So I know some of you, not all of you, and it's great to have you all here. Today, we're going to talk about, well, we're going to talk about the environment. And we're going to talk about Dogen, who I get probably most of you know, was the 13th century founder of what we now call Soto Zen. So I'm going to be looking at some of Dogen's environmental teachings. There are many. and how he particularly links them to devotional practice. So, can everybody hear me? Okay, I have a lot of papers here that I'm gonna be consulting and I will be reading some of the time from an article I wrote for a book that's forthcoming. The article is called, somewhere here.

[01:05]

Anyway, it's about Dogen's environmental teaching. Dogen's vision of the environment and his practice of devotion and faith. Again, I'll be reading from parts of that and reading from other things at times. Wade, could you let me know if the rustle of papers becomes distracting and I'll see what I can do. So, thank you. So, lots of familiar faces, hi Patrick. So, I'm gonna focus on a few of Dogen's writings about the environment. And the focus of the paper and the focus actually of this talk is Shobo Genzo Keisei Sanshoku, which is this, Keisei Sanshoku means the sounds of the valley stream, the forms of the mountain.

[02:14]

So there's a poem at the beginning of that Wait, could you share that first document? Screen share. We'll just look at this briefly and then we'll come back to it later. So yeah, you can roll down. So the poem is what's relevant. So this is a poem by Su Dong Po, who was a great, a classic Chinese poet, one of the great poets of China, lived in the 10 hundreds. And he had an experience and he wrote this poem. The sound of valley streams is the universal long, broad tongue. Sometimes that's read as Buddha's long, broad tongue. The shape of the mountains is no other than the unconditioned body. and sometimes that's read as Buddha's body.

[03:17]

Realizing this, 84,000 verses came forth throughout the night. So Su Dong Po, also known as Xu Shi, was a great Chinese poet. Realizing this, 84,000 verses came forth throughout the night. At some later time, how could I say anything about this? So this is a fundamental question and a fundamental vision that we'll return to, but I wanted to start with that. This is kind of the theme of, in some ways, of the day's seminar. So you can take that down. Some of you may have received copies of this that were sent out. So the particular writings, mostly from Shobo Genso, the true Dharma, I Treasury, that is one of Dogen's two masterworks, that I'm going to talk about are the Self-Fulfillment Samadhi, or Jiji Uzami, which is part of Bento Wa.

[04:23]

And then I'm also going to talk about Sansui Kyo, the Mountains and Water Sutra, or the Landscape Sutra, as I call it, and some of what's in there. And then, K.C. Sanshoku stories, but also, oh, some of the material from Mujo Seppo, which is another Shobo Kenzo physical, that's the inanimate beings express the Dharma. And the question is, is there such a thing as an inanimate being? But anyway, we'll get to that. And then the K.C. Sanshoku, Kesei Sanshoku, the sound the valley streams in the shape of the mountains, includes within it the text called Ehekosu Hotsuganmon, Dogen's writings about arousing the vow. That's sometimes chanted in Soto Zen. We chanted here at Ancient Dragon Zen Gate in Chicago. I don't know if it's chanted at Santa Cruz or Chapel Hill, but it's a separate text, which is part of Soto liturgy.

[05:27]

And so Dogen within this text called of Kese Sanshoku includes that. And it's a teaching about faith and devotional practice. So that's the summary scenario of the day. Again, we'll have a break at some point around three or so, depending on where we're at. And also we'll have time for questions and responses, a couple of times at least. And at those times, you can put questions in the chat. So to start, I want to talk about the self-fulfillment Samadhi, which I think you have as a text. Wade, you could, how are we doing? How many are here now? I'm expecting that there may be more people joining us, but anyway, we'll just have to join in.

[06:29]

So, the Self-Fulfillment Samadhi is part of Endo-wa. Jiji is online in Japanese. And, We sometimes chant that as a particular text. Wade, could you share that text? Will you share that text, please? Yes. Yeah, okay. Can everybody read that? Is it large enough? So no, that's not it, Wade. That's the Ehekosa Hotsuganman. Could you put up the Self-Fulfillment Samadhi, Chi Chi Irzama? Thanks. Here we go.

[07:32]

OK, good. And scroll down a little, if you would, to the second paragraph. So I'm just going to point out a few things in this, in this, this is again, a section of Ben Dawa, wholehearted way. Norman, some of you may listen to Norman Fisher's podcast. He gave a talk recently on Ben Dawa, where he talked about how, Bendowa was the writings of a young Dogen. But he was 31 at the time and had already been in China for four years. I think Norman was more referring to the question and answer section of Bendowa in which Dogen kind of asserts strongly his particular view of Buddhism and practice. But that was something that was happening for all of the new, the great teachers and new schools in that period, Kamakura period in the 1200s.

[08:33]

Anyway, the second paragraph in the Self-Fulfillment Samadhi section of Bendowa, just before the questions, question and answers, says, when one displays the Buddha mudra with one's whole body and mind sitting upright in the Samadhi, even for a short time, everything in the entire Dharma world becomes Buddha mudra and all space in the universe completely becomes enlightenment. This is an amazing radical claim. that when, even for a little while, when you sit in zazen, displaying the Buddha mudra with your whole body and mind, sitting like Buddha, when that happens, everything in the entire dharma world, which is to say, the whole environment becomes Buddha Mudra, the seal of Buddha. And all space in the universe completely awakens, we can say.

[09:40]

So what could it possibly mean that all of reality, all the universe, the whole environment awakens? I've been sitting with this question for, I don't know, 40 years or so. But I'm going to suggest that Dogen gives some response to what this means in the Keisei Sanshoku essay, and we'll come back to that. But this is just to appreciate what a radical claim this is. Even for a short time, when one person, any of you, sits upright like Buddha with your whole body and mind, all space, all the environment around you, awakens. He goes on to say, scrolling down a little bit, if you would wait.

[10:43]

Yeah, it's down at this point. At that time, all things together awaken to supreme enlightenment and utilize Buddha body. What is Buddha body? immediately go beyond the culmination of awakening and sit upright under this regal Bodhi tree. So, again, and then everything in turn is the incomparable Dharma Wheel. So this is kind of Dogen's, I don't know, Declaration of Interdependence. It's how Dogen, it's, It's one of his first writings. It's his first writing on the meaning of Zazen. Scrolling down a little bit more, if you would wait. Okay. Therefore, This Zazen person without fail drops off body and mind, cuts away previous tainted views and thoughts, awakens genuine Buddha Dharma universally, helps the Buddha work.

[11:54]

So the Buddha work is an important term for Dogen. In each place as numerous as atoms where Buddha Tathagatas teach and practice and widely influences practitioners going beyond Buddha, vigorously exalting the Dharma, the teaching, the truth that goes beyond Buddha. And then he gets specific about what he means by all space. What he means, what the environment is. At this time, because earth, grasses and trees, fences and walls, tiles and pebbles, all things in every direction in the universe carry out Buddha work, just like the person sitting. So everyone receives the benefit. of wind and water caused by this functioning, all are imperceptibly helped by the wondrous and incomprehensible influence of Buddha to actualize the enlightenment at hand. So this is, again, a very strong and maybe curious statement, but he's naming the earth,

[12:59]

grasses and trees, but also fences and walls. It's not just what we call natural stuff. It's even fences and walls, tiles and pebbles. And we'll come back to that pebble. All things in every direction of the universe are carrying out Buddha work. And then there's this phrase, which I never heard in American Zen until I started, I translated this with Shōhaku Okamura back in the early nineties in Kyoto. The wondrous and incomprehensible influence of Buddha, and he later talks about the mutual influence. So the point here is that the person sitting helps earth, grasses, and trees, fences, walls, tiles, and pebbles to awaken, whatever that is, and vice versa. So there's this mutual incomprehensible guidance that's imperceptible that he's talking about here. There's a Japanese word, mutual influence.

[14:04]

It's a little lower down. These various mutual influences do not mix into the perceptions of the person sitting. So they're imperceptible. They take place within stillness. Without any fabrication, they are enlightenment itself. But these mutual, the idea of mutual influence, there's a Sino-Japanese word, myoshi, which I never heard about, in Americans then, but it's important for Dogen. This mutual influence of the Zazen person or the Zazen Sangha and grasses and trees, the whole earth, mountains and waters, tiles and pebbles. So Dogen is saying this in 1230s, early 1230s, There are, I was talking about this some this morning, there are now scientific papers, scientific experiments that are validating that, this mutual influence.

[15:19]

So this is, again, Dogen's first writing, I would say, about the environment. And it has this radical, radical claim. Could you go down a little further away? Yeah, a little further, more over and down. Okay, that's good. So he talks about, well, I could give a whole, afternoon seminar at GGU's on just the self-receiving and self-employing. And I've written about that in some of my books, but I'm not going to go into that now. But within this process of self-receiving, self-employing, self-fulfillment, there is, that he's talking about in this section, there's extensive Buddha work and profound, subtle Buddha influence. that are carried out. And then again, he expresses the grass, trees, and earth affected by this functioning together radiate great brilliance and endlessly expound the deep wondrous dharma.

[16:28]

Grasses and trees, fences and walls demonstrate and exalt it for the sake of living beings. For the sake of living beings, both ordinary and sage. they express and unfold it for the sake of grasses, and the living beings express and unfold it for the sake of grasses and trees, fences and walls. So Dogen is declaring here, proclaiming here, this radical view of our relationship to our environment, that there's mutual support, that when we enter into awakening practice, when we enter into practice of Zazen for him. He says, the realm of self-awakening and awakening others is fundamentally endowed with a quality of enlightenment with nothing lacking and allows the standard of enlightenment to be actualized ceaselessly.

[17:30]

So I read this as a statement about how Dogen sees the environment. So Wade, you can take away the screen sharing. Again, this is an extraordinarily radical statement. In our logical thinking, what does that mean? What does it mean that space awakens? What does it mean that reality itself is enlightened and enlightens others? It's a view of, practice and a view of awakening that, you know, certainly goes beyond just self-help. It ties together. It is declaring the interdependence of all things, the interconnectedness of all things, which we're having more and more experiences of, I think, all of us, you know, thanks to this horrible pandemic in which

[18:39]

You know, more than 700,000 people now have passed away. It's so much distress. And at the same time, here we are on Zoom and there are people from California and North Carolina and lots of other places right in front of me. So Nevada, anyway, we see how we are connected in a new way. And also the pandemic shows us how we're connected, how the whole world is connected. The pandemic will not really be over until everybody can get vaccinated, including people in India and South America and Africa. So, okay, here we are. And this radical interconnectedness that Dogen is talking about in this self-fulfillment Samadhi in Bendowa is, It's kind of astonishing.

[19:40]

And again, he doesn't talk about it just in terms of mountains and rivers and earth grasses, trees, but walls, pebbles, tiles, fences. So we are used to thinking of the environment as the so-called natural world. outside the city. Of course, in Chicago and hopefully in other cities, there are wild spaces and forests and so forth and parks. But even within, Gary Snyder talks about the nature in the city, grasses growing out of concrete trees. And we are part of nature. Nature's not something separate from us. We are expressions of the earth. We're not, I was talking this morning about how we're not, we don't have dominion over the earth, grasses, and trees, even though we're used to thinking that way.

[20:42]

maybe in a Western worldview, at least in some of it, that we can control, we can exploit, we can mine the resources of the earth, we can cut down the trees, and so forth. Anyway, we are part of the earth. And what Dogen is saying here kind of feeds into that. Okay. So actually, I'm tempted to pause there briefly. And if, Wade, if you can open up the chat box just to see if there's any immediate questions or responses in the chat box for, that I can respond to. I wasn't gonna do it soon, but. Florence Caplo actually just posted, let me scroll up, And she, if you're taking questions now, Taigen, yes? Yes. And she asks, what is the Japanese term for quote, Buddha work?

[21:44]

Is it more or less bodhichitta? It's certainly bodhicitta, but it's a different term. I forget the sign of Japanese, but it's Buddha and literally the character for work. So I forget how to say that, but that's a literal translation. So that's what bodhisattvas do. That's what all of us as Zen or other Buddhist practitioners are doing. We are doing the Buddha work. That's what Dogen says in this. And of course he's saying that mountains and rivers and earth, grasses and trees and fences and walls, tiles and pebbles are also doing the Buddha work. Wow, what does that mean? Okay. So any other, I'll take one or two more questions if there are any. I see there's others in the chat box. Wait. No, we had an accidental copy in the chat box. So no other questions currently.

[22:44]

Okay. So let's move on then. Actually, Joshua, Pat Phelan. Oh, hi, Pat. Just says, have you heard the Jiu-Jitsu Zanmai described as a fundraising letter with the geomancy and elements referred to from Professor Pete Winfield? Oh, Pamela Winfield has talked about it that way? Yeah, she's down in North Carolina too. No, I haven't. But I'm in the middle of writing fundraising letters because we're trying to get a new temple since we lost ours due to COVID. But yeah, I hadn't thought of that. Maybe I'll send this out as part of the fundraising letters. But you know, this is important to say. The idea of geomancy, this idea of the earth being alive, this was congruent with Japanese and Japanese Buddhist worldview. It seems strange to us. This was actually part of Japanese Buddhist awareness.

