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Mirror Mind: Seeing the Self Clearly - Kisei Costenbader, Sensei · Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks

• 0:00
  Jomon: Hello and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddhadharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
• 0:27
  Kisei: We're in the last few weeks of our summer read of The 25 Centuries of Awakened Women. And today, we're on case 34, which is called Zen Mirror And of this is from Japan, probably thirteenth century. I'll just start by reading the case. The convent of Tokeji had a great mirror. The founding abbess, Kakuzaan Shido, would meditate before it in order to see into her own nature.
• 1:25
  Later generations of nuns would practice Zazen in front of the mirror, concentrating on the question, where is a single feeling, a single thought in the mirror image at which I gaze? Where is a single feeling, a single thought, in the mirror image at which I gaze? Each abbess of Tokeji wrote a verse in response to the mirror practice. The following verse was composed by the fifth abbess, Princess Yodo. Heart unclouded.
• 2:11
  Heart clouded. Standing or falling. It is still the same body. Heart unclouded. Heart clouded.
• 2:27
  Standing or falling. It is still the same body. I'll just read the first paragraph for now of Zenju Earthland Manuel. Zenju Earthland Manuel wrote the reflection or the commentary to this koan. And she says, Where is a single feeling, a single thought in the mirror image at which I gaze?
• 2:53
  When we ask this question, at once we enter the purpose of our lives, which is to look upon our lives and discover who we are as living beings. We enter a dark abyss in which we encounter our heart, mind and body. On the journey of discovery, we fall through the sky. At times, the sky is clouded. And other times, it is unclouded.
• 3:22
  On the earth, we plant our feet and still we stumble. What are the clouds and what takes them away? What makes us stand or fall? So this practice of mirror Zen, it's quite a unique practice. There's a bit of a story behind it.
• 3:48
  That founding abbess, whose name is Kakuzan Shido, she's the founder of the Tokeji Monastery, and she had the monastery or the convent built after her husband died. Her husband died. He was in the samurai, like, caste or of of the samurai people, and there was, you know, a kind of war or situation where many of her family members died. And she was quite young. She was married young.
• 4:29
  She was married to an older man, and her husband actually had a monastery built called Nkokuji, which she had the nunnery built or the convent built right across the street. And then she studied Zen. She practiced Zen wholeheartedly at Angkokuji and received dharma transmission. So she was an authorized Zen teacher, and she founded this nunnery or this convent. And somehow, this is like part of the mystery of this story, is she obtained a very large mirror.
• 5:21
  And there are some accounts of the story that say that it came from a Shinto shrine that was right on the ocean, that was a symbol of the nun. Her name was Nun Shogun or something like that. And the mirror was installed to, commemorate her visionary, aptitude. She had a premonition of an attack coming on that coast and was able because people listened to her her premonition, that coast of Japan was was saved from, this attack that was coming. And so they had this giant mirror installed there.
• 6:09
  And some speculate that that's where where the mirror came from. That was in the Tokeji Mirror Hall. And then there's another mysterious, encounter with a mirror where when they were breaking ground for the Nkokuji monastery, the monastery that her husband founded, they hit a mirror. There was a mirror buried under the ground where they were trying to put the foundation of the monastery. So apparently, Nkokoji had a mirror hall.
• 6:43
  And when at one point Nkokoji burned down and the mirror disappeared, and so there's some speculation that she obtained that mirror. So I don't know, but it's kind of interesting that this, you know, this is probably twelfth century time in Japan because Princess Yodo was many generations after Kakuzahn Chido, the nun that we encounter in the story as Princess Yodo. So I'm I'm just telling kind of the story of the founder, which is a legendary story, and has has all this mystery surrounding it. And it's just it's interesting to me that there is this kind of mystery surrounding this place called Tokeji. But nonetheless, they did in fact have a mirror.
• 7:39
  And at first, it was in a I imagine a separate building. If you've ever been to Japan and visited temple temples, they're usually temple complexes, which is just very traditional how Dogenzanji saw the monasteries in in China, which many of the monasteries early were modeled after. So there were temple complexes, there was a gate, and then there were separate buildings usually for the zendo and then the chanting hall. And then many of the monasteries or the temples that you'll you can visit even today, they have other buildings that sometimes house, like, great works that the temple has or the temple has become famous for. And sometimes these are statues, and sometimes you can go in and make offerings to the statues, are quite often quite beautiful and quite amazing to behold, very large, and they take up the entire space of the room.
