Good morning. Good morning. I want to continue the talks I've been giving some of the time on the background of Japanese Buddhist poetics and aesthetics going back before Dogen, the founder of our practice tradition in the early 1200s and the founder of Soto Zen. going back before that in Japanese Buddhism to the traditions that are part of our practice in many ways. And today, I want to focus on what we sometimes call in Buddhism impermanence, change, and how that was understood and really transformed in some ways in Japan. So impermanence was part of basic Buddhist teachings going back to India, coming from China to Japan.

[01:08]

But in some ways, in Japan, it took on a new emphasis in Japanese poetry in terms of the impermanence of nature and of human affairs. of course, part of how it was understood in China, and nature is important in Taoism, and so it was part of Chinese culture. But in Japanese classic literature, going back into the 800s, 900s, 1000s, and the Heian period, for example, in the Tale of Genji, when nature is understood, it has to do with the seasons. And the seasons were very important in all of Japanese literature and poetry, and the emphasis on the seasons as the epitome of change, how change is seen.

[02:13]

And we're seeing that now, as winter is coming early. Maybe this is still autumn, but we see it today in daylight savings time. the seasons as the immediate example in our life of change. And in the Tale of Genji and other Japanese literary classics before Dogen's time, the change in human affairs was taken to mean the ever-changing love relationships in the court. And among the leisure to lead, this was the subject of the classic literature in Japan. But towards the end of that period, in the 1100s, the period before Dogen, there was a different emphasis on change. And it had to do with dwellings and habitations. And that became the emphasis.

[03:15]

So in some ways, the change in permanence became seen more and more as instability. and it became seen as spatial instability. So I'm taking a lot of this from this book that I recommend, The Karma of Words by William O'Fleur. He says, this spatial connotation, the matrix out of which the literary forms of the inn and the hermitage arise, is also an extension of the range of impermanence's sway. This is the change in the scope and character of impermanence in nature as well. It is no longer limited to the more or less predictable sequence of the seasons, although that's there. But in the 1100s, through earthquake, flood, and fire, impermanence or instability takes a totally unpredictable route.

[04:19]

So in this period, this was very important. There were, in the late 1100s, earthquakes, floods, fires in the capital, Kyoto, there was this new sense of instability, also civil war. There were bodies in the streets of the capital. So I think this emphasis on instability that became part of, an important part of Japanese poetry and literature in this period is something that is very relevant to us now, this sense of instability, things changing. Of course, this sense of, so he talks particularly about the hermitage, and I'll get back to that, but this is not unknown in China. We chant one of our One of the favorite chants around here is the Song of the Grass Hut we do sometimes, which was written by Shito or Sekito, one of our great ancestors, back in the 700s in China, where he talks about will this hut perish or not.

[05:36]

And so there is a tradition in Chinese Zen, Chan, of hermits and Shito, who was actually had a monastery where he taught. Many, many monks also built a little hermitage on a rock near his monastery. So this wasn't unknown in China, but it wasn't a predominant mode in the literature. And in Japan, it became that. And so I'm going to talk about that today in terms of a few literary figures. So one of the things that happened in this period of civil war, in this period of instability. So to think about impermanence as instability, I think resonates again with what we are living through now in so many ways, in terms of nature, in terms of, well, the fires in California, all the effects of climate damage around the world,

[06:45]

the intensified hurricanes in the Southeast and in the Caribbean and the intensified floods and famine and so forth in many parts of the world. It's just reported according to scientific studies that many of the coastal cities in South Asia will not be there anymore in, you know, just in a few decades because of rising seas due to intensified climate damage. So this sense of instability is even more with us now than it was in Dogen's time, time period before Dogen. But this literature and poetry that was popular then really highlighted this. So one of the things that happened, the great literature of the Heian period in the 900s and 1000s was predominantly the literature of court ladies.

