Good evening, everyone. Thank you, Bo. So I want to talk this evening about a writing by Ehe Dogen. And it ends with this chant we've just done, Dogen's writing on Arousing the Vow. But I'll get to come back to that a little bit at the end. The writing is called The Sound of the Valley Streams and the form of the mountains. So some of you know about Dogen, but for those who don't, just briefly, Dogen, Hei Dogen was the Japanese monk who introduced, who founded what we call Soto Zen now. He went to, he lived from 1200 to 1253, went to, from Japan to China, for four years in his early mid-20s and came back and eventually founded Ehe Monastery, Eheji, in Japan.

[01:09]

and founded the branch of Zen that we call Soto Zen, and that we follow, and that led to Suzuki Roshi, and that we follow now in America. Dogen had quite a lot of writing, was one of the most prolific of the classic Zen masters. Two great masterworks, Shobo Genzo, Ju Dharma, I, Treasury, and Dogen's extensive record, which I had the privilege of translating with Shōhaku Okamura. The writing I'm going to talk about tonight is from Shōbō Genzo, which means true dharma, I treasury. And it's the essay Kese Sanshoku, the sound of the stream, the form or the shape of the mountains. And So I'm going to just, I'll talk about it more than tonight, probably. This was the essay that we were going to use for our spring practice period, which got rained out by the COVID virus.

[02:10]

But I want to talk about it some. And early on, it talks about a poem by the great Song Dynasty poet Su Shi, or Su Dongpo, is his literary name. He lived a while before Dogen. He lived from 1037 to 1101. So he died a century before Dogen was born. And Dogen quotes, he was, Su Dongpo was a great poet, one of the great classic Chinese poets, a very famous poet. He was also a high official in the government at times, also exiled from the capital a couple of times. He was a great calligrapher, a great painter. He studied with a Zen master and was a meditation adept. But the poem, and he wrote, a very prolific poet. The poem, though, that Dogen quotes, I'm working with a couple of different translations of this essay, so I'm gonna be shuffling papers around a little bit, sorry, but the poem,

[03:20]

my translation or paraphrase of it. I'll read through a couple of times. The sound of valley streams are Buddha's long, broad tongue, or the sound of valley streams are the universal long, broad tongue. The shape of the mountains are no other than the unconditioned body. Realizing this, 84,000 verses came forth throughout the night. At some later time, how could I say anything about this? Again, Sush's poem, the sound of valley streams are the universal long, broad tongue. The shape or form of the mountains are no other than the unconditioned body. 84,000 verses came forth throughout the night. At some later time or some future day, how could I say anything about this? So this sound of the valley streams or the long broad tongue is often interpreted as Buddha's long broad tongue.

[04:29]

Buddha was supposed to have a very long tongue and one of the 37 marks of a Buddha. The form of the mountains or the shape of the mountains are no other than the unconditioned body or sometimes interpreted as Buddha's body. So this is to say that the sound of the valley streams is the voice of Buddha. the form of the mountains and the distance, the shape of the mountains is Buddha's body. Buddha is not somewhere other than in the sound of the streams and the form, the shape of the mountains, right in the mountains and rivers that Dogen lived in. Realizing this, 84,000 verses came forth through the night. So, with this realization, Sutongpo heard all these verses coming forth.

[05:40]

Of course, he was a trained poet, but just all of these verses came forth. Maybe more than he could write down. Wonderful verses. But then, In the future, how can I share this with anyone? How can I say anything about this? So this poem is wonderful. It's kind of the heart of the practice. To see that the very mountains and waters, the sound of the stream, the shape of the mountain, the form of the mountains, is the voice of Buddha, is the body of Buddha. and realizing this verses baffled forth for Sutongpo. But how to say anything about this? How do you, how to share this? That's the question when there's realization of how the earth itself brings forth the Buddha.