• 8:55
  And so I'm imagining perhaps that the the mirror was in one of those buildings, in one of these kind of adjunct buildings at first. And so another part of this story of Kakuzahn Chido is she had this mirror hall and she would walk past this mirror. And at some point she decided to do zazen in front of it. And when she sat down and this story is told in a little bit more detail in Women of the Way, which I talked about before. This is a historical fiction, so she has as much of the details of the original stories, and then she fills in the gaps and makes it into, an interesting story.
• 9:46
  So Women of the Way, this is by Sally Tisdale. She actually is a teacher at Dharmaraine in Portland, Oregon. But in her story, she she breathes some life into this. Like, okay. Kakuzahn Chiro starts sitting in front of the bureau.
• 10:03
  We know that much. And and starts practicing Zazen, gazing at her own reflection and has a kind of insight, has a realization after doing this. And so in Sally Tisdale's telling, she's like, oh, something caught her attention, and there was a kind of restlessness that she noticed at first that even though she had received transmission and had, passed the very many koans that are part of the Rinzai koan curriculum like still something caught her in this mirror as she was gazing at her own reflection and and she like was inspired to deepen her practice and look into what is that that's catching me? So she sits with her own reflection gazing into the mirror and has an insight, has a realization, And she's the first one who writes a poem to reflect her insight. And then she has the mirror installed in the Zendo.
• 11:18
  And after that, anyone who would come to train at Tokeji had to practice mirrors and had to gaze at their own reflection. And it's it's I'm not clear. I mean, I'm imagining that the mirror wasn't that large that it, like, took up the whole Zen Do and, like, was reflective on both sides so that, like, rows of people would be sitting there. So it sounds like it was a bit of an initiatory experience for people when they first came to the monastery as part of the breakthrough koan, which was part of what was recited in in this this koan. They would meditate on the question, where is a single feeling, a single thought in the mirror image which I gaze?
• 12:11
  So that's a little bit of the history of where this koan comes from. And, you know, just imagine if you there weren't a lot of nunneries. There weren't a lot of convents at at the time, twelfth, thirteenth century Japan, especially ones that you could actually train with a woman who had transmission. That was fairly rare. And so you come, you have like this aspiration, you want to practice the dharma, and in order to train at this monastery, you need to sit and look at yourself in a mirror.
• 12:59
  And that is your Zazen practice. You know, imagine that if you came to the monastery or the only place you could sit in your house was in front of a giant mirror. I want to read a little bit from Joan Sutherland. She also has some comments on this. She says, Imagine sitting in front of a mirror and looking at yourself day in and day out, confronting whatever arises.
• 13:35
  First is the question of looking at all. Would you rather be doing pretty much anything else than looking at your own reflection? Are you curious? What would it be like to confront the years and memories marked in your face? To go through the layers of emotion about what you see in the mirror, But to keep studying and stay with it until looking in the mirror is absolutely ordinary, causing no ripples at all.
• 14:15
  And then she quotes Yodo again. One of the capping phrases to this poem written on mirror meditation was by teacher Yodo, heart mind clouded, heart mind unclouded, rising and falling all the same body. So when I first encountered the story of Kakuzahn Chido, it was during a sashin, and Jogen actually read from Women of the Way, so from Sally Tisdale's book. And I was really captivated, and then he invited us for the rest of that sashin to to sit as a mirror or to embody mirror mind. And part of the interesting thing after, hearing that koan and being really inspired by it and taking up this practice of sitting as a mirror, I inherited a mirror.
• 15:16
  I was working at, the Amber Assisted Living, in Klaskanai, which was close to the monastery, and one of my clients or patients died, and she I was given the mirror from her room and it was a large mirror, so I started practicing sitting in my cubicle as I was living at the monastery and practicing mirror gazing. I want to share a little bit about that and then I want to read from Zenju because Zenju shares a little bit about her practice of sitting in front of the mirror leading up to her 50 birthday. And she had the question, what is what does it look like to get old? Or am I old? I can't remember, but but I'll read a little bit from that.