[23:50]

So, maybe I'll, we can say more about this, but I'm gonna move on to the next part of this. Oh, wait a second, let's see, what else was I gonna say about that? Hold on a second. Again, I've got all these papers to fiddle around with. Well, maybe I've said this, that the whole phenomenal world is involved in this. So this is a fundraising letter for the whole phenomenal world, all of which needs support, especially these days. And part of what Dogen is saying here strongly is that the whole phenomenal world, including uh... fences and walls and tiles are doing the buddha work and uh... you know what we can sort of see this and i have behind me

[24:55]

I'm not really right now zooming in from the mountains of China or Japan, but behind me in my backdrop is a landscape painting by Sesshu, one of my favorite painters. And the whole world of landscape paintings in East Asia kind of gives this sense of this connectedness. And in those landscape paintings, sometimes there's the person. somebody walking along or a hermit in a little hut sitting, and they're little, but they're part of the whole landscape. So we are, and there's this mutual influence happening. So that's the first thing to say. I'm gonna move to the second text that I wanted to talk about, which some of you are probably familiar with. This is called the Sansui Kyo, or the, Sansui means mountains and waters, and sometimes it's literally translated as mountains and waters. However, Sansui, as a compound,

[26:03]

means landscape. So I kind of call this the landscape sutra. And there's a lot of stuff in here about how Dogen sees the environment. And the beginning of this, from Thomas Cleary's translation, the beginning of this text, which is also considered part of Shobo Genzo now, Dogen says, the mountains and waters of the immediate present are the actualization of the path of the ancient Buddhas. I'm going to say that again. The mountains and waters of the immediate present are the actualization of the path of ancient Buddhas, together occupying their own Dharma positions. They have fulfilled the virtues of thorough exhaustiveness because they have been active since before the Kalpa of emptiness. They are the livelihood of the immediate presence. So he's saying this landscape, the mountains and waters, have been alive, active, since before the Big Bang, before the Kalba of Emptiness, which is one way to say the Big Bang in Buddhist cosmology, or what's before the Big Bang.

[27:27]

So he says, because they've been active since before the Kabbalah of emptiness, they are the livelihood of the immediate present. Because they are the self, since before any subtle signs emerged, they are the penetrating liberation of actual occurrence. So again, this is a really strong statement. He's saying, the landscape that we are part of, that we think of as something that we can manipulate, but that we are actually just a part of, has been active, has been lively, has been aware since before any subtle signs emerged, before forms emerged from emptiness. Therefore they are the penetrating liberation of actual occurrence. So he's talking about the mountains and waters as liberation.

[28:32]

And when we take our position in the mountains and waters, in the landscapes, this is liberation. So, He says a number of other things in that text. It's a wonderful text, which probably some of you have looked at, and there's a lot in there. So he's saying that this awakening process of all Buddhas, this landscape is prior to all time, to all temporality, but it also embodies all time. So when Dogen talks about the phenomenal world, a phenomenal world doing Buddha work and all space in the universe awakening, he's also talking about time. He's talking about all times.

[29:35]

This is a really important teaching for us, that we are connected, interconnected, massively interconnected, not just in space with each other and with all beings, but in all times. So there's many implications to that. But he's saying that here. So this, the landscape, the concrete landscape, it's not an abstraction. Grasses, trees, rocks, rivers, water function as the substantiation, the substance of ultimate reality. So this landscape sutra of Dogen's, it's the only text he wrote that he called a sutra.

[30:36]

Excuse me, usually sutras are the words of the Buddha. So for him to claim that is pretty strong, but I can't disagree. Of course, Gary Snyder wrote the Smokey the Bear Sutra, and there are many texts that are called sutras that were actually written, as we know now, compiled in China, not by the Buddha in India. But anyway, they are expressions of awakening. So this landscape expresses for Dogen the self that precedes and includes all limited selves. in space and time. So this relationship, what Dogen's talking about is a relationship of each of us and each particular thing, each stone and pebble, each tile, to wholeness, to the whole landscape, and to our environment.

[31:39]

So this is also kind of environmental teaching. And we can put that in modern terms. And there are some environmentalists here. who might have comments, but okay. He says in the Mountains and Water Sutra, mountains lack none of their proper qualities. Accordingly, they are constantly settled and constantly walking. So one of the things that Dogen talks about in the Landscape Sutra is the mountains walking. which is not how we usually think about things, mountains or other things, so-called inanimate things. But he says the mountains are constantly walking. He's actually quoting one of our great Chinese ancestors, Furong Daokai, who talked, who said that the mountains are constantly walking. Anyway.

[32:41]

We must devote ourselves, Dogen says, to a detailed study of this virtue of walking. The walking of the mountains is like that of people. Do not doubt that the mountains walk, simply because they may not appear to walk like humans. Because the green mountains are walking, they are constant. And their walk is swifter than the wind. Yet those in the mountains do not notice this, do not know it. So I would say the mountains are our image of stability. Mountains are what are settled and steady and stable. Of course, we know they are constantly eroding in geological time. And animals, trees, and even rocks that are on the surface of the mountain are the mountains. are the skins of the mountain. And those are constantly shifting as animals walk around, as people walk around, as plants die and turn into compost, also at varying paces.

[33:55]

So Dogen says that we don't see the mountains walking because it's much slower than how we walk, right? But in geological timescale, mountains and even continents certainly move and shift here and there. So this is an important point. And I was talking about this some this morning, but we tend to think that You know, humans are the crown of creation. You know, we think anthropomorphically and, you know, so you might say mountains walking is anthropomorphic, but mountains actually walk. And Dogen says, you have to, you must study this. And if you don't see how mountains walk, you don't know you're walking. So, you know, this is, this interconnectedness, as I was saying, applies in time as well as space. Of course, for us, insects, for example, have a much shorter lifespan.

[35:03]

And for them, it may seem like we're not walking. An example I gave this morning is from a film called My Octopus Friend, which I highly recommend, talking about how Octopuses are very intelligent. They can use tools. They can communicate. They can do problem solving. They're extraordinary animals. And communicating with an octopus may be the closest thing we have now to communicating with some extraterrestrial being. But anyway, in this movie, my octopus friend, There's a guy in South Africa who was diving and there's wonderful photography of him meeting and becoming friends with this octopus. Unfortunately, talking about lifespans, octopuses only live for about a year.

[36:06]

So who knows what they might do if they, you know, if they had longer lifespans. So to see the interpenetration of all this is part of the point of getting to know our environment. Dogen also says in the Mountains and Water Sutra, hold on. Well, he talks about to understand one's own walking, one must also understand the walking of the Green Mountains. Green mountains are neither sentient nor non-sentient. The self is neither sentient nor non-sentient. Therefore, we can have no doubts about these green mountains walking. We do not realize that we must clarify the green mountains on the basis of innumerable Dharma realms. So from the perspective of multiple phenomenal realms, our existence, while smaller and shorter than that of mountains, walks alongside mountains.

[37:14]

even if we're on such a different time scale and scale and size, that it's imperceptible to us. So Tolkien, in all of this, is appealing to a radical imagination. We have to think beyond, you know, it's funny because we're, the screen I see a bunch of little boxes and some of you are on the second screen. So there's more little boxes. But the point of this and of what Dogen is saying is to not just think outside the box, to think inside the box, to think between boxes. How do we go beyond our usual ways of seeing reality in our life? And I want to recommend, and I'm forgetting the title. There's a wonderful book, I think I can find it here, by Rebecca Solnit. She's a wonderful writer for any of you who know her writings.

[38:17]

And she's also a Zen practitioner. She was a student of Blanche Hartman from San Francisco Zen Center. Yes, she has a book called Wanderlust, A History of Walking. So that's a history of human walking, but it's fascinating and I think a helpful commentary on some of the mountains and water sutra. Okay, so what else do I want to say about mountains and water sutra? Oh yeah. The Dogon talks about water too. Landscape is made up of mountains and waters and Gary Snyder talks about the interplay of water through the mountains and how the mountains rise up and are defined by the rivers running through them. Dogen says, seeing mountains and rivers differs according to the type of beings among them.

[39:28]

So this is an important part of all this in terms of thinking about our environment. In Genjo Koan, which I'm not going to go into much this afternoon, and in other texts too, Dogen talks about how we see the world and the limitations of human awareness, and human intelligence, and human perceptions. So this is a very important part of Zen practices and Zen training, is to just, you know, it's a kind of training in humility, to recognize that each of us, and all of us, and human-type beings have limited human limited intellects, limited imagination, limited perceptions. Dogen gives many examples of that. For example, well, I'll mention Lake Michigan, which is a great lake that's near here.

[40:32]

If you go out in the middle of it, you can't see any of the shoreline. So it just seems like a circle. But then when you get closer, you recognize there are details to the shoreline. And that's true of oceans and all great bodies of water. But also how we see water, for example. Dogen talks about how humans see water one way, fish see it another way. Hungry ghosts see it as pus, which is kind of gross. Sad for hungry ghosts. And dragon seawater in another way. Dragon seawater is crystal palaces. So how we see the environment, again, to use that word, is totally limited. We might imagine how trees see the environment, how insects see the environment, and so forth. A little bit more on mountains and water sutra. Well, just so what different types of being see is different, we should reflect on this fact.

[41:38]

Is it that there are various ways of seeing one object? Or is it that we have mistaken various images for one object? That's a quote from the Nouns and Water Sutra. So again, Dogen is talking about the paltry limitations of our conventional human perceptions and viewpoints. This is not to put down human beings, there's lots of wonderful things we can do, you know, but and, and just not to put down rationality and, you know, and human perception. And, you know, I mean, human beings produced Bach, Mozart and Van Gogh, you know, so we're wonderful, or we can be, but Part of that is recognizing our limitations. So towards the end of this sutra, Dogen says, it is not the case simply that there is water in the world.

[42:51]

Within the realm of water, there are worlds. And this is true, not only within water, but within clouds as well, there are worlds of sentient beings. Within wind, within fire, within earth, there are worlds of sentient beings. So inside the earth, I remember Wendy Johnson, who's the garden goddess of Green Gulch Farm, talking about within a cubic foot of earth, and it differs depending on how fertile the soil is, but there are He meant a huge number of beings. Some of them we can see, we can't see, and they're microscopic. Some of them we can see. Within the earth, there are worlds of sentient beings. That's the part that we can, that we have a clearer access to, but Dogen is saying that's also true within water, within clouds, within fire. He continues, within the Dharma realm, there are worlds of sentient beings.

[43:56]

Within a single blade of grass, within a single staff, there are worlds of sentient beings. And where there are worlds of sentient beings, there inevitably is the world of Buddhas and ancestors. So the Flower Ornament Sutra, which I feel like is, he doesn't talk about it as much as he talks about the Lotus Sutra, which is the sutra that Dogen talks about a lot. But in the Huayen Flower Ornament Avatamsaka Sutra, it says things like, within the tip of a blade of grass are innumerable Buddha worlds with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in each one of them. It says within an atom there are innumerable worlds with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in each one of them. So again, if you can accept that, this attests to the limitations of our human perceptions.

[45:01]

Dogen goes on, wherever there are worlds of sentient beings, there inevitably is the world of Buddhists and ancestors. And then he adds, as for mountains, 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 is a study of mountains hidden in hiddenness. So, Here, Dogen is opening up the deep complex interconnectedness and mutually supportive realm of mountains, waters, and all entities, including even human beings. So this is an extraordinary vision. You know, when we think about environmentalism and all the problems that we know of within our limited human facility, that we know about climate breakdown and damage and so forth, pollution in the air and water.

[46:16]

Okay, how do we start to think about these issues in this deeper way? What are the possibilities when we do that? I've referred to Gary Snyder. He has various writings based on the Mountains and Waters Sutra. He talks about the landforms as a play of stream-cutting and ridge-resistance, and waters and hills interpenetrate in endlessly branching rhythms. The Chinese feel for land has always incorporated this sense of a dialectic of rock and water, of downward flow and rocky uplift, and of the dynamism and slow flowing of earth forms. That's Gary Snyder. Okay. So I'm gonna shift to

[47:18]

Keisei Sanshoku, but I see there's a bunch of things in the chat box. Wade, can you help with, I will take a couple of questions from the chat box. Sure, let me pull that up. So Carolina asked, what is Buddha work? Yeah, that's a great question. What is Buddha work? Please sit with that question for 10 or 20 years. What is Buddha work? What is Buddha work in this time and place? What is Buddha work in your own life, in your own Sangha? What is Buddha work amid all these difficulties? So I can say some things about it, but maybe some of you can say other things about it. But what Buddha work has to do with liberating all sentient beings. And that's the basic mission of Buddha, is to help beings awaken, to help all beings awaken.

[48:25]

That's not just for bodhisattvas, that's something that Buddha supposedly said right at the beginning. So how do we help take care of all beings, and ourselves, and our friends and family, and also to see more deeply into the landscape of our lives. So that's not an answer. That's just my initial response. Please consider this question. What is the Buddha work? Wade, is there another one? Yeah, we have a couple more. Patrick asks, can we expand the Buddha mudra to include dwelling in Bodhi mind? Dwelling in Bodhi Mind is the Buddha Mudra. The Buddha Mudra is Bodhi Mind, but it's also Bodhi Body, Bodhi Language, Bodhi Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Tongue.

