So I'm talking about, again, about Dongshan, the founder of Soto Zen in China. In Chinese it's called Saodongshan. And this is a story about the bird's path. So a monk once asked Dongshan, what was the bird's path that he regularly recommended? Dongshun replied, one does not encounter a single person. So the birth path is about being solitary, not meeting a single person, and that includes a single person outside or inside, not meeting or creating a self, And it's about the birds flying away with no traces.

[01:08]

So the birds path, the path of birds flying in the sky, we don't see some path markers in the sky. We don't know if birds do, but birds follow the same arbitrary path for sometimes many centuries. And the monk asked about this, birds continued asking about how one takes the bird's path, how one follows such a path. And Dongshan said simply, one proceeds with no self underfoot. How can we not get tangled up in some self underfoot as we follow the path? This may seem obvious, but actually we often get caught up in some self or some idea of self or some idea of some self outside.

[02:19]

The Burr's path is about no traces, just doing the next thing. leaving no traces of one's activity. Just meet each event without leaving traces, without searching for traces. So there are many ideas of the path in Buddhism, the Eightfold Path, many ideas of the Marga Path. And we have the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Precepts, the six or 10 paramitas or liberative practices. But Dongshan said, don't encounter a single person. Don't encounter another or oneself. Don't cling to some idea of self. Don't cling to some traces of one's activities. So this is kind of basic.

[03:25]

and maybe simple and also rather challenging. What is the bird's path? How do we follow a path where there are no markers up on the side, where there's no roadmap, where we fly free as a bird. We don't leave any traces of our activity. We don't search for traces to follow. This is not an idea or an image that Dong Shan invented himself in the 800s. In fact, it goes back. So one of the early Pali texts from the Buddha is called the Dhammapada, the path or the way of Dharma. And in chapter seven of the Dhammapada, describing the arhat, totally personally awakened one.

[04:28]

It says like the path of birds in the sky, it is hard to trace the path of those who do not or who are judicious with their food. And this field is the freedom of emptiness and signlessness. But the path of birds like the path of birds in the sky, it is hard to trace the path of those who have destroyed their toxins. who are unattached to food and whose field is the freedom of emptiness and signlessness. When one is not trying to find some roadmarks, some traces to follow, when one is not trying to be guided by the ancient sages or some teaching one has read, then we can fly free like the bird's path This is also described in the Perfection of Wisdom, Prashna Paramita literature.

[05:30]

So in the Perfection of Wisdom, the Prashna Paramita in 8,000 lines, the Bodhisattva shuns attachments and quote, having organized the world as like a snare for wild beasts, the wise roam about similar to the birds in space. quote. So here the birds indicate flying free, free of worldly needs or worldly attachments. So this is in a number of the Prajnaparamita wisdom texts. So we chant the heart sutra, we chanted that yesterday, which is one of these, I guess he was talking Thursday morning about the diamond sutra. I'm not sure if the bird's path is mentioned in the diamond sutra. But it is mentioned in another one of the many, many Prajnaparamita Perfection of Wisdom Sutra is the large sutra of perfection of wisdom. I think that's the one with 100,000 lines. And that one talks about nothing real is meant by the word bodhisattva.

[06:39]

Enlightenment and so called enlightened beings, as well as any other entities are ultimately unproduced. Such a thing as a bodhisattva is a thing that Well, it does not exist. It cannot be apprehended. Just as in space, the track of a bird does not exist and cannot be apprehended. So, you know, when jets fly overhead, we sometimes see the traces of them. But when birds fly over, it's just pierced by. And again, maybe the birds see road markers. Those birds fly the same migratory paths over and over again, but do they need markers? Do they need to have a guide to their paths? So in the Dasabhumika Sutra, or Ten Stages Sutra, which is part of the Flower Ornament Sutra, the Avatamsaka,

[07:44]

of Wayan Sutra, which some of us are chanting. Actually, this coming Friday evening at seven o'clock on our website, the first Friday of every month, we chant the Flower Ornament Sutra. And we happen to be in the chapter of that sutra called the Tasa Bhumibol, Ten Grounds or Stages Sutra. So this is one of the earliest Mahayana sutras, one of the earliest sutras about bodhisattvas. But in its introduction to these stages, so that chapter, sometimes it's translated as the 10 Stages Sutra, and the Flower Ornament Sutra likes to use the number 10, but it's also could be seen as 10 grounds. It's not that one has to, one can see them as a progression or one can see them as a circle, just like the Paramitas or Perfections. So in that sutra, Dasa Vimaka Sutra, part of the Flower Ornament Sutra.

