Upper Valley Zen Center
  • About Us
  • Newsletter
  • Schedule
  • Contact/Find Us
  • Intro to Zen
  • Donate
  • COMMENTARY
  • Retreats
  • Guiding Principles
  • Family Zen
  • CHANTS
  • Morning Protocol
  • Study Texts
  • Newsletter
  • New Page
  • About Us
  • Newsletter
  • Schedule
  • Contact/Find Us
  • Intro to Zen
  • Donate
  • COMMENTARY
  • Retreats
  • Guiding Principles
  • Family Zen
  • CHANTS
  • Morning Protocol
  • Study Texts
  • Newsletter
  • New Page

STUDY TEXTS

This page will be used for sharing texts used in UVZC Study Groups.   People are welcomed to attend Study Group sessions without advance reading.  Texts are presented here for use on Zoom calls or for further reading. 

Shinjinmei

SONG OF MANIFESTING TRUE SELF
Attributed to Sen-tsan, regarded as the Third Ancestor of Zen, living in China in the latter part of the sixth century and early seventh century. This translation combines aspects of one by Amaranatho, with another from Seminar on the Sutras, Cornell University, 1980.
​
  1. The Perfect Way knows no difficulties
    Except that it refuses to make preferences. Only when freed from hate and love,
    It reveals itself fully and without disguise.
    A tenth of an inch’s difference,
    And heaven and earth are set apart.
    If you wish to see it before your own eyes, Have no fixed thoughts either for or against it.
  2. To set up what you like against what you dislike –
    This is the disease of the mind.

    When the deep meaning of the Way is not understood,
    Peace of mind is disturbed to no purpose.
  3. The Way is perfect like unto vast space,
    With nothing wanting, nothing superfluous.
    It is indeed due to making choice
    That its suchness is lost sight of.
  4. Pursue not the outer entanglements,
    Dwell not in the inner void,

    Be serene in the oneness of things,
    And (dualism) vanishes by itself.
  5. When you strive to gain quiescence by stopping motion, The quiescence thus gained is ever in motion.
    As long as you tarry in the dualism,
    How can you realize oneness?
  1. And when oneness is not thoroughly understood,
    In two ways loss is sustained:

    The denying of reality is the asserting of it,
    And the asserting of emptiness is the denying of it.
  2. Wordiness and intellection-
    The more with them, the further astray we go.
    Away therefore with wordiness and intellection,
    And there is no place where we cannot pass freely,
  3. When we return to the root, we gain the meaning.
    When we pursue external of objects, we lose the reason.
    The moment we are awakened within,
    We go beyond the voidness of a world confronting us.
  4. Transformations going on in an empty world which confronts us
    Appear real all because of ignorance.
    Try not to seek after the true,
    Only cease to cherish opinions.
  5. Abide not with dualism
    Carefully avoid pursuing it.

    If there is even a trace of this and that, of like and dislike,
    Confusion ensues, and Mind is lost.
  6. The two exist because of the One.
    But hold not even to this one.

    When a mind is not disturbed,
    The ten thousand things offer no offence.
  7. No offense offered and no ten thousand things.
    No disturbance going and no mind set up to work
    The subject is quieted when the object ceases.
    The object ceases when the subject is quieted.
  8. The object is an object for the subject,
    The subject is a subject for the object.
    Know that the relativity of the two
    Rests ultimately on one emptiness.
  1. In one emptiness the two are not distinguished,
    And each contains in itself all the ten thousand things.
    When no discrimination is made between this and that,
    How can a once-sided and prejudiced views arise?
  2. Clinging is never kept with bounds.
    It is sure to go the wrong way.

    Quit it and things follow their own courses
    While the essence neither departs nor abides.
  3. Obey the nature of things and you are in concord with the Way,
    Calm, and easy and free from annoyance.
    But when your thoughts are tied, you turn away from the truth
    They grow heavier and duller and are not at all sound.
  4. When they are not sound, the spirit is troubled.
    What is the use of being partial and one-sided?
    If you want to walk the course of the One Vehicle,
    Be not prejudiced against the six sense objects.
  5. When you are not prejudiced against the six sense-objects,
    You are one with the awakening.

    The wise strive to no goals
    While in the ignorant bind themselves up.
    Though in the Dharma there is no individuation
    They ignorantly attach themselves to particular objects.
    It is their own mind that creates illusions:
    Is this not the greatest of all contradictions?
  6. The ignorant cherish the idea of rest and unrest.
    The awakened have no likes and dislikes.
    All forms of dualism
    Are contrived by the ignorant themselves.

