Earth Dreams: Zen Buddhism and the Soul of the World

This is the first of a series of talks exploring the Ox-herding pictures, a set of teachings on the Zen path of Awakening. This first stage is foundational and is often called The Search, Arousing the Mind of Awakening or Awakening Bodhicitta.

Each of the Ox-Herding pictures includes a stanza and a poem. The stanza reads as a teaching to accompany the image. What follows below is an excerpt of this Dharma Talk.

The Ox has never really gone astray, so why search for it? Having turned his back on his True-nature, the man cannot see it. Because of his defilements he has lost sight of the Ox. Suddenly he finds himself confronted by a maze of crisscrossing roads. Greed for worldly gain and dread of loss spring up like searing flames, ideas of right and wrong dart out like daggers.

Here we are confronted with one of the seeming paradoxes of dharma practice. The OX, our true nature–has never gone anywhere. It is right here. Prior to all experience. What has been with us since the moment we were born, through every breath, heart-beat, heart-break, loss, joy, thought, delusion, delight.

The sense of being myself, prior to all conditioned ways of being / behaving.

If it is so close, if it hasn’t gone astray–why search? Why practice?

And yet, and I think we can resonate with this. Having turned our backs on our true nature–we don’t see. We’ve been conditioned to seek pleasure else-where, to look for validation and safety from others, to move towards success, to avoid failure, to appear competent and knowledgeable and avoid feeling incompetent or unknowledgeable. And so the maze of criss-crossing roads. 

Or you could say it another way, our feelings of isolation, of being separate, unloveable, or being afraid of being unloveable, or our need for approval—dominate our attention. Creating confusion, we start relating to the world as if things weren’t interconnected, as if we could just do it right and everything would work out, we start to blame ourselves or others for our conditions.

And mean while, the freedom and love we seek. Is just right here. In the present. Yet, we don’t quite know how to be present with ourselves any more.

In the long arc of practice, this stage or picture represents beginning to really see our own ignorance, isolation, confusion or our own suffering, and the insight or recognition –wait, it doesn’t have to be this way.

I remember someone saying, you are not your thoughts. And really being able to hear it, like oh, wow–there is a me who isn’t this confusion, this shame, this anxiety, this narrating, this planning. Who is that me?

Another way this comes up is through reflecting on the state of the world, seeing all of the division, conflict, war, discrimination–and recognizing, it doesn’t have to be this way. There is another way.

…

The talk continues by exploring some of the traditional reflections for Awakening Bodhicitta or cultivating motivation on the path of practice. This is a meditation on our own motivation for practice. How that motivation may have changed over the years, and how we continue to connect to motivation in whatever season of practice we find ourselves in.

As always, I offer this as an expression of my practice and vow. Please feel free to leave a comment or reflection if anything touches or challenges you. I find the connection of community such a vital part of the of Awakening. The ways our hearts and minds shape and are shaped by each other’s is truly precious.

This talk involves some screen shares where we look at some of the images of this OX-herding picture together. I am including the links below.

Mumon Roshi’s Commentary

Daido Roshi’s Commentary

I originally started this Substack as a clear way to share my weekly dharma talks. Every Monday at 6P PT / 9P ET I host an online Zen gathering through the Zen Community of Oregon where I am one of the teachers.

The gathering begins with two twenty minute periods of meditation, followed by a Dharma Talk.

Dharma Talks are ways of connecting to the voice of the ancestors, the path of awakening that has been opened up and walked by real human beings over the course of millennia. Because our habitual minds tend towards confusion and distraction, we often need regular reminders about the path of practice.

In the Zen Buddhist tradition these reminders point us to Buddhahood. To our intrinsic Buddha nature, that is spacious, free, compassionate and infinitely creative.

This talk is the beginning of a series of talks on the Ten OX-Herding or Cow-Herding pictures. My teacher Chozen, Roshi would often remark that Zen practice is a practice without handrails. For how does one begin to measure or mark the infinite. And yet, there are states of mind we taste in our practice, and as we continue these states become more and more familiar and accessible.

This talk is an introduction to the Ten OX-Herding pictures as well as an introduction to how I will be exploring this teaching.

