Good evening, everyone. So I want to tell an old story tonight, a koan, a case from the Book of Serenity. And somehow this came to mind in the context of our talking as we're in the middle of a practice period talking about the Mountains and Waters Sutra transcribed by Dogen, which is about how we are connected with an expression of, well, mountains and waters together in Chinese and Japanese means landscape. So it doesn't apply just to mountains, although we've been talking about mountains, but it also applies to prairies and lakes buildings and avenues and the landscape of our lives and how that landscape, the mountains and waters that we are an expression of.

[01:10]

So in that text, Dogen talks about, well, he quotes an old Zen saying about the green mountains are constantly walking and talks about how to learn our own walking, we need to study the mountains walking. And so we are expressions of the landscape, we're connected to the landscape. And this story that I'm gonna talk about tonight, so it's a koan, but by saying that, please don't be intimidated. People have funny ideas about what koans are. These are all the old teaching stories from the Chan or Zen tradition. And in some approaches, people try and pass through various curriculums of koans. In our approach, we just settle in with the story and allow it to inform our

[02:12]

practice body, and we never really finish with any of them. So this is a story I've studied from time to time over many years, and I see it in some different ways in the context of looking at the landscape sutra. It's a story about a great Chan teacher, roughly contemporary with Dong Shan, the Chinese founder of Soto Zen, named Yang Shan. So he lived on Yang Mountain. These teachers are named after the mountain where they live. And Yang Shun was one of the founders of one of the five houses of Chan or Zen. Soto was one of them. But Yang Shun and his teacher Guishan, often referred to as the Great Guishan, were founders of one of these five classical lineages in China. And Yangshan is a pretty impressive fellow. In fact, he had this nickname, Little Shakyamuni, Shakyamuni Buddha being the Buddha from roughly 400 or 500 BC.

[03:23]

So anyway, Yangshan was an impressive fellow. And this story is about a dialogue between him and a monk who's also very impressive in many ways. This monk, we don't know his name, so usually if the monk later becomes a great teacher, they would say his name. So this is just an ordinary monk, but quite accomplished. So I'm going to start with the introduction in the way this is from the Book of Serenity Koan Collection that is more in the Sōtō lineage, Sōtō lineage. And there's a structure to how these Cases are expressed, there's an introduction and a case and a main verse, and then commentaries on the case and the verse. So we'll see how far we get, but I mostly want to focus on the case itself, the story itself. But I will start with the introduction by the commentator Wansong.

[04:26]

He says, the ocean is the world of dragons. Disappearing and appearing, they sport serenely. The sky is the home of cranes. They fly and call freely. Why does the exhausted fish stop in the shoals and a sluggish bird rest in the reeds? Is there any way to figure gain and loss?" So, in some ways, this story seems to be about gain and loss. about various stages of practice and so forth. But our context here is, as Suzuki Roshi, my teacher's teacher, called it, beginner's mind. So we don't worry about getting to any particular stage. We're just here, fresh in this moment, sporting serenely, as he says, of dragons. But there's this question. How come, you know, sometimes we get exhausted, sometimes we may feel sluggish. How do we find our vitality?

[05:29]

So, that's the kind of introduction to this story. So, the story goes, this has three or maybe four parts to it, and I thought about should I just read each part and comment, but I think I'll just read the whole thing through first, and then go into the different sections. It's more involved than most of these Zen koans. Yangshan asked a monk, where are you from? The monk said, from Yu province. Yangshan said, do you think of that place? The monk said, I always think of it. Yangshan said, the thinker is the mind. The thought of is the environment. Therein are mountains, rivers, and the landmass, buildings, towers, halls, chambers, people, animals, and so forth. Reverse your thought to think of the thinking mind. Are there so many things there? And the monk said, when I get here, I don't see any existence at all.

[06:35]

Yangshan said, this is right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of person. The monk said, Do you have any other particular way of guidance? Yangshan said, to say that I have anything particular or not would not be accurate. Based on your insight, you only get one mystery. You can take the seat and wear the robe. After this, see on your own. So that's the whole story, and it's pretty involved, so I'm going to go back and... break it into several parts. So, first of all, Yangshun asked the monk, where are you from? And, you know, the tradition in China, and sometimes in Japan, and sometimes in America, is to wander around and go to first-hand people and look at different, you know, talk to different teachers. And so, when the monk first comes to a monastery, they go to meet with the teacher. And Yangshun, so this seems like that situation. Yangshun asked the monk, where are you from? And the monk said, from Yu Province. So this is just a kind of accidental wonderful thing about this story that there's this bilingual pun there.

