Good morning, everyone. Welcome. Good morning. So this morning's Dharma talk is also a book talk introducing formally this new book I've been working on, Just This Is It, Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness. So we've actually been talking about it for a while, even though it's just last week or so that it formally was released and some of us are using it. We're in the second week of a two-month practice commitment period, so we're using it. Why are we doing that? So I want to start by giving an overview of what the book's about and then tell a few stories from it. So this is about The story's about, his name was Dongshan Liangjie, or Tozan Yokai in Japanese.

[01:05]

He lived from 807 to 869 and is considered the founder of the Chinese Saodong lineage, or Soto in Japanese. It was brought to Japan in the 1200s by Ehei Dogen, who we talk about a lot here. and then brought to America in our lineage by Shinri Suzuki Roshi, my teacher's teacher, and although there were many other, a number of other Japanese Soto teachers who came over. So, just some basic background. Dongshan is known primarily in Zen for a long teaching verse, the Jewel Marriage Samadhi, which we talked about two years ago in our practice period. There's also a teaching called the Five Degrees, or sometimes called the Five Ranks, which is about the interplay of the ultimate reality and our

[02:10]

conventional phenomenal reality and the fivefold aspects of that. But this book focuses, and there's actually chapters on each of those, The Jewel Marrow Samadhi and the Five Degrees, at the end of the book. But the book focuses on, and I want to focus on, the various teaching stories or koans that involve Dongshan, both when he was a student and then more than when he was a teacher. And all of these stories, so the word koan has become sort of intimidating in English. These are not kind of riddles to solve or nonsense stories. They're our way of working with them. In this tradition, going back to Dongshan and Dogen is kind of to unfold them and use them as ways of looking at aspects of our own practice. So most of the classic teaching stories and koans are from Dongshan's time in the 9th century, many of them.

[03:16]

And they've been studied since then because they have something to say about the quality of our own practice. And the point isn't to... They're not riddles to solve or there's not some one right response to them. But each of these stories presents qualities of the practice that then can be elaborated on. So the stories that focus on in the book, and I'll try and get to three of them this morning, at least briefly, have to do with the experience of suchness, which goes back to India as a way of describing kind of the other side of emptiness, which you may have heard of. reality as it is. So as we've been sitting facing ourselves, facing the wall, just being present to appreciate fully this present reality, just this.

[04:21]

And how do we engage that reality? So that's one major theme of these stories. How do we practice with this reality as it is and the various levels of reality that are part of our lives. So just that suchness and the practice of suchness is one theme for these stories. Also, and particularly the first story I'm going to talk about has to do with self and our sense of self, our images of self and our stories that we make into a self. And then the teaching, classic teaching in Buddhism of non-self, which doesn't mean that we don't have a self, it just means that our idea of a self is kind of an illusion. And so to see through that and to see the complexity of how we are and who we are relates to kind of ultimate, universal, unconditioned reality of suchness.

[05:28]

And then another theme of these stories that runs through them is how to convey this suchness, the teaching of it, and the experience of it, and how it's been transmitted, both individually and, I would say, for us, the question is how does that reality of suchness, how do we see it in terms of our own culture? So, in our own time. So, of course, There were many things that were very different in 9th century China or in Dogen's 13th century Japan, and yet this basic practice in some way is what we've been doing here and what we do here. So all of those are illustrated in these stories, and particularly how to engage the ultimate or the unconditioned reality in our everyday conventional reality. So one of the stories I'm going to talk about relates to that. And then finally, some of the stories relate to how we practice in terms of the path, which is a classic way of talking about practice in Buddhism and in many spiritual traditions.

[06:48]

But Dongshan has this very strong kind of critique of the path as stages of progress or stages of accomplishment. that he talks about the immediacy of this ultimate reality. So anyway, this is just a little bit about the range of these stories that are talked about in much more length than I'll get to today in the book. And the book also includes my own commentaries on these stories, but also classic commentaries by Dogen, who was very influenced by Dongshan, and later Chinese Tsao-Tung or Tso-Tung teachers like Hongzhe, and also Suzuki Roshi, who brought this to California, and current Buddhist scholars. And then in the spirit of trying to see what these stories have to do with our own lives, I had commentaries on Dongshan stories by Western culture figures, Lewis Carroll, and Jack London, and Bob Dylan, and Krishnamurti, and Bill McKibben, and Grace Flick, and Donovan, and Randy Newman, and Joni Mitchell, and even Hank Williams.

