Beyond and Surpassed Now I can see and hear it. Good morning, everyone. So we've been talking about

[01:09]

This Sutra from the Mountains and Waters that Dogen has transcribed for us, this Shobo Genzo text, Mountains and Waters Sutra. Dogen is the 13th century Japanese monk who founded this branch of Zen and Buddha Way called Soto Zen. So, I wanted to start with some things from this text and then add a few things. So, there's so much in this. to look at and to, not to try to figure out or understand, but just to be provoked by, to play with.

[02:18]

So at the beginning, it says, the mountains and waters of the immediate present are the manifestation or expression of the path of the ancient Buddhas, together abiding in their own dharma positions, their own situations. They've consummated the qualities of thorough exhaustedness. They've realized completeness or fulfilled exhausted virtues, another translation says. Because they are the circumstances prior to the kalpa of emptiness, before there was any form, they are the livelihood of the immediate present. So, I've encouraged you during this practice period to consider what is the livelihood, what is the vitality of this immediate present.

[03:31]

This is what we realize in Zazen, this immediate present in its full interconnectedness with the landscape, Sansui in Japanese, of the mountains and waters, of the situation. the landscape, wherever we are, whether it's prairies and lakes or mountains and waters. Anyway, Dogen says, or the Sutra says that because they are events prior to the Kalpa of emptiness, or we could say before the Big Bang, these mountains and waters are the livelihood of this immediate presence. And because they are the self, before the germination of any subtle sign, before there's any indication of anything, they are the penetrating liberation of immediate actuality. So, this is the starting point for this involvement with the landscape of our lives, the penetrating liberation of immediate actuality.

[04:43]

So this is a text about mountains and waters. It's also a text about Zazen and about our practice and about how to take care of that. And he goes on to comment on, an old saying that the blue mountains are constantly walking, and then he talks about, and there's of course much more, but that by studying how it is that the mountains are constantly walking, we can learn our own walking. And this isn't just walking, walking also implies here how we perform, how we conduct ourselves, our way of being in the world. So, as I've said to people in this practice period we're using this text for, that it's not about trying to understand, you know, what this text is saying. That doesn't really, it's not important.

[05:46]

It's about finding ways to play with our own awareness of our own life. as the form and emptiness of the mountains and waters. How do we allow this to inspire fresh practice perspectives for our own way of being in the world? So again, the livelihood of the immediate present. What is that? the penetrating liberation of immediate actuality before any understanding, before any signs or indications or names or stories or designations. So that's the starting point and I've been looking more at the ending of this text and there's so much in between. He talks about water and all the different perspectives on water and how, of course, humans and fish see water differently.

[06:48]

Humans drown in it. Fish breathe in it. Dragons see it another way. Hungry ghosts see it yet another way. So how do we see the different perspectives about this life, this world? And beyond that, towards the end he says, it is not just that there is water in the world, there are worlds in the realm of water, and this is so not only in water, there are also worlds of sentient beings in clouds, there are worlds of sentient beings in wind, there are worlds of sentient beings in fire, there are worlds of sentient beings in earth, there are worlds of sentient beings in phenomena, in all phenomena. There are worlds of sentient beings in a single blade of grass, and there are worlds of sentient beings in a single staff. And where there are worlds of sentient beings, there must be the world of Buddhas and Zen atoms. So Buddhas are just, you know, that portion of the mountains and waters, that quality of the mountains and waters that is awake, that is paying attention.

[08:01]

and that is caring about the quality of the lives of everyone and everything in the mountains and waters. He goes on to say, further towards the end, mountains... Among mountains, there are mountains hidden in jewels. There are mountains hidden in the marshes. There are mountains hidden in the sky. There are mountains hidden in mountains. And there is a study of mountains that's hidden in hiddenness. So some of you have had difficulty with this text. If you try to understand it, it's pretty challenging.

[09:03]

It can be opaque, the way Dogen writes, or the way the mountains and waters write Dogen. Anyway, there's a study of mountain hidden in hiddenness. So how do we appreciate that which is hidden from us? How do we appreciate the ways in which the mountains are walking? And the water, while it flows, also is still. We can't pin it down anywhere. This is actually the reality of the landscape of our world and of our life. What is this study of mountains, hidden and hiddenness? Then he quotes the old saying, mountains are mountains, waters are waters. This saying does not say that mountains are mountains, it says mountains are mountains. So there's the old saying, when we start practice first we see mountains and waters, we see the ordinary world, the world out here on Irving Park Road and every other street in Chicago.

