Good morning, everyone. Seems like a pretty full house. It must be the beginning of the year still. Everyone's New Year commitment to get their zen on is still active and alive, and we'll see how that is in June. Anyhow, it's a delight to see you all. Thank you again for being here, joining us on this beautiful day. Thank you. And for those who may not know me, my name is Tenzin David Zimmerman, and I serve as the abiding abbot here at this particular urban temple. However, I've been away for a little while, so this is a little bit of a coming back. I was away for the fall at our monastery, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, for three months. And Tassajara is in the Las Pagas National Forest, the Ventana Wilderness, And it was there leading a 90-day practice period, or ongoing.

[01:21]

It was the light to actually kind of leave the city and be able to enter once more into that beautiful setting. I don't know how many of you have been to... How many of you have been to Tassajara or the Los Pages National Forest? A good deal of you. So it's a wonderful place, and I could feel it. It felt to me like... coming home again. You know, I had lived there for eight years, and so there's a way that those mountains and waters and that environment is a part of me, came a part of my body. And so it felt like coming home, and kind of the rhythm of the environment as well as the monastic setting really kind of felt like second-skinned again, and I felt myself kind of sink in. at a deeper level. So that was a great joy for me. And now I'm here. I'm back. I'm back in the urban temple. I consider myself somewhat of a city boy.

[02:25]

So the idea that I spent eight years of Tassahara is a little kind of like, wow, that's pretty amazing for this one. But I learned how to be wherever I am as completely as possible. That's my goal, my wish, to be at home wherever I am. So... There's been a particular Zen saying that's been visiting me in the weeks since my return from Tassahara, and it's by the Chan Master Ching Yuan Huixin, who lived during the Tang Dynasty, and you might be familiar with it. It goes like this. Before I had studied Zen for 30 years, I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters. Anyone familiar with this verse? Yeah.

[03:41]

A few of you. So this saying by Ching Yuan is echoed by our 13th century Japanese Zen ancestor, Dogen Zenji, in the last lines of his fascicle from the Shobo Genzo, known as the Mountains and Waters Sutra. And the Mountains and Waters Sutra, Dogen's fascicle, was the focus of our study for the 90-day practice period at Tassajara this fall. So the last lines are, an old Buddha has said, mountains are mountains and waters are waters. These words do not say that mountains are mountains and waters are waters. They say that mountains are mountains. Okay? Thus, we should thoroughly study these mountains. When we thoroughly study the mountains, this is the mountain training. Such mountains and waters themselves spontaneously become wise ones and sages.

[04:47]

A little bit ago, your typical Zen paradox, confusion, twisting things around a little bit, throwing you off where you think you know. So Dogen, how many people have read Dogen's Mountains and Water Sutra? A few of you, right? My experience, it's a masterpiece of poetry and insights. And, like many of Dogen's writings, I find it both beautiful and complex, a complex expression of the Dharma, and it's also somewhat impenetrable at times. It's really hard to enter into and figure out where are we going here. And if you've been to Tassajara, it's sometimes like the Tassajara wilderness, right? You kind of get going, you don't know how to proceed. You get to a certain cliff or something like that, and you're kind of stuck. But... despite its challenging nature, it's well worth the walkthrough and to explore it. And I'll put a plug in for the bookstore. I think there's a few copies in the bookstore.

[05:48]

This morning I thought I would share some of the insights gathered while living with Dogen's Mountains and Water Sutra, as well as amidst the Mountains and Waters of the Sutra of Tassahara. And... What I want to share isn't intended to be a synopsis or a summation of Dogen's fascicle by any means. It took us three months to get through it, and to be honest, it could take several years actually to really deeply go into it. But I really just want to share this morning a few colorful leaves and stones that caught my eye on the way and may perhaps inform and inspire your own study of and training in the way of Zen. So for those of you who are mountains, and we are all mountains, training how it is to be the mountains that we are. What is that? So the Mountains and Waters Sutra begins with the line, these mountains and waters of the present are the expression of old Buddhas.

