This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzz.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. The most important thing for a Zen student is to know what you're doing, moment by moment. Maybe for a human being, most important. So we'll include all human beings as Zen students. All human beings are bodhisattvas, whether they like it or not. You know, bodhisattvas are dedicating themselves to helping everyone wake up, helping everyone realize the great matter of birth and death, helping everyone to be fully present and alive.

[01:12]

So I really feel that this way includes everyone. And so none of you get off easy. Everyone's on the hook of the bodhisattva way. So congratulations. Dogen said in regards to mountains and waters of this moment are completely actualizing the Buddha way. So if you are bodhisattvas actualizing the Buddha's way, you're also mountains. Is that logical?

[02:21]

He quotes Dogen. So we're having this retreat. The nature, what's it called? The nature of Zen or Zen nature. There's no Zen without nature. And so we're meeting, fully participating with mountains. actually going out and greeting the mountains. Today we had a little discussion and we realized that it was kind of foolish to judge mountains. So our judging mind doesn't really work. We can't really say, well, this mountain is successful and that mountain fails. So this is really important to have some recognition that our judgment, our judging mind is kind of puny, right?

[03:41]

It doesn't really avail in the realm of mountains. Dogen quotes an older Chinese Zen teacher master Pu Rong. of Master Dokai of Furong saying that the green mountains are always walking. The green mountains are always walking. And he points out that unless you understand that the green mountains are always walking, then you don't understand your own walking. So you can't actually understand what you're doing. moment by moment. You can't really understand the most important thing for a Zen student or for a human being if you don't understand the mountains walking. And the mountains walking is not so unusual actually.

[04:51]

The mountains then Our walking means the mountains are alive. So lately I've been considering how it is that human beings, we have this kind of a conceit, I think. In a way it's an amazing capacity to believe what we think. An amazing capacity to believe that the way we construct the universe is the way the universe is. Even when we find that we run up against stress, conflict, even when it doesn't check out, we still have this tendency to believe what we

[05:56]

believe that things are the way we put it together in our mind. And our minds are amazing, right? Today, walking up the Church Creek Trail, I was noticing that every step was many different worlds. There are many different worlds in one step. If I wasn't careful, though, I wouldn't notice that. If I wasn't really careful, I might think that I knew where I was. I might think that I knew where I was going. I might think that I knew what was happening, what was going to happen. So you know, before there were movies, there were these little books with flipped pages, right?

[07:06]

So you could just flip the pages. And if you flip the pages with different images, this would be an animated experience, right? That when you flip the pages, what appeared to be, say, a person sitting down would then stand up. And it would run, right, be running, right, on the page because you could just flip the page. But you knew that each page was just one moment. And as the moments begin to move more and more quickly, pretty soon they tend to merge. The mind creates this notion of some continuity through those pages. And things are actually happening much faster than that. Hear the sound of the creek.

[08:08]

The creeks merging right out here. Something happening so fast. And today I was sitting up at the wind caves and For a moment we had a little silent sitting. And for a moment it was very calm and quiet. And then I could hear the wind moving across the ridge. And I knew that the sound was tickling my ear. And then I waited And then it was the wind, the actual wind tickling my ear. So the sound was moving faster than the wind. Right now, right now, do you know what's happening?

[09:12]

Right now, what's happening with this sound? I don't know what. Anyone in the room is thinking. I have some feeling. But if I'm making sounds here, then I'm just making some sounds, just expressing myself here. And you, amazingly enough, are putting it together. trying to make some sense out of it. What does he mean? Mountains walking. This is a question for you to investigate for your own walking.

[10:15]

When I moved from years of living at Green Gulch as a practice place. For a while I had a job as a carpenter building a house in Tiburon. I was working to extend my practice of sitting still to the job of building a house. So I took up the practice of not walking. while walking. In other words, the practice of not going anywhere while walking. Naturally, I didn't tell the boss about this. So this is my own internal practice. But I noticed that it made a big difference in my state of being if I paid attention to what I'm doing moment by moment.

[11:27]

If I'm walking across the deck to get some nails that are over on the other side of the project, I don't have to be thinking about getting there. Once I have set the direction, I set the direction and then walking happens. But while walking, I'm completely still. I don't know if you know of this experience. But you can cultivate this practice of being right with your own body, moment by moment. Then amazingly enough, you arrive where the nails are. Oh, okay. So this then is a very easy way to work.

