That profound and marvelous Dharma is rarely met with even a hundred thousand million kalpas. Good morning, everyone. We've been looking at a particular text during the practice period that we're in the middle of, two-month practice period. This is from Dogen, the 13th century Japanese monk who founded the branch of Zen we do called Soto Zen.

[01:15]

And this text is called the Mountains and Waters Sutra. So for those who are in the practice period who have been following, I just want to say again, we're not going to, we're not attempting to cover this completely, as if such a thing were possible. And don't worry about understanding what it says in the text. But the point of our study of The teaching is to inspire our practice, to encourage our practice, to support, well, the sitting that we've just been doing. And of course it's connected with, it's an expression of this zazen we do, and sitting and walking, and how that expresses itself, that awareness expresses itself in our everyday activity and how we find ways to be encouraging in our everyday activity.

[02:20]

But this particular text, called a sutra, which is usually the words of the Buddha, to clarify in some way, this is not Dogen's sutra. This is the sutra that comes from the mountains and waters. Maybe Dogen channeled it or wrote it down. So just a little bit of introduction or a background for those who are joining us or new to this, because I'm actually going to speak about the ending of this text this morning. And there are copies of it back in the back shelf for anyone who wants to look it over. You don't need to. But, well, Dogen starts by, or the text starts by talking about how the mountains and waters are the penetrating liberation of immediate actuality, how they are the self, the formless self, the self before we start identifying selves, small selves.

[03:36]

This text is about our interconnectedness with, not just with mountains and waters here in the Midwest. This is our interconnectedness with the whole landscape of prairies and lakes and skyscrapers down in the loop and boulevards and lakeshores and so mounds and waters as a compound in Chinese and Japanese means landscape. So this is about how we find our deep interconnectedness with the landscape of our lives. We could say environment, but that's already to put it outside of us. We are, it's not the environment separate from us. We are integral to everything around us. And part of what we learn, not just theoretically, but kind of viscerally by doing this practice regularly is our deep interconnectedness with each other and everything, so-called thing, how we are a process together with mountains, waters, and everything.

[04:48]

So how we find and express and take care of everything is in our life, in our own lives, and people around us and so forth, is what this is really about. So I'm going to start by reading actually the last section of this text. So I'm giving away the ending, and that's fine. And you don't need to try and read through it from beginning to end. It's OK to jump around in it. It's OK to just play with it from wherever you find yourself in it. But part of what it's talking about is to see how our usual human perceptions are limited, how we can't see the whole of reality. We can't possibly know everything that's going on in this room. or if we're sitting on a mountainside or a lakeshore, you know, just in the, oh, I don't know, 10 square feet around us, there's so much going on.

[05:55]

Anyway, this is what this is about. So just to read the last section, it is not just that there is water in the world. So he talks about mountains and he talks about waters. It is not just that there is water in the world. There are worlds in the realm of water. So, of course, if we look at the water in Lake Michigan, and we take a little bit and look in a microscope, you know, there are many, many beings there. There are whole worlds there. And, of course, there are many beings in oceans and lakes and rivers. So there are worlds in the realm of water. And this is so not only in water, there are also worlds of sentient beings in clouds. There are worlds of sentient beings in wind. There are worlds of sentient beings in fire. There are worlds of sentient beings in earth. So also if you took a square foot of soil, there are lots of little bugs crawling around as well as microscopic beings, but even bigger than microscopic.

[07:08]

There are many things going on in the square foot of earth. So there are whole worlds of sentient beings in Earth. There are worlds of sentient beings in phenomena. And then he says, there are worlds of sentient beings in a single blade of grass. There are worlds of sentient beings in a single staff. Where there are worlds of sentient beings, there must be worlds of Buddhists and Zen adepts. You should meditate on this principle very thoroughly. So the Buddhas are awakened ones, and some of the sutras and other scriptures in the Mahayana way talk about Buddhas, a huge, immense number of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, awakening beings, helping Buddhas on the tip of every blade of grass, or even in every atom. So this way of seeing this practice that we do of expressing Buddha on our Kushner chair, of displaying uprightness and awareness and trying to settle into a relaxed, upright awareness, which includes everything in our life.