    They are like visions and flowers in the air.
    Why should we trouble ourselves to take hold of them?
    Gain and loss, like and dislike –
    Away with them once and for all!
  1. If an eye never falls asleep,
    All dreams will by themselves cease.

    If the Mind retains its absoluteness,
    The ten thousand things are of one Suchness.
  2. When the deep mystery of one Suchness is fathomed
    All of a sudden we forget the external entanglements.
    When the ten thousand things are viewed in their oneness,
    We return to the origin and remain where we have ever been.
  3. Forget the wherefore of things,
    And we attain a state beyond analogy.
    Movement stopped and there is no movement.
    Rest set in motion and there is no rest.
    When dualism does no more obtain,
    Oneness itself abides not.
  4. At the ultimate end of things where they cannot go any further
    No law or description applies.

    In the Mind harmonious (with the Way)
    All self-centered striving ceases
    Doubts and irresolutions vanish
    And life in true faith is possible.
  5. There is nothing left behind.
    There is nothing retained 

    All is empty, clear, and self-illuminating.
    There is no exertion, no waste of energy.
    This is where thinking never attains.
    This is where the imagination fails to measure
  6. In the realm of true Suchness
    There is neither “self” or “other.”

    To come directly into harmony with this reality
    We can only say, “Not two.”
  7. In being “not two,” all is the same.
    All that is, is comprehended in it.

    The wise in all realms,
    All enter into this Absolute Reason.
  1. This Absolute Reason is beyond time and space.
    For it, one instant is ten thousand years.
    Whether we see it or not,
    It is manifest everywhere in all directions.
  2. Infinitely small and infinitely large:
    No difference, for definitions have vanished
    What is, is the same as what is not
    What is not is the same as what is.
    Where this state of things fails to obtain,
    Indeed, no tarrying there.
  3. One in all, All in one.
    If only this is realized
    No more worry about your not being perfect!
  4. Where Mind and believing mind are not divided,
    ​And undivided are believing mind and Mind,
    This is where words fail,
    For it is not of the past, the present and the future. 

TEISHO for study.


 TEISHO                                                                                            Joshu Sasaki
​
…when we define what Buddhism is, we say very  clearly that Buddhism
 is the manifestation of the heart of compassion. 
 
Then we are faced with the problem of what compassion actually is. All 
of you love to say that we can’t live without love, and Buddhism also 
says that. Buddhism says of itself that there is no Buddhism other than 
the activity of true love.
 
Then what is the activity of true love? If we very carefully analyze the 
activity of love, we see that it is comprised of two activities. In 
Buddhism we use the word ji-hi to describe the activity of love. 
Each of those syllables represents a separate activity, so we can speak 
of the ji activity of love and the hi activity of love.
 
The Chinese character pronounced ji corresponds to the Sanskrit word 
karuna. Karuna is the activity of love within the process of living. It 
is the living activity of love. As we do our living activity, we meet up 
with all sorts of hardships and troubles and problems. Our struggles and 
hardships obstruct our doing of the living activity. The karuna love, 
the ji love, this kind of activity of love is the activity of love which 
removes those obstructions from our living activity.
 
What kind of activity can obstruct our living activity? It’s, of course, 
the dying activity that gets in the way of the living activity. Who is 
it that can help us overcome the dying activity that we encounter as we 
strive to do living? Who is it who can help us overcome our obstructions 
so that we can complete the living activity? Although the answer is very 
startling, we say that it is the dying activity itself that helps the 
living activity in order to complete the living activity.
 
It is death that obstructs life, and yet we also say that it is the dying 
activity who is the helper, who helps the living activity complete 
itself. It isn’t easy to truly manifest the wisdom that can grasp this 
principle.
 
What about the hi love? What about the love of the dying activity? In 
just the same way as we encounter difficulties when we strive to do the 
living activity, we also encounter difficulties when we must do dying. 
We dislike dying. And yet, it is said in Buddhism that undoubtedly we 
will do the dying activity until we don’t need to do dying anymore. It 
should go without saying that that which obstructs the dying activity is 
the living activity.
 
However, according to Tathagata Zen, inevitably the dying activity will 
be led to the condition in which dying doesn’t need to be done anymore. 
And who is it who leads the dying activity to the state of complete 
death? That is the living activity. The living activity transforms 
itself and leads dying to the condition where dying doesn’t need to be 
done anymore.
 