[07:02]

Now the mountains and waters that Dogen speaks of in its classical are not simply to be understood as the mountains and waters of metaphor or poetry. In fact, it could be said that the Mountains and Waters Sutra is not a sutra about mountains and waters at all, but that mountains and waters are themselves the sutra of the title. So what Dogen writes about is how mountains and waters in their elemental form, are the very expression of the true Buddha Dharma. See, the authentic and timeless teachings of the Buddhas and ancestors. So when looking at mountains and waters with a true Dharma eye, what we see is the realized truth of the universe. Looking at mountains and waters, we see the realized truth

[08:05]

In other words, when observing mountains and waters with an awake mind, when we have clear seeing into the nature of reality, then we see the Buddha and his teachings in the very manifestation of the natural world itself. In this way, nature, including our own human nature, becomes our sutra of study. So for anyone who has been there, you'll recognize how the profound beauty of the Tatsahara wilderness, combined with the dynamic silence and stillness of a traditional Zen monastic period, make for the ideal conditions to take up the study of this particular sutra. And Dogen concurs.

[09:07]

He writes in Sansuikyo, which is the Japanese title for translation of, not even translation, Mountains and Waters is the translation of the Japanese title, Sansuikyo. He writes, From the timeless beginning to the present, the mountains have always been the dwelling places of the great sages. Wise ones and sages have made the mountains their personal chambers. their own body and mind. And it is through these wise ones and sages that the mountains are actualized. Although many great sages and wise ones have gathered in the mountains, ever since they entered the mountains, no one has encountered a single one of them. There is only the manifestation of the life of the mountain itself. Not a single trace of anyone having entered can be found. So if we want to understand mountains and waters then, like the wise ones and sages throughout history, we have to first enter into and become intimate with them.

[10:23]

Maybe even disappear into the vast body of the mountains. And for those of us in the practice period, in the fall practice period of Tatsahara, our study of the mountains and waters not only took the form of formal classes and Dharma talks, but also through a mindful and deliberate engagement with the natural environment around us. We took many opportunities to allow the wilderness to teach us. how to be embodied beings, expressing both the upright stability and the stillness of the mountains, as well as the flexible, ever-flowing quality of water. So truly, it's fascinating to be able to actually practice Atasahara because the mountains teach us zazan, their upright posture, alert, attentive, open, spacious, still,

[11:30]

unmoving, really is this foundation of the posture of zazen. And yet within them and over them there is life flowing all the time. The water is flowing, wildlife is flowing, plant life is flowing, the breeze, everything is moving through. And at a very subtle level the mountains themselves are moving. They're breathing in some way. And so they are perfect teachers for us. when we sit in this posture of zazen, to be able to look at the mountains and know that they're sitting with us and sitting actually in us. So rather than spending all the periods of formal zazen sitting in the zendo, we sometimes set zazen outside. And this is kind of like, for some of you who've been to Tassajara, it's like... You could sit zazen outside? You can go outside of the zendo to sit?

[12:32]

Yes. Several times we even sat outside at night under the stars listening to the Dharma teachings of the creek and the crickets and the owls and the foxes. Oh, it's so beautiful to hear the owls and the foxes at night. It's just this magical thing. All right. and also the cool autumn breeze passing through the valley. And we also held two full moon ceremonies outside, chanting our bodhisattva precept vows while bathed in the moonlight. And it's pretty amazing to be able to do that particular ceremony that started basically in Buddhist time, but doing it 2,500 years later under the same moon. It's this profound sense of deep, vast connectedness to our ancestors, to others like us who've been seeking illumination within. And during Sashin's, we took daily silent walks up the road and along the creeks and feeling the way in which not only were we walking in the mountains, but the mountains are walking in us.

