Good evening. Evening. Okay, well, I wanted to... Actually, maybe the beginning of a series of talks on one of my favorite Dharma texts by the great American Zen writer, Gary Snyder, Zenji, The Practice of the Wild, I wanted to start talking about tonight. First, I wanted to kind of review some things I've been talking about and talk about this basic rhythm of Zen practice, which I've been talking about in various ways in recent talks. And one way to talk about it is in terms of this harmony of sameness and difference, this tension and dynamic interaction of what Shoto or Sekito,

[01:05]

one of our great ancestors, calls sameness and difference. So we could say this side of sameness or oneness is the side of wisdom. It's what we realize in our Zazen, kind of sometimes gradually, sometimes dramatically, but organically. It's the ground of our practice and of our sitting, this oneness, this way in which, as Dogen said when he came back from China, he realized that I is horizontal and O is vertical. We all share this. But then there's our practice, the expression of this in our daily activity, as well as in our Zendo forms, but in our life. The expression of this sameness has to do with difference, or we could call it compassion.

[02:05]

So this rhythm of sameness and difference runs through all Zen practice and teaching. The sameness that we realize as our essential nature, as the emptiness of differences, we then express by appreciating and honoring and respecting differences. So I spoke about a month ago about diversity and how part of the practice of Sangha is to actually appreciate diversity, encourage diversity, welcome differences, appreciate differences. And in the context of our particular society study, cultural habits of prejudice, the importance of studying racism and how that affects all of us, for example.

[03:08]

This is not just in our culture, but underlying all spiritual practice. There's again this expression of wisdom that is difference, diversity, compassion, recognizing the differences, appreciating the differences, welcoming people from all kinds of different backgrounds and appreciating that and seeing that in ourselves too. Seeing the diversity within the sameness that is on each of our cushions and chair right now. So another way to talk about this is, I've been in the teachings of Dongshan that I've been talking about in the Koan class Thursday night and in the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, he says,

[04:14]

You are not it, it actually is you. Or in his verse when he saw his reflection in the stream, he said, It now is me, I now am not it. This also we could say, sameness and difference. It now is me. This oneness, this sameness, this wholeness is each of us. And I now am not it. Each of us is a unique expression, a unique diverse example of it. So part of that tension in that statement too is, how do we see the sameness that is the ground of all of us and then how do we appreciate the differences? How do we appreciate and respect and be compassionate towards the particularities? I also talked about this a couple of weeks ago when I spoke about several Mary Oliver poems.

[05:20]

And I spoke about it again a little bit yesterday, particularly this poem about Buddha's last instruction. So she takes the last instruction the Buddha gave, which is usually translated, be a light unto yourself, which suggests that Buddha was saying to his monks and disciples just before he passed away to be a guide for themselves, to see, to study the Dharma in themselves, to be a guide unto themselves. Mary Oliver reads it as, make yourself into a light. Very interesting. And this idea has been ringing in me since we talked about the Mary Oliver poem. Be a light unto yourself or make yourself into a light. So this has to do, you know, we can see the sameness and difference on both sides of that actually.

[06:26]

So part of the sameness and difference is that they're the same and also that they're different. But how do we make ourselves into light? Into a light, each of us in our own way, in our own activities. So we have this non-residential Sangha practicing in the middle of this great heartland city of Chicago in this strange time, 2008. How do we express this sameness in the differences, in the particulars of our, each of our very diverse lives in the city, in our work, in our family and relationships? In some ways this has to do with sameness and difference too. How do we find each in our own way, a way to be a light, to show this possibility of sameness,

[07:26]

to help other beings enter into the path to seeing this underlying sameness and then finding a way to help others make themselves into a light. So how do we express this rhythm of sameness and difference, each in our own way, in the differences of each of us in our own lives? So this is a little bit of background, just to mention this, what I feel is this fundamental rhythm of Zen practice and Zen life. And it's a background that I want to give before talking about reading some from Gary Snyder's Practice of the Wild, and we'll start that tonight and do it in some other Monday nights as well. But particularly I wanted to start with a commentary text that Gary Snyder gives

