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Mountain Mind, Endless Way - Kisei Costenbader, Sensei · Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks

• 0:00
  Jomon: Hello and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddhadharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
• 0:25
  Kisei: I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in dharma, and I take refuge in sangha. Letting the way be endless. Letting the way be endless. There's a line from one of Dogen Zenji's practice instructions that says, it is rare to meet one another and to practice what is rare to practice. It is rare to meet one another and to practice what is rare to practice.
• 1:13
  I feel that right now. Do you? Can we appreciate this meeting? This coming together of causes and conditions that has made it so in this world of human experience where we could walk around mindlessly mired in our own fears, insecurities, judgments, and blame. Somehow, we had the faith and fortune to discover the dharma.
• 2:02
  And for those of us assembled here, we haven't just encountered the dharma on a podcast or in a book. We sought out practice beyond conceptual or intellectual understanding. We put our bodies, hearts, and minds on the line. Even if this is your first Sunday program, this might be a little heavy handed, but you're here. Something caused you to drive to Kolaskhanai.
• 2:47
  Most of the time when people come here the first time, they're like, I can't pronounce it. Where what is this? I didn't know there was a Zen monastery. Yeah. We let ourselves try this practice out for ourselves.
• 3:06
  And that is one of the main teachings that the Buddha gave. Don't just trust me. Don't just take my word for it. That's not liberating, actually. Somebody else's words, somebody else's experience, somebody else's description of freedom.
• 3:22
  It can give us faith. It can touch our hearts. It can resonate something in us, but what the Buddha said was try this out. This is medicine. Try it out.
• 3:37
  See for yourself. Does this path lead to liberation? Does it offer solace? Are these teachings true in your direct experience? So we're doing that.
• 3:55
  And what we're doing in a way is the simplest, most natural thing. And what we're doing in a way is exhausting, challenging, really, really hard, maybe impossible, and it's both. So simple right here, right now. In a way, we're free. That's the most basic experience of our nature.
• 4:34
  Open, ever present. And then we encounter as we sit and affirm that presence of our original nature, all the confusion from countless lifetimes that has gone into making or this experience of this body mind, this life. So simple, right here. This is our life. Can't be anywhere else.
• 5:17
  We can't experience anything else but this. And then a single thought can arise, a single sensation in the body that we don't like, that hurts, that challenges this basic freedom, and we get confused. Welcome to the human condition. Dogenzhengji we've been talking about Dogenzengi a lot this session, but he has this quote, Enlightened person and a deluded person share the same boat. We're just used to identifying with the deluded person, but there's an enlightened person in that boat too.
• 6:17
  This boat of us, this boat of this human life. We're finishing our outdoor sasheen. This year, it was spent indoors, grasses, trees, and the great earth. And we're practicing with recognizing earth and all the beings that come from the earth as teacher, as medicine, opening up to our interconnection, to the truth of non separation. One of the main practices that we did during this sashin was mountain practice.
• 7:08
  Mountain practice. I'd like to, for those of you who are finishing Sasheen, just come back to this mountain mind, mountain body. For those who are joining for Sunday program, just to give you a little taste of what we've been up to. In dharma we have this concept of upaya, skillful means. Throughout the history of Buddhism, of dharma, and probably before dharma, before the Buddha, there have been thousands of practices developed to help us cultivate awakened awareness, to help us recognize our awakened nature.
• 7:56
  And Zen has their own skillful means, and this retreat was its own skillful means of learning from the earth, a practice that was really important to Chosen Roshi. So she felt like we should have one sashina year where we're really spending time meditating in the natural world. She said, and I think she got this from one of the Thai forest monks, Ajahn Amaril, who is also a student of Ajahn Chah. He said the Buddha was born in a forest, enlightened in a forest, taught in a forest, and died in a forest. So obviously the forest is pretty important to this tradition.
• 8:43
  We did that, we practiced, and we're enlightened in the forest, this retreat. We also practiced being mountain, so that's another skillful means. Recognizing our true nature through this analogy of like a mountain. So right now, you can start by calling to mind a mountain. Maybe remembering the last time you saw a mountain or were in the mountains or an image of a mountain.
