All these words in front of me. What I want to talk about this morning is snow. So a few days ago I had the opportunity to take a long walk when there was a lot of snow and it was snow was coming down a lot and it was lovely. I enjoyed it a lot. So today the snow is, well, mostly melted and the sun's out. And it's early March, so in, well, a previously normal Chicago climate, early March, we could expect more snow, we'll see. What I want to do today is read some Zen poems about snow. So I want to read a series of six poems, six verses on snow by Ehei Dogen, the 13th century Japanese founder of this branch of Zen, Shinto Zen, it's called.

[01:26]

And then a couple of poems by American Zen poets. Dogen, well, the first 10 years of his teaching career, he lived in the capital or the cultural capital of Kyoto, and then he moved way up into the mountains and founded his temple, Eheji, way, way up in the mountains, very remote. Often there are There's six feet of snow in the winter there, or sometimes ten feet of snow. Just lots of snow. So, actually all the poems today are sort of more rural snow poems, but it's so thought provoking. And maybe relating them to this snow that we live in, and snow in the Zepto. So these six verses on snow, he wrote later on when he was living up in the... Deep snow, I hate you.

[02:34]

So I'll read this through. I'm gonna read each of these six. First one I'll read through twice. Deepening dusk in early winter. Dense snow keeps falling. One, on mountains, in all directions, we see no cypress or pines. Stop discussing snow depths and the sinking gloom. I want this to be like Sowshire Peak on Mount Song. So again, deepening dusk in early winter. And of course, we're now in sort of later winter, maybe. Deepening dusk and early winter, dense snow keeps falling. On mountains in all directions, we see no cypress or pines. Stop discussing snow, Jack, to stem the sinking gloom. I want this to be like Tsao-shir Peak on Mount Song." So Tsao-shir Peak on Mount Song is where Bodhidharma taught. So I'm going to talk about that.

[03:36]

But first, the sinking gloom. it's just to stop discussing. So I will, but I first, you know, the sinking flume. This week, you know, we've been facing class warfare against the American people for about 30 years and this week, there was this sequester thing. And so the big banks and the fossil fuel companies and the major weapons makers and the politicians and mass media they own took this major step this week. So for me, this is the sinking gloom. So according to the nonpartisan economy, The so-called deficit problem is not a problem. The government should be spending. There's no real need to worry about the deficit, or not so much. We should be spending to grow our economy.

[04:41]

The deficit was created by wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan. But this sequester thing that's happening, is really happening so that there will be zero cuts in taxes and tax loopholes for the big corporations. For example, General Electric, who is one of our big weapons manufacturers and who built the Fukushima nuclear reactor, which I'll talk about in the announcements, and other nuclear reactors like it in Illinois. So General Electric is has great entitlements and pays no taxes and actually gets tax rebates. And so to protect that, we're going to have huge cuts now in, for example, the Center for Disease Control and Disaster Relief and Energy Assistance for the Poor and in the earned benefits of Social Security and Medicare and so forth.

[05:43]

Anyway, that's what's happening. You know, I feel something gloom from that, but Dogen says to stop discussing it, so I won't. He says, I want this to be like Sasha Peak on Mount Song. Sasha Peak on Mount Song is where Bodhidharma taught. Bodhidharma is, there's an image of him on a statue on the, to my left of, towards the side of the altar. I got that in Northern China at the temple that he taught at. And he came from India to China, He's famous for sitting in a cave in northern China in the snow for nine years. And the snow was very deep there, too. And I visited that mountain where he sat, also in the snow. So Dogen says, I want this to be like Saisho Peak on Mount Song. And so he was talking to his monks in this monastery way up in the mountains in Japan, where You know, they were sort of living like Bodhidharma did in a way.