[06:51]

How do we share it? How do we convey this? So, Dogen goes on to express that afterwards. This verse Sudongpo presented to his teacher, his Chan master. And his Chan master was a Dharma heir of Huanglong Huinan, who was the founder one of the main branches in China of the Linji, of the Rinzai branch, called Rinzai in Japanese, the Huanglong branch, the Yellow Dragon branch of Rinzai Zen. Actually, that's the branch that we also belong to. So Soto Zen, Dogen, is from the Sado or Soto lineage, but in our lineage papers, we also honor one of Dogen's teachers before he went to China, Myozen, who was from that branch of

[08:05]

Linji or Rinzai Zen, so in some ways we're both. The other main branch of Rinzai or Linji is the Angshi branch, and that's the main branch in Japanese Rinzai. Anyway, that's a footnote. But here, Dogen is identifying Buddha, or the ultimate, with the landscape of nature, with the environment, the mountains and the sound of the stream, awakening for for Shutong-po and for Dogen the very environment itself and so Shutong-po had asked, before this experience, Sudhankar had asked his teacher, he went back and told his teacher, gave his teacher this verse.

[09:08]

And previously, he had asked his teacher, well, Dogen says, if this revelation of the Buddha's body is the preaching of the Dharma, how are people today to see the form of the mountains and hear the sound of the streams? Now, a lot of Zen rhetoric is about mountains and streams. When I first moved to Chicago, I talked about how we could also talk about this in terms of prairies and lakes. But anyway, Dogen says, how do people today, in his time, see the forms of the mountains and hear the sound of the streams? Do they hear them as a single phrase? Are they just half a phrase? Are they myriad verses? How regrettable it is that there are sounds and forms in the streams and mountains that we cannot understand. So one of the things that Dogen does in many of his essays is kind of prod his students to look deeper, how sad it is that we don't understand it.

[10:16]

That's just something that he says, but then he says, yet it is a matter for delight that we have the opportunity to acquire the proper conditions for experiencing the way in these sounds and forms. The sounds are never still, and the forms never cease to rest, never cease to exist. This being so, does this mean that when they are revealed, the body is near, and that when they are obscured, the body is not near? So he's saying, the mountains and waters, the landscape of reality, the natural order, our environment is always there to express Buddha to us. It's always there, no matter what the situation. Even in the middle of a pandemic, we can go walk out and see trees. We can go out and walk to a park nearby. So, Dogen says, today's bodhisattva who practices the way should begin his study of the way or her study of the way in the knowledge that the mountains flow and the stream does not flow.

[11:31]

That's kind of a strange statement. The mountains flow, the stream does not flow, Dogen says. How we usually think of mountains and waters is not necessarily so. And these days, how we usually think about the world we're starting to see is not necessarily so. The world is not what we think it is. We live in a strange time and maybe it's easier to see now that the mountains flow. stream does not flow. Things are not how we usually see them. So Dogen goes on to say that when Sutongpo was enlightened, had this realization, and wrote this verse, he had on a previous day asked his teacher about the saying that even non-Sentient

[12:45]

beings, non-sentient things, express the Dharma. So this is an ancient saying, and I'll say more about it, but while he had no really significant experience from hearing his master's explanation, when later that night he heard the sound of the streams, it was as if the billowing waves touched the high heavens. When this occurred, Dogen says, the sound astonished Shidongpo. But should we say it was the sounds of the streams, or should we rather say that it was the sound of his teacher flowing? Perhaps his teacher's discussion of the idea of insentient things expressing the Dharma had not really stopped, but was imperceptibly mixed with the night sounds of the valley streams. Dogen goes on, now someone will say that it was a single water or that it was the ocean of oneness, the oneness of the water of the Dharma and the water of the streams.

[13:55]

If we examine the matter closely, was it the poet Tsongkhapa who became enlightened or was it the mountains and streams which became enlightened? So was it Tsongkhapa who had realization, or did Sudongpo allow the mountains themselves to awaken and the stream to awaken? If anyone has eyes to see, then certainly anyone is able to see the long, broad tongue and pure body of Buddha. So that's Dogen's comment on this poem. So, more to say about this. There's one of Dogen's earliest writings about the meaning of meditation, The Self-Fulfillment Samadhi, which we also chat sometimes from one of his earliest essays, now included in some versions of Shobo Genzo called Bendowa, The Wholehearted Way.