[08:34]

to one of Dogen's great writings called the Mountains and Waters Sutra. So Gary's chapter in Practice of the Wild is Blue Mountains Constantly Walking. But it's really a commentary on this writing by Dogen. And again, this background of sameness and difference and wisdom and compassion is in the tension in the rhythm of this text as well. So sometimes in Zen writings, mountains are kind of emblematic of the wisdom side. Of going deep into the mountains and finding the starkness of oneness or sameness. And then the waters, the rivers, the ocean is emblematic of compassion,

[09:35]

of the waters of mercy, Kano and Bodhisattva. But also we could see both in both, but there's this rhythm, this deep rhythm in it. And again, before I start reading from this text by Gary Snyder, I've mentioned before that this rhythm, this kind of poetic language of mountains and rivers that runs through most of Zen, most of East Asian Buddhist poetry and most of Zen discourse is particularly suited to China and Japan and California. And that one of the long-term ambitions I have for our practice here together in Chicago is to find a way to express that for the heartland. So maybe it's prairies and lakes. I don't know if in Indiana, where it's also kind of flat, if Shohaku has come up with any way of expressing this. But prairies and lakes, or maybe it's the L and the lakeshore.

[10:41]

I don't know. And I've been actually thinking about Frank Lloyd Wright architecture and listening to Carl Sandburg poetry reading a little bit. But before we even get to that, what is the guts of this? Blue Mountains Constantly Walking. So this text by Dogen goes back to a saying by Furong Daokai, one of our ancestors in China, who said the Blue Mountains are constantly walking. So that's kind of, it seems, what? Mountains walking? Well, anyway, there's lots of ways to think about that. I think I'll just start by reading what Gary has to say about this in this essay and comment, and then we'll have some time for discussion. So the first section is a little long, and he calls it Fudo and Kannon,

[11:41]

which were two, Kannon you know, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Kansei and Fudo we'll get to. But these are two important Buddhist figures in Japan. So Gary starts by quoting a translation of the Mountains and Rivers Sutra, or the Mountains and Waters Sutra by Dogen, which goes, The mountains and rivers of this moment are the actualization of the way of the ancient Buddhas. Each abiding in its own phenomenal expression realizes completeness. Because mountains and waters have been active since before the eon of emptiness, they are alive at this moment. Because they have been the self since before form arose, they are liberated and realized. And Gary says, this is the opening paragraph of Dogen's astonishing essay, Mountains and Waters Sutra, written in the autumn of 1240,

[12:46]

13 years after he returned from his visit to Song Dynasty China. At the age of 12, he had left home in Kyoto to climb the well-worn trails to the dark kinoki and sugi, cedar and sequoia-like forests of Mount Hiei. This 3,000-foot range of the northeast corner of the Kamo River Basin, the broad valley now occupied by the huge city of Kyoto, was the Japanese headquarters mountain of the Tendai sect of Buddhism. He became a novice monk in one of the red-painted shadowy wooden temples along the ridges. So the two years I lived in Kyoto, translating with Shobako out of his temple west of Kyoto, I was living sort of in the foothills of Mount Hiei, just sort of at the edge of Mount Hiei, the northeast of Kyoto. And it's one of the many mountains in Japan that are just covered with temples. I always, hiking around Tassahara, I always imagined little shrines

[13:48]

or little sub-temples all around the hills. Of course, they would have been burnt down, but anyway, maybe someday. He goes on to quote Dogen, the Blue Mountains are constantly walking. And Gary says, in those days, travelers walked. The head monk of the Daitoku-ji Zen Monks Hall in Kyoto once showed me the monastery's handwritten yearly tasks book from the 19th century. It had been replaced by another handwritten volume with a few minor updates for the 20th century. So Gary Snyder actually practiced as a monk in this great, beautiful Rinzai Zen temple in Kyoto for a number of years. These are the records that the leaders refer to through the year in keeping track of ceremonies, meditation sessions, and recipes for the Tenzo. It listed the temples that were affiliated with this training school in order of the traveling time it took to get to them, from one day to four weeks' walk.

