good.
Well, looks like I'm batting 100.
So, I meant for you to take it on not as something to figure out, but as something to live with, to integrate.
So, I'm going to offer this again for this coming week. So, maybe you want to take me up on it this time.
It's not necessarily what the intellectual meaning of the text is, but what you notice within yourself. Did it show up? Does it show up anywhere?
So, to be continued.
This noticing versus intellectual analysis is the heart of our practice.
Not resolving something, not figuring out, but just maybe getting a glimpse of it. The movement towards a text like this and the movement away from it.
It would be too much to ask of anybody to just dive round right down to its depths.
But this movement away and towards something is something very familiar that we do quite a bit in our life. So much that we probably don't notice it at all.
And when we integrate little pieces of this text, then it begins to open up to us in a different way. Again, not something to be understood, but something that begins to describe our own experience.
So tonight, I want to stay with this quality of seeing within our own life, but widen it just a little bit. Not to understand more, but to notice more.
There are these beautiful lines in there 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 yet. It responds to the inquiring impulse. There's something very subtle happening here. At first, everything seems to disappear into sameness. White on white. The bowl and the snow, the heron and the moonlight. White, white, white.
It's hard to tell where the snow ends in that silver bowl and where the silver begins.
Nothing announces itself. It's almost as if our seeing is failing us. And yet taken as similar, they are not the same. So even in this field where it's hard to distinguish one from the other, difference does not disappear. The heron is still the heron. The snow is still the snow, but we cannot necessarily rely on contrast to know that. We cannot rely on something to stand out.
So what kind of seeing am I talking about? We are very used to a certain kind of seeing. Seeing that identifies, that names, that distinguishes one thing from another. The kind of seeing which is incredibly useful. It allows us to function, to navigate the world. Just imagine a world where we are just seeing traffic lights, but we're not distinguishing the colors. That would not be so good.
But this text is pointing to something more quiet, a seeing that does not lean into the contrast and does not immediately move to naming. It's more like being with or as Thich Nhat Hanh calls it interbeing, inter penetration.
And maybe you have had moments like this in your life and they were not traumatic. They were very ordinary. When you are simply present and everything is just exactly as it is, nothing special and yet nothing is missing.
Then Dongshan writes, "When you mix them, you know where they are." To me, this suggests that this kind of knowing is not lost when things are not clearly separated. Even when everything seems to blend, there is still a kind of knowing that functions. A knowing that does not come from analysis. A knowing that does not come from figuring out or studying. It is immediate and intimate.
It is the meaning is not in the words yet it responds to in the inquiring impulse. It becomes very direct.
We're so used to looking for meaning in words. We listen, we read, we intellectually process, we want something from the text, we extract something, a definition, an explanation, a how to guide, because we definitely are a self-improvement project, right?
Something we can hold on to, we can write down, put it on our to-do list.
But the Jewel Mirror Samadhi tells us the meaning is not in the words. So if it's not in the words, where is it?
It responds to the inquiring impulse and something within us does respond.
So the question for the discussion is something along these lines. What does your response to the inquiring impulse feel like in your own experience? Like have you ever noticed a response within you that wasn't an answer in the usual sense? Maybe something that didn't even make any sense at all, but it felt perfectly all right, even if it doesn't fit the situation. And you know, it's it.
And for the next quote, I would like to stay with this question of how to see the question of seeing itself. But it's time to get a little bit more personal and a little bit more direct. It is like facing a jewel mirror. Form and image behold each other. You're not it. In truth, it is you. That is so Dongshan.
The image of the mirror is very intimate.
What do I see when I step in front of the mirror? Myself. It's no longer about snow and silver and moonlight. Something we observe from a distance. Now it's us, you and me, and what we see.
There is a story about Dongshan that lives right inside this line. After studying with his teacher for many years, his teacher was Yunyan, Dongshan eventually prepares to leave and to continue his practice on pilgrimage.
