Good morning, everyone. It's nice to see so many people, people I haven't seen in quite a while. And how many are here for the first time? Welcome. Thank you for coming. My name is Linda, and... I wanted to thank Wendy for inviting me to participate by giving a talk during this practice period, the theme of which is nature and the experience of nature and the spiritual context, solitude.

[01:08]

And I've listened to some of the talks that have been given during the practice period to hear how others have taken up that theme. And I will take it up in the way that's come from reflecting on this theme. I wanted to say where I live, I live at Green Gulch Farm, which is, some of you have been there, lived there. It's an organic farm and garden, meditation center, and a private inholding in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. So it's acreage that flows to the Pacific Ocean, It has its own water sources, springs, and creeks, and surrounded by the hills of the GGNRA, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

[02:15]

And I've been living there now for 27 years and feel grateful every day to walk, wake up, sit in, live in this This love of, and I feel like this is shared with everyone, really everyone in the world, a love of place, a love of mountains and rivers, valleys, forests, trees. That feels like it's something we all share. And often, if you're not living in a place where you're surrounded, it might be hard to enter those spaces. You have to make a commitment to do it, to go. When I lived in the city, going to Golden Gate Park, going to Mount Tam on the weekends, making that a commitment.

[03:26]

for my own sanity, for my own health, and for the health of everyone who came in contact with me. I think these things are really important. And as we know, this contact with nature relieves depression, can relieve depression, can be a solace, a comfort, a place to integrate our most difficult things. And often there's memorial gardens, places where people, or even cemeteries, you might say, this peaceful feeling. Also at Green Elch, we have fog. It's coastal, of course, but we also see the stars and the moon. Tomorrow is the full moon, actually early, early in the morning tomorrow, or 2.23 in the morning, at some time zone. So to be able to see the moon, and the stars, and Green Gulch is very careful about light pollution, so we have footpath lights but not big overhead lights on the walkways to guard the night sky for the benefit of beings who are there and for the animals, too.

[04:52]

I just... In reflecting on this, I just had to say something about the animal life at Green Gulch. I'm not naming even a small part of it, but just coming to mind were owls. This is what you can hear during Zazen, the great horned owl calling back and forth. There's frogs. The ocean itself can be heard sometimes if the... temperature is right and the winds are right and the heat is right, you can hear the ocean crashing on the shore as if it's right outside the Zendo. So part of sitting is sitting with the ocean, the breath of the ocean, connected with our breath. Also, not infrequently at Green Gulch, you can see raccoons a possum, fox, gophers, herons, red-winged blackbirds, all sorts of birds, the swainsons, thrush, hummingbirds.

[06:00]

And when I first moved to Green Elch, I had never encountered a hummingbird so close to me. It really scared the dickens out of me, this sort of zooming, tiny bird. Great blue heron, ravens. One other part of the soundscape of Zazen in that zendo I wanted to mention are the coyote. There's a ridge right above Green Gulch called Coyote Ridge, and there's the Coyote Ridge Trail, and there are lots of coyote in the mountains there in the hills. Also, it's not all that rare to hear them calling. And they have vocalizations that are amazing. Aside from yips and barks and growls, there's this howling choral sound.

[07:08]

This is also when I first moved there. I didn't know what it was. And I thought it was women screaming. I didn't know what was going on. It is so powerful and the hair stands up on the end. It is thrilling. And in reading more about it, the coyote is also called the song dog. They have lots of communication within these vocalizations. And the one where they're, the choral, yip choral, yip howl choral, is communication saying, I'm here, where are you all? Let's meet here. It can be heard for about a mile, and then other coyote groups call back, and then it goes for miles. And they did a test where one went. They followed how far it went down the coast of mile by mile, the communication.

[08:13]

So this... mysterious, wondrous life that we're part of. Everything I've mentioned is part of who we are. These are not separate beings and nature events that are separate from us. We participate, we respond, we communicate. we create possibilities for things to happen or not happen. So in this particular time, this very difficult time, although I suppose you could say it's always a difficult time, but right now coming out of the division, the disparaging language, factionalism, lying, Yeah, one against another, these kinds of feelings.

[09:23]

And also along with that, I'm going to use the word pandemic, the coronavirus in China, that is, we don't know what's going to happen, but the great difficulty that's happening in that country and fears that you can imagine, And not to forget ever our environmental crisis and the climate crisis. So right in the middle of that, we stand, we sit in the middle of that. How do we care for ourselves and others? And find solace, find peace, find stability. And I feel like going into nature, finding nature wherever we are. City is filled with nature.