[10:19]

And then at some point we start to see that mountains are not just mountains. And water is not just water. And we start to see how we're deeply interconnected. And at some point again, we can appreciate mountains are mountains and water is water. But we've seen this interconnectedness, or a little bit of it. We can't see it completely because mountains, there's a study, the study of mountains is hidden in hiddenness. So, this is not about some teaching or doctrine for us to figure out or understand. This is a way of seeing and being, a way of witnessing, a way of performing our lives that we can be inspired in by mountains and waters and prairies and lakes and skyscrapers and avenues.

[11:21]

And so mountains are not just mountains. There's another, I want to bring in another writing by Dogen called, another essay from Shogo Genza called Painting of a Rice Cake. It starts off by him talking about an old man saying that the painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger. And the initial meaning of this, of course, is just that we need to find the real thing, as they say, not just some painting of it. It's not enough to read the menu, you have to actually pick something and eat it to get nourishment. So painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger, but in the course of talking, looking at painting and rice cakes and other things and satisfaction and hunger, Dogen ends up saying, at the end of this long essay, this amazing thing that

[12:39]

There is no remedy for satisfying hunger other than a painted version. Without painted hunger, you can never become a true person. So take care of your hunger, your yearning, your questioning, your dissatisfaction. There's no remedy for satisfying hunger other than a painted rice cake. And without painted hunger, you never can become a true person. There is no understanding other than painted satisfaction. In fact, satisfying hunger, satisfying no hunger, not satisfying hunger, and not satisfying no hunger cannot be attained or spoken of without painted hunger. All of these are simply painted rice cakes. And he says, to understand this meaning with your body and mind, you will thoroughly master the ability to turn things and be turned by things.

[13:58]

So, then to enact this ability is to actualize the painting of enlightenment. So we tell stories or we draw pictures of everything. We have pictures of mountains and water and what they mean. We have pictures of Buddhas or statues of Buddhas or we bow to these images of Buddha. But what is the real thing? And is there something separate from the story we tell about Buddha and the Buddha? Well, part of the mountains and waters scripture is that when we look closely at the way mountains are hidden in hiddenness and water is hidden in the flowing of hiddenness, we start to see both complexity and different perspectives, but also how everything and all of us, as they say, is without an abiding self.

[15:03]

What is the self of mountains? What is the self of the Chicago River? What is the self of anyone sitting in this room? He talks about this practice of painting. And first he starts with rice cakes. He says, a rice cake is wholeness of body and mind actualized. A rice cake. And then he says, a rice cake is blue, yellow, red, and white, as well as long, short, square, and round. Many, many shapes, many, many colors to the forms of the mountains and the waters. And then he says, when mountains and waters are painted, blue, green, and red paint are used. Strange rocks and wondrous stones are used. The four jewels and the seven treasures are used. And then he says, rice cakes are painted in the same manner. And when a person is painted, the four great elements and the five skandhas are used.

[16:10]

When a Buddha is painted, not only a clay altar or a lump of earth is used, but 32 marks, a blade of grass, the cultivation of wisdom for incalculable eons, all of those are used to paint a Buddha. As a Buddha has been painted on a single scroll in this way, all Buddhas are painted Buddhas. All painted Buddhas are actual Buddhas. And this is so also of the mountains and waters. We have a painting of Lake Michigan that we appreciate when we go to the lakeshore. We have our story about Lake Michigan. We can't possibly know all of the textures and all of the beings, even in a little piece of Lake Michigan. And yet, we have a name, Lake Michigan. And it's a great lake. We've all seen it. And yet, whatever you see is just a painting of Lake Michigan.

