This summer, I would like to, this summer I'm going to try to concentrate on mountains and water. Okay? This is a great place to concentrate on mountains and waters. It can be done anywhere, but this place is really good. Because of the geological setup. Some time ago, in China, a monk asked a Zen teacher named Yun Men, which I think means Cloud Gate,

[01:22]

where do all the Buddhas come from? And the teacher said, what did he say? The Blue Mountain walks over the water. That's really close. He said, the Eastern Mountain moves over the waters. Where do all the Buddhas come from? Eastern Mountains move over the waters. As Dr. Williams said, it's hard to get the news from poetry. But men and women die every day from a lack, or die miserably every day from a lack of what can be found there.

[02:30]

But it's hard to get the news from poetry. Here's a poetic expression, a spontaneous utterance from a teacher about the source of enlightenment. Where does it come from? It comes from Eastern Mountains moving over the waters. Eastern Mountains, of course, are all mountains. And the mountains means your existence. Another Zen teacher instructed his monks, the Green Mountains or the Blue Mountains are always walking. A stone woman gives birth to a child in the dark.

[03:36]

Our dear ancestor, Dogen Zenji, says, you should examine thoroughly the walking of these Blue Mountains. You should also examine your own walking thoroughly. You don't understand the walking of the Green Mountains, you also don't understand your own walking. Step right, walk right, sit right down.

[04:51]

Daddy, let your mind roll on. Walk right, sit right down. Daddy, let your mind roll on. Everybody's talking about a new way of walking. Do you want to lose your mind? Walk right, sit right down. Daddy, let your mind roll on. The mountains always come down to the water. This is a fact, a poetic fact. The waters always come up to the mountains.

[05:54]

This is kind of a law of the human psyche. In the I Ching, the fourth hexagram in the I Ching is the Trigram Mountain over the Trigram Water. And it's called youthful following. Existence, mountains, hovering, vibrating over the water.

[07:01]

Existence, your life, vibrating, hovering over emptiness, your life coming down and touching the ungraspable vastness. Something about youthful following here. The springs, the I Ching says, the images, a spring wells up at the foot of the mountain. Do you notice that? Right here, right over there, there's a spring gurgling out of the ground at the foot of these mountains.

[08:07]

All these mountains around here coming together from three directions plus a road coming down, condensing, squishing together very intensely and the water spurts up. Warm, healing water. And even besides that water there, up the road a little bit, there's some cool water coming out that you drink. So you have cool water coming out and hot water coming out at the foot of the mountain. The water wells up and it comes forth and it runs forth and it moves forth. And when the water goes forth, it's very thorough. It runs into the pipes and into the reservoir and up through the pipes into the plunges and touches your body.

[09:10]

It's very thorough. If it runs over a hole, it fills the hole without ever missing any holes. It never skips over one hole. And it moves on. It fills thoroughly but it also keeps moving and avoids stagnation. It's refreshing. It's moving forward. But where does this water come from? It comes from the bottom of the mountain. It comes from coming down the mountain, descending the mountain. At the bottom of the mountain, this water, this flowing thoroughness comes forth. We have to come down the mountain. We have to descend into the abyss. Abyss. Abyss.

[10:14]

Abyss means a bottom. Right? No bottom. You go to the bottom of the mountain and there you meet the bottomless. And the bottomless is water. The bottomless is healing, refreshing freedom from the mountains. Freedom from the mountains is achieved through the mountains, by descending the mountains. Another Zen teacher said, a stream at the mountain's foot flows down ceaselessly. Now, how do you get to the bottom of the mountain? Well, you descend. You descend from the top of the mountain.

[11:18]

Or from the middle of the mountain. Or from three quarters of the way up from the mountain. Or from the foothills of the mountain. But you always start some place in the mountain and you descend. Down. Into the darkness. Into the darkness. Someone, sometimes people say that Zen is kind of, the Zen forms are kind of masculine. Have you heard about that? Well, I think that's true, they are. They are. Here's a Zen form, see? Masculine form is a regular Zen form, you just saw. Also, we have that, we hit that Han.