[10:25]

It's not like there's the rural, the country and the rural and the urban. The city is filled also with animal life and nature. And to make it a vow almost to encounter that, to go, to take care of. and return to this truth of our shared nature. I wanted to share with you something that I found very moving, and it was a story, actually a true story, sent to me by one of the students here, Hiro. who just returned from Japan, was at Tasahara for many years and is now in the city. And this story is about a gift that was made from Japan recently, in the last couple days, I think, from Japan to China of thousands of face masks.

[11:40]

Because I believe in China there... They're running out of supplies and things. So Japan sent these boxes, cartons, with thousands of face masks. And on the label of these cartons was a tag with the fragment of a poem. And the poem, this is translated by Hiro, is... Mountains and rivers, lands apart. Winds and the moon in the same sky. So there's so many layers to this, which is why it was so moving for me. This poem, first of all, the relationship between Japan and China has been... There's various difficulties, various...

[12:44]

unintegrated, unmetabolized sufferings from the war, wars. So this gesture of extending medical health, these medical supplies, and using this poem. This poem is a fragment from a poem that was written in the eighth century and it was written by a Japanese prince who sent to China 1,000 Buddhist robes, and sewn in the robe was a label with this poem that said, Mountains and rivers, lands apart, winds and the moon in the same sky. Sending these robes to you, disciples of the Buddha, Let us create eternal connection together.

[13:48]

So this poem and this gift of robes was sent to China from Japan with a request to have a Chinese priest come to Japan and establish an ordination platform and a system of ordination and also the precepts, to bring the precepts to Japan, which had at that time a kind of eclectic hodgepodge maybe of different things and self-ordination. So this request came from Japan to China with this poem. So, you know, hundreds of thousand years later, for this poem to be attached to these masks, these masks for people to wear in China, calling up once more this eternal connection together, even with the suffering and the wars and the sadness.

[15:02]

There is the eternal connection of our life together, our shared nature, under one sky, winds and moon, One sky, mountains and rivers, lands apart. The depth of this poem, this fragment that was sent, and the reverberations in the past, present, and future, was so meaningful to me. And just to end the story, this label with this poem was... probably one of the deciding factors for this very famous teacher at the time to decide to go to Japan and leave China and bring the precepts. And he made this vow to travel to Japan, which was very dangerous at that time, and tried over 11 years, about six different times with shipwrecks and

[16:05]

the military absconding with the ship and all sorts of things. But he kept coming back to, I made this vow to go and help. And he did go. And he was blind by that time. But he went to bring precepts and ordination and to help. Let us create eternal connections together. So this shared, our shared, you know, in some ways we don't need to create eternal connections. We are eternally connected already. This is the truth of our life together, and this is our Buddha nature. So I wanted to bring up and express the way it has been traditionally expressed through poetry, an image using nature of our Buddha nature and our shared connection and interfusion, the way we actually exist together, permeated.

[17:22]

You know, there's so many This lectern is... There we go. In our Buddhist liturgy and teachings and stories, often nature and the images of nature are what is brought forth to describe and to teach. many, many, many poems. I'm sure you could think of some yourself. Just as this poem from this Japanese prince, the winds and the moon under the same sky.

[18:26]

And the moon is often used as a image for our enlightened nature, our realized nature, the moon. But Buddha nature, and this is this core teaching of Buddhism and Soto Zen in particular, that is offered over and over and over again. And I think in my early years, I didn't want to hear about it. I just wanted to sit. But coming back to this teaching seems extremely important right now. And this is the teaching... of Buddha nature, actually Buddha nature. So we often think of Buddha nature mistakenly as some kind of little thing that's sort of inside everybody and they just have like a seed. You just have to water it and it will grow and become the Buddha nature.

[19:31]

And this is a kind of image that is very deeply embedded, I think, in our... just in our way of thinking. And the Buddha nature, the Buddha said, all beings, this is from the Maha Paranirvana Sutra, the Mahayana Sutra, not the Pali, all beings, without exception, are completely and thoroughly enlightened, except for their delusions and misunderstandings, they haven't realized it. So this little paragraph, this little, all beings without exception are completely and thoroughly realized, enlightened. However, because of our misconceptions and delusions, we don't realize it.

[20:39]

So this whole sentence, this whole paragraph, those two sentences, is Buddha nature. It's not all beings without exception are completely enlightened, and that's the Buddha nature. And we're, on this other side, deluded and with misconceptions, trying to get over to this other side of the enlightened. What are we going to do? What do we have to do? How do we have to improve our lives? And what do we have to change in order to get over there? Isn't that often how we think? I think very naturally we think it's like that. However, this entire paragraph is Buddha nature. All beings without exception are completely enlightened. Because of their misconceptions and delusions, they don't realize it. All of that together is Buddha nature. The deluded and the undiluted, are interfused.

