Good morning. So, here we are meandering through mountains and waters. So, We'll see where the mountains and waters take us. Maybe we won't even get to the water section during this session. But I'll try to say something about it. So at the recent Dogen conference I spoke at in New York, my translation collaborator, Shohaku Okamura, gave his whole talk on six Chinese characters.

[01:03]

So maybe I should just spend the whole session on the mountains and waters of the immediate present or the manifestation of the path of the ancient Buddhas. And I do want to keep coming back to this introduction. And yet, I kind of feel OK about meandering through these sacred words about the mountains and waters and circulating around them. Does anyone remember there was a translator named Arthur Whaley who was one of the first translators of East Asian texts.

[02:10]

He was British. He never went to Asia, but he did wonderful translations back in the 30s, maybe even the 20s, of the Dao De Jing, and the Tale of Genji, and a number of other Chinese and Japanese poems and texts. There's a book about him called Singing Madly in the Mountains. So I kind of feel like that. So there's the walking of the mountains and the floating of the mountains over the waters. And then there's singing madly in the mountains. And I think that title is taken from a translation of his of a poem by maybe Li Bo or maybe Xu Dongbo, one of the great old Chinese poets. So the mountains all around us are singing madly. We have many critters, trees, water, brush, and mosquitoes, and dragonflies, and bats.

[03:18]

Tayo is particularly adept at catching bats. If any of you have a bat in your room, just see Tayo. He's very good at it. And I've at least witnessed sightings of foxes, and deer, and anyway. many aspects of the mountain are singing madly all around us. So how do we find our walking in the midst of these mountains singing all around us? So I do want to go back to just this introduction to this sutra by Dogen and just sing it again. The mountains and waters of the immediate present are the manifestation of the path of the ancient Buddhas. Right now, this path of the old wayfarers, those old men and women who preserved this tradition of aching knees and sore backs and sitting upright in the mountains.

[04:31]

opening up our bowls and laying out cloths in funny ways. Anyway, all of this right now is the manifestation and the expression of the path of the ancient Buddhism. Together, abiding in their dharma positions, they have consummated the qualities of thorough exhaustiveness. That's how Tom Cleary reads it. Klaus Tanahashi says, they have realized completeness. So even with sore knees and shoulders, there is some way for us amidst the mountains and waters to realize completeness, to actually experience our wholeness right now. And this has something to do with how the mountains and waters are walking all around us, how they are circumambulating this end zone, and jikoji, and our life, and our kusha, right now.

[05:39]

So in this immediate presence, because they are events prior to the kampa of emptiness, they are the livelihood of the immediate present. So John asked about that word yesterday. The word You could just read it as the life, this life right now, but it also has the meaning of livelihood. Our vitality and our livelihood and our life, our awareness, our reality that is our life, which includes singing madly, includes walking slowly, includes sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, includes sore shoulders and delicious soup. What is the livelihood of this immediate present? He says, because there are the Self before the emergence of signs, there are the penetrating liberation of immediate actuality.

[06:54]

So these mountains and waters are the self before our ideas of self emerge, before our identity cards are stamped, before we even know what sign we are. What is that self that is in tune with the mountains and waters that goes all the way back on this path of the ancient Buddhas? Because the mountains and waters are that Self, they are the penetrating thorough liberation of this immediate realization right now. By the height and breadth of the qualities of the mountains, the spiritual power to ride the clouds is always mastered.

[07:57]

and the marvelous ability, the supernatural ability to follow the wind is inevitably liberated from the mountains. So to come to the mountains and waters, to put ourselves right in the middle of the mountains and waters, just as we are, in this body and mind, with this ancient twisted karma, with all the sore knees and backs and shoulders and other problems that each of us has on our cushion or chair right now. This is the practice of meeting the ancient Buddhists. This is the practice of finding out and investigating our own walking. So from the beginning we have some relationship to these mountains and waters. we are actually products of the mountains and waters.

[09:04]

Somehow human beings and buddhas grew up in the midst of a world of mountains and waters. So this topography of eastern mountains floating on the water moving across the waters. Of the waters flowing down from the mountaintops. Of the water vapor rising up to cover the mountaintops. This is the walking of mountains and waters. And Dogen and the other ancient masters are encouraging us to study this closely, to sit in the middle of this, to feel it. So, I will jump around and pick out some parts of this text that may help us to find our way in the mountains.

