I'd like to speak this morning about kīng-hen, walking meditation. So, this weekend I'm speaking from the Dogen's Mountains and Waters Sutra, and kind of the starting point, the starting point in this text is a saying by our great ancestor, Furong Daokai, who said, the Green Mountains are forever walking. A stone woman gives birth to a child at night. The Green Mountains are constantly walking. He also refers to a saying by Yun Man, another great master, who said, the Eastern Mountains travel on the waters. The Green Mountains are constantly walking. So I asked yesterday if there were any native Chicagoans present who had never seen a mountain.

[01:11]

Everybody said they'd seen a mountain. Is there anybody here who's not? Who's never been to a mountain? Paul, you've seen mountains, haven't you? No? I've been in California, I guess. I don't know if I've ever seen a mountain. A little mountain? A hill. Between a hill and a mountain. Well, that's the other thing about mountains. Not only are they constantly walking, but they're constantly shifting shape. They're constantly giving birth to other mountains. Mountains beget mountains. Stone women beget stone. Wooden men are stone women. So how is it that the mountains walk or grow or fade? So actually, as we get older, we get worn down and become smaller mountains. Usually, you think that as you get older, you get, well, at some age, as you get older, you get bigger.

[02:14]

But sometimes, as you get older, you get smaller. That's not a bad thing. So Marcus was talking about the Smoky Mountains yesterday and how they're old mountains But you like them, huh? They're beautiful. They're beautiful, yeah. So, how do we walk like mountains? How do the green mountains constantly walk? Of course, it's not just the mountains. The green prairies walk on the waters, too. How do we see water? How do we see how we see water in mountains? Of course, mountains represent substance, solidity, unmovingness. And this is an example for us as meditators. So we can look around the zendo and see mountains sitting on zafus or chairs, sturdy, steady, hopefully unmoving.

[03:19]

But there's always some movement. So, even if you're not shifting your position, you know, there's breathing, there's thoughts which move around, or feelings which move around in our body. So the, the, the, Furong Daokai said the green mountains are constantly walking. I would add the green mountains are constantly thinking also. The mountains are constantly aware of seeing the mountains. So we think in terms of the particular human consciousness and perceptions, and we think that's what consciousness means. What a silly notion. There are all kinds of consciousness. I mean, it's just obvious. Dogs smell and hear things that we have no awareness of. Does that mean that their sense of smell and hearing is imbalanced?

[04:23]

or does not constitute smelling or hearing. Well, just like we can't smell or hear like dogs, we can't see or think like mountains, except that we can see and realize the mountains walking constantly. So this is a very important point for us in terms of opening up our own sense of ourselves and deepening our sense of practice and deepening our sense of what it means to be alive and seeing options for how we are living our lives. The Green Mountains constantly walk. A stone only gives birth to a child by night. So Dogen goes on, though the walking of the Green Mountains is fast as wind and even faster, people on the mountains are unaware and uncognizant. So we don't necessarily see how Lake Michigan is walking.

[05:28]

We don't necessarily see Irving Park Road changing, although these days it's easy to go outside and see the road and the sidewalk and everything else walking, transforming. So the basic issue here. Well, he says, if one knew one's own walking, one would know the walking of the green mountains. The green mountains are not animate nor inanimate. The self is not animate nor inanimate. Another translator says, another way to translate that is the green mountains are not sentient nor insentient. The self is not sentient nor insentient. One should not doubt this walking of the green mountains. This has to do with, what does it mean to be alive, to be animate? We are used to thinking that, you know, we're alive and the altar's not.

[06:30]

We're used to thinking that we are alive and, you know, well actually, you know, there's a significant history to this. In Buddhism, in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, they make a clear distinction between humans and animals on the one hand, and plants and trees, not to mention rocks and concrete, that plants and trees do not have consciousness. In China that changed, and so Dogon is kind of the culmination of a whole body of East Asian Buddhist thought about this. It has to do with what is Buddha nature. It's foundational to the Soto tradition. Dongshan, the Chinese Soto founder, came to his teacher through the question of how to hear non-Sentient Beings expounding the Dharma. How do we appreciate the teaching of the mountains and rivers and lakes and prairies?

[07:37]

and of the altar, and of the skyscrapers. So, you know, humans have this strange egotistical notion that we are the smartest beings in the universe, or at least on this planet. That's because we measure this in terms of our quality of awareness and intelligence and consciousness and so forth. In China, there was an early, pre-Zen, pre-Chant, before Bodhidharma, a couple of centuries, a Chinese Madhyamaka thinker said, if you make a distinction between sentient and insentient, then nothing has Buddha nature, or nothing is Buddha nature. that that kind of distinction is ridiculous. And it developed in Chinese Buddhism, this idea of Buddha nature, not just certain, so in India, in some schools said that there are certain people who have Buddha nature, who have the capacity to awaken others, you know, and we know some of them who we might imagine, you know, it could never be Buddha.