[21:48]

Now, our tendency is to think, well, I want to get out of one or get rid of one in order to have the other. So there's many poems that help in this teaching, poems that use nature images that help us to see more clearly that it's this interfusion. And you can't have one without the other. The Buddha nature is the relationship. It's a relationship between sentient beings and Buddhas. It's this relationship. It's not one or the other. I find this very hard, in some ways hard to integrate or accept or... And I'm doing my darndest, you know, to be steeped and soaked in this teaching and not fight it with some logical thing.

[22:52]

But, oh no. So Buddha nature is this relationship. It isn't a little thingy-do in itself that's lodged somewhere. It's the relationship of sentient beings and Buddhas. that is interfused and can't be pulled apart. Now, that's good news, you know? All beings without exception. One of the images of this is the lotus in muddy water, which we're going to be chanting at the end of this talk. May we exist in purity, like the lotus in muddy water. Ah, we're not going to chant that at the end of this, sorry. I wish we would. It's at the end of the meal.

[23:53]

But that image of the beautiful lotus, which comes in all these fabulous colors, that only grows in the lagoons and the muddy water. It can't grow in clear water. It cannot grow in clear water. It's a relationship of this huge, and some of you have seen lotuses. They're huge, and they lift up over the water. They stand over, but their stem, which is very thick, goes down, down, down into the muddy lagoon, and that's where it draws nutrients, and it's a relationship. The lotus isn't just the lotus. The lotus is in muddy water. This is our life. These are these images from nature that teach us and are undeniable. You know, they're undeniable. So this, we think of the lotus, you know, it's holding above the water some kind of purity and the impurity of the muddy.

[25:02]

But no, it's this relationship that's totally interfused. What is pure? What is impure? So, there's a teacher named Hongzhu, who was the fifth ancestor, and in the collection of koans called the Book of Serenity, Hongjir collected them and wrote diverse commentaries. And this is just something he said. It's not a poem. Enlightenment cannot be pursued without delusion. If one abandons phenomena, this is this

[26:05]

thousand things and the absolute and the relative, also called principle and phenomena. If one abandons the phenomena, the ten thousand things, the delusions, the confusions, the principle of an empty nature cannot be realized. Enlightenment cannot be pursued without delusion. If one abandons the 10,000 things, that means our daily life, our difficulties, our health, all the problems of the world. If we somehow feel like I'm turning my back on that, I'm just going to go and what? Wake up. this is not possible, it cannot be realized. And there's many stories of in the midst of daily life, in the midst of work practice, that someone wakes up.

[27:14]

You don't have to get rid of some of this notion of get rid of conventional or all the mud so that then we can experience something else. This is a major delusion right there. But this is difficult, I think. So I'm going to come back to this, and I want to be aware of my time. come back to this engaging in the world thoroughly and completely in accord with who we are and at the same time realizing the non-abiding nature of all things, the emptiness of all things in the middle of the phenomenal world.

[28:21]

This is this interfusion or unity interdependence, mutuality. There's a poem by Dung Shan which says, the blue mountains are... I'm going to change it a little bit. The blue mountains are the parents, and the creamy white clouds are the children. All day long, they... One translation says, hang out together. All day long they hang out together. Each is dependent and independent. This image of, I mean, if you think about clouds, clouds are never still, right? They're moving, they're turning, they're changing into shapes, they're disappearing, they're coming up again. Phenomena, 10,000 things.

[29:26]

conventional world, always in flux, it feels like. And then we have the Blue Mountains, which also are walking. The Blue Mountains are walking is another, you know, teaching. But they, you know, stands stably there with this movement. But all day long they're together. And the... The mountains create clouds, right? The parents. There was a practitioner in China, excuse me, in Japan, whose name was, we chant her in the morning, she's the last of the Acharya's In the morning, we chant a list of women practitioners.

[30:31]

It's not a lineage as much as a family of practitioners, women teachers. And her name, Chiyo No, is the last one in the list, starting from the Buddhist time all the way through India, China, and Japan. And Chiyo No... There's various stories about you and variants, but the story I want to tell is she was a humble person of humble origins, and there was a small group of nuns, this was in the 1200s, living together and practicing together, and she joined them and was helping with taking care of these nuns. and their life. And she realized, I want to practice. She saw what they were doing. I would like to practice too. But I'm just from this, I can't read or write, which echoes some of our other teachers in the past who had a strong affinity with practice and found a way, even though they didn't come from

[31:51]

a situation where they were being taught. So she swept and worked around the little place that the nuns were living, but she wanted to hear the teaching. And so this one night, she kind of crept over to where all the nuns were practicing, and she observed them sitting zazet. And she wanted to be able to practice along with them. And she asked one of the nuns, please tell me the essential principles of practicing zaza, and I want to sit like the other nuns are doing. And the nun said to her, your practice is simply to serve the other nuns of this temple as well as possible without giving any thought to physical hardship or uttering a word of complaint.