• 9:28
  And just notice what happens when you bring mountain into your awareness. What happens in your body, in your mind. And your mind might be remembering specific events that happened on mountains or with mountains, but see if you can sink into just feeling the presence of the mountain. The mountain's stillness, steadiness, and bring that mountain into your body. Be the mountain.
• 10:20
  Feel your body utterly connected to the earth, one with the earth. Feel the stability of mountain. Connect with the sense of time that mountain experiences. Feel your relationship with the sky. And for a moment, let your sense of self drop out of the body.
• 11:35
  The sensations arise, but don't identify with them. Let them be part of mountain body. And same with thought, let your sense of self drop out from the thinking mind. And let thoughts just be like another sound, another sense. For the moment, no concern to the mountain.
• 12:30
  Just clouds. Dancing with your peak. And from mountain presence, whatever is happening, let it happen. Nothing to fix or figure out. That's a taste of mountain practice.
• 13:32
  Mountain mind. Notice that mountain mind is still, silent. There's movement on the surface of the mountain, but in the mountain, as the mountain. There's stillness, silence. And you can be a mountain for the rest of the talk.
• 14:27
  You can be a mountain for the rest of your life. You are. Just forget. The mountain is an analogy for that aspect of our mind, our awareness, what we call our Buddha mind. It's ageless, ever present, stable, like a mountain.
• 14:54
  We did one of our summer practice periods when I was living at Great Vow around the theme of the Mountains and Rivers Sutra, which is what we were chanting during the noon service during session. It's fascicle by Dogen Zenji, and we were just chanting excerpts from it that were practice instructions. During the summer practice period, Chosin Roshi introduced the practice of sitting as a mountain. On the first day of the practice period she was in her seat in the back during morning Zazen, and she said, If you practice sitting as a mountain for the next sixty days, which was the length of the practice period, it will change you. If you practice sitting as a mountain for the next sixty days, it will change you.
• 15:55
  Obviously, that has still stuck with me. And for those of you who were doing sashin, you know something about that. Just practicing mountain for six days, know something about the stability of your own mind, You know something about the silence of your own mind. The unperturbability. That's one of my favorite words during the or just experiences of mountain presence.
• 16:37
  Oh, there's an aspect of our experience that isn't perturbed. Even in the sun, even in the thousand mosquitoes, the first night of sissing, we were just, like, attacked by mosquitoes. Wow. Unperturbed. This mind is your mind.
• 17:03
  And to know this mind outside of this sashin container, so that's where for the next sixty days, for the next thirty years, Keep recognizing, keep affirming mountain as your inner chamber. That's another line from Dogen Zenji. He said, Wise people and sages all have mountains in their inner chamber. That's us. We all have mountains in our inner chamber as their body and mind.
• 17:40
  As your body and mind mountain. There were several evocative lines from the Mountains and Rivers Sutra that I'd like to share some of them. They're quite evocative of pointing out or reminding us these aspects of mountain mind, these aspects of true nature. Mountain possesses complete virtue with nothing lacking. Mountain mind, your mind possesses complete virtue.
• 18:23
  You possess complete virtue with nothing lacking. Mountains are safely rooted yet constantly moving. Mountain mind is the original self, and it is freedom realization. Mountain mind transcends time and is alive in the eternal present. Transcends time and is alive in the eternal present.
• 19:04
  Well, it's true that any practice that we do, if we really do it, and that can be fuel for the inner critic, so I wanna clarify what I mean by really do it. Because we can say, like, well, I sit, but my mind wanders, so I'm not really doing it. But really doing it means that you have the intention, and you keep coming back to it minute after minute, minutes after minutes, you know, depending on how distracted the mind is, which is completely normal, but you're coming back minute after minute, day after day. And, of course, we will get distracted, we'll fall asleep, we'll forget. And the good thing about our true nature, about mountain mind, is it's undisturbed with such normal human behavior.
• 19:55
  It doesn't judge us for that. But if we do any practice, if we really do it, if we have that intention and keep coming back to it, keep coming back to the intention to be present, to feel the breath, to recognize mountain mind. It will change us. It will change us. This practice works, and you all know that, but I'm just reminding us.
• 20:30
  And we experience this after Sachin. For sure, we feel changed. We feel more connected to who we really are, more alive. The mind of mountain is always available. Practice is always available.