[06:50]

You know, but I have this feeling about this, what Bodhidharma is saying to us. Stop discussing snow jets and the sinking gloom. Well, maybe we need to talk about it occasionally, but I want this to be like Sao Chapique on Mount Sun. How is that possible? Here we are in this urban storefront temple. We can't sit for hours at a time. Well, once a month we have an all-day sitting. Sometimes you have three-day sittings, but, you know, I want us to sit like Bodhidharma when we come and sit here. I want us to have that resolve. This is a wonderful sangha, and we go out into the various other sanghas that we are involved with in Chicago, and like the snow settles, How can we settle and find the determination and resolve and uprightness to bring life to our life, to bring life to our world, to not be sunk by the sinking gloom, to actually make a difference in our lives and our world, to bring our life to life?

[08:13]

I dare to say that I want this to be also like Bodhidharma's temple. And I know that the people here in the Sangha, those of you I know a little, very talented, very determined, very resolute, good people. So in this context, in this very advanced practice of, you know, Who is it, Bruce Springsteen, who says it's so hard to be a saint in the city? Anyway, here we are. We can sit, too, and be determined to make a difference in our lives. And enjoy the snow. So what is the snow about? The second poem of these six verses on snow by Dopey. The five-petal flower opens, a sixth snowflake petals added.

[09:24]

Though daytime with blue sky, it's as if there were no light. If someone asks what color I see, these are Gautama's old eyes. So there's a kind of reference here. The five-petal flower refers to the white plum blossoms. So this is maybe a poem from later in winter. And the white plum blossoms open at the beginning of spring. And they open in the snow and fall in the snow. And it's white on white. So there's this imagery of snow and white on white and snow on the mountain and snow in a silver bowl that plays through this. The five-petal flower opens. This may also be a reference to the five... Later on, there were the five houses of charm.

[10:27]

The five-petal flower opens the six snowflake petals at it. So, something new. New snowflakes fall. New blossoms open. Through daytime with blue sky, it's as if there were no light. So it feels that way. When the snow is falling, like it was the other day, it's just the air was filled with snow. There's a kind of light, and it's a different light. And we can sometimes feel that in the Zen, though, when the lights are dim. There's no light, and yet there's another light. If someone asks what color I see, these are Gautama's old eyes. Gautama was the name of the Buddha before he became the Buddha. And through these poems, Dogen is quoting his own teacher, Chantam Rujing, who talked about plum blossoms often. So Dogen commented to another phrase from his teacher, Rujing, we correctly translate and accept that plum blossoms and snow are truly the top of his eyeballs.

[11:41]

So how do we see the flowers in the snow? How do we see white on white? How do we see snow in a silver bowl? And there's another poem coming up that's about that. So just the image of settling, something about snow, about the peacefulness of snow. Maybe when we have to go outside and slosh around in it, it feels messy. But when we look out on the snow, it's just a white blanket. Blanket in the world. There's some feeling of peacefulness. There's some possibility. Here's the third. With frosting on the snow, it's difficult to say more. December plum blossoms gradually covering, the ground becomes spotless. Although there are three kinds of conduct for patch road monks, in my assembly, we all avoid falling into the Black Mountain.

[12:52]

So there's a reference here. With frosting on the snow, it's difficult to say more. And actually, sometimes there's a texture to snow. And there's different kinds of snow. There's fluffier snow, and there's a little kind of frosting on the snow, and there's the ice under the snow, and there's, you know, we can appreciate the texture of snow. And it's difficult to say more about it. December plum blossoms gradually covering, the ground becomes spotless. How do we feel that, you know, this is also about meditation. How do we feel as we sit? ground becoming spotless. How do we feel the snow at the bottom of our sitting? And then he has this weird thing. He says, although there are three kinds of conduct for patch road monks, and we could say present practitioners, and he's quoting Dawei, interestingly, who said that superior monks practice Zazen in the monk's hall.

[13:57]

So we've all been doing that. So you're all superiors and practitioners. Then he says, middling monks compose verses about snow. So here's Dogen. And then he says, inferior monks sit around the fire and talk about food. So we will have tea and cookies later. Dogen says, we all avoid falling into the Black Mountain, implying that there are no inferior monks here. Although Dogen himself is middling. So anyway, it's okay to actually compose poems about snow. In fact, I encourage you, express yourselves. Express the snow at the bottom of your zazen. This is partly how we recognize Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma didn't write much. We don't know, really. Except we still know his name 1,600 years later. How can we all be resolute in our practice?