[12:19]

And hit bells. Hit that bell. Hit. Boom. Ha, ha, ha. Zen forms are like guardians. The muscular guardians. What are they guarding? Hmm? They're guarding something feminine. What is that feminine thing they're guarding? Huh? The soul. What did you say over there? Emptiness. Emptiness. They're guarding the waters. They're guarding the receptive. At the center of it all is something very receptive. Is the source.

[13:21]

Is the mother. Is the water. So we walk down the mountain. How do we walk down the mountain? There's many ways. You just heard one way, did you hear it? Walk by you. Sit it right down. Daddy let your mind roll on. That's how you go down the mountain. Step by step. Buddha said, you should, you, please disciples, train yourself thus. Thus. Train yourself thus. You could have stopped there. That, but that basically is how you go down the mountain.

[14:26]

You train yourself thus. Do you understand what thus means? No, nobody understands what it means. So since you don't understand what it means, what does it mean? Huh? Effort. Effort. What kind of effort? Give me an example. Effort of no effort. Okay. What did you just do? You talked. Saying effort of no effort and saying regular effort, saying, but what did they do? They talked. They went. They made a sound with their body. How do you make effort? There's three ways. You think. You talk. And you take a posture. Three ways to make effort.

[15:28]

Anybody know any other ways to make effort? How do you make effortless effort? Same three ways. You think. You make sounds. You take postures. You practice thus. You don't know how to practice thus, but you practice thus anyway. You don't have to know how. You don't have to understand. You do it anyway. You're always doing it. Buddha says practice thus. He means practice thus. Thus. Not exactly this. Okay. A little bit different from practice this than practice thus. Thus is a lot bigger than this. Do you understand? Do you understand this? If I say Buddha said practice this, you might understand. Would you understand better? You'd think you understood anyway, wouldn't you? You know what this is, don't you? This is just this.

[16:30]

Whatever this is. What is this? Some concept. You're always dealing with something you know. You know what this is, but you don't know thus. But you can't do what you don't know, so you do what you know. So you walk right in. Sit right down. And let your mind roll on. Daddy or Mommy. Do you have any choice? Anybody know how to do anything else besides that? No. Or maybe you do. Anybody know anything else? That's all you've got. This is youthful folly, too. How silly. What a silly practice. What a silly life. Just thinking and talking and walking and squatting. Why does emptiness need to be guarded?

[18:06]

Guarded? It doesn't need to be guarded. But we need to... Well, it isn't exactly guarded. Yeah, it's guarded. It's guarded so that nobody... We guard it so that we can use it. So we walk around it. And we throw threads across it. I throw a thread to you and you grab it. And then you throw a thread to them and they grab it. And we make these nets over emptiness. So we can appreciate the bottomlessness of our life. It feels like it's always around. Guarding it is kind of calling attention to it or bringing more concentration to it.

[19:10]

Right. Guarding it is bringing our concentration to it, right. We do ceremonies, right? Our ceremonies... All our ceremonies are celebrating the bottomlessness of everything. We're celebrating the fact that everything has no bottom. This is our greatest joy. This descent is a life-enhancing descent. The descent to the bottom of the mountain, to the toe of the mountain, is life-enhancing. Now somebody said that it is precisely the woman who has a poor relationship to the mother,

[20:17]

who, quotes, cannot believe that any mother would be there to mourn or receive her. At the bottom of the mountain. She's afraid she will fall into the crevice, into the crevasse. But that doesn't happen. As soon as you get to the bottom of the mountain, the waters don't open up and let you fall in. They come up and squirt you in the face. They spurt forth. She does take care of you. So some people feel it's like, they sometimes use words like, you descend, you submit, you die.