One invitation that is alive in the Zen school and in my personal teaching is that the metaphors that we use to describe Mind’s nature, can be entered directly. So here, in this teaching we are invited to meet the OX or the Cow. This is a symbol or metaphor of our true nature, our natural divinity.

Awakening the OX perhaps is a journey to the pre-Buddhist Minoan culture on the island of Crete, where humans performed rituals dressing as bulls to summon the Great Goddess who could give life or take it away.

But as always, more intimately awakening the OX is a journey of Self discovery. A revelation of what has always been here. Of course, as with any good teaching tool, the OX itself will be forgotten, as the functioning of Awakening lives on through us.

There are many great resources to view the Ten Ox-herding Pictures, the prose and commentary. Here are two that I share during this talk:

DT Suzuki

John Daido Loori, Roshi

Thank you for reading / listening.

I am getting over the flu, so you may notice that my voice is nasally and fatigued.

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KOAN:

Yun Men imparted some words saying, "Everyone has a light; when you look at it, you don't see it and it's dark and dim. What is everybody's light?" 

He himself answered on their behalf, "The kitchen pantry and the main gate." He also said, "A good thing isn't as good as nothing.”

POEM:

Spontaneously shining, bathed in solitary light 

It is an open secret

Flowers fall, the tree has no shadow

Look! Who does not see? 

Seeing, not seeing

Ride the OX backward and enter the Buddha Hall

As the world darkens, this koan always slips to the surface of mind. It’s a koan I have worked on, or kept company with for years. This is part of koan practice, koans we work on rise up and invite further investigation, or help us reconnect, or resurface the insights that opened up when we sat with or inquired into or kept company with the koan in the past.

So here in the koan, we have an invitation to consider that Everyone has their own light.

The buddha as he was passing, invited his disciples to be a lamp unto themselves.

In the Zen tradition, instructions for zazen invite us to turn the light to shine within.

Koun Ejo in his treatise of luminosity says: 

Sitting under the open sky, weightless as a flame. Even if eighty-four thousand thoughts come and go, each will display itself as the luminosity of perfect knowing itself if you do not hold to them and allow them to just go on their own way.

This display of luminosity must not just be something you experience in sitting but in each step. This step, this step, are all the walking of luminosity. 

In this luminosity usual people and sages, deluded and enlightened are one. In the midst of impermanence, this luminosity is unobstructed. Forests, flowers, grasses, leaves; humans and animals; large or small, long or short, square or round: all display themselves simultaneously, free of discriminating thoughts or intention. This is luminosity unobstructed in impermanence. Luminosity is its own open brilliance; it does not depend on your mind.

Luminosity has no location. When Buddhas appear in this universe, it does not arise with them. When Buddhas cease, luminosity does not cease. When you are born, luminosity is not born; when you die, luminosity does not die. Buddhas do not have more of it; sentient beings do not have less. If you are deluded, it is not; if you are enlightened, it is not. It has no rank, no form, and no name. This is the Body of Totality of all things.

You cannot grasp it; you cannot throw it away. It is unattainable. Although it is unattainable, it penetrates this whole body. From the highest heaven to the deepest hell, all realms are illuminated perfectly. This is wondrous and inconceivably subtle luminosity.

Everyone has their own light—

If we try to look for it, we don’t see it.

This is an interesting conundrum, Hogen Roshi during Rohatsu sesshin pointed out then when we really look for something, it vanishes.

Perhaps the looking and the vanishing and what is left in the vanishing are all light—the light of awareness, the light of buddha nature, the light of our true nature

Everyone has it—this light

More intimate then perception, it shines out of our eyes, it graces every word, image or thought, in streams through our blood vessels, it pools as our hands touch another's, each place of contact—

each sound, smell, taste, touch, breath, feeling emotion—another color, texture of this radiant light

This koan invites us into intimate recognition of the “light” of true nature.

To see, know, experience the light of buddha nature in everyone and everything—this is the aspiration of someone on the path, when I try to articulate my vow–that is it.

And what does the practice of this look like?

A reminder—the light of awakened nature shines through everyone and everything, can you let yourself trust that, see it, know it

And can you study, what gets in the way–of seeing your own light?

Of affirming this light in everyone you meet?

Perfectionism, fear, habits of distraction—these things appear to cover our light, and the light of the universe. And yet–they too are the light, in the moment of their arising.