[07:46]

It's you province, why you, which was a province in China, but it's also you province, your province. So where are you from? And when I was studying this with my teacher, Robert Greengold, we spent many weeks, class each week, going over each story, and somebody printed up a little button that said, where are you from? So it's actually, you know, it's a good question. Where are you from? Each of us, where are you from? The monk said, from Yu Province. That's more polite than if he had said, from me, province. Anyway, he said, from you, province. And Yangshan said, do you think of that place? And this monk was really honest. And he knew himself, and he said, I always think of it. So think of where are you from. Dave, where are you from?

[08:49]

Oregon. Oregon. Do you think of that place? All the time. OK. So we can see it that way, but also, where are you from when you're sitting on your cushion or chair? And do you think of that place? And maybe there's no other place that you can think of. You think of where you're from. And so I want to talk about this story tonight. It's called Mind and Environment, which is obviously relevant to thinking about the mountains and waters or the landscape. But I want to talk about it tonight in terms of what it has to say about self and non-self and how we activate ourself. So, amongst it, I always think of it, which is a wonderful, wonderful response. Yangshan then said this also wonderful thing. He said, the thinker is the mind, and the thought of is the environment, or literally, that which thinks is the mind, and that which is thought of is the environment.

[10:01]

So this is a basic, a basic issue in our practice. And a basic issue in being a human being. It's pretty hard to think without dividing subject and object. As soon as I talk, as soon as I make a sentence, there's a subject and a verb and an object. So in a sense, anything you think of is the environment. So there's this mind and environment. part of our dilemma as human beings is that we are caught in that separation. So the Mountains and Water Sutra is about seeing how we are not separate from what we think of as the landscape of our environment. We are an expression of that. We are one with it. In this story, Yangchen goes on, he says, the thinker is the mind. The thought of is the environment. And then he says, therein, and the environment are mountains and rivers, which we've been talking about, and the land mass, and then buildings, towers, halls, chambers, people, animals, and so forth.

[11:13]

So all of that, the whole phenomenal world, whatever you can imagine, whatever you can think of, all of the people in Chicago and all of the buildings and the cars and the elevated trains and so forth, the thought of is the environment. Then Yang Shans gives this fundamental meditation instruction. It's very important. He says, reverse your thought to think of the thinking mind. Are there so many things there? So this is a very... This is in many, many places in Zen. Dogen talks about turning the mind around to take the backward step to turn the light within and illuminate the self. So, in our meditation, the direction of our awareness is reversing your thought to think of the thinking mind. We face the wall, we face ourselves, we turn our attention around.

[12:19]

So, in some ways, when we When we stop and put aside, as it said in Dogen's words on faith, he said, we put aside all of that stuff of the world. Of course, it's still out there. We know when we're finished, we'll go out. And Chicago will still be there. But when we sit down, in some sense, we put that aside. We don't get rid of it exactly. We just put it aside and turn our attention The way Yangshan says it, though, he says, reverse your thoughts to think of that which thinks. That's pretty subtle, actually. It's like trying to see your own eyeball. How do we turn the mind around, turn our awareness around, to focus on how's thinking? How is awareness?

[13:21]

What is it that we're thinking? so we can get caught up in all kinds of elaborate thoughts about thinking. And that's not exactly what he's talking about here. This is a kind of teaching about different levels of, we could say different levels of thinking or different levels of awareness. And part of this is about getting unstuck from this the verbal way of thinking where we think in terms of subject, verb, object. Anyway, turn your mind around to focus on that which is focusing, as it were. And then Yangshan asks the monk, are there so many things there? And the way the story is written, it seems like the monk just answers right away.