[49:35]

How do we, yeah, the Buddha Mudra is all of that and everything else that we can imagine as part of the Buddha work. So the Buddha mudra, yeah, I mean, literally, you know, mudra means like a hand position, like, you know, like Zazen mudra, or some Buddha images go like this or like this and giving, but really Zazen is a mudra. just to sit upright like Buddha. A mudra also means a seal, like to seal a letter, to seal a deal. It's used in East Asia for stamps that identify one. That's how people sign letters, not with signatures, but with their seal in East Asia still. So Buddha mudra is the Buddha seal. It's the stamp that confirms awakening.

[50:36]

but it's also in process because we're alive. So how does Buddha continue? We're talking about Dogen and I'm going to refer to other ancient teachers and of course Buddha and himself or herself and how does that continue? And that's the Buddha work. How do we take care of the Buddha seal and the Buddha mudra so that it continues? because we're also working in time as well as space. So thank you, Patrick. One more, oh wait. Well, if I may, a quick question is asking what essay of Gary Snyder's you were quoting from, and then maybe we can do one more actual question. Okay, so there's a book called Buddhas and Rivers Without End, is that what it's called? There's so many faces there, it's wonderful.

[51:42]

But I can't see Laurel who would know. Anyway, but also, I'm quoting from what I consider Gary Snyder's masterpiece, The Practice of the Wild, in which he has a chapter, maybe a few chapters actually, that are directly commented on the Mountains and Waters Landscape Sutra by Dogen. And one more, Wade? Yes. Marsha was asking if you could please say more about the dialectic of water and rock. What is their relationship? Hi, Marsha. I see your box. Oh, there you are. Hi. Yeah. Ah. That's the nature of landscape, as Gary Snyder says, water cuts through rock. There's a river in southwest United States called the Colorado River, and it created the Grand Canyon. So rivers are, water is really powerful, but so are mountains.

[52:47]

Mountains rise up, you know. So the whole idea of landscape, sansui, landscape is the form of how mountains and waters are interacting. So the wonderful landscape gardens, there are called, there's sansui, there's a karasansui, dry landscape gardens that I love in, temples in Kyoto and Nara and elsewhere in Japan, in which sometimes there's a little bit of water, but mostly it's like gravel and rocks and some moss and maybe a plant or two. And there are miniature landscapes. And we see through them the way that the water flows in between the rocks. There's lots of other ways to think about this. mountains and waters. So, but that's just a little bit. Marsha, do you have a comment on that? Her follow-up is asking if one is more dominant.

[53:52]

Which are more dominant, men or women? Sorry, that's a loaded question. It's not about, you know, One is the winner and one is the loser. They depend on each other. Everything depends on each other. Mountains depend on water. Water depends on the mountain streams. So the next thing I'm gonna go, the next writing I'm gonna go to is about the mountains and water. So maybe we should go to that. Kese Sanchoku, is that the next? Yes. So, Yeah, hold on a second. Yes. Okay. So, Wade, would you please put up again that poem from the Kesei Sanshoku, the poem by Sudoku? Yes. So this is just a tiny bit of a long essay in Shobo Genzo called Keisei Sanshoku, the sound of the water, the shape of the mountains.

[55:09]

But this is the starting point for this long essay. And this is, again, from a poem by Sushi, or Su Dongpo, who lived in the 1000s, who had an experience. I think he was visiting a temple somewhere, or maybe visiting a friend, and he heard the sound of valley streams. And he wrote this poem, the sound of valley streams is the universal long, broad tongue. The shape of the mountains is no other than the unconditioned body. Realizing this, 84,000 verses came forth throughout the night. At some later time, or it could be read in some later day or night. How could I say anything about this? This is a wonderful, wonderful poem.

[56:15]

And Dogen has a lot to say starting from that. So with this realization, the great poet Sugungpo felt myriads of verses arising in and flowing forth from him. But simultaneous with this outpouring of awakening expression, the poet wondered how he might ever share this wondrous vision with other beings. This is a real question when people have some realization They wonder, how would anybody ever understand this? This question is identical to the Buddha's own question upon awakening 2,500 years ago. Whether anybody would ever understand what he had realized? And how could he share his awakening? So Shakyamuni wondered about that and then

[57:19]

The story goes that Brahma came and said, yes, people will understand. If you build it, they will come. Please go and share this. And so he spent 45 years wandering around what we now call India and Nepal and trying to express this awakening to different people in different places in different ways. But it's a real question. when we have some deep sense of how wonderful Zazen is, how can we say anything about that to anyone? So the sound of the valley streams, You know, these two lines, the sound of the valley streams is the universal long, broad tongue. The shape of the mountains is no other than the unconditioned body.

[58:22]

Personally, I think of Tassajara, where I lived for a few years, and I know there's at least a couple other people, probably more, who have done practice periods at Tassajara. But sitting in the zendo there, There's a creek, Kabarga Creek, named after Pat's husband. You know, you hear the sound of the creek. And it sounds like various things. One time, sitting Zazen, I don't know if it was in Sashina or just in the long sittings every day, I heard the chanting of the names of Buddha that we chant. There was a guy who sat next to me one practice period, a German guy, whose father was a concert, was a symphony musician. And he had a terrible, terrible time with the sound of the creek because, and I don't know if he ever got beyond this, I don't know.

[59:32]

But for a while at least, he heard this at the creek and he heard some Beethoven symphony, but it stopped at some point. And that was very frustrating to him. So sounds are strange and wonderful, and especially the sounds of streams, but all kinds of sounds, of course, good songs. And anyway, I also think of Tassajara with a line, the shape of the mountains is no other than the unconditioned body or the body of Buddha. There's some of you who've been to Tassajara know when you step out of the zendo on the, I guess that's the Western side, there's shapes of, there's a horizon at the top of the Tony Trail and there's shapes of the mountains. And I think if I ever end up there in a future life, I will recognize that shape.

[60:37]

So, you know, part of what this is saying is the shape of the mountains is the form of Buddha's body. The sound of the streams is Buddha's speaking. So this is a really radical way of connecting oneself to the environment. We are in the environment, the environment is in us. The word environment is kind of not big enough. I don't know what English word to use. Landscape, I like, but, you know, landscape includes mountains and waters. Anyway, it's the whole phenomenal world, but it's also the natural world and the natural world of, again, to refer to Gary Snyder, he talks about skyscrapers like we have downtown in Chicago and boulevards or avenues as the cutting of waterways and mountains.

[61:42]

Anyway, we can see this metaphorically in all kinds of ways. So, Wade, maybe you can take that poem down. I want to say some more though about things that, so how are we doing time-wise? Oh, good. Okay. So there's a lot more in this essay by Joe Ghen, Keisei Sanshoku, to talk about. At one point. Oh, just to say something about Well, I'll come, I could come back to this, but I'll just say this, that Xu Shi, or Xu Dongpo, the poet, was approved by his teacher, Zhao Jue Changzong, who lived in the 1000s. who was a disciple of the Huanglong, of Huanglong, who was the founder of one of the branches of Linchi or Rinzai Zen, Yellow Dragon Zen.

[62:53]

And that's in terms of, some of you may have received, have done lay ordination, received Kechinyaku, blood vein. And in the Kechinyaku or lineage papers that we give for precepts, Dogen comes from both the Soto lineage and also from the Linji or Rinzai lineage in terms of the precepts. So we don't have to make divisions about Soto and Rinzai. But the branch that became prominent as Rinzai Zen The Huanglong is the yellow dragon. The other branch is the willow branch from Yangtze. Anyway, that's just a little historical footnote. Dokian often points to the inner closeness or intimacy with oneself promoted by Zazen and the practice of Zazen.

[63:55]

So of course, when one does Zazen for a while, one becomes intimate with oneself. One gets to know, very well, sometimes very painfully, one's own inner emotional entanglements and afflictions. And knowing those, becoming aware of them as part of liberation from them, because we, not that they necessarily go away, some of them might, but we don't need to react based on them. When we become intimate, when we get to know the patterns of our own anger or greed, We don't have to react based on that. So Dogen talks also about how this intimacy is echoed by practitioners in their active relationship with teachers or in their everyday affairs. He affirms the Bodhisattva studying the way must know that mountains flow and waters do not flow.

[65:02]

So this is another strange radical thing that Dogen says in the Mountains and Water Sutra. Mountains flow, waters are still, they do not flow. That's just true. You know, mountains are moving as I was talking about before, of course, in geological time, but also, you know, just in, You know, a few minutes of looking up at a mountain, there's all kinds of things moving around on the mountain. Plants and animals. Of course, waters flow, but also, in this Jewel Mary Samadhi, Dongsheng says, reality constantly flows. There's something constant about the flowing. That's the nature of water. So beyond our conventional conceptions, supposedly static forms such as mountains are constantly shifting. Well, ephemeral sounds like a flowing stream are constant.

[66:07]

So before he had this realization, that he talks about in this verse, Soedongpo had inquired of his teacher, Changsong, who I mentioned, about the story of non-sentient beings expressing the Dharma. So this is a complicated story, and this relates to another one of Dogen's Shobokenzo writings called Mujoseppo, on non-sentient beings express the Dharma. And this is an important story in our lineage. This goes back to Dongshan, the founder in China of Zhaodong, or Soto-Zhan, or Zen. And this story comes up in the Mountains and Waters Sutra, and in Keisei Sanchoku. Dongshan inquired of his, so this is a very, very, very, very short version of this. Dongshan inquired of his own teachers, Guishan and then Yunyan, about a previous statement by the national teacher, Nanyang Huizhong.

[67:29]

And you don't have to remember all these names that will not be a test. But in Japanese, Nanyo Echu, when asked about the mind of the ancient Buddha, which maybe was the question that Patrick was asking in a way. When asked about the mind of the ancient Buddha, Nanyang responded that it was wall and tile pebbles and further that the earth and all supposedly non-sentient beings expound the Dharma ceaselessly. This is an important and very relevant statement. This goes back to the environment. This statement by the national teacher before Dongshan that the earth, walls and tiles and pebbles, all supposedly non-sentient beings expound the Dharma ceaselessly.

[68:41]

And there's lots of ways we might interpret that But this comes out of a kind of discourse and philosophy and questioning that was part of Chinese Buddhism before Chan, before Zen, and is echoed in Zen teachers and in Dogen certainly, which was that non-Sentient beings can express the Dharma. Or another way to talk about it is, can inanimate beings express the Dharma? Does a dog have Buddha nature, even a dog? That's a Zen story, of course. How do we understand our environment? How are we going to help save our environment or our world or the world of bugs and elephants and grasses and trees and so forth?

[69:50]

This I think is a relevant question for us. Towards the end, when we have more discussion, I'm interested in people's reflections on how any of this material might relate to current issues of environmentalism, for example, and to how we are practicing Zen today. So, This is a complicated story. So first of all, there's this Nan Yang's statement, and he was the national teacher, that all supposedly non-sentient things, earth, grasses, and trees, tiles, pebbles, and walls, expound the Dharma ceaselessly. And Dong Shan, Yongmeng Dongshan asked these two great teachers, Guishan, who had found one of the five houses of Chan later, and Yunyan, who was the teacher of Dongshan, what does it mean that non-sensual beings can express the Dharma?

[71:03]

So this is kind of a question that I was asking when I was talking about the self-fulfillment Samadhi and all space of becoming awakened. And in this discourse in Chinese Buddhism, there was this idea that trees and grasses and even supposedly non-sensual beings could express the nature of reality itself, of all reality itself. There's a kind of distinction here between Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and East Asian Buddhism. One distinction is that in, and there may be exceptions to anything I say here, okay, but in most Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, animals can awaken, animals can express the Dharma, but plants are non-sentient and don't have Buddha nature. in the discourse about Buddha nature in China that was developing with Chan, but earlier than Chan also, there was an understanding that plants have Buddha nature.

[72:14]

And now we know that plants are intelligent. And I was talking about this this morning to some people, but it's, you know, modern scientific explorations, excuse me, have shown that plants have emotions, that plants grow better, cornfields grow better when there's music. And that some plants prefer different kinds of music in terms of their growth potential. And also that when plants, when trees are cut down, sometimes they scream. not in a way that we can hear. But the vibrations are there. So how we usually see the world is an issue here.

[73:18]

And how Dogen sees the world, and this was more congruent with his world of East Asian Buddhism and Japanese culture, was really different. And I think this is not something that, we in American Zen really fully realize, or even at all realize. But anyway, so the story about Dongshan is really important. And this idea of Buddha nature of non-sentient beings, or we could talk about awareness and intelligence. So I was talking about octopuses. We know now that, so I'll recommend another movie that I mentioned this morning, the fantastic fungi or fungi, which talks about the mycorrhizal underpinnings of forests. And we now know, scientific experiments demonstrate that trees within a forest can communicate and can warn each other of dangers and can actually send nutrients through this huge inter,

[74:28]

a web of interconnection under a forest from these mycorrhizal threads, I don't know what to call them, so that trees within a forest, even from different species, communicate and share information and nutrients. That's not some fantasy, that's modern science. So how do we understand? And there's a whole long story about Dongshan asking Yongyan and, first Guishan, who's going to come up later in this, and Yongyan about this story. But it's a fundamental story for us about non-sensual beings expressing the Dharma. At some point Dongshun had some realization about this and he wrote a verse that goes like this, the Dharma expounded by non-sentient beings is inconceivable.