[08:26]

This isn't about getting rid of thoughts and feelings and are confusion and grasping and so forth. It's about being present and aware in the middle of everything. So where there are worlds of sentient beings, the sutra says, there must be the world of Buddhas and Zen adepts. You should meditate on this principle very thoroughly. So consider this. How is it that there are many worlds? And again, in this room now with all the people in this room now and all the people who've been in this room in the last week or in the last couple of months or the last year. I don't know. Are there remnants of their thoughts or whatever in the dust that we're going to clean a little later? Are there remnants of atoms from beings who were here last week? I don't know. We cannot know or see completely all of the complexity of this world.

[09:37]

And then he goes on to say, so water is the palace of the true dragon. It is not flowing. Also, I forgot to say, early on in this text, he talks about mountains and how the... So those of you who've been here know, but he talks about how the mountains are constantly walking. Green mountains are constantly walking. And then he says, we should study this. And if you don't know that the mountains are constantly walking, we can't know our own walking. So to learn our own walking, we need to look at how the mountains are walking. So we could see this in geological time, but we can also see how Nothing is absolutely still. Everything is moving. Leaves fall in the mountains. New leaves, this time of year, spring forth on the mountains or on the lakeshore. We can put it that way, too. Flowers start to bloom sometimes.

[10:43]

Flowers fade sometimes. So the mountains are constantly walking, we are constantly walking, and one of the Chinese characters for walking means also conduct, or behavior, or practice. So the mountains are practicing. How did we learn our practice from, as humans, from looking at how we are practicing together with the landscape around us? It's not separate from us. But here he talks about water. The water is the palace of the true dragon. It is not flowing, he says. If you recognize it only as flowing, the word flow slanders water. So after talking about mountains walking here, he's talking about water not flowing. So Dogen in this writing and in all his writings is kind of playing tricks with our usual way of seeing things. And part of the point is to go beyond our usual ideas of reality, our usual ideas of ourself, to open ourselves up to a deeper awareness.

[11:56]

So he says, the word flow slanders water. That is because it is like insisting that it doesn't flow. So if you insist that water is only flowing, then it's actually sort of like saying it doesn't flow. We have to see both flowing and not flowing, both walking and sitting. Water is just the true form of the suchness of water. The fact is that water is the quality of water, it is not flowing, and investigating the flow of one body of water and investigating not flowing, the completed investigation of myriad phenomena suddenly becomes apparent. So everything is kind of flowing in some sense. From an awakened perspective, there are no things. There's not a single thing that exists as separate. Everything is in process, flowing together. Everything is dependent on everything else. Everything is connected with everything else.

[13:00]

Each of you, from a conventional perspective, of course, has some self and some identity and stories about who you are you know, an address and a social security card or whatever, you know, there are various ways of defining each person, each thing. And yet, each of us is a product of everybody we've ever known. Teachers, parents, siblings, friends and lovers, pets when we were kids. people we don't even remember who we met sometime, some party when we were 18 or whatever. Many, many, [...] many beings contribute to what is happening on your Kushner chair right now. And it's all flowing.

[14:01]

But in some ways, it's also all just settled and abiding in that flow. So we're all in process together with the mountains and waters. He goes on to say, and this is getting to the very end of this text, in the case of mountains too, there are mountains hidden in jewels, there are mountains hidden in marshes or swamps, there are mountains hidden in the sky, there are mountains hidden in mountains. There was a study which hides mountains in hiddenness. You know, translation by cause, I kind of like better for this section. There are mountains hidden in jewels, there are mountains hidden in swamps, there are mountains hidden in the sky, there are mountains hidden in mountains, there are mountains hidden in hiddenness, that is how we study. Mountains hidden in the sky, I don't know if any of you

[15:04]

around in the clouds. I don't know if James Cameron read this, but anyway. Mountains are hidden in hiddenness. So part of the point of this, even if you're When you're walking in the mountains, you can't see the mountains. Well, even when you get to the mountaintop, and some people want to get to the top. It's not enough to just enjoy walking around in the sides of the mountains. You want to get to the top, and you can see a long distance, and you can see other mountains. But you can't see the whole mountain, even from the top of the mountain. So much is going on on any given mountain. So much is going on on any given cushion or chair right now. How can we possibly know all of the reality of this room right now? And yet, here we are. And we flow with it, and we're connected with it. And it is us. So there is a study of mountains, hidden in mountains.

