Good evening, everyone. We have a number of new people tonight, which is great. I'm Tygen Layton, the teacher here. We're in the middle, a little past the middle of our two-month practice period here. We've been talking about a few stories from the Lotus Sutra, one of the most important Buddhist scriptures in East Asian Buddhism and very important in our tradition and to the founder of this tradition in Japan, Dogen, in the 13th century. And so we've been talking about some of these rather strange and exotic stories. And I want to talk about. Well, two of them that sort of go together. I want to talk again about the story about the bodhisattvas springing forth from under the ground, from the open space under the earth, and the inconceivable lifespan of the Buddha.

[01:09]

And I'll just tell the stories briefly because I want to, the point of these stories is not some particular didactic teaching. The point of these stories is to support and encourage our practice. So these stories from the Lotus Sutra are rather flamboyant. And again, their point is just for us to use them to support our practice and to play with them. And so I'm going to do that tonight. So briefly, the first part of the story, the Buddha throughout the first half of the Lotus Sutra has been calling for his disciples and great bodhisattvas or enlightening beings and asking who will come back and keep alive this teaching of the Lotus Sutra in the future evil age.

[02:16]

And because the Lotus Sutra is the last teaching of the Buddha, one of the last teachings of the Buddha, he's about to pass away after 45 years of teaching. And so at the beginning of the story, a number of bodhisattvas who've come from very different worlds, distant world systems, distant, maybe distant solar systems, or galaxies, or distant dimensions of space and time, or whatever, say, oh, we'll do that, and we'll come back. And the Buddhist says, no, you don't need to do that. And suddenly, from out of the open space under the Earth spring forth vast numbers of ancient, very skillful, venerable, Quiet but wonderful bodhisattvas, all of whom have myriads of other attendant bodhisattvas and so forth. It gets very profuse in its description. So there's lots of things to say about this story.

[03:22]

But I want to talk about this story and the story about the inconceivable lifespan, which is the next part of the story, in terms of space and earth and time themselves. So what is this open space under the ground? What is this open space under the earth where all these bodhisattvas are living and practicing and ready and willing to come forth when they're needed? What is this about? Well, you know, there's lots of ways to see it. And part of what these stories are about is to inspire us to look at our world in fresh ways and to look at the problems of our world in fresh ways. So what does it mean that right under our seats, right in the open space under the ground, right in the earth itself are these The earth itself is fertile with this possibility of great bodhisattvas.

[04:27]

So I was thinking about this in terms of space and place and sacred places. And so I happened to be, so Rebecca Solnit, who was here not so long ago, talking about many things, a wonderful writer, I was reading from one of her wonderful books called A Field Guide to Getting Lost. And she said something that seemed to me, in a strange way, relevant to this space under the earth. So I'll read, there's a couple sentences that struck me, but I'll read the whole paragraph. She says, the places in which any significant event occurred become embedded with some of that emotion. Oh, it's in the context of her talking about country music songs. and the drama and the emotion that comes forth in these songs, and she likes these songs. The places in which any significant event occurred become embedded with some of that emotion.

[05:33]

And so to recover the memory of the place is to recover the emotion. And sometimes to revisit the place uncovers the emotion. Every love has its landscape, so she was talking about lost loves. Thus, place, which is always spoken of as though it only counts when you're present, possesses you in its absence, takes on another life as a sense of place, a summoning in the imagination with all the atmospheric effect and association of a powerful emotion. The places inside matter as much as the ones outside. It is as though in the way places stay with you and that you long for them, they become deities. A lot of religions have local deities, presiding spirits, geniuses of the place. You can imagine that in the songs, Kentucky or the Red River is a spirit to which the singer prays that they mourn the dream time before banishment.