[13:49]

And it really takes... a deep concentration to feel how that's true. We assume we're the ones navigating the external world, but the external world is navigating in us all the time. We're constantly being informed by it and moved by it. Are we aware enough to notice how that's happening for us? And the wilderness in this way became not only an extension of the Zendo, but our very bodies and minds. In these ways, we enable the mountains and waters to actualize themselves through our practice, through our posture, our breath, our pulse, our work and our daily activities. The wildlife in the valley are also engaged in their own Zen training and practice. And it becomes pretty apparent after you've been there for a little while.

[14:50]

You're thinking, squirrels and blue jays? Really? They're practicing Zen? And they are. They really have their way of practice. One particular, for me, beautiful example was there was a family of deer that visited the monastery grounds almost on a daily basis looking for food and water. And initially, they were kind of tentative, right? And they kind of hung around the edges. But in time, they came to the center of the monastery. And we'd be sitting in class, and they'd be walking down Tassahar Path, just walking along over the bridge, around the cabins, just kind of making it their home. And the family, particularly, what was unique about it consisted of two mother deer and three young ones, or fawns. One of them, the youngest, had a little bit of a deformed leg. And so it had a little bit of a hop in order to make its way through. That was endearing to watch. And so it was amazing to come out of one's cabin or be doing walking meditation outside and suddenly encounter these so-called wild deer close at hand and relatively at ease.

[16:02]

I think the family of Delft felt comfortable being in the valley with us monks because they sensed not only that they wouldn't be harmed, but that they sense the internal stillness cultivated by our practice of zazen. One time I was walking to the bathhouse along the path, and there's this part of the path that's very narrow. It's right between the creek and the edge of the mountain. So there's basically just maybe eight feet across. And I encountered one of the mothers and the fawn with the leg challenge. And I needed to get to the bathhouse. I wanted to pass. And they were there kind of nibbling on the side of the road. So I thought, okay, I'm just going to walk very slowly and mindfully and see if I can not disturb them in some way. And I was able to very slowly. I kept my head down, but I could see out of the corner of my eyes. Just very slowly walked. And they...

[17:03]

just basically stayed where the yacht, the little one, the cutest one, just kind of like, okay, whatever. The mother was a little bit more weary, but she took a step or two away. But basically I was passing these deer, these deer monks. They were basically just five feet away from me. And it was so touching. And if you look into their eyes, there's lights. If you look into the eyes of wildlife, they're full of lights. And so it's beautiful to get that close and see the light coming from them and feel it, feel yourself being reflected in the light of their own eyes. These encounters with the deer brought to mind for me the words of W.B. Yeats. He said, we can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see It may be their own images.

[18:06]

And so live for a moment with a clearer, calmer, perhaps even a fiercer life because of our quiet. So how would it be to cultivate this type of still, quiet mind so that all beings, not just the deer in the mountains, but each other, experiences the same sense of calm and clarity coming forward from us and in doing, inviting them in, inviting them to connect with us and feeling the fierce presence that is in our lives, which is what we are made of, this fierce, luminous presence. How can we practice? How can we train in that way that that's possible? In another line recited from Swansuikyo, Dogen says that although we say that mountains belong to the country, or you could say the state, actually they belong to those who love them.

[19:28]

The mountains belong to those who love them. In other words, when we love the mountains, they love us in return. In his fascicle, Keisei Sanshiki, which translates as the voices of the river valley and form in the mountains, Dogen shares the following koan, which also speaks of belonging. A monk asked Zen Master Chosa Kation, how can we make mountains, rivers, and the earth belong to ourselves? Master Chosa replied, how can we make ourselves belong to the mountains, rivers? So Dogon goes on to comment that, this says that ourselves are naturally ourselves. And even though ourselves are mountains, rivers, and earth, we should never be restricted by belonging.

