Good evening and welcome. I want to continue this evening speaking of some of the themes from the Mountains and Waters Sutra by Dogen that we've been talking about during our practice period this month and will continue next month. So yesterday, our practice period Chuseo, Nyozan gave a very fine talk about bodhicitta, which is a Sanskrit word, very old teaching in Buddhism. Bodhicitta means literally the mind of awakening. And it refers to the aspiration for awakening, the aspiration for enlightenment, or bodhi. And it's talked about in terms of that which brings us to practice, that which originally brought you to do this practice.

[01:09]

And in some sense is considered, in some ways, to include all of enlightenment in it. But, of course, it develops endlessly. But in China and in Japan, this was translated as, well, to use the Japanese pronunciation, dōshin, the mind of the way. So starting in China, they translated a lot of Indian Buddhist ideas in terms of Taoist well, originally Taoist ideas, but still, even after they kind of understood Buddhism very clearly still in terms of Taoist terms. So Tao or Do in Japanese came to be used as, well, the path and sometimes the Buddhist path, but also the whole process

[02:16]

of awakening, including the goal, the process and the path, not really separate from the goal, which is how we see it in terms of practice and realization being one. So, Dogen talks about dosha, the mind of the way. And in terms of... So this has some implications for... some of the basic themes of the Mountains and Water Sutra we've been talking about, which is a very elaborate long essay by Dogen. Dogen's the 13th century Japanese monk who started what we now call Soto Zen, this branch of Zen Buddhism that we practice here that goes back to China and of course back to India as well in terms of its teaching roots. But this This text, the Mountains and Waters Sutra, is a long, difficult essay.

[03:27]

Dogen is particularly challenging in terms of how he uses language and how he uses various phrases from both the Mahayana Sutras and the old teaching stories, and turns them around and plays with them very poetically to bring out the inner teachings of Well, of reality and of our practice and the implications of this zazen we've just been doing, this meditation practice. And one of the major things that he talks about in this essay called The Mountains and Water Sutra, he starts from this old teaching, this old phrase from one of the Chinese Tsao Tung and Shoto Ancestors, who said, the green mountains are constantly walking, which is of course very challenging and we think of mountains as very solid.

[04:33]

What does it mean to say the mountains are walking? And he goes on to say, well, that we have to study the mountains walking and we have to study how the mountains walking teaches us about our own walking. So in some ways, this teaching is about learning our own walking. And of course, walking involves some path, some way. So I want to relate this tonight to the way, the path. And there are many overtones in this text. It's very poetic. And in this phrase, the mountains and sutra, the mountains are constantly walking. He doesn't use this word for walking, but later on he uses the word for walking, which also means conduct or performance or practice, the Gyo of Shugyo, for those of you who know some Japanese.

[05:39]

So, the implication is that the mountains are constantly performing their mountainous. And we are constantly walking, and we sometimes do walking meditation here, but whether we're walking or moving around like the waters, or sitting still and upright like mountains, there's some movement, there's some walking, there's some conduct that's going on. So we could talk about it in terms of ethical conduct too, I suppose, but tonight I want to talk about it in terms of this process of walking itself and how it relates to the way and our practice, and what is our walking? So in the Mountains and Waters Sutra, just to talk about how Dogen talks about it a little bit, and then I'm gonna go talk about Gary Snyder's comments, but Dogen says, mountains walking is just like human walking.

[06:48]

Accordingly, do not doubt mountains walking, even though it does not look the same as human walking. The Buddha ancestors' words, point to walking. This is fundamental understanding. And he says that if we don't see how the mountains are constantly walking, we can't see our own walking. So what does this mean? learn how to walk, that we learn our own walking by studying the mountains walking. That's what he's implying, that somehow we have to see, and this whole essay is about this deep interconnectedness that we are with the whole landscape of the mountains and waters. So our whole world, the whole universe, mountains and waters, but also the prairies and lakes, the skyscrapers and avenues, all of the terrain of our life, we are an expression of.