[75:38]

Listening with your ears, no sound. Hearing with your eyes, you directly understand. So our usual idea or way of thinking about how we perceive things is, part of what the problem is in terms of this. And again, Dogen wrote a whole essay based on this story from Dongshan, called Mucho Sepo. And, I'm not gonna go into detail about it, but there's a lot about it in a book I wrote called, I don't know if you can see it, Just This Is It, Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness. So I will probably next year do one of these afternoon seminars just on Dongshan. That's a whole topic in itself. Okay, so, other thing I was gonna say.

[76:48]

Oh, yeah. So in terms of the mountains and water sutra. Well, Tolkien says that this is interesting about our practice. Dogen says that Sushi, Sudongpo, did not have any realization after hearing Chongzong, his teacher, comment on the story from Dongshan, the story about non-sensuous beings expressing the Dharma. So Sudongpo Sushi had heard that story and heard his teacher talk about it. But then when he heard the sounds of the valley streams, He had this realization and he wrote this poem. Dogen so says though that it was still his teacher's previous words mixed in with the sounds of the streams that awaken Sushi.

[77:56]

So the impact of teacher's dharma expressions is not necessarily immediate, but they seep into awareness gradually like the flowing streams. Dogen further wonders if it was Si Tung Po who awakened or if the mountains and waters themselves awakened at that time. So Dogen also speaks elsewhere of mountains and waters not only expressing awakening, but awakening themselves through practice. So what is the practice of mountains and waters? That's another question for you to work on in your Zazen for a couple of decades. Okay. So there's this, again, this story of Sutongpo's experience in the poem he wrote afterwards.

[79:01]

Later on in, in his other masterwork beside Shogo Genzo called Eihei Kōroku, which Shōhaku Okamura and I translated as Dōgen's extensive record. There's mostly these very small talks in there where Dōgen says a little bit and then there's some conversation. But in part of the Ehekoroko Dogen's extensive record, there's a whole series of verses by Dogen. And one of them, so this is much later in his life, Dogen says, sitting as the night gets late, sleep not yet arrived, evermore I realize engaging the way is best in mountain forests. So I live in a city, but some of you get to see mountain forests. Sitting as the night and this was written when he was up at a hazy way up in the mountains, very remote mountains. Sitting as the night gets late, sleep not yet arrived.

[80:07]

Evermore I realized engaging the way is best in mountains forests. Sound of valley streams enters my ears. Moonlight pierces my eyes. Other than this, not a thought in my mind. So here Dogen is quoting from Tsudonpo's verse that inspired Kesei Sanshoku. But in the essay, you know, the sound of the streams and the shapes of the mountain provide a sudden awakening for Tsudonpo. But in this verse, Dogen is describing a settled practice place up in the mountains near Eheji. and a sustained sitting practice in which awakening mountain forms and the sounds of valley streams are ever present as ongoing inspirations. So it's not just a one-time jolt, it's the sounds of the valley streams and the forms of the mountain are kind of an omnipresent inspiration for ongoing practice.

[81:18]

So that's the beginning of the Shogoganzo essay, Kesei Sanshoku. He goes on from there to tell stories about awakening amid mountains and waters after he talks about Suganso's poem. And he tells two stories about disciples of Guishan, who I mentioned, in terms of Dongshans asking about this issue of non-sentient beings. So some of you have heard these stories, but one of them is about a teacher named Xiangyan, Kyogen in Japanese. So the story is that Xiangyan was very knowledgeable. He was very well-read, it's well-known. He would say something, but his teacher asked him, would he please say something from before his parents were born? So Guishan is asking Shangyan, please say something from before your parents were born.

[82:24]

And Shangyan was struck speechless. He couldn't think of anything to say. He consulted his large collection of sutras and Buddhist commentaries. But there was nothing there to help. He wasn't able to respond at all, despite all of his books. So Shangyan took all of his books out into the yard and burned them all. Now, I'm not advocating book burning, but anyway. He said then, a painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger. So there's another Dogen essay by that called A Painting of a Rice Cake. And so I'm gonna digress here before I come back to Xiangyan and what happened with him. It's one of, to me, one of the most memorable essays in Shōbō Genzo, Gabio, A Painting of a Rice Cake from 1242.

[83:29]

And it's based on the story of Xiangyan And it's wonderful, there's a good translation of it in Lunar Nidudrop by Kastanahashi. Dogen starts off by saying, with this saying by Shon-yan about the painted rice cakes not satisfying hunger, which of course implies that these sutras and commentaries were just paintings of the Dharma, they weren't the real thing. So a painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger. But then Dogen plays with this. And, you know, with his wordplay and anyway, he ends up saying that a painted rice cake is the moment of realization. Eternally turning inside out the saying's original meaning. He has many more utterances about painted rice cakes. He says, for painting rice cakes, rice flour is used.

[84:31]

A painting of mountains is made with rocks and trees. A painting of a person is made from the four great elements in the five skandhas. All Buddhas are painted Buddhas and all painted Buddhas are actual Buddhas. So is the painted environment the real environment? How do we see beyond our ideas? Okay. All painted Buddhas are actual Buddhas. The entire phenomenal universe and the empty sky is nothing more than a painting. Dogen ends up at the end of this essay saying, there's no remedy for satisfying hunger other than a painted rice cake. With painted hunger, you never be, without painted hunger, you never become a true person. There is no understanding than painted satisfaction. So that's Dogen's comment on the saying a painting of rice cake does not satisfy hunger that Xiangyan had when he couldn't figure out what to say from before his parents were born.

[85:42]

But the story continues. Xiangyan you know, spent some time still with Guishan as a serving monk, just serving oyoki meals. He gave up his studying. And then after a while, he just left and went to the, to the home, to the memorial site for the national teacher, Nanyang, who had first said this thing about non-sensual beings expressing the Dharma, grasses and walls, tiles and pebbles. that inspired, you know, Dongshan's inquiries. And Xiangyan went there and became a groundskeeper. He just kind of took care of the, he was a maintenance worker. So the story continues. One day Xiangyan was sweeping the ground in a bamboo grove at this memorial site of a national teacher, Nanyang, and he swept up a pebble.

[86:46]

And the pebble knocked against some bamboo. So remember, Dogen talked about pebbles. When he heard this sudden sound, Xiangyan was awakened. He faced the direction towards Guishan, his teacher, and made offerings and did prostrations. Xiangyan wrote a verse that Guishan later approved. which includes the line, with one blow subject and object vanish. I no longer practice to solve things on my own. In all my activities, I celebrate the ancient path and do not fall into passivity. This is a great verse. With one blow subject and object vanish. You know, we think of everything out there, the environment. Remember, Dogen said that when one person sits expressing Buddha mudra with their whole body and mind, everything out there, all space awakens.

[87:55]

But Xiangyan said, with one blow, with that sound of the pebble hitting bamboo, subject and object vanish. There's no separation between himself and all of space. I no longer practice to solve things on my own. So this is particularly a problem, I think, for Western Zen students. We've been trained to figure things out, to use our wonderful intellect to, you know, it's like people trying to figure out these, these wonderful teaching stories, like as if you could solve them. The point is not to, uh, solve things or figure out things. I would say it's more to play with them anyway, to enjoy them. The verse goes on, in all my activities, I celebrate the ancient path. So Zazen is about celebrating Zazen. period, and do not fall into passivity.

[89:00]

So Shangyan's awakening triggered by the pebble and bamboo led to enhanced active devotion to the ancient way, going beyond passivity, going beyond just, you know, oh, I don't know, or just settling anyway. So that's the story about Shangyan. The essay, Keisei Sanshoku, The Sound of the Valley Streams, The Mountains, The Shape of the Mountains by Dogen continues with another story of another student of Guishan named Lingyun or Reiyun in Japanese. So he had practiced for 30 years once he was traveling in the mountains and Lingyun rested and then got up and saw in the distance, peach blossoms opening. He was suddenly awakened and wrote this verse, which he later presented to Guishan. For 30 years, I sought a swordsman, how many times leaves fell and new ones sprouted.

[90:09]

Once seeing the peach blossoms, nothing more to doubt. So he went beyond trying to figure out or trying to, you know, battle with his ideas or other ideas. Guixiang said about this verse that those who enter through conditions like the pebble and the bamboo never regress. Dogen comments rhetorically, does anyone enter except through conditions? Does anyone ever regress? So Dogen implies that all awakening is through our interaction with the natural landscape, the world around us, the world of phenomena. So after these two stories of disciples of Guishan, Dogen provides a brief exchange with Changsha, who was lived in the 700s, Chosa in Japanese.

[91:22]

And Changsha was asked by a monk, how does one return the mountains, rivers, and the great earth to oneself? Changsha responded, How does one return oneself to the mountains, rivers, and the great earth? So that's a wonderful question. How do we bring ourselves to the mountains, the rivers, the great earth, the natural landscape, which includes, of course, fences and walls? Dogen here reaffirms and emphasizes the intimate relationship between people and the whole natural environment. Changsha had, moreover, emphasized the need for the practitioner to actively engage that relationship with the phenomenal world. You know, you might think that engaged Buddhism is new, but here they were talking about it back then.

[92:26]

How do we actively engage with the environment? So these stories point to the importance of the natural phenomenal world as a focus and trigger of awakening. However, one of the most influential early commentaries in Soto Zen on the Shobo Genzo is by the fifth Abbot of Eheji, Gion, who was born the year Dogen died in 1253 and lived till 1333. He wrote a whole long commentary on the 60-verse version of the Shobo Genzo. Stephen Hine has translated this commentary. Flowers on a Wizard Tree or something like that. He's translated all the eons, this Fifth Abbot of Ehege, four-line verses of Shogokenzo, commenting on Shogokenzo essays and giving other comments that later teachers made on those verses.

[93:32]

So, let me find this. So Gion's verse on kese sanshoku directly echoes Tsudonpo's verse, but begins with the capping phrase, transcends seeing and surpasses hearing. So again, going beyond our conventional ideas and ways of seeing and hearing, beyond our perception. This resonates, of course, with Dogen's early teaching of the self-fulfillment samadhi. So we're kind of at an interim point and I want to have some discussion now and you can ask questions in the chat box. But the second part of this seminar today is about devotional practice or faith and how that's part of our practice.

[94:43]

So in the essay, Keisei Sanshoku, The Sound of the Stream is the Shape of the Mountains, Dogen goes on to speak about, oh, well, first he speaks about contemporary practitioners in Japan, and he warns the Japanese practitioners of serious dangers of seeking fame and gain. But in the middle of these are Dogen's expressions of the importance of vow, of faith, of repentance even, and confession. So in this essay, Dogen shifts from this discussion of the mountains and waters and their awakening capacity. So this is in some ways the response to my question about the self-fulfillment Samadhi, where Dogen says when one person sits fully expressing Buddha mudra with their whole body and mind all space awakens.

[95:49]

What does that mean? How does that happen? And Dogen says something about that here. He's talking about you know, the problems for practitioners, for contemporary practitioners in Japan. But in the middle of that, he has the text of Heihei Kōsuho Tsuganma, it's embedded. So we're going to talk about that. We'll have a break first, and I'm not sure whether we should have, maybe we could do both. We could have some questions now about everything that I've been talking about. But then after that, and after a little break after that, we will talk about this text, Ehekosahotsaganma, Dogen's Words on Arousing the Vow, which is a one-page text.

[96:51]

Joshua, do you ever chant that in Chapel Hill? I can't hear you, sorry. Excuse me. No, we don't. We chant the GGU Samai, but not the Ehe Kosu Kotsu Ganmon. Okay, well, this is an introduction to that. And it's a strange text to most Western Zen people, because it's all about faith. and repentance and confession. So we're going to study it coming up because it's part of this essay of the Keisei Sanshoku. It's in there and it's a whole genre, the Hotsugan one, so I'm going to talk about it as a genre also, as well as talking about how it appears in in Keisei Sanshoku. But let's pause now and have some Q&A.

[97:56]

So if you have questions or comments or responses, let's take some time to work with those. So, Wade, are you there? Yes, I am. We have a couple in the chat, some some older ones from as you've been talking. Maybe we can work through those. Okay. So yeah, go back to the, you know, about any, about anything I've been talking about. Yeah. So Matt straight asks, my understanding is that the mountains and water sutra was given by Dogen after midnight to his monks. Can you speak to how meditation darkness and other quote unquote magical aspects help us to see a deeper, less common relationship to the environment? And actually, Marsha put a response in the chat to that question, which says, because it becomes monochromatic and details merge. So maybe you can address both of those. Yeah, well, I'd forgotten about the mountains and water sutra being spoken at midnight.

