I'd like to say a little bit tonight about case 30 in the Book of Serenity Koan collection, Dasui's Aeonic Fire. So maybe I'll just read the whole case first. A monk asked Dasui, when the fire at the end of an aeon rages through and the whole universe is destroyed, is this destroyed or not? Dasui said, destroyed. The monk said, then it goes along with that? Dasui said, it goes along with that. A monk asked Longzhu, when the fire ending the eon rages through and the whole universe is destroyed, is this destroyed or not? Longzhu said, not destroyed. The monk said, why is it not destroyed? Longzhu said, because it is the same as the universe. So first this question that the monk asked, and maybe it's not the same monk in both responses, but the monk asks, when the fire at the end of an eon rages through and the whole universe is destroyed, is this destroyed or not?

[01:21]

This fire at the end of an aeon is a reference to something in Indian and Buddhist cosmology and pre-Buddhist Indian cosmology that the universe is considered to have, well, Aeon is a translation of Kalpa. Kalpa is a long, long period of time. And there's four Kalpas in Aeon, or maybe in Aeon, a Kalpa has four parts. But there's the rising Kalpa, where everything is created. There's the abiding Kalpa, that we're all in, where everything exists. And then there's the fire that destroys the Kalpa, and then there's the Kalpa of emptiness. So Kalpa is a very, very long time. One description of it is, of the length of that time is a bird flying over Mount Everest with a piece of cloth and her talons, and the time

[02:31]

And once every hundred years, she flies over the top of Mount Everest, and the time it takes to wear down all of Mount Everest is one kelpa. Anyway, there's various descriptions, but in India, they had a very, very wide, long view of time. And yet, there's this fire at the end of the eon that rages through, and the whole universe is destroyed. And this was understood as part of the way the universe works. that there is this fire that burns through and the whole universe is destroyed. But the monk asks, First the monk asks, does we, when this fire burns through and at the end of an eon and the whole universe is destroyed, is this destroyed or not? And in the commentary in the koan, that's understood in various ways. But I take it as referring to just this, this dharma of suchness that we chant about in the Jula Mary Samadhi, from Dongshan, who asked his teacher, when he was departing from his teacher, what is his main teacher?

[03:45]

And his teacher, Yunnan, said, just this is it. So this, just this, just this. This reality. which goes beyond all of the kalpas, goes beyond. And it's just this. It's not separate from each thing. So this monk is asking this, you know, it seems to us a strange question. But actually, I want to talk about how this is a very relevant question for us right now and this week. this week for me, when the fire is at the end of the aeon, rages through and the whole universe is destroyed, is this destroyed or not? This reality, this samadhi of all beings, this communion with all beings in all time, in all space, that we

[04:54]

taste in this practice of zazen. Dasui said, destroyed. The monk said, then it goes along with that? And Dasui said, yes, it goes along with that. This suchness goes along with this fire at the end of the kalpa. Another time, a monk asked Longzhe the same question. And interestingly, this is case 30 in the Book of Serenity, For those of you who know about koans, there's also the Blue Cliff Record, which is used more in Rinzai's tradition. In our Soto tradition, we use the Book of Serenity a little bit more. In the Blue Cliff Record, which is earlier, the person who compiled the case, Ushueto, did not include the second part of this case. This was from Longzhe, who was a contemporary of Xue Dou. Yuan Wu, the commentator in the Blue Cliff Record, mentions it in the commentary. But in the Book of Serenity, Hongzhe mentions also the second response.

[06:04]

A monk asked Longzhe, when the fire entered, ending the eon rages through and the whole universe is destroyed, is this destroyed or not? And Longzhu said, not destroyed, just this continues. Why is it not destroyed, the monk asked. Longzhu said, because it is the same as the universe. Now that's a little funny. The universe is destroyed and yet just this, the same as the universe, is not destroyed. So this seems kind of arcane and abstract, and maybe so. And yet, we're sitting in the middle of this. So again, I'm just going to say a little bit about this story tonight and how it's related to our situation now. I'll read the introduction to this case.