[07:51]

The literature of the Tale of Genji and this poetry about love affairs and and of elegant costumes and of poetry about the change of seasons. But in this period, it became more and more the poetry of monks. So one of the great literary figures of this time is a man named Kamo Nochoe. And I'm going to read a little bit of his very well-known poem, or actually, prose writing called Hojoki, or A Count of My Hut. And actually, Hojo is the Japanese term for a 10-foot square hut, which goes back to Vimalakirti and that story from India. But it was also the name used for Zen abbots, because it was

[08:55]

said that Vimalakirti, this great enlightened layman supposedly from Shakyamuni's time, had this 10-foot square hut that he lived in. Anyway, but Kamonochome lived 1153 to 1216. There will not be a test, but this account of his hut talks about instability and impermanence in this eloquent way. So I'm going to read a little bit from the beginning of his sort of lengthy, well, not that long, but it's a classic literary piece from Japan. So he says, the flow of the river is ceaseless and its water is never the same. The bubbles that float in the pools, now vanishing, now forming, are not of long duration. So in the world are man and his dwellings. It might be imagined that the houses, great and small,

[09:59]

which vie roof against proud roof in the capital, remain unchanged from one generation to the next. But when we examine whether this is true, how few are the houses that were there of old. Some were burnt last year, and only century built. Great houses have crumbled into hovels, and those who dwell on them have fallen no less. The city is the same. The people are as numerous as ever. But of those I used to know, A bear, one or two in 20 remain. They die in the morning. They are born in the evening, like foam on the water." So this eloquent description of impermanence and change. And then he talks about how he has built a little hut just outside on the eastern hills of Kyoto. Before I was aware, I had become heavy with years. And with each remove, my dwelling grew smaller. The present hut is of no ordinary appearance.

[11:03]

It is a bare 10 feet square and less than seven feet high. I did not choose this particular spot rather than another. And I built my house without consulting any diviners." So often they would choose, they would build, Huts and temples, based on Geomancy. Only in a small hut built for the moment can one live without fears. It is very small, but it holds a bed where I may lie at night and a seat for me in the day. It lacks nothing as a place for me to dwell. So he talks about this as his hut. And he goes on to talk about his very simple life there. So this was a very popular work in that time. This impermanence or instability was seen in terms of natural calamities and in society as a whole. So there were many disruptions in this period.

[12:09]

And again, I think we can feel the resonance and relevance of this kind of situation to our own time. But this was taken not just in terms of the instability. And actually, when I lived in Kyoto in the early 90s, people would say to me, oh, it's so different. It's fallen apart. Even then, there was the sense of the great houses are gone. Gaiji and my American friends had been living there for a while, some of whom are still living here. Preston Hauser, for example, was here last year playing, earlier in the year playing shakuhachi. But they would all talk about how the old houses are gone and they're rebuilding and there's all these horrible new buildings instead of the great old buildings.

[13:11]

Of course, the great old temples are still there, some of them anyway. You know, we can see this in Chicago too, just on this street. You know, many of the establishments that were there when we first occupied this storefront temple 11 years ago are gone. So impermanence, instability, you know, this is the way things are, right? In many ways. Lafleur says, changing one's habitation with ease in the empirical world is analogous to moving with facility through a series of incarnations toward the goal of nirvana. So I was talking last Monday about transmigration through the six realms, hungry ghosts and heavenly realms and human realms and animal realms. So in some ways, this sense of Instability was seen as a metaphor for how things move from lifetime to lifetime.

[14:19]

We think that things are solid. We think our life is set. And yet, things move from one lifetime to another. So the author says, ideally, both kinds of transposition would be managed with maximum ease. Moreover, moving one's hut here and now is unparalleled practice for dying and being reborn." Chome's point is that one ought to learn to live a kind of existence that is in harmony on all levels with the laws of instability and impermanence. So this sense of instability, this is, again, a basic Buddhist teaching. to see it as the instability of the world around us and the instability of our lives. I think we feel that now in our world and in our lives. Traditionally, impermanence was seen as, in Buddhism, a basic source of suffering.

[15:25]

One of the things that this Zazen practice gives us is a kind of sense of Not stability, exactly, but a sense of flexibility, a sense of adaptability, flexibility and a way of looking at this, all the changes, in a way that we can adapt. But this was part of the culture that Dogen came out of, not just the Buddhism and Zen, but this Japanese poetic culture. So an example of this from another great figure of that period, Saigyo, a great Tendai monk poet who traveled around Japan writing poetry. And I'll probably be talking about him more, but here's just one poem. Talking about his hut, this leaky tumble-down grass hut left opening for the moon, and I gazed at it all the while it was mirrored in a teardrop fallen on my sleeve.

