We have humbly arrived at the occasion of our great benefactor, Shakyamuni Buddha, resolving to sit still under the bow tree until realizing the way. Tomorrow we may perform a ceremony to celebrate the occasion of Shakyamuni realizing the Buddha way. We also do a ceremony in April often, sometimes in May, where we celebrate the birth of the being who became the Buddha, or the being who evolved to become the Buddha.

[01:39]

We call it Buddha's birthday. But it just occurred to me in the last few days that it's not actually Buddha's birthday. It's the birthday of the Bodhisattva, the great Bodhisattva, Gautama, Prince Siddhartha. The Buddha was actually born on the occasion of attaining the Way. So this is an opportunity to celebrate the attaining of the way and also the birth of a Buddha. Zen monasteries are sometimes called Buddha-making or Buddha-birthing places. When the Shusso was talking about geology a few days ago, about mountains and water, I thought of another part

[03:18]

of the scripture that she recited where the ancient teacher Yuen Mun asked the assembly, where are all the Buddhas born? And as usual, he answered the question for them and said, Eastern mountains move or travel over the water. This is where and how Buddhas are born. Togen Zenji helps us out by commenting that it is the foot of the mountains that actually walks over the water.

[04:50]

And he even gets more precise to point out that it's the toes the toes of the mountain that touch the water. And where they touch the water, the water splashes up. The mountain toes and the water waves are dancing together. At that place, Buddhas are born. Buddhas are born at the toes of the mountains meeting the water. Buddhas are born at mountains being mountains from their peak, from their summit, to their toes. Buddhas are born at the culmination of mountains being mountains.

[05:57]

And as you know, when mountains are truly mountains, mountains are not mountains. When mountains are truly mountains, they start moving over the water. They start dancing on the water when they're truly mountains. when mountains are completely, thoroughly intimate with being mountains, they meet the water and Buddhas are born. We have the great good fortune of living at the toes of mountains that meet the water right here in this valley. Also, Archie so pointed out in her talk that there's a block called the Nascimiento block

[07:24]

which is next to the ocean. And that block means the to be born block. It's the place where mountains are born. It's the place where the water and the mountains come together and the mountains are born. The birthing process This teaching about mountains and waters is for people and other sentient beings to tell us that Buddhas are born in sentient beings' intimacy with themselves. Buddhas are born where and when we are thoroughly intimate with ourselves.

[08:26]

This morning I heard Eno read the admonitions for Sesshin and I thought I heard her say something like, harmonize with the schedule. I thought that was unusual. Sometimes it says follow the schedule or follow the schedule completely. Follow the schedule completely in order to harmonize with the schedule and thus drop off body and mind. Become intimate with the schedule, which might involve following it or running away from it, which might involve I think would involve meeting it and not meeting it. But in the end, the intimacy between ourselves and this schedule is where Buddhas are born.

[09:45]

In the Buddha-making house, in the house for making Buddhas, they sometimes have a schedule. And when the sentient beings become intimate, with themselves by becoming intimate with the form of a schedule, Buddhas are born at the toes of the mountain of harmonizing with the schedule. You've heard many times it's said something like, when we express the Buddha mudra, the Buddhist seal, that character which we say Buddhist seal, the character means mudra, which means a seal.

[11:09]

A mudra is a seal. It's a ring. But it's also like our sitting posture is a mudra. So on the altar we have the Buddha sitting in the mudra of cross-legged sitting. That's the Buddha mudra. But the Buddha mudra is that when you're sitting, you thoroughly exhaust the qualities of the sitting posture. You're intimate with your sitting posture. To sit upright in correct bodily posture means sit upright and harmonize with that upright sitting. Be intimate with that upright sitting. Be wholehearted about the posture you have in the moment. And in the wholeheartedness of this posture at this moment, at the toes of the mountains of this posture,

[12:12]

And you could also add at the fingertips since we put our hands down. Mountains don't have hands but we do. We have toes like mountains but we have fingers and fingertips like mountains don't have. So we exhaust our posture to the toes and the fingers and we put the toes and the fingers in the same neighborhood and there Buddha is born. It's also said that when we express the Buddha's mudra in the three actions of body, speech and thought, of thought, speech and body, when we express the Buddha mudra in the three kinds of karmic consciousness all day long,

[13:17]

during this session and before this session, I think it was the same, and after this session it will also be the same, that throughout the day we will be involved in three kinds of karmic consciousness. Mental karmic consciousness, postural karmic consciousness and vocal karmic consciousness. there seems to be an encouragement for us to express the Buddha's seal in our thinking, in our postures, and in our vocalizations. Now everybody's sitting here. So in this physical posture, express the Buddhist seal by being thorough in this sitting at this moment.