What does it look like to practice seeing everyone’s light?

To see what is shining through before thought/projection?

To see each person’s beauty, uniqueness?

And—to help them see it too?

We can even do this for the parts of ourselves—

What is the light of the inner critic, anxiety, fear, greed, judgment, comparison?

Can you see the light in the ordinary stuff of your life? The carpet, walls, the objects you interact with, your shoes, the work you do…

This is a great koan to accompany us during this time of year, the holidays. Whether you are seeing family, or spending time alone.

Can you see, know, awaken to the light that permeates everyone and everything. Can you see the unique light shining forth from this word, this color, this screen?!

LISTEN FOR MORE!

The path of the paramitas leads to the shore of freedom, of liberation / love.

OM ! Gate, gate, para gate, parasum gate, bodhi svaha

Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone to the other shore–Svaha! Oh what a realization!

The zen buddhist path is a path of mystery as much as it is a path of awakening, when we speak of awakening, we usually invoke a sense of realization, understanding, wisdom, knowing—enlightenment.

The path of mystery invokes the dark, unknowing, the hidden, the secret

Prajna Paramita is translated as wisdom beyond wisdom, wisdom beyond understanding

To talk about it inherently limits what can not be named, or grasped, or bound or contained

Sometimes we invoke prajna paramita as emptiness, pure potential energy, the womb of the great mother—pregnant nothingness, where anything, everything has the potential to emerge

But also, the mother of all manifest, of all life. The spacious, unconditional acceptance of things as they are, great love or great compassion.

Listen to the Podcast for more!

Also, I am excited to announce that I will be leading an online class series on Awakening the Sacred Feminine: The Practices and Teachings of the Women Ancestors

You can learn more here.

February 2 - April 26, 2024

Fridays 9:30A - 11A PT

An Online Class Series Meeting Every Other Week for a total of 7 Weeks 

What is the sacred feminine? A zen student may ask. And for good reason, aren’t we taught in Zen to transcend duality? 

Chozen Roshi would often say: Zen practice invites us to become completely male, completely female, both and neither.

Still, cast under the cloud of patriarchy, for millennia the sacred feminine and the women ancestors have remained hidden and obscured within the Zen Buddhist tradition.

Or have they? What if their hidden-ness is itself an invitation to descend into the depths? To encounter the mystery? To share in the open secret?

In this spirit, this class series is a descent, an endarkenment, an underworld journey. For to awaken what is historically hidden and obscured one must be willing to enter the mysterious womb of Prajna Paramita, to carry the sacred embryo, to dream, to lose things, to fall down, to gaze into the empty mirror, to shapeshift, to love.

Each week we will encounter one or more of the great women ancestors, beginning with the archetypal Mother of the Buddhas, Prajna Paramita. Each class will include a teaching and story from these wise women  and a guided practice based on their teaching. There will be opportunities each week for further study and ways to deepen one’s home practice.

This class is open to all genders and to any one who is interested in encountering the hidden, the veiled, the mysterious—just know, you may be transformed in the process.

What’s included:

* 7-Live Weekly Class Meetings (Meeting every other Friday)

* Recordings of teaching/practices from each class

* Home Study material

* Weekly Practice Encouragements

* Optional Journaling or Creative Prompts to help integrate the learning

DATES:

Week 1 – Feb 2

Week 2 – Feb 16

Week 3 – Mar 1

Week 4 – Mar 15

Week 5 – Mar 29

Week 6 – April 12

Week 7 – April 26

A note from Kisei Sensei: Encountering the Women Ancestors and practicing with their teachings has been an ongoing part of my practice. I remember the waves of delight when I would discover a new (to me) ancestor, learn about her life and begin putting her teachings into practice. I sat with and lived into the poems of the Terigatha, gazed into the clear mirror, sat in the dark womb of Prajna paramita. The women ancestors really helped me see that my life is my practice and my offering. It is with great respect, joy and wonderment that I am offering this class. May your life be as enriched and transformed by their wisdom and compassion, as mine is.

Weekly Themes

Week 1 : In the Womb of the Great Mother: Awakening Prajna Paramita 

Darkness is the home from which we come.