[17:12]

We tell stories and we paint pictures of our life. And it's not that that's bad or wrong, that's just how we live, as expressions of mountains and waters. So mountains and waters in Lake Michigan are not somewhere out there. When we climb around in mountains or in prairies, when we walk down avenues in Chicago, we are It's not that the avenues are out there. Irving Park Road is in this room. So all of this is about seeing our reality. I don't want to value it. I don't want to say one way is better than the other. But seeing how we see reality

[18:15]

in terms of the paintings of Blue Mountains walking constantly and the stories and flavors we have about the water and the various waters. Mountains and waters take various forms. Mountains and waters are not just mountains and waters. So, I've asked this before, but is there anybody in this room who's never been in a mountain, on a mountain? Sometimes people raise their hands because, you know, here in Chicago we don't have mountains. We have tall buildings. So, but the mountain that you, if you picture a space or a time when you were

[19:24]

constantly walking or maybe when you stopped and sat down in a mountain. We all have a different image. It's possible, actually, that two people in this room might be thinking of the same mountain. But then which side of the mountain were you on? Anyway, we have these different ways of appreciating mountains. And the point isn't that mountains are something that exists out there. Mountains are constantly walking, transforming. The world is transforming. And we can see that in geological time, of course. But even in the actuality of the livelihood of the immediate present, everything is changing. Each of us and all of the mountains we've been in and all of the water we observed.

[20:27]

Lake Michigan, I understand, is, thanks to all the snow, is rising. Not as much as it used to be, but anyway. Mountains and waters constantly shifting. And, you know, often in these Zen texts and sayings, when it talks about something, it's not just that thing. So mountains and waters, can also represent, mountains in Zen talk is this kind of slang for Zen teachers. So a lot of the great Zen masters that we talk about from China, their name, the name we know them by is the name of the mountain where they lived. So Dongshan or Guishan, those are names of mountains. So sometimes, so water takes, we know that water takes many forms. It can be lakes or rivers, it can come out of our taps, it can be ice, it can be hot, it can vaporize too.

[21:39]

So talking about mountains and waters, as this mountains and water sutra does, also refers to, we could say masters and students, because one form of water is clouds. and monks are called unsui, clouds and water. So this is sansui, the mountains and water sutra, but it's also the unsui, the cloudy waters, the cloud waters, the watery clouds. So this is from Hongzhe, from cultivating the empty field, a while before Dogen, He says, a person of the way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere. So we can abide in our dharma position, but we can't actually stay in any one place. You know, through the course of the day, some of you are assigned seats and you're, you know, we'll be there through the day, but actually the whole room is moving anyway.

[22:44]

A person of the way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere. The white clouds are fascinated with the green mountain's foundation. The bright moon cherishes being carried along with the flowing water. The clouds part and the mountain appears. The moon sets and the water is cool. Each bit of autumn contains vast interpenetration without bounds." So this is the wrong season to read this in, but still it seemed relevant. Every dust is whole without reaching me. The 10,000 changes are stilled without shaking me. If you can sit here with stability, then you can freely step across and engage the world with energy. So let me read that again. a person of the way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere. The white clouds are fascinated with the green mountain's foundation, even though Dogen later says, and actually this comes from a saying from Furong Daokai, who was a teacher a couple generations before Hongzhe, that the green mountains are constantly walking.

[23:53]

Here, Hongzhe says the water, the white clouds are fascinated with the green mountain's foundation. So even Beings who are walking may have a foundation, apparently. The bright moon cherishes being carried along with the flowing water. So there's this wonderful image here, this kind of story, this little video of the moonlight reflected in the stream as it flows down the mountain. The clouds part and the mountain appears. The moon sets and the water is cool. This is the natural function of mountains and clouds and mountains and water. Each bit of autumn contains vast interpenetrations without bounds, and each bit of springtime, too. Vast interpenetration. What goes into a flower blooming on a tree in Chicago in May?

[24:54]

Every dust is whole without reaching me. The 10,000 changes are stilled without shaking me. So how are we involved with the 10,000 changes? How are we involved with the flowing of the mountains and waters that are constantly walking? This is the question of our practice. How do we share the expression of the mountains and waters? And then he says, if you can sit here with stability, then you can freely step across and engage the world with energy. So the point of this is not to reach some idea or understanding or figure out something about mountains or water or whatever, clouds, but how do we sit in the midst of this flow? And of course, as we're sitting still, as you all know from sitting here this morning, things are going on. There's blood flowing within us. Sometimes there are thoughts flowing. And yet, he says, if you can sit here with stability, then you can freely step across and engage the world with energy.

