This week Roshi continued the discussion on Sandokai.

(Suzuki’s book on the Sandokai linked HERE)

Last week he spent the entire talk exploring the title and first line of the sutra.  This week, we moved onto the next line which reads:

While human faculties are sharp or dull,

the Way has no northern or southern ancestors.

We could read this line simply as an injunction against judging people by their differences.  However, like everything else in this passage, we can go so much deeper.  There is a natural tendency to prize intelligence.  Western students search out the “smartest” Dharma teacher.  This goes the other way as well – teachers look for the students with the wittiest demonstrations of a koan.  However, is this paramount in realizing the way?  Sandokai is telling us NO.  There is something else which is more highly prized that cleverness.

As an illustration, Roshi mentioned that his teacher, Ban Roshi was born in the year of the dog.  The Japanese kanji character for a dog is the symbol of a person with a small dot added.  The dot, is the dog, of course – always right beside their person always loyal and persistent.  Ban Roshi considered himself a “slow dog.”  For him practice was not an intellectual pursuit, rather it was more about ‘pounding it out” every day.  Roshi mentioned that his training was very much like this as well.

As another example, Buddhist lore talks about four horses.  Some horses just know how to run fast while some horses need to see the whip to start running.  Some other horses need to simply feel the whip lightly to start running.  Lastly some horses need to be beaten to get moving.  Sandokai is saying that these horses are all the same!  It is only the running which counts.

Roshi also mentioned as a final example, that Suzuki Roshi was not venerated highly in Japan.  He was not considered a brilliant student, but more like that 4th horse which needed to be beaten.  Like Roshi, he was the last student to gain transmission from his teacher.  When asked how he eventually got transmission, Suzuki said he simply outlasted everyone else.  All the smart people, scattered when they got a tiny piece of realization.  They could not stay in one place long enough to see the training all the way to its end.  In other words, Suzuki was the “last man standing!”

Roshi then moved on to the second part of this verse.  The way has no Northern or Southern ancestors.  Religious traditions tend to split into different “schools” as time passes.  This happened in Buddhism with Mahayana, Theravada, and Vajrayana Buddhism.  Even in Zen, we see Soto and Rinzai Zen.  The question whether these are really so different from each other.  We may think that Soto is about gradual enlightenment whereas Rinzai is instant realization.  But is this fully true?  In Soto, we are doing Shikantaza (just sitting) but at some point it all “clicks.”  Isn’t that instant realization?  Alternatively, in Rinzai, we may have a sudden insight from a koan, but you are not done.  There is a reason that the student needs to pass through hundreds of more koans after the initial insight!  So, which is sudden and which is gradual?  Is this simply a difference without any meaning?  YES!  That is what Sandokai is trying to tell us.

Roshi moved onto the next verse:

The spiritual source shines clear in the light; the branching streams flow on in the dark.

The spiritual source is understood to be the eternal unchanging unity of reality – namely what we are practicing to understand.  This reality shines clearly in the light!  The branching streams which flow in the dark represent the world of samsara or everyday life.  We could also look at this as a metaphor of the comparison of a religious vs a secular life.  Are we all one in “unity” or is it everyone for themselves?  Is there a mystical universe or should we only be concerned with what is right in front of our noses?

We may think that this verse is telling us that the religious life is the light and materialism is the darkness.  We all assume that Nirvana, shining in the light, is so much better than the world of discrimination endlessly branching in the darkness.  However, Sandokai is telling us not to get trapped in this kind of delusional thinking.  BOTH states exist.  One is not “better” than the other.  Our goal is to understand this and strive to exist skillfully in both realms.

Roshi wrapped up by warning us not to fixate on enlightenment.  Do not grasp at idealizations.  Do not shrink away from the material world, but do not get consumed by it either.  When you get confused, remember what Sandokai means.  The harmony of difference and equality.  The harmony of bare existence with the “hurly burly” of day to day existence.