[08:47]

It says that these stages, quote, realized by sages are actually unattainable by mind, intellectually inconceivable. We can't figure them out. Then the sutra cites the bird's path image, just quote, just as the tracks of a bird in the sky cannot be described or seen, even by the awakened ones, In the same way, all the stages cannot be total, told of much less heard. So these stages are called stages depicted in the sutra are acknowledged at the outset as merely shadows, reflections of reality, femoral as the birch path. They are retold only partially and imperfectly as filthful means out of compassion for those who might be encouraged by this So this idea of leaving no traces is kind of fundamental in Zen.

[09:54]

Sometimes it's said to leave a place cleaner than when you found it. So Zen practice involves cleaning and straightening up and taking care of one's space, the space that one leaves. There's another description of the bird's pet. from a little bit later in Japan. So I had this from a treatise on the precepts from Okasotan, who was an important teacher a little before Suzuki Roshi, who founded San Francisco Zen Center. And he's quoting Daichi Sokai, who lived 129 to 1367. He was in his lineage in Kyushu, It started with one of Dōgen's disciples, Kanben Gien. And don't worry, there will not be a test. I'm just throwing this out for Dharma nerds out there, whoever you are. But Daichi Sokai was a great poet.

[10:56]

He also founded the temple Shogō-ji, where I did a practice period in Kyushu around, when was it? 1992, maybe. Anyway, Daichi Sokai, a great early Soto Zen teacher and poet said, quote, turning back before seeking to reach the kalpa of emptiness, before seeking to reach one's original face. Step by step, one must travel the mysterious path of a bird, seeing and hearing without subtle attachments, without unobstructed with within unobstructed sound and form is peaceful rest. So, of course, you know, we all have been trained to look for signs of progress. Our government measures the GDP to tell how well the economy is doing and so forth.

[12:03]

We all, you know, have been told to, you know, talk to just to identify ourselves with, you know, whatever grade we're at and what grades we get, you know, A or B or C or F or whatever. We're looking for, we're trained to look for markers or traces of our progress and where we are. But again, this teaching is about the bird's path is to find the path. So it's not, there is a path. clearly marked. The great American patriarch, Gary Snyder, talks about the path as a frame to wander off from. So sometimes it's useful to have markers, road markers, to mark out a path. And of course, in Buddhism and Zen, there are many systems of paths that are

[13:09]

Gary Snyder talks about how the real path is the path that we meander off from. Our creativity is found when we, you know, we have structures. In Zed we have schedules, we have forms that we use. We're gonna be talking about those in our practice intensive in November, and they're useful. But then if we get caught by them, and think that we have to follow some prescribed path, that's not it. So this bird's path is free of those. It's about being able to fly freely. So there's a mystery here. There's a mystery of migration. Some birds migrate 14,000 miles each year. And they often don't come back to the same place where they were the previous winter or the previous summer.

[14:21]

How does that happen? We don't know. And yet it's not marked off. It's not something they figure out. It's not something they have to calculate or deliberate. So, you know, this is what this birth path and this migration is like. the practice of bonsui, of monks, the Japanese clouds and water monks, who move around between different teachers, different mountains. In the old days, traveling by foot. And Dongshan did this, and Dogen did this, and many American Buddhist people go around to different sanghas and teachers. This is like the bird's path. In Genjo Kōan by Dōgen, he talks about when a bird flies, no matter how high it flies, it cannot reach the end of the sky. When the bird's need is great, the range is large.

[15:29]

When the need is small, the range is small. So each bird uses the whole of space and vigorously acts in every place. So this is a path one engages fully without knowing without having a marker to say what's next. So we talk in Zen about not knowing. Not knowing is most intimate, most familiar, most deeply true. How do we follow our spiritual path without needing to have some description? This is advanced practice and yet it is the actual practice that brought us all here. So each bird uses the whole of space and vigorously acts in every place. However, if a bird departs from the sky, Dogen says, it immediately dies.

[16:32]

We should know that for a bird, the sky is life. So this brings up the question, you know, what is the path? And when we ask what is the path and want some answer, we're getting caught in traces. How do we just proceed? How do we take the next inhale? How do we enjoy the next exhale? How do we sit upright amid thoughts and feelings or and thoughts and feelings fade away amidst just the sounds of the traffic on the street or sounds of one's breath or the sensations in one's shoulders or backs or belly. How do we sit upright in the middle of all that? How do we follow this bird's trap which has no traces?

[17:36]

So, This brings up the question, well, of course, what is the path? But also, what is freedom? We say that to fly free as a bird. And of course, our practice is about freedom, finding freedom, expressing freedom for ourselves and others. helping others to find freedom from their grasping. Each of us tries to hold on to things. This is our kind of fundamental nature. And of course, everything floats away eventually. How can we appreciate each step, each flap of our wings, each breath, without trying to make it into something, without trying to hold on to something,

[18:41]

So there's, there's a song ballad in plain D by one of my teachers, Bob Dylan Diocio. He says, my friends from the prison, they asked them to me, how good, how good does it feel to be free? And I answered them most mysteriously, are birds free from the chains of the skylight? So in what way? So you know, this is this is this is a poem. This is a question. This is something that is, it's at the heart of our practice in the heart of our lives. How do we not get entangled in particular attachments? Or how do we see them and see that actually, our entanglements are freedom? How do we see the freedom as, are we free from the chains of the skyway?