[99:01]

But you used the word magic. So first, I want to say something about that. Magic is what we don't understand. And magicians have tricks that, you know, they perform that seem like amazing to us. But, you know, if you, if, if the magician, so I'm talking about just human magicians, you know, circus performers, whatever, once they show how they perform that trick, then it's not magic anymore. So they don't like to show that, show their secrets. So, but, but Suzuki Roshi once said, I've heard that the world is its own magic. So maybe it's good that we don't understand everything. Or maybe it's just the way things are that we can't understand everything. So things happen and we think they're magic. For me in my life, I thought it's happened in terms of coincidences where something happens that's kind of miraculous, I would think.

[100:06]

But it's just, it's coincidence. And maybe those are the world showing its own magic. Anyway. That's an interesting word. Going back to the question about the Mountains and Water Sutra coming forth in the middle of the night, this relates to a text that Suzuki Roshi commented on a lot called the Sando Kai. we translate it as the harmony of difference and sameness. And this relates very much to Dongshan's five ranks or five degrees that I'll do another seminar on. But there's this interplay. So there was a question about the interplay of mountains and waters. We could see that as the interplay of form and emptiness. we could see that as the interplay of light and dark or day and night. And I'm not sure which is which, but in the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, Shuto Sekito Kisen, who was the teacher of Yaoshan and the grandfather of Yunyan, who I mentioned, who was Dongshan's teacher.

[101:16]

Anyway, he talks about light and dark and in light, we can see all the various things. So all the phenomenal world becomes apparent in light. We can see differences. I can see each of you with your name in each different box. If the screen went blank and black, everything would be together and merged. So in the night, in the dark, all things are interwoven, inter-one. So this interplay of mountains and waters, we might see as, as a parallel to the interplay of light and dark, which is parallel to the interplay of the phenomenal world, the world of the particulars that we can see in the light and the world of ultimate, the ultimate universal awareness, which

[102:19]

is in the dark. We can't, we don't, you know, but it, but right in, what is the line from, from Hasandakai? Right in light there is darkness, but don't see it as darkness. Right in darkness there is light. Don't, don't make it light. So, so yeah, part of the basic dialectic, which sometimes, you know, there are various ways of talking about it, including, you know, well, the absolute and relative sometimes, the ultimate and the particular, but they relate to this light and dark. So I don't know if that responds to your question, Matt. Yeah, I think so. I just know the first time I read the Mountains and Water Sutra, I didn't get anything out of it. I'm like, what is this craziness? And then I thought, if it's delivered at one in the morning, maybe it would make more sense at one in the morning, you know. Yeah, I, you know, the thing about Dogen, so I'm going to come back to this when I talk about the Hotsuganmon genre, but the thing about Shobogenzo, which in Mountains and Water Sutra is part of, is that Dogen was rewriting these essays throughout his life.

[103:35]

And there are lots and lots of different versions. And nowadays we have this 95 essay version of Shobo Genzo, which we take as, you know, the ultimate, but actually some of those essays were not originally included in Shobo Genzo. So I was referring to Gion talking about the, commenting on the 60 verse version, Stephen Hine has written a lot about these different versions of Shobo Genzo. And it's something that, you know, when most Americans and people first encountered Shobo Genzo, we thought it was one thing, but actually there are different versions of a lot of these essays. And they're still discovering more of them in attics of Soto temples back in the rural areas of Japan. So these essays were spoken by Dogen, compiled by some of his disciples, and then were copied over the years by other different Soto Zen people.

[104:39]

And so anyway, there's a whole long, complicated lineage of these Shobogenzo texts. So he may have spoken the initial version at midnight at Eheji, but we don't really know all the steps in the revisions, but he may have revised parts of it. So anyway, it's this kind of living, it's actually a living document. Other comments or questions, Wade? Yes, quite a number. Since we're on the topic, I'm going to go a little bit out of order. That's fine. Florence Kaplow is asking, I'm wondering why any Dharma talk would happen at or after midnight? It must have been significant because most of them don't have a time listed. Yeah, I forget about that. I'm not sure. But there were certain genres of talks that were given at particular times.

[105:42]

There were the Shosan, which were literally little talks, but they were given in the evening, traditionally. the little formal dharma talks, dharma hall discourses, we call them in Dogen's extensive record from Ehe Koroku, some of them were given at particular times. But anyway, as I said, Shobo Genzo has been, was revised, at least some of the essays were revised many times, so. Mora has, well, two questions, but they're related, so I'll read them together. Regarding Su Dongpo's question, maybe the question is about our assumption that we say things only in language. To speak as streams and mountains do, we have to use our whole body, our zazen and practice. And then later she wrote, I'm wondering if Dogen is suggesting that we should enlarge our notion of walking, speaking, et cetera.

[106:48]

They are anthropomorphic and anthropocentric terms, but mountain streams would have their own way of being, giving birth, dancing, et cetera. I'm reminded of the phenomenal expression of wood and ash from Ginjo Koan. Yeah. So what we think of as walking is just one way of talking about walking. Yes, so I agree. You know, there's, we have to expand our, part of what Zazen does is it opens our minds. And sometimes this happens suddenly and sometimes it happens very gradually over a long time, but it gives us different perspectives. And yeah, so what is walking? What are sounds? I sometimes suggest to my students that they, if their mind is distracted, or just in general, during zazen, to just focus on ambient sound.

[107:50]

Just to feel with their eyes on the wall, the sounds around. So yeah, our idea of our perception, our ideas are limited and that's okay. It's not that we should get rid of them all, but to be aware that what we think of as sound or sight is just some limited description. So thank you. Other questions or comments? Anne McQuarrie asks, is it possible to recognize the consciousness of the natural world we live in? I'm sorry, is it possible to recognize the consciousness of the natural world when we live so separately from it? Well, we think we live separately from it. we're actually totally engrossed in the natural world.

[108:57]

Even if we're living in a, in a, in a room, in a house with a box like, and with a ceiling and a floor, we are the natural world. The natural world includes the bacteria and so forth in our body. That we're not something separate from the natural world. That's part of, that's kind of the main point. that, you know, I mean, yes, we think of self and subject and object, self and other as separate. That's built into our language, maybe built into human consciousness. we have subject, verb, object. So there's objects out there that we can verb, we can take advantage of, you know, we can, if we think they're just dead objects. Part of the point of all this is that there's no such thing as dead objects.

[110:00]

There's no such thing as non-sentient beings in terms of the way Dogen is talking about. There's no such thing as a non-conscious being. It's just beings whose consciousness, whose awareness, whose reality we denigrate because they're not like human intelligence. So yes, now there's an advantage, as Doken points out in that poem about being out in the mountains and forests. There are advantages to going out for a walk in the woods or in some natural place. We feel that naturalness, whatever, maybe more. But we're not separate. And does that help? Thank you. Wade, some others?

[111:02]

Yes. Joe asks, does space awaken or do we awaken to space or both? Sure. Space awakens us. We awaken space. Space awakens about who we are. We awaken to what space is. All of this is the Buddha work. How do we recognize? And of course, I'm saying this as if it's some kind of philosophical thing. There are implications of this to, and I'm interested in hearing your comments on that too, how do we respond to climate destruction? How do we respond to you know, what's happening to our environment and mass extinctions. I think, so I'm not gonna make statements about that in this seminar. I'm just presenting, giving you what Dogen is saying, but I think it's worth looking at this in terms of what is the Buddha work about taking care of our environment.

[112:14]

Part of that in practice places, In monasteries, most clearly, my practice place in Chicago is non-residential, and now it's just all Zoom, because we lost our space. But when you have a space where you practice a zendo or a monastery, a large part of the practice is taking care of that space, cleaning, arranging. And this is a model for how do we take care of the world? So again, I'm gonna invoke Gary Snyder. I hadn't intended, but maybe because Laurel's here, I'm thinking of him. Anyway, Gary Snyder says, Zen practice comes down to zazen and cleaning the temple. And it's up to you to see how wide is the temple. So some of us are concerned about you know, about climate damage, about extinction, about the threats to democracy now, and so forth and so on.

[113:22]

That all can be seen as part of the Buddha work. So other comments or questions, Wade? Yeah, we have two more in the chat currently, and then perhaps we can take a break. Does that sound good, Tegan? Sure. Eric asks, is Taoism related to the fact that insentient beings are Buddha nature? Everything is related to the fact that insentient beings are Buddha nature, but Taoism is a wonderful resource for Zen particularly. This can go, I could give a very long answer to this. I'll try not to, but the teachings in Taoism are wonderful and they're kind of the background of East Asian Buddhism and the whole, you know, all of the landscape painting and nature poetry and all of that that's so much a part of Zen is indebted to Daoism.

[114:26]

So yeah, of course, Taoism has a lot to offer us. I'd say there's a difference between Taoism and Buddhism, though. One way to say something about that, and this is not to put down Taoism or Buddhism, or any other ism. But Taoism is more aimed at harmony with nature, and also at longevity, you know, that became a thing in Taoism. And longevity has its place, as Dr. King said, the night before he was killed. Buddhism is more about I don't want to use soteriology to use a technical term about saving or awakening or liberating beings. So there's a little bit of a difference there, but yeah, they're very much related. I'm not sure what the, I forget what the actual original question was. Hey, to me, that sounds like an answer to it.

[115:33]

Okay. But I could go into a whole rap about how Zen is Confucian Buddhism too, but maybe that's for another time. So another question about Buddha nature, this is from Brian Taylor, he says He says, we associate Buddha nature with beauty inspired by the aliveness of the natural world. Some include insensitive objects like fences, walls, and tiles, and we picture quaint, wabi-sabi versions of these things. But does the aliveness and interdependence of the material world also include, quote-unquote, ugly man-made objects like plastic bags floating in the ocean? If so, how do they carry out Buddha work? Yes, they do carry out Buddha work. And how is a big question. I think I mentioned this movie, Fantastic Fungi. I know I talked about it this morning, but there are funguses now that can break down oil from oil spills, and they can break down plastic, and this is wonderful.

[116:45]

But yeah, the world's in a mess. But from some point of view that is beyond me, all of these problems, all of even the cruelty in the world, which is so obvious in our society and the systemic racism and so on and so on, all of that is Buddha nature, is part of the Buddha work. And how it inspires us to work on these things might be part of that. So I'll say something else more that's actually more maybe appropriate to when I talk about Dongshan, who wrote a whole poem about the dharma of suchness. So I was recently studying the awakening of Mahayana faith, which is an early Chinese Mahayana Buddhist text.

[117:46]

not a sutra, cause it doesn't come from India, but anyway, it talks about four refuges. So you probably all know about taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. So some of my students have heard this before, but anyway, in this text, it talks about four faiths and faith. And we're going to be talking about faith after the break and Dogen's teachings about faith. But in this text, it talks about four, really four refuges, it's called some faiths, but the second, third and fourth are Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The first one is to take refuge in suchness, in reality, in what is. So, you know, all the problems of climate destruction and so forth and mass extinction. It's possible that human beings will go extinct.

[118:50]

I don't think so, but I, you know, I don't know. But it's all reality. How do we respond? It's not that we just sit back and look at reality out there. It's not subject-object separation. We are reality. We are climate destruction. How do we respond? This is the Buddha work. How do we respond to all of suchness, including plastic bags in the ocean? That's the Buddha work. And that's what we take refuge in. Just what is, according to this text. That's difficult, but it's, but it's important that it's us. And it's not about just sitting back and enjoying the wonders of nature. We are part of nature.

[119:51]

It's we, we have a responsibility to each other and our Sanghas and ourselves and the whole world. Any more comments or questions, Wade? John Boyd had a response that said, the plastic bags floating in the ocean connect us to the turtles that eat the bags. Poor turtles. OK. Is that it? Yes, that is. OK. So let's take a break. What time is it? 3.03. And we're going, what time we're going to? 4.30. Oh. So we're going to have more time for discussion and questions at the end. And I hope that you will have more questions and comments. But we're going to take a little break. And then we're going to come back and find and explore Dogen's teaching about faith and devotion, which is also part of Kese Sanshoku.

[120:53]

So let's take 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Any suggestions? Well, let's take 10 minutes plus, and when everybody's back, we'll start again. It's five after three now, according to my watch. Thank you all very much. Taigan, what was the name of the teaching of the four refuges that you were referring to? Well, it's just a part of a text called Mahayana Awakening of Faith, which is attributed to an Indian teaching in Ashwa Gosha. There's a new translation of it, and there's an old translation from the 60s by Yoshida Hakeda. Anyway, it's a short text, but it's very interesting. Thank you. Anne was asking. Okay, okay, time for a break. So we're still waiting for people to show up, which is fine.

[121:57]

But if anybody just wants to blurt out a question or a comment or whatever, informally, please go ahead. Florence Kaplan did ask, what the translator's name was for the new translation of Awakening of Faith. Tygan, are you familiar? Tygan, can you hear me now?

[123:25]

No. Perhaps write a note and hold it up to the screen. Yeah, I did just, I did just. Well, it looks like most of you are mostly back. Tygan? Wade? Oops, oh. Can you hear me now? Yes. More importantly, can you hear us? Now I can. Did I miss something? Did somebody ask a question? Yeah. Florence Kappler was asking about the new translation of Awakening of Faith. Joshua Pat Phelan is wondering if it's by Jorgensen, Lastaus, Maycomb, et cetera. Yes, Jorgensen, it's from, oh, I forget the publisher. I could go in the other room and get it, but yes, Jorgensen and Lastaus, oh, yes.

