The city center is in the midst, maybe about the halfway point of a practice period that is focusing on the Heart Sutra. Heart Sutra being a concise and deeply packed fundamental text of Zen, of Mahayana Buddhism. And I want to talk tonight. My talk tonight is inspired by the Heart Sutra. The opening lines of the Heart Sutra are, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing Prajnaparamita, clearly saw that all five aggregates or five skandhas are empty and thus relieved all suffering. Shariputra, being a disciple of Buddha, Shariputra, Avilokiteshvara says, form does not differ from emptiness.

[01:10]

Emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness. Emptiness itself, form. Does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness. Emptiness itself, form. So I'm going to start my words on this topic by telling you all that I do the lunch dishes on Monday. And I really like doing lunch dishes on Monday. Is Nadia here? Oh, excuse me. If you mention your name, Nadia, if you're not here. I did them with Nadia. She and I have sort of worked out a rhythm that seems, at least to me, seems like we've kind of like are very efficient and worked well together. And it's, you know, doing the lunch dishes, you begin with a mess.

[02:16]

And 45 minutes later, you clean it up. And it's very satisfying. But this Monday, as I was doing the dishes, which I've done many times before, not always on Mondays, on other days, in other years, I thought to myself, I felt, okay, Jordan, that's my name, in case you don't know. Okay, Jordan. Here you are doing the dishes. One more time, one more Monday. And it's odd what can go through your head as I, what went through my head as I was sorting the silverware. I thought, well, one way to know what you might be doing five or 10 years from now is to look at what you're doing right now. And I thought, oh, one thing I thought was, how could it be that so many years have passed since I came to the Zen Center?

[03:26]

And as I felt that question, I felt, to be honest, I felt a kind of mixture of pleasure and pain and kind of something. It was like a koan. How could it be? Decades after I first arrived, I'm here practicing by doing the lunch dishes. And in these feelings and thoughts, sorting this over where thoughts... I understood that what I was really wondering about was not the lunch dishes and not how much time had passed, but right then, then, right at that moment, was my practice and my spirit and my heart. When I first imagined that I was interested in Zen in the 1970s,

[04:30]

I had some fairly dramatic ideas about what this meant. I had read the literature, I'd heard the stories, and pretty clearly it was going to be interesting. And I thought of that as I was doing the dishes. Interesting? Well, yeah, it's interesting. What's not interesting? And I thought of when I first came in, one of the things that I remembered was when I arrived at the Zen Center, one of the reasons I came here was that somehow things didn't feel right. Things didn't feel right in my life. And in some ways, that's the good news. Because mostly, I think for myself and maybe for others,

[05:32]

People don't make a big effort to rearrange their life to... Well, make a big effort to rearrange their life and to question their life when things are going well. And when I came to the Zen Center, one of the first things I learned about was meditation with Zazen. And finding out about Zazen, finding out... about meditation seemed like a great gift. In a way, that younger Jordan didn't understand how to live in the world. And for me, in my personal journey and my personal pilgrimage, learning how to sit with myself and not move, learning how to settle on a cushion and try to follow my breath and be present with what arose without flinching.

[06:36]

This was tremendous. This was a gift. And I say learning how to sit with myself. But really what I learned was how to sit with a group of people and to be with a group of people. This being with a group of people And practicing with, not alone, but not by yourself, but with others, is really important. And many of us have, of course, even people, you know, you don't have to come to the Zen Center to have a gang, have people you hang out with. But one of the important things that Buddhism talks about is having spiritual friends, having friends who practice the way with you. I'm going to tell you a personal kind of, I can't quite believe I remember this so clearly, a 20-year-old, 20-years-ago story.

[07:45]

Mostly I forget things very quickly. But this thing I remember. I was living in Berkeley. It was the 1980s, late 1980s. And I was at a party, which was in some ways an unusual thing. I didn't go to that many parties. I was married with kids. And I remember that I was sort of excited. Good times, fun, who knows what party. And in the moment, at some point, in the evening and I was feeling somewhat carried with the rhythm and mood of what a party is. Suddenly, almost like just delivered words, this thing came in my mind.

[08:49]

These words and this thought came in my mind and it was this. And I'm going to say the words because I remember them and I didn't have to write them down. What brings me to this place where strangers' voices strip my mind of memory? Where was that coming? And then who are these echoing spirits that teach me in a life that owes no debt to freedom? What lesson is there in a dream that has no end? No end. And it kind of... Those words which came into me and suddenly I just sort of knew them in my heart and mind kind of spoiled the party. What lesson is there in a dream that has no end? No end. So it's very important to practice with friends and to find people who encourage you in the way.

[10:00]

And you need to find friends that encourage waking up, encouraging one's efforts to wake up. Back to the beginning of the Heart Sutra. It says, Avallokitesvara Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing Prajnaparamita, clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering. The five aggregates or skandhas are form, feeling, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness. And these are the five heaps, five aggregates, five skandhas, to use the technical word, Buddhist technical word. These are the five heaps that constitute a human being. that constitute the experience of our human life.