[07:05]

Obliterating all oppositions, cutting off both sides, smashing the mass of doubt. How does that require a single phrase? The capital is not an inch of a step away. The great mountain only weighs three pounds. But tell me, based on what order can one dare to speak this way? So one of the ways that the commentary talks about this is in terms of these two sides, and there's a barrier here. How do we see this suchness? in the midst of the fire, burning away at the end of the kelpa. And maybe I'll say a little bit about Dasui, who was in the first half of the story. He was a grand spiritual grandson of Baizhang Waihai, a great master famous for giving a monk's funeral to a fox and amongst many other things.

[08:10]

And his teacher was Guishan, another great, great master. One time Guishan said to this Dasui, the figure in the first half of the story, you've been here for several years and don't know how to pose a question. So, you know, sometimes students say to me, I don't have any question. Sometimes we have question ceremonies, you know, and students say, well, I don't really have any question. And you know, I can understand that. Sometimes we don't have a question. But Guishan said, so Dasari asked, what would you have me ask that would be appropriate? What is there, what question is there that actually, you know, here I am, you know, there's no question. And Guishan said, you don't know how to ask what is Buddha? So all of these koans, all of these questions come down to, what is Buddha? What is Buddha?

[09:13]

Maybe there's also, how is Buddha? What is the Buddha on your seat right now? How is it? What is Buddha? This is the question that we are always asking as we sit zazen. What is Buddha? So Buddha, maybe Buddha is just a question. Dasui, when he heard that, covered Guishan's mouth with his hand. Guishan said, later on, you'll have a piece of tile to cover your head. You won't even be able to find anyone to sweep the ground. about what he would do later. And actually, later on, this Dasui, who's asked the question in the beginning of the story, made tea in a booth by the roadside and served passersby for three years. So, there are lots of stories about, you know, Zen masters going off into the, you know, hanging out in the streets.

[10:15]

serving tea or, you know, just working in the marketplace. And Dasui did that for a while, and then later on he had a temple, and then this monk came by and asked him about the fire at the end of the eon. There's lots more to say about this, and the commentary goes on to talk about this, and talks about the difference between of these two responses. And it mentions, before I go back to that, it mentions a story that Dogen refers to, Dogen, the 13th century founder of our branch of Zen, Soto Zen, in Japan, about Buddha nature, and he refers back to the sixth ancestor. And a question from a monk who asked, and the third ancestor said to him, that what is impermanent is buddha nature.

[11:17]

What is permanent is the mind that discriminates good and bad. So this is a little different from what the sutras say, that the buddha nature is permanent. The student's asking, you say it is impermanent. So again, what is Buddha? And sometimes it's said that Buddha is what is reliable. Buddha is what abides. Buddha is what is permanent. But the sixth ancestor said no, that if the Buddha nature were permanent, then what good or bad or anything can you talk about anymore? I say it is impermanent. That is indeed the way of true permanence spoken of by the Buddha. So the sixth ancestor, who in some ways is the founder really of Zen in China, said that the Buddha nature is impermanent.

[12:18]

Well, you know, is it permanent or is it impermanent? In some ways this is the same question as does just this burn up with the fire at the end of the aeon? The sixth ancestor said it's impermanent. If Buddha nature was permanent, then we wouldn't have to bother with the precepts. We wouldn't have to bother with taking care of the world. Buddha nature's here. It doesn't matter what we do in the world. It doesn't matter. We don't have to care about injustice in the world. But the Buddha nature is impermanent. we have to work to express the Buddha nature in the world and to support the Buddha nature in the world.

[13:22]

So this question is tricky. This question has a lot of sides. And in some ways, it's not exactly the same, but it recalls to me a debate between two great American Buddhist scholars, Robert Thurman and Stephen Batchelor, that happened a while ago and that's still part of American Buddhism. So Robert Thurman I guess he's now better known as Uma's father. But anyway, Robert Thurman, a great Tibetan Buddhist scholar, was the translator for the Solemnist of the Dalai Lama. And he has said that the idea of the Bodhisattva requires the teaching of rebirth, that the Bodhisattva work that we're all doing here.

[14:23]

This is what we're doing. We're doing bodhisattva practice, helping beings to awaken, helping relieve suffering. That's the point of this, right? That it doesn't make sense if you don't have rebirth, because we're not going to do it in our lifetimes, right? I mean, look around. There's just, you know, so much difficulty. And anyway, You don't have to look far. So all of our efforts will be continued when we're reborn. This is the traditional view in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, and actually throughout Asian Buddhism, that there is rebirth. And so on some level, I kind of I confess, I confess that I kind of believe that, almost literally. But you don't have, Thurman says that you have to believe that to do bodhisattva practice, and I don't agree with that.

