Talk Notes:
2026-06-13 Sansuikyo talk 1 at Samish
Welcome everyone. Deep welcome. I know you don't need me to welcome you, but please allow me to support you in welcoming yourself to this space, to this moment on this island. Let's welcome each other. Do you welcome me here to sit in this seat? I welcome you here to sit in your seat.
We've been sitting here for a little while. Sometime in late 1992 or 1993 our little Zen group somehow felt ready to have a longer sesshin.
Our group's first retreats were actually overnight retreats too with our teacher Norman Fischer - two small overnight retreats at a friend of the sangha's named John Robinson's cabin and small farm on Lummi Island. Most of us slept in tents, there was a sleeping loft and one main room - I guess John didn't have much furniture as there was room for the cushions in the zendo. Dokusan with Norman was in a tent. I'd offered Norman my old VW camper van as his housing - he was a flexible guy really and he and his family were backpackers so I guess it all worked ok. Or maybe it was a little much and he was too polite to tell me!
At the first of those Lummi retreats myself and Florence Caplow received jukai from Norman. And at the second one Bob Penny did - I remember his son Forrest crawling across the zendo floor.
After that the Bellingham Dharma Hall formed - a shared space in downtown Bellingham - four Buddhist groups took turns using it - one large room was pretty much all it was. We sat there weekly and started having a few weekend retreats a year with Norman. One highlight I remember is that 16 year old Gillian came and sat the whole sesshin. John was so proud. I suspect Gillian was too. Weren't you? That you pulled that off, Gillian? I've probably mentioned this enough times in talks already so I'll let it go now that you're like 45! But it was pretty cool.
I remember I was so nervous on the first morning it was like I was in another world. The windows were wide open and it was freezing in there - I think it was early Spring - and Norman had to nudge me to say "Maybe we should close those windows" - I remember coming out of my reverie with a big CLUNK. Where was I? An odd feeling.
But we wanted more. A longer retreat. Was it me driving that bus? Was it Norman? Was it the energy of the whole group? I don't know, but we wanted a longer retreat and maybe somewhere a little more comfortable than a one room cabin with a sleeping loft and camping or cramming into one room and having the cooks bring the soup and salad from home.
It turned out that some of our friends at the Bellingham Insight Meditation group - roommates with us at the Dharma Hall then and now - had done a retreat at some church camp on Samish Island and said it worked well. I'm not sure I even knew where Samish Island was before that. Compared to our previous digs I'm sure it all felt lavish. And this was before they built the e-cabins.
I was actually a bit intimated by this great big room after being is such intimate spaces. We expected about 25 people I think. We sure didn't need a room this big!
So initially I had us set up in that corner over there after considering just being in the balcony.
But when Norman showed up - maybe Lee Nelson brought him like she has ever since, but I remember being in here pondering all of this and Norman walks in and says, naw, let's be in the center. Use the whole room. He always had a clear sense of space and arrangement - kind of a Zen fengshui master.
And he grabbed one side of the altar - which was on the very same maple table there (it's actually from my first marriage in 1991) and about halfway to the center, the incense bowl fell off and broke! Oops, no problem, clean it up, find a new bowl. Keep going.
In June 1993 I was 27 and Norman was 46. Now I'm 60 and Norman will turn 80 this Fall.
Except for missing 2020 and 2021, we've been here for a full week ever since in June. It's been such an important retreat. For the sangha. For me. And for Norman too.
For the last several years I've had an ongoing conversation with Norman about how much longer he'd keep coming. Mostly he'd say something like, well I don't think you need me here any more and I'd say, well you're totally welcome, we love having you. And actually the last agreement I had with him was this year would be the last year. That's he'd be here right now.
But after we finished last year's retreat he realized it was time. I suspect part of it is he realized there would be a LOT of fuss over him if there was a "this is Norman's last year!" retreat and he's not so into being fussed over. But I think it's not just that - energetically it just felt like time and he listened to that sense and let me know. Maybe you read his little letter to us about it. That bit about being in the way was interesting, and I'm starting to see there may be some truth to that. Even though he was in the dokusan room all the time his presence was strong and it's a different thing for us all to step up and into the practice that much more fully without him here.