[11:04]

And they're always changing. They're not just what they were a moment ago. The Diamond Sutra, which is a cousin to the Heart Sutra, close cousin, the Diamond Sutra says, past mind, future mind, present mind, cannot be grasped. And it's true that the past is gone and the future can't be comprehended and the present is immediately behind us. In Buddhism, there is a teaching called detentant co-origination, dependent co-arising, which says that there is no beginning or end to the stream of life. That might be what it says. And in this teaching, according to Buddha Dharma, life doesn't start here, for instance, and end there, but rather it's a circular cycle.

[12:13]

And in a circle you might pick out, for the sake of skillful means, for the sake of easy comprehension, you might pick out a beginning, you might pick out an end, but really it's kind of an arbitrary selection. And we often do that in our life. We say, because it seems so sensible. I was born at such and such a time. Our father, our mother passed away at such a time. And this is picking out points on a circle. We... We tend to think in this linear way because it seems to make sense. And we see our birth and death and our life in a horizontal way. But actually, another way to see it is that there's just constant change and transformation and motion.

[13:24]

And in this way, our body and mind and our life might be called the transformation body, the body which is always transforming. So Heart Sutra says all five aggregates are empty, which means that there is no person as such. What we call our self, this is a challenge for me, what we call our self is the five skandhas, forms, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness and Self, this self is a transformation, not a fixed event. I was somewhere last week. I'll be somewhere next week. Today I'm here. In each of those manifestations, I'm not the same person. And yet, my driver's license still says Jordan. In some way, I'm also the same person. Avalokitesvara bodhisattva, who in deeply practicing Prajnaparamita, clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty.

[14:35]

And then he saw that all dharmas, all elements are marked with emptiness and they do not appear or disappear. And what does this mean? You know, things do seem to appear. There's an old saying in Zen, one of those old quotes. In the beginning, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. And later on, mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers. And still later, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers again. Actually, I didn't say the word again. I added again. Later on. Mountains are mountains and rivers are just rivers. So what is meant by mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers? What might be meant?

[15:40]

Let me not say what is meant. Let me say what might be meant. Well, this is the place where we start. And this is the place where we know what's real. This is the way our mind describes life to us. One way to understand this place where mountains are mountains is, I think it and I feel it and so therefore it's so. And here things are pretty straightforward and it might seem, in fact, quite obvious. I'm me. You're you. That's a chair. I think we can understand this place. I think we're familiar with it. It's pretty simple to say it again. In this place mountains are mountains, and rivers are rivers, and form is form, and emptiness is emptiness, and never the twain shall meet.

[16:43]

But what's trickier, what's more complicated, is when mountains, when we see that mountains are not mountains, when we see that rivers are not rivers, When we see form is not form. When form is emptiness, as the Heart Sutra tells us. Thich Nhat Hanh said about this mountains and mountains and rivers. He said, before practicing meditation, we see that mountains are mountains. And when we start to practice, we see that mountains are no longer mountains. After practicing a while, we see that mountains are mountains again. But now the mountains are very free. Our mind is still with the mountains. It's no longer bound to anything. Our mind no longer bound to anything. What would that be like?

[17:47]

thinking and when you were thinking my mind and your mind are different are different minds and this is mountains are mountains this is a mountain over there and a mountain over here and a chair between them and if through as Thich Nhat Hanh says We start to practice. If through starting to meditate, if through making the effort to settle ourself and sit with ourself and see what rises and not flinch from it, if through that effort we can, which might suspiciously look like aimed at attainment, which there is no attainment, but if we make that effort and can cut through our thinking, in that place, in that spot, your mind and my mind and Everyone's minds are the same in that place.

[19:03]

Because this is... This could be the kind of empty mind. Which is a mind before thinking. And before speech. Before language. Before God. Before Buddha. This is the mind where there's no mountains and no rivers. This is the mind where Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. In this place, there is actually not just form is emptiness, but there is no form. There's no emptiness. So at some point in practice, it might make sense if you heard, if you read, if you thought. The mountains are no longer mountains. The rivers are no longer rivers. Because the original nature of our mind before Jordan manifested has no inside, no outside.

[20:16]

And as the Heart Sutra says, quoting the Heart Sutra, given emptiness, there is no form, no sensation, no perception. no formation, no consciousness, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind, no realm of sight, no realm of mind consciousness, and no mountains and no rivers. transformation. And in this realm of transformation and change, things appear and disappear, but actually the true form of things doesn't change, doesn't appear or disappear. And then the Sutra, the Heart Sutra says, all dharmas, all dharmas are neither defiled or pure,

[21:27]

Natural human instinct to sometimes think of things are either dirty or pure. Like for instance, we might come upon an old apple rind on the side of the road or on the path or on the sidewalk and we might think, ah, that's the sort of rotting apple rind. But the apple rind, if it could speak, I haven't yet met one that can, but if it could, I'm sure it would say, what are you talking about? I am just myself. I'm just this old apple rind, neither tainted nor pure. And it's our perceptions that make things tainted or pure. It's our perception that makes form and emptiness seem like two things, not one. And in this sort of place, which is... place to be.