[15:09]

Dogen says, when one person sits upright and fully expresses Buddha mudra, Buddha position in their body and mind. Even for a little while, all of space awakens. This is what Dogen proclaims. And then he says, earth, grasses and trees, fences and walls, tiles and pebbles awaken. And there's mutual guidance between the Zazen person the earth, grasses and trees, fences and walls, tiles and pebbles. So for Dogen, this practice, this sitting that we've just done, well, first of all, it's not just a self-help practice. Of course, we benefit from taking the time to stop and sit down and sit upright like Buddha and settle into being present in this body mind.

[16:12]

But what Dogen is proclaiming, the founder of our branch of Buddhism, is that this is much deeper. And what Dogen is expressing, he expresses it in many of his essays. But in this particular essay, The Sound of the Valley Streams, the Forms of the Mountains, he starts with this poem by this great Chinese poet, Su Dongpo, and uses that as a way of talking about this. So, you know, one of the issues here is just that we tend to think of, well, sometimes it's that only human beings can become Buddhists. Or there's the issue of consciousness, that only conscious beings can become Buddhists. or only self-conscious beings can become Buddhists.

[17:14]

But here, you know, Dogen says, he's asking, well, did Sudongpo have realization, or was it the mountains and streams themselves who had this realization? And Dogen elsewhere says that when we sit upright, even for a little while, and fully express Buddha Mudra, fully take on Buddha's position in our whole body and mind, that the whole environment around us, earth, grasses, and trees, fences, walls, tiles, and pebbles, all of space awakens. Now, this doesn't make sense to our Western logical mind, right? This is a nonsensical statement, but this is what Dogen proclaims in his very first essay about the meaning of Sazen, that this is a practice that engages not just our conscious mind to realize

[18:23]

this deeper awakening, the awakening of Buddhas, but that this has something to do with the nature of reality itself. So some of modern physics sort of seems to speak to this. What is happening when we are willing to stop, let our minds settle, let ourselves settle on the self, as Uchiyama Roshi says, be present, And what does this have to do with the mountains and streams? And it's not just the mountains and streams passively. It's the expression of dharma by the shape and forms and colors of the mountains and the sound of the streams flowing or the mountains flowing and the streams not flowing. The grasses and trees. And even tiles and walls, he doesn't make it natural.

[19:29]

It's not about natural things. Tolkien includes in the self-fulfillment samadhi tiles and pebbles, walls. There are modern theories of fields of resonance and things like that. What's going on as we sit and really settle into being present. Being present, some translators talk about presencing. Being mindful in a way that allows our mind to be not separate from our environment. So this is about the world of nature, but it's beyond that. It's not about, it's about consciousness, but also what is consciousness? Is it just our idea of human consciousness, self-consciousness?

[20:29]

So going back to Chinese Buddhism, going back to somewhat early Chinese Buddhism, the idea of Buddha nature. There was a debate and so this is one difference between Indian and Tibetan Buddhism and East Asian Buddhism. In Tibetan Buddhism and Indian Buddhism only animals might have Buddha nature or might be Buddha nature. In Chinese Buddhism they saw that they thought of grasses and trees also having Buddha nature and Dogen takes it a step further and says all beings is Buddha nature. And there's a whole Buddha nature essay, which gets into that in an elaborate way. But the question is for us, how do we see awakening as a quality of reality? What does that mean for us? And then what does that have to do with consciousness?

[21:29]

So, um, some, uh, Some indigenous people, I know the Cheyenne tribe, the Cheyenne native peoples in North America say that rocks have consciousness. So I've talked about this before. Some of you have heard me talk about this maybe, but you know, the wonderful Japanese rock gardens, you can look at some of those rocks and see they've been through some things. What is, of course we have some idea of And there are psychologists in our sangha who understand, from the point of view of Western psychology, a lot about consciousness. Dogen also, in one of his other essays, talks about the different ways we see, the limitations of our human consciousness. So for example, the water in Lake Michigan, we see one way, fish see another way, dragons see yet another way.

[22:33]

So our perspective on reality is conditioned by the limitations of our human consciousness. It's not that that's wrong or bad, it's just a limitation. Dogen is talking about reality that includes mountains, waters, lakes, prairies, and fences and walls. How are we interrelated with all of that? And so I want to come back at the end to what's the point of all this? Because this is just a theoretical discussion. And that's why we chanted the Dogen's Arousal of the Vow. I'll just say a little bit more about this essay. This is a long essay. He gives several other stories or koans about classical Chinese teachers who had awakened through interaction with natural phenomena, just to mention a couple.

