The unsurpassed, profound, and wondrous karma is spreading and living in a hundred thousand million coasts. Now I can see and hear Good morning everyone. Good morning. Welcome. So for some of us, this is the third day of a three-day sitting.

[01:07]

Some of us are here for a couple days, some of us for today. And welcome to all the people who are here for the morning talk. This is also the closing of a two-month practice period. And we've been focusing on, or taking off from, a text called the Mountains and Waters Sutra, transcribed by the 13th century Japanese monk Dogen, who founded this branch of Sato Zen we practice. So this Mountains and Waters Sutra It could be called the landscape sutra. Mountains and waters as a compound means landscape in Chinese and Japanese.

[02:14]

So we've been talking about the landscape of practice and how our practice is related to the landscape of our dharma position, the landscape we occupy. So in Sen previously, in Asia and California, there were mountains and waters. Here we have prairies and lakes, skyscrapers and avenues. Anyway, we each have our own particular landscape as well. And our practice, our sitting upright and being present and breathing and so forth, is about how we occupy that. So I want to review a little bit from the last couple of days, but talk today, focus today on what is sometimes called in our tradition the Buddha work. What is the work of our practice? How does Buddha express herself in, right now, on your Kushner chair and around your Kushner chair and in our lives?

[03:23]

And in this sitting in which we find communion with the depths and interconnectedness of the landscape we occupy. But also then how we express that awareness, the process, the vital process by which we and express that in our everyday activity. So we have to set aside a lot and try not to let things fall down in the conventional world. But we also connect with the ultimate reality or the universal reality or the deep reality of our deep interconnectedness. So this text starts off with invocation of a statement by the great master from China, Furong Daokai, who once said, the green mountains are constantly walking.

[04:30]

A stone woman gives birth at night. So we've been talking about that. So I want to say a little bit about that. So The mountains are constantly walking, constantly shifting in geological time, but even, you know, every day. Snow melts when it gets this warm up on the mountains. And now we have glaciers melting as the whole planet warms up. But flowers bloom. leave the trees, spring forth leaves, and spring arises in everything and in all of us. And so the mountains are walking, but the whole landscape is walking, moving, shifting. And one of the characters for walking, as I've been saying, also means to practice. Kyo of shugyo.

[05:35]

And it also means conduct, so how we conduct ourselves. is modeled by walking. So Dogen says to study the mountains walking if you want to understand and fully experience your own walking. How is it that our life is shifting around? Changes happen, you may have noticed. In our own lives, things, you know, we experience loss, sometimes gain, sometimes things end, sometimes new things arise. So this walking also means to perform. So each of you, right now, on your cushion or chair, is performing Buddha.

[06:38]

Performing Buddha as the being or beings sitting on your cushion or chair. So our practice is about how to perform Buddha. We perform Buddha, the mountains perform Buddha by their walking. We perform Buddha in our walking meditation we've just done as well. but also in our sitting. How do we perform the Buddha as the person, the being, the combination of beings on your Krishna chair? So this walking is mysterious. And again, just as a review, I've talked a lot about this history of walking called Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit. And just to mention a couple of things that she says.

[07:43]

The first day I read a bunch from this, but she talks about Thoreau's talking about walking and how two or three hours walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. And in walking around the terrain, the landscape of where we abide, where we occupy, where we live, if we're so fortunate as to not be homeless, we walk around and we see where we live. We see the space. And she talks about this in a way that brings walking back to sitting. She says, thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture. And doing nothing is hard to do. It's best done by disguising it as doing something. And the something closest to doing nothing is walking. So that's for most people in our culture. Of course, we do nothing by sitting.

[08:45]

So she says, no. Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing. We don't even think exactly. Of course, some of you may have had some thoughts during the last period of meditation. It's possible. But we also kind of sit beneath the thinking. We learn gradually, doing this practice regularly, to allow the thinking to just be the thinking, to let it walk. So not only are the green mountains constantly walking, and blue and red thoughts are constantly walking too. And we can just sit in the midst of that, or we can walk in the midst of that. And from the point of view of profit margins and production indices, this is doing nothing. So how do you do nothing as Buddha? How do you perform nothing as Buddha?