[26:18]

So this is the point of our practice. We sit upright and relatively still. Take another inhale and enjoy another exhale. when we can sit with steadiness, when we can be willing to face the flowing of our life in our own mountains and waters. We're not separate from Lake Michigan or Irving Park Road. We are the expression of that. The mountains and waters are constantly walking and flowing in this room. And yet the point of that again is when we can stay present with that, when we can witness ourselves as expressions of mountains and waters. Then we can freely step across and engage the world with energy. So, you know, I've referred to Paul Rupp's statement that rocks are people who sat still enough so that they could become them.

[27:25]

But that's not our... You know, our practice may be to sit still. and to be present and to settle and to, in some ways, sit like upright rocks. But also, the point of that is how can we then step outside and engage the world with energy? How do we express the mountains and waters in our life? How do we take care of the mountains and waters? This is not just a You know, a theoretical question now, in the age of mountaintop removal and tracking and so forth, how do we take care of the mountains and waters? How do we take care of the mountains and waters of our own life? How do we engage the world with energy? So when we settle in this Zazen practice and do it regularly, Maybe we can feel it for those of us sitting all day, or even if you just come and sit for a period. Something is going on.

[28:28]

Some energy becomes available. And often you may not even realize that. You may not see it. You may not recognize it. And yet, doing this practice regularly, allows some energy with which we can engage the world, with which the world can engage itself. In the Mountains and Water Sutra it talks about mountains loving the people who live there, the sages and wise folk who hang out in the mountains. But I think this may also be true for the wise folk and sages who hang out in the cities. We have this wonderful, cosmopolitan, lively, vital accumulation of heaps of different kinds of people, all somehow

[29:38]

We can call it Chicago, or whatever name you want to give it. Chicago doesn't exist apart from all the people in it right now. So right now, you are Chicago. Right now, how we express the mountains and water and the lakeshore and buses and avenues. This is how we engage the world with energy. So our practice is about expressing something. It's not about figuring anything out. Allow the mountains and waters to figure you out, to express themselves in your life. So there are many ways to do this.

[30:43]

And again, how do we take care of the mountains and waters in this time when the mountains and waters are challenged? So another kind of mountain I recently... Actually, this was sent to me by Florence Kaplow, who was here recently talking about women in Buddhism and her book about that. But this is... It's called The Dark Mountain Manifesto, and if anyone wants a copy of it, let me know and I'll email it to you. But it's about uncivilization. So, it's a long document, and I don't agree with all of it, but there's some interesting things here. A fellow named, well, there's a group of people in England, a fellow named Kingsworthy, there was an article about him. So this is sort of post-environmentalist. This is about, well, he quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson saying, the end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

[31:51]

So the people who wrote this, you know, abandoned their life of environmental activism and living in London or wherever and went off to, I don't know, Scotland or Cardiff or someplace in the country. Part of the point of what this is about is that we tell stories. Civilization is based on telling stories about humans. And I can read little bits of this, but it ends with these eight principles of uncivilization, which I'll read from. Well, I'll just read a little bit of this. Again, talking about the way in which our so-called civilization is, well, from their perspective, crumbling. It is, it seems, our civilization's turn to experience the inrush of the savage and the unseen, our turn to be brought up short by contact with untamed reality.

[33:00]

There's a fall coming. We live in an age in which familiar restraints are being kicked away, foundations snatched from under us, And he had been talking about Joseph Conrad and Bertrand Russell. It's a very literary kind of document. But in this time, the crumbling empire is the unassailable global economy, the brave new world of consumer democracy being forged worldwide in its name. Upon the indestructibility of this edifice, we have pinned the hopes of this latest phase of our civilization. So they talk about how we see the problems in the world, I'm talking about the environment, but I think it applies on many levels, as the problems to solve, and if we only get new technology or new fixes, that will take care of it. Part of what this is talking about is acknowledging and witnessing to grief, to the sadness of

[34:03]

endangering that we are in as a species and as a world, and being willing to just be there with that, not trying to fix things. So maybe I'll say more about this. That's a long document. But anyway, the Dark Mountain Project is about One way to say it is it's about speaking for the mountains and waters, not speaking for the civilization of humanity. So it's interesting and provocative. So it says, we must unhumanize our views a little and become confident as the rock and ocean that we were made from. And then some of their principles of uncivilization. We live in a time of social, economic, and ecological unraveling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history.

