... [...] Thank you. I'm going to be mine. The other one will be mine. Because to extend their compassion to us freely and without limit, we are able to retain rich. And I've been able to retain rich. And I've been able to retain rich. And therefore, the time master will be on the scent of the sea and last lies.

[01:05]

We're not alive. We're not being [...] alive. ...and conditions, practices, the exact transmission of... Thank you. Welcome to the apparent best day of our five-day shooting.

[02:09]

Yes, I'd just like to change the schedule a little bit and go on for another five days. Would you like that? No. It's not good for shaking. All right. If it comes out nine days, the shooting's here before you do. You did a 14-minute in 1987. You did. Hey, that's an idea. I think you've got mixed ideas of how long is long enough. I found nine days to be finished, but maybe beyond that it gets pretty much. Okay, I'll end today on a five-way session this time. So, Today, we got so far, especially in the first paragraph of the Wins and Mountains and Waters Sutra. And today, we're going to move on to the section of our two books. First, I'd like to share a poem with you by David Richman, who is the daughter of Jiria.

[03:17]

People know Jiria? Does anyone here know David? So Jiria is the Tato at Greenwald, and he was a resident here for, I think, a year or two. I can't remember exactly. He was here when I was here. And he's now a priest and a chaplain, I believe, and also a Polish poet. And he ended up marrying another former resident, Devin Miller, and they have a big two people children now. And I get to see Devin. She owns the city center sometimes for one-day cities. So nice to connect with her again. So here's a poem by David, and it's titled, I Was Reading a Poem. I was reading a poem by Rebecca about a leaf, and how it showed the front and back as it fell. And I wanted to call someone, my wife, my brother, to tell about the poem.

[04:20]

And I thought that maybe my telling about the poem was the front of the leaf, and my silence about the poem was the back. And then I felt that maybe my telling and my silence together were honestly just the front of the leaf, and that the back was something else, something I didn't understand. And then I felt that maybe everything I understood and everything I didn't were actually just the front of the leaf. So that the totality of my life was actually just the front of the leaf, just one side, which would make the other side my death. Unless my life and death together were really still only the front of the leaf. I left the branch.

[05:21]

I was falling. I was loose now in a bright, molten air. I was reading upon my rear con about a leaf and how it showed the front and back as it fell. And I wanted to call someone, my wife, my brother, to tell about the poem. And I thought that maybe my turning about the poem was the front of the leaf and my silence about the poem. And then I thought that maybe my telling and my silence together were honestly just the front of the leaf and at the back was something else, something I didn't understand. And then I thought that maybe everything I understood and everything I didn't were actually just the front of the leaf, both just the front of the leaf. You see, that the totality of my life

[06:26]

was actually just the front of the leaf, just the one side, which would make the other side my death. And that's my life and death together, but really still only the front of the leaf. I had left the branch. I was falling. I was a loose man in the bright autumn. A student once told the Zen teacher Charlotte Jokobrek in Jokosan that she was experiencing episodes of Vertigo due to a series of insights that kept undermining her perception of reality. And Jokobrek is said to have told the woman, get used to the sensation of falling. Zen is about learning how to live with no place to land and nothing to rely on.

[07:30]

There is just eternal groundlessness. We're always falling through the boundless hearts of the universe. So this is the way it is. We typically think we have to grasp on the way things are. That we understand how things really are. However, at some point, we come to our recognition that our understanding is limited. Suddenly, what we thought was a clear set of dichotomies were dualities, this and that, right and wrong, front and back, collapses. But then, to a relief, another branch occurs for us to grasp onto. I knew that it's typically created by the synthesis or inter-penetration of the former opposites. we find ourselves resting on a new set of economies.

[08:33]

For example, the reading of a poem, a story about the poem, speaking, staying in silence. And then, with the next insight, or turning over of our previous perspective, this new set of dualities collapses, only to give rise, yet again shortly after, to another set. Knowing, not knowing, understanding, not understanding. And this goes on. Each time we lose our footing on what we previously perceived as an understanding, a ground to stand on, we're briefly suspended in uncertainty, floating in space until out of nowhere a new branch appears. And we pray. At this time, we have truly reached the circle ground, a place where we can finally rest.

[09:37]

There is life and there is death. But then, lo and behold, even this branch gives way. At some point, though, there are no more branches. And all we experience is a continual falling through Thing is, even emptiness must be let go of eventually. Pre-manad is nothing more than another unreliable concept based on duality. For there to be emptiness, there needs to be something that is not emptiness. What we're left with in the end is nothing to grasp and nowhere to stand. There is just our floating through the bright, ultimate air. The usual way is to try to understand.