[20:30]

I think that our current environmental and climate crisis that we're witnessing and experiencing, in my view, largely human-generated, but some people may disagree with me. It's a matter of the human species having lost touch with a felt sense of belonging to the earth, of losing contact with the embodied wisdom that tells us we are dependent on the health and the vitality of this planet and the rest of its species and flora and atmosphere. We don't know who we are, nor the source of our being in many cases. Or rather, we have a mistaken view of who we are, one that is not rooted in the totality of being. Because we don't know who we are, we don't love ourselves.

[21:35]

And when we don't love ourselves, We don't feel like we belong. Or our sense of belonging is a mistaken view of belonging to conditioned, ever-changing circumstances rather than the unchanging, unconditioned true nature of reality. So like the monk in this koan, we may have a backwards understanding. The question of how can we make the mountains and rivers, the mountains, rivers, and earth belong to us, is backwards because it makes the separate self the center of the question, of the equation. When this is the case, we end up with all kinds of environmental transgressions and crises because our fundamental independence with nature is ignored. So teacher Chosa flips.

[22:39]

this to reorient the monk. How can we make ourselves belong to mountains, rivers, and the earth? This way of seeing says that when we are naturally ourselves, and even though ourselves are also mountains, rivers, and the earth, then we are never apart. We never feel separate. Even belonging doesn't restrict or limit us. In fact, belonging expresses the nature of our nature. We are the nature of belonging, of wholeness already. The American Catholic Benedictine monk, Brother David Stendler asked, who was once a monk here at Zen Center. Did you guys know that? I forget how long he's been here. I think a year is what I call it. and I think I could deal with that time with Atasahara, Brother David Senderwass defines love as the felt sense of belonging.

[23:48]

And this felt sense of belonging, I would propose, is the heart of Zazen. In Zazen, we sit in stillness and silence and allow ourselves to belong to our experience. and our experience, whatever it might be, to belong to us? Whether it's joy, pain, sorrow, irritation, desire, whatever it is, can we belong to that experience and allow it to belong to us? And this belonging manifests because something happens in the process of our sitting where the duality of the self And the experience, a self experiencing something called desire, pain, sensation, and seeing, falls away, leaving no trace of a separate self. Zazen is an act of both entering into and belonging to the mountain of our own being, as well as entering into and belonging to the mountain that is the reality of all being.

[25:03]

John Deiter Laurie, who, I don't know if he was the founder, but the main teacher of the Zen Mountain Center in New York, Mount Tremper. He wrote in the commentary on Dogen's Mountains of Mata Sutra, says that when Dogen speaks of entering the mountains, he's speaking of the non-dual dharma. There is no separation between the sage and the mountain. When we have made the mountains our own body and mind, our personal chambers, there is no meeting them, since the mountains and sages are one reality. That the sages have entered the mountains means that there is no one to meet and nothing to be met. There is only the mountain itself. So in Zen, our sage practice is to enter fully into the mountain way of life, or you could also say it's the water way of life, whatever way of life your particular practice environment is or is taking the shape of, and disappear into it, and disappear into that practice, leaving no trace of self.

[26:21]

And this not leaving a trace is not polluting the environment with the self, one that intentionally or abstinently leaves objects behind to kind of mark its presence, in order to somehow confirm or signal or verify its existence and its progress in some way. So there's no graffiti, you know, there's no certificates, no karns, no litter, no marks of any type to say, I was here. I reached this point. That's why you don't get certificates in Zen, kind of. Even this is questionable, you know, if you think of it in that way. So, in other words, you don't meet anyone. This form of no traits points to the Buddhist understanding that due to the nature of emptiness, which is another way to express our profound interconnectedness, there is no one, no inherently separate self, to meet.

[27:27]

It affirms that the true self is the entire indivisible universe. And one of the primary things that studying nature in the forms of mountains and waters can teach us is how to see with Dharma eyes, how to see the world through the eyes of a Buddha, and thereby experience our elemental oneness with all being. And throughout Sonsrikyo and Dogen's other writings, he's constantly instructing us to question our perceptions. our perceptions of mountains, of waters, of each other, particularly each other as well. Our path to freedom lies not holding on to our fixed views of the world and others, but learning how to see that they are limited and karmically conditioned.