[15:02]

How can we all make a difference in our life? How can we all bring our life to life? That's what this practice is about amidst this thing here. How can we all make a difference in the world? Each in our own way. Each of us has our own way of expressing something of the peacefulness of the snow for the world, in the world, in our lives. So, I think it's okay, right? verses about the snow, or about the sunshine. Okay, this is the fourth of these six poems, and it's one of Dogen's most famous poems, and it's one of my favorites. In our lifetime, false and true, good and bad are confused. Oh, yeah. In our lifetime, false and true, good and bad are confused. While playing with the moon, scorning winds, and listening to birds, For many years, I merely saw that mountains had snow. This winter, suddenly, I realized that snow completes mountains.

[16:06]

Or we could say that snow creates the mountains. So, when Kaz Tanahashi, my old friend who has done the complete translation of Shobo Genso, when he was here, he said that this poem is why he started studying and translating Dōgen. And we actually have a painting by Kaz behind Alex over there of this poem. You can turn around and look at it if you want. This is one of Kaz's one-stroke One brushstroke poem, it's a big brush. It's called The Snow Within. In our lifetime, false and true, good and bad are confused. While playing with the moon, scorning winds, and listening to birds, for many years, I merely saw that mountains had snow. Or that there was snow on the mountains. This winter, suddenly I realized that snow

[17:13]

creates mountains, or that snow is the mountains. Is there some difference between when there's a snow-covered mountain like that image over there? Is there some difference between snow and mountain? So in the Precious Mara Samadhi, we're going to be studying, we've been studying, and we'll be studying in our practice commitment period, it talks about snow in a silver bowl. This is kind of the inversion of that. Does snow make the silver bowl, or does the silver bowl make snow? For many years, I merely saw that mountains had snow. This winter, suddenly, I realized snow completes mountains. Do we see our lives as separate from the snow? Do we see our lives as separate from the sidewalk? or from the sky.

[18:16]

What is our relationship to our world? And, you know, I've talked before about how Zen poetry tends to be about mountains and rivers and, you know, we need to rewrite this for prairies and lakes here in Chicago, but, you know, the snow on Lake Michigan also. There was some this year, anyway. snow in a silver bowl. We can see the difference between the silver bowl and the snow in here. They're almost the same. Is the mountain different from the snow? Is the snow different from the mountain? The snow is the shape of the mountain. Next one.

[19:21]

How can the three realms and ten directions be all one color? Who would discuss the difference between human and heavenly beings? Do not convey talk of birds suffering in the cold. The lake with no heat of anxiety is on the snowy mountain. So there's some images in here that How can the three realms in ten directions be all one color? Well, the ten directions is just the standard Buddhist, you know, east, south, northwest, and every direction in between, and then up and down is the ten directions, so it means all of space. And the three realms, in this case, I think it means past, present, and future. How can they be all one color? When everything is covered with snow, we feel the sameness. There's a kind of depth to the snow where we all feel this kind of peacefulness.

[20:25]

How is it possible to feel the snow covering six feet deep in this center right now? Can you see that? How can it all be one color? Of course, it's not. Of course, we see different colors. But who would discuss the difference between human and heavenly beings? We can make all kinds of distinctions. Is snow part of the heavenly realm, or is it part of the human realm? And he says, do not convey talk of birds suffering in the cold. And this is a reference to a kind of bird in the Himalayas that does not build nests and so is particularly cold. So this line refers to complaining. Maybe in our context, we could say, do not convey talk of the homeless people suffering in the cold.

[21:29]

They're out there, we know. This lake with no heat of anxiety is on the snowy mountain as a reference to a particular lake, Lake Anabatakta, and we translated the literal meaning of the Sanskrit for Anabatakta, so I'm not sure if that is... Well, it is relevant to the poem, but no heat of anxiety, so it's peaceful. But that's also the lake that's in traditional Buddhist cosmology. That's the lake up on Mount Kailash in the Himalayas, from which the four great rivers of Asia come. So the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Irrawaddy, and one of the great Chinese rivers, maybe the Yellow River, I'm not sure. Anyway, and so he just says that lake with no heat of anxiety is on the snowy mountain. It's nice and cool, right? And that's the source of drinking water for all those people in Asia.