[14:24]

When you're walking during this session and hopefully for the rest of your life, walk as the performance of the Buddha mudra. Express the Buddha mudra in your walking. When you're standing, express the Buddha mudra in your standing. When you're speaking, express the Buddha mudra in your vocal karma. When you're thinking, make your thinking the performance of the Buddha mudra. I heard also an announcement here about going to the restroom and then

[15:40]

a further encouragement to wash one's hands after using the restroom. And then, I didn't hear it, but wiping one's hands with paper towels. It seems that this is partly to promote... public health in the practice place. But it's also another opportunity to be thorough in going to the restroom. There's many other ways to be thorough, but some people, like maybe me, might want to go to the restroom and not wash my hands because I have other things to do.

[16:45]

Especially if the water is cold. And should I use soap? Would that be more thorough? Would that be more wholehearted? what is it like to go to the restroom and do so wholeheartedly? When we express our posture that way, by doing that kind of act, can we express the Buddha mudra at the same time? The ancestors says that when we do express the Buddha mudra in our karma, of posture, voice, and thought. The whole phenomenal world turns into enlightenment. But as I also like to remind myself and you

[18:08]

Karmic consciousness is giddy. It's giddy. It's so excited. It's excited to the point of being disorienting. It disorients us from making this consciousness the performance of the Buddha way. It's so giddy, it's hard for us to be oriented to be aware of our karmic consciousness to see if we wish this moment of action to be offered as the performance of the Buddha way. When we're disoriented we may have trouble remembering that the ancestors teach that the Buddha way is simply to perform your current action as the Buddha way. And of course, that means to perform the current action intimately, thoroughly, wholeheartedly.

[19:21]

For example, in my case, Twenty-six years ago, at Green Gulch, we had a seven-day session. And the topic of the session for the talks was the Mountains and Waters Scripture. Where it says, that the mountains and waters of the immediate present are the actualization of the path of the ancient Buddhas. Not the mountains and waters that we're thinking about, but the mountains and waters of the immediate present. Not our thinking that we're thinking about, but our thinking of the immediate present.

[20:34]

Our thinking of the immediate present is our thinking which is wholehearted thinking. Which is thinking which is wholehearted and is wholehearted for the sake of the Buddha way. We give up half-hearted thinking for the Buddha way and engage in wholehearted thinking for the Buddha way. This is the same as the mountains and rivers of the immediate present. The mountains and rivers of the immediate present and our karmic consciousness of the immediate present is the actualization of the path of the ancient Buddhas. abiding together in their phenomenal expression in this way, they thoroughly culminate the qualities of exhaustiveness. They being the mountains, they being the karmic consciousnesses.

[21:38]

It's so simple, but it's hard because karmic consciousnesses is disorienting us, is shaking us up so it's hard for us to be thoroughly present with something that's so giddy and so silly and so dynamic and so obscured and so afflicted. Mountains are like this too. Then the quote from Yunmun is given by Dogen. Where are the Buddhas born? Eastern mountains, which means all of us, all living beings and all non-living beings are moving over the water.

[22:50]

They're moving over their not, their selflessness. In their total exertion, they're dancing with their selflessness. That's where Buddhas are born. Anyway, I enjoyed the session. I enjoyed being inspired by this teaching to be wholehearted, for the sake of the buddha way. For the sake of the buddha way to be wholehearted. I didn't feel like I was resisting that teaching or the practice during the sesshin that much except for there was one thing where I felt a little disoriented.