Before he goes, there's a very simple, very human exchange with Yunyan. Dongshan asks his teacher, "After you die, if someone asks me what your teaching was, how should I respond?" It's a sincere question, not abstract. He's asking in a way what is essential here? What is it that I carry with me when I go?
And Yunyan replies just this is it.
Dongshan understands the sentence but he cannot completely receive it yet. It stays with him unresolved. He carries it with him as he leaves.
Not as something that he needs to find an answer to, but as something unfinished, unresolved, something still alive. So he goes on alone continuing his journey and at some point he comes to a stream. He steps into the water and looks down and he sees his reflection and something something shifts within him. Not as an idea, not as a conclusion to be explained, but as direct recognition.
The words he later uses are very close to what we just read.
Now I go on alone. Everywhere I meet it, it now is me. I now am not it. The line in the Jewel Mirror Samādhi You are not it. In truth, it is you. When we look in the mirror, we assume that we know what's happening here. There's me. There's my reflection. Two things. Subject me. Object over there. But if we stay with it just a little bit longer, it becomes less clear. The image only appears because of me. And yet it is not me. I cannot step into it. I cannot become it. And yet without me, it does not exist. So what is this relationship? You are not it. We are not identical with what we see. We cannot collapse everything into sameness. In truth, it is you. And yet there is no real separation either.
When Dongshan returns later on to his teacher, this earlier exchange is no longer just a question. Just this is it is no longer something to figure out. It has become immediate, not something he can point to as an object. but something he is already participating in. So when we read form and image behold each other, it is not just poetic. It's describing something happening right now. Seeing and seeing are not two separate events. They arise together. There is no image without seeing and no seeing without what is seen. And still you are not it. We don't dissolve into everything and in truth it is you. We are not outside of anything. So again, what kind of seeing is this? Not a seeing that stands apart and not a seeing that grasps, but a seeing where there is no clear boundary between the one who sees and what is seen. And dear friends, we don't need to figure this out right now. We don't need to resolve this. But let us pay attention to notice moments where this is already happening. Not in dramatic ways, but in very ordinary seeing. Now it is you, you and what you see.
So maybe you might want to contemplate the question I'm going to ask when you get home. When you look at something, anything in your life, when you experience something, where do you place the boundary between you and it, between you and what you experience and what you see? Where do you draw that line?
I want to finish the night with two more lines if I have the time. I'll speak quickly. Subtly included within the true inquiry and response come up together. There's a gentle nudge here subtly included. Not obvious, not something we can point to directly, not something that stands out. It's already there but easy to miss. And within the true, not somewhere else, not something we arrive at later once we figure it out. Not something behind experience is hidden. Your experience is right there.
right there, right here within what is already happening, our reality
inquiry and response come up together. This is so close to what we are exploring. We usually experience the question and the answer as two separate things. First there is a question then the answer but they do arise together. One wouldn't be without the other. The asking and the responding are not two separate events. We are not asked necessarily to find the answer. But I am asking you now most sincerely fall in love was the question. Fall in love with the question and notice that in very simple ways. A question arises within. Sometimes not even as words. Sometimes it's a questioning feeling, a curiosity. And before we have time to turn it into something conceptual,
something within us is already responding. Not as an answer we can explain, not as something we can hold on to, subtly included.
Usually we're looking for something obvious, something we can point to and say, "There it is."
It doesn't stand apart from experience. It is the experience itself. And why do we resist that this mysterious dustness?
We resist it because it feels too simple, almost disappointing. Something so ordinary can't possibly be what we are looking for. And yet it is. So, thank you for allowing me to share this exploration tonight. And again, feel free to grab the text. You'll find it everywhere on the internet. Pick a line and figure out what it means for you. Just like last time, I will give you a reminder on the way on the way. And it's the five ranks poem by Dongshan. 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 a face, but it doesn't resemble her at all. Too bad. With a muddled head, she tries to recognize her reflection.
Within nothingness, there is a path leading away from the dusts of the world. Even if you observe the taboo on 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 blooming 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.