[22:34]

Of course, those glaciers are starting to melt, so who knows, in a century or a few decades, whether those people will have drinking water. But anyway. So what is he saying here? I'm not sure I can get this one. How can the three realms in ten directions be all one color? How do we see sameness and difference? Who would discuss the difference between human and heavenly beings? Sometimes if we settle into this oneness of snow, sometimes in our sitting we can feel this blanket of snow. Of course, sometimes we get caught up in all of the The sinking gloom and assessing the depths of the snow and all of that stuff, we can. Can we see sameness? Can we see difference? How do we see them together? So he says, do not convey talk of those suffering in the cold.

[23:41]

The lake with no heat of anxiety is on the snowy mountain. It's kind of encouraging. seeing the snow, seeing the peacefulness. And I think we have to do that. I think to respond to whatever sinking gloom you feel in your life or in the world, we need to settle into the peacefulness of snow also. To just breathe in the wholeness of the snow. the blanket of snow, of the whiteness, which is also part of our world. How do we find a balance here? How do we find the... So, this painting is called The Snow Within. So there's still snow outside.

[24:46]

Maybe it's more across the street because the sun shines more on this side of the street. But there's, you know, there's snow outside, but there's still snow within. How do we find that snow within? And even when it gets very hot in the summer, there's still snow within. I've got the painting right here. How do we find that inner peacefulness? This is what Dogen is recommending when he says, I want to his monks, these mountains and these remote mountains of Asia, I want this to be like Sao Tropico, Monsanto, Forte D'Armando. So this should be a place for you to come and find the resource of peacefulness amid the difficulties of our complicated life in Chicago. It's not that we ignore that. This winter, suddenly I realized that snow completes mountains.

[25:46]

Okay, here's the last of the six verses by Doge. An Udumbara flower naturally opens on an old tree. Early plum blossoms erect a sanctuary, a bright tower in the night. A silvery pearl net hangs over the entire world, the ground becomes pure as lapis lazuli. So, again, some images here, some traditional Buddhist images. An Udumbara flower naturally opens on an old tree. Udumbara flowers are supposed to bloom once every 3,000 years. And they're supposed to bloom when a Buddha is born. So there's different ways to see what a Buddha is. There's the Buddha nature that is in everything and all of us, but there's also Buddha Shakyamuni, who was born 2,500 years ago, so maybe we're due for another Buddha in 500 years, I don't know. Anyway, an udumbara flower naturally opens on an old tree, and the plum blossoms bloom on the same old withered branch as last year.

[26:58]

So, this practice is about bringing our life to life. We sit still. Silent. Upright. Quiet. It may look like we're dead tree stumps or something, but how do we find this inner life? It grows out of the snow, like the plum blossoms. An Udumbara flower naturally opens on an old tree. Early plum blossoms erect a sanctuary, a bright tower in the night. As the precious mirror of Samadhi says, the wooden man starts to sing, the stone woman gets up dancing. A silvery pearl net hangs over the entire world. It's kind of like what it's like when there's lots of snow on the ground and in the air. The ground becomes pure as lapis lazuli. So, you know, he's playing with images of

[28:04]

snow, the deep snow, are pre-aging. So again, Dogen is encouraging, and I'm encouraging, to see this side of our practice. The deep peacefulness that is also part of our practice amid the sinking blue. Before I shift to a couple of Americans and poets, just one, not a poem from Dogen, but one of his short dharma hall discourses, which I don't know if this is going to be relevant or not, but maybe. I was shocked when I called it The Snow at Midnight. So Dogen said, Having questions and answers, we smear everything with shit and piss. Not having questions and answers, thunder and lightning crash.