[10:45]

I think the German word for understand literally has this concept of standing under something. You're able to hold onto it, hold it up, you've got it. The word doping uses for not understanding is for suru. For suru, excuse me, for suru. And the first suru means do. And fu is not. And ee is understanding. So fu ee, not understanding, or literally do not understanding, meaning to go beyond understanding. To go beyond understanding means to embody and practice something without getting stuck in understanding or conceptual understanding. And it's not much of a leap then to see how we can go lingo from do not understanding. How do you do not understanding? But to go from do not understanding to do is instruction for zaza, which is think, not thinking.

[11:55]

Which means to go beyond thinking. Booker Moore writes that, in zaza we let go of thoughts. This lingo is not understanding. That is, not trying to understand or grasp conceptually. Thought is understanding. By letting go, we do not understanding. That is, letting go of thought is the activity of not understanding, not grasping concepts. Or as his teacher, which Gianna Roshi said, opening the hand of thoughts. The same and letting go of thought, opening the hand of thought, is the true term I. Having the true term I is not grasping. experience with karmic consciousness. So, you may be unnecessarily confused at times and wrestle with what it is that Dogen is trying to say in the Sanskrit Kyo in his other writings.

[12:55]

And in AAB, occasionally you think you're finally glad upon his meaning regarding a different point. Only God would slip away shortly after. Has anyone ever had time with this? Yeah? I got it! And then you can't go back and we get it somehow. But don't worry. Don't worry. Let's go to the other Dharma teachers. Our conceptual minds don't offer us ultimate liberation. There are only tools that help us at times to get a better view. But eventually, when we reach the top of the ladder, or the proverbial hundred-foot pole, we have to take one more step. Otherwise, we'll get stuck, frozen to our fixed view and unable to move. It's only when we no longer have anything to stand on will we taste true freedom. So get used to the sensation of falling if you're going to be a Zen practitioner.

[14:03]

Get used to the sensation of falling when you're eating Dogen, like sitting Zazen. cleansing the infinite space that makes up all phenomena, including ourselves. Get used to the sensation of phenomena. So let's keep following some more with Dogen. Move now to the second paragraph of his Naptals and Water Sutra, which means, precept of Kai, I'm not dying, I just leave suddenly saying, the blue mountains are constantly walking, The stone woman gives birth to her child in the night. The blue mountains are constantly walking. The stone woman gives birth to her child in the night. So Preceptive Kai of Mount Daing is also known by the name Furong Daokai, as well as the name that we chant here in morning service, which is Fuyo Dokai Daisho.

[15:07]

He lived from 1043 to 1118, And he's the 40th ancestor in our lineage. And Doga came basically with six ancestors after Doga. Doga was the 40th ancestor in this lineage, which was about 100 years after Fruya. And it seems that Fruya Doki currently have a lot to do with providing Soto Zen, or Soto, I should say, the Soto School in China at the time, when it was in decline. And they also have a large number of Dharma heirs, one which was a woman, but not a Tao. Shin. And so what was there is also bad woman dominators. And don't remember how reveres our ancestor Kai, and in the classical Kinshina Skarches, he quotes a long quote by Fuyo Dokkai and comments on it. However, for this particular segment, there doesn't seem to be any context. So it seems that Fuyo Dokkai or Preceptor Kai just kind of

[16:12]

came into the zendo, took a seat in his dharma seat, right, made this statement, got up and left. You're probably like, who won't take it ever to that? Short sweet dharma talk, one line, that's all we need, right? So, and again, all we're left with is this nomadic statement. The blue mountains are constantly walking the stone woman to his birth to a child with men. In his commentary, Omar says that Dogman uses a statement to express the reality of Nikon. Nikon is the present moment, which is the intersection of impermanence and eternity. Discontinuation and continuation for all beings and alternate truths. So interpenetration of these opposite pairs is the expression of the way of ancient Buddhists. This is what the Buddhists are teaching us. this interpretation.

[17:13]

And it is also the reality of our life. So you're not just saying this, to say it, it's what's true. It's your life, it's reality, right? So in other words, this image, which has three impossible things happening, has these impossible things happening, the mountains of walking, have you ever seen mountains of walking? Yeah, reality. as she was in a Miyazaki cartoon, or a stone woman during birth. Inconceivable, you know, the possible things. These point to equally inconsiderable meaning of the nexus, the intersection of transcendence, that which is fleeting and occurrence, and continuity, that which is internal. So you see again, over again, where is this connection happening? How do you understand? Now, in the context of the drama, inconceivability points to the inherent emptiness where interdependent origination evolved from them.