[08:04]

So, anyway, I kind of, the point of this book for me was to play with these stories, and the point of, in our practice of working with these stories is to unfold them and see how they relate to various aspects of our lives. So, that's my way of introduction. So, the first story that is kind of the central story for me, and I've talked about during the practice period already, but all of these stories bear repeating and This one is particularly complex, and there are many, many layers of this story. But I want to kind of give a basic account of it now. So this is a story about Dongshan when he was leaving his teacher, Yunyan, whose name was Yunyan. And he was going off, as Chinese chun, or Zen monks did, to visit other teachers and check his understanding and express

[09:06]

his understanding in the world. And Dongshan went to his teacher before departing and asked, later on, if I'm asked to describe your reality or your teaching, how should I respond? And Yanyan, after some pause, said, just this is it. And the story goes that Dongshan was kind of lost in thought and didn't have anything to say. And Yunyan said, now you are in charge of this great matter. You must be most thorough going. Please take care of this. And Dongshan left. And as he was proceeding, he waded across a stream. And he looked down at his reflection in the stream and then had some understanding, some realization of what Yunyan and he wrote a verse, Dongshan wrote a verse, just don't seek from others or you'll be far estranged from self.

[10:10]

I now go on alone everywhere, I meet it. It now is me, I now am not it. One must understand in this way to merge with suchness. So, I'll repeat that, just don't seek from others or you'll be far estranged from self. So part of the tradition and part of the teaching is that we have to realize and experience this ourselves, this reality of suchness. Now I go on alone, but everywhere I meet it. It now is me, I now am not it. One must understand in this way to merge with suchness, this it now is me, I now am not it, to me, is the central teaching of this whole tradition. So this is kind of complex. It now is me. I now am not it. So, looking at his reflection in the stream, he saw that that was him, but that he wasn't just that reflection in the stream.

[11:19]

And so this story can be translated in a variety of ways, and there's many, many overtones, and I'll just try and touch on them this morning. But it now is me, I now am not it. Well, going back to Junghyun saying just this is it, that this that I'm referring to in this way of talking about it as suchness itself, just this, could refer just to the presence altogether of the yin-yang and dong-shan. So the teacher and the student and how this is conveyed is very important in these stories, too. Or it might just refer to dong-shan asking the question, teacher, what is your reality? What is it that you see? What is it that is the basic teaching? But also, just this is kind of more universally the simplicity and immediacy of reality, here, now, in the 9th century and right now.

[12:23]

Just this. Beyond our ideas and conceptualizations and discriminations, just this. Experience right now. So as we're sitting, of course, oh, Colossians people need to rise and sensations and so forth, but in the middle of that somewhere, just this experience. So this is kind of a complex interrelationship between our self and reality itself, ultimate reality, universal reality. And this conventional phenomenal reality that we describe and tell ourselves that we are a part of. And in some ways we are. So there are many levels of reality at work here. But it now is me. I now am not it. It gets into this inner dynamic. So the I am not it side maybe we can see pretty easily.

[13:30]

that each of us, our small selves, our particular personal quirks and ego constructions and so forth, are not ultimate reality. We can see our own limitations. And one of the significant parts of practice and the difficult parts of practice is seeing our own grasping or anger or confusion or fear, our own greed, our own clinging to self. And so, of course, I now am not it. But the other side is that it now is me. That everything in the whole universe is expressed in a particular way, right now, on your cushion or chair. So we have physicists here who can talk about it in those terms, but just everybody you've ever known, in some way, Maybe some people, certainly more than others, parents, loved ones, teachers, children, anyway, are part of who you are sitting on your seat right now, of course.

[14:43]

Now, they're not here immediately, in the flesh, so to speak, but who you are is a complex combination of all of that. So, it now is me. just expands that. It Now Is Me refers to the way in which ultimate reality, universal reality, everything, is expressed through you, through each of us. So this is part of this suchness, this reality of suchness, that we have some sense of, that we get some glimpse of in our practice. So, just to amplify on I Am Not It, there's the saying from the French civilized poet Arturo Rimbaud, who said, Je et un autre, I is an other.