[14:21]

We know that in some cases, in some stories, the monk may have come back the next day and answered, or he may have paused for, you know. five minutes or ten minutes, or there's one story where the monk goes and sits in the meditation hall and said like an iron post for eight years and then he comes back and responds to the sixth ancestor who had asked him a question. So we don't know how long it took for the monk to respond here. Maybe he did it right away, maybe he was that good. But anyway, the young Shun again, he says, the thinker is the mind, the thought of is the environment. Therein are mountains, rivers, the landmass, buildings, towers, halls, chambers, and so forth, peoples, animals. Reverse your thoughts to think of the thinking mind. Turn your mind around to look within. And he says, are there so many things there? And the monk said, when I get here, I don't see any existence at all.

[15:25]

So this is also a very famous basic Zen teaching. The six ancestors said there's none. And basic Buddhist teaching, that there's nothing that exists independently, that form is emptiness. Of course, emptiness is also form. And in the commentary it talks about this. This is a particular kind of meditation, and this monk was a very accomplished meditator to be able to say that. So I'll come back to that when I talk about the commentary. I'm very tempted to stop and spend the rest of the evening talking about just what this monk saw or didn't see. But anyway, Yangshan goes on. He says, this is right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of person. So here he's introducing stages, a little bit tricky. But this idea of the stage of faith and the stage of person,

[16:26]

This word faith is difficult as an English word to translate this. It means faith, but it also means trust or confidence. It's a fundamental part of our practice. Somehow, there's some trust involved in just being able to sit down. and stay relatively still and face the wall and face yourself. So even though Yangshan seems to be denigrating the stage of faith, this is essential. But he says, this is right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of person. So that's another section. I'm going to go back and talk about this I don't see any existence at all and come back to this, but just this idea of the stage of person, that part of what, as some of you have been practicing a long time, some of you fairly recently, but whatever it is that allows you to be present,

[17:37]

has to do with some basic fundamental trust or confidence. Not in yourself, and not in something out there either, exactly. It's like the trust that you have when we do walking meditation and you put your foot down, and somehow the floor is still there to meet your feet. Or when you take an inhale, that you trust there will be an exhale after that, and vice versa. Anyway, he says, this is right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of person. So what does he mean by this? Well, Yezdan spoke about the 10 offshooting pictures, the offshooting pictures recently, and this is related, but what is the stage of person? This is important, and this relates very much to the Mountains and Water Sutra, so I'll come back to that. Then the next section, the monk says, don't you have any other particular way of guidance? So he's sort of like, oh, is that it? And good students keep asking, oh, what else do I have to do?

[18:46]

What else should I be doing? And Yang Shun said, to say that I have anything particular or not would not be accurate. Based on your insight, you get one mystery. You can take the seat and wear the robe. You now have the trust and the confidence to be a person who can face yourself. can face the world, can be upright in the middle of the mountains and waters and the landscape of your life. After this, see on your own. So there's an old Zen saying, you know, see on your own, then go check it with someone. So I can't tell any of you how to be Buddha. It would be nonsense, you know. And yet, my job is sort of to encourage you all to be awakened in the way you are, to use your own creative stuff to express something that's helpful in the world. So I don't care about Buddhism. How do you, each of you, find your own stage of person and express something that is creative and lively and inspiring for the world?

[19:59]

The world needs that now. So, I want to go back and talk about this. Reverse your thoughts to think of the thinking mind. There are so many things there. And the monk said, when I get here, I don't see any existence at all. So there's, in the comments of the, in the Book of Serenity, the cases were selected and ordered, sequenced, and the main verses were written by Hongxue, I translated some of these things from Cultivating the Empty Field. And then the commentary is by a later soto, Shaodong in Chinese, a monk named Wansong. And he has a lot of interesting things to say, and he gives a lot of background. So he talks about how Yangshun was nicknamed Little Shakyamuni. And then he goes over the story. So I want to... go over some of Yangshan's commentary, particularly about that part.

[21:01]

Yangshan said, once I'm right, what thinks is the mind, what is thought of as the environment. In the environment, there are a thousand differences. Are there so many in the mind which thinks? So this is, in a way, pointing to the subject as being the reality of everything. we tend to think of the world as dead objects. When we use language, we think of, you know, our language is how we think, and there are different kinds of languages. Of course, there's music, there's, you know, I don't know, chess, there's color, painting. There are many different kinds of languages, but in our spoken language, we have subject, verb, and object, and so we make things, we think of this as an object. But when we see ourselves as expressions of the landscape, then everything is a subject.

