When Taigen is ready, he'll be tonight's dharma talk. Thank you, Patrick. Welcome, everyone. So tonight I'm going to talk about the Flower Ornament Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra in Sanskrit, the Hoi An Sutra in Chinese, the Kegon Sutra in Japanese, just the different names, different languages. I'll start with a case from the Book of Serenity Koan Collection, case 67, called The Flower Ornament Sutra's Wisdom. And I'm not gonna read it in the usual way, which is to start with the case. This is true of this Koan collection, and also the Blue Cliff Record. You focus on the case, then the verse, both of which were written, in this case, by Hongzhe Zhongshui, who was kind of Dharma uncle of Dogen's.

[01:07]

He died in 1157. in the Xiaodong Soto lineage, not a direct antecedent of ours, but Dogen refers to him very often. I translated some of this material, Cultivating the Empty Field. And he was the greatest Soto teacher, Xiaodong in Chinese, in his time. And then there's commentary by a different teacher, as is the case in the Blue Cliff Record. This teacher is Wan Song, who was a later Tsao Tung or Soto teacher, a very interesting fellow. He had some important disciples. He was teaching up in northern China, in the Jin territory in Beijing. And anyway, he wrote an introduction, a commentary to the case, and then a commentary to Hongsheng's first. Okay, so I'm going to just start by reading the Huangsheng's introduction.

[02:08]

One atom contains myriad forms. One thought includes a billion worlds. What about a powerful person who wears the sky on their head and stands on the ground? a spiritually sharp person who knows the tale when the head is spoken. Don't they turn their back on their own spirit and bury away the family treasure? So I'll come back to that last part later in a little bit, but One atom contains myriad forms. One thought includes a billion worlds is one of the kind of basic kinds of teaching in the Flower Ornament Sutra that each atom contains a myriad manifold Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Each grass tip also many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

[03:15]

So it's a way of seeing, it's kind of holographic worldview, seeing all of reality in each bit of reality. um all of all of the universe in a grain of sand as uh William Blake said um so this is a basic perspective of the flower in a sutra and I'll just add that um the sutra itself so we we recite the sutra once a month here, Friday evenings from seven to 830. And it will be this Friday evening. It's the first Friday of the month that we do that. So we're going through it slowly. In Thomas Cleary's wonderful translation, there's 1600 pages. And that's supposed to be the kind of small version of the sutra. Anyway, there's a lot in the sutra itself that's

[04:16]

very visionary, flowery, psychedelic. It's about the different aspects of bodhisattva activity. It's not really, it's not a didactic text. It's not a text that one can particularly analyze or describe. It's more of a Samadhi text. Reading it, as you'll see if you come, everybody's welcome to come Friday evening and get a taste of it. It has an impact just hearing it, reading it aloud. You can read or take turns reading or just listen, but it, It is the teaching, and just hearing it has an impact, as I said. Anyway, so that's, and this idea of each atom containing myriad forms, Hongxue says here, Also, one thought includes a billion worlds.

[05:19]

In a different branch of Chinese Buddhism, the founder talked about each thought is 3,000 worlds. Anyway, you might have a sense of that from just from sitting in zazen and feeling the complexity of monkey mind, everything moving around and each thought implicates other thoughts, each sensation, each feeling implicates other sensations. But I was starting to say that the sutra was the basis of an important school of Buddhism, the Huayen school, in China. It's pronounced kegon in Japanese. It still exists in Japan. And it's a very different kind of discourse than the Avatamsaka or Flower Ornament Sutra itself. It's a kind of way of describing how this holographic image works, basically how interconnectedness works. And so it's kind of different, but it's very, very important as background to Soto Zen.

[06:28]

So Soto Zen people don't talk about it so much, but it's, I won't go into this tonight so much, although if you have questions, we can talk about it more, but the Soto five degrees or five ranks comes out of a teaching from Huayen Buddhism. Anyway, that's a little bit about the background. I'm gonna go now to the case in case 67. So this is the entire case. The Flower Ornament Sutra says, I now see all sentient beings everywhere fully possess the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones. So that's supposedly when he uh, awakened when he had his great enlightenment. And, um, um, and this flower ornament sutra is supposed to be the first teaching he gave, which, you know, he gave over, uh, at very seven days or 49 days anyway.