[09:48]

It's said that Shakyamuni Buddha, 2,500 years ago, in his 40-some years of teaching, never said a single word. And yet, we take each step in walking meditation. We inhale and lift our foot. We exhale and place it down and allow the soles of our feet to kiss the earth or the ground or the floorboards. So walking is a practice of doing nothing awesome. How do we walk our life? How do we walk through nature, or our dogs as the case may be? one of the quotes from Rebecca Solnit. She talks about wandering in East Asian culture and how being in this text, Dogen talks about mountains loving the people who are inhabiting them and sages loving mountains.

[11:05]

And walking around in the mountains is a wonderful activity. It's only recently that people had this idea they had to climb to the top of the mountain. as if the top was the only part of the mountain worthwhile and all the paths and trees and plants and animals on the sides of the mountain were not really important. It's the top. Of course, now we have mountain top removal, so there's no point in climbing to the top. You might get removed. So she talks about this in terms of the East Asian culture. It wasn't ascending so much as being in the mountains that those poets, poets, sages, and hermits celebrated. And the mountains so frequently portrayed in Chinese poetry and landscape paintings were a contemplative retreat from politics and society. In China, wandering was celebrated. To wander is the Taoist code word for becoming ecstatic. So how do we appreciate our wandering in our walking and in our sitting?

[12:10]

So sometimes people come to me and are troubled because they're wandering in their zazen. But wandering, according to the Taoist sages, is kind of ecstatic practice. So there's an aspect of practice that is also about focusing and settling and calming. We have various objects of meditation to use, to focus, but anyway, just wandering, just allowing the heart-mind to wander, not trying to get to any particular destination, going out for a while just for the sake of walking, going for a sit just for the sake of sitting. So the other side of Furong Daukai's statement, the green mountains are constantly walking, and then he says, a stone woman gives birth at night.

[13:16]

So I talked about this a lot yesterday, but where does our life and vitality come from? What allows us to give birth to new beings? the new beings that may arise on your cushion or chair in the middle of a period of zazen or as you go for a walk and enjoy lifting one foot and putting it down and the muscles in your legs and being aware of your shoulders. You can do this in walking meditation as well as sitting. But a stone woman giving birth at night, we will be chanting later the harmony of difference and sameness, which talks about light and dark. So in the light, we see all the distinctions, the world of discrimination, the world of differences, the world in which we grew up in, where we see the conventional realities.

[14:26]

So this has to do with these two truths in Buddhism. There's the conventional reality, but there's also the ultimate reality, or the ultimate truth, which is what we glimpse, at least, when we are willing to sit upright and settle. And all of you are here because you've somehow tasted it, or got a scent of that, or heard about it somehow in the wind. So this deeper, universal ultimate truth is that the conventional reality is kind of illusory. It doesn't mean we ignore the conventional reality. In fact, our practice is not to get to one or the other. Ultimately, long term, it's about sustaining a practice that allows us to integrate this background reality into our everyday activity. But the stone woman gives birth at night.

[15:33]

It's in seeing that there's nothing to see, that we can't make distinctions, that there's no objects out there separate from us, that we're all together, interconnected, in deep communion. From that reality comes forth many things. So it's also said when the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up to dance. Spring arises and everything. A dragon howls in a withered tree. Many sayings have been said about how from stillness, from settling, vitality, energy, creativity arises. And we each have our own particular way to do that. I can't tell you how to be Buddha. You have to find that yourself. And each one of you is Buddha on a different cushion or chair in a different way in the a combination of conventional realities of the stories of your life, of your own dharma position and situation, in your own place, in your own way.

[16:44]

So, that's a little bit of a review of what we talked about the last couple of days. I want to talk more today about sometimes called the Buddha work. So when we realize that, when we start to get a taste that, when we somehow sense that Buddha's happening on your Krishna chair somehow, or it can be there, or it's nearby, It's not enough to just have some understanding or realization or even fancy experience of that. How do we express that? How do we do the Buddha work? So part of that is Sangha. We work together in communities, so we have this Sangha. Each of you has combinations of other Sanghas, other communities, other people, other associations you're connected with.