[06:42]

When the singer lived among the gods, who are not phantasms but geography, matter, earth itself. So I like this, the places inside matter as much as the ones outside. So there is this thing in many traditions of sacred place. Hakusho just came from one of my favorite sacred places, Tassahara Monastery, where I lived for a few years and Hakusho was just a head monk there. There are places like that where there's something about the place itself that is powerful. So some of you may have experienced that in various places. You may experience it just walking along the lakeshore spot that just has some energy. What is that about? Well, I think that has something to do with, you know, what the sutra is talking about, about this open space under the earth. And Rebecca says,

[07:46]

The places inside matter as much as the ones outside. These places connect something in the space of that place. And those of you who like camping and like going out in the prairies or the mountains by the lakeside may know places that call you. But it's something that's inside you too. So what is this open space under the earth? What is this open space? What is the nature of space itself from which spring forth wonderful bodhisattvas who are there to help in times of trouble? This is part of what the sutra is talking about. And as I thought about this, I was reminded of this painting in Arzendo, back behind Matt, that Kaz Tanahashi left us when he was here last. He's going to be here again next March. It's one of his wonderful one-brush paintings, but he called it The Snow Within.

[08:56]

And I've said that in Chicago summers, it's to remind us of our inner cool. And in Chicago winters, it's to remind us that the snow is inside as well as out. And anyway, so what is this space inside the earth from which Bodhisattvas spring forth? So again, the point of these stories is not some teaching to hold on to, but to inspire us to look at our world in a new way. So in the Lotus Sutra, what happens after that is that the other disciples and bodhisattvas ask the Buddha, well, who are all these beings springing out from the earth? And the Buddha says, and who taught them, and where'd they come from?

[09:56]

And the Buddha says, oh, I taught them. And the other disciples say, well, we never saw them, and how could you have done that? We know that you left the palace when you were 29, and you've been teaching since then. How could you have had time to teach all of these? And finally, after being asked three times, the Buddha says, OK, now I'm going to tell you. And he admits that actually since he started doing the bodhisattva practice, it's been a very, very, very long time. And he gives this one of these Indian, you know, descriptions of all the sands in the River Ganges and how many, and that many, as many sands, you know, anyway, it's this astronomical figure in that direction in the east that many eons ago and all the worlds in there. And if you take all the, anyway, there's that long ago, So he uses, but what's interesting is he uses a spatial metaphor to denote time.

[10:59]

And I want to talk about that. I want to talk about the spatialization of time, of temporality. I want to say something about that, a little bit. That part of what's going on here is that we can see wide vistas of space and under the ground. And also what's going on here is this huge amount of time and this huge vision of time, which is part of our practice. And so the Buddha says that actually since he awakened and became the Buddha, he's been teaching for an inconceivably long time. And he will continue teaching for twice that long into the future. And yet he's about to pass away into nirvana. And that's true too. And so what does this mean? And this is this puzzle right in the middle of the Lotus Sutra.

[11:59]

And he says that this is a skillful means that some people, if they knew that the Buddha was just present, for all this time, they wouldn't bother to practice themselves. The Buddha's there. Hey, I can take it easy. I don't need to worry about the world. And we might feel that way. So the Buddha passes away. And oh, my gosh, the Buddha's gone. What do we do? So some of us might feel that way. And so the Buddha is gone. The Buddha was a regular human being. And he lived in an historic time. And he was born. He's gone. in some way, the Buddha is alive for a very, very long, very, very, very, very long. If I said very, you know, till past the election, many times, very, [...] very long, you know, it wouldn't even touch how long a time the Buddha's, you know, anyway. So what does this mean, this long time period?

[13:07]

And so I want to talk, say a little bit about that in terms of some of the things that Dogen says about time and about seeing time and these lengths of time in terms of our practice and in terms of space as well. So I'm going to just rely on some of the things that Dogen says about this. He says that it's not that the lifespan of the Buddha has prevailed only in the past, but that what is called vast numbers of eons or years is a total inclusive attainment. What is called still now is the total lifespan. So this vast, vast lifespan Dogen comments and says, this is now, this is here. He talks about the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha.

[14:10]

Buddha is always going beyond. Buddha is always awakening. Buddha doesn't look back on some awakening experience and say, oh, that was it, and now I'm a Buddha and I can forget about it. Buddha is always awakening. So what is this process, this vital process on the path, In another one of his writings, Dogen says, for countless eons, he quotes from a different chapter in the Lotus Sutra, for countless eons, Shakyamuni has practiced difficult and painful practices, accumulated merits, and sought the way of the Bodhisattvas. And thus, even though he is now a Buddha, he still practices diligently. And Dogen says, the long eons of difficult and painful practices are the activity of the womb of the Buddha, where the Buddha is born from. like the earth. When it is said that these practices have not ceased even for a second, it means that even though he is perfectly enlightened, he still practices vigorously. He continues forever, even though he converts the whole universe.