[23:48]

So, There's a couple of famous stories that he mentions next. One is about, again, I'm shuffling between various translations, but there was a famous teacher named Xiang Yan, who was a student of, oh yeah, this is a good story. He was a student of the great teacher, Guixiang, who was founder of one of the five houses of Chang. And the story about Chang Yan is that he went to see his teacher, Guixiang, and

[24:52]

Weishan said to him, you're quite bright and seem to understand everything without any reliance on your learned treatises from what you were before your parents conceived you. Give me one single phrase concerning the way. Xiangyan didn't know what to say. Try as he might. His token relates that Shong En could think of nothing to say in reply about what he could say from before he was born, from before his parents conceived him. And He couldn't think of anything, any clue in all of his, he was very learned. He had lots of books. He couldn't think of anything from his Dharma treatises that would help him. And so he set fire to all of his books and said, a painted rice cake does not satisfy hunger.

[26:00]

famous saying. And there's a wonderful essay by Dogen called about a painted rice cake. And that has a very surprising ending to it, but I'll save that for another time. Anyway, Shang En said, I'll no longer seek the Buddha way. I'll no longer seek for realization in this present life. I give up. I can't do it. I'll just practice being a serving monk and serve rice to the other monks. I can't, I can't, I won't, I can't understand the way. I can't find the way. So he was just a server, like a meal server in our, in our all-day sittings and sashimis, carrying food for the monks. One day he went back to Guishan and said, my mind's clouded, I cannot speak. Say something that will help me, please, teacher.

[27:03]

Guixiang replied, unfortunately, I cannot say anything for you. Maybe later you will resent my having done so, if you said something. So the years passed, and Xiangyan traveled away to a distant mountain, searching for the whereabouts of the national teachers. And near the hermitage of the national teacher, who I think by then had passed away, he built a grass hut. I sometimes sing the song of the grass hut. And he lived there. for years and just took care of this hermitage. One day, Xiang Yan, he planted many young bamboos around his hut and he spent his day taking care of his hermitage. One day he was sweeping the path and a pebble flew up from where he was sweeping and struck the bamboo. And when he heard the sound it made, he suddenly had a great awakening. This is a very famous story. So he bathed and purified himself, went back to Greyshawn's Mountain and paid homage and said to Greyshawn, if you had answered me on that other occasion, how would this have ever been possible?

[28:28]

The depths of your kindness exceed even those of my own parents. And he wrote a verse, so. And I'm gonna use the other translation for the verse. So this is all on this essay, The Sounds of the Valley Streams, The Shape of the Mountains, The Four Colors of the Shape of the Mountains. So Xiang Yan's verse. Forgetting all knowledge at one stroke, I do not need cultivation anymore. Activity expressing the ancient road, I don't fall into passivity. Everywhere trackless, conduct beyond sound and form. The adepts in all places call this the supreme state. And then just very briefly, there's another story that's similar. Also another student of Guixiang, He worked studying the way for 30 years.

[29:37]

Once he was traveling around and he came to the crest of a mountain and came over the ridge of the mountain and saw over the ridge many peach blossoms in full bloom and suddenly was awakened. And then he wrote a verse. For 30 years, I've been looking for a swordsman. How many times have the leaves fallen and the branches grown anew? After once having seen the peach blossoms, I've never had tripped outs anymore. So, okay. These are a couple of stories from this essay. The essay goes on quite a bit. And at the end of the essay, Dogen talks, and there's more to it, and I'll talk more about it, at some point, but at the end of the essay, Dogen talks about this whole thing of this determination, this commitment to awaken, to be present, to find one's way.

[30:55]

to realize oneself, to realize how to be helpful. And then the chants that we did at the beginning, which is on our website, if you go to Chants and Website and go to Dogon's Arousing the Vow or Ehekosalotsakamon, you can find it, is embedded in the last part of this long essay. Dogen's writing on arousing the vow, but it ends with it that this is the true mind of faith, the true body of faith. So in addition to talking about how our environment is connected to our consciousness, to our awareness, how the flowing of the mountains and the steadiness of the stream and the sound of the stream and the shape and form and color of the mountain is Buddha's body and voice.