[21:29]

You die at the bottom of your existence, at the tip of your existence. Another way to say it is just, you let it roll on. You sit down and let it roll on. You let it move. You let it die. So, the way you go down the mountain, the way you descend, is by practicing thus. That's how you do it. And after Buddha said, please train yourself thus, then he explained, he showed a little bit more how to practice thus.

[22:35]

He said, in the herd, there will be just the herd. In the scene, there will be just the scene. In the imagined, there will be just the imagined. In the thought, there will be just the thought. This is the descent to the foot of the mountain. When for you, in the scene, there is just the scene, and in the herd, there is just the herd.

[23:44]

And in the imagined, there is just the imagined. And in the thought, just the thought. Then you will not identify with it. When you do not identify with it, you will not locate yourself in it. When you do not locate yourself in it, there will be no here, or there, or in between. And this will be the end of suffering. Then, reaching the tiptoes of the mountain is what we mean by just the herd in the herd.

[24:47]

Reaching the tiptoe of the mountain, you do not identify with it. You do not locate yourself in it. And the end of suffering is this water coming forth. You completely die into your experience. In other words, there is nothing but your experience. There is nothing but the whole mountain right to the tip. You forget about everything but the sound and the scene. Because you totally take yourself to the extreme of your experience.

[26:02]

You completely fill your experience, and then the water, which completely fills everything, meets you. The spring at the foot of the mountain comes forth, brings life, brings that life which is in poetry into your life. In the end, are you awakened to the way of Buddha? Or are these mountains and waters awakened to the way of Buddha? These mountains and these waters are your forgotten self.

[27:15]

The herd, which is just the herd, is your forgotten self. This forgotten self, or this forgetting of self, this realizes Buddha's way. It's not no self, like erase it. It's a self that has been forgotten. It's a self that is forgetting itself. How does it forget itself? It walks right down to the bottom. Why is it so hard to walk to the bottom? Well, there's several reasons.

[28:29]

She said, why is it so hard to walk to the bottom? Because we have a long-standing habit of holding on to and protecting and trying to remember our self. And we think that we have to do something besides just hear those crickets to be happy. Then, on top of that, if you should happen to be able to train yourself at just hearing those sounds, just those sounds be just those sounds. Not even you hearing them, but just in those sounds, there is just those sounds.

[29:30]

Even if you can train yourself at that, then as you descend through that training to the tiptoes of the mountains, as they meet the water, at the place where the mountains and the waters dance, this is called the dance of suchness, the dance of thusness. This is training yourself in thusness. And when you get down there, then there too you could become afraid again. You become afraid of what will happen to you. You think no one will take care of your life. But some kind of natural survival mechanism comes up to stop you then. So there are multiple obstacles, but those are the two main ones that I mentioned now. Do you understand? It seems like you lose your forms.

[30:33]

You lose your forms. Yes, you lose the clinging to your forms. There are forms bubbling up all the time, right at that place. That's the place where forms are constantly being born. But you loosen your grip on the forms as you totally exert the forms of your existence at the limit of the form of your body, at the form of your thought, at the form of your speech, at the limit, as you exert them all the way to the end, at that place, they're forgotten. And you think, what will happen to me? Not to mention the trip down, when you think, I've got better things to do than this. Or, I'm doing this. I'm doing this, is extra, just doing this. I'm listening, I'm seeing, I'm imagining, I'm thinking.

[31:36]

Not those, just thinking, just imagining, just hearing, just seeing. That's all. That takes you down. That's going down the mountain. That brings you to the foot of the mountains, to the tiptoes of the mountains. And there, you forget all forms. Not that they don't happen, but you forget them. And as soon as you forget them, a new set comes. And you forget them, a new set comes. You are now attuned into creation. When your forms are lost, you'll be taken care of? When your forms are lost, you'll be taken care of, yes. When they're lost that way. Not by forcing them away, not by a nihilistic denial, but by following the forms, by being completely thorough with the forms, all the way to the end, at that place, they are forgotten,