The two fundamental opposing activities of tatha-gata and tatha-agata do 
seem to get in each other’s way, do seem to obstruct each other.  But 
they also mutually help each other, and through helping each other, the 
conditions of completed life and completed death are arrived at. The 
teaching of Buddhism concludes that whenever both tatha-gata (“thus come”)
and tatha-agata (“thus gone”) are completely made content, that being who
has made them completely its content is in a state of neither needing to live nor 
needing to die.
 
Buddhism says that when it comes to these conditions of not needing to 
either live or die, there are two: There’s the condition in which the 
living activity is leading, being aided by the dying activity, which 
culminates in the condition of complete life; and there’s also the 
condition where the dying activity leads, being helped by the living 
activity which ends in the condition of completed dying.
 
Tathagata Zen implores you to sit firmly in your zazen and contemplate 
without mistake that the condition of perfect living.  Completed living is 
the condition in which living has been done to the extent that it doesn’t 
need to be done anymore. And the state of perfect death is the state 
that has been reached when dying doesn’t need to be done anymore.
Buddhism further teaches that it is these very same two activities of 
tatha-gata and tatha-agata who are always acting together. Whether it’s 
on the side of the process of living or on the side of the process of 
dying, they always are bringing into being both the perfect self, the 
self that is the complete self, and the imperfect self over and over 
again.
 
To study these two activities of tathagata and tatha-agata from the point 
of view of knowing, from the point of view of conceptualizing, is what’s 
called Zen Studies. Tathagata Zen very sternly and strictly reminds us 
that it’s not possible to do this kind of studying without an ‘I am’
self. The self who lives inevitably will manifest a condition where 
living doesn’t need to be done anymore. The self who dies will 
undoubtedly manifest the state where dying doesn’t need to be done 
anymore. To learn and study this principle is Zen study.
 
Buddhism calls the activity of tatha-gata and tatha-agata together when 
it bundles them together into one activity, it calls that activity the 
Dharma activity, Dharma nature, Dharma-ta 
 
All of you don’t know that this is the point of view of what’s called 
Buddhist studies or Zen studies because you haven’t done Buddhist or Zen 
studies. You’ve been brought up in a so-called religious atmosphere, in 
a religious culture, not a Buddhist one. Without first doing any 
Buddhist studies or Zen studies and simply directly entering into trying 
to practice Zen, of course that’s difficult.
 
If you study Buddhism or Zen first, and then enter Zen practice, it 
becomes a little bit more interesting, a little bit easier. But without 
doing any study and just jumping right into Zen which is the practice of 
Buddhist principles, which is the doing of Buddhist principles, it’s 
natural that that is very difficult for you.
 
However, Tathagata Zen also says that it’s difficult to study the 
principles of Buddhism or Zen from the point of view of the ‘I am’ self, 
and actually, oppositely, to practice first, to try to experience first, 
is easier. Why?
 
The reason why it’s so difficult to grasp Zen or Buddhism from the point 
of view of studying it, from the ‘I am’ perspective is that, no matter 
how much you study, no matter how much you learn from the point of view 
of the ‘I am’  self, you will not be able to experience the dissolution of 
that ‘I am’ self. You will not be able to truly understand the origin of 
that ‘I am’ self, where it comes from and where it goes to. You won’t 
truly be able to know that your original self is absolute space, is the 
great cosmos itself. Even if you learn the idea that your origin is 
absolute space, is the great cosmos, it is only by appealing to practice 
itself, to experience itself, that you can really know that.
 
Tathagata Zen names the original condition your “original face.”  That 
original self means that originally there is no ‘I am’. It isn’t that 
there is no original self, it is simply that if you’re attached to your 
‘I am’ self, you will never be able to know the original condition. What 
we say in Tathagata Zen is that if you unquestioningly, unconditionally, 
uncritically affirm your ‘I am’, and then from that point of view study, 
no matter how much you study Zen or Buddhism, you will never be able to 
truly grasp the wisdom that knows your origin.
 
All of you, when you encounter a talk or a teaching that affirms the 
self, at once you think, “Oh, that’s a good teacher. That’s a wonderful 
teaching.” And you’re very impressed. However, teachings that negate 
the self immediately cause you to respond, “What a stupid guy. 
He doesn’t know anything. What a dumb and boring and uninteresting 
talk.”  You reject teachings that negate the self.
 
The teaching of Tathagata Zen takes as its subject of investigation, what 
is the true self and what is the nature of the ‘I am’ self. You all have 
already experienced that every single thing, every single existence does 
both the activity of being born and the activity or dying. Every single 
existence does both the activity of appearing and the activity of being 
hidden. The teaching of Tathagata Zen asserts that there certainly is no 
activity other than those two fundamental opposing activities. There is 
no existence apart from those activities.
 