[14:50]

Student monks from even those distant temples usually made a round trip home at least once a year. Virtually all of Japan is steep hills and mountains dissected by fast, shallow streams that open into shoestring valleys and a few wider river plains toward the sea. The hills are generally covered with small conifers and shrubs. Once they were densely forested with a cover of large hardwoods as well as the irregular pines and the tall, straight hinoki and sugi. Beautiful wood. Traces of a vast network of well-marked trails are still found throughout the land. They were tramped down by musicians, monks, merchants, porters, pilgrims, and periodically by armies. And then Gary talks about this idea of landscape and of space

[15:53]

and space itself in terms of walking. He says, We learn a place in how to visualize spatial relationships as children, on foot and with imagination. Place and the scale of space must be measured against our bodies and their capabilities. A quote-unquote mile was originally a Roman measure of 1,000 paces. Automobile and airplane travel teaches us little that we can easily translate into a perception of space. To know that it takes six months to walk across Turtle Island or North America, walking steadily but comfortably all day, every day, is to get some grasp of distance. The Chinese spoke of the four dignities. Standing, lying, sitting, and walking. They are dignities in that they are ways of being fully ourselves, at home in our bodies, in their fundamental modes. I think many of us would consider it quite marvelous if we could set out on foot again

[16:57]

with a little inn or a clean camp available every ten or so miles and no threat from traffic to travel across a large landscape, say all of China or all of Europe. That's the way to see the world in our own bodies. So I know Hoketsu and Shoto have done long walks. Maybe the rest of you have. I'm using a car, but having just moved north and west in the city, my ambition is limited to Chicago and to walk around Chicago, and I'm enjoying walking around our new neighborhood. So there's some way in which we have a sense of place or space, maybe bicycling also gives some of that, more than driving, certainly more than flying. So, and some of you, how many of you walk to the Senegal on Monday nights? Yeah, so you have a sense of, it's the space between here and your homes.

[17:59]

So I aspire to walk around Chicago more. Gary goes on, sacred mountains and pilgrimage to them is a deeply established feature of the popular religions of Asia. When Dogen speaks of mountains, he is well aware of these prior traditions. There are hundreds of famous Taoist and Buddhist peaks in China and similar Buddhist and Shinto associated mountains in Japan. There are several sorts of sacred mountains in Asia. A sacred site that is the residency of a spirit or deity is the simplest and possibly oldest. So in, particularly in Japan, there are particular mountains that are considered kami, kind of Shinto deities. And also on those mountains, there are particular places, a particular grove or a place where water pools or a particular tree or a particular rock that is considered a kami, considered sacred and something about it stands out and it's honored as such.

[19:08]

So these are sacred sites. Then there are sacred areas, perhaps many dozens of square miles, that are special to the mythology and practice of a sect with its own set of Taoist or Buddhist deities, miles of path and dozens or hundreds of little temples and shrines. Pilgrims might climb thousands of feet, sleep in the plain board guest house houses, eat rice gruel and a few pickles and circumambulate set roots, burning incense and bowing at site after site. So when I came back from Japan to Green Gulch, I had this, I never did it, but I imagined circumambulating the bay, chanting Kanzeon. So anyway, I imagined doing it would be a nice practice for someone to do. Again, I don't know Chicago well enough to know what would be the equivalent kind of pilgrimage site that we might construct in Chicago. Finally, there are a few highly formalized sacred areas that have been deliberately modeled on a symbolic diagram or mandala of a holy text.

[20:19]

That too can be quite large. It is thought that to walk within the designated landscape is to enact specific moves on the spiritual plane. Alan Gropard is a scholar who's written about that. There's a set of mountains in Kyushu that actually, so it takes, I don't know, a week or some weeks to walk through. But each place in each in these mountains, there are different shrines, different little shrines, each one representing one Chinese character from the Lotus Sutra. So to go to walk all of them is is like walking the Lotus Sutra. It's like on the land, you know. So this piece, this area of land is like the Sutra. And you walk and you kind of do the whole thing. There was a, there are miniature examples of, there are also pilgrimages to temples of Kannon. And there's a famous pilgrimage in Shikoku, one of the, the fourth island of Japan, around the perimeter where there are 88 temples that people used to walk around to now.