Emptiness is pure potential energy, spacious and wakeful— Prajna Paramita wisdom beyond wisdom. Words fail. To encounter Great Mother Spaciousness, we must be willing to un-know, to darken further and let the mystery guide us home. This week we will meet the mysterious mother of the Buddhas.

Week 2 : Giving Birth in the Night: Yasodhara and Maya

A stone woman gives birth to a child at night.

Yasodhara is the Buddha’s wife and Maya is the Buddha’s birth mother, both of these women’s paths to awakening involved premonitory dreams, pregnancy and giving birth. This week we will explore the wisdom of the dharma teachings of the night, dreams, pregnancy and birth as both metaphors and lived experience (for some).

Week 3 : Loss and Being Found: The Path of Heartbreak and Love

A coin that is lost in the river, is found in the river. 

What happens when you lose everyone and everything that is dear to you? Or that one precious person, your child, your love? This week we will explore grief and heartbreak as a path, through the stories of Patacara, Kisagotami, Ubbiri and Kannon.

Week 4 : Falling Down : The practice of touching the Earth

Until a person has fallen down, the earth can’t help her arise.

Dhamma was awakened upon literally falling to the Earth, the Earth Goddess rose up to affirm the Buddha’s awakening. This week we will explore: what happens when we fall–whether it’s falling apart, falling down or falling in love, falling, touching the earth– is a gesture towards intimacy, humility and transformation. 

Week 5 : Mirror Zen: The Koans of Tokeiji

As night falls, no more reflections in the mirror,

Yet in this heart they are clearly seen. –Shotaku

The Mirror Koans of Tokeiji are one of the longest recorded examples of an unbroken women’s lineage that extended for at least eight generations. This unique lineage developed their own koan curriculum based around insights the nuns had while gazing into a mirror in the buddha hall. This week we will explore the practice of Mirror Zen.

Week 6 : Shapeshifting: The Goddess of Great Compassion

What is the enlightened aspect of shapeshifting? Perhaps the skillful means of great compassion, trickster feminism, spontaneous freedom, creative play. This week we will meet the shapeshifting goddess from the Vimalakirti Sutra and the many manifestations of The Bodhisattva of Great Compassion.

Week 7: Awakening Together: Exploring the Therigatha

I attain the meditations on emptiness

and signlessness whenever I want.

I am the Buddha’s rightful daughter,

always delighting in Nirvana.–Uttama

This week we will meet some of the earliest women ancestors through their awakening poems. We will learn a practice for working with their awakening poems as a koan or contemplation in our own practice and lives. And perhaps write our own poems of awakening.

How do we practice saving a ghost, when that ghost seems to be everywhere?

In the zen buddhist tradition we have the archetype of the hungry ghost—a being who is often depicted as having a large belly and a teeny-tiny throat and a tongue of fire. The hungry ghost is always wanting, yet never, never satisfied.

Sound familiar?

We all host parts of ourselves that seem to be constantly wanting & never satisfied—often these parts come with shame and perhaps secrecy.

During this dharma talk we explore the archetype of the hungry ghost, and how to turn towards our wanting. We also explore how to practice nourishment and satisfaction. Embracing the hungry ghost with compassionate awareness is an important on-going part of dharma practice.

It is tempting to try to suppress or deny these parts of ourselves, but that doesn’t work and isn’t dharma practice.

Dharma practice invites us to turn towards, embrace, bring curiosity to places of suffering and through that process we find liberation, love—and humility.

This talk ends with the kanromon, a short ceremony and song for embracing the hungry heart.

Offer flowers on a distant mountain to all beings —Dogen Zenji

In this dharma talk we explore the beautiful practice of giving, generosity, on the three levels of experience, Inner, Outer and Secret.

The invitation here is to open to the inherent generosity of life itself and explore ways we can cultivate and infuse generosity in our lives and practice.