[07:41]

Um, and nobody could understand it then. And it's not something one can really understand exactly. It feels obscure to people, but come Friday evening and you'll get a taste of it. But in that sutra, as the Buddha awakened, he proclaimed, now I see that all sentient beings everywhere fully possess the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones, of the Buddhas, but because of false conceptions and attachments, they do not realize it. So I think this is a very, very controversial koan right now. And I'll come back to that. I'm going to read a little bit of Fuan Zong's commentary on this case. One of the Huaien patriarchs, Zheng Guan, said that this sutra is the opening up of the causal nature, and this quote.

[08:44]

in the commentary on the practice and vows of Samantabhadra, he calls it opening up the source of the nature of beings. So Samantabhadra is the main bodhisattva of the Flower Ornament Sutra and of Huayen Buddhism. He goes on to say in the commentary, so this is Wansong kind of expanding on what the case itself says, uh, the Buddha observed all the beings of the cosmos with his pure unobstructed eye of wisdom and said, how wonderful. How is it that, and we might translate that as how strange, how is it that these beings all have the wisdom of the enlightened ones yet in their folly and delusion do not know or see it? I should practice this. I should teach them the right path to make them abandon illusion and attachment forever so that they can perceive the vast wisdom of the awakened ones within their own bodies and be no different from the Buddha.

[10:01]

So in some sense, this is the Buddha's mission. This is his statement of what the Buddha does. So, yeah, I was gonna read from the Flower Ornament Sutra itself, a couple of versions of this. One of them is from the chapter of the 10 Dedications, and we will be reading this this Friday evening. So the Buddha says, all sentient beings are wrapped up in the web of attachments, covered by shrouds of ignorance, clinging to all existence, pursuing them increasingly, entering the cage of suffering, acting like maniacs, totally void of virtue or knowledge, always doubtful and confused. They do not perceive the place of peace.

[11:02]

They do not know the path of emancipation and they resolve, they revolve without immersed in the mire of suffering. Awakening, awakening beings bodhisattva them wanting to enable sentient beings to all attain liberation. To this end, they dedicate all their virtues, dedicating them with a great, magnanimous heart in conformity with the dedicated practices by the enlightening beings of all times. So this is another version of this. And I'll read one more, which is actually, I think, the thing that is quoted in this koan case this is later on in the chapter on the manifestation of buddha it says to enable all such beings to benefit greatly

[12:21]

The knowledge of Buddha, infinite and unobstructed, universally able to benefit all, is fully inherent in the bodies of sentient beings. But the ignorance, but the ignorance because of clinging to deluded notions, they do not know of it, are not aware of it, and so do not benefit from it. Then the Buddha, with the unimpeded, pure, clear eye of knowledge, observes all sentient beings in the cosmos and says, how strange, how is it that these sentient beings have the knowledge of Buddha, but in their folly and confusion do not know it or perceive it? I should teach them the way of sages and cause them to forever shed diluted notions and attachments so they can see in their own bodies. the vast knowledge of Buddhists, no different from the Buddhists.

[13:26]

So this is one of the basic positions of the Flower Ornament Sutra, and I said it was controversial. So I think particularly these days, Yeah, such beings are caught in the web of ignorance. They're caught in all kinds of fake news and delusion and they're manipulated to support all kinds of strange deluded views to support racist terrorism, to support banning books, to support encouraging fascism. So how could those sentient beings, as this case says, be, actually have, fully possess the wisdom and virtue of the enlightened ones?

[14:37]

This is the standpoint of the flower in the sutra, that even the most deluded beings actually, it's only because they're caught by illusions, by propaganda, by cultural support of craving, or greed, or anger, or confusion, because of this they don't see, or we could say we don't see, that the wisdom and virtue of the awakened ones is right here. So that's, you know, I think that's controversial. I think that's not how many people would think about our situation today. But this is what the Flower Ornament Sutra teaches. The Flower Ornament Sutra is about vast interconnectedness.