So this might sound off topic but bear with me: a little ear worm I have in my mind is from an LP I used to have from the Reggae Sunsplash. I've never been, but it's a big annual reggae concert in Jamaica. The LP I had must've been from the year after Bob Marley died. It opens with the MC calling out with that beautiful accent, "You are at Montego Bay Jamaica in case you have forgotten where you are.... No ONE can take the place of Bob! No one! But we are gonna try and do our best!" and then the base line from the first song starts up.
So I feel moved, even though Norman is happily very much alive, to share with you: "You are at Samish Island Camp in case you have forgotten where you are.... No ONE can take the place of Norman. No one! But we are gonna try and do our best!"
Kanho Chris and I will alternate talks and obviously I'm up first. The topic will be Dōgen's teachings. I'm planning to all 4 of mine around one longer Dōgen text and Kanho is going to bring up 3 different texts and explore some themes. All are from the Shobogenzo. We haven't coordinated much beyond that but I'm sure something will emerge in aggregate between these talks that will be interesting. And I hope helpful.
I hope everything we share is in fact helpful encouragement for your practice. Please remember the preciousness of the opportunity of sesshin and let's all practice with full hearts and take care of our beautiful practice together. I feel like we're off to a good start.
Our way at Red Cedar is to be serious about what we're doing but also relaxed. What's happening here is precious and rare. And it's not helpful to get uptight or too precious about it.
And of course we are all conditioned human beings and we will sometimes get a little bamboozled and distracted and forget where we are - even if we aren't smoking weed at a giant reggae concert we may forget where we are - we may forget why we're here and fall into all kinds of habitual states.
As the sesshin encouragments Mari read last night said, "sesshin includes pleasant and unpleasant experiences" and that our way is to practice with them equally. Everything that happens is important. And everything that happens is just a passing moment, soon gone. Not to get caught up on it and lose your presence here.
Of course there will be a few logistical rough edges on the first day and maybe some of the leaders like the head teacher will get a little confused about things at times, but we're settling right in.
And no matter how tangled up any of us gets this week, sooner or later we'll remember and we'll come back. That is our commitment, that is our promise. And that is what Dōgen definitely expects of us. It's hard to know what kind of person he was really but he was definitely super serious about this practice.
The text I picked is one I've recited in sangha and on my own many time: it's the Sansui-kyo. The Mountains and Waters Sutra. Written by Dōgen at his first monastery, Koshoji, in the rural farmlands south of Kyoto when he was 40 years old. We chant this essay on our annual Mountains and Rivers backpack each year, so it's very familiar to some of us, and with Dōgen's teaching there is always so much more to discover.
I have handouts for you, which is unusual during sesshin. I give these not for everyone to read over and over but that as I'm reading the sections I want to share about I know it's just so much easier to take it all in if you can read it for yourself. So please just use this handout in that way - staying focussed on what we're looking at together, set it down after we read a passage. And don't flip through it to see what's next or whatever. Keep these at your place in the zendo and bring them to my talks.
This is Kaz Tanahashi's translation but I'll also be referring to a more academic translation by Carl Bielefeldt. Kaz and his collaborators are generally more readable, but in his quest for readability he does sometimes obscure some of what Dōgen was doing in his writing.
Sutra
(1) MOUNTAINS AND WATERS right now actualize the ancient buddha expression. Each, abiding in its condition, unfolds its full potential.
Because mountains and waters have been active since before the Empty Eon, they are alive at this moment. Because they have been the self since before form arose, they are emancipation actualized. Because mountains are high and broad, their way of riding the clouds always extends from the mountains; their wondrous power of soaring in the wind comes freely from the mountains.
MOUNTAINS AND WATERS right now actualize the ancient buddha expression. Each, abiding in its condition, unfolds its full potential.
Kaz's "abiding in it's condition" refers to dharma state or dharma position. It's the topic of Dōgen's famous Genjo Koan essay also, "when you find your place where you are, practice occurs - actualizing the fundamental point." The underlying term is hō-i and it's a term he found in the Lotus Sutra, scholars believe. We know he loved the Lotus Sutra as he quotes it a lot sometimes with attribution and sometimes just lifting something from it like this.
ho-i, dharma position, refers to the radical this-is-it-ness of everything. A mountain is completely a mountain. Without hesitation, without doubts it expresses its mountain-ness through and through.
It's like when Suzuki Roshi said, "when you are you, Zen is Zen." The mountain is completely the mountain.