[29:09]

The great earth in ten directions is leveled and all of space is torn open. Not allowed to enter from outside, not allowed to leave from inside. A gavel strikes the sounding block and the 10,000 affairs are completed. At such a time, how is it? After a pause, Dogen said, time and again, everything exists within a painting, even allowing for what is split apart. Snow falls at midnight. So I don't know if we'll have any more snow. this year. But if it comes, please enjoy it. Two more poems, and then I want to have time for questions and answers, comments and responses, dancing, whatever.

[30:15]

The first one is kind of an introduction to the second one. This is from the great Zen patriarch, American Zen patriarch and poet, Gary Snyder, from It's short. It's called Three Deer, One Coyote Running in the Snow. First, three deer bounding, and then coyote streaks right after, tail flat out. I stand dumb a while, two seconds, blankly, black and white, of trees and snow. Coyote's back. good coat, fluffy tail, sees me, quickly gone. Later, I walked through where they ran to study how that muse all got put down. So there's a tension here between this peacefulness of snow

[31:25]

and steadiness of snow, and the response to the world from the snow. So I want to close with a poem from Mary Oliver, a great American poet. I call her a Zen poet. I don't know that she's formally. She does write wonderful. She has written some wonderful things about Buddha, and I find her inspiring. an instructor as a Zen person. This one is called Beyond the Snow Belt. Over the local stations, one by one, announcers list disasters like dark poems that always happen in the skull of winter. But once again, the storm has passed us by, Lovely and moderate, the snow lies down, while shouting children hurry back to play, and scarved and smiling citizens once more sweep down their easy paths of pride and welcome.

[32:37]

And what else might we do? Let us be truthful. Two counties north, the storm has taken lives. Two counties north, to us, it is far away. a land of trees, a wing upon a map, a wild place never visited, so we forget with ease each far mortality. Peacefully from our frozen yards we watch our children running on the mild white hills. This is the landscape that we understand, and till the principle of things takes root, How shall examples move us from our calm? I do not say that it is not a fault. I only say, except as we have loved, all news arrives as from a distant land. So again, there's this snow of peacefulness and steadiness, and I think it's of great value.

[33:45]

But also, What Mary Oliver says to us is that the snow can remind us to love and to see beyond. So that's a lot of stuff and a lot of words and a lot of snow. But comments, questions, responses, please feel free. I really like snowshoeing, and I think it can be the same cross-country skiing too in certain areas, where you can cross-country ski further in than what you normally just hike into.

[35:00]

But too, with snowshoeing, I'm being able to really get into places where there aren't as many humans, Yeah, there's not as many humans and you can kind of get in and be alone and kind of hear things and hear, if it's snowing, you can hear the snow falling. And you can do that anywhere, but really, you know, just kind of if you're alone, you know, kind of be alone out there and kind of hear things going on and the birds and that. You're not all being scared away by whatever and just kind of sit with the snow. I don't like to do it when it's really cold. And I haven't really done it here in Chicago, although I know that I see people cross-country skiing in the cemeteries. And I think that that's cool that they're able to do that. But definitely in the mountains and Colorado and Minnesota, I had the opportunities to do that, a lot of snowshoeing. I really appreciated the snow then, and I know Amory still gets to appreciate the snow now, making snowmen.

[36:06]

I don't like that stuff so much now, but I used to like to snowshoe. Listening to the snow, just walking up Lincoln Avenue, there was lots of snow coming down. I could sort of hear, even though there was some stuff around. I meant to say we don't have mountains, but Lake Michigan, just looking out on the lake, is also kind of looking out on the snow in a way. That sense of peacefulness. Sometimes it's choppy and sometimes it's calmer, but that sense of calm, it's possible. I was inspired by the Ai Weiwei documentary.

[37:11]

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese dissident, and there's a part in the movie where he goes to the police station and makes a claim for a crime that's committed against him. And they asked him before he went in, did he think actually it was going to happen? And he's like, no, but you have to participate in the system, so the system can see. And, you know, I thought about this, we need participants in them that are able to be upright and witness what's going on and participate fully to show how corrupt and how backwards the system is. Yeah. And again, I'm honoring Dogen's saying not to discuss it, but yeah, I think the idea of Responding to that from a place of calm and uprightness and to see that this is a long-time work helps.