[15:40]

So the image of Indra's net, how many of you have heard of that? Maybe not. So that comes from the Flower Ornament Sutra. And that is the image of the universe as a network and at every place in a five dimension, three dimension, whatever, a network at every place where the meshes of the net meet, join, there's a jewel. And each of those jewels reflects the light of the jewels around them. And those reflect the light of the jewels reflected in all the other jewels around them and so forth forever. One of the great Huayen ancestors, patriarchs in China, was asked by Empress Wu, who was a great powerful monarch in China, one of the great, maybe one of the greatest women

[16:44]

leaders in all pre-modern history. Anyway, she asked Fa Zang to demonstrate this interconnectedness and he built a room and actually saw a version of this at City of 10,000 Buddhas in Northern California. He built a room with mirrors all around it and then he put in the middle of it a statue of the Buddha. And she came and she could see the Buddha going, you know, reflected in all the mirrors and reflected in all the mirrors around them and so forth forever, just as a demonstration of how interconnected all things are. And I've been talking about how the pandemic has given us this blessings as well as causing so much suffering and trauma that we all feel, but we see this interconnectedness. So this little zoom window, we have people from Minnesota and Ohio joining us in Chicago or wherever this is. So, pandemic has given us this clear demonstration of how interconnected we all are and how we're each we're dependent on each on all the other beings to not spread the pandemic.

[18:02]

Anyway. So this is this holographic teaching is basic to the flower in a sutra. I want to read some more from the, from Wansung's commentary. First I'll read Hongsha's verse comment. Sky covers, earth bears, making a mass, making a clump, pervading the universe without bound, breaking down subatomic particles with no inside. Getting to the end of the mysterious subtlety, who distinguishes Who distinguishes turning inward and turning away? Buddha and ancestors come to pay the debt of what they said. So, yeah, this idea of sky covers earth bears, everything is connected in this cosmos.

[19:16]

making a mass, making a clump. Well, you know, we chanted the Harmony of Difference and Sameness. Sameness is not exactly like just one big clump of everything is merged together, one big blob of everything. So the Sando Kai that we each chanted, Harmony of difference and sameness is merging with sameness is still not enlightenment. So this is the basis of Huayen thought and of Soto Five Degrees that there is this interaction between each particular zoom window and the whole. or each particular event, each particular living thing in the universe and on the planet and the whole planet. We are all so deeply interconnected. He says, pervading the universe without bound, breaking down subatomic particles with no inside. So if you think of the structure of an atom,

[20:19]

Atoms are actually, they're not part, they're not particles inside atoms. They're sort of waves, but from one perspective, there are electrons going around nucleuses, electrons being kind of energy, energy, energy clumps to put it that way. Well, the structure of the atom is the same as the structure of the solar system. There's the sun in the middle and there's these planets going around it. And I understand, I'm not an astronomer or physicist, but I understand that our whole galaxy might be like that. You know, there are wings of the galaxy and it's whirling around. And maybe the universe is made up of galaxies like that too. We don't know. Anyway, we're just a little little bitty things on the, on, on, you know, one little bit of a planet on the, on a, on a minor sun, minor star on one distant wing at the, at the periphery of the galaxy anyway.

[21:26]

And yet, the Flower Ornament Sutra says that each atom and each hair tip or each grass tip contains innumerable Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who are gathered around them and so forth. So this is not the way we usually think. We're used to, we're trained to think in our kind of, I don't know what to call it. I don't mind. I don't, say Western rational culture, but I don't mean to demean the West or rationality. But we usually think of the world as a bunch of dead objects, right? This is why, you know, People think they can dig the minerals out of the earth or pump the oil out of the earth to use for our benefit because, you know, we're the masters of the universe or some nonsense like that.