[15:52]

And part of I Am Not It is that Our usual way of being in the world is that we see things out there. We see separation. We see objects where subjects, verbing objects, are trying not to be verbed by subjects out there. We see ourselves as separate from the environment of the world. And when we do that, I is an other, just like all the other others. When we make ourselves into an object, Of course, we can make other people or so-called things into separate dead objects, too. This is how, in some ways, the primary violation of the first precept, not to kill. We see the world as a bunch of dead objects. And then when we do that, and we see it, me, then I is another.

[16:53]

I is yet another one of those others. So, this is this process of I am not it. We imagine ourselves as a separate I. Rambo also said, it is wrong to say, I think, one ought to say, people think me. So, we're others in many different ways. So, this I am not it, is one of the things that we start to see as we practice, as we're willing to do the practice of regularly stopping and facing the wall and facing ourselves and just sitting and seeing what that's like. And we see that I am not it. The other side, though, is that it now is me. the reality of wholeness of the whole universe doesn't exist somewhere else outside of you. It now is me.

[17:55]

It is each of us. So we have some responsibility to this universal reality. We may not realize it, but part of our practice is seeing that we are connected, deeply connected, to many beings, in fact, to everything. We can start by seeing the beings we already know we're connected to. So this, It Now Is Me, is very important that we actually do represent one particular quirky, strange piece of everything. And so we have some responsibility to that. Dogen later on commented on this in his famous essay, Genja Koan, he said, to carry the self forward and experience myriad things is delusion.

[18:59]

That's I'm not it. But usually that's what we do. We project our self, our idea of our self, our stories about our self, our identity, our sense of identity onto the world of things. carry the self forward and experience myriad things as delusion. The other side, it now is me. Myriad things come forth and experience the self, or themselves, and that's what Dogen calls awakening. So the myriad things come forth right now, as we're breathing. Everything in your life and in your experience is there and arises. And when it all arises together, that's awakening. But that's not happening somewhere else outside. We're a part of that. This is the side of this reality, and more than that, this suchness or just this is not some, again, it's not some static thing, it's not an object, it's not dead. In fact, suchness itself is very much alive.

[20:04]

So there's a danger in the phrase just this, it may sound passive. Like if I just accept everything as it is, that would be it, that would be enlightenment or something. But that's not it. That the myriad things come forth and experience for themselves is happening on your Kushina chair too. So this is a very complex dynamic. I am not in it, now it's me. And this has to do with the relationship of our kind of, I don't know, yucky sense of self with wholeness and everything, and how it's interrelated. And this is one of the major themes in these stories of Dongshan. This story itself has lots of other overtones though, and overtones too, that The pronoun in just this is it, and in I am not it, it now is me, also could be read as a personal pronoun.

[21:18]

So this is a whole other realm of this story, which I won't go into so much, but when Jung-Hyun said just this is it, it could be understood as just this person. And when Dong-Shan said, I now go on alone, everywhere I need it, it now is me, I now am not it, that could be understood as, I now go on alone everywhere I meet him. He now is me, I now am not him. So there's this many layers to the story, and it doesn't really matter so much what Dongshan and Yunyan intended when they said whatever they said. We don't know how, you know, the history of all this is very murky. But we have these stories, that have been studied for over a thousand years that have many overtones. Suzuki Roshi, when he talked about this story to his students in California, gave it yet another tone, overtone.

[22:21]

He said that he discussed this practice of justice as the practice of everywhere meeting oneself. So he emphasized the importance of kindness and warm-hearted kindness to oneself as well as others. He said, don't try... He translated... He paraphrased Domshana, saying, don't try to figure out who you are. If you try to figure out who you are, what you understand will be far away from you. You will have just an image of yourself. And then, he also paraphrased part of this... I go my own way, wherever I go I meet myself. So this is also a story about how do we meet ourselves in the fullness of ourselves, and how do we do that, as Sukhiroshi said, with this kind of warm-hearted feeling and kindness to ourselves as well as to all the other selves that are not it, but it is them. So that's just a tiny bit about this.