[10:18]

Dogen says the Blue Mountains are not sentient, and they are not insentient. We ourselves are not sentient. We are not insentient. So this word that is usually translated as sentient also could just mean animate. We are not. The Blue Mountains or Green Mountains, however you like, are not animated with life and they are not not animated with life. And the same for us. What does it mean to be alive? Are we sentient or are we not sentient? Do we only realize our sentience when we hurt? When the pain in our knees is so unbearable that we have to move? Is that sentience and sitting still in sentience? What does it mean for us to be animated with life? How do we find

[11:22]

our own walking. This also has to do with the nature of our awareness. So we usually think of, those of you who have studied biology, there are definitions for what is life and what is not life, right? Rocks are not alive, right? And I guess in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, they say that plants are not sentient beings. In China, Buddha started saying that grasses and trees can actually expound the dharma. And in the chant we did this morning, Dogen says that grasses and trees and tiles and pebbles can expound the dharma. Actually, he didn't make that up. He got that from a teacher in China, anyway. What is the nature of our aliveness? What is the nature of our awareness?

[12:23]

This is what this sutra is pointing to. How do we see the relationship between our own thinking and the thinking of the mountains? As human-type monkeys we do think and plan and scheme and have all these thoughts floating by. Probably most of you have had a thought or two since you got here. This happens. And the walking of the mountains, you know, is not about getting rid of that kind of thinking. In fact, we use that thinking all the time. It is a wonderful way of hearing these words of Dogen. finding our own seat. And yet there's another kind of awareness. So I've mentioned before the Cheyenne Indians say that rocks have consciousness. So they would probably understand this sutra by Doge.

[13:28]

It's a different kind of consciousness. What is the awareness of trees? So just by meeting the mountains and rivers and their awareness, we are not going to get rid of our monkey mind. And yet we can have another sense, another perspective. And so much of what this is about, this practice and this particular teaching is about shifting our perspective, opening up to other possibilities. Sadhguru says the Blue Mountains are not sentient, they are not insentient. We ourselves are not sentient, we are not insentient. We can have no doubts about these Blue Mountains walking. We do not know what measure of dharma realms would be necessary to clarify the Blue Mountains.

[14:35]

So, we should admit that we don't understand the minds of the Blue Mountains or the waters. we are completely connected with them. And by being willing to be present and listen to the sounds of the mountain and waters all around us, and feel the wind and the mosquitoes and the breathing of the mountain that's on your own cushion or chair, we connect with something that's deeper than our usual sense of who we are. that is connected to this deeper self before the emergence of science. We do not know what measure of Dharma realms would be necessary to clarify the Blue Mountains, but we should do a clear accounting of the Blue Mountains walking and on walking, including an accounting of both stepping back and back-stepping.

[15:42]

we should do an accounting of the fact that since the very time before any subtle sign, since the other side of the Big Bang, walking by stepping forward and backward has never stopped for a moment. Everything changes. Everything flows. We can't get a hold of it. So, one of the functions of our mind is to try and get a hold of it. We think, oh, if I could only understand what Dogen's talking about, then I would be OK, or I don't know, then I'd be a Buddha, or then I'd be a human being, or then I'd be myself. But actually, yourself is completely yourself flowing through the sounds of the babbling of these words. So what is it that our awareness is? How is our awareness related to these Blue Mountains walking?

[16:47]

How is our walking related to these Blue Mountains walking? So this is a way of studying the Self, and a way of studying the mountains, and it's a way of allowing the mountains to study each of us too. And I think This kind of perspective is very practical and very helpful, actually, to our lives. So, as we sit as human beings, as human monkey-type sentient beings, obviously animate, even when we're trying to be still. Our mind is chattering around. Feelings in our muscles is chattering around. The study of the Blue Mountains walking I think can be very helpful. So I mentioned the practice of walking meditation that we do.

[17:50]

Feel the slowness of that walking. Maybe the slowness of that walking is very, very fast walking compared to the walking of the mountains. So they say that The mountains, there's an island off Los Angeles that will be off San Francisco eventually. It's moving up the coast. And probably none of us will live that long to see that. And yet, the mountains are walking. So I don't know what kind of science of geology was around in Duggan's time. But they knew something about mountains. And again, as I mentioned yesterday, I don't know. Did he imagine what the mountains looked like from above the clouds? So we have the advantage of being able to fly over mountains in airplanes. So anyone here has never been in an airplane? So all of you maybe have flown over something, over prairies or mountains or clouds.