[22:27]

All part of this one master clump, but each of us particular. Anyway, um, I'm interested in your commentary on this, your comments or questions about this perspective. But I want to throw in one other thing. Towards the end of Wansong's commentary on the main case, he talks about a story about two masters, Yangshan and Xiangyan. Yangshan says of Shangyan, I won't go into the background story, but I grant you understand the Chan or the Zen of the Buddhas, but you haven't even dreamed of the Chan of the ancestral teachers. So this gets thrown in here and there's a reason why it's part of this this particular text.

[23:28]

How many of you have heard of this before? It used to be in books about Zen much more, Togita Zen and Ancestor Zen. Have any of you heard of that? No, so this is a way of talking about two aspects of Chan or Zen. Tathagata Zen, Buddha Zen is, you know, what we're all doing by sitting Zazen, we're sitting like Buddha, we're opening up the form of Buddha, as it says in the case. Getting to the end of the mysterious subtlety. who distinguishes turning towards and away. So Tathagata Zen or Buddha Zen, Tathagata is another name for Buddhas, is the Zen that we do as Buddhas or following Buddhas or addressing Buddha. Ancestor Zen is something else. That's about lineages. So where Ancient Dragon Zen Gate is in the Suzuki Roshi lineage in America.

[24:37]

Of course, it's all Soto Zen, which is a lineage going back to Dogen. Mad is in a temple in Minnesota that's in the Katagiri Roshi lineage. Katagiri Roshi was kind of an assistant to Suzuki Roshi while he was alive, and then he went to Minnesota later and founded bunches of temples with many successors. But Ancestors, then, is about how do we continue. this practice. So Ancestors Zen is in a way less than Buddha Zen. It's just, it's about particular people. It's about particular people in the lineage. So people who are doing lay ordination or priest ordination get a lineage paper. And the precepts, which we talk about often as ethical guidelines, are actually from the point of view of ancestors in, and this is the main understanding in Japanese, they're not so much ethical guidelines.

[25:47]

I'm gonna be talking about that more later this month and how this is so, but they are a continuation of the lineage of Buddhists. So all of you here, by virtue of being here, are part of this lineage. So really they're not the same. I mean, they're not, really, they're not different. So Yang Shan says, tell me how far is it from the Buddha's Chan, the Buddha's Zen to ancestral Zen? They're really part of the same thing, but it's a different way of looking at it. In some ways, ancestor Zen is about lineages and maintaining and keeping alive the teaching for the future. So that's what, you know, lay or priest ordination is about. That's what transmission is about. But anybody who just comes and sits in is doing Buddha Zen, Tathagata Chan or Tathagata Zen.

[26:50]

And that's wonderful practice. And they're really not separate, but anyway, they make the distinction here because this, this saying by the Buddha from the Flower Ornament Sutra, I'll read it again. The Flower Ornament Sutra says, Buddha says, Flower Ornament Sutra, I now see all sentient beings everywhere. even the people we think are doing harm and we don't like, all of them fully possess the wisdom and virtue of the awakened ones. But because of false conceptions and attachments, they do not realize it. And the Buddha goes on to say, I will. And this is where maybe where Tathagata Zen comes in. But the Buddha says, just seeing that we're all connected and that all beings have this Buddha quality. It's not that they have it, it's not a thing to possess.

[27:53]

They are this Buddha quality of wisdom and virtues. But then the Buddha says, I will go and help them see through their confusion and delusions. And that's more in the realm of ancestors. And there's one other thing in the case I want to, want to point to, reading again Hongshu's verse, sky covers, earth bears, earth holds it all up, making a mass, making a clump, pervading the universe without bound, breaking down subatomic particles with no inside, Getting to the end of the mysterious subtlety, who distinguishes turning towards and turning away? Getting to the end of the mysterious subtlety. So there's a commentary in the Wansum's commentary to the verse includes, a story about Zhaozhou, or Zhou Shu, who might be the greatest Zen master of all time, just because he lived to be 120 years.