[16:42]

So this sense of this grass hut. shabby grass hut with holes in the ceiling and leaking in the rain and looking up at the moon and a teardrop on his sleeve with the reflection of the moon on it. This leaky tumble-down grass hut left opening for the moon and I gazed at it all the while it was mirrored in a teardrop fallen on my sleeve. So Saegyo wrote many poems about looking at the moon. And another figure from this period, actually a little later, he's a little later than Dogen, Yoshida Kenko, 1283 to 1350, wrote an interesting little book called Essays in Idleness, which is a kind of in a way, an antidote to our sense of busyness and how we have to be productive and do more of this and get more of that.

[17:50]

It's much more, as LeFleur says, more orbain than Chaumet's book. So I'm going to read just a few, a little, some excerpts from that. So he also talks about huts. About the 10th month, I had the occasion to visit a village beyond the place called Kurusuno. I made my way far down a moss-covered path until I reached a lonely-looking hut. Not a sound could be heard except for the dripping of a water pipe buried in fallen leaves. Sprays of chrysanthemum and red maple leaves had been carelessly arranged on the holy water shelf. Evidently, somebody was living there. Moved, I was thinking, one can live even in such a place.

[18:55]

When I noticed in the garden beyond A great tangerine tree, its branches bent with fruit that had been enclosed by a forbidding fence." Then he says, rather disillusioned, I thought now, if only the tree had not been there. So the tree was too elegant for his tastes. He liked the more disarranged, carelessly arranged maple leaves and chrysanthemum. He goes on, how delightful it would be to converse intimately with someone of the same mind, sharing with him the pleasures of uninhibited conversation on the amusing and foolish things of this world. But such friends are hard to find. If you must take care of your opinions, do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking.

[19:58]

You might just as well be alone." So his book is filled with these kind of reflections, just thinking about, you know, what it's like to live kind of idly. You might suppose that a man who listens in general agreement to what the other person is saying, but differs on minor points, who may contest an opinion saying, how can I possibly agree or argue? It's precisely because of this that that is the case, would be a great comfort when you are bored. But as a matter of fact, if ever anything is said which might require a word of apology, of course, even when conversing with people who are not of the same mind, differences over the usual insignificant gossip do not matter. One realizes sadly what a great distance separates this man from the true friends of one's heart. So he has these kind of reflections, these idle reflections, which are kind of interesting. He says, the pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known.

[21:07]

Just one more excerpt. If man were never to fade away like the dews of Arashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Torabayama, but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us. The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. Consider living creatures. None live so long as man. The mayfly waits not for the evening. The summer cicada knows neither spring nor autumn. What a wonderfully unhurried feeling it is to live even a single year in perfect serenity. If that is not enough for you, you might live a thousand years and still feel it was but a single night's dream. We cannot live forever in this world.

[22:16]

Why should we wait for ugliness to overtake us? The longer a man lives, the more shame he endures. To die at the latest before one reaches 40 is the least unattractive. So essays and idleness is a kind of interesting idea. So there's this idea of the hermit's hut that LeFleur talks about. He contrasts that with another mode that is different, but other than the usual householder's stable house that lasts for a long time, and that is the traveler's inn. So this is more stable, but it's also ephemeral, impermanent, because it's a place that people come and stay only for a brief time. And so it's another mode of transience, but a little bit more worldly.

[23:16]

There's more social interaction because there are many people stopping. So this was a place that people would, on the road between Tokyo and Kyoto, for example, there'd be these traveler's inns. So there was some social interaction. But it was frequented by courtesans. So there's a story also about Saigyo, the monk poet, that he was in Osaka and he wanted to stop at one of these places. So this is a famous story and there's a poem by Saigyo about it. He stopped and wanted to stop at this traveler's inn and there was a courtesan named Eguchi And just to summarize, he asked her in a poem if he could stay there, and she refused him because she knew that he was a monk, and he was committed to celibacy, and she didn't want him to get a bad reputation. And he protested, but she declined to protect his vows.

[24:22]

So there was this poem, and later there was a whole no-play about this story, and then later on, The story is that actually she was a manifestation of the great Bodhisattva Samantabhadra. Those of you who've looked at Faces of Compassion know Samantabhadra is the, and we say in our meal chant, the action, the act of Bodhisattva. The Shining Practice, Bodhisattva, who rides on an elephant. And there are pictures of this courtesan Aguchi riding on a white elephant. So there's a no-play about that. So anyway, Luthor talks about this as another mode of instability or transience, these traveler's inns that also were part of the culture there in that period. So I just, in closing, I want to talk about another aspect of this poetry and aesthetics in medieval Japan, and this term yugen.