[17:53]

So this is a very lively Sangha. Maybe because we're not up in the mountains, you know, hanging out there just together for a few months or a few years, but, you know, coming in from the streets of Chicago, we each have our own experience and situation. How do we do the Buddha work in that? So a lot of our teachings are about that, the Bodhisattva precepts or the Bodhisattva practices or, you know, how we express how we can find guidance in how to express that deeper reality that we are connected to in some way, in our everyday, particular, conventional world. So one way that's been expressed is, Dogen, in one of his first writings, there's a section of that called the Self-Fulfillment Samadhi. And he says this, this is his first writing about the meaning of Zazen.

[19:01]

So at the beginning of this long career of amazing writings, he said, amongst other things, when one person sits upright, wholeheartedly taking the Buddha Mudra with their whole body and mind, even for a short time, everything in the whole universe and space itself awakens. And he unpacks that by talking about the mutual guidance and interconnectedness of the person sitting with fences and walls, tiles and pebbles, with the grasses and trees, with the earth itself. So this vision of what our Zazen is about is not just some, you know, kind of technique or psychological tool to help us find some personal inner peace. Although, it can help with that, and that's okay. But actually, you can't sit by yourself.

[20:05]

I encourage you to go and sit regularly at home, too, when you're not here, but we're always in communion with many, many people who are part of what is sitting on your Kushner chair right now. parents, teachers, family, friends, loved ones. So, how is it that we are in interconnection with all these beings? And not just that we are connected to them in some abstract idea, you know, but that actually there is this mutual guidance, this wondrous and incomprehensible It's not something we can get a hold of exactly. It's not that it's irrational and that we can't realize it, but that we can't see the depths of how deeply connected we are to the earth and grasses and trees.

[21:10]

We are the landscape in the form of these Very intelligent monkeys, intelligent in certain ways. We are the landscape come to life. We are the landscape of our life and the mountains and waters and the prairies and lakes and the skyscrapers and avenues. That's all happening on your Kushner chip. And again, it's not just that the grasses and trees are awakening thanks to our sitting in some way, but that actually there's this support. The whole universe supported you to be here this morning. Through various means and particular mechanisms, maybe you drove or maybe you came by the L or maybe some of you walked, There's some way in which different aspects of the universe allow you to be here in this room now.

[22:17]

So this deep interconnectedness is about seeing that and then the Buddha work, he talks about that in the middle of talking about that, he says that the Buddha work is to support this. It's not just that there's mountains and waters out there, and it's not even just that we're deeply connected to them and expressions of them, but actually, as elements of the mountains and waters, we have a kind of responsibility. So this is what the Bodhisattva path, the practice of awakening beings, helping to foster universal awakening, this is what that's about. how do we do the Buddha work? How do we become protectors of this dharma world? So, you know, in early Buddhism in a formal way, what Dogen is playing on is just the reality of Buddha lands. When a Buddha becomes a Buddha, when she fully awakens, there is constellated a Buddha land, always.

[23:29]

And this is the beginning of pure land Buddhism, that there are these pure Buddha lands out there. Shakyamuni Buddha, our Buddha, in this period of history that we're in, 2,500 years ago, in what's now northeastern India, the Buddha land, the Buddha world that he is said to have constellated is called the Saha world, the world of endurance. That's because it's kind of hard, it's kind of tough. And even that is collapsing as climate damage proceeds. But it's a difficult world, this AHA world. It's a world of endurance. It's a world that tries our patience. And it's a world that advanced bodhisattvas are born into. Because it's difficult. And the Buddha work is hard here. Some places the Buddha work is easy. There are Buddhas who teach by fragrance. You just smell some incense and everyone's awakened, you know. But we're not in that world.