[29:02]

But there's so many koans about him, he's so great. Anyway, in this one, the monk asked Zhaozhou, what is the mystery within the mystery? Zhaozhou said, how long have you been mystified? The monk said, I have been into this mystery for a long time. Chow Chow said, anyone but me might have been mystified to death. And then there's a comment from Dongshan, the founder of Soto Zen in China, where Wang San quotes Dongshan's, one of Dongshan's, Dongshan's the one who wrote the Song of the Jewel Marrow Samadhi, we sometimes chant. But in another writing of his, The Seal of the Mystery, he says, do not take to the road, but if you return, you turn your back on your father. You turn your back on your teacher.

[30:04]

Anyway. Um, so, um, there's various parts of all that. Um, but this base, this, this basic sense, you know, again, I called it controversial that, um, you know, as the, as the case says, all sentient beings everywhere, even, you know, Donald Trump or the governor of Georgia, or whomever you think might be spreading harm in our society, they fully possess the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones, but because of false conceptions and attachments and fake news and so forth, they do not realize it. So it's not that there are, that there, you know, there wasn't, so this is about Buddha nature. one of the basic teachings of Zen in Mahayana. There's a long writing, one of Dogen's longest essays is about, it's called Buddha Nature, and he has various stories about that.

[31:10]

And he starts by saying all being in their wholeness is Buddha Nature. It's not that beings have Buddha Nature, but in early Mahayana teachings in India and in some parts in China, they thought of Buddha nature as something that some people had and some people didn't. There were supposedly some beings, some people, they were called achantikas, that's the Sanskrit word for them, who could never be Buddha, who could never awaken. They were just hopeless. But Tathagatas and ancestors both deny that, all being Buddha nature. Okay, there's a lot of stuff there. I'm interested in your comments, questions, responses to any of it. Please feel free. Mike.

[32:13]

Thank you for your talk, Taigan. I was struck by the words atom and subatomic, which I wonder, because I assume that the concept wasn't around at the time that that was written. So I wondered, like, what were the original words that were used? And like, how much knowledge, I don't know if you know this or not, but like how aware was society at that time about like the smallness of things? Like, were they aware that like, you know, we had parts that, you know, were smaller parts or like, like what was like the general knowledge of society versus like how this is coming across in terms of like us thinking about just, you know, things are, you know, infinitely smaller. I don't know. I was curious about that. Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. And I think that actually, that's a reasonable translation. I mean, we had the word atom is, you know, is part of modern science in English.

[33:15]

But yeah, there was an idea of smaller and smaller bits, and subatomic particles even. I think, so I don't know what the Sanskrit or Chinese version of it is. I do have the Chinese text of these cases and verses, so I can go see if I can find it. But basically, that was a teaching back then. They did see that things, the smallest things. Another version of that is not just in space, but in time. So in early Buddhism even, there's this idea of 66 moments in a second, I think it is. or in each moment there's 66 parts. So I don't know what yogi could see that clearly down to the dimensions of time to come up with that and find that number. They're called kasanas. So they were seeing that. Now, I don't think this is just an Asian, Indian, or Chinese thing.

[34:20]

I think David Ray, who is not here, but he could talk about the roots in classic Greek. I think, is it Themosthenes? I forget who it is in Greek philosophy, who actually also talked about atoms, maybe not exactly defined in the same way that modern physicists would. So, yeah. Well, the ancient Greeks, that's where we get the word atom from, right? It's directly from Greek. And they used it to describe basically the same thing, which was the concept of the smallest possible unit. of space that is indivisible. And we now know that atoms are not indivisible, but when they were first discovered, we were. So like, oh, that's a concept that applies. And then when you talk about time, Zeno's arrow, right, coming from Zeno is talking about that same thing. So like the ancient Greeks were also very kind of attuned to this, but it's funny because the word Adam is virtually unchanged for the past 3,000 years, but it feels so new and so modern that it's weird when we talk about, yeah, in an old text like this.