[12:33]

A lot of extra energy goes into thinking about what you're going to do, thinking about something else, not actually being in the body moment by moment. When you're in the body moment by moment, walking happens naturally. So this is the same then as the mountains walking. If you can understand that, then you can understand the mountains walking. Same thing if you're working in whatever situation. You're working in the kitchen. I know my friend Ed Brown said many times that Suzuki Roshi said, when you're working in the kitchen, what do you do? When you stir the rice, stir the rice. When you cut the carrots, cut the carrots. And then Ed tells this story, many of you have heard, right, where he goes into Suzuki Roshi and he says, it's all well and good that you tell me to cut the carrots, and when I cut the carrots and stir the rice, stir the rice, but I have other people working in the kitchen

[13:58]

And they don't do that. They don't do what I tell them. Sometimes they even show up late. Sometimes they bang the pots around and they make noise. And when I try to tell them what to do, they get angry at me. And Ed says he thought that Suzuki Roshi would be sympathetic and say, well, yeah, good help is hard to find. But Suzuki Roshi said, it takes a calm mind to see virtue in others. So Ed remembered that, but he was kind of unhappy about it. And because he was unhappy about it, he remembered it.

[15:01]

This is the way Dharma teaching works. When it's not really what you want, that's a chance for you to learn something. So... So I'm reflecting on how it's our human tendency to think that things are the way we see them, the way we construct them. There's a Japanese phrase that goes shinku myou. Shinku myou means from from empty, from true shin, this shin is true, true emptiness, wondrous being.

[16:06]

True emptiness, wondrous being. So that true emptiness is the source of wondrous being. Wondrous being is each moment... emptiness is the source of each moment. So when Dogen says that the mountains and rivers are the actualization of the Buddha way, this is what he's talking about. He's talking about the mountains and rivers as true emptiness. So the tendency that you might have to think, okay, this is the way it is, as an assumption, you're usually ignoring true emptiness.

[17:08]

Usually ignoring the source. So if we take a look at this in terms of the earth, we just had... Earth Day. A week or ten days ago, right? So it's good to have an Earth Day every now and then. It's good to have an Earth Day every day. But once a year, at least we can have an Earth Day. Helping us remember that the Earth is not what we think it is. If we think we know what the Earth is, we really don't take very good care of it. We don't take very good care of ourselves. We don't take very good care of our home on the earth. It's when we have some inquiry, some curiosity.

[18:12]

What is this? That we begin to listen more carefully and we begin to take better care. So I think now... We need to use all of our resources to take good care of the earth. It may be helpful to know that the earth is living. That we actually are in this little kind of thin layer of life on the surface of this big ball, right? 8,000 miles diameter. Hard to fathom. But we live right on the surface. We live in the air on the earth.

[19:16]

We are able to breathe air because of the earth. We're able to breathe air because of the roots of the plants in the earth. Now that we know that the air is changing because of our own impact, we begin to pay attention to our own impact. So I think as Buddhist practitioners who have an intention of not causing harm, it's very important to know what is the impact of our action. What is the impact of burning fossil fuel and raising the level of CO2 in the atmosphere? Someone that, I think his name was Hanson at NASA, had determined that 350 parts per million

[20:23]

is kind of the maximum for the forms of life that have now evolved and are currently living on this skin of the earth. So 350 parts per million has now become globally recognized as a significant number. I've seen people walk around with 350 on their t-shirts, and there's a website, 350.org. Last year at Green Gulch, we used flowers to make big numbers on the Zendo floor, and then put candles all around it and took the picture and sent it off to 350.org. but what are we actually doing moment by moment?

[21:26]

I have to ask myself this and invite you also to ask yourself, what are you doing moment by moment that relates to the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? When you burn something, you know that your releasing carbon. When you plant a tree and the tree grows, you know that the tree is sequestering carbon. Every little thing that we do has some impact. Every thought that we have and every action that we have, that we take, has some impact. So I'm... inviting everyone in this room to participate and paying attention to the impact of your thoughts and the impact of your actions.

[22:34]

This is also included in knowing what we are doing moment by moment. It's hard because everything's changing. It's hard to be a human being because it's scary. It's hard. And I feel, as a Buddhist, I feel sometimes it's particularly difficult because just don't have the certainty. Knowing what you're doing moment by moment does not mean certainty.

