Merit, Bodhisattvas, and the Enmei Juku Kannon Gyo

[00:00:00] Speaker A: For more information on Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, please visit our website at www.ancientdragon.org. our teachings are offered to the community through the generosity of our supporters. To make a donation online, please visit our website. [00:00:16] Speaker B: Pleasure to be here, especially since I haven't been around too much lately. I regret that. So this I'm going to be talking about giving a talk focused around the. One of the texts that we chant, the Enmei Juku Kanangyo Kanze, on that one. And. But I will try to use it as a way to talk about some broader historical issues and sort of give a sense of where I understood the world. Let's. Let's put it this way, the world I understood the text arose within or was written within, composed within, and how. And the Buddhism of that world, of course, most importantly, and how that world, that Buddhism, you know, still our Buddhism. Right. But I think it can seem different. Can seem in some ways, I think, quite different. And I think, I hope it's my guess that the wager of this talk, as we say, that that will be helpful to understand, to understanding the text itself and the history that we are parts of as we chant it. So it's actually the second talk I've given on this text at Ancient Dragon. I thought I had done one before, so I just googled my name and Ancient Dragon talk and I got a list of six talks. They're all there. At least those ones are there. And so back in 2013, which is kind of a shockingly long time ago now, I gave a talk at the old. At the Irving Park Temple space. And actually on the year before, in 2012, I had given one on Dharani's, as we say, which was just before I published a book on that subject. There used to be a copy in the library. I noticed there isn't one now, so I brought a new one. There's one in the. There's one in the library if anyone would like to have a look at it again, long time ago. So who knows, who knows if that talk or this talk or that book or any of this is of any use. But I will try. So I want to take kind of two angles on the text, one historical and one kind of a textual studies one. Right. Just kind of looking at the text itself as I read it. And as I read it, it's a scholar's talk, and so I read it mainly as a scholar, but also I will try to open it up, especially for a conversation at the end and how we might read it as practitioners or Think about it. So first, just to say something about that world, right? And so it's hard to narrow in, narrow that world down when it comes to any one particular text. But with this one we have some stories, right, that, about, about its origins, right? Or at least its early uses and how it was. And, and I will talk about them a little bit or just really one of them, just to try to, to give a sense of that. And, and again, as I say, to open up into this world. And then I will again, as I say, look at the text itself and try to understand it not as in, not from the perspective of its described effects, right? Or what it was supposed to do or what it was understood to do in certain contexts anyway. But you know how it was made, right? And it, and it struck me especially this morning as I was looking over my notes for the talk that the description of the uses from a thousand years ago and the way that the text, that way that I think we. And they too would have read the text, would have written it, it's a bit different, right? It takes a kind of a different angle on it. So it strikes me that it's pretty interesting, an interesting difference there. I'm going to try to bring into, bring to bear another text that we chant, that we chant both in English and in Japanese. In that case, that's the Heart Sutra, which I think is helpfully similar in some of these ways, right? Both in the way it was constructed, as I see it, and in the way it's been used, or at least its use has been talked about. So, okay, so the world, the old world of Buddhism, which is still, again, still very much our world. And I'm going to talk about it in two respects. One or in, in terms of two themes. One is the theme of merit or blessings, and the other is in broadly speaking, let's call it the relationships between practitioners and the bodhisattvas. The Buddha too, but mainly bodhisattvas, and mainly in the case both of the Heart Sutra and the Enmeijuku Kanangyo of Kannon, right, Of Guanyin, as I like to use that name just because I study Chinese stuff. But Avalokiteshvara, right, this great bodhisattva. So let me look at what I wrote here. So these texts, the Enmeijuku Kanangyo, the Heart Sutra and also Dharanis of a range, right, Which I actually won't talk about that much, but I'll mention them, they were conceived and written within a very different world than ours. I Think and in some ways a different Buddhism, right? Which is not to say that Zen, our Zen, at least in part, as we understand it, didn't exist then, right? I'm not saying that there are, of course, deep continuities between. Between what we do and what they did and how we understand what we do and how they understand what they did, but here's, I think, a difference. The overall cosmological picture, right, That I think most of us carry around in our. Wherever we carry our cosmological pictures, you know, is different. Was quite different, right? And this is not. This won't be an unfamiliar picture, right? We all know it as we study Buddhism, but I don't know if we, you know, is this the world that we take ourselves to be living in, right? A world filled with heavens and hells, right? Many. I think there was an earlier talk, maybe it was Stefan Lika's talk, where the ideas of the importance, the kind of central importance of hells, right? In early Buddhist stuff, especially Mahayana Buddhism, perhaps that this, you know, was cause for discussion. This inspired some discussion, right, in the. In the group about. Wait a minute, wait a minute. There are hells, right? Well, I mean, traditionally, right? Buddhism has a lot of hells and they are very horrible, right? I think Buddhist hells can hold their own with the hells of any culture. I just finished teaching Dante, the Inferno, as I do every year, and there's some pretty good ones there, but Buddhism also, right? And so this was simply the furniture, I think, in the world in which texts like the En Meijuko Kanangyo were written. And I say that. And here I'll. Let me move to this idea of merit, right? Which again, I hope is familiar, I know is familiar to many of you, perhaps all of you, right? Merit, punya, blessings, gongyang in Chinese, different words for it, right? And that basically means, right, that. How to say it? Let me back up, take a slightly different angle, right? So this is, I think I like to say in my classes that the basic activity of Buddhism across history, right? Across cultures, is in one sense, right? The production, the reproduction of the Buddha's