[07:57]

How do we walk in this? So, last Monday night I talked about, so, from this wonderful book, great book, Practice of the Wild, by Gary Snyder, a great American Zen patriarch. There's a section that I talked about last Monday night about where he's actually commenting explicitly on the Mountains and Water Sutra. I want to talk tonight about a different part of this book, The Practice of the Wild, read some things from it. This relates to this idea of the mind of the way. of what Nyozoma was talking about yesterday. But in terms of the way, in terms of this sense of there is a way, there is a way that mountains walk, there is a way that we walk, there is a way that is both the path, our progression as we practice, and the wholeness of that path, which is awakening.

[09:05]

So I just want to read some sections from one of the chapters or essays in this wonderful book, The Practice of the Wild, and this is called On the Path and Off the Trail. And he starts by talking... Well, he talks a lot in this book about place and finding your place. And I could relate that to Dogen talking about dharma position, finding your place in the world. So our place is, you know, in northern Chicago, Irving Park Road. That's the place of our sangha. But each of us has our own place that includes many other places. But he talks about places also... Well, I'll just read the beginning of this. Place is one kind of place. Another field is the work we do, our calling, our path in life. Membership in a place includes membership in a community. So he's actually talking about Sangha here. So this is the Buddhist word for community.

[10:10]

But especially in the context of this kind of non-residential lay Sangha that we have here, we are a community of multiple communities. And this is something he's talking about when he starts to talk about the path. He says, membership in a work association, whether it's a guild or a union, or a religious or mercantile order, is a membership in a network. networks cut across communities with their own kinds of territoriality, analogous to the long migrations of geese and hawks. So this sangha is a network of sanghas, actually, because each of you is connected to other communities through your work, through various other contexts, relationships, and so forth. So when we talk about the mind of the way, And as Nyozoma was talking about yesterday, mind, citta also means heart.

[11:14]

So the heart of the way, the heart that beats on the path, is a network. It's a kind of context of various paths that we're all connected into and by and through. So I want to just talk about, I want to leave some time for discussion, hopefully, but I want to talk about a few of the things that Gary talks about in this context of path. He talks about paths as being in one level linear, but also that paths include being off the path and off the trail. And what is off the path? In a sense, everything else, everything other is off the path. The relentless complexity of the world is off to the side of the trail. For hunters and herders, trails weren't always so useful.

[12:17]

For a forager, the path is not where you walk for long. So, as we follow our path, we also have to look to the sides. And this is particularly true for us in this Sangha, as we're exploring what is it like to have a lay, non-residential Sangha in Chicago. This is new. And actually, all of Americans then, it's something really new. And yet, we're even more experimenting with how do we take care of a certain form in this context that is multiple networks. What we're doing is kind of bold and kind of off the path, and yet there's a path in the forms here. So he talks about just this idea of the path, that the word Tao comes from Taoism, and the word Tao itself, or do in Japanese,

[13:19]

means way, road, trail, or to lead or follow. Philosophically, it means the nature and way of truth. The terminology of Taoism was adopted by early Chinese Buddhist translators. To be either a Buddhist or a Taoist was to be a person of the way. And so still, we are persons of the way. This is something, as Zen people, that we are. We're people of the way. And what that way is, is not something we can define so easily. And it's a good thing that it's not set up in some type of box. It's a way. It's alive, actually. And that's a big part of what the Mountains and Water Sutra is about, and what Mountains Constantly Walking is about. So he talks about this as another extension of the meaning of Dao is the practice of an art or craft. In Japanese, Dao is pronounced Do as I've been saying, as in Kado, the way of flowers, or Bushido, the way of the warrior, or Sado, tea ceremony.

[14:28]

So we're going to have, I'll talk more about this later, but we're having a Sado or tea ceremony, a way of tea event here next weekend. And in Japan, there are many, many ways. You know, they're cultural events, but they're also kind of spiritual practices or even disciplines. The way is, you know, on some level it's a discipline, on some level it's a kind of organic happening, but it has a kind of form that we follow. And yet, there's a flexibility to it. There's a way in which it's, as she says, on the path and off the trail. What we're doing is modeled in Japanese and Chinese culture by many, many, many cultural forms. So for Japanese people, there's this way of doing all kinds of things, music and art.