[25:31]

So this was a poetic term, but it relates to arzazen. This has to do with, This sense of depth, depth of meaning, depth of sensitivity, it's partly a kind of sadness. So poems and no plays later on were valued if they had this sense of yugen. And it's very hard to define, but it was this very ephemeral sense of something very moving that couldn't be defined. It has to do with, you could say, change or impermanence. And it's like you knew it when you felt it.

[26:35]

But poems would, and so maybe I'll talk more about this, but the sense of something deep, something that touched one, something that was moving, usually applied to something in literature or painting or music. But it also relates to the sensitivity or sensibility that emerges, can emerge from sasen. Or from considering this sense of instability of the world. And it has to do with a kind of beauty, too. It's a sadness, but it's also something beautiful. So there are volumes of poetry about the fading of the cherry blossoms in spring in Japan. And people actually, the same way that people go out to still in Japan to look at the full moon, they go out to look at the cherry blossoms when they blossom.

[27:42]

And on the news, and well, I'm sure this is still true, when I was there in the early 90s, they would report where the cherry blossoms were blossoming. And you could see, and they would tell you which part of Japan where the cherry blossoms were blossoming. But these volumes of poetry about the cherry blossoms particularly celebrated when they were just starting to fade. You know, this was, you know, this sense of the beauty that's not when they're at their peak, you know, and the cherry blossoms were beautiful, you know, but just when they started to fade is when there was this, you know, you could say there was this yugen, this beauty, this poignancy. So this whole thing about impermanence as a kind of aesthetic quality, a kind of instability. And we can see the instability of our world now in terms of all of the suffering involved, in the instability of the homes burning in California, in the instability of our government, in the instability of many things in the world.

[28:53]

and the instability we know of people we know who have illness and we are concerned for their well-being. The instability just, but again, the sense of these huts and the instability of places within a block of here that some of us used to like to go to eat. are gone. And so we live in this world where things are fading. And so maybe that's enough for me to say now. I welcome your comments or responses or questions or reflections about No plays are fairly scarce in Japan too.

[30:07]

I think there may be, like in the Japan Cultural Center occasionally, so the no plays is a kind of music that's involved with them that sometimes you can hear. The no plays in Japan last for hours and hours and hours. People are complaining about Scorsese's new film, The Irishman, because it's three and a half hours long. No place could go on for eight hours, some of them. And they evolved into Kabuki, which is a different kind of form that has more melodrama. But I don't know. Does anybody know? I think you can find, I know you can find bits of some of them on YouTube. If you look up No Play, you can see some of the action. Part of the way they work is, the No Plays famously have masks, so it's not about actors, they're characters, so there are

[31:10]

particular masks that are worn, but the movement is very slow and it's very eerie, with the music which is very eerie too, to see these masks moving. And sometimes, so for example, a journey of Many, a hundred miles or a thousand miles will be taken, will be, you know, three steps slowly, very slowly taken with this masked figure. So it's a particular kind of sensibility. But it was very, so it was very, a man named Zeami, who was also a Zen practitioner, is a classic. It's the Shakespeare of no, but there are many no plays, and there's still some of them being created. But it, I think it was in the 1300s, 1600s. Anyway, they were established. So look on YouTube. Other comments, questions, reflections on instability and beauty within instability and the suffering of instability.

[32:21]

Yes, Paul. So, yeah, I really appreciate this talk. It's just relevant to, as you mentioned, the time we live in. And I appreciate your response to that? Well, yeah. I mean, there are things that are changing that we may want to resist and that are worth resisting and that there are people, and especially young people, who are doing really noble things to resist, in my opinion.

[33:33]

So it doesn't mean that all change is good. or that all change is bad. And so, yeah. But partly, this resonates, this is talking, and they weren't saying that all, and certainly, Kamenouchome wasn't saying that all change is good. He was lamenting the changes in the capital. And part of that was civil war. So there was a period of, in the late 1100s, of battles between various branches of the aristocracy and various noble families that were devastating, that many civilians were caught up in. And because these noble families had alliances with the great temples, there were many Buddhist temples that were burnt down. So part of talking about this is to see that change and instability happens many times, what's happening now, where there's mass extinction of species, is in some ways unique and really terrible.