body, right? And the Buddha's body can be reproduced in the form of texts, right? Can talk about this afterward. I don't want to get lost in this subject in the form of statues, right? In the form of visualizations, imaginings of the Buddha. And it's said it's very important to the tradition throughout history that when you do that, right, when you reproduce the body of the Buddha, it comes with it Incalculable blessings, right? Merit, as we call it, power. And that, those blessings, that power, that merit, right? You can do things with it. And key to what's called Mahayana Buddhism, right? Is the idea that you can transfer that merit. So we chant, we sit, right? We imagine, we do what we do, and this produces merit according to the tradition. What do you do with that merit, right? Well, traditionally in Mahayana Buddhism, you transfer to others, right? And in East Asia, the others that you transfer it to is very often your ancestors, your family's ancestors. You give it to them, right? To nurture them. You can give it to all beings, right? You can give it to anyone. But very, very commonly it was transferred to ancestors, right? And we know this. You can go to, say, the Art Institute, and there are these big stone pillars with the Chinese carved all around them. Most of what you see there are the names of people in the groups, right, who sponsored the creation of these things. And they were, but also of ancestors, right? We know from what are called the colophons, the little text appended to the ends of copied sutras and other things that say, why this sutra was copied almost always from this period, thousand years ago or so. They were copied to produce merit, to give to ancestors, to give to the ancestors, right? To nurture them. And so chanting the Heart Sutra and Meijuko, Kanangyo, Lotus Sutra, what have you, Dharanis produces merit, right? Produces blessings. And then things are done with it, right? We transfer it, we give it away. And this is why, for example, you will see, when you read the text, you will see it says chanted a thousand times. It says chanted 108 times. It says chanted a hundred times. It says chanted however many times, because the more you chant it, the more merit, the more blessings are produced, right? This is the logic behind that's there, right, in the creation of these texts. And when I tell the story in a minute, you know, it'll involve chanting it a thousand times, right? This is part of what's going on there. The other one is this relationship with the bodhisattvas, right? This is traditionally and still today described in terms of this word that I like to call resonance, right? Spiritual resonance, sympathetic resonance, ganing in Chinese, kano in Japanese, right? You hear this phrase kano doku a lot. And it's a very old idea, pre Buddhist idea in China, in East Asia. And it's a kind of a mechanical resonance. That's why this word resonance works. And an example, an explanation for it that was very Very common one, and I like it a lot, is that, say you have your guitar, right? It's tuned, and you walk into the guitar store, right? And you go in and you pluck the G string or whatever string. What's going to happen? There's. There's walls full of guitars. All the G strings are going to vibrate, but the E strings and the D strings technically won't, right? Because there's its resonance within categories, right? Some of you will heard of the five Element theory, right? Five Phases theory, Five Agents theory, right? This. Intrinsic to that. When Buddhism arose, Buddhism came into China and became Chinese, became East Asian. They thought, wow, this. This idea really works for us. And it helps us. It can help us to explain the relationship that we have with Seguan, with. With Kannon, right? With Avalokiteshvara. Why does our chanting stimulate? Because I say stimulate because it's gan and ing, stimulus and response, right? You pluck the string, all the other strings respond, right? It's. That's the. That's image, literally. So why, when we chant, when we do our practice, why does Kannon, for example, respond to us? How can we understand that, right? Well, it's this. This is. This was the way, right? To understand it becomes very, very important, right? So I don't want to get into the technical. I've raised the, you know, I've invoked the technical details of both merit and resonance, right? But I. I don't want to argue then that the en meijuku kanangyo, you know, is specifically working in those ways, although it was described in those ways. You can find it described in those ways. But what I want to do is to remind us, because I think we know these things, but I want them to be front of mind, right? As we're thinking about this, chanting these texts, that this is how the world worked, right? The Buddhist world. When people. When somebody wrote the emejukkanangyo, right? When the Heart Sutra was, as, you know, I think it's generally accepted today, understood today, you know, a section of the much longer perfection of wisdom literature was taken out, right? And then turned and then. Then an introduction, you know, Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva, doing deeply, prajna, paramita, et cetera. And then an ending, right? A kind of an outro, an intro and an outro, right? The outro being the. This great mantra, this da da da mantra. Gate gate, paragatte parasam gatte bodhi swaha, right? That. This doctrinal bit, right? This philosophical piece, form is emptiness Emptiness is form, There is no path, the path is endless. You know all that Heart Sutra stuff, you know that that was, was boxed up in a way, was framed in a way so that it could be chanted, right? And in fact, Heart Sutra, the heart of Heart Sutra, the sheen of Xinjing shin of Shingyu, right? Means in this case the heart of the thing, the essence of the thing in the sense of adharani, which also meant the essence of a thing, right? The boiled down essence of, for example, the vast, vast prajana, paramita, perfection of wisdom, literature, boiled down to this one set of phrases, really, and then packaged as a chant, right? To be chanted to generate merit, to generate blessings. Right. I'm going to argue at the end of this, or not really argue, but I'm going to wonder at the end of this that the Enmei Juko Kanangyo is sort of similar, right, in its structure, a packaging of a kind of doctrinal claim or set of them. Okay, so as usual I'm way left behind my notes somewhere, so. Oh, the story, right. I was going to tell you the story. So there's a text, a history of Buddhism that was finished supposedly in the year 1269, right? So in the 13th century, called the Fo Tzu Tong Ji in Chinese. So the complete record of the Buddha's ancestors, something like that, history of Buddhism. And it has a story in it, it has an account that supposedly in the year 450, this was during a period in China in a state, a small state in China called the Liu Song state or the Liu Song dynasty, not the later big Song dynasty, but