[21:27]

Now pilgrims go by bus or maybe they'll walk some parts of it. And there was one on the hillside in northwest Kyoto that I actually did in one afternoon, which is the 33 forms of Kannon. And it's up this hill and around and there's 33 different shrines and you can do it in an afternoon. It's a nice walk, but it's a way of honoring, you know, some part of Buddhist teaching or texts through the land itself. Gary goes on, some friends and I once walked the ancient pilgrimage route of the Omine Yamabushi, a mountain ascetics in Nara Prefecture from Yoshino to Kumano. In doing so, we crossed the traditional center of the Diamond Realm Mandala at the summit of Mount Omine, close to 6,000 feet. And four hiking days later, descended to the center of the Womb Realm Mandala at the Kumano or Barefield Shrine deep in a valley. So those are the two main mandalas of Japanese Shingon or Vajrayana Buddhism.

[22:29]

It was also part of Tendai Buddhism and it's sort of in the background of Soto Zen. Anyway, he says it was in the late June rainy season, flowery and misty. There were little stone shrines the whole distance, miles of ridges to which we sincerely bowed each time we came on them. This projection of complex teaching diagrams onto the landscape comes from the Japanese variety of Vajrayana Buddhism, the Shingon sect and its interaction with the shamanistic traditions of the mountain brotherhood in Japan. The regular pilgrimage up Mount Omine from the Yoshino side is flourishing. Hundreds of colorful yamabushi and medieval mountain gear scale cliffs, climb the peak and blow conches, while others chant sutras in the smoky dirt floor temple on the summit. So this yamabushi means mountain ascetic and it's still an active practice in Japan and in Kyoto. On weekends, particularly, you'd see on the buses going to the foot of Mount Ie,

[23:29]

or going up to part of the way on Mount Ie, these... It wasn't just men, but mostly men with... I'm sure were salarymen, were white-collar businessmen during the week, but on the weekend they had these white or yellow robes with all kinds of tassels and beads and staffs. And so they would be going to do this kind of weekend ascetic practice. The long-distance practice has been abandoned in recent years, Gary continues, so the trail was so overgrown it was impossible to find. This 4,000-foot-high direct ridge route makes excellent sense, and I suspect it was the regular way of traveling from the coast to the interior in Paleolithic and Neolithic times. It was the only place I ever came on wild deer and monkeys in Japan. So he's talking about this practice of walking. I'll just read a little bit more and maybe we can have some discussion.

[24:35]

He says, in East Asia, mountains are often synonymous with wilderness. And wilderness is really the subject of this whole book, and the context of the whole idea of mountains and waters. As he says a little later in this, the word mountains actually just coming up, the mountains and water, the word shanshui in Chinese, sanshui in Japanese, means literally landscape. So it's talking about space, it's a way of talking about how we see the space around us. Now again, what the words for landscape would be in Illinois or Indiana or Iowa, I don't know. But anyway, in East Asia, the landscape is the mountains and waters. But also, what Gary is talking about in his practice of the wild is this underlying wilderness,

[25:41]

which is, a couple of you were here yesterday, we were talking about this kind of underlying source of creative energy, this kind of, Dylan calls it the deep wellspring of creativity, this source of energy that is something we tap into in our zazen in some organic way over time. So anyway, a little bit more I'll read. In East Asia, mountains are often synonymous with wilderness. The agrarian states have long since drained, irrigated, and terraced the lowlands. Forests and wild habitats start at the very place the farming stops. The lowlands, with their villages, markets, cities, palaces, and wine shops, are thought of as the place of greed, lust, competition, commerce, intoxication. The dusty world. Those who would flee such a world and seek purity find caves or build hermitages in the hills and take up the practices which will bring realization or at least a long healthy life.