When I speak, I often just use the simple expressions ‘plus’ and 
‘minus’ to express these two mutually opposing fundamental activities. 
Buddhism says that both the plus activity and the minus activity are 
acting without will. To act will-lessly means that these two activities 
are not doing the function of knowing as they act. The teaching of 
Tathagata Zen says that the world of pure plus and minus is a world in 
which the self who does knowing, the self who has concepts, has not yet 
appeared. Therefore it is a world that has no knowing.
 
Therefore, the point of view in which the function of knowing has 
appeared is the world of the ‘I am’.  Why is it that this strange and 
mysterious existence which calls itself ‘I am’ has been manifest from the 
pure world of plus and minus that has no knowing? Tathagata Zen says 
that you must make this your personal problem, your question.
 
…You can’t say that you’ve studied my Zen until youÕve manifested the
wisdom for yourselves that really understands the principle of birth and the
principle of disappearance. Listen carefully to this teaching which teaches
about this great being that we call “the great cosmos!”  This great cosmic being i
s brought into being through the activities of plus and minus and it also 
dissolves through those same two activities.
 
The first person who taught about the nature of the cosmos in this way 
was the founder of Buddhism, the young man Siddhartha. He taught that 
the very nature of this cosmos is to have two opposing activities of plus 
and minus as its content, doing a repetitive functioning of on the one 
hand, totally unifying with each other, and on the other hand, separating 
from each other.
 
The enlightened one, the one who was enlightened into the very way of 
being of this universe taught that when plus and minus separate from each 
other, in between them, when man and woman separate from each other, in 
between them is born imperfect space. English is a very inadequate 
language to express this. I’m told often that German is a much better 
language to express this idea of imperfect space. In Buddhism we have 
two words for space.  ‘Kukan’ expresses imperfect space.
‘Koku’ means perfect, complete space, the condition which is beyond all 
comparison, the one and only place that there is. That means the perfect 
universe. We also call it the manifestation of zero. 
 
You can say that the plus world is the world of brightness and light. 
The minus world is the world of utter blackness or darkness. When those 
two worlds, the world of brightness and light and the world of utter 
blackness become one, thatÕs the world that can be neither called light 
nor dark. That’s the world that is completely inexpressible.
 
All of you live in the daytime in the world of light, and at night you 
enter the world of darkness, but the great cosmos itself is always 
manifesting itself in the condition which is neither darkness nor light. 
The very nature of the condition of the origin, the condition of the 
origin of light and darkness, is an activity, in which tatha-gata and 
tatha-agata are repeating over and over again, on the one hand, being 
completely one with each other and, on the other, being distinct from each 
other but not separate from each other.
 
Buddhism calls this the original condition of space. So, in fact, the 
original condition is acting.  It is an activity.  Brightness and 
darkness are acting with each other, but they never separate within 
absolute, perfect space.
 
However, there will undoubtedly be a time, as I’ve told you, where 
brightness and darkness do separate from each other. When plus and minus 
do separate, that is when imperfect space is manifest in between them. 
And as I always tell you, Buddhism teaches that that imperfect space is 
the very foundation of any existence. Where did the imperfect space come 
from?  Buddhism very kindly and carefully teaches that the minus activity 
who forms the world of minus and the plus activity who forms the world of 
plus give a part of themselves in order to form that imperfect space.
 
…Carefully contemplate that the foundation of the ‘I am’ self is imperfect 
space. It has plus and minus imperfectly, incompletely as its content, 
and therefore there are plus and minus outside of itself that is not its 
content. At the same time as the birth of the ‘I am’ self, plus and 
minus also appear. This is a frightening situation. The moment the self 
is born, right then plus and minus also are manifest. But you must very 
carefully contemplate that the plus and minus who are manifest, the plus 
and minus that appear are not the perfect, complete activities of plus 
and minus because they have given part of themselves away in order to 
birth the ‘I am’ self.
 
Do you understand?
 
You have to carefully contemplate that the activity that plus and minus 
do in order to birth the ‘I am’ self is to give of themselves to make 
imperfect states, and in that activity of giving of themselves, they 
themselves become imperfect as well. What is the nature of the self who 
is manifest in between plus and minus. This self has exactly equal 
portions of plus and minus as its content. We can say that it’s received 
1/100,000,000 of both plus and minus. And therefore, having both equal 
amounts of plus and minus, it is zero. But it isn’t the perfect, 
complete activity or condition of zero because it doesn’t have all of 
plus and minus as its content. This is what you should be clearly and 
firmly contemplating in your zazen. I don’t know what you’re doing in 
your zazen besides complaining about your legs hurting, but this is what 
you should be doing.
 