[08:55]

But as this Dharma unfolded in China, they saw that they recognized plants, flowers and trees, grasses and weeds, having some awareness. And eventually, and Dogen again says this very strongly, that when one person sits, all of space awakens, and that There's this mutual support of guidance that happens between people sitting zazen and grasses and trees, but also fences and walls and tiles and pebbles and concrete. We are connected with the world, with our environment, deeply. We are expressions of that, as we were saying yesterday in the discussion. We are totally expressions of mountains and waters. We are the mountains and waters in the form of Sazan here in North Central Chicago this afternoon, this morning.

[10:01]

Of course, we don't understand how it is that grasses and trees think. Maybe that's not the right word even. Maybe the word think only applies to human beings, although obviously those of you who've lived with dogs and cats know that they have thoughts in certain ways. So I mentioned yesterday that the Cheyenne, many native peoples, but I know specifically the Cheyenne, say that rocks have consciousness. It's a different kind of consciousness. And Paul Rep said that rocks are people who sat long enough to become them. So our sitting is about stillness, about sitting upright like a mountain. back straight as Mount Sumeru, from a string hanging from the sky, like the Sumeru pedestal on which our Buddha sits on an altar.

[11:13]

The center of the universe. So each one of us is the center of the universe. The center of the universe is every particle in the universe. This is basic East Asian Buddhist philosophy. the rocks, the mountains and waters, the ultimate. We can see that in terms of ultimate and particular and so forth. But again, how do we recognize the dharma expressed by Lake Michigan? How do we hear the teaching of the weeds as well as the flowers? So he goes on talking about the limitations of our view, of our normal, conventional view of things.

[12:15]

And this is such a rich text, there's so much in it, but I'll just, you know, to talk about a couple parts of it. Well, he talks about water in a way that's very helpful. He says that for the time being you should study the time when you must look upon the waters of the ten directions, in the ten directions. How do we see the water as just water? Chicago River, Lake Michigan, the water flowing through our faucets. This is not the study of only when humans or celestial beings see water. There is the study of water seeing water. How does water see itself? How does water flow into water? Because water cultivates and realizes water, there is the investigation of water expressing water. One should actualize the way through where self meets self.

[13:19]

One should advance on the living road where others meet others and should leap out. So this living road, this way of bringing life to our life, we meet in zazen. And again, I want to talk about walking meditation, what we meet when we get up and do walking meditation. How do we feel the, how do we, it's not about figuring something out, because what he's talking about is the limitation of our capacity to figure things out, and the limitation of our capacity to perceive things. And yet, there's a deeper kind of knowing. How does water know water? How do mountains appreciate walking on the water? Seeing mountains and waters has differences depending on the species. There are those who see water as jewel necklaces. Nevertheless, there is not seeing jewel necklaces as water. As what forms would we see that which they take to be water?

[14:25]

Their jewel necklaces we see as water. There are those who see water as beautiful flowers. So there are fish and dragons who swim through the water. And we walk on the surface of the planet and through the air. How do birds see us? Stuck to the bottom of the ocean of air. There are those who see water as beautiful flowers, but they don't use flowers as water. So what is flowers for us? And what are flowers for flowers? Hungry ghosts see water as raging fire or as pus and blood. This is very sad. There are beings called hungry ghosts, many in our society, who can never be satisfied. If they have $10 billion, they think they need $20 billion more, for example. And all of us have some piece of that.

[15:29]

can have some piece of that. Maybe it's part of human consciousness, or maybe it's something that's enforced more in a certain culture, but this feeling of discontent. How do we appreciate water as water? In the water, dragons and fishes see palaces and pavilions. Some may see water as precious substances and jewels, or as forests and walls, or as the natural state of pure liberation, or as the real human body. or as the characteristics of the body and nature of the mind. People see it as water. It is an interdependency of killing and giving life. So part of this is just to actually appreciate the particular limitations that we have, the particular kinds of mountain and water that we are. that are limited from seeing other kinds of mountains and water.

[16:34]

Rivers and oceans are made within water, therefore there is water, and lakes also, therefore there is water even in places where there are no rivers or lakes or seas. When water descends to the earth, it performs the function of rivers and seas. That's all. So water is also clouds, or haze, or fog. How do we appreciate the mountains and waters of our life? Dogen also says, the mountains belong to the territory of the nation. They are entrusted to people who love the mountains. The mountains definitely love the owners. Saints, sages and those of exalted virtue are in the mountains. So how do we appreciate walking the earth? We're all doing it.