an earlier smaller one. This. They had part of their northern territories had been conquered by these people called the Tuoba, which anyway, don't want to get too involved in them, but they're a steppe people, a horse, horsemen of the steppe, basically like the Mongols much later. And the Liu Song emperor wanted to regain that land and so he sends north a general, a commander named Wang Shenmue, right, to take back the territory. He fails in doing that. His subordinates blame him for the failure and they want to kill him. He knows this, the story goes, that night, he thinks the next day they're going to kill him. But that night Wang Shenmo is visited in a dream by a figure. In the version of the earlier story, it just says somebody ran person in later versions with other figures who also receive the same text in dreams. It's called a white robed figure. This can be in that sort of genre of These miracle stories, white robe figures can refer to any number of our kind of magical kind of beings, right? There is later on a white robe Guanyin. I imagine that people would have brought them together. But anyway, in our story, it's just somebody, some dream figure says you can avoid this fate if you chant what's just called there, the Guan Ying Sutra a thousand times. And so. And then it gives the Guanyin Sutra. So the Kanangyo part of Enmeijuko Kanangyo. He gives it. [00:18:01] Speaker C: He. [00:18:02] Speaker B: The saying he's. He. I don't know. The figure in the dream gives the. Gives the text which is almost precisely the Enmeijuku Kanangyo. I'll tell you at the end, there's one word that's different, but it's actually, interestingly, it's pronounced the same in Japanese. Wang wakes up the next morning, chants it a thousand times, is not killed, goes on to live a long life, dies in his 80s. That's the story, right? Of the. Of the. Of the Enmei Juku Kanangyo. What gets called so enmei, right? Life extending. I always wondered, why is it called a life extending? I said, is it just because it generates merit and it's good for us, you know? Good? Well, maybe not. Maybe it's exactly because of this story, right? And in other stories, later ones, it also is about preserving life. And so I brought up this merit idea, right? Because these things have blessings, they have power, they have good benefits, right? They save your life. Just like Kannon, right? Guanyin in the early, early versions, in this story, not one. Well, it's his at this point, his sutra, right? And in the most famous Avalo Guanyin Jing Kannon Sutra, which was a chapter of the. And still is a chapter of the Lotus Sutra, which is basically a collection of stories of Kannon saving people from drowning, from fires, from all kind of bad situations, right? This is what Kannon did and does, right? Saves people. And so here in this story, save somebody. Enmei juku, right? Shi ji in Chinese, right? 10 sentences, 10 claims, 10 phrases. However you want to take it, right? The later. The slightly later versions, it's called the Juku kanangyo, right? The 10 phrase Kanan Sutra, I guess, to distinguish it from the. From the much bigger one. So. So that's the story, right? Which I would just. We can talk about it later. You know, I want to switch to my part two of this talk. The text itself, but grew up in this world. Grew up. What's created in this world of Blessings, right? Of sutras. Save you, right? Save your lives. Literally, right? They have these powers and this is how it was understood, at least in some ways. [00:20:24] Speaker D: Right? [00:20:25] Speaker B: But so when we turn to the text itself, you know, it's. It's more interesting, right? It's different. It's not only that the texts are always different, are always more interesting, right? But anyway, let me, let me just go through the text, give you a rough translation, a rough literal translation of it. So it starts out as we know, Kanzeion, right? Which is one of the many different versions of the name of, Of Kannon, of Guanyin, Avalokiteshvara, Guan Shi' in, the Ze Kanzeon is the world, right? And you've probably heard that the name Avalokiteshvara in some understandings, not all, means to hear the cries of the world, right? Hear the sounds of the world. So that's the first line. Kanzeon, invocation of Guanyin. Then Namu butsu. Right. Then we have one of the most common of all lines in all Buddhist texts, right? Namu. Veneration to the Buddha. Right, Veneration to the Buddha. Honor to the Buddha. Then we have next lines. Yo Butso. U in and yo Butso. Un. Right, One word difference in and en. In and en together are causes, sometimes called the primary causes of what? Of everything. En are sometimes called the secondary causes or the conditions. The causes and conditions. With the Buddha, Yo Butsu. With the Buddha, there are the causes. Causes of what? It doesn't say. Causes of every. Of good, of Buddhahood, of awakening, of practice, of every good thing, no doubt. Yo Butso'. U. And with the Buddha there are the conditions, right? So the causes and conditions come from this connection with the Buddha, right? Then the next line, this is the one that's different in the original, but would be chanted exactly the same in Japanese as in our version. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Right? And again, conditions. So the conditions of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Question marks. I've never quite known how to translate this one. But in the old, the first version, the earliest version I found the so is not Sangha. It's this word which means mutually or together. And so in that case, it would be read something like the Buddha and Dharma condition each other, are the conditions for each other, which is interesting and quite different. Right? So the Buddha and the Dharma, they condition each other, or as in our version, the conditions of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. So I think of this part as part one. I have a three part understanding. I think it's fairly common to have a three part understanding of this text. And the first I think of as invocation, right? And kind of setting the scene. Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha in the house, right? You know, and then, and then our connection with them. Powerful, right? And then we have this line, my, you know, my favorite line. Both because it's so great to chant and for what it says. Joe Rakuga Joe, right? This again, as many of you will know, perhaps all of you know, these are four words, four separate concepts, right? Permanence or eternality, joy, happiness, self, essence perhaps, and pure purity. You might recognize these as the things that the world is not supposed to be, right? According to the original four marks of Buddhism. The four marks of existence, right? What are the marks of existence? First there are three. A four gets. Fourth gets added. Impermanent. The world is impermanent, right? Things are impermanent, right? Things. [00:24:38] Speaker C: Suffering. [00:24:38] Speaker B: There is suffering, right? And there is no self. There is non self, not self. However, we want to understand this, right? And then later on we have this idea of impurity which is added here. It's flipped, you know, it's. And we chant it, right? And this is the sort of, you know, again, I. I think I don't know how all of you feel, but I mean this, to me, this is like the real line in, in the text, right? Sure. You can really dig into this one, right? At least I feel that way. So what's going on there, right? Well, again, it's probably a fake. A fake, you know, reveal here for you. Cause you probably already all know this, but in, in Mahayana Buddhism, and it's starting especially in, although not in every text, but in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, one of the most important sutras, it does this, right? It flips things. It flips the whole thing on its head in this way. And you can. One way of understanding it is, well, from our normal kind of deluded perspective before awakening. So basically how I see the world is things are impermanent, things suck, right? Things, you know, I can't, you know, where's myself? You know, I was promised to my mom, said I had a self, where's myself, right? All that stuff, right? It's not there. And, but this says no, but from the perspective of the Buddhas, right? From the, from the, from what's called the true truth, right? Or, or true reality in the, in the two truths. In one version of the two truths, understanding, you know, my understanding, my deluded worldling understanding is wrong, right? Or it's it's not. It's not complete. You know, as I. I think in the last one of these scholar talks, I gave. I. I gave this image, very famous image, most famous probably from a text called the Awakening of Faith, of. Of water, ocean and wave, right? And so from the perspective of the waves, of phenomena like waves endlessly breaking, right? And the waves arise and fall. They're impermanent. They have no self, they have no essence, right? They're created by wind and tides and whatever the moon. And if attachment to any one form of the wave is causes suffering because it's endlessly going away, right? And that's if you're stuck in wave frame, right? But if you kind of step back and say, wait a minute, right, it's all the ocean. It's Lake Michigan, right? You know, you can just. It's just lake. It's always Lake Michigan. Then. Whoa. It's. It's permanent, right? It's. It's. There is something there we might call self, right? Perhaps big mind, big self. I know in Douglas, often in his talks he mentioned he invokes this and grounds for joy, right? Grounds for happiness. Grounds for a full embrace of waves, right? Of each passing wave. Because each passing wave is nothing other than the ocean, right? Okay. I don't know. That's a whole other talk. Sorry. So that's the. That's. To me, that's the sort of, you know, just like in the Heart Sutra. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. All that is is sort of the doctrinal main event, right? In my understanding, this is the. This is that for this text. And then we have a kind of an outro, but not a. But a very interesting one. Just like in the Heart Sutra, a very interesting one, right? We have. What do you. Well, a two part, right? What do you do. In the morning? Nen, right? N mean. It means both think on call to mind and chant, right? Nian kanze. In the morning, do this chant and bring to mind. In the evening, do this chant and bring to mind. Fair enough. Easy enough, right? But then we have these last two lines which are really, really interesting, right? Nen nen ju shinki nen nen Fudi shin nen nen. Each Nen each nenning. Right? Each bringing to mind, each chanting, Each chant follows from the mind or from the mind arises. Sorry, Literally from the. Arises from the mind. Our bringing to mind of Kanzeon, which is maybe what Kanzeon really is is none other. It comes from the mind. And then the last line, right? Furishin each nen, each thought, each chant, each bringing to mind each instantiation of Kanzeion. Perhaps Furishin is nothing, is not separate from the mind, is not apart from the mind. There's nothing other perhaps than mind. Right. That's an interesting end to this text. Chant it in the morning. Chant it to think, you know, in the evening. Bring Kanze onto mind in the morning and in the evening. And each time you do it, it's from the mind and it's not apart from mind. You know, I like to think. And here I'm just. This is my personal opinion, how I read it. You know, I like to connect it with this idea of practice and awakening. Right. There is no awakening, so I'm told apart from practice. Right. There is no Kanzeion. There is no apart from invocate from Kanzeoning. Right. And the Kanzeon only is there in the Kanzeoning. Sorry, this. I worry that that's some kind of a heretical way of putting things, but it's feeling good to me at the moment. So anyway, I could go on, but I wanted to have lots of room for conversation. Let me just look at my notes and see if I think that's good. I got other things, but let me stop there and ask for corrections and conversation. [00:30:29] Speaker C: Oh, thank you so much. And I think our surfers will go and get some tea for us and treats in the Zendo so we can have a long conversation with Paul. I wonder if people can hear me. [00:30:41] Speaker E: Maybe I'll hear my server. [00:30:43] Speaker D: I'm going to bring it on you, [00:30:45] Speaker C: Nicole, there's some experienced servers and Nina, you can go to. So I was just expressing gratitude to Paul. And this is so along the lines of our practice commitment period. You know, when you were talking about this, you know, all practices, this body, you know, like we read in Chong Lu, sitting like a stupa, you know, you become this Buddha body, but also in the nenning, you become the Buddha mind seal, you know, And I think. Thank you very much. I think you're. Yeah. And so this kind of Buddha mind seal or this mind, the fundamental mind, is awakening, but we won't get in too far into that. But of course you would. Yeah. Paul's other, another specialty, one of his many, is seals. But anyway, I know we're going around the room a little bit, so I wonder if anyone online has something to say to Paul while we're getting the room nourished. And please feel free to get tea and treats for yourself and David Ray. I think you'll Help us with online. [00:32:04] Speaker B: I will. [00:32:04] Speaker F: And so here in the room, I'll pass the microphone. If nobody online is ready with a question. I have one. But I see that Bryant has a question. [00:32:14] Speaker G: Yes, thank you. Can you hear me? [00:32:16] Speaker B: Yes. [00:32:17] Speaker G: First of all, Paul, amazing, wonderful talk. Thank you so much for sharing your obvious lifelong deep, passionate curiosity and scholarship. Lots to learn. For me it's more like an acknowledgement. One point that I've always found wonderful