[18:21]

So, just to be clear, emptiness and interdependent origination are not different states or manifestations. They're just two ways of describing the same reality, the same reality coin, if you will, from a different perspective. So that exploring interdependent origination means nothing is independent and nothing has absolute world-being. This aspect of reality is really hard for us to grasp. Can you grasp it? No. I mean, it's just okay to grasp it. And yet, despite that nothing exists in and of itself in the ultimate realm, in a relative aspect of the world, things too, indeed, exist as themselves. So how do you reconcile these different opposites? So again, we have two significant possible things happening.

[19:24]

Mountain's walking and a stone woman giving birth. Mountain's are the opposite of walking if it appear. They're solid, and they don't ever move on the court. And a stone woman is exactly a woman capable of giving birth. This sounds like a lot of Zen non-sequiturs, right? But it's not. It's telling us that what we have deeply, that it's telling us that we got deeply rooted conventional ways of seeing things and fear in our life, understanding our life and conceptualizing our life. We take our conventional way of hearing things completely for granted. We just assume that's the way it is. We believe things like Mountains don't walk. And just like we think mountains are solid, so do we think, mistakenly, that our thoughts are solid and real. But like mountains walking, our thoughts also come and go.

[20:25]

So in the light of emptiness, we realize that all our conceptualizations are just that, conceptualizations. We don't have to believe in that. or in an all-or-nothing way. Master Freudo Kai said, the blue mountains are constantly walking. And the Chinese language is ideographic, so it's made up of characters that are compounds of different elements. Is that what you said in Chinese? It's really, when I take a peek in, it's really fascinating to see how the Chinese language is created, the rich language particularly. characters have different radicals or parts that mean different things. So the analogy of Chinese characters can be very revealing and fascinating. In this case, the character for walking, as in constant walking, is pronounced Joko. The first character, Joe, means ongoing.

[21:27]

And it's often used in the sense of practice, meaning ongoingness. And the second character, Ko, means steps. So the word for walking in Chinese is going steps, meaning steps and going somewhere. So dogma takes apart the character and then place with it, and draws a profound meaning as a result. To see the impermanence of everything is to see and understand walking. And this walking is essential to practicing the Buddha. is case 20 from the College of Commons known as the Book of Equinity or the Book of Ceremonity. Master Dajon asked his student Faiyan, where are you going? Faiyan said, I am wondering aimlessly.

[22:27]

Sometimes it's translated as, I am going on pilgrimage. Dajon, what do you think of wandering? Or what is the purpose of pilgrimage? Faiyan said, Dijang replied, not knowing is most intimate. Sometimes it's translated as, not knowing is nearest, but closest. And of course, as usually happens in the Zenkuans, the student was suddenly awakened. So without trying to figure out what Dijang and Sunfayan were actually talking about, we can feel our way into wonder into what wandering aimlessly while going on pilgrimage suggests to us. It's an accurate description of how our own heart mind wanders aimlessly, and endlessly through its patterns of thinking and feeling. What would it be like to truly admit that we don't know on a very deep level?

[23:35]

And how can we taste what Fionn discovered, the good intimacy of not having to know. This direct intimacy is available to everyone, to all of us, and inquiry or koans or koan inspection is one of the many scopeful means that can lead us to a fully compassionate, clear and awakened life. Mountains are constantly on pilgrimage, and humans are So mountains also abide. They stay in place and live. And humans abide in mountains. Some even take up the name of the mountain that they live on. Mountains and humans constantly walking together, chilling together. Mountains and humans constantly abiding together, being an eternal together.

[24:36]

Mountains do not know where they are going. That is not their concern. Humans think they should know where they are going. Because of this, they have great concern. And it's usually misplaced. Not knowing is nearest. Not knowing where we are going, we are already right where we are. Nothing at all has a changing self. And yet, we constantly are riding in this dormant position. When you find your place right where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. And yet, as we were talking about yesterday, you cannot stick to your downward position or place. Even when we find it, find it. We must be willing to not only fall, but also to use our balance over

[25:39]

and over again, which is a form of dying to what we previously were. So here's Suzuki Ripsi from Zen Mind, the Guinness Mind on the value of losing our balance. To live in a realm of good nature means to die as a small being, moment after moment. When we lose our balance, we die. And at the same time, to lose our balance sometimes means to develop ourselves or to grow. If we are in perfect balance, we cannot live as a small being. So whatever we look at, wherever we look, we see that things are changing, losing their balance. Why everything looks beautiful is because it is something out of balance. But its background is always in perfect harmony. In all this perfect harmony, everything exists, losing its balance. This is how everything exists in the realm of big, good nature.