[16:11]

This is how we study, he says. This is how we practice. And then he ends the whole sutra from the mountains and waters, and ancient Buddha said, this is an old saying of an old Zen master, mountains are mountains, waters are waters. And Dogen says this saying does not say that mountains are mountains, it says that mountains are mountains. So the whole, this is an old saying from an old Chinese master who said that, when I first started practicing mountains and mountains and waters and waters, after a while, I saw that mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers. But then later on, I just saw mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. Or, you know, as Donovan said, first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. poetic, concise version of that. Dogen says, this saying does not say that mountains are mountains, it says that mountains are mountains.

[17:18]

So how do we see, so this isn't just about mountains, of course, this is about seeing the, all of the prominent aspects of the landscape of our life. All of the problems in your life, all of the aspirations in your life, all of the, you know, the big relationships in your life, all of these mountains and molehills that appear in our life. They're mountains and they're not mountains, and maybe then they're mountains again, but how do we study them? Therefore, you should investigate the mountains. If you investigate the mountains, that is meditation in the mountains. Such mountains and waters of themselves make sages and saints. That's the ending of the essay. And, you know, actually literally going to sit in the mountains or to sit on the lakeshore and meditate. And you can do it, you know, unobtrusively, just sitting and being present and enjoying the waters of the lake and the people passing by and so forth.

[18:28]

How do we appreciate this landscape? You can also do this just sitting in this room together. It's nice to sit outside, actually. We're not separate from that, even sitting in here. And again, there's a study of mountains hidden in hiddenness. what is concealed from our awareness as we sit here. And it's not, so the practice is not about understanding everything. That's not the point. We can't possibly, and yet we can know that we can't possibly. We can know that reality is much more wonderful and complex than we can perceive or understand with our wonderful but limited human intellectual faculties.

[19:30]

So again, there are microscopic beings. And modern physics is telling us that there are different dimensions going on, parallel universes even going on. that we can't know about. So mountains are walking like mountains. Mountains walk. And we can study the mountains walking and somehow our walking is related to the mountains walking. It's different of course. We don't walk in the same way with mountains. So mountains don't walk on left and right feet exactly. But neither do dogs. Dogs have four feet. So there are all kinds of beings who walk in all kinds of ways. So one main point of this is just to not just recognize, but to really appreciate and wonder at

[20:32]

complexity and hiddenness, and yet we're not separate from that. So to honor that, I want to, so Dogen is talking about walking like a mountain, I want to read a passage from a great environmental thinker, Aldo Leopold, from his Sand County Almanac. And I saw a movie about him a few nights ago. Laurel, who is one of our students here, was on the panel talking about it afterwards. But there's a section here called Thinking Like a Mountain. So we've been talking about walking like a mountain. And Aldo Leopold had this... He died in 1948, so he was writing a long time ago. He was born in the 1880s, I think. He lived in Wisconsin, mostly, and taught up in Madison and wrote about the landscape just north of us, really.

[21:40]

But he also lived for a while in New Mexico, so I think this particular episode, he talks about him here, happened there. He was also a hunter. He hunted deer and This particular, so in this section, just the title, Thinking Like a Mountain, is I think helpful to throw into this discussion of the Mountains and Water Sutra. So not just walking like a mountain, thinking like a mountain, or meditating like a mountain, or awareness like a mountain. He talks about a particular episode that happened to him when he was hunting, and because he was a deer hunter for a while, they thought that that meant that he should hunt the predators of deer. So he was responsible, actually, for trying to kill many wolves in that area. And he says that about wolves, the mountains have a secret opinion about them. My own conviction on this score dates from the day I saw a wolf die.