[17:47]

Sometimes we do it in cars or on the L. We're all stepping into our lives each moment. And I kind of feel like we see that in Sashin. You know, we sit for a long time and our knees ache or whatever. Sometimes our hearts ache. And then the bell rings and we're supposed to get up and walk. How is it that we walk the earth? How is it that we walk our life? So the Chinese character for walk, as I guess it also means to perform or conduct or tread, has an ethical implication. How do we get up from our cushions and walk in our life? How do we conduct ourselves in our life?

[18:51]

After having immersed ourselves in just settling into the mountains we are. So I don't want to just say that sitting is mountains and walking is water, but anyway, how do we, how do we allow our settling into flow into preparing lunch or sending out our bowls or food from the server or cleaning the temple? How do we allow this settling? And it's a complicated settling. It's not one thing. That's part of the point. How do mountains settle into being mountains? Well, of course, as you're settling into zazen, sometimes thoughts come up. It happens. Feelings may arise. That happens too in zazen sometimes.

[19:53]

But you're there for it in a way that you're not when you're running around trying to manipulate things, or manage things, or cross things off your to-do list. So whatever, you know, whether or not you think that you're settled in your zazen, even if you think your zazen is very sleepy or groggy, or if you think your zazen is very distracted and daydreamy, whatever you think about it is not the settling. And yet that settling, when you get up and do walking meditation, or when you go out into Chicago and take care of your life, how do we express that? How do we take care of that? How do we allow that to flow? This is the question. How do we appreciate our everyday activity in the context of seeing that, well, we can distinguish ourselves as human-type monkeys from trees and so forth, but we're on some level very deeply

[21:23]

really connected with everything. So how do we walk the earth? How do we walk when we get up for a kid hit? So the usual instruction for walking meditation is, you know, when you inhale, you lift your foot. Exhale, you place it down. And we do this very very slow form of walking meditation that you've all been involved with this morning. Hands like this or like this, there's various different traditions, but half steps, slow walking. Walking like a mountain, as opposed to the walking of monkeys who are scampering around. So there are many different kinds of walking meditation too. I remember walking with Thich Nhat Hanh, and we were walking at a normal pace, but it was still foot lifting from the ground, foot exhale.

[22:30]

Sometimes, one way to do that is maybe two or three steps on the inhale, and four steps on the exhale, or different paces, but still to pay attention to your feet, and your breath, and the ground. And occasionally here we do very fast walking, so that might happen today, I don't know. Laurel was mentioning to me that before, what year was it? 1500? When the Spanish bought horses? Before that, 1500 or so. Everybody in this continent, and South America too, walked. I mean, they may have taken boats on rivers, but they walked. And Dogen, when he went to China, he walked.

[23:33]

He wasn't driving between these different monasteries he visited. And all these Chinese monks who went around visiting teachers, they didn't take the bus. They actually walked from one mountain to another. and came and sat down and practiced and asked questions. And we have this record of their questioning. So our questioning can be informed by walking. And in fact, our questioning is always informed by our walking. If we're afraid to take a step, we may not be willing to ask the question. So one of the teachers I studied with in Japan, Tanaka Shinkai Roshi, I really liked.

[24:36]

I went to his... Soto, we had a monk's hall, a traditional monk's hall, a little ways outside Kyoto, and I sat sashimi a number of times, and his style of sashimi was not like what we do where we have periods of zazen and periods of walking. And I think, you know, I think it's appropriate that we do that, you know, it helps us kind of get together, but find our space together and find our timing together. But his kind of session, they'd have morning sitting, and they'd have, because in the monk's hall, not only do you sit and eat at your place, you also sleep there. It's a very traditional way of going back to Heiji. But between breakfast and lunch, there were no bells. There were no periods of zazen. The same between lunch and dinner. It's just, he called it Buddha zazen. So when it was time, you could just sit for a few hours straight, or whenever you felt like it, whenever you felt the need to, you could get up and go to the restroom and come back, or you could do walking meditation, and there was actually a walkway around the Soto, around the center.

[25:56]

That's Buddha Sosa. I think that's kind of a Theravadan practice, too. You just sit, and they don't have a schedule of, walking and sitting. Just get up and walk when it's time to walk, when it feels like time to walk. And when you practice at home, you might try this. Forget about setting some clock or whatever. Just sit, and if you have time to do a retreat at home, a half day or a day or longer, just sit. And when it's time to get up, get up, and forget about the clock. The way mountains walk is not based on some clock. Sometimes they rise up like when the Indian subcontinent pushes into Asia and the Himalayans rise up. Sometimes they wear down slowly like the smoky mountains, the Allegheny Mountains.