[15:29]

All of these are plays, dabs. And Gary goes on to talk about how that's learned. So this is, I think this is relevant for us. The service we just did, I think people coming into a temple like this for the first time and all of this chanting and bowing and offering incense, it's a little funny. It's not part of our culture. And yet, all traditional arts and crafts Gary talks about this, Gary Snyder talks about this in terms of apprenticeship. So there's an apprenticeship and there's a discipline and a discipleship. And, you know, so this is true, this was true in medieval Europe, as well as in, you know, still in Japan and traditional cultures. And it's true in some realms in our culture, I think in music,

[16:30]

you know, this sense of training or following a path, learning a path. How do we learn to walk? And that's what this Mountains and Water Sutra is about on one level, at least. How do we learn to walk? How do we learn our own walking? So he says, talking about apprenticeships in the arts, the youngsters left home to go and sleep in the back of the potting shed and would be given the single task of mixing clay for three years or sharpening chisels for three years for the carpenters. It was often unpleasant. The apprentice had to submit to the idiosyncrasies and downright meanness of the teacher and not complain. It was understood that the teacher would test one's patience and fortitude endlessly. One cannot think of turning back, but just take it, go deep, and have no other interest. For an apprentice, there was just this one study. Then the apprentice was gradually inducted into some not-so-obvious moves, standards of craft, and in-house working secrets.

[17:34]

They also began to experience, right then at the beginning, what it was to be one with your work. So this is a traditional way of learning a craft. And again, there are some forms in our own society. So when we think about how it is to learn to walk like mountains or to walk like human beings, or how do we see what our walking really is? How do we learn anything? How do we learn? We have here in the room lawyers and psychologists and professors and artists and musicians. How do we learn to do the work that we do? To learn our path in life? This is an interesting question.

[18:35]

And of course, sometimes we change our paths. And we live in a much more fluid society than they did back then. So Gary says, he said, these stories about apprenticeship not only bridge the spiritual and the practical, but also tease us with an image of how totally accomplished one might become if one gave one's whole life up to a work. So in a place like this, we're not, you know, there's some people who are training to be, to take care of a temple like this, but that's not what this is about exclusively, certainly. This is about how to, this practice of sitting like mountains, flowing like waters, or flowing like mountains and sitting like water, is learning how we walk, each of us in our own way.

[19:37]

So my hope for each of you is to use and be used by Zazen to find your own way of expressing something really deep. But that means giving yourself to whatever it is that you care about. So how do we learn? How do we learn a way? How do we learn a way to do what is important to us? This is the point here. And part of that, again in these old crafts, was doing the same thing over and over again. So he talks about how In our society, just thinking in terms of the arts, informal arts, there's a premium on originality, doing something new. That's considered exciting and sexy. But actually, in traditional arts, the disciple does the same thing over and over and over again.

[20:44]

in a society that follows tradition. Creativity is understood as something that comes almost by accident, is unpredictable, and is a gift to certain individuals only. It cannot be programmed into the curriculum. It is better in small quantities. We should be grateful when it comes along, but don't count on it. Then when it does appear, it's the real thing." So, you know, part of doing these forms doing his chants and the way we move around the Zendo is just to learn a form. And it's not that there's anything special or sacred about the form in itself exactly. It's a long ancient tradition or it's based on that. But just to do any particular form over and over and over again, we physically learn something. So this is true in lots and lots of ways. In the tea ceremony event that's happening Saturday, you will see that.

[21:48]

But in many arts and music, musicians play scales over and over again so that they become very used to that. And we do these forms of sitting. just sitting, and then we bow, and then we turn around, and then we stand up. So how do we learn something that's not about our ideas about things, but that's following... Well, that comes from something physical, that's part of the way. So this is, again, mountains and waters are physical. They're not ideas of mountains or ideas of water. So, just a couple, a few more things that Gary Schneider talks about. One of the things he talks about is particularly relevant for us as, again, as a lay practice center.