• 16:06
  That's in the commentary. And then also I want to share another Zen teacher, Ruth Ozeki. She's a Zen priest, a Zen teacher, and she's also a fiction writer. But she wrote a nonfiction piece called The Face a Time Code where she took up this practice of mirror gazing a little bit more as an artistic exploration, but being a Zen practitioner there's also a lot of practice involved so I want to read just some of her reflections on trying to do that practice of looking at one's face or looking into the mirror. So what I found is the mind, you know, often starts by reacting.
• 16:56
  We have habitual ways, probably all of us, to looking at ourselves in the mirror. And you know, oftentimes we look in the mirror and we fix ourselves in some way, like, Oh, there's smudge on my face. Oh, I've got stuff in my teeth. Oh, I need to pluck my chin hairs. Oh, my hair's a mess.
• 17:17
  And so we re used to kind of using the mirror for feedback about how we look and responding, and usually the response has some kind of tinge of judgment, or outright judgment or criticism. Let me share some from what Zenju says about her experience looking in the mirror. She says, Looking into mirror may seem easy, but being honest with what we see is difficult. A few days before my 50 birthday, I looked into the mirror to see if I looked old. I asked, am I old?
• 18:01
  What is old? I did this exercise for five minutes a day for seven days. On the first day, I didn't see anything because I was afraid of seeing an old lady. My eyes constantly turned away. So she, you know, she took this up for five minutes, but that's actually quite a long time to sit and look in the mirror.
• 18:25
  On the second day, I spent some time plucking the hairs from my chin. I can see them clearly, the white hairs against my dark skin. They provided a nice distraction. On the third day, I thought I should grow my hair longer so that the thinning parts would disappear. I remembered my mother's hair thinning in the same places when she was my age.
• 18:47
  Still, I didn't want to see my mother in me nor see an old lady in myself. On the seventh day, I saw fear in the tightness of my lips, confusion in the brow. I thought what a tough journey life was. Then I looked deeper without an idea in my head, just the question, what is old? And I saw a courageous woman willing at least to look at herself.
• 19:20
  So I didn't read all of them. Did she does have like a time mark for each day. And often what happens when we do a practice like this is there are layers that we uncover, and so she she speaks of those. And I wanna read a little bit from Ruth Ozeki. So she has, like, time stamps.
• 19:42
  And she did this, I think, for two or three hours straight, and she was inspired by, an art teacher's, invitation to have their students go to the art museum and sit with a piece uninterrupted for, I think, two or three hours. So for a long time and just gazing at the art piece and noticing what happens in their body, in their thoughts, in their mind. And so that's what she she does, but she does it with her face. So this is the ten minute, ten minute, twelve seconds, staring at my face. I'm aware that I want to touch it.
• 20:22
  Touch the scar on my forehead, the pimple on my chin, rub my nose, my eyes, scratch my cheek. I'm aware that everything looks wrong. My face, my hair, my collar. I wanna fix things. I run my fingers through my hair, pulling it back from my face.
• 20:41
  It falls forward again like a curtain. It's trying to shield me from myself. Nice. I've spent much of my life hiding behind this curtain of hair. And then twenty minutes, forty six seconds.
• 20:59
  Deep breath. Bring the mind back. Try again. Don't look away. What do I spy now?
• 21:08
  Heavy bags under my eyes, saggy, slightly puffy baggage from my dad. I first started noticing them in my late thirties, and they horrified me. I didn't wanna look like my dad. Didn't wanna see his reproachful, drooping, disappointed gaze staring back at me every time I looked in the mirror. But there was nothing I could do about it.
• 21:36
  The bags were there. It's possible no one else even noticed them, but I could not look at my face and not see them. I think I started wearing thick framed glasses around then. And then she goes on and on and And and in the, it's like a short book slash essay, and in it, there are breaks where she does larger contemplations about identity. She's a Japanese American, so she talks about being mixed race and Japanese identity, and she also reflects on the koan show me your original face among other things.
• 22:23
  So this I I share these because this is a practice we could take up. We probably interact with mirrors quite a bit, or at least a little bit. I think Senju said, or maybe it was Ruth in in one of their writings, they said, I'd given up looking at myself in the mirror. But we encounter mirrors a lot. And so to try on like, oh, what is it to look at our face in the mirror and to stay with it?