[32:05]

This is about this awareness and determination, Dogen stresses, is about the role of faith in our practice. So this is a whole other topic because the word faith, you know, in Abrahamic religions in the Western idea of religion, the role of faith usually means faith as in faith in something, belief in some deity or some creed or some dogma. Faith in Buddhism is more like faith in a practice or trust, trust in something. So I want to link this back to, some of you heard Stephanie Cause's talk yesterday about the Dharma of Resistance and her experience of supporting the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and activities in Portland, Oregon, where she lives, and responding to the

[33:16]

I don't know, the federal agents, the storm troopers, whatever you want to call them in Portland, and these horrible sounds that woke her up in the middle of the night from the helicopters and so forth. So part of, so again, this long essay by Dogan is complicated. There's many aspects to it. It's complicated. It's talking about our connection to so-called non-sentient beings, what we think of as non-sentient beings, mountains and waters, trees, forests, rocks, and how they express the dharma for us, how we can realize awakening by listening to them, by seeing them, by hearing their voices, but also how our commitment to this our trust, trust in change.

[34:21]

You know, Stephanie was talking about this yesterday, that we can, Stephanie's a scholar of Buddhism and environmentalism, that we can trust in change. And this is, of course, is very relevant for us all now when we're living in this time of tremendous uncertainty and change with the pandemic of this COVID virus with the pandemic of our strange government, put it that way, with the pandemic of climate damage, with the pandemic, the 400 year old pandemic of racism, slavery and racism that we're finally waking up to, or some of those of us who hasn't been in our face this whole time. And the future is uncertain. And our response has responses.

[35:24]

So part of the trust, the true body of faith, the true mind of faith that Dogen talks about is that we can respond, but it's not in our control. We don't know the outcome. So I'm kind of adding that to what Dogen says in his chant, but I think it's there. How do we act? So yesterday we talked about, maybe it was Paul was talking about, I think other people too, about not getting caught in right and wrong and making judgments, but the Bodhisattva precepts and practice is about how do we be helpful rather than harmful? How do we support helpfulness rather than harm? So I've covered a lot of different material, but going back to the beginning, this sense of Buddha's voice, the sounds of the stream, and as urban dwellers, maybe it's in the sound of the traffic, but there's less traffic now.

[36:34]

The pandemic has given us more quiet. What are the ambient sounds that can give us the voice of Buddha? The shape of the mountains. What are the forms that you know, by the lakeside that can show us the body of Buddha. How do we see our connection to this world that we think of as dead? Part of the point of all this is that the world is alive and is available to help guide us. So that's a lot of stuff to, to kind of digest or hang out with, but all, I'll stop for now and welcome your comments, responses, questions to any part of any of this. Please feel free. If you raise your hand, I'll call on people.

[37:39]

Thank you all very much. Jokai, is your hand up? I can't see. Yes, go ahead. Roshi, you said that, or Dogen said that, maybe you can say the quote again that Dogen had about sitting upright, and just to sit upright is to express the whole of the Buddha ways and something like that. Yeah, and this is in a bendo in the, I translated it in a book called The Wholehearted Way. And it's also in our, in our chant book, you can find it in, if you go to chance in the websites, the self fulfillment Samadhi. So I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but he's basically says, just to sit and display with sit with whole body and mind, and display the Buddha, just display the Buddha mudra with your whole body and mind.

[38:50]

all of space awakens, something like that. So it's about this relationship between our upright, calm, quiet city and all of the environment around us. And I think Stephanie said something like, if there's a hair's breadth of deviation, it's the distance between heaven and earth. So is it possible for us to be just kind of sitting on our, the cushion spinning our wheels? You know what I mean? Is it possible to be doing like wrong meditation if we're not, if we're not fully expressing the Buddha mudra, you know? Well, you know, we can make judgments about are we fully expressing it or not? I don't, again, I don't know that right and wrong is a helpful judgment. Can we aim at fully expressing Buddha mudra with our whole body and mind?