[22:48]

He talks about, you know, in Asia, A lot of this was centered on monastic training and people committed to living in a monastery. But he says our models here talking about, well, the Buddhist song as it evolved, not just in America, but as it evolved in the Bodhisattva way, our models for practice, training, and dedication need not be limited to monasteries or vocational training, but also can look to original communities with their traditions of work and sharing. There are additional insights that come only from the non-monastic experience of work, family, loss, love, failure. And there are all the ecological, economical connections of humans with other living beings, which cannot be ignored for long, pushing us toward a profound consideration of planting and harvesting, breeding and slaughtering. All of us are apprentices to the same teacher that the religious institutions originally worked with.

[23:52]

Reality. So that's our ultimate teacher. We say dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Reality is our teacher, ultimately. Two more things. In terms of how we find our way to walk, to follow the way, he emphasizes that the path is something that we In some sense, we need to learn the forms. But then, what's important, he says, the truly experienced person, the refined person, delights in the ordinary. Such a person will find the tedious work around the house or office as full of challenge and play, as any metaphor of mountaineering might suggest. I would say the real play is in the act of going totally off the trail, away from any trace of human or animal regularity aimed at some practical or spiritual purpose.

[25:01]

One eventually goes out onto the trail that cannot be followed, which leads everywhere and nowhere, a limitless fabric of possibilities, elegant variations, million-fold on the same themes, yet each point unique. So one of the important points of finding our way is that we need to be willing to play with it. Play in the sense of it's not just one limited thing. So we learn the forms, but then how do we play with them? And of course, we are doing that here. So those of you who've been to You know, San Francisco Zen Center, where all of what we do is based on that, and yet, you know, there's some play. And how we play with the forms of Zen practice is how we learn the deep reality of our lives. How we play with the forms of our own work is how we can find some way to bring that alive.

[26:09]

So the point of all these ways is to make them alive. How do we bring this walk alive? How do we learn to walk in the mountains and not just stick to the old trails, but to explore a little bit? So part of Zen practice is that we can become more flexible. We learn how to take care of our lives well and take care of our work well, but then we play. So learning to walk in different ways. And I was reminded, I don't know if any of you ever saw Monty Python. They had an office where they had a department of silly walks. So, you know, you might try walking in funny ways and see what that's like.

[27:15]

Anyway, so just to close, I'll just read the last part of this. The rule of impermanence means that nothing is repeated for long. The ephemerality of all our acts puts us into a kind of wilderness in time. We live within the nets of inorganic and biological processes that nourish everything, bumping down underground rivers or glinting as spiderwebs in the sky. Life and matter at play, chilly and rough, hairy and tasty. This is of a larger order than the little enclaves of provisional orderliness that we call ways. It is the way. So he recommends finding the way that includes this play, this wider way. There is nothing like stepping away from the road and heading into a new part of the watershed. Not for the sake of newness, but for the sense of coming home to our whole terrain.

[28:20]

Off the trail, unquote, is another name for the way, and sauntering off the trail is the practice of the wild. That is also where, paradoxically, we do our best work. But we need paths and trails, and we'll always be maintaining them. You first must be on the path before you can turn and walk into the wild. So again, there's this play of mountains and waters, and part of the whole idea in Dogen of the Mountains and Water Sutra is to see this terrain where the waters carve the mountains, in a sense, and the mountains come up from the waters. And there's this line from Yunmeng, the eastern mountains flow on water, that he talks about later on in the essay, that Dogen talks about. Anyway, this is a little bit about the way and how the mountains, constantly walking, expresses that and gives us some clue for how to look for and step into our own walking.