[32:37]

and you will be taken care of. Buddha will take care of you. You are now experiencing, at that point, creation. Once you experience creation, you are experiencing the stuff that comes out of poetry. It's the stuff we absolutely have to have. If we don't have it, we're just hungry. We're thirsty. And when we're hungry and thirsty, we grab. And when we grab, we go up the mountain, far away from the waters. We feel miserable. We're far away from suchness, we're far away from our creativeness. We feel lost and miserable. And if we die up there, it's a sad death. But if we die at the tip of our existence, it's a rebirth. It's a creative act. Until we experience this kind of creativity,

[33:39]

we will grab for things. We can't stop ourselves from grabbing for things if we don't have this juice. It's what we need to keep from clinging. But once you get this stuff, you don't have to cling because all this fresh, fresh is coming. Fresh, fresh, fresh. Yes, yes, yes. If you use the same word, protect, once, once when you were describing protecting emptiness, and the second time you were describing protecting self, you're saying you protect the form that you know. So I felt the contradiction. If you're using it in the same way, it's the same word, you're saying you protect emptiness. You're strengthening one side to the other in kind of points comparable, but you've already given closely to some kind of a

[34:43]

limited matter that you are protecting. So why was it referred to as protecting? Protecting any other form of spirit? How dare you say that? I withdraw the word protect. Strike it from the record. Replace that protect with celebrate. We celebrate emptiness. And we protect ourself. Is there a father to go? Is there a father to go? There's no father to go? Is there any father to go in this point? Yes. Then that Buddha comes forth. Okay? And what does Buddha do? Then Buddha goes to work. Then you can start after that. Then you're not distracted by trying to get juice for yourself.

[35:46]

Your life is now plugged in to the stuff that we need to live. And then now that you're plugged into your life, now that the waters are spurting up through your mountains, now the mountains can start walking over the waters. They don't walk over the waters. Now sometimes after they start walking over the waters, sometimes they do take off up into the sky. They walk way up in the air, and sometimes they walk down. But they bounce off the waters to go up, and then they come back down to the waters. So they go, they go, and sometimes they just fly straight out. These are mountains. These mountains are your existence empowered by the waters. This is your existence now, is now enlightenment. Now you are working effectively to help people.

[36:48]

Right now you can start trying to work to help people. No problem. Start right away. Do anything you can do to help people right away. But don't forget that you might be able to be more effective in helping people if you could get down to the bottom of the mountain. Because now, although we're trying to help people, still, unless we're in touch with the stuff that comes oozing out of poetry, the stuff, not music and not poetry, but the stuff you get from poetry, the stuff you get from music, what is that? It's not only happiness, it's not only bliss, it is positive energy, inspiration. There's no end to that stuff. When the music goes off and the poetry goes off, that stuff can keep coming. You need that to work and not get tired and not get distracted by trying to get it because we need it.

[37:51]

So you can work to help people now and I think all of you are already working, please continue, but don't stop also working on yourself to get down to the feet of the mountains of your experience and get that water, to dive all the way to the bottom of your existence and get that refreshment, that encouragement, that inspiration, so you can work effectively as a Buddha or as a Buddha worker. Waters never dry up. Waters never dry up because every existence, every mountain is sitting on water. Every existence has a water under it. There's no water, by the way, floating around some place all by itself. Water always has mountains on top of it. So they're not really separate. Pardon? They're not really separate, no. The truth, the suchness, the thusness that we train ourselves at

[38:54]

is the interaction between these mountains and waters. But the waters are beyond our knowledge, so we train at the mountains. The mountains are hearing, seeing, imagining, thinking. These are the categories of our conceptions that we can work with, through our body mostly. It's through our body mostly. It's through this body. And we do a lot of the body work we do in silence. But you can also work through your voice and through your thinking. Do you think it makes sense that you're having to go all the way to the top of the mountain before you start being decent back down the mountain?