[15:24]

You can take it metaphorically. And our efforts continue. Suzuki Roshi's efforts continue here. Dogen's efforts continue here. And we can see it culturally in terms of the efforts of, in all kinds of fields, the efforts of, you know, people fighting for justice. Martin Luther King's efforts continue and so forth, and we can go way back. The other side of it is Stephen Batchelor, who has tried to present Buddhism for a modern scientific Western context. And he says, there's no rebirth. It's nonsense. It doesn't make sense in terms of science. And he's very adamant about it. And, you know, I can see that side, too. And one time I was at a, you know, and I know both of them slightly, and I once said to, at a conference to Stephen Batchelor, you know, I kind of agree with both of you.

[16:28]

And he got very upset. He said, no. If you believe in rebirth, then you can just, you know, then that's a cop out. Then you don't have to work for, you know, to take care of things now. So this is the side of the fierce urgency of now, as Dr. King said. No, there's no rebirth. It's just this life. We have to do what we can right now. The world is on fire. The fire at the end of the eon is raging through. So Laurel, is this the fifth or the sixth or the seventh mass extinction we're going through? The sixth, yeah. There's a wonderful exhibit at the Field Museum that Laurel's associated with of the history of life on the planet that talks about this. And we're in the middle of the sixth mass extinction. So yeah, the fierce urgency of now. No rebirth, as Stephen Batchelor says.

[17:30]

But the other side is, as Dr. King also says, the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. And we also have this long view of time. So I think this koan, this teaching story, which has these both sides, has to do with this issue. So this has affected my schedule this week. We're in the middle of the, There's a mass extinction going on. So I recommend to all of you, truthout.org has every month a report on climate change. current climate science from a journalist named Dar Jamal, D-A-H-R-J-A-M-A-I-L.

[18:31]

So I'm going to give you some highlights from some of the things that he has in his August 1st report. And I'm sorry, it's kind of rude for me to talk about this. It's not polite to say how terrible the situation is of our planet right now. Of course, Zen is not about being polite. So I'm going to go ahead. But there's one of the things he talks about. And I'm going to start with Alaska. And he goes through a lot of things that are happening. So I'm just going to do a brief review. But he also mentions that, well, The wildfires are burning across the Western United States, particularly in California. These are fueled by what he calls ACD, anthropogenic climate disruption, which is a nice scientific name for climate damage.

[19:35]

anthropogenic climate disruption, and the fires, particularly in California, are being fueled by ACD-amplified factors such as droughts, beetle infestations, winds, and record-breaking heat. As it happens, I was supposed to go next weekend to Tassajara Monastery to teach students there about the dharma of suchness and Dongshan's teaching of suchness, some of which we chanted about tonight. But there's a fire around Tassajara. So Akasho and Jeremy and I have all lived there. And I don't think Tassajara's in danger. It was inundated by fire in 2008. Hakusha was one of the people who kind of left just in time, and five monks saved it. There was really this eonic fire that kind of came through from all sides.

[20:38]

Right now, it's about 10 miles away from Tassajara and five miles from Jamesburg. And it looks like it's spreading in other directions. And thanks to what happened in 2008, they have good protocols. And so it's, I think Tassajara is safe, but I'm not going to be able to, the road is closed. So I'm not going there. I'm going to be going to, I'm going to be staying at San Francisco's Zen Center City Center instead. We'll have a chance to Do some Focus on some research work. I have to do and visit some old friends and next Monday night I'm going to be having dinner with Rebecca Solnit who was here recently so Anyway, so I'm not going to Tassajara because of the fire at the end of an eon So I want to come back to Rebecca Solnit, but I want to give you a little bit of Dar Jamal's report about what's happening in the science this month. He talks about Alaska a lot in this particular report.

[21:43]

Again, this is from truthout.org, Dar Jamal. You know, this is sort of scary stuff, but also I believe in awareness and in sort of a Buddhist axiom that awareness itself is transformative. Awareness helps us to respond. So he talks about glaciers melting in unprecedented rates. The side of a mountain nearly a mile high in Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park collapsed completely recently. The landslide released over 100 million tons of rock. Mountains that have been largely covered by glaciers for eons are losing their ice cover and the soggy and unstable lands underneath are giving way. with landslides usually large enough to cause seismic tremors, and sometimes if they're close to ocean tsunamis. Arctic sea ice has melted down to a record low.