[35:35]

Yeah, well, apparently they knew in China and India, they knew about atomic, where they had the idea of atomic particles. And they also had the sense that there were subatomic particles, and they wouldn't have defined them the same way that modern physicists do. But anyway, yeah, it's an old idea. And it's very much related to Huayen philosophy that in each bit, In H. Adam, there are whole worlds, this holographic vision of reality. So thank you. Other comments or questions or responses? Ed? Well, you know, I think we are challenged with this notion of accepting the universal nature of individuals in their social and political performances. Uh, because we do have, of course, uh, um, persons of high profile elected in representative office blatantly lie to us.

[36:48]

Uh, they're, um, the people they represent. And I simply mentioned certain members of the Republican party who sit on investigative committees and currently in front of Congress. And it's insulting to me to read their statements. And so I am challenged to maintain a sense of equilibrium in my view of them as human persons, given their commitment to the practice of deception for their own personal gain. And so maybe an underlying focus in Buddhist practice is to work with that problem as almost nearly the primary problem. So I'm not sure I'm willing to lend to Stephen Miller or certain members investigating the statements that Shell Oil Company made regarding their pretending to be interested in the carbon tax, but recognizing it will never pass in the house. I'm not sure how to deal with that from a Buddhist perspective, other than to take a position of reservation.

[37:55]

And so I'll just leave that at that. Well, thank you, and that's exactly why I said this is a controversial koan. I would go further than you and say, not only do political elected officials lie, they also act, support and sponsor and maintain acts of extreme cruelty. One of the, people who was in Guantanamo for years just testified recently about the torture that he suffered for, I think, six years and all, you know, and all the, all the I guess it was a court case and all the judges all you know these were military judges all described this as horrendous so it's not just so yes there's tremendous cruelty in the world and there is now and there and there has been for a long time.

[39:00]

I mean, I think there are many United States presidents who we could look at and say they acted like mass murderers, not just Donald Trump and the invaders of Iraq and so forth. So, So this version of reality is saying that all beings are inherently the wisdom and virtue of the Buddhas, this Buddha nature, but they have become so ignorant and deluded by all kinds of things, by attachments, by greed, by cruelty. So, you know, how do we deal with, how do we see this for sociopaths? You know, that's what we're talking about, who seem to, you know, rise to the top of society at times. This is why this is a koan. And yet, I think our Zazen practice

[40:05]

kind of gets us to the possibility of seeing that everyone, everything, every so-called thing, you know, the Ecuadorian natives whose land is fouled by oil intentionally, that will be there for generations, each of them you know, has potentially, or has more, actually, maybe expresses wisdom and virtue of awakened ones, but then what do we say about the people who make a profit by, you know, by leaking that oil? Anyway, so thank you, Ed, for bringing that up, so I didn't have to, or maybe I've expanded on it, but yeah, this is a real koan. How do we see that there is a basic decency that is not just a potential, it is an underlying reality to all being.

[41:15]

And not just human beings, animals, forests, plants, mountains, rivers. So this is a great challenge. And then how do we, so then the Buddha says, well, how do I teach them? How do I get them to see through their delusions? That's the question. And I think somebody who's persuaded that the attack on January 6th was just a bunch of tourists can not be when not be able to them otherwise. But there's this sense of this possibility of awakening. You may all disagree with that. It might be a helpful orientation when we try and go out to heal the sick, as it were, to forgive them for being deluded.

[42:23]

And that we're part of that. We are all deluded too. We all have lots of, you know, just from the process of growing up in our culture, and maybe in any culture. You know, the United States is not the first empire in the world that expressed cruelty. How do we see how we are caught by that too? We each have, through our karmic consciousness that this koan talks about, how we each have you know, our own pattern of greed, of anger, rage, of fear, of confusion. Yes, Matt. Yeah, I'll use that as a transition. You know, the climate stuff's in the news right now with COP 20 or whatever it is in Copenhagen or Scotland, I forget Glasgow.