[15:13]

This activity is the whole body of the Buddha. So this sense of this ongoingness is one way to see this long lifespan. So this isn't something that's just in some sutra that was spoken by the Buddha, and it's not just some commentary that was written in the 1200s. This has to do with right now. What is it? How is the Buddha alive right now? So Dogen talks about this lifespan and about this length of time. In terms, well, he uses, again, he uses this spatial metaphor. So the way in which the bodhisattvas come out of the earth and the space of that is related to time. So there's a young Buddhist scholar named David McMahon whose work I like. Well, first of all, there's a saying from Dogen, where Dogen says, although this moment is distant from the sages, you have encountered the transforming guidance of the spreading sky or space that can still be heard because of the still remaining, unquote, because of the still remaining transformative guidance of space itself, Buddha remains alive.

[16:44]

and all of us can still hear Shakyamuni Buddha's teachings. So this is a strange way to think about this, but the Buddha spoke this on Vulture Peak. Maybe he's still speaking it on Vulture Peak, but somehow that message has spread through space, and now we're hearing it, whenever that was spoken. 2,500 years ago or there's a Buddha who shows up whenever the Moda Sutra is spoken. So there's a way in which these stories bend our usual notion of space and time themselves. And I think that's important in terms of seeing the aliveness of our world and seeing the aliveness of our practice and seeing our responsibility for practice. This goes beyond what you've learned in your college class about Buddhism.

[17:50]

So I was going to quote David McMahon. The image of time as contained within space provides the basis for mandalas like the Mahakala Mandala in Tibetan Buddhism, in which time is represented as a circle on space. The spatialization of time. represents an important insightful perspective that allows for a new context for envisioning temporality. You know, how can we see time? Well, it's not just what we see in a clock. But here we're talking about this long lifespan of Buddha. How can we see that? I think it has something to do with seeing this bodhisattvas under the earth. So McMahon says impermanence, he talks about the early pre-Mahayana scriptures, and he says impermanence is not, but in those early sutras, impermanence is not to be celebrated, but transcended. So nirvana is something that is the escape from suffering.

[18:57]

This changes somewhat in Mahayana with its assertion of the non-duality of samsara, the world of suffering and nirvana, awakening. The Mahayana found ways to conceive of the transcendence of time within time itself. And this relates to this lifespan. Part of this is the spatialization of time, assimilating temporality, time itself, to the always present dimension of space. So this can sound philosophical, but I think there's a way in which it's very practical in terms of how we see our lives and our practice. Because time is moving, it's impermanent, it's passing. But space is always present, and we can see it through that. There's a poem by great Japanese poet Saigyo, who lived a little before Dogen, talking about the inconceivable lifespan.

[20:05]

He says, over Vulture Peak, there in Buddha's time and place, a bedazzling moon, here, softly filtered into Tsukiyomi's sacred shrine. So he was seeing the moon over a shrine that he was walking by. And he felt the same moon in Buddha's time. He felt the connection to Vulture Peak through that, through seeing that space, through seeing that time. So again, Dogan said, you have encountered the transforming guidance of the spreading space that can still be heard. So we might envision a sky at sunset, splendid with colorful, drifting, and spreading clouds. But also, Dogan is highlighting the presence and the persistence of the vision's transformative impact in this time where we have encountered it and we still hear it.

[21:07]

This becomes an expression for the persistence in time of the enduring Buddha. So again, this is about spatial imagination as a way of appreciating time. I don't know how helpful that is, but there's something about that. Just to see that we are connected. both to the space under the ground and to, you know, in our practice, we talk about the Buddha 2,500 years ago. I'm talking about Dogen in the 1200s. We talk about the ancestors in every generation and tell stories about some of them who kept alive this practice. And here we are. And we honor the passing of time. We don't, you know, Things are changing. Change can be good or change can be really scary.