is that the Buddhist teachings can be this idea that they can be understood on multiple levels. You know, one possibly thousands of years ago on a literal level when people believed maybe in actual hells or heavens, but then it seems to have progressed in our era to a more psychological understanding of psychological mental states that we can invoke or transform our minds through these practices. And the idea that to save ourselves in the sense of doing these practices and transforming our own minds has ripple effects which can ripple out and save others by our. The fact of ourselves having changed ourselves through these practices, through what we do, sitting, chanting and the value, I think just on the face of it, of any of us learning that what we think of as reality can have these multiple layers of understanding seems to open up more compassion for others. If we confront others who believe differently than us, oh, maybe they're understanding at a different level or from a different context. I think that has amazing value. Maybe you could elaborate. Comment. [00:33:55] Speaker B: Well, thank you for the kind words and for what you just said. The also the idea that the shift, I don't know if that's the right word from the, from the kind of cosmological to the psychological. I mean this is one of one, one way in which I think that Buddhism, Zen has been so powerful. Right. I mean it's because it's so adaptable and to so many different basic takes on the world. Right? It can, I mean, that's one reason why, you know, we're here today. I think, I wonder too about, you know, when this sort of shift begins. I mean we have this, this sort of so called shift to the psychological. I mean it's a feature of course of early Chantext Zen text that the cosmological, the hells as being out there are. That is sort of like. Well, okay, but, but the real hell, what we're really talking about, right, Is let's know, let's. But yeah, I don't, I don't know exactly how to comment on or to elaborate on what you're saying, what you were saying, except to say that yeah, it sounds, sounds great and thanks for that. [00:35:13] Speaker F: Thank you so much for that. So there are two things that I've thought about this chant that I want to run by you because they weren't in your talk. And that's interesting to me. So the first is kind of at the level of language, sort of about the syntactical relation of two lines because. And Joe Rakugajo. [00:35:36] Speaker B: I had. Maybe I. [00:35:37] Speaker F: Maybe I picked this up from a. From a translation I saw, but I had taken it, that that was two clauses connected and that it means in like given a condition in which. Or like where Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Or maybe it's where Buddha and Dharma mutually are the conditions in that condition. As though there's an implicit Z. [00:35:58] Speaker B: You know. [00:35:59] Speaker F: In that condition there is. There are. Joe Rakuga and Joe. There are these things that look like the negations of the marks of existence. That was one thing. And then the other thing is the thought that those four marks are being shown up as empty. [00:36:17] Speaker B: Right. [00:36:17] Speaker F: That it's not that there's. It's not that there's not right. Impermanence, no self. But it. But it's that those things are empty. Don't get caught up on thinking that that's just a new dualism to latch onto. So those. Those are two things about the chant that. [00:36:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks. Both great. The first one. Yes. I mean, this is something that's troubled me. I mean these. As you will you have noticed it works in pairs. Right. It works in couplets. And I broke up that couplet, which can't be right. [00:36:48] Speaker H: And I. [00:36:49] Speaker B: One thing I felt. I've noticed in my thinking that since I discovered this alternate version of that line, of the first line of that couplet. If it's taking it as a couplet where so means mutually. Right. Buddha and Dharma condition each other and under those conditions. Joe Rakugajo. Right. So I. I like that. And I. I certainly take your point and. And will Brutal reconsider. Right. That I. I want to just leave that middle line out because you know the Joe Akago as its own. [00:37:23] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:37:24] Speaker B: Because it just can't. I don't think it can work that way. As you say syntactically, generically. Right. In all different ways. That's right. The second one. What was the second one again? [00:37:35] Speaker F: Well, the thought that Joe Rapun guideline was asserting the emptiness of the four marks of existence. [00:37:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that's an interesting reading. The fact that it's such. So closely connected with a stream of Mahayana thinking originating or at least exemplified in the Mahapar Nirvana Sutra makes me sort of lean toward the side of the picture I gave. I'll also say, and this is. I don't know what to make of this, but if it's true that. And this is from a 13th century account of a 5th century thing. So, you know, who knows? But if it's true that this text did arise in the year 450 in the liaison State Liu Song dynasty, that those. That year, those few years were. That were a period of, it seems, well, what's called the southern translation of the Mahabhar Nirvana Sutra, which was simply a kind of a revision of the earlier translation of it. And so I wonder, and I was going to say this in the talk and I forgot, but I'm glad I have a chance to hear, but expect, you know, I don't know what to make of it. I can't really nail it down, but I think it's a interesting possibility. It's an interesting possibility that the Enmei Juku Kanangyo arose or came out of this same sort of renewed fascination with the Mahaparna Mahasud. So I don't know if that's true, but I think it's something to think about. [00:39:05] Speaker C: I wanted to underscore this interesting tidbit that the pronunciation of so or the character could have been lost in translation or changed in translation. Right. Like in Chinese, when it's chanted now, do they use the character for, you know, I don't know. This is the Japanese, right? [00:39:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:29] Speaker C: Appropriating the Chinese. So. So it's just interesting how it's so easy. And I've mentioned this before, that what we hear, like that story of Suzuki Roshi where somebody asked him about the Robe chant and said, what does it mean? And he says, love. That's what the person heard. Mal Whiteson heard that. But later people thought, well, maybe he was actually saying robe because that's how robe and love, to native Japanese speaker when they're speaking English sound the same. So we can easily in some ways go awry or astray, but also come right back home to the true dharma. [00:40:11] Speaker B: Well, manuscript cultures are filled with these kind of things. [00:40:14] Speaker C: Yeah. It's interesting, though. [00:40:16] Speaker B: Now, there are questions over here. [00:40:19] Speaker I: Thank you for the talk. First of all, this is not necessarily something that you touched on, but something you might know. Why, when we are chanting this, do we just pick up the pace every round? [00:40:34] Speaker B: I don't know. I know that. I know that. I don't know. I don't know why. Can I say quickly that you Asked about the Chinese. I don't know that it is chanted. Someone said that. Did David say this, that. That Shengyan has kind of reintroduced it? Yeah, because it, it's in Japanese. It's so good. Yeah, it's so good in Mandarin anyway. It's not. I mean, it's. It's okay. I mean, it makes. [00:40:58] Speaker C: It makes sense. [00:40:59] Speaker B: And I like saying it in Chinese in Mandarin because it makes sense to me. I get it. It's like, okay, yeah, but in my. You know, I don't really speak Japanese, but it, it's not as. It doesn't have in Japanese. It's just, wow, it's such a great text to chant. [00:41:12] Speaker C: So. [00:41:12] Speaker B: But anyway, that's not going to answer the question. I don't know why Hougetsu. We have Taigen online. Someone will maybe know. I don't know. But it's good to do it, isn't it? [00:41:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I have the magic mic. I. I don't know if I have a question here, but. But I'm tying some things together mentally and maybe you can facilitate that. We know that the fruits of practice are not what we think they're going to be when we start practicing. And it seems like the Lotus Sutra is all about that, you know, filled with those kind of stories like the father who, you know, entices his children out of a burning building with, you know, stories about go carts and stuff. And I connecting that now, I guess in my mind with this. I actually never really knew the translation for this. So this is all this. It's all mind blowing. Thank you very much. But the. I'm connecting this with kind of the. The universal gateway of Kanzeon Bodhisattva, part of the Lotus Sutra and how we don't really think when we are bringing Kanzeion to mind that, you know, we're going to get our wallet back after someone has stolen it. But, but I, But I like that maybe we can use this sutra as a way of aligning our minds with Kanzeon and with practice and as a. As a reminder that like, okay, we're not in this state, but we can. We can align ourselves with this state. And maybe it's just really a coincidence that the guy who didn't get. The general who didn't get killed didn't get killed. You know, we. [00:42:52] Speaker B: It's. [00:42:52] Speaker A: It's like another Lotus Sutra story. [00:42:54] Speaker B: Yeah, but. [00:42:54] Speaker A: But if we believe that maybe we will, you know, find a way to align ourselves and use this as like a little practice tool or something. [00:43:02] Speaker B: Yeah, the the idea that you might get your, you know, find your lost wallet if you chant. I mean, this, this, these are live ideas in, you know, in traditional Buddhist cultures even today, for sure, but not, I think, for, not, not for me. Right. [00:43:15] Speaker C: And, well, and. [00:43:16] Speaker A: Right, but. And there are schools within Buddhist culture that do chant for things like in, you know, in, in Soka Gakkai. But, but I guess maybe that's one key difference between Soka Gakkai and Zen Buddhism is that we are chanting for something else. [00:43:32] Speaker B: Not only Zen. Sure. But. Yeah, there are, there, there are, there are different styles. Right. There are different streams. And you can see this throughout the tradition. I mean, in this book on dharani I wrote long time ago now, you know, I talk about it even with them. I mean, there are, there are some texts, some discourses, let's say practices that require absolute mental focus and purity of ethical purity and actual physical cleanliness before you chant, otherwise they won't work. And then there's a whole others that just say no. I mean, you just, you, you carve this thing on a, on a, on a pillar and you put it on a hilltop and anybody who catches a glimpse of it or the wind comes off of it, so you, you're going to get exactly, exactly the same benefits as if you had done those other things. This is a very old split in Buddhism. [00:44:26] Speaker A: You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you'll find you get what you need. [00:44:32] Speaker B: The Lotus Sutra teaches us. [00:44:36] Speaker H: Paul, if I may, just a question. You know, as a theology student, I think the hermeneutics of this, you know, what was the purpose of the people who wrote this and how does that play into how it's interpreted? Different ways, you know, because there, you know, could be that they're just saying they're, it's literal or it could be that they're trying to influence their audience. You know, there was a. What was the purpose of them when they wrote this? [00:45:03] Speaker B: I mean, I, I wish I knew. That is my question. So this is why I, this is why I tried to give this sort of general, you know, here they're kind of assumptions about how Buddhist ritual works, right. And how texts work. And we know, you know, at least there, the story I gave you about this general. I mean, there's just lots, not just in the Lotus Sutra, but what's called miracle tale literature, is nothing but these kinds of stories. However, when you, as I then said, as we, when we actually look at the text, right. It's very interesting, right? It's making points, right? It's making what we could call doctrinal points, philosophical points, however you want to talk about them. It's making claims about the nature of reality that are quite different within a ritual, within a religious, theological discourse. That's quite different or could be seen as quite different from this sort of, you know, I need. I'm going to be killed tomorrow. I need. I need an out. Right. Something like that. Right? So these, again, they're. Am I saying. I'm not saying. Am I not saying that the people who wrote it in this very interesting way, very philosophically, doctrinally sophisticated way, that they would have been unhappy that the text was then immediately used for these other kinds of purposes? No, I don't think so. I mean, this is the tradition. I mean, there's a great book by Donald Lope, Don Lopez, Donald S. Lopez Jr. I think he's always in print. He has two books on the Heart Sutra. The second one especially is really great in my, My. In my view, in part because he goes through all the. The sort of. The Heart Sutra as a. What's the term when you want to get rid of demons? The exorcist as an exorcistic text. Right. It was used and is used today for those purposes. Right. And not just the Heart Sutra, Buddhist text. Right. All, you know, the most interestingly, philosophically interesting texts were used to expel demons. Right. And so these are. They're both there. I mean, this is kind of what I was hoping