[43:36]

You know, we hear about Exxon Mobil and these companies knowing all this stuff. I think we forget We're the reason why ExxonMobil exists. They're fulfilling a need. We drive cars. We buy plastic. We are, I mean, all of us play a very small role, but all of us, you know, just like interest net, all of us are interconnected. We are ExxonMobil. And it's funny, you know, we other these companies and we other these people, but We are them in some ways. I mean, I don't know. It's tough to think of it this way, but Donald Trump is a side of all of our personalities, right? We all have that side of our personality if we don't keep it in check. I don't know. It's weird. I don't know. I think, you know, if everyone was perfect and we fixed all this, we wouldn't be Bodhisattvas anymore. You know, that's why. We wouldn't need Bodhisattvas. There's a lot of work to be done. So yeah.

[44:37]

Yes. Yeah. Boris office have great job security. You know, I could parse what you're saying, Matt, and say that, you know, we can hold certain people accountable for certain actions. And Chevron and Shell, you know, the oil people who knew in the 70s what the effect of fossil fuel would be in terms of climate destruction, and went ahead and spent millions of dollars to climate denial, might be more, you know, if we thought about accountability, might be more involved part of the problem than each of us. But yes, we all benefit from that. We have electric lights, we have, you know, drive cars, or we go even if we go on public transportation, we're part of the system that's been created. A year or so ago, I read Moby Dick for the first time, and they were using whale oil as their main energy system.

[45:40]

And there was tremendous cruelty involved in killing those whales. But that was how people got by. So this is a big problem where there are now solar and wind and other alternate technologies. But then how do we get from here to there? That's the political problem. So anyway, but yeah, it's, we're all involved and how do we assess, how do we make, how do we get people to see through the way in which we're all part of, part of a system of greed, hate and delusion. Anyway, sorry for going on, but thank you Matt. Other comments, responses to any part of this teaching? Yes, Patrick. I thank you for your talk.

[46:41]

This is, I think, conceptually, I can repeat the words and think about them and believe them, but in practice, I don't feel them. But I was thinking just now, from the perspective of Buddha, I don't think there's Buddha's looking at me. And then maybe because of that, that interconnectedness is a little more tangible on some level. I have delusions too, but maybe just slightly different ones, or maybe not as deep. I was wondering your thoughts.

[47:54]

I've been chewing on the difference between Buddha Zen and Ancestor Zen. Given that we all are then interconnected, we're all part of the same lineage at some point in time then. And if we're, all part of maybe the same lineage at some point, then we're already part of the same lineage right now. Um, but maybe talk a little bit more of like the interplay between the two and in this context then of interconnectedness, it's, you know, um, It's intricate. That's where they talk about the mystery because each person, each entity, each Buddha bit has its own particular way of being Buddha.

[48:57]

So, you know, I think I do believe in accountability, you know, that in a reasonable justice system, people who do really heinous, cruel, highly damaging, who support those events, you know, should be held accountable. So maybe there are, you know, oil executives and Trump cabinet members should be in prison. A lot of the people who are in prison shouldn't be. That doesn't mean that we are necessarily inherently better than them. If we start, you know, parsing good and bad, you know, you know, from another perspective, all plants and animals are from evolutionary lineage, we're all descended from fungus. We're all descended from fungi, you know, and so we are all connected.

[50:07]

And then how does it come to be that there are, I don't know, the denial of science is a particular delusion that is around now, fake news, whatever, disinformation, just a denial. So there's so many levels of reality. And we're all denying some part of reality probably, but then there are clear aspects of reality where, anyway, it's complicated, but I think we can make distinctions and make judgments, but it's not that they are evil and we are good or vice versa. So, and Buddha goes beyond those ideas of, evil and good, good and bad, those dualities. Buddha's not caught by that. Randy, everyone else has spoken.

[51:08]

Do you have any thoughts about, or reflections or responses about any of this? Oh, sure. Thank you for your talk. I'm sorry I missed part of it. I'm having battery issues on my phone, but I did have something I wanted to ask you about, and it has to do a little bit with yesterday's talk and tonight's. That is the term that came to my attention yesterday, invisible mutual assistance. I think it's one of the translations. I'm going to also picking up a little bit. Yeah, that's inconceivable mutual assistance. Oh, most of it, but just to go back a little bit.