[20:00]

We are caught in our limited lives. We are caught in our particular habits, karmic entanglements, desires, and so forth. And yet also there's the birch path we are on. where we fly free, free, free as a bird. And we may not know what the next step is, what the next range of sky is that we are flying into. And yet, is there freedom there? So I will stop and and leave that question. How do we see freedom from traces of our past lives, freedom from traces of the past lives of our friends and family and all the politicians and all the strangeness of the world?

[21:08]

How do we see the bird's path? And how do we see ourselves in the chains of the skyway. So I'm interested in your comments, your responses, your questions. What is it like to be free, to fly free as a bird? What is it like to not be caught by traces, to not try and hold on to traces of our activity, our thoughts? or awareness, the last period is housing, whatever. So comments, questions, responses, please feel free. Amina has something. Hey, Amina. Hi, thank you for this for that talk. I really appreciate it. And I was struck by a lot of it. I mean, one of them being this idea of engaging fully with the unknown.

[22:14]

you know, like not just being okay with the unknown, but, you know, so I was asking myself the question, like, what does it mean to engage fully with something that you don't completely see? Or, you know, like the, how do you engage fully a pathless way or a path without markers? And I like that question a lot. So I think that's, there was one other thing I was going to say, I've already forgotten it, but. No traces. Yeah, well, just that traces, you know, like this, I was just thinking about how easy it is to sort of cling to, you know, when you think about what a trace of something is, it's not even there anymore, really, it's like something that's partially there, you can only, you know, it's already fleeting, you know, but like, we're still holding on to it, like the sort of ghost of something or, you know, that strikes me, too. Yes, yes, when we're holding on to traces, we're not really here. We're back somewhere else, or we think we are actually, of course, we're always here.

[23:15]

But we can imagine that we're caught in the trace of something else, or we can get entangled in, you know, the ways that karmic patterns do hold on to us. And how do we loosen up? How do we fly right? It's Yeah, good questions. Thank you. Hey David. I'm struck by, at least to me, a seeming contradiction. You know, we have the, you know, the three nobles, the four noble troops, we have three refugees, three pure precepts, the tight grave precepts, you know, the four... We have all these things that are guideposts.

[24:19]

And yet we're told to be free as a bird. And at the same time, we have the Bodhisattva vow that beings are numberless, I vow to free them. To me here in this world that I I see myself in, and I do have a self here, as a chaplain, being with people when they are suffering, and to be with them, in that sense, free them, you know, free them, or allow them to be free. So I see these contradictions here about being no path, and then having all this other stuff, hit the pond, or so, you know, or I feel it's hit the pot. So I asked you, is there a middle way? You know, Buddha talks about the middle way. I have all this stuff over here and here it is, the birdless path.

[25:23]

Is there something, or is it not being caught in either one of them? Yes. No traces, no traces. So yes, we do have all these guideposts. They're wonderful. And we study them, you know, we study them. not to accumulate some body of knowledge, you know, or learn something. We study them just to help us practice, just to help us fly the bird's path. And it's helpful to have guideposts, you know, that's what Gareth Snyder talks about. We have guideposts, but if we imagine that, you know, it happens You know, it happens in monasteries, for example, people get really caught up in the rules. And they think that if they follow all the rules perfectly, that's the way, that's, you know, that's the point. And it isn't. The point is freedom. And so you, these are skillful means. And they're not separate, actually, from the birch path. There are ways of finding the birch path where there's no guideposts, but

[26:28]

we need guideposts to find them. So when we have a structure, so like in a residential practice place, in a monastery, in a place where there's lots of, where there's a schedule for the whole day, and the practice is just to follow that. And we can say that about all the different guideposts, the 10 paramitas, the 16 precepts, the four Brahma viharas, all of these guideposts, and as it says in the Diamond Sutra and other Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, has no guideposts and we know that. So when we hold on to them as something that is real, that is the meaning of everything, then, you know, we're caught. And yet, to just kind of meander off and whatever goes mad and just flow free and, you know, without a sense of direction.

[27:32]

So the birds have direction when they fly. They're not just flying around in circles. The birds path, you know, they migrate, some of them 10,000 miles in a year. Birds migrate in all kinds of ways. Penguins swim their migration path. So how do we find So our direction is for Bodhisattva vows, or just, you know, we could boil it down to what is Buddha, or how, what's awakening, or to be free. And we don't know freedom unless we see, you know, the markers that show us the way to get free from the markers. So all those systems like that, that you are describing the precepts, Paramitas, the Brahma, the Haras, they're wonderful. And they help us to see how to let go of it. So this is subtle.