[26:45]

These hermitages in time become the centers of temple complexes and ultimately religious sects. Many rulers, and then he quotes Dogen, Dogen says, many rulers have visited mountains to pay homage to wise people or ask for instructions from great sages. At such time, these rulers treat the sages as teachers, disregarding the protocol of the usual world. The imperial power has no authority over the wise people in the mountains. Gary Schneider says, so mountains are not only spiritually deepening, but also, it is hoped, independent of the control of the central government. Joining the hermits and priests in the hills are people fleeing jail, taxes, or conscription. Deeper into the ranges of southwestern China are the surviving hill tribes who worship dogs and tigers and have much equality between the sexes, but that belongs to another story. Mountains or wilderness have served as a haven of spiritual and political freedom all over. So maybe I'll pause or maybe stop reading there and just say a little bit about this.

[27:53]

I'm interested in your comments, responses, questions. Again, with this background of sameness and difference, wisdom and compassion, this rhythm of our practice of sitting like a mountain, of getting up and flowing into the world of commerce or the city. This expression of sameness, each in our own particular way, and this image of the mountains as a place of retreat, to get away from the world of distraction and consumerism and greed, hate, and delusion and so forth. Even though, of course, living in the city, we're all leveled in this. We don't have mountains to go to.

[28:54]

In some ways, showing up on a Monday night or Thursday night or coming to an all-day sitting is a way of retreating into that space that's beyond. And then the point is, of course, we can't stay here. We have to fold up the cushions and take them upstairs and go out into our lives. Anyway, there's this rhythm. I'm very interested in any comments, responses, or questions, or whatever you may have about any of this. David? My recommendation for a Midwestern mountain would be soils.

[29:58]

Soils. Because that's kind of what mountains feel like to me, is like the earth element. So it's earth and water. So what would be the kind of rhythm or textures or discourse around soils? Of course, there's different crops. How do we play with the images of the soil? Sandberg talks about the soil a lot. He talks about the ground. So I think there's something there. I've never been a farmer. I practiced for a while at Green Gulch Farm, so I got to do some hoeing and stuff. I worked in the gardens a little bit. Something about soil and the earth and the fertility of that and the food that comes from that. Yes, Shota? And that the soil is like an entire universe.

[31:01]

I have started gardening. And it's like the whole thing only works if you have the fungi and the, I don't know, the bacteria, all the little bugs and the worms and the insects. You know, huge multitudes of creatures. Yes. Like a whole wild universe right there in a lump of living earth, which reminds me of my image of a mountain. A miniature mountain in a little molehill. Yes, Wendy Johnson, who was the Green Gulch kind of garden goddess, used to talk about a square foot, a cubic foot of soil containing millions of organisms. Not even the microscopic ones, but just very fertile and rich. Mauro, you're a landscaper.

[32:08]

Any thoughts about any of this? I've had to study soil quite a bit. And I know, at least in the Midwest, we're such a big farming area. And it's kind of contrary to the idea of millions of organisms. The way of farming is kill it all. Just make it antiseptic. Modern farming, yes. Modern farming. And then try to introduce the one crop and spray it with chemicals to make that one crop. It's interesting. And then we work with trying to get away from all of that. But oftentimes, you're trying to bring it back. And oftentimes, when we go to a natural site, we're trying not to disturb. I know we try to remove it in layers and actually put it back in the same way that we found it, because it's much healthier for the soil.

[33:10]

It really is a living organism. Yeah. And that's why forests and places that aren't touched are really pretty magical. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things, thinking about Japan's relationship to landscapes, is that one of the major art forms, well, there's landscape painting and landscape poetry, but one of the things that's done in Japan all the time is to make little microcosms of the mountains and waters. Even the rock gardens without any water, the dry landscape gardens, they're called, are big rocks and then raked gravel. And so many Japanese homes still will have just maybe a place of a microcosm, even maybe just two zabatons large, where there's a little miniature something of nature, and it's a kind of microcosm of this wider landscape.