• 22:57
  That's the invitation. Maybe for a minute, maybe for five minutes, maybe to sit, a meditation, looking into the mirror like the women of Tokeji did. If we keep looking, we can begin to view our reflection more as the mirror does. In both Ruth and Zenju's reflection, that starts to happen. They let the gaze relax and we can see our face more as form, color, a face, Not so personal.
• 23:42
  Not so particular. Which is interesting. And maybe you've had this experience if you've ever eye gazed with somebody. Sometimes this happens to me in Sansen, either as the teacher or as the student, where we're just sitting in silence together and the face of the other person just starts to become different faces, or I start to see other faces in their face, not necessarily people that I've ever met before. So sometimes that can happen.
• 24:16
  It's definitely happened for me doing mirror gazing where my gaze is relaxed. I'm not so fixated on, you know, that wrinkle or that pimple or that large pore or how crooked my teeth are, but, like, just seeing a face. And then the face becomes less personal, and I see other faces in my face, and then my face comes back. And then I see other faces again. So sometimes that happens.
• 24:44
  Or we start to feel love or affection for the reflection and that's actually in the next part. And I'll just read this again from Ruth. So this is a a couple minutes after she had the reflection of her dad's bags under her eyes. And she says, strange. Just realized that I haven't paid much attention to the bags for several years now.
• 25:12
  I mean, I see them when I look, but I don't obsess about them anymore. What's changed? Certainly not the bags themselves. If anything, they've only gotten worse. Have I just gotten used to them?
• 25:27
  Or is it that my feelings about my dad have changed? He's been dead for more than fifteen years now. The grief and anguish I felt at his death have softened. And when I see his eyes in mine, I don't see reproach or disappointment anymore. Instead of judgment, I see concern, watchfulness, maybe even a kind of compassionate discernment.
• 25:56
  So this is better, an improvement. I don't mind meeting him here in the mirror. It's kind of nice. Hey, dad, how are you doing? Compassion can open up through this practice or, you know, for Ruth it is more of a practice throughout time.
• 26:24
  Probably her Zaozan practice was part of that shift in how she was in relationship to her dad and her dad in her her face. So that might open up a feeling of love, of compassion for the person that you're seeing. Ozanji mentioned feeling the courage of that of her of the reflection looking back at her. Really that's the courage she saw in herself. And sometimes actually it's equanimity.
• 27:04
  We can just see our face without judgment, which is huge to just be able to be with whatever is appearing in that mirror, all its imperfections, all its beauty. And then we could try if we wanted to take this up as a practice of sitting or mirror gazing. Where is there a single feeling, a single thought in this mirror image which I gaze? Is the reflection in the mirror thinking? Does the reflection have feelings?
• 27:59
  Where are the thoughts that you are aware of? Where are the feelings, the emotions that arise in response to this face or just in response to life? Are they two reflections in this great mirror of awareness? And so we can actually practice being the mirror, reflecting the mirror. And that's something I noticed as I practiced mirror gazing, is at some point, you know, there was that feeling of equanimity of just seeing the face, and then I actually could see through the face, which is interesting.
• 28:48
  Like, you know, the whole time I'm gazing at a mirror, but and there's other things in the mirror, but it's so, you know, quick for our human habit to make contact with our face and then start analyzing it or start having feelings about it. Then just to even see the face as a face is a step of equanimity. But we also can see the mirror. We can actually just look at the mirror itself, like seeing through the face, seeing through the reflections, and seeing the clarity and, you know, acceptance of the mirror, the clarity of the mirror. Being a mirror, reflecting the mirror, letting the reflections, the different sensations that arise in this mirror of Zazen just be there, not needing to make a story up about them, not needing to try to get rid of them or change them or have some special experience, and just reflecting, just being with.
• 30:08
  It's part of what a mirror does so well. It's just we can have all sorts of reactions and thoughts about the reflections in the mirror, but the mirror doesn't do that. The mirror just, you know, stays there. Let's hold our image for as long as we stand in front of it. So I want to read a little bit more from Joan Sutherland on her commentary on this mirrors and practice.
• 30:42
  She says, Before each woman sat in front of the mirror, she would dust it and polish it. What was she cleaning off? What was she revealing? The mirror is an ancient symbol of the heart mind's receptive clarity, able to absorb everything and reflect it back as it is. The mirror turns nothing away, nor does it hold on to anything.