[22:46]

So I'm just going to skim this. There's massive bird die-offs. The ocean water keeps heating up. There are less and less fish, and it's scary. So this is a report of a young woman talking about this in Alaska. The seals are going extinct. A young fellow in Alaska talked about one of his favorite things when he lived in Juneau was to visit the Mendenhall Glacier. But after visiting it over time and watching it melt more and more each year, it used to be huge. It's now small. In the United States, last June was the hottest on record. and became, so that's two months ago, and became the second June in a row to hit that record. May was the 13th month in a row for record-breaking planetary temperatures. So this suggests that the planet is warming up faster than it was expected even a short time ago.

[23:50]

U.S. forests around the world are becoming mass casualties to ACD. Millions of trees have died off across Europe. In the Siberian Arctic, Russian scientists are finding what they refer to as fountains of gas, massive amounts of methane and carbon dioxide bubbling up from beneath the tundra. So the Arctic tundra in places is jiggling like jelly, forming what's been referred to as blisters of heat-trapping gases. New York's – as global sea levels continue to rise, New York City is planning on spending $3 billion to build a 10-foot-high wall around lower Manhattan to protect it from storm surges and rising seas. The media has not been reporting on that wall. They're saying that large sections of the Great Barrier Reef are suffering from quote-unquote complete ecosystem collapse. Glacier National Park in Montana, has anybody ever been there?

[24:55]

Glacier National Park? Yes. It's displaying dramatic signs of ACD. The park used to contain 150 glaciers is now down to 25. And again, I mentioned about the wildfires in California. Siberia has been ablaze throughout most of the summer in an area larger than the state of Maryland has already burned. The UN recently released a report showing that searing heat across the world will literally make it too hot for many people to work in the coming years. Loss of work hours during the hotter parts of the day will cost global economies over $2 trillion by 2030. The losses will impact the poorer countries of the world the most, of course. And a report in March, a study published in Nature Climate Change, showed that the planet was already warming 50 times faster than when it came out of the last ice age.

[26:01]

So that's just some of the science. Having said that, Well, I'll also just say the obvious that there's no real debate about this in our current national election. One candidate says that the whole thing about climate damage is a hoax. The other one says that it is serious, but they are also advocating for coal and for spreading fracking technology throughout the world. So having mentioned Rebecca Solnit, I want to end on, try to end on a somewhat upbeat note, that the level of anthropocentric climate disruption is clearly drastic.

[27:02]

Now I don't know if this is the, a fire at the end of an eon that is talked about in Indian cosmology and in this Zen koan. It certainly feels like it's related, but there are things that can be done still to make it less drastic and less harmful. We don't have a lot of time to do that, but we, meaning, you know, we as a species, we as a species are most responsible for this aeon-ending fire, not completely. But change does happen, obviously. Buddha nature is impermanent, the sixth ancestor said. And popular movements do make a difference.

[28:03]

And the climate movement has already made a difference in how fast this is happening. We're going to have a speaker here later in September from 350.org about things that can be done in Chicago on fossil fuel divestment and trying to keep fossil fuel on the ground. Lots of change has happened that, you know, Is it enough? Well, there's still suffering in the world, but there has been change, and it's obvious that there has been change. Going back to when I was younger, the Berlin Wall came down, apartheid ended. Much more recently, the LGBTQ movement has made huge changes. There is now gay marriage. The Black Lives Matter movement is not making enough change, but it's certainly bringing to all of our attention that all the injustice that is happening with police brutality.

[29:06]

And this is changing the nature of how our country is seeing things. And there is real possibility, I recommend, Laurel recommended this movie to me a while ago, Michael Moore's new movie, most recent movie, where should we invade next? It's funny and it goes around Europe and sees all these great things that are happening that actually they got from us that we've forgotten. And so it's possible to have to live and it's possible. Sanity is possible for human beings. It doesn't look like it if you live here. We have some people from other countries in the room who can talk about that. Are we living in the middle of the eon, of the fire at the end of the eon? Well, in some ways, sure.