to gesture at anyway, in the talk. Thank you. [00:47:15] Speaker C: I was wondering, did you have something? Yeah, yeah, a bit. But I'd also like us to chant this too, so maybe ask your questions and then we can feel it in our bodies. [00:47:27] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:47:28] Speaker J: I was just. I really loved your point on Kenze Awning, and I've been recently reading Uchiyama's book Perceiver the Sounds of the World, where I feel like it really emphasizes this idea of the devotional side and the embodied practice or sitting side, as so intertwined. There's no, there's no real difference that the heartfelt, which. It's just coming to mind as you're talking about, that the originators wouldn't have felt at issue with this because that the heartfelt recitation is an invocation of practice, is the practice, is the settling into. [00:48:09] Speaker B: And. Yeah, that's how I see it. Yeah. Thank you. [00:48:15] Speaker D: Yeah, thank you so much for your talk. You know, I'm unlike many Zen students, I am not interested in. In the scholarship per se, but. And I've been chanting this particular thing for decades. Basically have no idea what it means, but I know how it feels. Right. [00:48:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:36] Speaker D: So it's so great to, you know, like, hear a talk like yours and. And just have all these. These things open up and, you know, meaning kind of cascade forth from, you know, the information that I'm hearing. Because I've stayed out of concepts for a long time and practiced this chant. Chanted this chant. So it's. It's just. It's so interesting. I mean, thank you so much. I really appreciate all the scholars because I learned so much, but I just don't do it on my own, you know. So thank you. [00:49:11] Speaker B: Thank you for that. I would just say quickly, because I know we want to chant, that this brings us into this whole other side, Right. Which I didn't talk about, but thank you for bringing up of the sound. Right. Of the doing of the embodiedness of it, the bodily ness of it. Right. And of course, this is a big part when people think about Dharanis. Dharanis. And why you don't translate them. Some of them can be translated, at least in part, but we don't never or very rarely. And we chant the Heart Sutra in Japanese, right. Even though we have an English. Chanted in English too. Right? And that's very different, right. At least for me, when you chant it in a language that. I mean, the Heart Sutra anyway, take a. In a language you don't speak, right? When it's just the sound, right? And it's been sort of honed for the sound. And it's been. The rhythm has been honed, right? So that you can really. We have the mokogyo, right? The wooden fish there. That. That's what that means, wooden fish. [00:50:12] Speaker C: Right? [00:50:13] Speaker B: And you know, that's all a huge part of it, right? I mean, I. That's. That's why I, you know, that's why I come. That's why. That's why I roll in here, you know, for that. For sitting and for the chanting, you know, And I like, you know, just another quick thing. Sorry. But if Japanese chanting, Korean chanting, Chinese chanting, they're very different. They're so different. Chinese chanting is more like singing in my. And I, I, you know, first encountered chanting in. In American Zen. And I knew this very Japanese kind of boom, boom, boom, boom. And I was living in Taiwan, I went to a temple and they started chanting, and I was kind of girding myself for that. And it was like, wow, it's this most beautiful singing kind of thing. And. And Korean is. It's kind of. Interestingly, it's kind of in between. Right. It has more kind of rhythmic drive, at least to my ear, but it's also more melodic. And so that aspect of the kind of musical, rhythmic aspects of it all is. So it's really the most important thing. Right. In so many ways. [00:51:13] Speaker D: That's how it would work, right? [00:51:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:15] Speaker D: Vibration. [00:51:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:16] Speaker D: It doesn't work in the metal. [00:51:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:18] Speaker D: It's an energy. [00:51:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:22] Speaker C: Blake is going. [00:51:22] Speaker B: Hi. [00:51:23] Speaker E: Yeah, thank you for your talk. Kind of going in relation to this and the oral history of it and that the Heart Siddro was written down and that you were talking about some chance not being written down. I know this is a part of translating or writing down. Oral history or not. [00:51:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:40] Speaker E: So instead of. Why was it written down? How. Like, who was the. If there was another scribe or if there was controversy and why did it. Why did this one get allowed to be written compared to the chants that are not allowed? [00:51:57] Speaker B: Well, it's not. I didn't. I didn't. I'm sorry if I said they weren't written or weren't allowed to be written. But translating. Right. It's a written culture. Right. Especially throughout East Asia. I mean, deeply so. And, you know, and in South Asia, too, from the early period, those texts just don't survive because they were written on leaf. [00:52:16] Speaker C: Did you have something? [00:52:17] Speaker B: Not immediately. [00:52:17] Speaker C: Okay. But you have a question. Yeah. So, David, could you allow Andy's. [00:52:21] Speaker B: Oh, thank you. They were written on leaves. Right. And the leaves just don't. Didn't last. But the question of what texts survive, Right. No chance. [00:52:32] Speaker C: What? [00:52:32] Speaker E: It starts with a chant. The tradition starts, and the chant was written. [00:52:37] Speaker B: So I don't know. There's. So if you. If you believe the dream story, he's told it in a dream. It's not written down. And he then chants it, and there's no text. He's memorized it. And then. Yeah, somebody must have written. Assuming that story is true, somebody must have written it down. How actually were these texts done? I mean, you know, it's. I guess it's like, I don't know. Here's a crazy statement. Don't. Don't ever tell. Hey, my colleagues, I say this. Maybe it's like songwriting or something, right? I mean, maybe you have the tune first, right? I don't know. I mean, I don't know how they were. The actual process of writing dharanes or writing texts. Writing chants, as you rightly emphasize. I, I. You know, I did spend a lot of My life on thinking about these on dotanates. But I don't. I can't think of any instances of the. The. The writing of one. The kind of. So I feel like I'm giving it. I'm not giving a good answer to what you're wanting, but it's. [00:53:41] Speaker E: It's more like what, you know, how was the process? [00:53:44] Speaker B: Yeah, how was the process? Indeed. [00:53:45] Speaker E: Not literally. [00:53:47] Speaker B: It's just like. Was it