[124:31]

Who's the publisher, Pat? Oh, I think it's Oxford University Press. Okay, yeah, so that's, it's a cute little book, but it has, there's just this one little section where it talks about these four, it calls them four faiths, but it's four refuges. So it's Awakening to the Mahayana, Awakening to Mahayana Faith. It's a very traditional, early Chinese Buddhist text, very, Joshua is holding it up, yes. It's a very important text in Chinese Buddhism to many different schools. but it's very early in Chinese Buddhism. Um, and it's not, it's, it's from China, not India. Um, anyway, um, were there other questions I missed? Cause I was, didn't have my earphones in. No, that was the only one that I saw. Okay. So, um, just, um, coming back from the intermission, um, Yeah, one thing that I should say is that the ones I mentioned are not the only texts in which Dogen talks about the quote-unquote natural world, about mountains and waters, or, you know, there are many, many, many other places where he talks about this.

[125:54]

But I picked these as kind of central, I think, and again, with the question posed by the Self-Fulfillment Samadhi, you know, what does it mean? How does the Buddha work happen where this mutual incomprehensible influence between the practitioner and all of space and all of it and the walls and tiles and grasses and trees and stuff. How does that, what does that mean? How does that work? So that's kind of, again, I've been working with that question or sitting with that question for 40 years or more, but anyway. So just to, again, to say that there are many other places in his poetry and lots of other places where Dogen talks about the natural world. So I'm just pulling out a few key places. And yeah, what I want to talk about next is the true mind and body of faith.

[127:01]

What does faith mean for Dogen and devotional practices? And so we're going to look at this text which seems to be embedded almost all of that text, which is a part of the liturgy of Japanese Soto Zen, is in this essay, Keisei Sanshoku, The Sound of the Streams and the Shape of the Mountains. Um, but actually before we do any of that, I want to just ask if anybody else has any questions remaining or leftover or that ever risen, um, about, um, mountains and waters or about, uh, or about anything I was talking about in the first part about, uh, the natural world or the so-called natural world. You can put them in the chat if so. Wait seems to have disappeared.

[128:10]

Are you there? No, I'm here. There's nothing in the chat. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, I'm putting something in the chat. Okay. During the break, I saw that there's a petition about the, there's a proposal to replace the indoor garden space at Navy Pier, which has been free to like destroy all the plants that are there and to replace it with a paid digital experience. And, you know, given what we've been talking about, I thought people might be interested to hear that. Yeah, Eve, so could you put the link in the chat for people? Yeah, I'm sending it to Wade and I guess he can send it now. Okay, well this is only for people in Chicago because Navy Pier is a kind of I don't know, I think of it as a tourist place, but it's... Well, so that's people outside.

[129:12]

So for people who live in Chicago, and for those of you from Michigan, I see, and now North Carolina, of course, and anyway, people from, there are many people from distant places here. Santa Cruz. Anyway, if you ever come to Chicago, you might go to Navy Pier, although You know, I've been there a few times. Anyway, so please share that with Wade and he can send that out. Minnesota, I see Minnesota here. Okay. So I want to talk about Keisei Sanshoku, the sound of the streams, the shape of mountains, and how that after the stories about awakening, awakening with the circumstances of nature, like a pebble hitting bamboo or seeing peach blossoms on a distant mountain or, you know, that Dogen shifts this.

[130:22]

And actually, I'll say something more about that. In a way, those stories are a response to how does the environment, what the mutual influence. So those stories are examples of how the natural world fosters awakening, as it fostered awakening in those students of Guixiang, Changyang, and the guys of the Peach Blossoms. In some ways that's part of a response. And the whole issue of how we see reality and what is that, and what is our practice about that? And I think there's lots of ways to practice with it, but this is what Dogen is offering. So I don't necessarily agree with every word that Dogen said. even though I've written books about him and translated a whole bunch of stuff.

[131:24]

And, you know, part of what Zen and Buddhism is, is that it's alive. just as the mountains and forests are alive. Uh, this practice is alive, hopefully it looks like it from everybody here. And, uh, and, uh, and the Buddha work is to keep it going for people in the future. That's, that's another way of saying what the Buddha work is. Um, so, uh, I'm gonna, uh, dive into this next part, and we will have time for more questions at the end. So please, you know, any comments or questions or responses. Maybe everything I've said just seems, of course, you know, reasonable, because you've all practiced Zazen so much, but it should be a little bit shocking, some of it. Anyway, okay.

[132:28]

Okay, so the second portion of the Keisei Sanshoku essay proceeds by affirming that thanks to the virtue of the sounds of the valley streams and the colors of the mountains, and Dogen uses a word that can be translated as virtue. Excuse me. The great earth and all sentient beings, therefore, simultaneously attain the way and countless Buddhas awaken upon seeing the morning star. So he's saying here that as it was for Sutongpo, the sounds of the valley streams, the colors of the mountains, thanks to them, due to them, because of them, thanks to their kindness, the great earth and all sentient beings, that includes each of us, simultaneously attain the way and countless Buddhas awaken.

[133:47]

So this is clearly not a matter of merely personal liberation. This is not just a self-help practice. I mean, it might include that. And through the rest of the essay, Dogen, at least as it starts to proceed, strongly warns against concern about fame and gain. caring about reputation and trying to, to, you know, gain more material stuff or gain more approval or whatever is, is an obstruction to the Buddha way. He also, again, talks, talks more about how, how, how primitive the people of Japan are, who he's talking to, and how much they don't understand, and how far away they are from the Buddha and all that.

[134:57]

But then Dogon introduces encouragements to arouse the vow to aspire for awakening. Bodhicitta, someone's referred to. So, and the rest of the case is Sancho Coese intersperses warnings against practice aimed at seeking personal gain with devotional encouragements for arousing the vow, confessing the patterns of misguided unwholesome karma that we each have and arousing faith. So I think there are, you know, there's some people who don't think of this as a faith practice. Well, I think, you know, to show up on your seat in a zendo requires some, well, we could call it faith. And interspersed in all of this is this text, Heikosu Wotsuganmon, which is a formerly part of Soto Zen liturgy in Japan.

[136:06]

I will, we will, I'll stream, we'll screen share that in a bit. And I think Wade sent that out to many of you. And it's, so what reading this Kese Sanshoku and knowing Ehe Koso Utsugama literally means great ancestor Ehe, that is Dogen's words on a rousing vow. And excuse me, seeing most of that text, if not all, interspersed in Keisei Sanshoku, one would likely think that it's pulled out of or taken from a Keisei Sanshoku shogu, again. So I've had a few discussions with Will Botterford, who's a great scholar of Soto Zen and of the texts thereof. He's not sure whether, which came first.

[137:13]

And again, there's this issue of Shobo Genzo being constructed, being edited by Dogen, and maybe by others over time. So he thought that maybe Hotsuganman came first and then he added it in to this text, Keisei Sanjoku. Anyway, this is an issue for academic scholars, but just to mention that. And also, there is a whole body of texts called Hotsuganman. It goes back to China. Many of Dogen's students wrote things called Hotsuganman. So I'll get to that later. What's a good one as a genre? Okay, but Dogen says in the text, together with all sentient beings, may I hear the true Dharma from this birth throughout future births. In keeping with contemporary, unquote, in keeping with contemporary Buddhist cosmology, Dogen's vow applies to his concern for ensuring his beneficial activity in whatever future realms he is born into.

[138:27]

So this teaching of rebirth, which is in some ways essential to Asian Buddhism and is dismissed by parts of modern American Buddhism, is part of this text. Dogen continues, when I hear the true Dharma, I will not doubt or distrust it, When I encounter the true Dharma, I will relinquish ordinary affairs and uphold the Buddha Dharma. So, uh, some of you may remember that there's one of perhaps Dogen's first writing, Fukan Zazengi, instructions for general instructions for Zazen. He said, he says, put aside worldly affairs. And one can understand that as just when you go into the Zen do and sit down, you know, don't think about worldly affairs, don't judge right and wrong. Don't, you know, just give up, just let that go. Here he says, when I hear the true dharma, I will not doubt or distrust it.

[139:34]

When I encounter the true dharma, true teaching, the truth of reality, I will relinquish ordinary affairs and uphold the Buddha dharma. Thus, may I realize the way together with the great earth and all sentient beings, unquote. Oh, that part is in the Heikosogon. e he ko su ho tsuganmon, then he also says in Keisei Sanshoku, this vow is the ground for genuine aspiration. Do not slacken in this determination. So again, he ko tsuganmon is not verbatim connected in Keisei Sanshoku, but all of it is there. Okay. So Dogen is emphasizing a vow that includes all beings and extends throughout all time, clearly. Immediately thereafter, in this text, Dogen notes that Japan is a remote country and Japanese people are extremely ignorant.

[140:42]

And he talks about this because of Japan's distance from India. So I don't know, some Americans and people might say, We're even further away from India and Japan and remote in time. And Americans are extremely ignorant. Well, anyway, I'm not saying that necessarily. Dogen warns those who aspire to the way and to awakening to keep their practice private, not to seek praise for their practice. And he gives various examples going back to the time of Shakyamuni Buddha in India of people who sought praise or rewards for their practice. Dogen described seeking fame and gain by practitioners as a disease. He recommends instead the admirable aspiration to seek the way joyfully. So he talks about enjoying the way, enjoying our aspiration to

[141:49]

practice fully. That's kind of cool. Oh, and then he goes into a whole thing about Bodhidharma, the legendary founder of Chan in China, and these other teachers who were there who attacked Bodhidharma like wild animals. So he says that the merits, the virtues of practice may lead to worldly power. Somehow I just thought of Steve Jobs. Anyway, most of the rest of Keisai Sanshaku talks about devotional practice. The text proceeds, quote, endeavor wholeheartedly to follow the path of earlier stages. You may have to climb mountains and cross oceans When you look for a teacher to inquire about the way, look for a teacher and search for understanding with all encompassing effort as they come down from the heavens to emerge or emerge from the earth.

[143:09]

When you encounter the teacher, as they invoke sentient beings, as well as non-sentient beings, hear them with the body, listen with the mind. To hear with the ear is an everyday matter, but to hear with the eye or with your whole body is not always so. When you see Buddha, you see self Buddha and other Buddha, large Buddha or small Buddha. Do not be frightened by a large Buddha. Do not be contemptuous of a small Buddha. Just see large and small Buddhas as valley sounds and mountain colors, as the broad long tongue and as the 84,000 verses.

[144:14]

This is liberation. This is complete seeing. And earlier Buddha said, quote, it covers heaven and encompasses the earth. So this is, this is Dogen's encouragement in case they sound shocking. Um, and you know, he, when he talks about searching for a teacher and, um, you know, crossing mountains and rivers to find other teachers. And, you know, we have this strain, you know, this wonderful, I don't know, maybe it's too easy, but we have, you know, these Zoom platforms. And, you know, you can go hear talks by teachers in California or North Carolina or New York or even Chicago. And, you know, so maybe it's too easy for us to hear teachers. I don't know. Maybe it's just wonderful. But, you know, this pattern of looking around and listening to various teachers, that happens in America now.

[145:17]

And it happened in China. and it happened in Japan. And in China and Japan, they didn't have internet, they didn't have, you know, lots of things, but they would actually walk across mountains and rivers to go to another temple to hear somebody else. So anyway, this is interesting and I think encouraging. Dogen says, and Dogen can be very poetic, he says, this is the purity of spring pines and magnificent autumn chrysanthemums. So he's emphasizing the role of a good teacher and compares their function to the seasonal splendors of the natural world. So the practice itself is, you know, part of the natural world, teachers and students and so forth. So he goes on to say that those who are lazier and sincere should earnestly repent before the Buddhas.

[146:31]

And then he says, quote, doing so the power of repentance will rescue and purify you. This power will nurture faith and effort. And will nurture, I'm sorry, will nurture faith and effort free from hindrance. Once pure faith emerges, self and others are simultaneously transformed. So this whole issue of subject and object and thinking that the world out there is a world of nature we can exploit and so forth. This benefit, he says, reaches both sentient and non-sentient beings. Repenting, one declares, quote, although my past unwholesome actions have accumulated, causing hindrance in the study of the way, may Buddhas and ancestors release me from the burden of these actions and liberate me. And this is actually part of the Heikosu Hotsuganman text. He goes on, may the merit of practicing Dharma fill inexhaustible phenomenal worlds and may compassion be extended to me.

[147:39]

So this is calling to the Buddhists and ancestors for support. So this is devotional practice here that Dogen is adding to his discussion of the mountains and the mountain streams and the shapes of the mountains, the colors of the mountains. So he says, so he says, may the merit of practicing Dharma fill the inexhaustible phenomenal worlds and may compassion be extended to me. So he's invoking Buddhas and ancestors for support, but so we have to talk here about faith, the word faith. Dogen's faith is not merely belief in some external entities, but confidence in the possibilities of awakening and universal liberation.