Another place Dōgen talks about dharma position, hō-i, you might be familiar with is in Genjo Koan:
Genjo koan
Firewood becomes ash. Ash cannot become firewood again. However, we should not view ash as after and firewood as before. We should know that firewood dwells in the Dharma position of firewood and has its own before and after. Although before and after exist, past and future are cut off. Ash stays in the position of ash, with its own before and after.
Dharma position is a pointer to how things exist in time as well as in space.
Mountains and waters, sansui, is also a phrase that means the entire landscape. And thus the entire world, the mountains and waters means the entire universe, including us. And Zen literature and sayings are full of mountains river, or waters.
Here's a Zen expression that was made popular by the early translators DT Suzuki and Alan Watts:
"Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters."
This from a teacher named Master Qíngyuán who was probably 11th century. The shorter version that's been in my mind for ages is just, "At first mountains are mountains and rivers are waters; then mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers; then mountains are mountains again and rivers are rivers again."
I don't think we know if Dōgen was inspired by this or even knew it. Sometimes the stuff we think of as classic Zen more a function of what a few people, like these two men, thought were cool in translating Zen to the West. Maybe this expression wasn't so well known in Asian Buddhism at all, but it seems apt here.
The character translated as "are" in "mountains are mountains" (山是山) and "rivers are rivers" is not the regular character for "to be" it's a different character called shi. [The character for to be is 居 kyo/ko] The dictionary calls it an "anaphoric demonstrative pronoun" which I had to look up, believe you me. It means "just so, this, right, as it is."
So it's more like "Mountains are just so as mountains" or "Mountains demonstrate their mountain-ness" or maybe "mountains show us the essence of mountains". Much more active than and engaged than "it's uh mountain" - something to explore in practice with for a lifetime as Master Qíngyuán says. To penetrate deeply as Dōgen often says.
I've been geeking out on the Chinese at underlies all of our teachings more lately. Sometimes there are interesting layers of meaning there. And plenty of rabbit holes too.
I've also started a book by a Tibetan teacher named Lama Zopa who reminds us of the power and centrality of the mind. He wrote, "One of the fundamental points of Buddhism is that there is no creator other than our own minds. The whole world as we experience it comes from the mind and is caused by he imprints of positive and negative karma left in the mind. There is no creator who who has a mind separate from our. There is nobody who created the ups and down of our lives except our own minds and our own actions, which have collectively produced the results we now face."
So Dōgen opens this adventure talking about mountains waters, about the landscape, and we probably think at first he's talking about mountains as out there. "At first mountains were mountains" and then we start to wonder if it's all so simple as me over here looking at the mountains over there. Are the mountains a creation of my own mind? "Then mountains were not mountains".
Are Blanchard and Chuckanut Mountains across Samish Bay out there, or in here [pointing to my head]?
If we read the first two few sentences of the opening passage of Sansui-kyo substituting "mind" for mountains it's pretty interesting:
Sansui kyo
(1) Our minds right now actualize the ancient buddha expression. Each, abiding in its condition, unfolds its full potential.
Because mind has been active since before the Empty Eon, we are alive at this moment. Because the mind has been the self since before form arose, we are emancipation actualized.
Feel into that. What are you? Something bigger than, "I am this person, born in such-and-so year, who had these parents and these experiences, these joys and these sufferings." You are also mind, also mountains and waters, also the great earth. You are an expression of something that's been active since before the beginning - an expression of something radically here right now. This - this is emancipation actualized.
And then the last sentence in section (1) may feel a bit less random.
Last sentence in (1)
Because mountains are high and broad, their way of riding the clouds always extends from the mountains; their wondrous power of soaring in the wind comes freely from the mountains.
As a result of understanding how things actually are as an expression of mind: we ride the clouds and soar in the wind. We are free. So free. Isn't that beautiful?
And you can also read "soaring the wind" as literally having the power of flights. This was a Taoist superpower which the Chinese Buddhist adopted too. Do you remember there was an Indian meditation group that could supposedly leviatate in the air when they were deep into meditation?
We do know that Dōgen was inspired by a famous Chinese poet named Su Shi, also called Su Dongpo - all of these characters have multiple different names.
In Shohaku Okamura's book on this sutra he brings up two poems of Shu Shi's as inspirations for Dōgen here.