[24:32]

We're in this world of endurance and, you know, so we have work to do. Maybe there's work in that fragrance world too, I don't know. But the Buddha work here is we have to learn patience. The dynamic practice of tolerance and capacity and forbearance, and not just as a passive practice, but patience as an act of paying attention. Being willing to sit in the midst of the turmoil of whatever feelings are going on this week, being willing to sit with aches in our knees or our backs, being willing to sit upright and present and perform Buddha, in the midst of a difficult world with people that you have trouble with, with all kinds of situations. So this is a good, this world is a wonderful training place for bodhisattvas. Congratulations, you've made it to the Saha world, the world of endurance.

[25:41]

Good luck. So just to sit and talk, take the, to, I'm gonna try and read it instead, paraphrase it. Can you hand me your chant book, please? This sentence from the Self-Fulfillment Samadhi, that we chant sometimes. It's in our chant book. If you go to our website and go on Dharma and look at chants, you'll find it there. In one sense, he says, when one displays the Buddha mudra with one's whole body and mind sitting upright in this samadhi, in this concentration, even for a short time, everything in the entire dharma world becomes Buddha mudra and all space in the universe completely becomes enlightenment or completely awakens. So, it's strange. It's a strange idea.

[26:43]

We can't possibly figure that out with our usual way of thinking. What does it mean that space itself awakens? How could that possibly be an effect or function of your sitting for a little while? Anyway, we take this mudra of Buddha in various ways. invoke some other versions, expressions of taking on the Buddha worth. One of Dogen's predecessors, two generations after Furong Daokai, Hongzhe, in the 1100s in China, said, in the great resting, great halting, the lips become moldy and mountains of grass grow on your tongue. So if you sit quietly for a few days, you might feel that way. Moving straight ahead beyond this state, totally let go, wash clean and ground to a fine polish. Respond with brilliant light to such unfathomable depths as the waters of autumn, or the moon stamped in the sky, or the spring arising in everything.

[27:51]

Then you must know there is a path on which to turn yourself around. When you do turn yourself around, you have no different face that can be recognized. Even if you do not recognize your face, still nothing can hide it. This is penetrating from the top most all the way down to the bottom. So this turning ourself around, this is sort of the basic meditation instruction. And Dogen says, take the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself. We sit and we focus on what's going on, this body and mind, and all of the different complexities involved. We turn the light inwardly. And through doing this regularly, gradually, whether we realize it or not, sometimes it's just like Suki Roshi talking about walking in the fog and getting his robes wet. It seeps into us.

[28:55]

It's not a matter of something that you have to figure out or calculate. Even if you do not recognize your face, still nothing can hide it. This is penetrating from the topmost all the way down to the bottom. When you have thoroughly investigated your roots back to their ultimate source, 1,000 or 10,000 stages are no more than footprints on the trail. So we were talking yesterday about how Dogen keeps saying to study this, to study this. This is the study he was talking about. Thoroughly investigating your roots back to their ultimate source. This takes some time. This takes a lot of patience. It takes a sustained practice. So what's really important is not some particular experience, but how can you sustain a practice of attention to the quality of your life? To this communion with interconnectedness, with the totality of our landscape.

[29:59]

Then he says, after saying that, talking about investigating your roots back to the ultimate source, he says, then in wonder, return to the journey, avail yourself of the path, walk ahead in light. So again, it's walking. So avail yourself of the path and walk ahead. Then he says, in light, there is darkness. Again, right in the conventional truth, there is ultimate truth. Where it operates, no traces remain. With a hundred grass tips in the busy marketplace, graciously share yourself. So our practice is not, you know, sometimes some of us do go off to some mountain retreat and do a lot of sittings because we need to. Some of us need that more than others. But even then, the practice is to come back. With a hundred grass tips and myriad things in the busy marketplace, graciously share yourself. This is the Buddha word. Wide open and accessible, walking along, casually mount the sounds and straddle the colors while you transcend listening and surpass watching.

