Cantongqi

I certainly imagined when I first sat down in that zendo that I was very far from the environs of the kind of peace and understanding of myself that Suzuki Roshi seemed to be talking about.

What I thought was, "I don't have what he's talking about, certainly not, and I really do wanna get that." Uh, and I really felt that in the words of the Sandokai, mountains and rivers block my way.

I, I just don't know any way through to that kind of way of being, uh, which is a feeling, uh, fifty-some years later I still often have.

Uh, some feeling that this present moment, whatever present moment of my life, is definitely not what Suzuki Roshi is talking about.

It was so, uh, freeing actually.

Um, so how do we hold both/and? Um, this I wanna go back to, um, the Sandokai, the harmony of difference and unity, which talks about finding our place.

Each one of us has to find the best place to use this unique body and mind.

This unique body and mind exists as the intersection of difference and unity.

You're welcome.

But I thought of the Sandokai.

Mm-hmm.

You know, harmony of difference and equality, celebration of all these relative world individuated ways that we get to be fantastic and beautiful and worthy of celebration simultaneously with a recognition that in a more ultimate sense, th- those distinctions are all illusory.

I don't think about the ultimate so much as like a separate plane because the ultimate and the relative are not...

There's not a radical duality between the ultimate and the relative.

That's what the Sandokai is all about.

And I also would challenge the idea that we do anything that's not about the self because everything is totally interconnected, so nothing is separate and apart from the whole.