[23:51]

And it started before the sesshin where my spouse told me that her car needed to be repaired. And it would cost, let's say, $1,100. So 26 years ago, that was more than now. And we had $2,600. So I said, OK. And I don't know, I was pretty wholehearted about it. Yeah, go ahead. I'd give you all of my money that I've saved after 30 years of Zen practice. I've saved $1,100. You can use it to fix your car.

[24:54]

Then I think maybe during Sashin, she gave me another message, which was something like, it's going to cost $1,900. But we don't have $1,900. So I'm going to borrow the rest from my father. And my karmic consciousness got a little giddy there. I think a little bit giddy. I got a little disoriented from, what am I supposed to be doing here now? Oh yeah, be wholehearted about this karmic consciousness, which is, oh, that's more money than we expected. But I'm going to be totally thorough and intimate with, that's more money than we expected. That's my job. That's not a complaint. That's a mountain to walk to the bottom of. But I only went halfway down the mountain, I think.

[26:00]

Kind of like, could we have another mountain, please? Slightly different. After the session was over, she gave me another message, which was, actually, it's going to cost $3,400. By the way, the car was worth about Two thousand. Very cute, but this repair was that kind of thing. At that point, again, karmic consciousness, this giddy consciousness was kind of like very giddy, very disorienting. And in that disorientation, In the disorientation, I didn't think, oh, how can I be wholehearted about this dynamic situation where it's much more expensive than we thought, plus the car isn't worth that much, and so on.

[27:07]

In that kind of disorienting situation, how can I be wholehearted? I forgot about me being wholehearted or totally being intimate with this situation. Rather than wanting to be intimate with this situation so that the mountains could move over the water, I wanted to try to have a different situation. I wanted to find somebody to blame for the situation. Maybe that would make things less giddy, less disorienting. Maybe I could find my way back to someplace I used to be. There was a moment when I thought of blaming someone quite close to me. And I thought, oh, no, no, no, no, no. It's not her fault. Then I thought of blaming someone even closer to me. And I said, oh, no, no, no, it's not his fault.

[28:08]

Don't blame him. Then I thought of blaming the mechanic. Well, that's a better option. And maybe I thought, well, let's blame cars, blame the universe, blame Germany. It was an old BMW. My mind was like trying to put the responsibility for this situation someplace other than right here in the immediate present. The teaching hadn't gone in sufficiently to my body and bones so that these karmic consciousnesses weren't disorienting me. At that same time, during that session, I had a niece born.

[29:23]

And the niece had a problem with one of the arteries coming from the heart that upon birth it's supposed to close up and it didn't. And it just so happened that in San Francisco at UC Medical Center, they just a few years before had developed a method to fix that problem when it occurs in newborns. So she got the operation and didn't die. So my spouse and I went to see the baby. We went into the room and as I remember there was nobody else in the room. She was lying there with this incision this long incision in her chest because she had open-heart surgery, and she was still sedated, lying on her back with heat lamps.

[30:31]

And she was trying to cry, but she couldn't really because she was medicated. But as best she could, she was still trying to express herself her pain. And she did really a good job of crying in that drug state. And I thought, eastern mountains move over the water. This is not trying to be someplace else. Maybe she was a little bit, but she couldn't. Anyway, she reminded me to be there completely with her. And then we left. And walking down Parnassus outside of Moffat Hospital, I was no longer trying to blame anybody for this world, for the problems of this world.

[31:42]

for illness, for financial problems, for unpredictable changes, I would stop trying to blame somebody for it and just try to be here and suffer. We've got the suffering. All we've got to do now is be totally here. And not just to suffer, but for the Buddha way. Because the Buddha way requires us to go to the toes of the mountain of our suffering. And in order to go to the toes of the mountain of our suffering, we have many practices to help us. like generosity and precepts and patience, relaxation and gentleness.

[33:01]

Compassion in this way will help us not blame somebody else for the problems we have during the session. And then we may be able to wholeheartedly sit and express the Buddha mudra in our sitting and walking and thinking and chanting and silence. We may be able to be quiet and make that silence a thorough, wholehearted, generous, tender silence, moment by moment. We have a chance to be intimate with ourselves.

[34:06]

And perhaps with confidence that this is the performance of the Buddha way. And if I forget, and I notice, I confess, I feel repentance, and I re-enlist in the Buddha way.

[34:45]

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