[26:43]

So if you see things without knowing, without realizing good nature, everything is in the form of suffering. But if you understand the background of everything, which looks like suffering, suffering itself is how we live, how we extend our life. So then we sometimes emphasize the out-of-downs or disorders. So Zekiroshi is reminding us that everything is beautiful because of the presence. You appreciate things only because they don't last. You know looking at a beautiful flower. You know looking at the sunset. You know looking at a left one. Somewhere deep inside, even though it's not a pier, that this too will pass. And that gives rise to beauty. Because everything is a permanent and not stuck in a fixed stable state, it is experienced by us, thus losing its balance.

[27:49]

We must be willing to fall out of balance, to lose the known position in which we are standing, and to tumble into the next. Like the act of walking. Balance to out of balance to balance. Walking entails in balance. In order to walk, we need to lose our balance for a period of time. We need to let one foot lead its connection to the earth, hotter in space than uncertainty for a moment, and then hopefully land quickly again on solid, stable ground, at which point the process starts all over with the other foot. Inbalance lead to balance lead to imbalance, and so forth. And permanence lead to eternity lead to permanence. It's all one movement. Phu Yerudokha is a verse, now that the constantly walking is followed by another seemingly inconceivable event.

[28:50]

The stone woman gives birth to a child in the night. So stone woman in Chinese has two meanings. One can be a barren woman, a woman who is unable to conceive or give birth. And it can also be a stone statue of a woman. Literally stone. So Okumor says that in this case, the ladder is the meaning here in the sense of one who is free of human feeling, consciousness, discrimination of kind of consciousness. So in other words, the reality of all beings, without discrimination, can reveal itself as either a man or a woman, dualities that is, or each and every phenomenal being. It takes many shapes. Yet another way to express this is to draw from the teachings of form and emptiness, where the teaching that myriad objects form, particularly body and penis. These teachings say that a form is not different from form, and a form is not different from emptiness.

[29:53]

And with these teachings in mind, we can then circle back around again to this stone woman during birth. So a stone woman, a statue of stone woman, appears to be an object that looks like its own, that has its own nature and its own existence separate from everything else. just in the same way that each object conventionally exists. Each has its unique dharma position, each bit coming forward according to new strands of causes and conditions, and all meeting at the nexus, the intersection of this particular dharma position. So separate, and yet separate of a separate self by virtue of interdependency. If you studied each thing fairly, you'll see that it says, by virtue of everything else. And this is an interesting exercise. You might want to try it on. When you particularly have a sense of wanting to blame others or a situation, something goes wrong, you want to place blame, and you focus on a particular object or person, place that blame on.

[31:06]

But if you look at that person or object, there's nothing more than a rise of it. into dependent causes and conditions, suddenly that object disappears. There's no person to blame anymore, right? There's just this flow of causes and conditions from all time and space coming together, being in excess for a moment, right? You can't blame that one pinpoint because that one pinpoint is connected to everything else. So what are you gonna blame? The blame isn't out there. It's actually looking at your own view and how it's limiting. how it's limited, and therefore your understanding is limited. So each thing, its existence is dependent on everything else because it's dependent on the reason. So we can all see how it conventionally exists. And given us, we might all agree and relate to it in a certain way. So we all agree this is cut.

[32:07]

We conventionally agree this is cut. And they put water or something in it to drink, coffee, perhaps tea. And they all agree with what I drink. And I put this on my head and started walking around with it and said, no, this is my cup, my hat. He looked at me like, whoa, this is my other guy. Or quite sort of trying to eat it, right? Or sit on it, he'd be like, I think you're all there. So we have to all agree that this is a cup. What happens when we normally read that this is a cup? What's that? And this will come up again later when we do it. We talk about the different views of water and mountains. Other beings don't see this as a cup. And they just say, oh, swimming hole. And other beings go, oh, Jack, whatever. So different views. And each thing exists conventionally.