[23:26]

primary story about Dongshan with his teacher, I wanted to get to a couple more. And again, I'm just going to tell just the kind of surface part of these teachings, and then we'll have some time for question and discussion. And we do have books available, and I can sign them later if you're interested. But this next story is one of those stories that where Dongshan is talking about what we might call sudden awakening, which is to say, not some flashy experience in the future, but actually this situation right now. And I like this story, but there's a number of stories that are like this in terms of pointing out this immediacy. This one, has to do with a meeting between a teacher and a student, but this time it was a student who came to see Dongshan when he was a teacher. And Dongshan asked, where have you come from? And this monk responded, I've come from wandering in the mountains.

[24:30]

Dongshan asked, did you reach the peak? And this person said, yes. And Dongshan asked if there was anyone on the peak. And he replied, no, there was not. Doshan said, if so, then you did not reach the peak. So, if you got to the peak, then there could be no one there. But this monk was very good. You know, after saying he'd had this peak experience, he said, if I did not reach the peak, how could I have known there was no one there? So, Dong Xuan was impressed and realized that this student had really been up there in the peak and realized there was no one there. And Dong Xuan asked him why he hadn't remained on the mountaintop.

[25:35]

And this monk was very honest. He said, I would have been so inclined. I would have liked to have stayed there. But someone from the West would not have approved. So this was either referring to Buddha, maybe, or to Bodhidharma, the legendary Indian monk who brought Zen to China. Dongshan was very impressed and said, I had wondered about this monk. So there's many aspects to this story, too, and I talk about nationalism, including commenting on the stories, bits from Krishnamurti and from Dhanananda, anyway. But the main point is that at the peak there was no one there, and yet he had to be there to see that. So this, again, goes back to that, it now is me, I now am not it. This dynamic of how do we actually take on the practice of engaging sessions.

[26:43]

There's another story that's related by one of Dongshan's main disciples named Yunzhu, who's actually the teacher from whom Arvaniage and Dongshan has descended. So, this is another story of a Yonji who came to talk to Dongshun. And Dongshun asked him, where have you been? And Yonji said, oh, I've been walking in the mountains. So, you know, all these stories, you know, kind of work in China and Japan and California, but here in Chicago, maybe he was walking in the prairie. But there's lots of talk of mountains and rivers and so forth. Anyway, Yunzhi said he'd been walking in the mountains. And Dongshan asked if he'd found a mountain to reside on. So, you know, all of these great classic Zen masters are usually named after the mountain where they taught.

[27:50]

So Dongshan means Dong Mountain. It's the name of the place where he eventually became the teacher. So he was asking if Yen Chu had found a place where he could settle and teach. Had he found a place suitable for residing? And Yen Chu said, no. None of them were suitable for him to reside in. Dong Shan asked if Yen Chu had visited all of the mountains in the country. He claimed that. Yen Chu said, no, he hadn't. Dong Shan sort of was curious about this and commented that Yen Chieh must have found an entry path. But Yen Chieh proclaimed very emphatically, no, there's no path. So this gets to the point of the story that, you know, we're used to thinking in terms of, you know, spiritual traditions, but also in terms of our everyday activity of, you know, finding some

[28:51]

plus some way of progressing, you know, going from the first grade to the second grade, or from junior to senior, you know, accomplishing this and that. This is our usual orientation to the world, step by step, you know, eventually. And, you know, we think in terms of spiritual practice that if we practice long enough, eventually we'll get to a higher stage, and then eventually Eureka, we'll, you know, see the light or whatever we might imagine. But, you know, I just said, no, there's no path. But then Dongshan said, if there's no path, how did you come to lay eyes on this old monk? How did you get here if there's no path? But Yunzhi said, if there were a path, then a mountain would stand between us. Dongshan approved, saying henceforth, not even 10,000 people could hold down Yunzhi. So the very idea of a path implies some separation. some distance in space or time that we need to traverse to get to a particular destination.

[29:57]

And this is how we all think. So part of working with the story is to see the ways in which we think that we're not good enough now, or that if we only did this, we only did that, eventually we'd get to the mountain peak, or whatever it is we imagine as the goal. But Yonju disdains any path and affirms his present communion with Dongshan. So though Yanju is not Dongshan, Dongshan actually is him. And there's no need to travel to some meeting place somewhere else. So this is, again, very subversive to our usual way of thinking about things. These stories give us a different way of approaching our whole sense of reality. And practically speaking, in terms of this Sautam Sutta tradition, you kind of start on the top of the mountain. So, for those of you who are here for the first time and had meditation instruction this morning, maybe I should talk to you about just sitting, and that our practice basically is about just being present, and whatever comes up is okay.

