Sun Face Buddha; Moon Face Buddha

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.

The sun you could say is what we know about ourselves.

In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition the clear light of the sun is used to describe our true nature. There is this enduring, life-giving quality to the sun. 

Awakening is allowing the clear light of our nature to shine through us. 

Awakening dawns in us, as us—with the recognition that this light does not belong to us, but is the light of our shared being—our true nature.

Practice-awakening involves a continual recognition of this light—our Sun Face Buddha—which is always present. We are in a sense continually recognizing what is always already here, basic to us. 

The clear light of mind is present even in the night or when the dark monster appears to eat the light for a few minutes twice a year.

Because our inner light, the light of awareness does not dim. Even in sleep. Even when the outer world appears dark.

Moon Face Buddha

And yet, change is our nature. As human beings, as earthlings—we change, we live on a changing planet.

Some change happens to us. Or at least appears too. Friends move away. Our career pivots or the work environment undergoes changes, our relationships pass through their own seasons of connection, intimacy, seeming disconnection and rediscovery / drifting apart. People we love die. Our kids grow up. Our parents age. Our bodies age. Environmental disasters happen. The politics in our country changes.

Other changes we seem to have more agency in.

The Moon reminds us that we too are cyclical. 

Archetypally the moon has been associated with change, the tides, in many cultures each of the monthly full moons have a different name. The moon's phases remind us of our own mini cycles, that our bodies too are flowing, need periods of rest and rejuvenation. The moon is often associated with our emotional being. Our innermost experience.

The moon’s light is different from the sun, it's a reflective light.

Ominous, it holds an element of mystery. When seen in the moonlight, things lack clear edges or boundaries, there is a blending quality to the moon’s luminosity. Hazy, inchoate, the moon illuminates a world beyond distinction + labels, beyond the piercing clarity and gnosis of the sun’s rays. In the moonlight we are invited to un-know. To see beyond our projections. 

The mind and our obsession with “seeing” is rendered ineffective. We misperceive. Is that a vine or a snake? A person in the corner or a coat hanging, the antlers of a deer on the porch or an upside down broom? We can spook ourselves and have the opportunity to laugh at ourselves in our delusional moon vision.

The Moon card in the Tarot is an image of waters, a crab, a wolf/dog, howling, two towers with a path passing through. There is something a bit unsettling about the image. Looney, lunatic. The moon’s face isn’t straight on like the sun’s —its sideways. Looking away, peripheral. 

It describes what many people talk about feeling in the dusky hours. A restlessness, an unsettling, a strange boredom, loneliness—this is often the time of temptation, cravings emerge for food, sex, some kind of distraction or entertainment.

At the monastery, this is one of the times of meditation. 

Another aspect to the moon is that we can’t see the entire moon. The moon has a dark side.

The moon is what we don’t know about ourselves.

What is unknowable.

In the Japanese Zen tradition the moon represents enlightenment. 

Here we have the reminder that awakening is ungraspable, anything that we think we can say about it, is already covering the direct, unmediated experience of life itself. The moon shadows show us the limits of mind, words, concepts and knowing.

The moon reminds us of the mystery that we are. That life is. The mystery of our own light, our own gnosis—how we can’t quite tell of it—for our telling casts silvery delusions like the rays of moonlight, obscuring the truth.

And so—we are invited to live—Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha. 

Knowing and unknowing, bright clarity that is truly a mystery.

Transformation comes from our ability to embrace these two luminaries, two sides of the same face? To faces of the same sky? 

What shines forth unobstructed as we allow our humanness, our changeability, our flaws, the mystery of what we are—to shine together with the unalterable light of our true nature?

Love, our  unique expression of compassion, awe, wonder, wisdom—

Sun Face, Moon Face

Original Face

Buddha

See below for up-coming in-person and online group meditation events and retreats. I also offer 1:1 IFS-informed Spiritual Counseling and Meditation support. I incorporate dream work and hakomi skills in my sessions, you can learn more about my 1:1 work here, feel free to reach out with any questions.

This talk is recorded during my weekly Online Monday Night Meditation and Dharma event. This event is open to anyone, you can drop in anytime. Meditation begins at 6P PT / 9P ET. Click here for more information and the zoom link. We are currently exploring the theme: Engaged Buddhism.

Retreats in Oregon at Great Vow Zen Monastery

May Zen Sesshin: The Light of Our Ancestors May 13 - 19 at Great Vow Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, OR co-led with Zen Teacher Patrick Bansho Green

During this 5-day silent Zen meditation retreat we will connect to the ancestral light of awakened nature. Drawing inspiration from the stories and practices of our Zen ancestors, fellow human beings who felt the call to practice the spiritual path of insight, love and presence.

Love & Spaciousness: A Weekend Loving Kindness Retreat May 24 - 26 at Great Vow Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, OR with Dharma Holder Myoyu Haley Voekel

With wonderment on our side, and in relationship with all that is, we recognize the inherent compassion that naturally arises from deep and sustained presence. Held in a container of zen forms and the vibrant dance of a monastery waking up to spring, we will explore the nature of being anything at all! Love and Spaciousness are two qualities of our true nature. This retreat we will practice recognizing and opening to them.

Love and wonderment,

Kisei

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