[28:35]

This is kind of advanced teaching, you know. And yet, total freedom and these guideposts are not different at all. Our delusions is how we find awakening. Awakening is what leads us to engage in the delusions so that we can help others awaken from delusions to see delusions. So the bird's path is endless as long as it doesn't leave the sky. That's what Dogen talks about. So we continue to practice through our lives with four bodhisattva vows, 16 precepts, six or ten paramitas, signlessness, emptiness, wishlessness, and so forth. So thank you, David. Other comments or questions or responses to this challenge of the birth chart? Can I ask a question?

[29:44]

Please. I'm wondering, is the bird's path something that we like choose to or have to decide to be on? Or is it something that we're always on? We're always on it, but we don't necessarily realize it. So we can choose to say, oh, yeah, bird's path. Yeah. And bird's path includes, oh, yeah, we are we are following this particular structure. We are following the path of inhale and exhale. We are following the path of Four Noble Truths and so forth. Those help us to see that we're on the bird's path. Yes, Isha. I'm kind of struck by what seems like a dichotomy to me, is that to us, the bird's path seems to have no trace. And it seems to be a pathless path. But to the birds, it's a path.

[30:45]

And we don't know, you know, from our frame of reference, we don't know what it is that they're following, but they're following something. So I'm kind of just a little confused by that. Good. Yes. Yes. So what is it to a bird? I don't know. I'm not a bird or at least not, you know, not tonight. And I don't know, do the birds know what their path is? I'm not sure. the birds think about, oh, I have to find my bird's path. I don't think so. I think the bird just, just flies. And without trying to make, as the Joel Marison Rodney says, without deliberations, you know, the bird just flies. And the path is whatever is in front of her. And so how do we respect this pathless path. So yeah, I thank you for your question.

[31:53]

Yes. Yes, I'll guess. I think birds actually follow magnetic fields. Yes. They found that they have some sensory mechanisms that detect magnetic fields. So they see things we don't see or follow things. And also, I don't know, they sometimes leave a trace if you've ever had geese fly over you. There's often quite fragrant traces that are left. So yes, you know, it's, it's an interesting thing, but the birds might look at us and go, what? I don't see any path that they're following. It seems totally random. What is the people path? It's interesting because I, you know, I remember many years ago being in Southern Illinois in March and it was called the Mississippi Flyway. and it's just filled with birds. They're following the river. They're following, you know, what the destination is and how they guide themselves. I have no idea, but they're just going in mass along this river valley.

[32:59]

all the way up the counter. So they have a direction. They do have a direction. And yes, there are magnetic fields and there are geological clues. And there's also, I don't know if the sense of that particular migratory path is inherited, but there's a kind of wisdom of the flock that helps the birds. So maybe some birds, I don't know if there are I wish Laurel was here because she's a bird expert, but some birds maybe migrate solitarily. I don't know. But usually they seem to fly in formation. I was also thinking, although we're not, we don't understand that maybe yet with science yet, we follow some path. Something brings us to the dharma, this bodhicitta, kind of is this geiger counter, you know, for like, oh, We all ended up an ancient dragon.

[34:02]

How did that happen? So there's that kind of interesting through the path. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And that's also like the birth path in this in the sense that for us, the birth path is mysterious. And we don't, we don't, we don't see that with the guideposts they might see. I'm not sure how, how much, you know, electromagnetic fields guide them or I don't know what we don't know. And yet, what is it that allowed all of us, whether we're here at Ebeneezer or out in the Zoom world, to show up and practice? It's awesome. That's also a mysterious path, the Buddha bird. Maybe we don't have as much free will as we think. Birds are part of the universe, and they're the part of the universe that, you know, each flock follows their own magnetic path.

[35:04]

That's just the universe coming together and experiencing itself. And perhaps we are showing up here, you know, as part of the universe experiencing itself. We think it's our free will, but you know, who's to say? That's a really interesting question I've been wondering for many years. And so I don't know, but I think it's not that it's predestined. It's not that Amina was going to show up on Zoom at Ancient Dragon on this particular night or show up again at this particular time or the pandemic was predestined. It's not controlled. And yet there's a direction. Yeah. So it's not exactly random. There is there is cause and effect. Everything we do and think has a creates something. And everything that happens has causes and conditions.

[36:08]

So yeah, it's not exactly free will, but it's not predestination either. And some birds will resonate on this frequency. Yeah, so we're offline response to whatever it is. Yes. The Buddha frequency has called us.

[36:23]

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