[22:15]

Stephen Hines says, Dogen strongly rejected efforts to deny the flux both as un-Buddhist and more basically not true to the nature of his own, Dogen's own quest and longing to find release from suffering within rather than in contrast to the unstoppable transiency of lived time. So here we are in lived time. How do we awaken time? How do we abide in this time? How do we find our ability to respond in this time, in this space, with the challenges in this world? How do we honor the Earth and its capacity to bring us awakening beings and teachings? How do we find our ability to respond and our responsibility?

[23:26]

So I want to close. not, and try and be encouraging about this, but I want to close with the seriousness of our climate situation and I want to thank Bo for going yesterday to Whiting, Indiana, where there was, actually there were actions all around the world to stop fossil fuel and We know now that the fossil fuel corporations knew in the 1970s that fossil fuels were creating climate damage, and they knew how bad it was, and they continued to do that and make profits and cover up the information about it. And the latest scientific news is really... kind of heavy, that April was the hottest month ever that's ever been recorded.

[24:34]

And it was the seventh month in a row that was the hottest month ever recorded. Currently, we have the highest levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 15 million years. So that maybe is a small number compared to the number of eons that the Buddha had been alive and teaching. Climate models predict we may well be on track to see human-caused atmospheric warming reach well over 3.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial baseline temperatures by 2100. Humans have never lived on a planet at 3.5 degrees Celsius above that level. So this is a serious situation.

[25:37]

There's lots of serious situations and difficult situations in our world. And there's lots of, and I wanted to apologize to the Ina for leaving out our ancient twisted karma chant this evening. I left out the ancient twisted karma chant. No, I just, I. Oh, I'm sorry. So all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. So, and we all have that. So the situation is serious, and yet it's not, you know, I wouldn't talk about this if it was hopeless. It's very easy to feel overwhelmed. So Rebecca Solnit spoke recently here, and she told a story about being at the Paris Climate Conference with Bill McKibben, who was there yesterday.

[26:47]

And she was talking about how we need to stop fossil fuel as our energy system. It's not enough to do good stuff ourselves. It's not enough to have, you know, I mean, all the things we do personally help, but that's not enough. We have to actually change our energy systems. And we have to do that together. And, you know, I think change doesn't come from some elected leaders. Change comes, you know, elections can be important, but where change comes from is from people acting together. The climate movement, like yesterday all around the world, even when the media doesn't report it. And the Black Lives Matter movement and the movements that led to the Berlin Wall coming down and apartheid ending and so many things. The LGBT movement, which now we have gay marriage, which was unthinkable pretty recently.

[27:52]

Anyway, a young woman came up to Bill McKibben, Rebecca Saunders was there, and said, what should I do as an individual? And Bill McKibben said, stop being an individual. So we don't practice just for ourselves. We each have our own responsibility. We each have our own way of responding. But we have resources to share. We have the resources of Bodhisattva time and of this view of time and of seeing that this long perspective of time is right here. We have the resources of the earth and the energy of the earth. And we have the resources of seeing that people working together can make change and that change does happen. And I want to call on Bo just to say a little bit about his experiences, but just to mention that Buddhist Peace Fellowship Chicago is meeting here and looking at some things to do.

[28:56]

And 350.org Chicago is working on divestment campaigns for the city of Chicago, divesting from fossil fuels. And we'll be having meetings with aldermen of Chicago to try and sponsored resolutions. So if any of you are interested in joining with such meetings with Alderman to try and encourage those resolutions, let me know or you can email info at ancientdragon.org. So I know I've covered a whole lot of stuff tonight, and time and space and, you know, strange stories and And we're living in the middle of a strange story, and it's all connected, you know? So, anyway, thank you all for listening. Bo, can you say a little bit about, thank you for going on our behalf to this event, and can you say a little bit about it? Well, yeah, it was really inspiring, honestly.

[29:56]

There were folks from lots of different groups. This was the Midwest gathering for all the actions that have been happening for a week or so. And so a woman from Flint was there to speak about the water crisis there. Another woman from Michigan a woman from the Black Lives Matters group in that part of Indiana. Bill McKibben was there, which was really cool. I mean, he's been flying all around the country in the last week to different gatherings. from the southeast part of Chicago, who over the last several years have been fighting against the coal power plants down there, and then this pet coke issue of this terrible dust that's kind of floating all over that part of the city from refining heavy crude oil.