[30:09]

Already some species are going extinct. In other ways, you know, it doesn't mean that we're going extinct yet. and we don't have to, and we can do things. And in some ways, feeling overwhelmed and feeling desperate and feeling hopeless is kind of just lazy. It's kind of just self-clinging. It's kind of just feeling like, well, there's nothing I can do. There's lots we can do. And it's not always clear. But like I've been talking about race and racism lately, talking about this stuff is the way to start. So I can't go to Tassajara this weekend, but I can talk about the fire. So thank you for listening. I know it ain't easy, but does anyone have something you'd like to say, please? Or questions or comments?

[31:13]

Yes. Good. Yes. I will not be here if the cherry blossoms don't come back. Nature will come back. The cycles of nature will continue. And it's strange to live in a time when we may lose that. It's like, it's hard enough to accept one's own impermanence, but to accept the impermanence of everything that we've lived in for the longest period of our lives is honor. It's hard and we need to do it.

[32:29]

So yes, that's the essential question. of our lives, because, so, my friend Joanna Macy, who was here several years ago, talks about this, going back to, this week was the anniversary of Hiroshima, and since Hiroshima, really, most of our lifetimes, there's been this possibility of the end of human existence. Well, human civilization as we know it for sure, maybe human beings. And we don't talk about it. And we don't talk about, you're not gonna see anything about anthropocentric climate disruption in the mainstream media. And the debates in the election, it's just not part of what people talk about because it's too hard. We'd rather be entertained.

[33:32]

But unconsciously, some part of us knows about that. And this practice of zazen awakens our whole life. And this samadhi of all beings, some part of us becomes aware that exactly what you said, that the cherry blossoms continue, but oh wait, will the cherry blossoms continue? So we have a chance to make a difference, whether the cherry blossoms and all the other blossoms of life will continue. This generation, you know, 21st century, we'll decide. And I feel very hopeful, actually, because I think there's many people all over the world who are acting in very positive ways, trying to support life. It's not in the mainstream media. You won't see it there. You have to look. But yes, that's the question. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[34:34]

Ben. with the sort of willful ignorance about climate change as a particularly American thing. And I think of two things. Of all things in the world, the opening ceremony of the Olympics, the whole second half of it was about global climate change. I haven't been paying attention to that, so thank you for telling me. That climate change is happening and we have to do something about it. And then I think about friends I have in other parts of the world obvious to them. So a friend of mine is from Bolivia and he told me a while ago that he used to ski on a glacier that was near La Paz and that the glacier isn't there anymore. And that it's, you know, so he can't ski on the glacier anymore but it's a huge problem for all the people in the communities near the glacier that rely on runoff

[35:38]

diseases. So, I don't know, it seems that people in other parts of the world know this and see this and they're having to deal with it. I wonder if we're in a bubble with a lot of us from every United States. We're shielded, a lot of us, from the effects. Well, it's not just that. It's intentional. I mean, the refugee crises in Europe and elsewhere are significantly impacted from climate. But also, it's documented now that ExxonMobil and all the other fossil fuel companies knew the science about anthropocentric climate disruption. back in the 70s, and they could have revealed it, and they could have gone towards developing alternate fuels. And they chose not to, and they chose to put millions of dollars into denying it. so and that's and they control our media and politics and So, you know, that's it's like the tobacco company executives, but on a much bigger scale So yeah, we're in a bubble so pop Hector hi

[37:14]

reminded me of a very brief poem by an American poet called Ted Kusher. And it kind of just, I'm restating what we've been saying, but he puts it really well. And I think the poem goes something like this. Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hope with those who favor fire. I think I know enough of hate to know that for distraction, ice is also great and would suffice. I like how the opposite is often true as well, right, and we can think of the fire of of climate destruction, but I like how he brings to that note of the coldness of indifference.

[38:29]

Yeah. Other comments or responses? I'll just say our practice is a response to. I've been talking about the First Noble Truth as just facing the sadness, translating suffering as sadness, just that we can sit uprightly and be present and face this. There's a tremendous dignity and power to being able to face this. And then when we're ready, and we're paying attention to see what we can do to help a little bit. Talking about it is a start. And next month, Melissa Bryce from 350.org will be here to talk about things we can do in Chicago.

[40:03]

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