[33:09]

While it exists conventionally, it has no separate self. It exists in the fabric with the contents of everything else. This only exists by the contents of the fabric, everything else. I really, I went from the last class to show Icart Bucketheets. He does another film. There's a scene in there about the blanket, the blanket scene. He has another blanket scene. That's what I want to show you. It talks about this. I mean, get it to work. I'll do that. I'll share that with you. Again, the stone woman is all these conditions without inherent existence. And even though all these things exist without a second self, all these things arise. All things arise at interconnectedness, independent core arising. So you can call this the pentacle arising of existence, a form of conceiving or giving birth. So the stone woman of the pentacle arising gives birth to these things.

[34:12]

And what does it mean for a stone woman to give girth to a child in the night? What is meant by night here? In Zen, night usually means darkness. And darkness is in the sense of non-discrimination. So night means darkness as in the realm of beyond discrimination. We might be familiar with this teaching if we've ever studied the chant of the sound of kai, the harmony of difference in quality. So here both stone woman and the light refer to the ultimate reality beyond discrimination in karmic consciousness. So a stone woman gives birth to a child at night in the darkness is a way of saying that true birth is always going beyond a world we can see and can't see. It's a description of the mysterious, inconceivable way we exist together. It's inconceivable. Yet we have to do this inconceivable act in our daily life. How do you think it could be inconceivable?

[35:16]

Just like that. How do you think it could be inconceivable? Nightshare is like going into a dark room with no light. Everything is there in the dark. You can imagine objects such as furniture bed, table, books, etc. Even though you can't see them. The spiritual source in the dark is this dark. And all the branching streams, all strands of causes and conditions flow in the dark. So all the very objects in the dark are a manifestation of the source. Branching streams are water, constantly flowing and interpenetrating. And yet we don't see them as non-separate things because of our conventional, conceptual view. The teaching is that we're all existing in the source. We're all existing together in the darkness. We all exist together in the darkness. Vichyana Roshi said that the reality of our life is before separation.

[36:26]

Before any bhikkhani. Before the cessation between permanence and inclineness. Inclineness is only one side of reality. The other side is eternity. The reality of our life is before separation. How do you live that? How do you live before separation? That the stone woman gives birth to her child at night in the darkness is a way of saying that true earth is inconceivable and as such is always going beyond the world we can see or can't see. All things come into meditation from ultimate, non-describing darkness all the time. Because we can't see the breathing of phenomena, they only partially see reality. The side that's been in the light of the relative of conventional views and conceptual understanding. Booker Moore writes, Booker Moore writes, So Bill Maher is saying that the ultimate reality without discrimination and conventional reality are opposite each other, made it always together.

[37:48]

This ultimate reality beyond discrimination is not barren or stagnant, but full of the life. Without any arising and perishing, it gives birth to the phenomenal beings that are arising and perishing, being born and dying. So in other words, the inconceivable fullness of total reality inconceivably gets better to the conceivable. But because it is a temporary birth, in no time, it too eventually dissolves back into the inconceivable from which it came, leaving us all in the dark once again. Where are we going? We're just going on pilgrimage through this mystery. It takes courage not to know. What is it that keeps us going when we don't know?

[38:50]

How is it that we can keep on walking when we don't know not only where we're walking toward, but why exactly we're walking in the first place? And yet, something. the supporting and encouragingness, as I mentioned. Otherwise, we couldn't be in this room in these mountains together. Here is the next paragraph that follows. The mountains are none of the proper virtues. Hence, they are consummated rest, consummated walking. I have basically two months to go. Not to go. Not all the stuff that we put kitchen left. The mountains lack none of their proper virtues, hence they are constantly at rest, not today walking. We must devote ourselves to a detailed study on this virtue of walking. Since the walking of the mountains should be like bad people, we ought not doubt that the mountains walk simply because they may not appear destroyed by humans.

[40:01]

So I'm actually going to end here and take this up in our next class. Father, I want to point out my that Dogen often says. Things such as, we should devote ourselves to study, or we should make a teachable study, or we should examine carefully. Let's see this again and again. So here he's saying, we need to study, investigate the true reality of our lives, and go beyond our conventional knowledge. So, taking Dogen's advice, Let's go walking in the mountains and to examine a study both the virtue or concreteness of our walking and the virtue or concreteness of the walking in the mountains. Do not have a concept of walking in mind for either yourself or the mountains. Take up walking that is before the concept of walking rises in your mind.

[41:01]

Then you won't be walking in the court, your mountains are obvious. there, after I walk in, will once again take up the study of just sitting, sitting at the mountains, sitting at the mountains, not knowing. Is that the end? I don't know. See what happens. I don't know.

[42:09]

I don't know. I don't know. Thank you.

[42:41]

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