[31:12]

So yeah, I mean, the situation is dire, and that was pointed out, obviously, of people show up, it was really inspiring. And then from there, from the speeches and so forth, we marched around this BP oil refinery, which I've never been close to an oil refinery before, so that was kind of weird. It's a weird structure. the fire coming out of them and stuff, it's pretty, you know, it's kind of hellish. But then we marched through a gate and, you know, I'd say like between 40 and 50 people, you know, sat in the street and eventually they were arrested. So it was really impactful, you know, five or six hours. Thank you, and just to say that place in Whiting is, it's in the northwest corner of Indiana, very close to Chicago. Yes, you can see downtown from. Yeah, it's a refinery for the tar sands oil, and it spews a lot of poison into Lake Michigan.

[32:19]

I mean, it affects, we're connected to that. It affects our drinking water. Yeah. So. So thank you very much for going on our behalf. So we have just a little bit of time, but does anyone have questions, comments about anything? Yes, Akshay. So how do we re-stabilize places? You know, that's a really, thank you, that's really interesting. One of my teachers, Joanna Macy, has talked about the best way to take care of nuclear waste, which is not being taken care of, is to make those sacred places and to build spiritual communities around them.

[33:20]

And Bernie Glassman, who's his then teacher, has also done that by doing sashins at Auschwitz and seeing that places where terrible things happen, are also in some, are power places, and in some ways sacred places. So sacred places can be just natural, like Tassajara where this is, well, it has a hot springs and there were native peoples before. So sacred places can be something about the nature of the place itself. Sacred places can also be places where wonderful things happen in history or where wonderful people lived. But they can also be places where horrible things happen. And by paying attention to that energy, Joshen Althaus, who's a teacher out in Oak Park, has been talking about having a bearing witness event at Pilsen, maybe, or at one of the places in Chicago that was a center for this.

[34:23]

Actually, by paying attention to such a place as a a power place, in a way. I led a day-long sitting in Richmond, Virginia, at the auction houses that was the center of slavery. In 2007, the first year I was living here. They were the center of slavery for, well, they were a slave center for going back to the 1600s, but they were the center of slavery in this country the first half of the 1800s. And we sat there. There's one of those buildings that's still there, and there's a freeway over it. Sacred places are natural places and sacred places are places where powerful things have happened. Yeah, we can, partly sacred places are there and sacred places are where we, you know, Green Gulch was a sacred place maybe before it became a Zen place, I don't know.

[35:26]

But now it's got some energy, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so part of our practice is to see how do we, how do we honor the land so that, how do we honor the earth so that space, that bodhisattvas can come forth. I don't know if you have some sense, Laurel, from the prairies you work in. The Chicago River not too long ago was an open sewer that was declared dead. It was just so damaged by filth and activity.

[36:28]

and so on. So we're going to help them on, you know, what the benefit is of early sequalization of that space. Ecological restoration of lots of things. That's just a really important part of helping our world and actually having a positive impact on climate change as well. Lessons that are green, healthy, soar above carbon. from 9 a.m. to noon. We'll have more announcements, but any other comments or questions? Yes. of our time versus more internal time, and that resonated with what you were saying about kind of thinking a little bit outside of our frame, or not being able to think outside of our framework, even, when it comes to time, and going back and forth in it in a way that we as finite humans can't

[38:41]

Yeah, Stogen talks about time a fair amount and about how time is not just some external container, but time is our experience, our activity, our awareness, our thoughts and speech. So some periods of Zazen that are 30 minutes go by very quickly, some take forever. Time is very flexible actually, it moves in lots of directions. Thank you. Time for one more. Yes, Ben. So it's like frozen time, the time that it took a little seedling.

[40:05]

How long does it take for a maple to grow until you could chop it down and make boards out of it? Yeah. And then wondering, like, so where did the maple come from? Was it Wisconsin or Michigan? The time that it took to transport it and bring it here and the place that that maple came from. What else has grown there, if anything else has grown there? And the nitrogen in the soil and the rain. And all the sequestered carbon that was sitting on the ground. Here we are. Well, thank you all very much. We'll close with our four Bodhisattva vows, which we chant three times. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible.

[41:09]

I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them, but as way is unsurpassable, I vow to realize it. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize it. Beings are numberless.

[42:14]

I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable.

[42:41]

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