[22:05]

So he says, what is thought of as the environment, in the environment there are a thousand differences. There are a thousand different distinct Well, we could think of them as objects, or we might think of them as events, and not see it so dualistically. But anyway, Yangshan says, are there so many in the mind which thinks? And then, Wansong quotes another great master, Yodaman, who once said, Yangshan, because of his kindness and compassion, had a conversation in the weeds. So, describing this story. And Wangshan says, after all, the monk too was sharp. He said, here I don't see any existence at all. Nowadays, Wangshan says, hardly one of 10,000 people reach this state. If they do, then they point to themselves and carry a board, not knowing that by delighting in the road, one ultimately fails to reach home. Wangshan had traveled the mountain paths, so he especially pointed out a living road.

[23:16]

So this can happen. It happens in sessions sometimes. I know students for whom this has happened, where they see that there's nothing, really nothing, to turn off or to turn on. It's just... this field, and people get stuck in emptiness. Maybe it's harder to do that in a zendo in the big city. But maybe a few people here have gone off to do retreats in places like Tassajara. If you do a lot of meditation, it's possible. We're doing a little bit more meditation than usual with people in the practice period. And it's possible to see. It's possible to see there's nothing at all. And Wansong says, hardly one of 10,000 people reach this state. He's really acknowledging how strong this monk is in his practice.

[24:22]

But then Wansong says, if they do, then they point to themselves and carry a board, not knowing that by delighting in the road, one ultimately fails to reach home. So we can get caught in emptiness. It's called insaneness. It happens. And this thing about carrying a board, there's an old saying, a board-carrying fellow, somebody carrying a board on their shoulder. So right now I can't see Katie because I've got this board up. So we shut off part of the world. Then we think, oh, hey. There's nothing here, and we see how wonderful that is. So this is a problem, again, more of a problem for monks up in the mountains in the monasteries. Now, as Bruce said, it's hard to be a saint in the city, and maybe that's a good thing. Anyway, Yangshan had traveled the mountain paths, and he especially pointed out a living road. And then he tells a story, Wang San tells a story about Yangshan himself. In the past, as Yangshan was meditating in front of the monk's hall in the middle of the night,

[25:27]

So, sometimes, you know, there's actually in monasteries, there's a time when you're supposed to put out the lights and go to sleep, and a monastery I was staying at in Japan, I would sit up late, you know, just in the monks hall. the monk next to me who was a good guy, but he gave some instruction, instruction that the teacher Narasaki Garoshi was giving, and the top mentioned going, doing this, you know, everybody doing the same thing, and this guy whose seat was next to me said, hey, Taiken stays up late tonight. And so they kind of gave me a hard time about that, but the teacher also said, well, I wish all of you had that kind of spirit. But anyway, but I was really, you know, it was, you're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to just be like everyone else. This is beginner's mind. But here, this is a story about Yangshan meditating in front of the monk's hall in the middle of the night. Couldn't help himself. He didn't see the, and then he didn't see the mountains, rivers, buildings, people, or even his own body.

[26:35]

All was the same as space. So this is a story about Yangshan. The next morning, he reported this to Guishan, his teacher, who said, I reached this state when I was at Baizhang's, his teacher, famous teacher, Hakujo in Japanese. This is just the achievement of melting illumination, which dissolves illusions. Later on, when you are teaching, there can be no one who surpasses this. And so Wansang says, no one but Yangshan could realize this, and no one but Guishan would recognize it. So, they're talking about, you know, sometimes people, you know, get into meditation and want to get, you know, really high, you know, really get into some high mental states and it's possible in meditation. But again, here we just do beginner's mind and... So, you know, it's not that, you know, there's that kind of meditative intensity can be helpful.

[27:36]

We can see that our usual way of seeing is limited. We can see that all the things we think are there as objects are, you know, really just, how does he say it? You know, that there's nothing that exists separately. But by delighting in the road, one ultimately fails to reach home. So this thing about stage of faith and stage of person is tricky. But it's important. So I'm not going to read through all of the commentary here. He talks about the Surangama Sutra, the Atavantime Concentration Sutra, Surat Gama Samadhi Sutra, which says there's this stage of faith, stage of contemplation, stage of cultivation, stage of practice, stage of relinquishment.