[148:45]

His repentance and confession are not about some fundamental sin or fruit or guilt, but of habitual karmic patterns that obstruct practical ability to foster awakening in self or others. So this is about practicing with karma. So the word faith, this is a problem in translation. So I use the word faith in some of my translations, but it has to be separated from the idea of faith that is common in the West, where faith is belief in something out there. Belief in some dogma, belief in some text, belief in some external deity. There are elements of that in some of Zen teachings about faith, but primarily this is about, I would use the word confidence or trust in something fundamental, like taking refuge in suchness itself.

[149:53]

So just to show up, just to show up for Zaza, just to show up when it's time to do your job in the Zendo or whatever, just to show up is faith, just to show up in your life. So I think that the character that is translated there is a person next to their word, and it's literally translated as faith, but it means something different from that English word, I think, or there's different overtones. We're talking about what is faith for Dogen here, and what does faith mean in Zen? If you look at textbooks, you'll see that Zen is supposed to be self-power, and Pure Land Buddhism, for example, which developed in the same period as Dogen, is other power. And so this is a common formulation in

[150:57]

and discussions of Buddhism of that period. There's self power, which relies on your own practice of Zazen or whatever, your own practices. And then there's other power where you rely on Amida Buddha in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism, but also in other Buddhas or Bodhisattvas. And you call on them for support. And in the textbooks, you'll see these very much distinguished I don't think of Soto Zen as self-power. I mean, we do go and sit in the Zendo for long periods and go to Seishin and exert ourselves. And that's not easy. So there's self-effort certainly involved. It's not, but there's also faith, confidence, trust, calling, and many, you know, the dedications after our services, we call on the Buddhism ancestors, and we name particular ancestors.

[152:07]

And, you know, we call on Buddhism bodhisattvas, but it's not like, oh, come save me. Although, you know, popularly, and this is complicated, in popular Asian Buddhism, Yeah, people do call on Buddhism, bodhisattvas, not just Pure Land people, just in general, popular Buddhism, you know, for help, for support. And I think that's a natural kind of activity for people in spiritual situations to ask for help. But I want to, you know, this thing about self-power and other power, I think there's other power in Dogen and Soto-sen, but there's also self-power. Anyway, that's a distinction that is mostly made in Pure Land Buddhism where there's this radical other power.

[153:08]

So one of the founders of Japanese, so this is an aside, but since we're talking about faith, one of the founders of Pure Land Buddhism one of the branches of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism, Jodo Shinshu. I actually teach at the Jodo Shinshu Seminary in Berkeley. Anyway, The founder was named Shinran, a very interesting guy. He practiced on Mount Hiei, which is where Dogen also practiced before he went searching for Zen and practiced with the only Zen teacher then and was down in Kyoto. Mount Hiei, where this temple is, where the where they practiced this up in the northeast corner of Kyoto. And I lived in the foothills for a couple of years of that temple, of that mountain. Anyway, Shinran was interesting because he had this radical humility. He thought he couldn't do anything without the help of Amida Buddha, who's one of the other many, many, many, many, many Buddhas in Mahayana teachings.

[154:15]

And the practice for people in that school was just to chant Namo Amida Buddha. We chant to Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and ancestors, but Shinran said he could not even chant Namo Amida Buddha, homage to Amida Buddha, without the help of Amida Buddha. Anyway, he was an interesting guy. That's an aside, but it has to do with this whole question of faith. How do we think of our practice or Zen practice or whatever as involving faith. What does that mean? So, okay. So this is a section of the Ehekosalotsokatman that I'll read again, which is actually part of, no, this is a section of Kese Sancho, which is actually also part of Ehekosalotsokatman. Although my past unwholesome actions or karma have accumulated causing hindrance in the study of the way.

[155:18]

May Buddhists and ancestors please release me from the burden of these actions. He doesn't say please, and liberate us. May the merit of practicing Dharma fill inexhaustible phenomenal worlds. May compassion be extended to me. So again, Dogen's faith is not merely belief in some external entities, but confidence in the possibilities of awakening and of universal liberation. And when we think of the natural world and mass extinction and climate destruction, maybe we don't think that the world can support us, but that's what he's talking about. So again, his repentance and confession are not about some fundamental sin or guilt. And that's, you know, where we think of faith.

[156:20]

But of habitual karmic patterns that obstruct practical ability to foster awakening in oneself or others. So part of Zazen, I think I referred to this before, is just to become intimate with one's own patterns of greed, hate, delusion, grasping of aversion, of confusion, and not to be caught by them. And it's not that our practice will get rid of all these patterns of lust or anger or confusion, delusion, but sometimes they do. But how do we not act in a way that is harmful based on these. How do we get to know ourselves so intimately that when this stuff comes up, we say, oh yeah, there's that. And we have a chance to respond in a more helpful way.

[157:21]

And then, and this is also a part of the Heikotsu Otsugamon, but I'm kind of talking about what's how he, what's laid out, excuse me, in Keisei Sanshoku. He reads, he recites a poem by Longya, who lived 835 to 923, a Japanese teacher, who said, if you did not attain awakening in the past, do so now. Liberate this body that is the culmination of many lifetimes. Before awakening, ancient Buddhas were like us. When awakened, we will be like those Buddhas of old." And then he says, this is the understanding of a realized Buddha. We should reflect on it. This is the exact point of a realized Buddha. With repentance, you will certainly receive invisible help from Buddha ancestors. confessed to the Buddhas with mind and body, with whole mind and body.

[158:31]

The power of repentance, excuse me, melts the roots of unwholesomeness. This is the single color of true practice, the true mind of faith, the true body of faith. So that's the ending of Ehekosahusranman, but it's also in Kse Sanksyako. So, good Zen people, you probably never thought that Zen had to do with confession or repentance, or maybe you didn't. But this is about acknowledging that we are all karmic beings. That's how, how we got here in this sense world. And so we all have these problems. I'm reminded Suzuki Roshi once said to his students, the problem that you have now, you will always have. With all due respect to Suzuki Roshi, I'm not sure I totally agree. Sometimes some of our problems do resolve, but then other people will come and give you their problems.

[159:39]

So here we are with some kind of stuff. So how are these encouragements of faith and repentance, how do they relate to the appreciation and connection to the natural landscape. It's in the first part of Keisei San Shoko. In his closing to this essay, after the material that's in the Ehekosa Utsuganma, which we're gonna look at more directly, Dogen says, when you have true practice, Then valley stream sounds and colors, mountain colors and sounds all reveal the 84,000 verses, the many verses that Sudongpo was looking for. When you are free from fame, profit, body and mind, the valley streams and mountains are also free and generous through the night.

[160:46]

This goes back to what Matt was saying about the mountains and water sutra in the night, because Su Dong Po, you know, saw this and spent the night with all these verses coming in. Through the night, the valley streams sounds and mountain colors do and do not actualize the 84,000 verses. When your capacity to talk about valley streams and mountains as valley streams and mountains is not yet mature. Who can see and hear you as valley stream sounds and mountain colors? That's the very ending of Kse Santra. So, perhaps more expected responses to the power of nature that is expressed in Tsongkhapa's verse, might be wonder and awe at the wonder and awesomeness of nature and of these valley streams and their capacity to help awaken us.

[162:03]

And I think that's part of our practicing faith, this wonder and awe. One might also anticipate a spiritual sense of deep gratitude to this experience. So I think gratitude is part of this too. I think of our Thanksgiving as a Buddhist holiday because it expresses gratitude and generosity anyway. Yeah. So Dongpo invokes a related sense of responsibility to share this awakening with others. So this is a, this is a fundamental, this is that which goes beyond passivity.

[163:10]

This is our, you know, the sense of responsibility to share. Um, in the transmissions, the Soto Zen transmission teachings, which a few of us here have been through, we're told to not let it be cut off. But I think this is also a Sangha question. How do we keep alive this practice? All of you are here because somehow, something inspired you to want to dive deeper into the teachings. So that so this responsibility can take various different forms, but how do we share awakening with others? So don't possess at some later time, how could I say anything about this? Xiangyan similarly seemed impelled by the pebble striking bamboo to devote himself more fully to sharing this awareness.

[164:16]

Again, Changsha asked, as Dogen says earlier in the essay, how does one return oneself to the mountains, rivers, and great earth? So this is invoking responsibility to share this practice, to take on whatever dharma position you're in, whatever situation you're in, in this life and in your sangha and in this world and in your practice, how do you take that on? Joyfully, as Dogon says earlier. Dogen examines the actual practices of sharing the awakening process with others. He emphasizes how self-aggrandizement hinders spreading of true practice. Deeply embedded karmic habits of seeking fame and gain are obstructions and require, along with clear awareness, repentance and confession.

[165:22]

So that's where they come in. To admit, to confess to being a human being. to repent of our karmic entanglements, which we all have. And so Dogen recommends calling on the ancestors, the awakened beings of the past for support. So Dogen's exhortation to repentance and devotion has actual practice instruction in response to, is an actual practice, practical instruction in response to Sudhankar's question, how to share this with others, how to share the mountain colors and the sounds of the stream. So Dogenix provides a link here between his,

[166:24]

own deep appreciation of our environmental landscape, which is, you know, part of Japanese culture and relates to its sources in Taoism, as was said, and devotional religious practices that support the awareness of interconnectedness and responsibility. So at this point, Wade, might you chant for us? On Zoom, we can't really chant aloud. Would you screen share? Would you be so kind as to actually chant it for us? Sure, I would be happy to, one moment, and I can pull that up. Eihei Koso Hotsuganmon We vow together with all beings from this life on throughout numerous lifetimes not to fail to hear the true Dharma.

[167:35]

Hearing this will not be skeptical and will not be without faith. Directly upon encountering the true Dharma, we will abandon mundane affairs and uphold and maintain the Buddha Dharma, and finally, together with the Great Earth and all animate beings, we will accomplish the Way. Although our previous evil karma has greatly accumulated, producing causes and conditions that obstruct the Way, may the Buddhas and ancestors who have attained the Buddha Way be compassionate to us and liberate us from our karmic entanglements, allowing us to practice the way without hindrance. May the merit and virtue of their Dharmagate fill and refresh the inexhaustible Dharma realm so that they share with us their compassion. Ancient Buddhas and ancestors were as we. We shall come to be Buddhas and ancestors, venerating Buddhas and ancestors. We are one with Buddhas and ancestors, contemplating awakening mind. We are one with awakened mind, compassionately admitting seven and accomplishing eight, obtains advantage and lets go of advantage.

[168:44]

Accordingly, Longya said, what in past lives was not yet complete now must be complete. In this life, save the body coming from accumulated lives. Before enlightenment, ancient Buddhas were the same as we. After enlightenment, we will be exactly as those ancient ones. Quietly studying and mastering these causes and conditions, one is fully informed by the verified Buddhas. With this kind of repentance certainly will come the inconceivable guidance of Buddha ancestors. Confessing to Buddha with mindful heart and dignified body, the strength of this confession will eradicate the roots of wrongdoing. This is the one color of true practice, of the true mind of faith, of the true body of faith. Thank you very much, Wade. So you can take that, the screen share down at this point. So the question is how is, you know, in Keisei Sanshoku specifically, Dogen is connecting appreciation of nature and the mountains and the rivers and all of that to this practice of devotion.

[170:01]

Repentance, confession, faith. So this is maybe not how any of us thought of Zen when we first came to Zen. But I think it's worth looking at. And I just wanted to say a little bit about the Hotsuganman as a genre. Because this Hotsuganman are words on arousing a vow, literally. It doesn't start with Dogen. There's some parts of some of the sutras where the phrase Hatsuganman comes up in relationship to Buddhas or Bodhisattvas. Buddhists such as Amitabha or Bodhisattvas such as Samantabhadra who talk, who have particular vows they talk about, but also there are historical masters who wrote Kotsuganman texts going back into China. For example, Yongzha Zhuangzhe, Yokagenkaku,

[171:04]

in the 600s and early 700s in China, wrote one, a long one, much longer than Dogen's. He was the successor of the sixth ancestor, Huining, is best known for his long poem, Song of Awakening, and Dogen refers to him. Also in Japan, Saicho, the founder of Tendai Buddhism, wrote a Hotsuganman text, small Hotsuganman text. And that was the school that Dogen was originally ordained in and all of the Kamakura founders. And there's other people in the background of Japanese Buddhism, but especially some of Dogen's disciples wrote Hotsuganman texts. I guess inspired by Dogen's Hotsuganman. So those included Keizan, who's considered as a few generations, Dharma generations after Dogen, is considered the second founder of Soto Zen. Gion, who I mentioned before, who wrote the first commentary on one version of Shobo Genzo.

[172:12]

And Kangan Gion, who his dates are 1217 to 1300, he was a direct disciple of Dogen. After Dogen died, he went to China, and returned and established an important branch of Soto Zen in Kyushu, in the Southern Island. And that branch of Zen is still there. Anyway, I'm gonna read a little bit of Kangan, or actually I'll read the whole of Kangan Gian's Hotsuganman, because it's not that long. So he said, in the authentic San Zen of China, it is necessary above all to arouse sincere heart and pure vow. to put yourself in the sight of the Buddha ancestors, offer incense and make prostration and entreat the Buddhas. May the ocean of vows of the three jewels be dedicated to this body received from our father and mother. May lack of faith in every fluctuation or condition be wiped away.