[39:58]

Well, in a sense, yes. I mean, in a sense, you have to get... Some of us have to get totally alienated from the waters in order to come back down. There's different kinds of people. Some people have to get all the way to the top in order to start coming down. Other people can get the idea midway. Depends on the type of person. Anyway, wherever you are, turn around and go the other direction. This kind of instruction is not so much to change things, but go in the other direction. And that will cause change. Turn around. The direction we're usually going in is towards life. We're usually going towards life.

[41:06]

This doesn't work. The direction of life is towards death. Death means not death, but the opposite direction of trying to go towards life. It means go towards the limit of your life, the limit of your existence, to the end of your existence, to the tiptoes of the mountain. Remember, so, it's not me or you that attain enlightenment. It is the mountains and waters that attain enlightenment. The mountains and waters are your forgotten self. Just tomorrow or tonight even,

[42:09]

look at those mountains. That's your forgotten self. Which means what? Another way to look at it is, look at all sentient beings. Learn to see through the eyes of everyone else. That's your forgotten self also. Be totally concerned for others. That's a forgotten self. Another way to get to the bottom of the mountain is being totally concerned for others. Always being dedicated to find out how others see things, what others need. And in order to find out what they need, you have to learn to try to see what they see. You'll never know what they see, but you try. And you try not to find out what they see even, but because by trying to see how others see,

[43:11]

you go to the bottom of the mountain. And then when you get to the bottom of the mountain, you have inspiration to actually help others. And again, this is youthful folly. Why is that? Because the child, the child connects the mountains with the waters. The child is the bridge between the mountains and the waters. Why? Because it's wonderful.

[44:15]

Well, it's wonderful, but sometimes it's folly. Could be a better translation. Well, I don't think so because if you look at the, if you study the hexagram more, you find out that sometimes folly should be punished and sometimes it's rewarded. It dies. You must, you must never grow up. You must never grow up. Never grow up.

[45:16]

Does that make sense to you? Children can spend all day sitting around cemeteries, enjoying the tombstones, and watching the grass grow out of the graves. Poets do this too. Right? Walt Whitaker says, the grass always grows out of the graves. Grass always grows out of the tops of graves. Do you understand? Now, some people may think, no, grass grows someplace besides on top of graves. But try it on, try on thinking about how grass always grows on top of graves. Doesn't life always grow on death?

[46:37]

Don't we all grow on dead things? And who spends their time watching life grow out of death? Who is willing to do that? A child? But we, supposedly adults, have to find that child again. I don't mean to tell you to have to do it, excuse me. It's a little bit rude. But still, I propose that to you, that we need to focus on this child. We need to focus on this child.

[47:41]

We need to focus on the one who can spend her time, spend his time, being a little boy or a little girl, at this place of creation, where nothing very interesting is happening except creation. No big deal, but for us, at this point in our life, it's a big deal. But for us, to get back to that place, to get back to the child, is a descent. It is a death. A death of our adulthood. A giving up of... I don't know what... Huh? Importance. Importance? Yeah, importance. Giving up important things. And being concerned with stuff

[48:43]

that you can't even tell anybody else about. You can't even go and say, Hey, guess what I saw? No one can see this but you. You can tell people about it, but basically they have to go do it themselves too. You can't really explain, but you can encourage them to come down with you and hang out at the foot of the mountain. At the tip-toe of your existence. So this is where the Buddhas are born. They're born at the eastern mountains, walking over the water.

[49:45]

They're born at this stream, or this spring, that flows at the foot of the mountain. All you've got to do is get down there to the bottom. The water takes care of itself. And the way you get down to the bottom is by training yourself thus. So, if I may quote the Buddha, please train yourself thus. It's not easy, but you can do it if you try. If you really try. Like a child. The Buddha was nothing more interesting than the world. Walk right in.

[51:04]

Sit right down. There you let your mind roll on. And roll with it. Stay with it. All the way to the bottom. With the true merit of the Buddha's wish, Chudro Nguyen Se Dhammo.

[51:55]

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