[18:57]

So could Furong Daokai have seen what it was like to see mountains from up there. Of course, some of these guys, when they were climbing through the mountains, got to the tops of the mountains, or near the tops, and they could look down. So maybe they had a sense that way. Still, it's hard for me not to think of this in terms of geology and in terms of what we know about the formation of mountains and earthquakes and tectonic plates and all of that. So we can include that in our study of mountains. But also, since we're right in the middle of the mountains, we're in the Jikoji Mountains right now. Does anyone know the name of this mountain? Someone asked me. Do you know, Jane, what these mountains are called? Are these the Santa Cruz Mountains? OK. So here we are in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Thank you. And the ridge runs.

[20:04]

North-south. So in the morning, if you look up that way, the morning star is very bright, very beautiful. In the east, I think it's also known as Venus. And so the ocean is over just on the other side of this ridge to the west. So we're surrounded by mountains running north-south. Here we are in this little jikoji gully. So what is the nature of our own awareness? What is the nature of the mountain's awareness? What does the mountain think of us when they hear all these bells and chanting? How does the mountain perceive us?

[21:06]

Dogen says, the Blue Mountains develop themselves to the investigation of walking. The Eastern Mountain studies moving over the water. Hence, this study is the mountains' own study. The mountains, without altering their own body and mind, with their own mountain countenance, have always been circling back to study themselves. So not only do mountains walk, but they actually study. So are the mosquitoes and the deer and the bats studying us, the trees studying us. Again, this kind of sense of walking, this very slow walking, and then even the slower walking of mountains, I think is really helpful for us. So, you know, we're in a time of great urgency in the human world. The next several months are maybe as critical to the species as any in my lifetime.

[22:17]

So I don't want to elaborate or go into it, but we all know that it's a very critical time, maybe more dangerous than the Vietnam War or the Cuban Missile Crisis anyway. And yet, how is it that we can help? So I know there are, do you remember Cedar from Green Gulch? She's organizing sitting meditation in both Boston and New York during the conventions. And there'll be many people sitting there. And I hope that they, while they're doing that, remember the Blue Mountains Walking. And I hope that we can remember the Blue Mountains Walking over the next several months. Because when we have this perspective of the space and time of the Blue Mountains Walking, then we can devote ourselves to taking care of the immediate present with a different perspective.

[23:26]

We can do it for the sake of the Blue Mountains, not for the sake of some, I don't know, particular human agenda. So the Blue Mountains walk through us. The waters flow through us, through our capillaries and veins and arteries. And when we study the walking of Blue Mountains, then we have a chance to actually dedicate ourselves to taking care of the Blue Mountains, taking care of the livelihood of this immediate present. They're not separate. All of this, again, is about the immediate present that is the manifestation of the path of the ancient Buddhas. So excuse the example, but some of you may have seen Lord of the Rings, the Red Lord of the Rings, and there are these three beings in Tolkien's fantasy called the Ents.

[24:47]

And I guess they're not trees, they're tree herders. And they move like trees. So they help fighting the battle of humans against Mordor anyway. What is the trees walking? Maybe it's easier to think of mountains walking than trees walking. The trees move. I recently took my cousin to Muir Woods down the road from Green Gulch, and he'd never seen redwood trees. He lives on the East Coast. There are trees there that are growing kind of in a circle because the original tree was burnt out, and yet all around the edge of this big tree, maybe as wide as from me to Patty, maybe not quite that wide, but anyway, there are new, different trees because redwoods grow out of

[25:49]

the burrow. Probably some of you know a lot more about this than I do. But anyway, there are these wonderful trees that grew out of one tree. Somehow the tree moved and became many trees. So we are part of nature. The world doesn't belong to us. People belong to the world. we are the mountains and waters flowing, sometimes maybe singing madly. So again, the Blue Mountains devote themselves to the investigation of walking. the eastern mountains study moving over the water. Hence, this study is the mountains' own study.

[26:52]

The mountains, without altering their own body and mind, with their own mountain countenance, have always been circling back to study themselves. So this kind of study is not about, you know, figuring something out. This kind of study is not about finding the answer to some question. Just like the Blue Mountains Walking is not about reaching some destination. So the mountains are not walking in order to get to some particular other space or site. The mountains are just walking. So when we study our own walking, you know, when we get up and do walking meditation, we're not going anywhere, we're just going in a circle, and eventually we'll come back to our own dharma position. And actually, as we're walking, in walking meditation, at every step, with every inhale, each time we lift our foot and place our foot down, we're still in our own dharma position.