[33:01]

That is your zazen. And Chiyono wasn't satisfied with that. Doing her work, that was fine with sincere heart, but she wanted to... Sit as well. And her grieving continued. She grieved. And then she spoke to another nun. And because she didn't give up, so this kind of perspicacity. And she spoke with this elderly nun. And this one said, this is wonderful, my dear, that you want to sit. like this. And then she said, in fact, what is there to attain? And this is about this Buddha nature, this teaching. In Buddhism, there's no distinction between a man and a woman, a layperson and a renunciant.

[34:02]

There's also no separation between humble and noble, between old and young. There's only this. Each person must hold fast to his or her aspiration and proceed along the way of the bodhisattva. There's no higher way than this. Seek the Buddha in your own heart with great compassion for all beings. Ah. So hearing this, Chiyono continued with her sincere practice. And one day, when she was getting water, the bottom of her water bucket broke. And she realized her Buddha nature.

[35:02]

And this is the poem that she wrote. With this and that, I tried to keep the bucket together. And then the bottom fell out. Where water does not collect, the moon does not dwell. With this and that, I tried to keep the bucket together. To me, this bucket is like our conventional world. Just like we try to do, we try to keep it together. in all the ways we can. Our schedules are taking good care of our bodies. And of course, to no avail. Eventually, all composite things are impermanent. But this effort of keeping things together...

[36:04]

With this and that, I tried to keep things together. And then the bottom of the bucket fell out. Now, this image of the bottom of the bucket is an image for realization or principle or absolute, this bottom of the bucket. But her bucket may have been an old bucket and actually did fall apart there, which occasioned this... Where the water does not collect, the moon does not dwell. Now, this has been a difficult poem for me because my sense is it felt like it might be one-sided. The bottom drops out and there's no moon? Are you saying there's no moon, Chiono? Is that what you're saying? Or are you saying, what are you saying? Though I came upon this other poem, which I wanted to continue on this theme with you, from another woman, Zen teacher named Nyo Zen.

[37:13]

A hundred years later, Chiono was in the 1200s and Nyo Zen was in the 14th century, 1300s. Nyo Zen had been meditating and reflecting on Chiono's poem and turning it as a koan, which is what You know, this eternal connections and poetry and imagery that we share in order to help one another wake up, to care for one another, out of compassion for one another. So Nyos then had a copy of this poem. And she was turning it. And while meditating on this poem, This is Nyozen's poem. The bottom fell out of the bucket of that woman of humble birth, Chiono. The pale moon of dawn is caught in the rain puddles.

[38:20]

So she takes it one step further. The bucket The bottom dropped out, and it's not holding this image of the moon in the bucket. But where is the image of the moon? It's in every puddle, in every drop of water. As far as the eye can see, the moon shines. Myriad objects partake of the Buddha body. These images, and I would say this image of the moon reflected in This is the name of the moon in a deuteronomy. This is moon in all the puddles, not just in one bucket that you keep trying to keep together, but when that drops, when the bottom falls out, the moon is reflected everywhere. And, you know, in poetry, this reverberates with other poems that you might know of,

[39:29]

dragon jewels that, you know, it's a setting in the ocean and this is from other poetry collections, other koans, other then stories. So this particular Chiono ended up being the first Dharma transmitted woman in Japan and also started the first convent. So the legend goes, or so the story of her goes, there's variants of these stories. And Nyozen's reflecting on her poem. This is a kind of rare occurrence where we have the occasion of a woman practitioner using the story and poem of another woman practitioner to wake up. We have many stories of contemplating koans of the ancestors, but this particular one of using someone's enlightenment poem to wake up oneself.

[40:42]

And this is our eternal connection. This is how we help one another. This is our compassion for one another. Buddha nature as, and our understanding of it, realizing Realizing it without getting rid of doesn't mean that we don't make enormous constant effort to practice the way. It doesn't mean we sit back and, well, all beings without exception, that means me.

[41:42]

I can just... Everything's hunky-dory. To realize it, we need to practice with... full, sincere heart, continuous engagement, ask the questions we need to ask, sit together and alone, sit with the world. This is not complacency. And the You know, the natural world can be our companion, is our companion. This is, I want to end with this last story, which is once a monk, this is from 9th century China, once a monk on pilgrimage met an old woman who lived alone in a hut.

[42:50]

And the monk said, do you have any relations? Any relatives? And she said yes. And the monk said, well, where are they? Maybe it was word for her. And she said, the mountains, rivers, and the whole earth, the plants and the trees are my relations, are my relatives. She was not alone in her hut. She was alone with others, which is the way That is our true existence. So thank you very much for your attention.

[43:33]

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