[34:12]

So in some sense, the little piece of soil or the little garden can be a way of seeing this. Also a little bonsai. Yeah. Landscape in miniature. Yes. I'm guilty of collecting rocks wherever we go. I spend a lot of time looking at the ground, so I'll pick up rocks. But then we set them out all over, and there are a lot of rocks. I remember where I can pull out rocks. We just moved, so then we go through all the old rocks, and I can pull out rocks that I remember from living in Minnesota when I was 18. And I remember that spot and where or what ridge in Colorado, and it really brings it back or brings me to that place for a minute. And I really enjoy that. I think that's a lot of what Gary's getting at in terms of talking about this practice of the wild

[35:18]

and the Blue Mountains constantly walking, that you have rocks that are old friends and that bring you back to a particular space in a particular time. That's great. Yes, Ryan. Two images for me are the tallgrass prairies, which were very wild, very unusual landscape, which, of course, were destroyed for the farming here. So that's a native Illinois? Yeah, Midwest. Probably Indiana, too, but huge tallgrasses that were a really unique landscape. We don't know much about them because they were destroyed, but there are some places in the area that recreate. I don't know about tallgrass, but do recreate some of the prairie landscapes. But it occurs to me, if you look at a map of the Midwest, what you see,

[36:22]

especially if it's topographical and colored, what you see is this incredibly verdant landscape because of the rivers. And the rivers walk, in a sense, through the landscape, and we know how water moves so insistently, but yet to the easiest path, the path that's least resistant. But it's carved. Lake Michigan is a glacial lake. The waters have been there for 10,000 years, the same water in that lake, and it's deep. So there's incredible landscape here, and it seems to me it's a little similar, though the land is not mountainous, but yet the way the waters have carved it. There's a lot of material here. Well, actually, the next section of the essay, Gary Schneider talks about the tension between mountains and water

[37:22]

having to do with waters carving the mountains, and mountains kind of being thrust up, but then the waters carve. There's something natural about the rhythm of that. So maybe here in the prairies in the Midwest, the same dynamic, it's just subtler. The lands are lower, but still there's the rivers. Yes? But I think also, at least in Wisconsin, the waters during the last ice age actually created a lot of the elevation because the rocks were moved down and kind of deposited when the glaciers receded, so kind of on both sides. Yes, Donna? In Indiana, I know in just the northern part they have the bluffs, and then down in southern, down by the river, and in Brown County is the rolling hills. Brown County is pretty. Yeah. I'm not really an Indian. Everybody looks at me, it's like, I'm really a Minnesotan. Minnesota, there's lots of lakes, so that's also part.

[38:25]

Lakes and prairies. It has really nice lakes and those great rocks in the North Shore. Yeah. Nathan, you spend a lot of time in the Andes, right? Do you have any kind of reflections on walking in the mountains there or how the natives relate to the space of the mountains? Yeah, there's a lot to talk about there. It's overwhelming. Well, start anywhere. I was thinking about that when Gary Snyder was talking about the trails in Japan and kind of the native or indigenous religious practices being related to sacred spaces and sacred places,

[39:29]

and there's absolutely the Amazonian and Indian regions full of sacred places. How do they designate them? And what are the indigenous ways of honoring them? Can you say a little bit about that? Well, there's a lot. There's many, many different cultures. It's like in Peru, there's 90 different indigenous ethnic groups, and there's a big difference between the mountain peoples and the people who live in the Amazonian lowlands. So they'll have different ways of relating to the land and moving through the land. People in the Amazonian region move through the land on rivers, and people who are in the island areas move through the land more on network trails. Do they have little shrines along the trails in the mountains like they do in Japan?

[40:35]

Yeah, they do. I'm not an expert on it. Well, again, part of the point of talking about this is that it has something to do with this rhythm of our practice that, again, sameness and difference is one way to talk about it. Turning within and then, you know, stepping out into Chicago is another way to talk about it. Sure. In this discussion, in this connection with the Japan walking discussion, you were talking about walking in South Texas, where there's both an incredible landscape, which is not familiar to me, but shines everywhere. And we were walking in a community.