[40:04]

Can we give ourselves, can we not hold back from our wholehearted expression of body and mind? And there's another essay, Being Time, Dogen talks about a half-hearted expression of being time is completely a half being time. So it's not a matter of, you know, giving yourself a grade on your zazen. That's not the point. Just stop holding back from just being how you are in your dharma position as you are. What you think about your zazen is not what your zazen is. Don't believe everything you think.

[41:05]

And if you make judgments, don't make judgments about that. Other questions or responses or comments? Yes, Paul. I like very much what you said about the Bodhisattva and resistance, because I was having great difficulty coming to terms with the idea of being pushing back against the authorities, against the cops, against, it was very much of a dualistic situation where there's the good people and the bad people and you're trying to, you're feeling scared and you're yelling and screaming and there's something that's not the Buddha way about it. And you said something about Bodhisattva, and it just clicked to me that of course that's what's going on.

[42:16]

It's not the Buddha way, but we are intentionally transgressing the oneness of the Buddha way. of body and mind, the oneness of good and bad, in order to perform something for the benefit of all mankind. So that's the Bodhisattva's vow, not to go into Nirvana, but to stay here and take on the suffering of the world. So that makes it much easier for me to understand, because I'm very drawn to wanting to take on the suffering of the world, but on the other hand, Why shouldn't I just mellow out? Yes, so we can talk about this more, but there is a bodhisattva way to engage in, and I've talked about this a lot here, and some of you have heard me before, And it's not that I'm not asking, I'm not saying that everybody should go into demonstrations at all.

[43:23]

But for some people, if you're so moved, there's a way to respond. And there's lots of different ways to respond. There's not one right way to respond. That's part of the point. But as Buddhists, quote unquote, being passive, being cool, calm, and quiet, and not speaking out, I don't think that's helpful. I don't think that's, I mean, but there's a way to go to demonstrations as Bodhisattva activity where you don't have to, you know, yell and scream and act aggressively to anybody. But you can be part of expressing opposition to what is harmful.

[44:29]

But how do you do that in a way that is clear and calm and And it's not personal, you don't have to demonize the police or any particular politicians. It's tempting to do that sometimes, but how do you respond helpfully? So yeah, I think Stephanie's talk yesterday was challenging for many of us, but there's a way to be engaged in that kind of, and that kind of activity for those who are so called to do that. But I think just talking about it is also a way to be involved. But just ignoring what's going on in the world, I don't think that's, I don't know, I don't think that's what Buddha was talking about.

[45:32]

Let's put it that way, so we can talk about that more. Bo, you had something? Yeah. I mean, I appreciate your talk. Thank you. I mean, it's kind of easy for me to think of like mountains and streams as kind of the Buddha's body. I mean, I don't know if it's easy for me, you know, but it's not a huge leap. But then I think about, maybe I'm thinking about some of this, like the dichotomy or duality between good and bad somewhat, or the natural and the unnatural, right? So I'm wondering, you know, if like, you know, a body of water as the Buddhist body, again, is something easy for me to imagine. But what about, like the oil spill in the body of water, right? Like, is that also I mean, is all of this a part of the Buddhist body, no matter its ill effect or not?

[46:32]

And maybe ill effect is a judgment, et cetera. But then again, we have to see clearly. And I also agree that, you know, we use our wisdom towards acting beneficially, et cetera. But how do we conceive of that sort of enormous trouble, you know? Yeah, good, yeah, basic question. So it's not that everything is, well, in some sense, everything is the Dharmakaya. Everything is Buddha's body on some level. And that's sometimes pretty hard to see. But we have these Bodhisattva precepts that we follow that include you know, radical respect for all beings, benefiting all beings. It includes values. There are values there, not killing, not stealing, speaking truth, you know, not harboring ill will, not holding on to anger.