The world in which the plus activity is imperfect and the minus activity 
and the manifest self in between is also imperfect is the human world, is 
the material world, is the world of form. If you don’t even understand 
the principle behind what the material world is and what the spiritual 
world is, and you simply want to find peace of mind, want to get 
enlightenment, and you do zazen with that attitude, it’s impossible.
The world that is not the material world is the world of the origin. And 
I suppose we can call that the spiritual world. Without even 
understanding the difference between the true spiritual world and the 
material world, in Tathagata Zen we say, “DonÕt blabber and jabber on and 
on. Shut up!”
 
The translator has a lot of energy. He makes me want to 
be young again. It’s better to be young than to be old.
But it isn’t enough just to think, “It’s better to be young,” to 
complain, “I can’t work like I could when I was young,”  because actually, 
young and old are equal.
 
The teaching of Tathagata Zen says that, because imperfect plus and minus 
are manifest together with the self, that means that your mother and 
father are born simultaneously with you. Even some of you here are 
attached to the idea that your mother and father were born before you, so 
of course Zen practice is impossible for you. But actually it’s much 
easier to really manifest the wisdom that knows that mother and father 
are born simultaneously with you. To try to know that mother and father 
were born before you is really difficult.
 
There are many Buddhist scholars these days who think in this way: They 
go searching for their origin backwards into the past to their mother and 
father who were born before them they think, and then their mothers and 
fathers, and their mothers and fathers, on and on. Thinking in this way, 
they come to the conclusion that everybody is our ancestor. They come 
to the conclusion that we never meet anybody who is not our self. 
There’s really nothing wrong with that kind of thinking, but if you think 
in that way, you can’t really grab on to your origin.
 
The reason why people end up thinking in that way is because they affirm 
the standpoint of the ‘I am’ and they affirm and fixate the positions of 
mother and father. You first appear when the activities of plus and minus
separate. Your mother and father also appeared when plus and minus
separated in between them.
 
…Buddhism, however, further teaches that the ‘I am’ self is never fixated. 
Again it will disappear, and again the world of only the two fundamental 
opposing activities appears.  When you mature, again you will meet the 
world that has no child in it, that is only mother and father alone. You 
must, in order to do this, manifest the wisdom that knows the principle 
of the dissolution of the self.
 
People love to say ‘I am!’ I suppose there’s nothing wrong with it. But 
unless you can dissolve that ‘I am’, true growing up, true maturing, even 
one step of maturation cannot occur. In order to grow and develop, 
although this might seem surprising to you, you must dissolve that ‘I am’ 
self. The first step in growth or development is to manifest the world 
of no ‘I am’, the world where it’s only plus and minus.
 
If you always insist on saying, ‘I am’ and insist on depending on your 
mother and father, then of course you will never become mother and father 
yourself. But when you dissolve the self, then the world appears that’s 
only plus and minus, that’s only man and woman alone. When plus and 
minus find themselves alone together, then for the first time, plus 
really knows, “I must make minus my self” and minus likewise knows, “I 
must make plus my self.”  This is why Buddhism concludes that love means
the activity of the true self.
 
When it comes to the activity that forms the self, for plus, the minus 
activity is necessary. For minus, the plus activity is necessary. We 
also call the Dharma activity, the time activity. And naming the Dharma 
activity the time activity, we call the material world the world in which 
past, present and future are separate and have been manifest.
But when the imperfect, present moment vanishes, then only plus and minus 
are left. In other words, when the imperfect present is gone, then the 
only activities that are left are the pure activities of plus and minus, 
the pure activities of past and future.
 
…Buddhism says that if you practice and manifest the wisdom that knows the 
nature of your self and the nature of this world, then naturally this 
part which vows will arise, and the sort of vow that will arise will be a 
vow that says, “Although I am very inadequate, although there is almost 
nothing I can do, I should at least do this. If I can just do this to 
help the people of the world, that will be enough.” 
 
If you live your whole life as a carpenter, then become the carpenter
Bodhisattva. If you live your life as a cake maker, then become the cake
maker Buddha. If you work at it, we say that inevitably you will become the
carpenter Buddha, the farmer Buddha, the candy maker Buddha.
The problem is that no matter how you look at it, it is difficult to do 
the activity of dissolving the self. If you’re attached to the ‘I am’ 
self, if you can’t dissolve your self, then even if you’re a farmer or a 
carpenter, you won’t truly become the farmer or the carpenter 
Bodhisattva.
 



 

 
 

Proudly powered by Weebly