[31:12]

So this echoes an earlier, it's a different version of this that Hongxia has earlier in this Cultivating an Empty Field where he talks about sounds and colors. Right in the beginning he says, the subtlety of seeing and hearing transcends mere colors and sounds. The whole affair functions without leaving traces, mirrors without obscurations. Very naturally, mind and objects emerge and harmonize. So this is an actual practice instruction. You can try this during your day, those of you who are staying here to sit more today, or if you come home and sit. Wide open and accessible, walking along. You can do this while you're going for a walk, too. casually mount the sounds and straddle the colors, but transcend listening and surpass watching. So it's possible to listen to sounds as a meditation object without getting caught by them. It's possible to see the wall in front of you without getting hung up on watching for something.

[32:20]

Just to be aware of this phenomenal sense world, this ordinary conventional world, this wondrous ultimate reality world around us, is one way to perform Buddha, to do the Buddha work. So I want to close with the discussion at the end of the note of the Water Sutra. that deals with water. He talks about mountains and he talks about water. And he talks about how we all see water from different perspectives. So humans and fish see Lake Michigan differently. And dragons see it even in another way. How we see this room depends on where you're sitting. We each have a different angle on Buddha. You can notice in the center of the room. Asian can only see his back.

[33:23]

So this is true with water, this is true with mountains, this is true with prairies and lakes. Dogen says, it is not the case simply that there is water in the world. Within the world of water, there's a world. So there are many Brutal Nights. This is true not only within water. Within clouds as well, there is a world of sentient beings. Within wind, there is a world of sentient beings. Within fire, there's a world of sentient beings. And sometimes it's said that all Buddhas sit in the middle of fire. It's hot. I'm just sitting. Your knees or your shoulders might burn. It's hot. Sitting in the Sangha world. Anyway, but there are sentient beings, and there are ways of cooling and settling. Within fire, there is a world of sentient beings. Within earth, there is a world of sentient beings. Within the Dharma realm, there is a world of sentient beings.

[34:26]

Within a single blade of grass, there is a world of sentient beings. Within a single staff, there is a world of sentient beings. And wherever there is a world of sentient beings, inevitably, there is the world of the Buddhas and ancestors. So, in the Lotus Sutra it says the reason for Buddhas, the single reason, the single cause for Buddhas appearing in the world is suffering beings. So, if there was no suffering, it would be difficult to even see Buddha. I was talking with a Buddhist professor, last week, who was a group of us, of people, and somehow he mentioned that he had taught at Santa Barbara, and I used to visit Santa Barbara, his stepdaughter who was in school there. Have any of you ever been to Santa Barbara? A few of you. My experience of Santa Barbara was that there was no suffering.

[35:32]

It was so beautiful, so wonderful, and so, you know, It's just this paradise, it's just so lovely. So some of you who've been to Santa Barbara might have seen stuff in there, I don't know, but I never did. It was just this lovely place. So this wonderful Buddhist professor told a story when I said that, and he said, it's funny you say that. He had invited a Tibetan teacher from Los Angeles to come and give a talk in his class, and the teacher liked it so much that he went to Santa Barbara and set up this little Tibetan Buddhist center, but nobody came. And he finally left and said, there's no suffering here. I can't be here. So anyway, we're fortunate. In Chicago, there's gun violence. There's poverty. There's people with difficulty finding jobs. There's all kinds of misery right here. And that's what brings us here, to do the Buddha work. Just to continue to just the ending of this wonderful text, or some of it,

[36:35]

So water, he says, water is the palace of the true dragon. It is not flowing away. If we regard it only as flowing, the word flowing is an insult to water. It is like imposing not flowing. So sometimes water is still, sometimes it flows. If we call it anything, it's an insult. So maybe the Mount of Resentment being told that they're walking. Just right here. And that happens sometimes, maybe too. Water is nothing but water's real form just as it is. Water is the virtue of water. It is not flowing. In the thorough study of the flowing or the not flowing of a single drop of water, the entirety of the 10,000 things is instantly realized. Among mountains as well, there are mountains hidden in jewels. There are mountains hidden in marshes. There are mountains hidden in the sky.