[35:07]

We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it. Two, we reject the faith which holds that our converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of, quote-unquote, problems in need of technological or political solutions. Three, we believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we've been telling ourselves. So this is where I want to bring this Mountains and Water Sutra in. The roots of these crises lie in the stories we've been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilization. The myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, the myth of our separation from nature. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten that they are myths. So again, we look at Lake Michigan or the mountains or waters and we see it out there. This is talking about the problem of self, is how we talk about it in the Buddha way, that we think there's a separate self and we think that each of the selves in this room and each of the beings in the city and the lake and the river are separate, fundamentally existing selves.

[36:22]

So they say, for we will reassert the story. The role of storytelling is more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality. So they speak in the manifesto of the role of artists and writers and creative people, which means all Zen students. How do we express something that is not a story about objects out there that are falling apart, but that is speaking from? How do we speak for the Chicago River and Lake Michigan and the mountains and waters and the sirens going past? Five, humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. Wow. What an idea. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human bubble. By careful attention, we will re-engage with the non-human world. So this is very much about what Dogen, remember, is talking about is the mountains and waters.

[37:28]

How do we re-engage with the world that's not just limited to humanity and human civilization and human history and human culture? What is the culture? What is the art of the mountains and waters and the lakes? And the last one is, the end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us. So I was speaking to someone yesterday who was talking about radical optimism, which I think is realistic, that whatever may be happening, and again, this applies to our own lives and the difficulties we face in our own lives, as well as the problems of the planet and the species and so forth, that the future isn't set, that things change, that science tells us about the perils that the planet and human habitat face, but we don't know how things will happen.

[38:42]

We can't. And also, second noble truth, there is a cause for suffering. It also means there's a cause for the end of suffering. So everything we do makes a difference. So, feeling overwhelmed by the problems of the world or the problems of our own life, It's not realistic, actually. We don't know how things will happen. The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world, full stop. Something continues. Something will continue. So it might be, you know, as I've suggested at times, a worthwhile exercise to consider the people walking past outside on Irving Park Road, you know, in 20 years or in 50 years or in 250 years.

[40:05]

And what are they like? And what is this world? And we don't know, of course. But how we express the mountains and waters and the lake and river and so forth, has something to do with who they are. So maybe I'll just close by reading Hongshu's passage again. A person of the way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere. The white clouds are fascinated with the green mountain's foundation. The bright moon cherishes being carried along with the flowing water. So you see, he's speaking for the bright moon and its cherishing and for the white clouds and how they are fascinated.

[41:08]

This is part of the appeal of Hongzhi's expression, that he's speaking from the mountains and waters. He's not speaking as a person who's observing mountains and waters somewhere else. The clouds part and the mountain appears. The moon sets and the water is cool. Each bit of springtime contains vast interpenetration without bounds. Every dust is whole without reaching me. The 10,000 changes are stilled without shaking me. If you can sit here with stability, then you can freely step across and engage the world with energy. So, how do we engage the world with energy? And there's not one right way. Each of us has our own way of finding and expressing some energy. So, for those of us who are sitting here all day, we'll have a time in the afternoon for tea and discussion, but I take a A few minutes if anyone has any comment or response now.

[42:11]

Laurel. One is that human beings are superior and need to fix everything that's broken. The other is that human beings are a failed experiment of the earth and we should just think beyond us because we're out of here and the earth will be fine without us. And the third one is from the pot of lightning woman, we should go back So there's a lot of big ideas out there about what's going on in the world today.

[43:27]

And I might have been the only Buddhist in the room, but I've been grappling with all of these three things since then, so I thought I'd share them with you. Thank you. Wonderful gift. Any other response? Well, thank you. Silence is the traditional Buddhist response for whatever that's worth.

[44:16]

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