[28:41]

And then here's Yangchen talking about stages of faith in a person. So in the early Mahayana, no, in the Mahayana sutras, a lot of them do talk about stages of practice, stages of bodhisattva development. And on some level, you know, just in terms of experiencing beginner's mind, If you sit regularly, and I recommend sitting at home in your spare time when you can, several times a week if you can, or if not every day, but when we do this, something happens. even in this kind of practice where we don't have lots of stages, we can recognize that some confidence, some awareness, some ability to respond to people and things around us, some flexibility, some new options, some new ways of seeing things, that that does develop and open up.

[29:54]

But here we have the stage of And there's some really wonderful poetry and poems that he talks about. And it does reference the ox herding pictures again, which are one way of talking about the development of practice. First seeing, just getting a glimpse of the ox. The ox representing kind of awareness and wholeness. There's different kinds of pictures. The ox goes from all black to various stages to all white in representing purity. One of the famous versions of this at some point, the ox is forgotten. First there's seeing glimpses of the ox, then there's actually seeing the ox, then there's following the tracks and seeing the ox.

[30:57]

There's sometimes six pictures, sometimes 10, sometimes 12. But eventually there's taming the ox and then riding the ox home and then at some point the ox is just forgotten and they just draw that as a circle. But then the last one is like this stage of person and re-entering the marketplace with Sometimes they say bliss bestowing hands. So we're doing this practice where we're starting in the marketplace. Some people here go off and do intensive practice, or sometimes we do it on a day of sitting like we did yesterday, or three days, which we'll do at the end of this month, or December five days, anyway. The point, though, is what is it that unfolds in our practice that allows us to re-enter the marketplace. And we don't have to do it, it doesn't have to be one cycle, it can be many cycles of turning within, looking at the mind that thinks, seeing what's there, seeing in some ways the sameness of things or the interconnectedness of things.

[32:12]

So that's what we're doing in this practice period by looking at the landscape sutra, seeing how we are expressions of the landscape. And then maybe we see it's all one process. There's not a single thing that exists separately. And yet, this story sort of ends. I mean, there's also the thing about continuing your practice. Go back and sit and see the mystery more on your own. But basically, it's okay for the stage of faith, but that's not yet the stage of person. So I just want to say a little bit about, you know, what is this stage of person? How do we find that? So, first we have to turn away from our sense of self, the stories we have about the self, all of the ways in which we hold on to some sense of a separate self. That's an illusion, and it's a trap, and we get caught by it.

[33:14]

But when we're willing to see how we are, an expression of the landscape of the prairies and lakes and the buildings and avenues and the mountains and waters, then something else happens. And we're not, we loosen our hold on, doesn't mean we shouldn't take care of ourselves, but we don't get so caught up in me, me, me, or you, you, you. We see that we're part of, an expression of the whole phenomenal world. And yet then, that's what Yangshun is saying, that's all right for the stage of faith. And the stage of faith is pretty good. We just chanted something from Dogen about arousing faith, arousing trust. But then there's the stage of person. And so I'm not even gonna get to Hongzhe's first comment where he talks about Talking about being caught in emptiness, it says, when the wine is always sweet, it lays out the guests so the meal is filling.

[34:19]

It ruins the farmers. Bursting out of the clear sky, the Garuda takes wing on the wind, treading over the blue sea. Thunder follows the roaming dragon. So how is it that we as baby dragons start to take, to unfold our wings and take on the stage of person. And again, I can't tell you, but I want to encourage you all to find your own creative energy, your own way of expressing all of the mountains and waters. and bring it into the world. So, there's always much more to say, but I'll just stop at this point and ask for comments, responses, questions.

[35:22]

So I hope this long and long story doesn't seem too impenetrable, but it's about our practice. So comment. Jeremy. Thank you for your talk. I know I've heard the poem a number of times, but I think hearing it now, I've seen it a little differently. When the monk says, when I get here, I'm saving it all, it's just another kind of comment of gain and loss. When I get here, I lose everything. Or maybe that's even a way of saying, I gained something. He's gained everything because he's not caught by any single thing. Exactly. I remember somebody saying, like, I practiced this Hinayana practice with Mahayana.