[47:41]

And yet we can speak truth to power. We can support non-killing in life. It's complicated and Buddhists have, you know, there's the whole thing about Zen at war and how Zen people in Japan, you know, supported the Japanese imperialist war before World War II. So, you know, it's possible to make mistakes. I remember Katagiri Roshi. I did a practice period with him at Tasahara and it came up because Somebody said that they'd heard that he had said that Hitler was a bodhisattva. And people were really upset about that. And he said, okay, okay, I'll take it back. Hitler was not a bodhisattva. Hitler was Buddha. Now I, you know, I can't go there, but you know,

[48:50]

You know, part of what's happening right now in this country is, and in the world, is a working out of the karma of human beings. The whole thing of racism goes back, the whole thing of slavery goes back, you know, maybe to the beginnings of humanity. How do we grow out of such things? So is Donald Trump Buddha? I don't know. And yet we can make assessments of harm and helpfulness and respond and try and support helpfulness. Doesn't mean that we can control the outcomes of our activity, but we can try and act in ways that seem to move towards helpfulness. So we do have values based on Buddhist and Bodhisattva principles.

[49:57]

And maybe what's happening now is that, I would not imagine that this is through any conscious intentionality on the part of Mr. Trump, but that what's happening now is revealing you know, the terrible background of our country's history and legacy and, you know, and not just our country, but around the world. So something is becoming much more apparent than it was before. And we have a chance now to make positive changes about that. So yeah, so it's complicated, and we don't know how things will work out, but there's a chance that maybe things will be much better after the pandemic. I don't know. I don't have the answers. We don't know. We can't control it.

[51:00]

But we can respond, hopefully. And what that means is different for each one of us. We each have our own particular ways of responding. So, other comments? Yes, Juan Pablo. Hi, Thaygen. Hi, everyone. Thank you very much. And I was thinking about this theme about insentient beings speaking the Dharma. And I have read a little bit the Shogun. I found that there's not an explicit, how do you call, a teaching of insentient beings. I mean, Dogen always says, like, I don't know, like, all these because the bell struck the bamboo or something, but is there anything in Dogon that says how insentient beings speak the Dharma, or what is the teaching that insentient beings are given to us?

[52:17]

Because I don't see it very clearly. Well, yeah, there's a whole essay about that in Shobo Genzo, and it comes from a teaching of from actually from the Chinese founder of Soto or Zao Dong, Dong Shan, who lived in the 800s. So you can look at my book, Just This Is It, Dong Shan and the Practice of Suchness. There's a whole chapter on non-sentient beings. expressing the Dharma. But there's a essay by Dogen about that, about Dongshan speaking about this. So yeah, there's a whole discourse about this through the history of Soto Zen, about non-sentient beings expressing the Dharma.

[53:19]

And it's talked about in various ways. So in terms of what is the, just the fact of it and how we hear that, I don't know that it gets into the science of it in the way that we would think about it, but it's very much a, not the most predominant part of, Soto Zen, but it's very much part of the tradition of Soto Zen. Because my way of understanding this statement is to try to understand how they are, how they have agency, to put it in some terms, you know, like in sentient beings that we suppose they don't have any agency, well, they have agency.

[54:21]

So that's a teaching. But I mean, I cannot find an explicit way how they act in Dogon. And that's my question. How they teach, how they act, how they... I don't know. I don't know. I just... That's an interesting agency. I don't know that there's... I'm not sure about intentionality. It's more like the sound of the streams is in some way Buddha's voice. And maybe it's the intentionality of the Zen person hearing it. I don't know. That's an interesting question about agency. I'm not sure. I'll have to think about that. Maybe I'll get back to you on that. But maybe it's just the intentionality of all things. that all things have this quality of Buddha nature.

[55:23]

And it's not like something that's intended to control something. I don't know. That's an interesting question. I'm not sure. Ed, did you have something? Yes, thanks, Tygan. Juan Pablo, sometimes I mingle the idea of agency with the idea of capacity for instrumentality. Is there an instrumentality to the object, say an inanimate object, such that it has the capacity for agency, or to myself? I'll relate one experience very quickly. I was in a national park somewhere, and there was this enormous redwood tree. And you could see the top of it. You couldn't even get around it. The thing was different as you walked around it. It wasn't the same object. But there was a sign in front of it that said, this redwood tree will create 28,954.5 board feet of lumber.

[56:30]

So the tree had agency. The tree had instrumentality. The tree had an understandable purpose. Only if you cut it down. I'm telling you, when you stood near this tree, it was inconceivable. You couldn't understand it. And the term faith, for me, the non-Abrahamic term faith, I think relates to faith in no judgment of any understanding of the object being observed. objects absolutely are beyond understanding yet continue to exist. Yeah, that's, that's good. I, you know, that example, like a big, you know, one of those big sequoia trees in, in, in Northern California, such a presence.