[31:12]

But practically speaking, it takes some time to settle, and it takes some time to find some calmness. So we do have all kinds of exercises that you can do to help settle, but basically they're not stages. It's not about reaching some place in the future, and eventually in the future you will have some realization. It's about realizing what is here right now. And of course, there's an unfolding of that, and a development of our sense of that, and of our way of engaging with that. But this is some pretty difficult stuff, actually. So sudden awakening, again, is not some flashy experience. It's about seeing the reality of just this. And practically speaking, again, we do offer counting your breath, or doing a mantra, or listening to sounds, or various exercises you can do to kind of fill in the path from the mountaintop and how you got up here.

[32:21]

And it's OK to do those practices. But we start with the sense of wholeness right now. And then if you want to do some of those stages of practice, OK, that's fine. But don't get fooled. Part of this is going beyond emptiness. So the first month, he would have liked to have stayed on the mountaintop where there was no one there, where he could see that all of our ideas about all of this stuff are just that. But he knew that that wasn't the whole practice, that he had to come back down from the mountaintop and share what he had seen. and engage with all the different elements of his life. So it's not enough to just have some flashy realization of suchness or emptiness or whatever, or wholeness.

[33:21]

How do we then live our life of engaging that and expressing that in our everyday activity, in whatever kind of work and life and relationships you are involved with? How do we share this sense of the wholeness that we start to get glimmers of, or tastes of, as we're doing this practice. So another classic expression of that in Chan, there's a longer version of the story, but I think Donovan Leach put it very concisely. He said, first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. We first see distinctions, and then we see through them. But then we have to go back and see just this as our conventional, ordinary reality, and how do we integrate with that.

[34:23]

So I'm going to leave time for discussion and questions, but I'll just briefly mention one other story. And this is a story about, related to what we were just saying, but about how we meet the unconditioned, ultimate aspect of reality in the world. And there are numbers of stories from Dongshan that relate to this in different ways, but in this one, So we're just at the beginning of a two-month practice period. Classically, we do three-month practice periods in China and Japan, where we're adapting these forms in America, and particularly here in this non-residential storefront temple in the middle of Chicago, we're doing a two-month practice period. But one time, Dongshan, at the end of a three-month monastic practice period, said to his assembly,

[35:24]

It's the beginning of autumn, the end of summer. Traditionally, they did these practice periods in the summer. We adapted that in the West. But it's the end of summer, and you will all go, some to the East, some West. You must go where there's not an inch of grass for 10,000 miles. And then he said, but where there's not an inch of grass for 10,000 miles, how can you go? So this is talking about metaphorically going where there's no, grass and weeds is kind of synonymous. They didn't have mowed lawns in Asia. And now as water becomes more scarce and climate is changing, maybe hopefully we will end, we will not have lawns in the West either. In California already they're having to ration waters anyway. So everything is changing.

[36:26]

The reference to 10,000 also refers to a story about the 10,000 grass tips. So this refers to all of the myriad phenomena of the world. Go where there's no grass for 10,000 miles, he said. There was a great Zen guy in China, Lenglin Pan. He was a layperson, not a monk, but he was about a century before Dongshan. And he said the 10,000 grass tips are the minds of the Buddhist ancestors. So ultimately in Zen, we see that even though we can see this ultimate reality and we see our yucky personal stuff, there's no separation. So, anyway, Dong Xiaonou encouraged his students to go where there was no grass for 10,000 miles, where they were not caught by all the conditioning of the world.

[37:32]

And that's pretty difficult. So, he acknowledged that and he said, but where there's not an inch of grass for 10,000 miles, how can you go? There was another teacher named Xishuang. We heard about this and he said, just stepping outside the gate, immediately there's grass. So this is obvious, in this little temple where you can come and sit and have some sense of communion with something that goes beyond. And then Irving Park Road is right out here. But even if you go off to some mountaintop, Tassajara, or some monastery in Tibet, or China, or Japan, or wherever, as soon as you leave the gates, there's grass. As soon as you leave the gates, there's weeds.