[28:32]

So recall the saying by Ching Yuan Guishin that I shared with you at the beginning of the talk, in which he pauses that before you study Zen, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. While you are studying Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers. Mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers. But once you have had an awakening, the E word enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers again rivers. And what we have here in this is three ways of seeing that could correspond somewhat, roughly, to three stages of practice. And we try not to talk too much about stages of practice in Zen, so hold this very loosely. So first, seeing mountains as mountains and rivers as rivers means seeing them as fixed, solid entities in and of themselves.

[29:39]

they appear to us as just namarupa, or name forms or mirror objects. So I could see that that's a mat, that's a tatami, and that's a camera, and that's a woman, and that's a man. So we just see the form, the visual appearance of the objects. And we perceive the world when we do this in dualities and in oppositions. In more or less flat, two-dimensional, kind of a small way. And we assume we know what mountains, rivers, trees, people, and so on are. And likewise, we might assume that we know what Zen is. And sometimes our views are so limited and restricted that they become painful, leaving us with a feeling of anxiety or leading to some kind of conflict, even wars. And as a consequence, perhaps, we might find ourselves driven to Buddhists.

[30:40]

practice, looking for another way to live and relate to the world and to relieve suffering caused by our karmic consciousness. How after practicing for some time and having some insight or prajna, we might begin to see mountains and waters differently. We see them through the lens of impermanence, interdependent origination and emptiness, seeing them not as mountains, Seeing them as not mountains and not rivers means we understand that neither mountains nor rivers exist in and of themselves, that they are empty of inherent existence and made up of other beings that are also empty of inherent existence. For instance, there is nothing within a mountain that we can pull out and say, this is a mountain. And this is what makes a mountain a mountain.

[31:41]

Mountains are made up of rocks and trees and grass and snow and water and rivers, ponds, lakes, insects, birds, animals, and so on. And all these things are made up of other things. So given this, there are no mountains and no rivers. Then, as we continue to practice, and our wisdom eye is fully open, we eventually come to realize that mountains indeed are mountains, and rivers indeed rivers. And there is a mountain there, and a river over there, here. However, we deeply understand that both mountain and river are merely words and conceptual designations that we use to describe the conditional phenomena in front of us. neither phenomena is fixed nor a permanent entity that exists in and of itself and possesses inherent existence as mountain or river or whatever words we use to describe it.

[32:52]

It's in this way that we come to experience and understand the true nature of mountains and waters and the true nature of all beings. And another name for this true nature is Buddha nature, which is itself the awake mind of Buddha. And to quote Dogen describing his own awakening, I came to realize clearly that mind is nothing other than rivers and mountains and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars. So we enter the mountains of our lives and study and practice to become one with the mountains. whatever that particular mountain is for you. And in time, we might gain some insight into the nature of nature and into our own minds. But then what? Where do you go from there? So there's a story from the recorded sayings of Dangshan that might give us some direction.

[33:59]

Dangshan asked the monk, where have you come from? And the monk replies, from wandering in the mountains. Dangshan asks, did you reach the peak? And the monk responds, yes. Dangshan then asks, if there was anyone on the peak? And the monk says, no, there wasn't. Dangshan replies, if so, then you did not reach the peak. And so here, Dangshan indicates that if no one was there, then neither was the monk. If his peak experience was a true awakening experience, one of true emptiness in which not a separate thing exists, then neither did the monk exist. But the indomitable monk replies, if I did not reach the peak, how could I have known there was no one there? Touché. And Dogen said, why didn't you stay there?