• 31:11
  The women of Tokeji would have agreed with this, and they also seem to have added their own understanding. They spoke of how when night had fallen, the mirror could no longer reflect anything, but the heart mind continues to see in the dark. In their Koan study, they were asked to show the color and shape of this heart, this dark adapted heart mind. The nuns didn't consider mirror meditation an emptiness practice because they thought such practices perpetuated a duality between the empty viewer and the empty things viewed. Instead, they called mirror meditation forgotten eye meditation, forgotten eye like capital I, Forgotten I meditation.
• 32:05
  In which all the layers of self and story, thought and emotion fall away. To express this forgotten I, which is a luminous presence, the nuns could, by custom, use no words, compose no poems. The only response is to show your original face. I want to read just a little bit more from Zenju in The Hidden Lamp. There's lots of people who've commented on these koans, or on this koan.
• 32:48
  She says, when we face the mirror of Zazen, our minds tend to face ourselves as objects first. Our skin color, age, gender, sexual orientation, all the ways we are embodied and move in the world, we begin to unfold stories about I. If we are willing to look long enough in the mirror of Zazen, past seeing ourselves as objects, we have the potential to see that we are nature itself. We are born and will die just as the trees, flowers, and animals in the wild do. And sometimes in Zazen, we can see that the mirror is clear.
• 33:36
  There are no clouds, no dust. The human condition is set aside. I am not old, middle aged or young. I am fulfilled in my own spirit. And in this recognition, I feel the connection to my ancestors, to those who came before me, or to a life larger than my own.
• 34:00
  I am returned to an open field in which there are many possibilities. This open field is my original home, where there is no blackness, no old age. As Princess Yodo wrote, heart unclouded, heart clouded, standing or falling, it is still the same body. I say, in the silence of my open field, face clear or face colorful, dancing or sitting, it is still the same body. She talks about Zazen being like a mirror, and that is similar to saying our awareness is like a mirror.
• 34:57
  That's another way that we can practice with this koan is to sit as a mirror. To sit and allow whatever is put in front of the mirror or whatever appears in our awareness to be there, to be reflected. Not trying to get rid of it, not trying to change it, but just noticing like, oh, how would a mirror react in this situation? How would a mirror react to this thought or this feeling or this body sensation? Because if when we do that, when we ask that question, I think it's, you know, it's a creative way of pointing to the aspect of our being that already is doing that.
• 35:49
  We call that our Buddha mind or original nature. It just allows. From that place, there is no problem. We're not a problem. There's nothing wrong with our bodies, however they are, whatever is happening.
• 36:18
  And we can learn to rest in that truth, and it's not indifference. It's the deep embrace of a mirror that will will really reflect anything. I want to share before we end some more of the poems that were composed. As they were saying, the women came to the monastery and they had to sit in front of the mirror. They got to sit in front of the mirror and do mirrors then and work with that koan and then they would have an insight or a realization of some kind and compose their own poems.
• 37:13
  Then the women who did become abbess or the head teacher, their poems became part of a koan curriculum. When the students were working on the poems from their teachers they were sometimes asked follow-up questions that they couldn't use words to answer. So they both had to write poems for some of the questions, and then some of the questions they couldn't use words. They had to just respond using their bodies. Here are some of the poems.
• 37:55
  First we have Princess Yodo's Heart clouded, heart unclouded, rising or falling, it is still the same body. And then this is the poem from the sixth teacher, Nimbo. And she said, even without any mirror to reflect the things, every time one looks, there is a mirror reflecting them in the heart. Even without any mirror to reflect the things, every time one looks, there is a mirror reflecting them in the heart. And then the third teacher showed Taku.
• 38:39
  She said, As night falls, no more reflections in the mirror. Yet in this heart they are clearly seen. As night falls, no more reflections in the mirror, yet in this heart they are clearly seen. And then the seventh teacher, Ryoto, she said, If one asks where the reflections in the pure mirror go when vanish, Do you declare their hiding place? If one asks where the reflections in the pure mirror go when they vanish?
• 39:23
  Do you declare their hiding place? The one question we could ask ourselves as we come to the end of this talk is what is reflected in your mirror right now? In your mirror mind.
• 39:47
  Jomon: Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast, and thank you for your practice. New episodes air every week. Please consider making a donation at zendust.org. Your support supports us.