[26:59]

So we have different perceptual faculties. We have different intellectual faculties. We have different spiritual faculties. We also have different temporal faculties. So for us, the mountains walking seems very slow. It's what we call geological time, as if that's not real time. They're not. They're not punching at a time clock. And, you know, insects seeing us feel like we must be very slow too. When we look at trees, they seem slow. But the mountain looks at trees and sees them, you know, growing up and falling down, you know, rather quickly compared to how the mountains walk. So even in this slow walking, if we don't change the pace of it at all, pay attention.

[28:25]

How is your foot resting on the ground? How do the floorboards in this room help you to stay walking? At times there are storms or terrible things that happen and the floors fall apart. and the walls come down, this happens in our world. But how do we appreciate, how does the sole of your foot appreciate the wood of the floor that meets it when you take a step? I maybe shouldn't say this, but I once had this vision of walking meditation. Sometimes I like to almost completely close my eyes during walking meditation. You have to be careful that you don't bump into things or other people.

[29:27]

I felt like this rhythm of walking. Maybe it's because I saw the movie 2001. How many of you have seen 2001? Some of you haven't. Anyway, there's a scene where they're in a spaceship going to the moon station, I think it is, and there's a stewardess who is walking in this circular thing, and she walks, and this compartment is turning so she can walk, so she walks kind of in a circle up the wall, that she exits Upside Town. I recommend that movie for those who haven't seen it for various reasons. But somehow that scene came to me once it was awesome. And I imagined if I was walking here and walking through that wall, just keeping walking. And when I got to the wall that's behind the casinos, and I just We think we know what's left and right and up and down.

[30:39]

In the world of... What are the roads by which the mountains walk? Do they walk on particular roads? I talked recently about the birds' path. Where is the path that the birds fly? Well, maybe there is some path that we can't see. They seem to follow the same migratory path for many years. How do we know our space and our place through our walking? And even when you're sitting, the planet's turning very slowly, but if you look out the window out front, you see the light changing. So we're turning as we walk, as we sit still. So what's the point of all this?

[31:43]

What does this have to do with awakening and compassion and bodhisattva way and all that? I think when we see our walking and sitting more freshly, more openly, it's a little easier to not get stuck on our stories about ourselves, our ideas about ourselves. It's not that you should not think about things. This isn't about irrationality or nonsense. But how do we allow ourselves to be open to wider possibilities of our life? How do we open ourselves to wider possibilities of how we can help relieve suffering? And ourselves as well as others. How do we play with our walking and our sitting?

[32:50]

So I would encourage you not to get stuck on some rigid idea of what your sitting meditation is. We do this practice called Just Sitting, which is just sitting. Whatever you're doing as you're sitting upright is okay, but pay attention to it. What's going on? And of course, there are various specific practices, following the breath or saying mantras or whatever. There are many practices and many of you do particular practices. And those can be helpful to help you settle into being the mountain you are. But the point is that also there's flowing. The mountains are constantly walking on water. How do you pay attention to this? How do you open your awareness to this? Without trying to figure it out or reach some particular mental state or mountainous state, you don't have to be a particular kind of mountain.

[34:07]

So we're going to have time for discussion about all this this afternoon, but somehow I feel like asking if there's anyone who had, you know, maybe take one question or comment or response now. How do mountains question each other, talk with each other, and hear each other? Ah, silence. This is, I'll come back to you, Roy, but just, you know, how mountains talk with each other is often silence. And Shakyamuni is the Buddha who taught through silence. So this is our way. We sit quietly. We walk quietly. Try and maintain silence through the day. And yet something's happening. Roy. Maybe I shouldn't say anything. Too late. Is there a way that mountains sometimes feel when they start to move?

[35:33]

Do they ever want to just stay put? Oh, probably always. Because mountains also abide. They occupy their mountainous. And yet, within that, there's a little bit of rustling. So do mountains have resistance to being mountains or to walking? Interesting question. Sure. Sometimes that manifests as earthquakes or landslides or all kinds of other phenomena. Volcanoes. Volcanoes, yes. Volcanoes happen when mountains get so frustrated that they just have to erupt! So please enjoy just sitting like a mountain today.

[36:39]

Please enjoy your walking today. Please see that your sitting and walking are not separate. In fact, mountains are constantly.

[36:59]

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