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Talk Notes
Good morning. Good morning to all of you in Zoom land.
How are you feeling today?
I really appreciated Nomon's talk yesterday about the early days of our sesshins on Lummi Island and Samish Island. I really miss them.
But before I really get into my actual talk about valley sounds and mountain colors, I would like to also acknowledge something that I suspect many of us have been carrying quietly or not so quietly and that this is our first sesshin on Samish Island without Norman. Norman Fischer was the guiding teacher of our community in the early days and I'm very grateful for that. His poems, his questions and his particular way of teaching and practicing have been woven into the life of this annual sesshin and our style of practice overall.
And as the original guiding teacher and the teacher who both transmitted Noman and myself, Norman's influence runs deeply through this community. The forms we practice, the language we use, the questions we ask, and many of the values we hold have been shaped by his teaching. And I'm deeply grateful for the many years that he spent with us.
Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it. So naturally we notice his absence at the same time because we are Zen students. We cannot stop here. Zen has a habit of asking us to look again. So I'm asking us all to look more deeply. We think we know what presence means, what absence means.
We think we know what's here and what is not. Zen practice invites us to look again more carefully. If someone is not sitting in a particular place, are they truly absent? If the teaching continues shaping the way we practice, if the students continue carrying those teachings forward after they disappeared, this question is actually closer to today's fascical than it might appear at first glance. The fascical is called Keisei Sanshoku. Valley sounds, mountain colors. We here are surrounded by water. The islands stretch across the horizon. The light changes throughout the day and deer wander through the meadow and seem to stop to listen to our talks. Rabbits nibble on the grass along the path we take to the dining hall. And swallows feed their young, each according to their own way. It is easy to fall in love with a place like this.
Natural beauty opens a door. A beautiful piece of music stops us in our tracks. The mountain view can leave us speechless. Beauty and love slow down the mind's tendency to grasp, evaluate, and explain.
So one night when Dongpo visited Mount Lu, he was enlightened upon hearing the sound of the valley stream.
He composed the following verse which he presented to Changzong.
Valley sounds are the long broad tongue. Mountain colors are no other than the unconditioned body. 84,000 verses are heard through the night. What can I say about this in the future?
Seeing this verse, Changzong reproved his understanding.
The story at the center of this fascical concerns the great Chinese poet Su Dongpo.
He did hear the mountain stream and something in that hearing opened his heart. So he wrote, "The sounds of the belly stream are his long broad tongue. The forms of the mountain are his pure body." For Su Dongpo, the stream was not merely reminding him of the Buddha. The stream itself was manifested Buddha nature and expressing the Buddha's teaching. The mountains were not symbols.
They were not pointing elsewhere. They themselves were manifestations of the Buddha's body. Encountering passages like this can leave us both intrigued and bewildered. Actually, bewildered might be putting it mildly. When I first started reading Dogen, I usually did not have any idea what he was talking about. I would read a paragraph and think something like, well, that's certainly a collection of words. And I would read it again and still had no idea what was happening.
Something kept me returning mostly that was kind of fun to read that stuff.
Maybe there was also some stubbornness in there and curiosity. Definitely curiosity. What made him the core of Buddhist renewal in Japan in his day? But I guess after all mostly it was the language that attracted me. The poetic images, mountains, rivers, moonlight, mirrors, flowers in the sky, valley sounds, mountain colors. The imagery worked on me before the meaning did. What began as a strange fascination eventually became a long-term relationship. The poetic images seduced me.
Looking back, I think that was an appropriate way of meeting Dogen. Over time, I came to suspect that he was not primarily trying to explain reality.
He was trying to help us encounter it directly. Those are two very different projects. Most of us spend much of our lives explaining mostly explaining reality to ourselves. Something happens and immediately my mental commentary begins. I decide whether I like it, dislike it, whether it should be different, whether it reminds me of something else entirely, whether it supports my plans or interferes with them. Our thinking is wonderfully creative. It's also not so wonderfully busy.
One of the reasons people sometimes find sesshin is difficult is that many of the usual distractions are removed. There is no conversation, less entertainment, pure opportunities to escape into activity.
We spend hour after hour sitting with ourselves in the world.