[38:34]

As soon as you go out into the world, many things. Another teacher later, Dai Yang, a great teacher in Ireland, in the Chinese-Limited School, I would say even not going out the gate, still the grass is boundless. So actually, you know this. Even if you're sitting quietly, just sitting, the weeds, the mind weeds, as Sugiyoshi calls them, are rising constantly. So even inside the monastery, there are weeds. Even within Sangha, where we are all trying to practice together and feel our uprightness, weeds arise, grasses arise. So there are many more things I could say about that story, too. There are numbers of interesting stories about grass or weeds in our tradition. There's the Song of the Grass, how we chant sometimes, where he says that his hut is covered by weeds.

[39:39]

There's another story, an old story from Mama Yamalor, from the Bodhisattva teachings about Manjushri, the great Bodhisattva of Wisdom, who's sitting on a lion in front of the Buddha on our altar, the teaching staff. The Bodhisattva of Wisdom once asked a pilgrim named Sudhana to bring him one stalk of medicinal herb. So Sudhana went out and searched through the entire earth, but he could not find anything that was not medicine. So, he came back and said, the whole great earth is medicine, which one should I pick and bring to you? And Manjushri insisted, please bring me back one stalk of medicine. So, Sunada plucked a blade of grass and handed it to Manjushri.

[40:40]

That took care of that. So, of course, we know that Oh, Manjushree announced this one blade of grass can both kill a person or give them life. So we know that medicines also, if you take too much of them, can be lethal. Anyway, this has to do... So underlying the story, and there are many other things to say about it, is what is our relationship to... What is our relationship? Even as we glimpse and maybe Sometimes we sit all day or for a few days and soak in this sense of suchness, of just this. Still, what is our relationship to all of the grass that is growing in our life, all of the phenomenal aspects, ordinary, conventional aspects of our life? How do we integrate that with this sense of something that goes beyond? So there's much more to that story. Maybe I'll pause there.

[41:41]

So we're going to have a little extra time for question and answer today. We're not going to do our usual temple cleaning. There will be tea and cookies. But does anyone have comments, responses, questions? I'd like to have some discussion. Please feel free. Yes, Mike. part of her life during the U.S. inversion and the kind of the summer It's just an interesting look into a very common thing that is abundant.

[43:15]

It's where we go and where we stand a lot, too. So any piece of the world of so-called nature, which is actually everything, can be taken as, and displayed as a reminder of the beauty of the world. And as I think you were getting at also, we can see that, how that is threatened. But I'm not sure I got to your question if there was one. There was this question that just paralleled looking into the nature of what we find difficult and trying to often avoid. I have a modest garden up front, and every day there are dog walkers, and they just trample the garden.

[44:16]

And I think to myself, what is this agitation Is this outside the temple, inside the temple? How do you wrestle, churn these everyday things? shift the mind or step back a little bit to see that they're part of this energy. Yes, exactly. That's right. So yeah, how do we see the way in which there are gardens everywhere and they're being trampled everywhere?

[45:21]

How do we see our own part in that? How do we take care of that, appreciate it, and act in a helpful way? This is exactly the point of these stories. These stories aren't answers. They are, to provoke questions, considerations. Yes, George. the place of 10,000 miles without a blade of grass. Would that be awareness without content? Ah, interesting. Without content. Yeah, it might be that. That's one possibility. So our practice is not about getting rid of thinking or getting rid of awareness. It's about realizing the deeper levels of awareness that are already here or that are possible right now.

[46:29]

when he says, go where there's no grass for 10,000 miles, it's kind of an ironic challenge. Maybe he's saying, go and see that actually there's grass everywhere, that you can't get away from the phenomenal world. There are exercises one can do, and maybe it requires being in a kind of monastic or retreat situation where you can really focus on various specific meditative exercises, where you can, like the monk who got to the mountaintop and saw there was no one there, where we can have that kind of full awareness, not caught by any phenomena. That's not exactly our practice. That may be a useful exercise sometimes. But the point is more like how do we, you know, maybe have a sense of that, but also then how do we take care of the rest?

[47:32]

And how do we take care of all the phenomena in our lives? Do that carefully and lovingly. But it helps to have I think what the Dokshat stories implies is that having a sense of the openness that's also part of this reality helps that. Other questions or comments or responses? OK. I've just been rolling a little story around in my mind as we talk about grass. Rolling around in the grass. I've done that. Someone told me a story that Joshin-san, a very famous Japanese teacher of the story of the Buddha's robe, When she was picked up from the airport and dropped off at Green Gulch Farm, the first thing she did was hop out of the car, laugh, and roll around on the grass.