[41:40]

We were treated so kindly by Catholic churches and deacons and brothers and communities and, you know, some people other than Catholics. And it was just when you said, you know, and at the end of 8 or 10 miles, there's a little hut to stay in. You know, it's like we'd walk our 13 miles and then we'd park for the night at a church and then we'd walk another and then it got longer. But that experience of being supported by the community is totally astounding. It's like, I mean, I learned a lot of stuff there, but the fact of walking without money and being taken care of was what really changed me. Okay, so maybe you could say something about walking in Russia?

[42:42]

No. I mean, that sense of, you know, when we were explicitly walking for peace and understanding, the outpouring, I mean, like thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of people would come and immediately take groups into their homes, you know. And that sense of, I think, the fact that we walked on the land and became intimate with the physical space of the group of people who were told to be afraid of us and were told to be afraid of them and the sense of sharing the land and the food. Like in Russia, you're met with bread and salt as a greeting. And to have that everywhere we went. Vodka afterwards. So you were Americans and Russians walking together? Yeah.

[43:49]

And then birch sap was another favorite drink, which was preferred. But that's very much, I think, you know, the sense of being with the land, which I think isn't as sterile in Russia, despite places like Chernobyl. Even at Chernobyl, which I was very close to, I mean, very close to, old grandmothers would walk over the fence to get the tomatoes that were still growing behind the radioactive tomatoes. Yikes. But there's a sense of really having contact when you're on the ground, and maybe that's all our practice is about, that kind of contact. Yeah, we sit on the ground. Sorry. You're reminding me of the sitting I did in Richmond, where we're sitting outside in the grass. I don't know if we, you know, well, we sat in Grand Park when the shoes exhibit was there.

[44:51]

I actually sat in Russia. Yeah. So sitting outside, I don't know if any of you have had a chance to do that, even if you're just camping or, you know, walking in some park or wild area, just, you know, doing this sitting practice that we do traditionally in Zendos, but to actually sit outside is very refreshing to do that occasionally. No, sure. I don't know what you were doing, but, you know, we didn't just walk in Russia. We also walked across the United States a couple times and across the Midwest. And the Midwest was actually the most receptive place. I mean, I walked across the continental divide during the snow, you know, all this kind of stuff. But in the Midwest, all the farmers came out. The fact that you honored the land, I think, was so intimate and connected people in the view. So there's a lot in the U.S., not just Russia, I guess. And in the Midwest, the heartland, you know, really felt like the place that you would think would be most conservative

[45:53]

was actually most receptive and touched by people walking the earth. Maybe we could do walking sessions where we go on all-day walks or something. I don't know. We've got a road in Indiana that needs some of that energy. It's not built yet. I see. Yes, Ken. This summer I was out east with my family. I had a chance to sit outside a couple times, and there was a family of wild turkeys that were coming out of the woods. And this is my in-laws' backyard. And they'd seen them periodically during the summer, but I was kind of sitting in their backyard, and Mama Turkey and all the baby turkeys kind of walked by. And I came in, and my mother-in-law was like, that's by far the closest they've seen them come to anybody. And she's like, you just, I mean, I admit at one point I was a little, I'm like, I don't know if Turkey's charged. You actually saw some?

[46:56]

Yeah. And I'm like, I'm just starting to move. And if she comes at me, I'll figure that out when it happens. It was actually quite amazing, because they're just like going right by, and the little baby chicks were kind of looking, and they keep going and pecking at the grass. So it's an interesting experience. I remember sitting on a porch up in the hill, cabins of Green Gulch, and this fox walking right in front of me. Well, I'd like to continue reading from The Practice of the Wild and this commentary on the Mountains and Waters Sutras. I think we'll revisit this topic and see what it brings up in terms of our practice together. So thank you all very much. It's great to have you here, Shona. Thank you. Thank you so much.

[47:48]

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