disguised? Was it. [00:53:49] Speaker C: Well, that's. I mean, I think, like, maybe one of the things you might be pointing to is who decides what is kept and what has dominant power within any tradition. Which is also very interesting and maybe beyond the scope of this talk today. But I think it's, you know, I mean, just this comes to mind, the lineage chart where I'm the only female in that chart. So somebody decided to blunt on it. And eventually I snuck in. But, you know, but it's something to think about who decides what is. Whatever. But also sometimes it's just a catchy tune like Paul said. But I think, Andy, you wanted to say something, so. [00:54:34] Speaker I: Thank you. Thanks, Paul. That was a little window into what is clearly a huge world. I've been reading a little bit Bodhidharma lately and makes a point in there kind of over and over. Like, it's. You have to see your. Your own nature. [00:54:51] Speaker B: It's. [00:54:51] Speaker I: You know, if you don't see your nature, this is all. You're. You're wasting your time. I'm kind of wondering about the relationship between chanting and producing merit and kind of is that seen as a way to. Is there a relationship there to seeing our own nature? Is that a way to see our nature? Or is this kind of like parallel tracks, like do your zaza and to see your nature and do this to kind of produce merit? [00:55:16] Speaker B: I mean, that's. That's the question, right? And I gave a picture where they're kind of parallel tracks, right? But. But happy neighbors. And not just neighbors, but, you know, people sometimes do one. They do. People would have done both, right. Just as we do. You know, I feel like this is a moment when I can say, you know, this is not a. Not a question for the scholar in the room. We can ask one of our teachers, [00:55:40] Speaker C: being a scholar, do you have a sense of this? [00:55:43] Speaker B: I mean, I feel. I think, as others have been saying, there is something. They are together, right? They're one thing, right? It's the practice. Right? And, you know, whatever seeing the nature could be, right, It's. It must be there in all. In all Activities. Right. We say. We say sitting Zen, standing Zen, walking Zen, lying down Zen, chanting Zen, doing the dishes Zen, driving home Zen. Right. So that would. That's my. This is my faith that it's like this. Right. And that's why I try to do it, what we do here. I hope that's helpful. [00:56:21] Speaker C: We can see our experience of it and maybe do some chanting Zen now. Yeah. Maybe you could bring the. Let's chant now. Okay. You've already talked about later. And Howard could lead us off, but I think we might need your. The so in our chant work on some. If it's not in your mind already and heart already. It's a wondrous Enmei Juku kanangyo. And could you put this a little closer to Howard? So we'll chant it seven times. Yeah, that's fine. [00:57:04] Speaker D: Okay. [00:57:07] Speaker B: 2676, [00:58:23] Speaker D: Sam. [00:59:28] Speaker C: So thank you very much, Paul, for helping us engage deeply with this wonderful and major crude kanangyo, this connection to this great Bodhisattva of compassion. And I think maybe what we'll do now is have our cups and anything else collected by our wonderful servers. Thank you so much. I think maybe while that's happening, before we do, we usually do our announcements. Usually do our announcements at the after, Paul, the speaker does their ending vows, but I think we'll just end with the four vows, and I'll do announcements now. I think everyone knows about the jukai that I mentioned earlier. At 2pm it'll be hybrid in the zendo. There'll be a reception afterwards for our shuso Jerry, and our work leader, Jake, who will receive the bodhisattva precepts. And they'll receive the rakasu that they gave back to Aishin. I'll get it back. There'll be a shuso way seeking mind tomorrow evening after zazen and service. And so the shuso will tell us about her practice journey so far. And next Sunday is Buddha's birthday already. And so we will be bathing the baby Buddha. So please come for that. We'll have a little bit of Dharma talk and a little bit of baby Buddha bathing. And if it's a nice day, maybe we'll even do the bathing outside and have the reception outside. We'll see. But there'll be a little reception, too. So we're having a lot of activities these days. And then on the 12th, Sunday, April 12th, our great practitioner Paula will have a departure ceremony as she returns to the marketplace, so to speak. And so we will have that. We'll have a little Bit of discussion and then ceremony for Paula on the 12th. And I would like to just mention many of you know that the sendo at Tassajara burned a few days ago. Fortunately, it seems, as far as I know, so far, all humans were intact. But it's pretty startling to see that zendo where many of us have sat, including Tigen and so. And that zendo was a temporary zendo which replaced another zendo that had been burned to the ground in 1978. And our dharma friend, Paul Disko supervised the building of the new zendo as a temporary zendo that lasted 48 years. And this sendo was supposed to be like a six month temporary sendo. And we're, I don't know, getting close to year four, but we will. We have scheduled a sangha week to another temple, Green Gulch Farm of San Francisco Zen Center, August 19th to 23rd. And so there's a flyer out, there's info online if you're interested. A group of us will come and hang at Green Gulch. And some of us have been there previously, so that will happen later in the summer. And I think that's probably enough announcement for us for today. And after. Yeah, Teigen has a hand up with [01:03:05] Speaker B: something to say, just that I will be available for people online if you want to briefly, you know, have some discussion after the regular period. [01:03:19] Speaker C: So we'll make. After we finish sitting, Tigun will be the host so people online can congregate and speak together. But I think what we'll do now is we'll do the bodhisattva vows. After the vows are done, we'll stand up and bow out together. After we arrange our seats and then we'll proceed. Those who wish to stay for work, period, we'll go do a little cleanup and prep maybe for the jukai. That will happen this afternoon. So at this point, I'll just maybe say goodbye to everybody online who I'm facing, because this laptop's gonna go away. And may our intention equally extend. So this is a dedication of merit, a transfer of meri to every being in place with the true wonder of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless. We vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. We vow to cut through them. Dharma gave us our boundaries, we vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. We vow to realize it. [01:04:53] Speaker D: We are blessed, we are delusions are inexhaustible. We go through the. Realize that. Are inexhaustible. We cut through them. We to enter them realize it.