Episode Details

Greetings!

I am sending this Podcast Dharma Talk that I recorded last Monday, after viewing the Total Solar Eclipse. Which was spectacular, really beyond words, eerie, beautiful, humbling, I was struck with a deep sense of awe and gratitude.

Below is the written version of the Dharma Talk. The exploration inspired by the eclipse is an active contemplation of the koan, Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha.

Sending blessings with this post for your own transformations, and transformation in our world. May we continue to see love and compassion.

Eclipses are viewed mythologically, astrologically as times of transformation. 

Perhaps something in the shadows of our psyche, unconscious to us–rises to the surface or is able to be seen more clearly. Making the unconscious, conscious is crucial for transformation to occur. 

And there are other transformations possible in the spiritual alchemy symbolized by the kissing of the sun + moon.

I want to share a koan

KOAN:

Ancestor Ma was sick. The superintendent of the monastery asked him, “How have you been feeling these days?” The Ancestor said, “Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha.”

—Blue Cliff Record Case 3 (translation by John Tarrant & Joan Sutherland, titled Ma’s Sun Face, Moon Face Buddha)

Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face BuddhaWhat kind of people where the ancient ancestors!For twenty years I have struggled fiercely;How many times have I gone down to the Blue Dragon’s Cave for you?This distress is worth recounting;Clear-eyed bodhisattvas should not take it lightly.

—Xuedou’s Commentary on BCR Case 3

I have always loved this koan. I think of the eclipse as a time when the sun-face buddha and moon-face buddha meet—In ancient Chinese and Indian cosmology the eclipse was thought to be caused by a dragon eating the sun, other cultures in the Americas believed it was a monster or a squirrel who ate the sun. In alchemy we have the image of the green lion eating the sun.

It does look like someone is taking bites out of the sun, like the sun is a giant cookie, and the moon is taking bigger and bigger bites out of it. Until it is completely swallowed and night dawns in the middle of the day.

Perhaps it is in blue dragons cave—in the belly of the monster– where the light of the sun is restored. Where our original light is realized.

In this koan we have Ancestor Ma.

Ma is a sound that corresponds to mother, in many languages–which is interesting in its connection to pre-axial religions, where mother goddesses ruled the heavens and the Earth.

Sophie Strand in her research on the history of myth traces the monsters that emerge like the minotaur as having their roots in a mother goddess culture, where this goddess had energy like Kali meaning she could give life and take it away. Which is something that we say of Zen teachers or people with realization—they have the power to give life or take it away.

For realization in Zen is more of a losing than a gaining. We see through our self and delusions to the point of realizing that we are everything and nothing belongs to us.

The Sun and Moon archetypally play different roles in our collective imagination.

Sun Face Buddha

The Sun illuminates the day. The sun is connected with knowledge, the ego, clarity, our uniqueness, how we shine, vitality, consciousness, the mind–our knowing. 

If you look at the Sun card in the Rider-Waite-SmithTarot you see an image of a bright luminous sun, a naked baby so vibrantly full of life, riding a horse as sunflowers bloom all around. The Sun looks directly back at us. Bright and straightforward in its life-giving radiance.