[22:45]

We were eating lunch on a high rim rock at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way. We saw that what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breasts awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook her out her tail, we realized our error. It was a wolf. A half dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. So there's this pile of wolves. And he says, in those days, we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. Because these were ranchers, as well as hunters, who were trying to protect the deer herds that they hunted, as well as cows. So he tells the story. In a second, we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy. How to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide rocks. We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.

[23:53]

I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes, something known only to her and to the mountain. I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunter's paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view." And he goes on to say, I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. Perhaps with a better cause, for while a book pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail a replacement in as many decades. So he talks about how the deer can eat the whole side of the grass, the whole side of a mountain. So this is, you know, a very specific example for him of thinking like a mountain.

[24:57]

How does the mountain see the whole terrain of all the beings in the mountain? He ends the section, I'm not reading the whole thing, but he ends with Thoreau's dictum, in wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men. He starts the section talking about the howl of a wolf, a deep chesty ball that goes from rimrock to rimrock, rolls down a mountain, fades into the far blackness of the night. But partly I read this just for the name of the section. I mean, the green fire and the wolf's eyes is powerful and stayed with him. But he's talking about thinking like a mountain. And there's, you know, we might think about meditating like a mountain.

[26:04]

If we think about walking like a mountain, when we do walking meditation, how is it... Of course, we're not mountains, we're human beings, but still, we're connected to mountains, waters, lakes, lakeshore. How do we feel that connection? How do we appreciate our connectedness with everything? Not as some environment out there, We're part of the mountains. We're part of the lake shore. And there's this line from Paul Reps, one of the early Zen American Zen writers who talked about rocks being people who sat there long enough to, sat still long enough to become them. So, you know, this is our practice, just sitting and sitting still. And then something comes from that. Some liveliness comes from that. So that's sort of a little bit of a different topic.

[27:07]

But how do we, how do mountains come alive? How do we come alive? How does spring burst forth in everything? What's happening now? out there in Chicago, and in here, in all of us. Spring is arising in everything. After this fierce winter, it's wonderful, and still we have rainy days. So it's the process of spring, coming into spring. Following up on Aldo Leopold's Thinking Like a Mountain, I want to read a little bit from a book by Joanna Macy, who was here a couple years ago, who's a great Buddhist activist and thinker. And this is a book she did a while ago, 1988, called Thinking Like a Mountain that she did with some other environmentalists. This section I'm going to read now directly relates to the passage I read from the end of the Mountains and Water Sutra, I think.

[28:12]

And she calls this, this was, she did with John Seed, who's an environmentalist from Australia and works on protecting forests and has long done that. So I'm just going to read this. What are you? What am I? Intercepting cycles of water, earth, air and fire. That's what I am. That's what you are. So again, Dogen talked about there being worlds of sentient beings in water, worlds of sentient beings in clouds, worlds of sentient beings in wind. There are worlds of sentient beings in fire, and in earth, and in phenomena, in a single blade of grass. So she goes through water, earth, air, and fire. Water, blood, lymph, mucus, sweat, tears, inner oceans tugged by the moon, tides within and tides without, streaming fluids floating on our cells, washing and nourishing through endless riverways of gut and vein and capillary, moisture pouring in and through and out of you, of me, in the vast poem of the hydrological cycle.

[29:24]

You are that. I am that. Earth, matter made from rock and soil, It too is pulled by the moon as the magma circulates through the planet heart and roots suck molecules into biology. Earth pours through us, replacing each cell in the body every seven years. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we ingest, incorporate, and excrete the earth, are made from earth. I am that, you are that. Air, the gaseous realm, the atmosphere, the planet's membrane, the inhale and the exhale, breathing out carbon dioxide to the trees, and breathing in their fresh exudations, oxygen kissing each cell awake, atoms dancing in orderly metabolism, interpenetrating. So we emphasize, along with posture, breathing in meditation. And I say to enjoy your inhale and your exhale.