[37:38]

What's that movie? Avatar? Have you seen Avatar? Anyway, there are mountains hidden in mountains. There was a study of mountains hidden in hiddenness. So, I want to close with this, mountains hidden in hiddenness, as a way of talking about the Buddha work. How do we do the Buddha work? How do we protect the landscape of this? Buddha world on so many levels. The landscape of the people that you interact with, people that you know, the people hidden from you. So there are beings that we don't even know who've influenced us. Maybe somebody Maybe some bus driver, Bodhisattva, who smiled at you one morning when you were getting on the bus.

[38:41]

And you may not even remember him, but something about that helped you to be a little more open that day, and maybe something else happened. We don't know all the ways in which hiddenness is working in the Buddha work on our cushions or chairs. So this Buddha work is to take care, to protect, to appreciate, to be grateful for all of the landscape of our lives, for all the mountains and waters and prairies and lakes. And this Buddha work, this awakening, is just to express that which is usually hidden. How do we... We don't necessarily have to figure it out, but how can we appreciate what is hidden? what is not obvious, what is not part of the conventional reality of our time and place. We have to observe the conventional reality of our time and place so we don't get into too much trouble.

[39:48]

But how do we express something deeper, this underlying wonderful Buddha world of endurance that we occupy? So for those of you who are here for the whole day, we will have a questioning ceremony later this afternoon. We can talk about this more, but I appreciate those of you who came for the talk. And so we have a few minutes. If anyone wants to ask a question or make a comment or respond in any way, please feel free. Libby. I also had that feeling about Santa Barbara when I was there and I heard about the shooting. Oh yeah.

[40:50]

They have suffering there now, don't they? Yeah. I felt that contrast and then so I was thinking about it after you were telling it. Yeah, and that ugly hidden world is a reflection of, you know, things that are not so hidden in our culture. The current war on women and the way that women are mistreated, the way that rape victims are further victimized. This is going on in so many realms in our society now. So it's, there are lots of things to, well, lots of ways of doing the Buddha work to try and protect all the beings.

[41:55]

Of course, there's the war on the poor and the incarceration of minorities. Anyway, many things to talk about. Many specifics in the conventional world to talk about. that might benefit from our response, or at least our consideration, our concern, our awareness. Lots of aspects of the Buddha work to do. Yes, Nyozan. Yeah, I would submit that this fellow who went to Santa Barbara was maybe not paying close enough attention or the right kind of attention because it, you know, it's stated as the first noble truth that suffering is pervasive and that's represented, you know, in the fact that

[43:01]

the gods and that six-part cosmology will tumble down because the roots of suffering have not been eliminated there. And it seems to be representative of the story of Buddha himself, you know, growing up as this very sort of privileged, pampered guy and coming to recognize that he, too, So, I mean, there's certainly grosser and more subtle forms, but I think it's important not to lose sight. It's dangerous, I think, not to think that there's some people who are sort of outside that range of what should be bodhisattva concern or whatever. Yes, all of us are damaged. All of us have been hurt in various ways.

[44:06]

All of us are suffering beings. How do we... So we have to take care of ourselves. That's part of the Buddha work, part of the Bodhisattva work. To forgive ourselves for being human beings. To appreciate the pain of that. But also, we can see, we can be grateful for the way the world is, one person, for having found this practice. Other comments or questions? Yes? You were mentioning about the mountains walking to you, and in my dream, you know, yesterday I had a mountain walk up to me, and I looked out of my window in Chicago, and it was Mount McKinley, and it just walked up to me. my dream and it felt like just natural looking out my window in Chicago and seeing this beautiful mountain, you know, it looked kind of gray in the distance, you know, in the light.

[45:08]

And I remember this, I don't remember my dreams too often, but I remember this because you don't have to focus on you know, speaking and listening and the words, it's just, it's there, it's the mountain, it's a diamond in your rough, and it just leaves a lasting impression, and it's just simple, and the sun sits upon the mountain, and it's kind of like, you know, just, you know, it's simple, so. Wonderful, thank you for sharing that. So there are mountains hidden in dreams, there are mountains hidden in Chicago. Thank you. One last comment? Thank you all very much for your share of the Buddha work together.

[46:03]

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