By this point in sesshin, many of us are no longer quite as protected by our routines and distractions. Sometimes that feels great and sometimes it feels uncomfortable. Often both at once. We discover that we are more affected by things than we realized and a kind word may land more deeply. A difficult thought might linger longer
and seeing the swallows fly through the sky might bring tears. None of this is unusual. It is part of what can happen when we spend days turning toward our lives instead of away from them. You might also notice that the world seems more vivid and everybody's kind of a little bit prettier. The bell sounds different. The changing light catches our attention. The taste of food becomes more immediate. Everything seems to be impossibly alive.
Nothing has really changed and yet something feels different. Perhaps we are discovering that the world has been offering itself all along. Perhaps we are simply becoming more available to receive it.
One of Dogen's central teachings is what we call practice realization. Practice zazen and realization are not two separate things. We tend to imagine practice as a means to an end. We practice now really hard so we can become a bit later. We sit now strongly so that eventually something important will happen. Dogen repeatedly challenges that understanding in Bendōwa. He tells us that practice itself is original realization. Genuine practice is not preparation for awakening. It is awakening itself expressed as practice. It is awakening itself expressing itself as practice. This is one of those teachings that sound inspiring until you actually think about it. If it is true, then awakening is not waiting somewhere else. According to Dogen, this period of Zazen is not a preparation for realization. This period of zazen is realization expressing itself as sitting. Not because we're doing it particularly well and not because we have achieved some special state but because awakening is not waiting somewhere else at some time in the future.
That does not mean that there is nothing to learn. It does not mean we stop practicing.
It means that awakening is not separate from the activity of practice itself.
I think this might actually help us a bit to understand Su Dongpo's experience.
The stream did not suddenly spring into being or become holy and the mountain did not suddenly become sacred. Maybe we can see it rather as a softening of the separation between observer and the observed. The stream was allowed to be completely a stream and the mountain was allowed to be completely a mountain. The world has not changed and yet we encounter it differently. And for that moment perhaps Su Dongpo was allowed to be completely himself completely present.
Throughout the Shōbōgenzō the collection of Dogen's essays Dogen often returns to a line from Genjōkōan that many of us know so well to study the Buddha way is to study the self to study The self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things. The myriad things actualize us.
The mountain, the stream, the swallow, the person sitting next to us, the concrete beneath our cushion. The myriad things continuously participate in our awakening.
When I first encountered Zen practice, I to be honest, I was looking for the I got it some kind of extraordinary experience. I wanted to drop my skin and become one with the universe. That's what the moon time promised to me time after time. Hasn't happened yet, but
I imagined an awakening and nonattachment through some dramatic insight or mystical realization, a transformation from one moment to the next. I thought the pain would stop. and I will be free.
As it turns out, Dogen, mountains, rivers, and the myriad things have different plans. There has been no dramatic transformation, no lightning bolt, no sudden arrival at the end of suffering. And after more than 25 years of practice, I find myself less interested And maybe I'll have an extraordinary experience and more interested in being intimate with the myriad things.
On the other hand, if a traumatic enlightenment experience wishes to arrive later this afternoon, I'm totally there for it.
Oh well, back to Dogen's valley sounds in mountain colors. Let me read you a passage from the fascical.
How sad for those who miss the dharma of the manifested Buddha body. How are mountain colors seen and valley sounds heard otherwise? Are mountain colors and valley sounds one phrase or half a phrase? Are there 84,000 verses of scripture? You may regret that mountains and waters conceal sounds and colors, but you may also rejoice that the moment of enlightenment emerges through mountains and waters.
The tongue of the Buddha does not take a break. The colors are beyond coming and going. Are sounds and colors intimate when they are apparent or are they intimate when they are obscured? Are they one whole expression or half an expression? During past springs and autumns, Dongpo had not seen or heard the mountains and waters. He saw and heard them for the first time that night. For the Sattvas who study the way, open your minds to mountains flowing and to water not flowing. Dongpo had his awakening soon after he heard Changzong talk about insentient beings speaking dharma.
Although Dongpo did not leave when he heard Changzong's words, the towering billows flew into the sky upon his hearing the sounds of the valley. Was it the valley sounds or the tight awakening that choked Dongpo?