[30:25]

When we inhale, actually, oxygen goes throughout all of our body. but we've had various practices of focusing and ways to focus on inhale and exhale. Anyway, oxygen kissing each cell awake, atoms dancing in orderly metabolism, interpenetrating. That dance of the air cycle, breathing the universe in and out again is what you are, is what I am. Fire. Fire from our sun that fuels all life, drawing up plants and raising the waters to the sky to fall again replenishing. The inner furnace of your metabolism burns with the fire of the big bang that first sent matter energy spinning through space and time. And the same fire as the lightning that flashed into the primordial soup, catalyzing the birth of organic life. You were there. I was there. For each cell of our bodies is descended in an unbroken chain from that event. through the desire of atom for molecule, of molecule for cell, of cell for organism.

[31:31]

In that spawning of forms, death was born, born simultaneously with sex, before we divided from the plant realm. So in our sexuality, we can feel ancient stirrings that connect us with plant as well as animal life. We come from them in an unbroken chain, through fish learning to walk the land, feeling scales turning to wings, through the migrations in the ages of ice, We have been but recently in human form. If Earth's whole history were compressed into 24 hours, beginning at midnight, organic life would begin only at 5 p.m. Mammals emerge at 1130, and from amongst them, at only seconds to midnight, are species. In our long planetary journey, we have taken far more ancient form than we now are. Some of these forms we remember in our mother's womb, where vestigial tails and gills grow fins for hands. Countless times in that journey we dived to old forms, let go of old ways, allowing new ones to emerge.

[32:34]

But nothing is ever lost, though forms pass or return, each worn-out cell consumed, recycled through mosses, leeches, birds of prey." So part of our practice is to appreciate this possibility of change and transformation. that in settling and being present and upright and breathing that we can die to all forms and new possibilities can emerge from our stillness, new ways of thinking, new ways of responding. She goes on, think to your next death, will your flesh and bones, will your flesh and bones back into the cycle, surrender, love the plump worms you will become. Launder your weary being through the fountain of life. Beholding you, I behold as well all the different centuries that compose you. And I'm going to speak to you a little bit of this incredible coordination and cooperation of countless beings.

[33:39]

You are that too, just as your body is part of a much larger symbiosis, living in wider reciprocities. Be conscious of that give and take when you move among trees. Countless times in that journey we died to old forms, let go of old ways, allowing the new ones to emerge, but nothing is ever lost. The forms pass or returns. Remember again and again the old cycles of partnership, drawing them in this time of trouble. By your very nature and the journey you have made, there is in you deep knowledge of belonging. So this is walking like a mountain. Draw on it now in this time of fear. You have earth-bred wisdom of your inter-existence with all that is. Take courage and power in it now that we may help each other awaken in this time of peril." So, what Joanna Macy is getting at here in her book, Thinking Like a Mountain, is part of what's implied in the Mountains and Water Sutra.

[34:41]

and she was writing this in 1988, but it was already evident that we are living in difficult times and now it's even more apparent with climate damage and all the other things that are happening to the planet and the mountains and waters themselves in danger, mountain top removal and fracking, poisoning the waters new British petroleum dumps of toxic things into Lake Michigan. All of this is in danger. So part of walking like a mountain, thinking like a mountain, is appreciating the mountains and waters, appreciating the landscape of our life, and responding. And how do we respond to protect this? Well, there are many ways to respond. Some of us here are quote-unquote environmental activists of sorts, but I think just being aware, seeing that new possibilities can emerge, seeing that whatever else is happening

[35:59]

Humanity is in a process of transformation. Something new can happen. So there's lots more to say about that, but I'm going to stop soon and have a little bit of time for some responses and comments. But part of this practice of walking like a mountain and thinking like a mountain and connecting with mountains and waters is that we have the capacity to speak for and speak with and listen to the mountains and waters, the landscape of our world and of our life. And again, this is on all kinds of realms, in terms of the turmoil in our own personal lives, too, in terms of our confusion and grasping and aspirations, but also in terms of, you know, what is happening to the physical world around us. How do we respond to that?