[48:38]

I had never heard that story. She was wonderful. I had a chance to meet her. Wow, that's fun. Yeah, she was a Japanese nun who practiced very hard for a long time. Was that the way, like, going where there's no grass for 10,000 miles? Right. Just roll around in it. Good. Hi. I'm thinking of Hikinoto Art and Nature Museum had a few years ago had a lawn exhibit. And one of the most beautiful aspects of that lawn exhibit that I thought was they had an exhibit that they called Freedom Lawn. Freedom Lawn was a lawn that was free of any fertilizer, pesticides, or pesticides. And so they said that the design of Freedom Lawn would be grass, and lions, and clover, and other types of things that you try and get rid of. But it makes me think when you have to go where you won't find a health place, right?

[49:46]

That we so often want to order the grass, order it. This is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong, this bothers me, this doesn't. And part of at least my understanding in front of just this is it, is that you don't order it. So, you know, there are times when we might arrange things and take care of it in a particular way. We arrange this space in a particular way according to our tradition, adapting it to this space. So it's not that you wouldn't necessarily take care of your garden. The garden, you know, if you wanted to grow vegetables or flowers or whatever, but how do we... So we are part of the garden.

[50:49]

We're not separate. But yeah, how do we allow the world to be the world and try and be helpful there without having to control everything? The impulse to try and control is very strong. And how can we kind of let go of that a little bit? So, David. called One Straw Revolution. And his whole philosophy on farming was do nothing. And basically, there is planning and forethought in how you plant the rice and how it's done.

[51:50]

But after it's done, it's just let it go. And the whole purpose of agriculture, he says, is not to raise crops. It's to raise good people. And that's his line. But it was a way of planting things with forethought, Yeah, that's wonderful, thank you for reminding us. So, maybe one last, and you're done. Oh, there's one more I'll keep for... Well, go ahead. Well, so in all of these stories, there's a certain sort of underlying theme of, you know, there's this distinction between two things. There's self and other, there's mountain, there's non-mountain, or there's where there's between the two mountains, or this sort of thing of journey between self and non-self and all that kind of thing, is that when you, you know, the third step, the mountain,

[53:19]

being with the idea of the particular. It's actually this thing out there in the universe where I'm a person here on my cushion. obligations, things to do, things to take care of, and things to attend to. Does that seem... Yeah. Except that they're not just ideas. Well, yeah, they're not ideas. The reality of just this as it is, which we... Everybody here has glimpsed that, or else you wouldn't be here, even if you're just here for the first time for meditation instruction, whatever it was that brought you. the universal or the ultimate, or however you want to talk about it.

[54:44]

And also this idea of, you know, I mean, it ties into this idea of sudden enlightenment. You don't really need to get anywhere, but there's always this, you know, as even in these stories, this process that has to be sort of taken up to come to that in a really deep way. Like Joyce saying, that the end of the journey is to come to the place where you started and know it for the first time. So Dongshan and these stories are ways of looking at this whole dynamic. Since the other side didn't want to say anything, what didn't want to be the last one? Does anybody else have something to share, or say, or respond to the question or comment? Hi. Hi.

[55:44]

I was just really struck by, you know, holding those, these opposing realities which so many of the stories kind of contain. You know, there's one thing and then it turns, it overturns, as you said. How it's so liberating, where you might think it might sort of hurt the thinking mind or feel paradoxical or tense, it's actually, there's kind of a relaxation and a liberation in hearing those two opposing things stated. So that was quite nice in your talk, I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Yeah, so it's not religious too, although there's a section in the book where I talk Echinoderms, like starfish, who have five appendages, they don't see things in terms of front and back, or left and right, or male and female. They see things in terms of fives, as much as they have some awareness.

[56:44]

But actually, this is not something that you have to figure out, or understand, or calculate. the point of these stories is exactly what you said, this kind of release into not kind of trying to control reality but allowing something to be there and that you were part So one of the things we chant, the song of the grass hut, actually, says, let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. So you may not have heard this, but actually the point of Zen practice is to relax completely. So I'll close with that.

[57:30]

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