[29:31]

So I'll stop now. Ask for comments, questions, reflections. Please feel free. Later in the Mountains and Rivers, Mountains and Waters Sutra, there's this bit where he talks about, you know, if you actually go into the mountains, you won't meet anybody. And when you're reading this piece by Gary Snyder, I was thinking of another thing that actually pairs really well with it, which is, by a woman named Rebecca Solnit, who's also associated with, in some context, with the San Francisco Zen Center. And she wrote this wonderful book called A Field Guide to Getting Lost. And when I'm reading that, I'm thinking of practice as kind of a, I wouldn't want to push it too far, but in some sense, a method for getting off the path, getting a little,

[30:39]

rearrange so that you can see the mountains walking, so that you could, you know, all that kind of thing. So, I'd recommend that book to anybody. It's a good essay. Well, I'm in the middle of reading another book of hers called History of Walking, Wanderlust. So, I'm going to bring that into this practice period. Yeah, that's a wonderful book too. So, yeah. How do we see walking? That's one of the key, yeah. And how is walking informed by getting lost? Good. Thank you, Nilsson. Other comments or responses? Anyone? Hi, Kathy. Hi. I think about who writes present-day koans. And Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of my favorite authors. And he definitely talks about getting lost. He really describes, I think, the soul of people and how they follow something internal that's rarely talked about, he captures it.

[31:52]

So it just seemed to fit there in terms of getting lost. Yeah, so we're honoring him tonight at our memorial service. Yeah, so there are internal trails too. Part of this walking the trail and the way is we go inside, we walk you know, up and down the streets and, you know, anyway. Part of Zazen is to bring those together. Thank you. Okay. So one of the things I've been talking about is how I think in our culture we have this strong tendency to think of the landscape, so mountains and waters as a compound in Chinese and Japanese just means landscape.

[33:39]

And we think of landscape or nature as something out there separate from us. And part of what this, The Mountains and Waters Sutra, and I think Gary Snyder does it, and I guess Rupak is on it too, is to see how we are part of the landscape. We're not, you know, the landscape's not out there. We exist as elements in the mountains and waters. We're expressions of the mountains and waters. We're not, you know, the waters are flowing through us. And I think this practice, it's not that it teaches us, but that we start to, as I was talking yesterday about getting a scent, getting this glimpse, that we start to actually, physically, perceptually sense how we are part of this greater connection.

[34:47]

But again, it's not some objective thing. It's something that we participate in. So we walk like the mountains. Right. It feels like... moves around it, but I think in many ways the wind moves around to create space for the mountain, that they arise together. And I think that's part of the mountain walking, is to see it not as a fixed thing, but rather itself a process.

[35:54]

You know, we understand, well, it's really just water moving. It's a process. And there's this empty space there that we call a whirlpool. But to a fish swimming under the water, that's an area it can't go and breathe and live. Yeah, part of... And later in the Natural Water Sutra, he's talking about waters and how different beings see waters different ways. So partly he's trying to... I think he succeeds in unsettling our preconception about things as things. As you were saying, it's a process, it's a network, and we are in it. that may be upsetting, and maybe that's part of why people get kind of unsettled trying to read Dogen, because it is a little upsetting.

[37:18]

He upsets our idea of reality as things. His language does that. when we start to be willing to be part of this networking process that he's speaking from inside of, I think, there's a joy to that. That we're not separate, isolated beings, but we're actually part of something deeper and more whole and more connected. And we are. All our relations, we all are connected. And then how do we take care of that? That's the question. Yes, hi. Somehow the mountains walking makes me think about the illusion of time.

[38:19]

And that the mountains literally are walking. Yeah. You know, from like a geologic time frame. Absolutely. It's a metaphor, but it's also a reality, but we can't perceive that reality because we don't have the time, we don't have that vast vision. So whenever I think about the map, it's a little blocky. Yeah, it's just something that just makes me want to open my mind to a greater perspective. Yeah, and that's part of the point, is that we can open our mind to different time frames, that mountains move in one time frame, that trees move in another time frame, that ants and other insects move in yet another time frame, and we're part of that continuum too. And it's all walking on some level.

[39:25]

So speaking of time frames, it's time to end for now. But let's close. Thank you all. We'll close with the four bodhisattva vows. And we've changed the third. We're leaving out the da before buddhas. So anyway, we'll change it a few times. So go next to the last page of the chapter. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unimpassable. I vow to realize it. Beings are numberless.

[40:29]

I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize it. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are impossible. I have to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I have to nurture them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable.

[41:34]

I vow to utilize it.

[41:39]

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