I suspect that Changzong's voices of insentient beings speaking dharma are resounding even now still blended with the sounds of the night's stream. Who can fathom this water? Is it a bucket full or does it fill whole oceans? In the end, let me ask you, was it Dongpo who was awakened or the mountains and waters that were awakened? Who today sees right away with a clear eye the long broad tongue and the unconditioned body of the Buddha? Beautiful passage, isn't it?
Dogen certainly appreciates mountains and streams, but he never leaves the teaching there. He lures us in with mountain colors and then hands us floorboards, dirty dishes, paint brushes, car repairs, and relationship problems.
The mountain has not disappeared. It has simply become closer and become more intimate. The separation decreases. The big question is this. Can we do that with our lives?
The countless conditions that make this moment possible. People support us. We we rely on objects. So much remains unnoticed until we begin paying attention.
And that is part of our practice. Learning to notice and learning to trust to trust what is already there. This brings me back to Norman. When I think about absence, the focus is on what is missing. The voice we do not hear. The dokusan that does not happen. Norman not slowly wandering down the path. Dharma talk in hand. There is tenderness and love in that noticing.
Practice invites me to look carefully. Norman's teaching continues.
What I call Norman has never been confined to the single body sitting in a single room. The stream continues its flowing long after a specific drop of water has passed. The teaching continues expressing itself through students, friendships, poems, conversations, and countless acts of practice. So perhaps presence and absence are not quite what we thought. Perhaps the mountain and the stream are not quite what we thought. And perhaps we ourselves are not quite what we thought. As we continue through this session, I invite you to spend some time with a simple question. What remains when we stop demanding that reality justify itself and simply allow to be what is? As you walk between buildings, you hear the bell. As you sit facing the wall, as you watch the swallows, notice what is already present. Not because there is some mystic hidden message, not because it is pointing somewhere else. Because this moment exactly as it is far closer to the dharma than we usually imagine. If the world is more intimate than we think and practice is already the activity of realization, then we must ask one further question. What exactly is the world saying? What does it mean to say that mountains, rivers, bowls, bells, and the concrete foundation preach the dharma?
As we move through the rest of this day, I am inviting you to spend some time with Dogen's remarkable face to be actualized by the myriad things. To be actualized by the myriad things. Most of us through move through life assuming we are doing the ones we are the ones doing the actualizing. We observe the world. We interpret it. We decide what matters and what does not. We imagine ourselves standing at the center of experience. Dogen gently turns that assumption
What if the mountains, the ocean, the person sitting next to us and even the concrete beneath our cushion are not merely objects of our awareness?
What if they are continuously participating in our becoming? What if this entire world is helping shape, awaken, soften, challenge, and sustain us moment by moment? The myriad things are not sitting there waiting for us to understand them. They are already in a relationship with us. They are already teaching us how to live.
During sesshin, we have an unusual opportunity to notice this. The tide continues its movement regardless of our opinions.
Nature's clock ticks on. Day turns into night. Baby bunnies hop around. The han calls us to practice. A meal appears when we are hungry. The cushion receives our weight.
The floor supports us without asking for recognition. We are continuously held within a vast web of conditions, relationships, and supports that make this very moment possible.
Perhaps to be actualized by the myriad things is simply to stop standing apart from that reality. Perhaps it is to recognize that we've never been practicing alone. This breath, this body, this moment, all arising together. The world continuously is offering itself and our practice is the willingness to receive it.
I will end this talk reading the last paragraph of Keisei Sanshoku. When you have true practice, then valley sounds and mountain colors. I'm sorry, I misread that. When you have true practice, then valley sounds and colors, mountain colors and sounds all reveal the 84,000 verses. When you are free from fame, profit, body and mind, the valleys and mountains are also free. Through the night, the valley sounds and mountain colors do and do not actualize the 84,000 verses. When your capacity to talk about valleys and mountains as valleys and mountains is not yet mature, who can see and hear you as valley sounds and mountain colors? Let me read that last sentence one more time. When your capacity to talk about valleys and mountains as valleys and mountains is not yet mature, who can see and hear you as valley sounds and mountain colors? I will leave you with this for the rest of the day. I hope you found this talk useful. If not, don't worry too much. Dogen has been confusing us practitioners for 800 years and he shows no signs of slowing down or stopping.