[35:06]

Okay, fine, but why didn't you stay there then if you reached it? And the monk said, I would stay there, but there's someone in India who would disapprove. And Dangshan said, formally, I doubted this fellow. In other words, now I don't. That someone who would have disapproved in India had the monk stayed on the mountain peak, stayed with his enlightenment experience, is Shakyamuni Buddha himself. So this koan served as an admonishment for us not to stick to, but rather let go of any insight or attainment. So not to grasp onto it, not to try to hang out in that wonderful whatever experience it is, right? Not to make it ours in some way, pretend it's us in some way. So the monk understood that the Buddhas and ancestors required him to take responsibility and return from the mountain peak and enter back into the everyday world to share his insight and help others, just like Shakyamuni Buddha did.

[36:17]

Our insights are somewhat worthless if they don't inform how we engage the world in a way that helps alleviate the stress and despair that we see both within us and around us. Gary Snyder says, the world is our consciousness and it surrounds us. The world is our consciousness and it surrounds us. And Noga Stogen tells us in the Ben-No-Wah, which translates as the wholehearted practice of the way, that when one has a Zen mind, one realizes that trees, grasses, and land involved in all this all emit a bright and shining light, preaching the profound and incomprehensible Dharma, and it is endless. Trees and grasses, wall and fence, expound and exalt the Dharma for the sake of an ordinary people, sages and all living beings.

[37:21]

Ordinary people, sages and all living things in turn preach and exalt the Dharma for the sake of trees, grasses, wall and fence. I would... Ah, that this light shining is not just mountains. It's not just mountains, trees, grasslands, walls that emit this light, but all phenomena. Cars, asphalt, trash cans, toilet, dog poop. Everything emits this light and likewise preaches the profound and incomprehensible Dharma. So if we overlook this truth, if we think we can only find the light of awareness in mountains or beautiful nature settings or certain kinds of so-called spiritual environments and objects, we are not looking deeply enough. There's an old Zen koan.

[38:24]

Someone asked a monk, what is Buddha? And the master replied, a shit stick. Right? Everything. is this light. Everything is the mind of Buddha. Do you understand that? How do you understand that? And how does that inform the way you engage the world? Everything is sacred in that way. Everything is teaching us thusness. Everything is teaching us liberation just by being itself. when we enter into and thoroughly study, study it to see its true nature, then everything is free just to be itself. This is how we liberate all beings. We allow them to be fully themselves, including ourselves. So when we thoroughly study in the mountains, Dogen says, this is the mountain training.

[39:29]

This is how we train in the mountains. Such mountains and rivers themselves spontaneously become wise ones and sages. So we are making the mountains sages when we train in them, just like they make us sages when we fully engage with them. When Dogen says, thoroughly study the mountains, he means to take the mountains and rivers, indeed all the phenomena, as the koan of our lives. They are constantly proclaiming the Dharma. Can we see it? Can we hear it? When we go deep into ourselves, when we gauge in practice fully, that practice becomes the embodied practice of all the sages and Buddhas, all the ancestors, past, present, and future. In fact, it's the verification and actualization of the enlightenment of the Shakyamuni Buddha himself and all the subsequent Buddhas. And it's also the practice and verification of the mountains and rivers and of your life and my life and the life of wise ones, sages, and ordinary beings, including those deer, right?

[40:42]

Those deer are sages. That car honk is a sage. So I'll conclude now. That was a brief meandering morning stroll through the various mountains and waters. including Dogen's fascicle, and by sharing another Dogen. This is a poem that celebrates both the mountains and waters along with the mutual awakening of all beings. He writes, Sounds of streams and shapes of mountains. The sounds never stop and the shapes never cease. Was it you who woke? Or was it the mountains and streams? Billions of beings see the morning star, and all become Buddhas. If you, who are valley streams and looming mountains, can't throw some lights on the nature of ridges and rivers, who can?

[41:44]

Lights illuminating lights. That's what we are, and that's our task. So thank you for being here. And thank you for entering back out into this beautiful sunlight to illuminate everything with your own awake, compassionate heart-mind. Thank you. Thank you for listening.

[42:15]

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