If you want to deep dive on this sutra later, Shohaku's book is from a retreat he gave on it where he gave two talks a day for 7 days on it! He's a Japanese priest who's lived and taught in the U.S. most of his life and is a great scholar-practitioner-interpreter of Dōgen.
The first of these poems is on the last page of your handout and goes like this:
This mountain stream, is Buddha's long, broad tongue This vast mountain, is Buddha's formless body. All night long: listening to 84,000 sutra verses When the light returns, how will I explain it?
Shohaku actually has 5 different English translations of this poem in the book. Chinese, especially poetry, can be read in so many different ways! This is actually my own version. Written a couple of years ago during my solo backpack trip camped along a mountain creek in the Eastern shadow of Glacier Peak deep in the wilderness. That was also the moment that inspired the name of our temple. Sansui-ji - Mountains and Waters Temple.
And by the way, Chris is going to talk tomorrow about the essay Dōgen wrote just before this one, Keisei sanshoku - Valley Streams, Mountain Colors - which was also inspired by this poem.
This all seems like simple metaphor and there is metaphor here. The stream is like Buddha's long, broad tongue. The mountain is like Buddha's formless body. But it's important to also feel into these statements as more than metaphor. As the truth of how things actually are.
This mountain stream, is Buddha's long, broad tongue This vast mountain, is Buddha's formless body.
After practicing for 30 years with my teacher, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.
For me it's actually 40 years this Fall. As a 20 year old I sat the Fall 1996 Practice Period at Green Gulch Farm. For the closing 7-day rohatsu retreat we all went to join the students at San Francisco Zen Center's City Center. Norman wasn't formally my teacher yet but he sat right across me on the raised sitting platform. I remember very clearly how carefully he cleaned out the oryoki eating bowls during the formal meals. He was a presence for me then and teaching me through his own practice.
After helping us see that we are non-different from mountains and rivers actualized the Buddha way from before the beginning, Dōgen continues:
Sansui kyo
(2) Priest Daokai of Mount Furong said to the assembly, “The green mountains are always walking; a stone woman gives birth to a child at night.”
Mountains do not lack the characteristics of mountains. Therefore, they always abide in ease and always walk. Examine in detail the characteristic of the mountains’ walking. Mountains’ walking is just like human walking. Accordingly, do not doubt mountains’ walking even though it does not look the same as human walking. The buddha ancestor’s words point to walking. This is fundamental understanding. Penetrate these words.
Dōgen's essays are often riffs around a particular saying or teaching and for the mountains half of this essay here it is. A Chinese Soto ancestor, Furong Daokai, once gave a short Dharma talk. Just one sentence long with two statements of the impossible. Green or blue refers to mountains in the distance, or just mountains in general. And they are walking. Mountains that walk. A stone statue of a woman gives birth, and symbolically that she does this at night is even more impossible. Dōgen focuses most on the first half of the statement: walking mountains.
We think of mountains as so solid. They are symbols of imperturbability and equanimity. Nothing disturbs a mountain. This is a wonderful way to practice zazen too. Feel yourself to be a mountain. And your physical form, especially with the cross legged sitting postures, is like a mountain - rooted in the earth extending up to the peak at the top of your head. Settle into the solidity of being a mountain as you sit. Feel how different weathers blow through but you don't need to be disturbed by them. Bad moods, different memories, grouchy judgments and so on. And also good weather - enthusiasm, excitement, great ideas to try to remember, important realizations - can also blow through.
And here Dōgen encourages us not to just see mountains that way. That they are also like everything else: fluid, dynamic, changing. Just like you are. So in our case here in the zendo bring forward the dignity of mountains as you walk in kinhin too. This is so clearly mountains walking.
And as you spend time outside on the breaks - and we get a fair bit of time to be outside here, it's wonderful - open to all that you see. Look deeply and warmly. Can you see the solidity and the fluidity of everything. Can you start to soften the habitual idea that you are over here, looking through little eye windows as something over there. Merge with this place. Be the birds - such rich bird life here! - be the trees and the tidewaters and the mountains.
We are spoiled having 10,000 foot tall peaks not far away but don't underestimate the majesty of the so-called smaller mountains just across the water to the north and the foothills emerging to hold the Skagit valley to the west. These two are completely mountains and waters. As majestic and impressive as all things. As you are.
Let's close the talk by appreciating sections 2-4 please chant with me.
Thank you very much.