[28:00]

And yet somehow, the way our minds work, we think that we have to get somewhere. It's very hard to think about walking and just walking for the sake of walking. So some of us do that. I like to take walks. And I don't know necessarily where I'm going to go when I start on my walk. And when we study, too, we can study the Mountains and Water Sutra, not to understand the Mountains and Water Sutra, but just to enjoy the study of the mountains, studying the mountains. This is actually the richness of the livelihood of the immediate present. Just walking madly in the mountains, not trying to get anywhere. Step by step, settling more deeply into what it is to be a mountain, what it is to be the person in your drama position right now.

[29:08]

So Dogen also says, thus the accumulated virtues of the mountain, brought up here, represents its very name and form, its vital artery. There is a mountain walk and a mountain flow. There is a time when the mountains give birth to a mountain child. The mountains become the Buddhas and ancestors, and it is for this reason that the Buddhas and ancestors have thus appeared. So this turns it a little bit. What does it mean that the mountains become the Buddhist ancestors? So I think this is partly about our sitting practice, you know, that in addition to walking, part of what we do, in addition to chanting, in addition to serving

[30:19]

food to each other or receiving food in addition to eating, in addition to going up and washing the dishes. You know, we just sit still, kind of like mountains. Paul Rapsett is saying that mountains are people who sat long enough to become. But Durbin is saying the opposite. He says that mountains become Buddhist ancestors. This is like the stone woman giving birth to a child at night. just stopping, studying our breathing, studying our posture, studying our connection to the Blue Mountains all around us. Something happens. Some connection to the deep livelihood of the immediate present. That includes the time of the next few months and the time of

[31:25]

said the Santa Cruz Mountains, walking all the way up to Kochi. So these are the same mountains that go down to Santa Cruz. So another verse from when Dogen was living later on, long after he read the Mountains and Water Sutra, maybe 10 years later. or more, 10 or 12 years later, he wrote a bunch of poems about being in the mountains. And here's another one, he said, staying in mountains, I gradually awaken to mountain sounds and colors. Fruit growing and flowers open, I question release from this emptiness. For a while, I wondered, what is the original color? Many of you wondered that.

[32:27]

Anyway, Tolkien wondered, what is the original color? And he says, blue, yellow, red, and white are all in the painting. Many colors make up the mountains. So they may seem blue or green. But they're also tree-colored and water-colored. rock-colored, gravel-colored, fox-colored, bat-colored, even sometimes people-colored. So again, together, abiding in their dharma position, these mountains and waters have consummated the qualities of thorough exhaustiveness. They have realized completeness.

[33:29]

When we realize completeness, we can accept all the colors. It's okay if our knees are sore, our back is sore. It's okay. It's not about doing it right. So is there a correct and incorrect kind of walking the mountains? Is there a correct and incorrect kind of flowing for waters? We should study all of the colors of the flowing waters and all of the colors of the walking mountains. So I want to have a little time for discussion this morning, but I want to end with another story, sort of related. And it's sort of related because it's about Furang Daokai, the teacher in our lineage who said, the Blue Mountains are constantly walking.

[34:36]

The stone woman gives birth to a child in the middle of the night. So this same teacher, Furang Daokai, we say Fuyō Daokai in Japanese, once visited his teacher, Tōzō, and asked, The words and phrases of the Buddha ancestors are like the ordinary rice and tea of our house. Aside from this, are there any other special phrases to benefit people? So along with studying the Blue Mountains, walking, we should also study the Blue Mountains, talking. Anyway, Tozu answered, tell me, When the emperor gives orders within his domain, does he require Yao, Shun, Yu, or Tang? So those are ancient, venerable, wise, sage emperors from 2,000 or 3,000 BC. They're legendary. Maybe it's like saying, tell me, when the president gives orders within his domain, does he require Lincoln, Washington, or Jefferson?

[35:45]

I don't know. But anyway, that's what Toza said. Furong Dalkai wanted to speak in response. But Toza brushed Dalkai's mouth with his whisk and said, as soon as you give rise to thoughts, you receive 30 blows. So he didn't use a stick. He just used his whisk, which is very soft, and pushed it around Dalkai's mouth and said, as soon as you give rise to thoughts, 30 blows. Dalkai, whereupon, opened enlightenment, again made frustrations and departed. Tosa said, come back, Elder. Dalkai did not look back. Tosa asked, have you reached the ground beyond doubt? Dalkai covered his ears with his hands. So that's the story about Furong Dalkai trying to find out about whether there were any other special phrases to benefit people besides the ordinary rice and tea of our house, that is, the phrases of Buddha ancestors.