[23:39]

It actually means that you're willing to not know. Because you're willing to not know, then you're willing to be present in the moment. I was listening to the, I forget his name, but he said, Catholic, I think, bishop living in New York and a very wonderful gregarious fellow. And I listened to an interview with him and I realized, oh, here's a person who has certainty. Wouldn't that be nice? He knows that the teachings of his religion are not going to change. He knows that women will never be priests.

[24:41]

He was very clear about that. He knows that priests will always be celibate. Very clear about that. Okay. What am I doing here? I'm in this lineage where we don't know such things, right? Suzuki Roshi said, well, you're going to have to find out. What is your American way? We're not sure. Well, maybe we have to actually keep listening and finding what works and try something and see what doesn't work. And then I'd say, excuse me, and then try something else. Not too fast. We don't want to make changes too fast because then we can't actually tell what we're doing. But there's this spirit, which is also, of course, very dear to me in Zen, the spirit of not knowing.

[25:51]

So this means you don't even know what's going on in the mind of the person who irritates you. In case there's someone here who knows someone that irritates them. I'm just mentioning this. I know, it could even happen right here at Tassajara. But sometimes people come here with memories of someone else who irritated them sometime in the past. And sitting zazen, one would think that those irritations would just dissolve, right? One would think that. Sometimes people hope that. I've been sitting and sitting and sitting and these irritations They haven't dissolved.

[26:58]

What's wrong with me? Maybe my practice is no good. So these irritations actually are going back to not knowing what's happening moment by moment. You might be caught up in some holding on to some previous idea. If I'm caught up holding on some previous idea about someone, then I can really believe they're an irritating person. I can believe they're an irritating person because I'm not actually paying attention to what's happening in my body. If I'm paying attention to what's happening in my body, I begin to notice that the irritation is right in my body.

[28:05]

There's some tension. There's some karmic formation that's carried in my body. And body, of course, includes your whole nervous system, the mind. And then there's a failure to accept that things are actually changing so fast that the person who irritated me years ago, that's long gone. But the pattern that's set up in my own body and mind is what's irritating me. So I tend to think, oh, it's that person.

[29:11]

But that person doesn't exist. That person is my own construction. I'm believing my own delusion. So we say delusions are endless. I vow to end them. So if you know what's happening moment by moment, then I should check the time. Yeah, okay. Not time for me to relieve you of this and sing a song or something. I know there's only so much reality people can take. that's really why we're here.

[30:13]

That's why we come to Tassajara to really taste reality. This is no joke. And the hard part of reality to taste is one's own contribution to delusion. That's so hard. Things are, fortunately, we have this experience of waking up in the morning and having a chance to live in a way that's true each day. Fresh chance. So I invite you to take that up.

[31:15]

You know, as a practice. When you wake up in the morning, just sit up, make a vow, I will live true today. Now, I just... Because we have fixed ideas we don't necessarily appreciate the benefit of the Dharma teaching when it arrives. So there was this haiku I mentioned to the group today which goes like this. What good luck a mosquito Bites me. This year, too.

[32:19]

Okay? What good luck. A mosquito bites me. This year, too. You may not always appreciate. how sweet it is to be bitten by a mosquito. You may not always appreciate how sweet it is to be irritated by your friend. You may not always appreciate what a miracle it is to be alive, what a gift it is. So I think I will.

[33:22]

If you don't know it, this is a Pete Seeger song for the earth. But it's also for one's own birth and death. It's also for one, for living your life in the service of something that's bigger than your own idea of who you are. So this is called My Old Brown Earth. And you can imagine singing it when someone is dying, and you can imagine singing it when the earth is alive. To my old brown earth. And to my old blue sky I now give these last few molecules of eye And you who sing and you who stand nearby I do charge you not to cry Keep well this human chain

[34:43]

Watch while you keep it strong, as long as sun does shine. And this our home, keep pure and sweet and green. For I am yours, and you are also mine. So, you want to join in, sing it? Okay. To my old brown earth and to my old blue sky I now give these last few molecules of eye. And you who sing And you who stand nearby I do charge you not to cry Keep well this human chain Watch well you keep it strong As long as sun does shine

[36:04]

And this our home, keep pure and sweet and green, for I am yours and you are also mine. I'm sorry I don't have a big screen up here with the words. Hey. Hey. I'm one minute over time. Thank you for listening.

[36:56]

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