[34:50]

And Florence Capital will be talking about that Tuesday at DePaul and how we can resist that. So yeah, it's complicated. And yet there's also some change that is in the nature of reality. And how can we look at... And, yeah, how do we assess how to respond? And then, you know, there's people like Yoshida and Okenko whose response was just to step back and not be busy, involved in trying to do anything about any of it. So that's one mode, and it's up to us. How do we take responsibility for part of the Bodhisattva ideal is to be responsible to the world from a place where we can also see

[35:52]

a wider view, hopefully. So yeah, this is a huge question. And it is relevant to us, and it's also to see this context from the history of our, from the background of our practice. Michael. I was, you know, thinking about how there's, Yes. Instability is a very emotive or human characteristic to it. It almost seems like a projection. I don't really have a question necessarily either.

[37:22]

I appreciate how within, like, you know, as a way of trying to take a, you know, to return, to take a step back, that food again is kind of like a, I don't know if that quite makes sense, but for me it just seemed like what you were describing Yeah, yeah.

[38:26]

And it's also about seeing the depth of both, that includes both sadness and beauty. But as you were talking, I was reminded of something that is a famous saying from an old Chinese poet. The city is constantly changing, but the mountains and rivers remain the same. And then Gary Snyder at Dio Show talked about, the city is always the same, but the mountains and rivers are being destroyed. So anyway. Yes, Alex? Yeah, that's related. I forget how you translate awari in that context.

[39:29]

The beauty of things, the sensitivity of things, the sadness of things. Yeah, that's related. Yeah. So part of why I'm talking about all of this in these talks about Japanese and pointing out that some of what we appreciate in Dogen and in Zen, that's part of our Zen practice, really, has to do with not just the background of Buddhism, but this background that's very deep in Japanese culture, that's partly before Dogen, but continues to develop after him, too. Thank you. Yes, David. It's interesting, because everyone in Japan It's being very rigid in certain ways, very, you know, we do this and we do this. The form is so important. And I just realized that what you're saying, it was the whole thing of stability was really to

[40:35]

deny the impermanence, deny the instability that's there. I see it as more of an imposition now. I see now more of an imposition on the instability that was always there. You had to have things in a set way. I don't know about deny, maybe just to counter, to have something to hold. to hold against the instability. But go ahead. Not denial, yeah. Because I was just thinking during Fukushima, how all the people queued up to get their water, and how everything was just so orderly, even though there was great you know, instability around. And how the outpouring of the people and people who volunteered and went up there in order to create stability again, even after this great impermanence. Great calamity. Calamity. So it's interesting.

[41:39]

I never saw it in those terms. I just thought of it as their way of being, you know. in the world, but now I can see it's a way of, in a certain sense, of trying to cope with the instability of the world. And I think that comes here in America and what's going around the world, basically, with right-wing governments coming up, that there's so much instability in the world that people are wanting to graft something that feels stable. whether it's, you know, make America great again or what's going on in Europe with the Italian government and with the people in Brazil, even though there's great instability there, they're grasping for some permanence, something that could be real rather than being the chaos that's in the world. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, and I agree with you that living in Japan for a while, you know, there is a great rigidity and it was difficult.

[42:45]

But yeah, I think that's right, it's trying to cope with... Yeah, and the world is so unstable now that there are lots of... ways that people are trying to cope with that, and some of them are not so helpful. But yeah, I think we all feel that. I think we all feel that in ways we don't really recognize. People are talking about climate trauma. I think there's an underlying stress that people feel because of the instability of our world now. However, we may see that instability in different ways. So what Japanese poetry and literature was, how that was responding to the instability then is relevant to us.

[43:50]

So maybe time for one or two more questions or responses if anyone has anything else to add. And actually, I want to just put in another part of why I'm talking about this is that I think it is relevant to this practice we do here, where we sit and face the wall and face ourselves and try and settle into not a stability exactly, because how could that be? Even in our own personal lives, things happen. You know, we might be doing okay relatively in our own personal lives or not, but how do we find a relative steadiness and calmness with which to respond

[44:56]

positively, helpfully to whatever instability there is in the world or in our own lives. And this practice, if we stay with it regularly, gives us some steadiness, flexibility for response. Anyway, any other comments? objects.

[46:15]

It's much more fluid energy that's always changing, and unpredictable and uncontrollable. There's something scary about that, but also something very delightful. It's really different. Yeah. Yeah, so when we can see the world as flowing, and we're part of that, and try to meet that as opposed to trying to control it as if stuff out there was just a bunch of objects for us to manipulate. Yeah, we can be alive within it more helpfully, I think. Thank you.

[47:00]

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