[36:51]

But the reason I'm reading it actually is because of Dogen's little poem commenting on the story. So Dogen said about this story, in the house of Buddha ancestors, every day tea and rice is coarse. Knowing courtesy to benefit people, simply play the cold reed flute. And there's a scholar who says that may have been the name of a particular song. Duggan goes on. Covering your ears, don't try to open your mouth. Even with the fret glued down, tune the strings and play more music. So this is a very interesting image. feel like it's related to our zazen. And he's actually talking about Chinese zither, I guess, or Japan. They're called kotos. They're long, flat, stringed instruments that sit on the ground. But you could think about it as a guitar, too.

[37:53]

But there's something like a fret that sits under the strings, and you move that to tune, to give the instrument different tuning. But on guitars, too, how many of you play guitar? I know Roger's playing guitar. Anybody else? NEH, OK. Well, isn't the stringed instruments something you can move, like a, I guess it's a stag guitar. Anyway, there's a, so what Dogan is saying here, even with the fret glued down, tune the strings and play more music. When the fret is glued down, you can't tune. You can't change the tuning. So it's a complicated image, but I want to try to say something about it. Even with the fret glued down, tune the strings and play more music. So this is like when the strings are held down and you can't move them anymore. And so it would seem like there's nothing left to, there's no way to play music. But Dogan is saying, even when you're pinned down, even when you're pinned down on your cushion or chair, even when you're pinned down to this upright posture,

[39:03]

even when it seems like there's no flexibility, that we're stiff and stuck like a mountain. Still, tune the strings, play more music. How can you find your own way of singing your song, singing madly in the mountains, right in the middle of this What seems like a restriction, this session schedule, this Zazen posture? What may seem like a very inflexible dharma position? What may feel stuck? What may include achy knees or backs? By the way, if your knees or back or shoulders hurt or whatever, please, it's okay to change your position over a period.

[40:07]

Just do it quiet. But also, in the middle of being just present as the mountain you are right now on your chair or cushion, in this immediate present, how can you hear your song? Each of you in each moment of the immediate present are already expressing the walking of the mountains and the flowing of the waters without moving. So even without moving, there's animation, there's awareness, there's this mysterious presence. So I want to give time for, if anyone has any questions or comments, we can take a couple. And if you have to go back to the kitchen, then go ahead.

[41:09]

OK. Any comments or responses or questions, please feel free. Nancy. So reflecting on the quote that you gave yesterday about the importance of security, I'm wondering if what you were just saying was kind of consistent. Yeah. Enjoy your own mountain spirit realm. So the mountains are constantly walking, and sometimes we have to shift because it hurts too much. And yet, even when we're not moving, there's our own mountain spirit realm. And, you know, Dogen wrote this while he was practicing in the city, or near the city. Here we are. with birds and bats and deer and fox and so forth. So your own mountain spirit realm is totally connected to the mountain spirit realm of the immediate presence of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

[42:18]

And yet, you know, you have your own mountain spirit realm and David has his own. Each of us together expresses our mountain spirit song. George? Well, my contacts with the mountains are mostly the Sierras and Mount Shasta. Mount Shasta, they're cold and climbing and knocking into the top. And the Sierra is going into the granite, and it's almost like a religious feeling. Almost when you get into Shasta, you see that peak above you, and you know the cold and what's It makes it some weather. It's just such a powerful feeling. And I think of this film that's out, Touching the Wood. I don't know if people have seen it. But it's the story of two climbers, two young climbers. And they're at Gutsy, and they're in Peru, and going for a 17,000-foot peak that no one's climbed before because it's so risky.

[43:27]

And they get into this spot where They're just climbing alone, the two of them. So they're tethered. And the one injures himself horribly, really breaks his leg very badly. So the other man decides that rather than take the route out and strip down, the man can go get help. He ties him, and then lowers the other fellow with a broken leg. You're not going to tell us the ending, are you? No. But it's so, that's just the beginning. And what goes from there? It's very much the mountains that teach us. Yeah. So, you know, compared to those kind of mountains, the Santa Cruz Mountains are pretty tame, pretty mellow, you know, real California. But as we sit in this immediate present, of course, we have many mountain stories and mountain songs that we've experienced.

[44:29]

Yeah, Mount Shasta is like Mount Fuji of California. It's really spectacular. It's coming from a distance, and I've camped up near the top, too. It's lovely. So how can we feel these mountain spirit songs, these Blue Mountains walking within us? With all the mountain lore, each of us has our own experience of a wonderful mountain. And each of us is here on our own cushion and chair, in our own mountain spirit realm, sharing that together. Any last comments or questions?

[45:14]

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