[37:02]

How do we take care of that? This is part of what is called forth in this Sutra from the Mountains of Knowledge. We have a little bit of time. Comments, responses, questions, anyone? New people too? So please feel free to respond to any part of any of this. Sometimes the mountains and waters are silent.

[38:03]

Sometimes the waters overflow and bubble and gurgle. Sometimes the mountains erupt or shift in ways that are visible even to human beings. Right. Let's talk about the sagas. The story of shooting that wolf is very powerful and it makes me wonder thinking of ourselves and our landscape as cycle, it seems like we're born greedy and ignorant and full of fears. And, you know, hopefully with time we allow compassion to arise. And then we die. and replaced by more ignorant, greedy, angry folks.

[39:09]

And it seems like that's part of the cycle as well. And so I'm wondering to what extent do we also need to accept those parts of things that drive us crazy and that we think we're fighting against? Yeah, the practice includes very, very, very much that we study, be aware of, the way that mountains rub against each other in their walking and have conflict. And yeah, so yes, we all have, we all, as human beings, have greed, hate, and delusion, let me say, greed and anger, yeah, fear. And part of the process of learning our own walking is to forgive ourselves from that, to see that, to study it, to see how we can work with that, not succumb to that, not succumb to our fears and our grasping and our sense of hopelessness or whatever, but that part of seeing

[40:31]

how we are connected to the landscape, all the landscapes around us, is that there are possibilities, too. But to see that, we have to face the ways in which we are caught in our walking, we are caught in our thinking. We do think that if we kill all the wolves, then we'll have all these deer to eat. And actually, the wolves serve a purpose, too. So, in the terrain of our lives, how do we honor that complexity? Yes, Dan. I had a real strong reaction when you said that the morning greeting had an image of a newborn infant. Yeah, I don't think babies are necessarily, you know, I mean, babies have some personality often, but it's not, I don't think that, so I agree that the assumption that all children are born angry and fearful and greedy is, you know, we all have our own karma, and so it's complicated.

[42:00]

Debra had her hand up. In another genre is these books, I think that's really important. to face the sadness, you know, that we try to run away from feeling sorrow at our loss, at the, you know, that which is the realities around us which are, you know, scary. And we don't know, you know, given the pace of climate change and the difficulties in actually making the changes that are going to be needed for a reasonable habitat to last over the next century or less.

[43:07]

It's, yeah, it's daunting. And I think we can't do much if we're not willing to face that fear, that sadness. And yet out of that out of that I think we can actually see some new possibility when we're willing to open to that, when we're not trying to hide from our own So this is a long, long discussion and we don't have that much time, but Joanna started her work by acknowledging that after Hiroshima and after World War II, the fear that all of us as humans had after that and that we denied of the possibility of catastrophic nuclear war. I grew up in the 50s when students were supposed to hide under desks. In our class we went down to the basement and stood facing the wall. That was supposed to protect us.

[44:08]

you know, this unconscious, but it's, you know, it's rude and impolite to talk about this stuff. Excuse me, you know, I'm being impolite, but, you know, this is something that we all know, and yet we try and, you know, we don't talk about it, you know. Certainly it's, if we admitted it, we, you know, we might just run screaming from the room, but where can we run to? You know, here we are. So how do we face And I think in our personal lives too, when we have great losses, when we lose relationships or loved ones, or whatever, how do we face that and be willing to be sad? I think we need to do that to actually open up new possibilities. One last comment. Your son, you had your hand up. Well, I mean my initial thing is no longer germane, but just thinking about, you know, we hate delusion have come up and you were just talking about Joanna Macy and our unwillingness to look at things and our unwillingness to talk about certain things and our

[45:25]

desire to keep certain kinds of things out of consciousness. And a lot of times, I'm just thinking that a lot of times we think about ignorance as simply not knowing things. But not knowing things is a big, as you were saying, it's just part of the picture. But there's this other aspect of ignorance and it's that unwillingness. It's kind of like denial in sort of 12-step thinking. You know, it's just not, you know, you know, but you won't look and you won't talk and you won't grieve. So that's just a comment. So, thank you all very much.

[46:00]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