The talk opens with the poem below:

simple generosities 

today I am appreciating

the simple generosities

the way things–in the act of being

Just as they are

make abundant

offerings

like how

compacta’s crimson

leaves carry

such a robust red

that i myself begin to blush

–a warmth

that fills me from the inside out

and what of sidewalks

even the seemingly broken ones

–who give 

unwavering support for every 

one of my foot falls

each step

–a secret meeting

of endless generosity

and neighbors with their kind hearts

create halloween dioramas on their porches

sacred altars

to the trickster, the child, the spooky

the already dead

jack-o-lanterns carved

to resemble each one of our 

faces

oh, and the locust

in their perfect row

along this street of bricks

how they wave their 

honey golden

limbs

in praise

of sun and wind

and every passerby

oh the simple generosities

–of chair and cup

of spoon and soil

of red-tailed squirrel and house wren

of pumpkin and marigold

–their bright orange faces

  that rise up and open to the world

today is the day

where i will receive

your bounty

i will see each of you

for the blessing 

that you are

and perhaps

in doing so

i will honor the generosity

of my own life

not for the acts done nor

the gifts given

but for the gift

that is my life

Just as I am

To follow one’s longing. Or even to listen to one’s longing–can be uncomfortable. It can be deeply inconvenient. Painful to feel this desire, this wanting, this longing for completion, wholeness, to love fully.

We sense that to listen to such a longing can be destructive. Yes, mystical longing asks something from us. Sacrifice, surrender, giving up, letting go.

We have this word in the Buddhist traditions–renunciation. And it’s an unpopular word. We want to believe we can have our awakening and our netflix, and our 60-hour a week job and our travel and a deep & meaningful relationship and, and and…or we just don’t want to feel the discomfort of our longing, the empty hole of our deepest mystical desires.

To do spiritual practice in a way that leads to liberation involves sacrifice–wise sacrifice. I want to emphasize the wise here.

We need to dedicate time and energy to the practices, teachings and path. Dharma practice reverses the flow of habit energy, the transformation is seismic, for the very foundation that we have constructed and built our lives upon is seen through. In order to create the conditions for this kind of shift in view to happen and be sustained–we must prepare our bodies, hearts and minds through stabilization and purification practices.

And especially after any shifts occur we must continue to practice stabilizing and integrating these insights.

Buddhahood is inherent to us, and yet if we do not practice and stabilize our awakening, we are like babies on the battlefield, sure to be overtaken by the power of our habitual thoughts and beliefs.--Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

In order to live our vows, or to live from our life purpose we will encounter challenges. During this talk we explore some common inner challenging voices or parts of us that may get activated as we endeavor to live our vows.

These voices in voices dialogue parts work are often named the perfectionist, pusher and inner critic.

As we conclude this series of talks on vow and purpose—we remember the mystic’s vow.

The mystics vow, is a vow of immediacy. Right here–can you see the fulfillment?

It invites us into deep presence. Into the truth of completion, perfection. The treasury of luminosity is right where you sit, shining from your heart, seeing with your eyes. The radiant light of awakened nature shines forth from every being, all at once. 

Buddha nature or awakened nature, isn’t something we get, if we are good, in the future. Buddha nature, awakened nature is us. 

Hakuin Zenji says it this way: This earth where we stand is the pure lotus land, This very body, the body of Buddha

When we awaken the mystic’s vow—we awaken to the ordinary perfection of things as they are. What a delicious invitation, to move from a great completion. To see the fulfillment even as we practice and actualize our purpose and vows.

We live our visions for ourselves and the world. If we see that world as a hopeless place, inevitably we will treat it as such.

The Buddhas and Ancestors remind us, that this very land is the place of awakening, this very body, the body of awakening.

This talk is an exploration in connecting with our biggest vision for ourselves and the world. As well as some practical magic for connecting with support from our human and more-than-human allies. This world is mysterious, if we allow ourselves to open to the unseen help available, we too can embody the impossible vows of the Buddhas and Ancestors.

What vision are you cultivating?

What vows are you living?

The Dharma empowers us to ask essential questions. This talk is an invitation to question, to really question and to live into these questions.

Often when we think about our life purpose, we makes assumptions about ourselves and the world that stem from fixed beliefs or inherited perspectives. For example the dharma invites a very different view of ourselves and the world, then say neo-capitalism does.

The dharma invites us to see ourselves as a network of inter-relations, our lives completely intertwined with the lives of the natural world, animals, plants, the great earth and sky, the people on our block and all over the world.

How does our sense of life purpose change when we open to experience of deep interconnection?

This talk is a deconstructive contemplation. An invitation to question. An empowerment to sit with a question. To let self, world, purpose live as questions in your heart.