[52:09]

Yes. How does that fit in with the internet and Buddha nature versus having Buddha nature or being Buddha nature? and how can we use that to better change things? Yeah, so let me see if I can say your question correctly. There's this phrase in Japanese Buddhism, inconceivable mutual assistance. Yes, it's in that Jiji-usami. I don't know if it was yesterday that I talked about that, but I did recently. And that's very much relevant to what we're talking about tonight. There's this idea of, in the context that Dogen talks about that, he talks about the person sitting and the elements of the environment, all the aspects of the environment.

[53:14]

Grassley talks about specifically grass. fence, walls, so even what we consider inanimate, artificial, man-made things. Can you all hear me okay? I got a signal that I'm breaking up a little bit too. Thank you. So yeah, that is, that's very much related to this um teaching in the flowering sutra of the interconnectedness of things it's more from what and Dogan's taking it a step further I say and that's maybe that's ancestrals then anyway he's saying not only is everything interconnected this is important this is actually maybe But everything has this mutual resonance. I think there's a Western philosopher called Rupert Sheldrake who talks about something like this, but that there's this inconceivable, unperceivable by us, mutual assistance between the person sitting Sasa, which is where Dogon starts, and grasses and trees, and

[54:35]

even tiles and pebbles and walls and buildings, and that there's this way in which not only is everything deeply connected, but everything is supporting everything else. I think we lost Randy, so I'll try and repeated when he comes back, hopefully. But does that, that's a turn on this teaching from the Flower Ornament Sutra. Maybe it's implied in what the Flower Ornament Sutra is saying, but to say that not only are we really connected, but we support each other. So there's various ways I could expand on that. But that's something particularly juicy in our Soto Zen lineage, going back to Dogen.

[55:46]

And this whole idea of Buddha nature as not being something that one can have, but being the nature of beings and things and people. It's not just, it's not some, it's not like some, it's not some thing. Like enlightenment is not something. It's about, it's a dynamic activity. So to recognize this deep interconnectedness, you know, we can say on the subatomic particle level or whatever, that is being spoken of in this koan. Beyond that, there's this quality that the Bodhisattva is about, about may all beings be happy. Beings are numberless without a freedom. How do we not just, so this wisdom in virtue of the Buddhas is not just some thing, some passive thing that we could classify, but it's actually a mode of awareness, a mode of activity, a mode of caring.

[56:54]

So, Randy, can you hear me? You're coming back. I don't know, anyway. It's an important turning of this. So Randy, I've been responding to your comments, and maybe it'll come through in the recording, which you can listen to in a few days. But yeah, just to say it again, because it bears repeating, that Dogen takes this sense of Buddha nature and interconnectedness, which is, it's not something that Dogen invented, it's all, it's part of what goes back to India, I suppose, but it's definitely developed in East Asian Buddhism, not just Zen. in the Havatamsaka schools and the Lotus Sutra Tiantai schools, this sense not just of that everything exists as dead objects and they're all connected, but that the Bodhisattva idea is that we're all supporting each other.

[58:04]

and in Jiji Uzama that you were referring to, Randy, there's this mutual inconceivable assistance. Now, this is another far out idea that we might not believe given the way the world is. I mean, I appreciate your skepticism at, you know, when we think about, you know, fossil fuels and Donald Trump and so forth, but that the nature of, at the very core of the nature of reality, there is this support system And it's not something we can necessarily believe in, but we can, but we're part of that activity. And I can only say, may it be so, and may it help us in these difficult, declining days. Um, so I appreciate your question, Randy, and I appreciate all of the discussion that we're getting on to, uh, ending time, but, and I have a Douglas requested that I make an announcement, but, um, does anybody else have something that is, uh, really want to say at this point?

[59:19]

Randy, can you say something? Okay. Anybody else? Okay, why don't we do the four sats of vows, if you would lead us in that chant three times, Patrick, and then I have some announcements to share.

[59:47]

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