[36:28]

I think it was even Tsukiyoshi. I said, how could that be possible? Because I thought that my practice was either Hinayana or not Hinayana. So I said, how is that possible? She said, I don't label my practice, or sometimes I do label my practice. And she said, well, sometimes it does happen. And can you just kind of see it happen? Can you kind of be with that, and kind of hearing about the fish If you get tired, take a break. When you have some energy, be active. Do what's appropriate for now. If you think you've gained something, be with the game. Yes, thank you. part of the point of all this is to get over the idea of gain and loss. Of course we think that way, but can we not, part of what the world needs is to stop thinking in terms of competition and who's winning from who and to start

[37:36]

We're not going to be able to address the climate and all the other problems of the world and the problems of our own lives without seeing that we are actually in it together. So part of the issue is to get over the loss. But yeah, if you gain something, okay, recognize that. That's the way to let go of it. Yeah. Yeah, please. Yeah, I wonder if it's possible to really kind of like You know, because I feel like getting over it, for me, when I think getting over it, I'm like, oh, game, getting over it. You know, it's kind of like this. It's kind of weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's just, it doesn't mean that you deny whatever experience you've had. or whatever insights you've had, it's just, okay, what's the next thing? So, as Young Chun says at the end of the story,

[38:38]

Based on your insight, you get one mystery. You can take a seat and wear the robe. There's always more. So our practice is always unfolding. There's more people. There's more awareness. There are more thoughts. There's always more deepening or unfolding, however you want to put it, that is available. Yes, sir? Yeah, or sometimes we have to actually make an effort to start over. Okay, here I am. Got this robe or whatever. I've managed to sit all day. But okay, now it's about how do we take on... There's always news. There's always new... We meet new people, there's new things happening in the world, there's new problems in our own lives.

[39:46]

We don't turn away from that, the new problems in the world. How do we engage with the flow of reality of the whole landscape? So there's not an end to it. It's not like we get to some place and that's it, and then we're the King Buddha of the world or something, or Queen Buddha of the world. We don't have to do that. So beginner's mind is actually, you know, it's very good news. How do we see our experience freshly? How do we meet our experience freshly? We have time for maybe one more question or comment. Yes, David. I see the end, from my perspective, of that koan where he says, A lot of that is we're not doing this practice just for ourselves, that we're doing it to be in the world.

[40:54]

And I find myself recently being caught up where even foolish things like talking to people on the phone that they're not getting what I'm trying to say. When we turn the mind, reverse our thought, to think of that which is thinking, we see, oh, here I'm getting frustrated and angry about this situation. And maybe that happens 20 minutes after the anger starts. Gradually we start to know ourselves and we can see those patterns a little more quickly and not get caught by them. That's being a human being. But going back to what Jeremy was saying about Hinayana and Mahayana, Hinayana is a kind of negative pejorative word for lesser vehicle in the Bodhisattva tradition, which we're in, which is about awakening together, taking care of everyone.

[42:03]

But sometimes we do need to work with Hinayana. The earlier Buddhism is more about purifying oneself, focusing on one's own liberation. Sometimes we need to do that. We need to work on ourself. That's part of the whole thing, too. So sometimes we see our own patterns of anger. It's something that on some level is trivial, but still we have to take care of it. So that's the part of what we still have to do, even when we see that we're practicing together with everything. And for the sake of everything, we still have to take care of, oh, OK, but why am I getting angry? Or whatever it is. So we're a little over time. This is a wonderful story, and there's a lot that we can say from it. But I kind of wanted to throw it into the mix of the practice period in the mountains and waters. And maybe I'll talk about it more. I don't know. For now, we'll end with the four bodhisattva vows, which are next to the last page of your chant book.

[43:12]

The fourth one, just start with this one. Beings are uncomfortless. I vow to be with them. Pollutions are insustable. I vow to end them. Dharma may thrive on all this. I vow to enter them. For the world's way is unassailable. I vow to know I say. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are implausible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them, but those ways are impossible.

[44:18]

I vow to realize it. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. I vowed to enter them, but those who went away did not succeed us at all.

[44:49]

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