[22:43]

In this sort of place where dharmas are neither defiled nor pure, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers. And this is the place in which mountains flow and rivers are made of diamonds. This is the place where Dogen writes about in his Mountains and Rivers Sutra, where he says, and this is a quote, The stone woman gives birth to a child in the night. Continuing the quote. This means that the time when a stone woman gives birth to a child is the night. We should understand the reason behind this giving birth to a child. At the time of birth, our parent and child transformed together. We should not only study that birth is realized in the child becoming the parent. we should also study and understand that the practice and verification of birth is realized when the parent becomes the child."

[23:50]

And in the face of this kind of place, when the parent becomes the child and the child becomes the parent and the stone woman gives birth to a child in the night, all of our Previous, historic questions lose meaning. And indeed, they're losing our questions that we've had for so long and we've brought with us as our friends. When they lose meaning, that is in fact the answer. The true answer. The questions we have are often unreal. often unreal. Even though it was the best effort we could make at the time. And in this place, where the stone woman gives birth to a child in the night, and the river's flow are diamonds, in this place, the

[25:14]

We understand that the teaching about the precepts of morality, which is so important in Buddhism, we understand that these teachings of morality are no longer, they're not rules, but they're glowing descriptions of Buddha's mind. There are descriptions of how compassion and love manifests itself in our human life. And it becomes almost incomprehensible or impossible to imagine that we would live any other way. We forget that. We can have that thought. And here also, in this place, We realize that the teacher and the student each need each other.

[26:22]

The parent and the child are one. The teacher and the student are one. One heart, one Buddha nature. And we can perhaps see that what's brought us in our practice to this point is... Shakyamuni Buddha talking with a warm heart to Mahakashapa and on and on and on, person to person to person over generations and generations to this time. And then we might have another thought. We might have the thought that as students, it's our responsibility to remain open. And as Dogen said, to be always disturbed by the truth.

[27:25]

Always be disturbed by the truth. This doesn't mean we go around in an upset state of mind. It means we always have the door open. Catching ourselves. And perhaps the only question that we have, not just teacher, but also student, is the question of what am I teaching at this moment? And this can be a sobering question. This can be a kind of awkward thing to realize on a Monday afternoon when you're sorting the silverware. What am I teaching at this moment? Before we ever had a chance to get to the place where we might have these thoughts, it is a bit of a miracle that our Zen training and our Buddhist practice continued, despite all the doubts, unanswered questions and problems that our life brings us.

[29:01]

But if we continue, if we don't become discouraged by these unanswered questions, these problems, we can come again. We come through the agent's vehicle of our life and we can come again to the place where mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. And it's not the same place as before. It's a lot simpler. than at first. So this takes time and it takes commitment and it takes continuing through impatience. But Zen practice is not magical. It responds to intention and effort.

[30:12]

It doesn't happen overnight. There is a secret to success in practice, in Zen practice, if you want to. Imagine there might be something called success. There's a secret to accomplishing it, and that is simply to continue. If we continue, we really will be changed. Except the challenge of this change is that it's... The challenge of this is that also really we won't be changed. First mountains were mountains and then they were not.

[31:17]

And then mountains again are mountains. And first Jordan is Jordan and then Jordan is not Jordan. But then at the end, Jordan is still Jordan. And this fact that Jordan remains Jordan is the challenge and problem of my life. Because and I think maybe Keith remaining to be Keith and Todd remaining Todd, challenges of your lives. End with a quote from Dogen from his Mountains and Rivers Sutra, another quote.

[32:18]

As for mountains, there are mountains hidden in treasures. There are mountains hidden in marshes. There are mountains hidden in the sky. There are mountains hidden in mountains. There is a study of mountains. hidden in hiddenness. An old master said, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. And the meaning of these words is not that mountains are mountains, but that mountains are mountains. Therefore, we should thoroughly study these mountains. And when we thoroughly study the mountains, this is the mountain training. such mountains and rivers themselves spontaneously become wise ones and sages. Don't hit that clunk yet.

[33:20]

I hope this works. It's rare you get to include an extremely popular, almost iconic song. It turns out as its topic a koan. So this is my concluding remarks. Press play. And then make it be on number two. It works. Nope, nope. If anybody wants to accompany it, if you're such an old fuddy-duddy. The dark upon my garden, it's a snail, that's what it is.

[34:32]

The dark upon my garden, it's a snail, that's what it is. Because there is a mountain, there is a mountain, there is a place. There is a mountain and there is a mountain. The chasm without chances is getting to find a butterfly in heaven. The chasm without chances is getting to find a butterfly in heaven. Thank you.

[35:34]

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