[173:12]

And from our current body and reaching the Buddha body, May we serve Buddhas and not be separated from the Buddha Dharma through lifetimes and generations of birth and death. May we fully liberate sentient beings from all locales and situations without becoming weary, whether atop the sharp trees of sword mountain or inside a fiery furnace of molten iron, both of which are hell realms depicted in Japanese Buddhism. Simply hold this true dharma, I, treasury, that's Shobo Genzo, taking responsibility and managing it everywhere. Humbly, we request the Buddha ancestors who have verified the three jewels to protect and attend to this. So that's Kankan I and Sotsudanma.

[174:14]

So I would expect that some of you have some comments or questions or responses to all this, to this sense of what is, you know, how our practice is, you know, connected to devotion and faith. And, you know, when we do service, when we do prostrations, when we chant, when we offer, or when the doshi, the priest offers incense, flowers, and so forth, these are devotional practices. And how do we see that as part of our practice? This is what Dogen is connecting in this essay to appreciation of the valley streams and the mountain shapes and to this appreciation of the possibility of awakening thanks to the natural world and of our helping to awaken the natural world.

[175:17]

So we have a little bit of time, comments, questions. I'm really interested in your responses to any of this. I'm going to open up the chat so that people can post publicly to everyone, but we have three questions in the chat already. Taigan, if we can start with those. Sure. Okay. Florence Caplo asks, I resonate with the translation of confidence or trust rather than faith, but directly appealing to Buddhas and ancestors to help release us from past harmful actions seems closer to the Western idea of faith or the Pure Land idea of other power. So perhaps faith in Dogon includes some element of the external and knowing that we can't do this alone. Thoughts on that? Yes, I agree. It's not either self-power or other power. I mean, we do in all and many of our chants, we call on Buddhas and ancestors, right?

[176:19]

But I think we can think of it in different ways. we're not separate from the Buddhas and ancestors when we do this practice. In fact, we're performing Buddha when we sit zazen. We are expressing Buddha in this body-mind as we sit, you know, sitting upright like the Buddha in the center of the Zen Do or Buddha Hall. So the Buddhas and ancestors, you know, from the point of view, from Dogen's point of view, from the point of view within the teaching, the Buddhist ancestors are not separate from us, they're not other beings. They are and they're not. And we don't have to think of Buddhist ancestors as just in the past either. They are our ancestors of the future, which I've written about. So we are keeping this alive and there will be beings, people and other kinds of beings in the future who will be doing this practice of awakening or caring about all beings, trying to support all beings.

[177:31]

And also, you know, the thing about, about, uh, repenting of our evil karma or whatever, uh, the word evil is problematic, I guess, but, um, you know, is to just recognize that we all, how to say this, we all have hangups, you know, we all have issues as human beings and they get in the way. And, uh, through practice, they can be less in the obstructive. Um, so I don't know if Florence, if that responds to your question, if you have a followup, she said, thanks. Okay. And if, if, if people, if I respond to people and they, um, you know, feel free to unmute yourself and respond audibly. Anyway, next, Wade. Yeah, two related questions from Maura High. She says, how does the general emphasis on faith, repentance, prayer, vow, et cetera, in Keisei Sanshiki have to do with the tenet that we are already awakened and already Buddhas?

[178:40]

And then, A similar question about the line from the Ehe Kosoho Tsugamon, we shall come to be Buddhas and ancestors. She asked, do we have to work on exercises and practices to attain Buddhahood? Well, you know, everything is Buddha from the beginning, right? And, um, we don't necessarily realize it. This is, this was in that I, the GCU is on my self-fulfillment Samadhi that I talked about earlier is from a text called Bendowa. And that one of the opening lines of that is that although all I'm going to paraphrase, I don't have it right in front of me, but although all beings have this, uh, indelible awakening nature. It's not real until it's actualized. It has to be practiced. It's not enough to just have the idea that all beings are Buddha nature. We actually have to express it and develop it.

[179:44]

So when Shakyamuni Buddha was awakened, that was not the end of his practice. He continued practicing for 45 years more and continued awakening every day, I would say. So awakening is not a one-time thing. But even if we have this capacity of Buddha nature, which is part of everything, how do we actually make it real? I think that's the point. How do we express it helpfully in the world? Is that okay, Maura? She's laughing, okay, all right. I'm laughing because my dog is barking at the dog that he can hear, I think, in Wade's background. My apologies, yes. This is wonderful, this interconnection of canines in Illinois and North Carolina.

[180:49]

How wonderful. Talking to each other. And I want to make a comment that I don't appreciate. Dogen's characterization of dogs, these things that we've got here, they seem to be bad, bad creatures. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not, there's a, Zhao Zhou in China asked if dogs have good in nature. And there's one version of the story where it says no, but then another time he says yes. So look in the Book of Serenity version of that story. But it happens to be that in, Tong China, dogs were not domesticated pets. They were kind of pests in the monastery and they scrounged around. So they were kind of lower class than dogs are now. But that's not about Dogen putting down dogs or Zhaozhou either. Yeah, no, it's just that he talks about, you know, the dogs that bark even at good people.

[181:52]

Oh yeah, well. He used dog as a lower class of being an animal as opposed to an enlightened being. In this, he's obviously drawing on that cultural characterization of dog. This is just a very slight point that I was making to do with our barking dogs. Yeah, well, you know, Dogen says really harsh things about some beings anyway. It's true. And it's not that being a Zen person means you have to always be nice. That's a delusion that's difficult to get over. Doing Zen practice doesn't mean always being nice and polite. I mean, usually that's a good thing, but anyway, just to say that. So, Wade, other comments or questions? Yes, from Karen Mueller. Thinking about how texts like the Avatamsaka Sutra and the Lotus Sutra and devotional practices like confession and repentance, chanting, et cetera,

[183:01]

energize and encourage practice by opening our imagination and warming our hearts and helping us loosen our grasp on what we think reality is. Would you comment on that? Oh, I think that's right. Yeah. The whole process of practice is to go beyond our usual you know, the conventional truths that we have inculcated from our culture and from everything else, and to widen our horizons. And so, yeah, and those texts help do that, yeah. We also, we have two from Joshua Pat Phelan. Hi, Joe. Hi, Pat. Right, I can see you there. She's here. Okay, I'm sure she is.

[184:04]

She says, in Yuibutsu and Yobutsu, Dogen talks about, because it is realized by Buddhas alone, it is said only a Buddha and a Buddha can thoroughly master it. Also, we sit with everything and for everything. Remember Suzuki Roshi saying, you will never sit Sazen. It is Sazen that sits Sazen. Yes. So, yes, Sazen says Sazen. Yubutsu, Yobutsu, that's interesting to bring up in this context. Yeah, that's a line from the Lotus Sutra that's where it says, only Buddhas can truly fathom this. So, fathom this wonderful Dharma. And, Actually, it's a translation issue. Kumarajiva translated the Lotus Sutra into Chinese.

[185:06]

I'm sorry, I'm getting geeky here, but he said, only Buddhas and Buddhas. And then Dogen read that as only a Buddha together with a Buddha, but he's talking about Dharma transmission, which is, you know, a particular, not necessarily a particular experience, but it's a particular, actually it has to do with faith. I think that Dharma transmission is to confirm somebody that they are, that they can carry forth the Dharma. So, Yeah, so in that sense, only Buddhas together can really fully realize this. But then again, for everybody who's sitting Zazen, there is this quality of Buddhaness that's there somewhere. So we can see it in lots of different ways.

[186:07]

Yeah, so I was trying to speak to that idea of not being other power or self-power. Us, we're already Buddha. It's the Buddha part of us that realizes reality. It's the Buddha part of us that sits us in. And so our work is to integrate the more ordinary aspects of our karma, states of mind and lives with the Buddha we already are or something like that. Yeah. Yes. I agree with that. And it's, and it's not that, um, you know, Dogen says all beings, sentient being, all beings completely is Buddha nature, um, in Shabu Gen Zabu show. Um, um, so yeah, in our wholeness, we are Buddha.

[187:09]

But that's, you know, in terms of actual practice as limited human beings with particular names and bodies and hearts and so forth, that can develop. So, you know, as I said, Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha continued to awaken throughout his life. You know, so recognition from another teacher in dharma transmission is not the end of your practice, it's the beginning in a way. So we're all on this path and it's all about how, it's the challenge of how do we express awakening in this world with all its difficulties and this body mind with all, with all our own particular difficulties. And that's why it's called a path. Anyway, I appreciate your comment. Thank you.

[188:11]

We are caught up in the chat. I'm not seeing anything new currently. Well, we have five more minutes according to the schedule. So if nobody has anything to say, I might start calling on people. Deirdre, I saw you smiling before. Please say something. Excuse me, Shokuchi. I remember you as Deirdre from the bakery. Shokuchi. Shokuchi. Hi. Hi, good to see you. Good to be here. Thank you so much. It's just such a wealth of teaching in so many directions. I came because in addition to enjoying hearing your teaching, I had an occasion to be teaching a kind of introductory Zen course a few years ago, and Buddha nature was kind of a thread going through.

[189:16]

And it was my first time I had any real focus on that. And as I moved through the Chinese ancestors and then into Dogen, I was starting in India. seeing more and more included in this in this term Buddha nature. And it seemed that Dogen, for Dogen, everything seemed to be Buddha nature. I don't know if that's true. And you can maybe comment on that. But it occurred to me that this way of seeing the world, if we could all see the world this way, we would not have problems with climate change. We would be it would be a very different place. And I found that really inspiring practice. So is it is it I'm being very simplistic, but is Dogen really see everything as Buddha as being Buddha nature?

[190:18]

Yeah, he says to all beings in their wholeness is Buddha nature. So, Buddha nature is not like, in early Buddhism, this idea of Buddha nature was this capacity to eventually become a Buddha. And as the idea evolved in China and then through to Dogen and hopefully beyond, in his Buddha nature essay, he turns things in really interesting ways and mentions all these other stories where Buddha nature is mentioned. I think that's his longest essay in Shobo Genzo anyway. Yeah, so all beings is Buddha nature, but that means we have work to do. It doesn't mean just, you know, being passive. Oh, I'm Buddha nature, blah, blah. You know, it means that we have a responsibility to all beings.

[191:21]

So we've got work to do. That's the Buddha work. Thank you. Good to see you. Are you still in Brooklyn? I am. I'm still in Brooklyn. Great. Great. So anybody else? Any other comments? Patrick, can I call on you? Any comments or reflections or questions or I don't know, whatever. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. So when we are sitting in the mudra of Buddha's body and mind, and the entire sky also becomes enlightened. Is this the same concept in the

[192:24]

Lotus Sutra is with that Bodhi mind, we then become the turning Dharma flower that is kind of the moving structure of the rest of the universe. Yes. Yeah. So there's so many different ways that all of this is expressed in all the different Buddhist teachings. And they're all lovely, and they're all wonderful, and I love the Lotus Sutra. Yeah, the way you said it was wonderful. And so yeah, just when you first said it, when we are sitting with Uttamudra in our body and mind, and all of space, all of the sky is gloriously awakened, How is it? You know, it's another way to say it. And it's wonderful.

[193:28]

And, you know, we can, it's okay to, you know, bliss out a little and hang out and just total enjoyment of the reality of all this that is. And then we remember that there are beings suffering a lot. in places. So how do we, how do we share that? How do we, you know, as, as in Sudhankawa's question, how to share this? That's, that's the Buddha work. Yeah. And it's, it's happening, but, and somebody said before, if everybody just, you know, expressed this or realized this, no problem. But, you know, we live in this complicated world. where people are suffering and plants and animals are suffering and mountains and rivers are suffering. So anyway, here we are. Thank you for this wonderful morning of devotion and looking at awakening to the world around us.

[194:35]

Thank you. Yeah, you said morning, it's afternoon here, but you're in California. We just turned into the afternoon. Oh, I see. Enjoy it. So, I mean, I can hang out a little bit longer if there's other comments or questions. You know, this basic issue, though, that, you know, it's not easy. You know, as Joshua was saying, you know, what is this What is this faith stuff? You know, it's not how we usually think of our practice exactly. And yet I think it requires some, whatever, trust or confidence just to show up, just to be together in Sangha, to be together in all the different Sanghas. You know, we each have many Sanghas in our life, the formal Buddhist ones and otherwise. So any last words? Comments, questions?

[195:37]

A couple parting shots in the chat, if I may. Oh, good. Yes, please. Florence Kaplos says, taking care of sentient beings as we take care of Buddha's robes. And Joshua Pat Phelan says, thank you, Taigen Roshi, for helping to open our minds and whole being. And Maura says, how to clean the temple. Yes. How to clean the temple? That's the question. So yeah, we all have, we all have work to do, you know, Buddha work, but also we have to, you know, take care of ourselves and get, get enough rest and, you know, uh, hang out and enjoy this beautiful world without becoming complacent. Okay. Any last comments? Thank you all very much.

[196:40]

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