[38:30]

And not to ignore it also. But others can discuss it if you want, Steve. Yeah, I enjoyed the talk and really all the poems, but I thought it was very nice at the end where you clarified it with Gary Snyder and Mary Oliver. Mary Oliver is talking about the snow or the storm two counties away, and I just said it was. It reminds me that people look at the snow and sort of personalize it. that, you know, I grew up with earthquakes, and people can very much sort of freak out over earthquakes.

[39:37]

It's really just the Earth adjusting itself to, after a few hundred thousand years, whatever it happens to be. Same thing with snow. There's nothing personal about it, and that's, I thought that Gary Yeah, I lived in California for a long time, and I loved it. I was there in the big 89 earthquake, and that, too, was sort of fun, in a way. But little earthquakes, you feel like, oh, yeah, it's alive. The Earth is moving, and you can't take for granted that this is so solid. There was another comment somebody else had. Jerry? Yes, Roy. Thinking of... I suppose I'm not supposed to talk about this, but I will anyway. You can talk about anything you want.

[40:38]

Well, Dogen said to stop talking about it. I ignore Dogen often. Me too. So not talking about the... bird that's so cold, or the county, two counties north. You know, I think that we can get burnt out thinking about the homeless birds in our own city, and the county is not so far away, and that we can almost, it feels sometimes like we can almost love too much. you know, take on so much burden of the world right now, especially when it's so easy to know so much of what's going on and so much pain. And yet there is the calm and tranquility of the snow here. And how do we balance those?

[41:39]

Yeah, good, good question. Yeah, the point is that we need to nourish ourselves in order to love in order to, to be caregivers, healers, whatever, in order to just care for the people around us, we need to find our own nourishment, too. That's very important. So how do we find, you know, and Zazen is one way to do that, to find that space where we can settle and feel the peacefulness as a resource, but not forget about the people to counties north or wherever. And so, yeah, it's balancing, it's balancing. We can easily get burnt out if we're just trying to help to such an extent that we don't take care of ourselves as well. So there's an art to them. And often we do get off balance one way or another.

[42:46]

So we have to keep adjusting. It's not that we ever find perfect balance, that's because the world is alive. So we have to keep constantly reminding ourselves, take care of ourselves, take care of others also. We're connected. One last comment? Yes, Libby, hi. I don't know, I'm curious for you to respond to this, but I appreciated how in the talk, snow became a way of encompassing all kinds of different aspects of our reality. All these different images in which children play,

[43:48]

the flowers emerging, and just the peacefulness. And there's also the horror of people that have died, and people whose losses, and just cold. I mean, think about being in a monastery with six feet of snow, and hundreds of years ago it would have been freezing cold, and probably dangerous in certain ways. protecting yourself from falling, you know, whatever. So, I don't know. So for me there was sort of a sense of just how different locations almost or moments yield different experiences and, you know, aspects of life. Like it's just all of those different things were encompassed. Yeah. Yeah, so on part, I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at, but from what you said, what I heard, one part of this is how we make this alive for us in our situation.

[45:01]

And that's, you know, we have, so I was, you know, quoting Dogen from the 13th century and, you know, Gary Snyder from the last century or whatever. He's still alive and kicking, fortunately. Yeah, what does it mean for us here? And I think that's the point from all these teachings and traditions. And there's still monks today aging, and they spend a lot of time in the winter, you know, taking the snow off the tops of the walkways. They're slanted, but they still, you know, they get up there on the roofs. But how do we take care of our own situation? And part of the richness, I would say, of this kind of Sangha, an urban lay Sangha, is that we have such a diversity of context that we, each of us, bring here together, and yet we can share that at different times. And so what we have in common is the snow of Zazen, that we settle and sit upright and can find that use that resource, but then also share

[46:09]

the variety of our lives. But how do we make it a resource? How do we make practice, how do we make this tradition a resource for all of us together and respect?

[46:21]

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