[57:39]

I mean, small things too can have presence. It's not just a matter of size, but, but yeah. there are natural events that have a presence that are just really clear, you know? And so, yeah. So agency, I don't know. Yeah. It's not, you know, I'm looking at you as an architect, and Paul is here too, it's not just natural things. Thinking about you know, Dogen talking about non-animate things like fences and walls, you know, there are structures, buildings that have a presence that conveys something just by their presence, you know? So unquestionably, right? Buildings are clearly sentient beings. I can't even imagine how they're not.

[58:43]

They're built with human hands and they have a history of occupancy they exist in a larger environment. I mean, you can't, it's impossible to conceive of them as anything else. So yes, but not even not even with their history or function just in their isness, you know, there's something power, there's some power. That's another word to put there, but not power over but just some presencing of of that conveys something, I don't know. It's hard to talk about this stuff in English. Our usual way of thinking about how things work on other things, when we talk about it in terms of things, it kind of comes apart. And it's certainly not an agency that can be boiled down to one sentence or two sentences or three terms or three ideas. If the agency is larger than that, we tend to think, oh, it has no agency. Yeah. But the fact is all objects have unlimited agency, depending on our understanding of how we relate to them.

[59:50]

Right. It's not one thing. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Good. Yeah. This whole thing about, about so-called incension, so-called inanimate beings expressing the Dharma. It's a very interesting idea that we, It's not how we usually think about things. Other comments? Responses? Oh, yes, David. Thanks for your talk on this essay that I'm really finding it hard to say anything about or ask a question about. But there's the thing about poetry, the thing about 80, whatever it is, 84,000 or 80,000 verses. And that really, that catches my attention. I care about poetry. I'm delighted that poetry is so central and important to Zen Buddhism.

[60:54]

And it's usually these beautiful, these beautiful little epic, you know, little lyric moments. And here's this thing that sounds horrible. I mean, it sounds wonderful, but it also sounds And I was sitting tonight and I opened the windows thinking, oh, this will be nice, I'll hear birds. And instead, I don't know if it's, I guess it's cicadas, but I was hot and there was this swarm and it was like, this is kind of cool. And it kind of reminds me of that. So I'm really, I'm curious to hear if there's anything more that you would have to say about the 80,000 verses. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And yeah, I love those last two lines of that poem. Let me read that poem again.

[61:58]

This is the starting point for this. The sound of valley streams are the long, broad tongue, or the universal long, broad tongue. The shape of the mountains are no other than the unconditioned body. 84,000 verses came forth throughout the night. Some, at some later time, how could I say anything about this? I love those last two lines. Yeah. And I, and, you know, I've had periods of Zazen where sort of, you know, just, I don't know about 84,000 verses, but just this insides pour out, you know, just, and when I'm in the middle of writing something sometimes in Zazen, the whole paragraph will appear. But then, you know, when one has some sense of something, when one sees how a tree or a building expresses the Dharma, you know, the last line, the last line, sometime later, how can I say anything about this?

[63:13]

This is, in some ways, the kernel of the bodhisattva way, the call for skillful means. How can we share this? So poetry is elusive. It's not saying it directly. How do you convey to somebody what moves you in a poem? How do you convey to somebody when you see I was talking about Katagiri Roshi, when he said, one of the things I remember him saying, when you go out of the zendo and see the mountains or see a beautiful sight or see a flower, if you say, oh wow, that's already too much. How do you share, you see something beautiful, how do you share that with somebody else? It's like that. And that's, the challenge of how do you explain, how do you, or any of you, how do you tell somebody else what's wonderful about Sazen?

[64:22]

Of course, Sazen isn't always wonderful, we all know that, but when it's wonderful, how can you explain that to somebody? How can you tell somebody? You know, maybe the most you can do is tell them, go sit. You know, and then, but maybe you can write a poem, I don't know. Or if you're a musician, maybe you can play something. Or if you're an architect, maybe you can build a building. I don't know. I don't know if that helps, David. Well, unless there's anything else, maybe it's time for announcements.

[65:04]

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