• 20:51
  It's always right here, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, standing, sitting, hearing, breathing, this is your life. This is it. I want to share a story from another one of Dogen's NG's fascicles. This is a fascicle called continuous practice, which is a great reminder that after Sachin or after Sunday program, practice continues. It's continuous.
• 21:30
  It's available any time of day, no matter what we're doing. All we need is a human body and mind, and we have that. We all do. In Dogenzhengi's fascicle Continuous Practice, there's actually two parts. He talks about continuous practice, but he also tells stories of the Zen ancestors.
• 22:02
  This story that I'd like to read is a story of Zen master Ma Zhu and Fa Chung, his disciple. I want to read it. It's a little long, and I'm gonna offer a little caveat in the beginning. As you hear it, it might be a funny thing to be reading as people are leaving Sachin, leaving residency on a Sunday, but I think it's relevant for all of us. Then I'll talk a little bit about the salient points.
• 22:49
  Mount Dai Mei is in Chihuang Prefecture. Fan Zheng founded a monastery on this mountain. When Fa Cheng was studying with Master Ma Zhu, Fa Cheng asked, what is Buddha? What is Buddha? Ma Zhu said, mind itself is Buddha.
• 23:16
  Mind itself is Buddha. Upon hearing these words, Fa Chung had realization. Fa Chung climbed to the top of Mount Dai Mei and dwelt there in a hut. He ate pine cones and wore lotus leaves, as there were many lotus plants in a small pond on that mountain. He practiced Zazen for over thirty years and was completely detached from human affairs.
• 23:46
  Without paying attention to what day it was, he saw only the green and yellow of the surrounding mountains. These were rugged years. During Zazen, he set an iron stupa of eight kun on his head. It was like wearing a jeweled crown. As his intention was not to let the stupa fall down, he would not sleep.
• 24:12
  This stupa is still listed as a stored treasure at Hushong Monastery, which is the monastery he founded. He practiced in this way continuously without slacking. After many years, a monk from the assembly of Yang Yang Wan went to the mountain looking for wood to make a staff. He lost his way, and after a while found himself in front of Fa Chung's hut. Seeing Fa Chung, he asked, how long have you been on this mountain?
• 24:46
  Fa Chung said, I have seen nothing but the green and yellow of the surrounding mountains. I have seen nothing but the green and yellow of the surrounding mountains. The monk said, how do I get off this mountain? I wanna turn into this guy. And Bachang said, follow the stream.
• 25:11
  Follow the stream. Mystified by Fa Chung, the monk went back and told Yang Guan about him. Yang Guan said, when I was when I was in Jingxi, I saw a monk like that, but I haven't heard of him since. This might be him. Yang Guan sent a monk to Fachung and invited him to come to the monastery.
• 25:34
  Fachung would not leave the mountain, but responded with a poem. A decayed tree remains in the cold forest. Meeting springs, there is no change of mind. Wood cutters see me, but I ignore them. How come the woodmaster seeks me out?
• 25:56
  Fa Chung stayed on the mountain. Later, when he was about to move deeper into the mountain, he wrote this poem. Wearing lotus leaves from this pond, inexhaustible, eating pine nuts from several trees, still more left, having been spotted by people from the world. I'm moving my hut further away. So he moved his abode.
• 26:25
  Later, his teacher Maozu sent a monk to Faucheng to ask him, reverend, when you studied with Maozu, what did you understand that led you to live on this mountain? Pho Chung said, Ma Zhu said to me, mind itself is Buddha. That's why I'm living here. The monk said, nowadays Buddhadharma is different. Pho Chung said, how is it different?
• 26:52
  The monk said, Ma Zhu says beyond mind, beyond Buddha. Pha Chung said, that old man always confuses people. Let it be beyond mind, beyond Buddha. For me, mind itself is none other than Buddha. The monk brought Pha Chung's response to Mazu.
• 27:13
  Mazu said, the plum is ripe. So I'd like with stories like this, I like to slow them down and just look at the different elements because there's so much teaching in this story. And the story, like all Zen stories, all koans, they're about our life, our heart, our aspiration, and they say something about the path of practice. So first in this story, we have these turning words. Turning words are words that enter our heart mind and turn something.
• 28:01
  We have an or a deeper realization or appreciation of some aspect of truth, of the truth of who we are. For Fa Chung, the turning words were mind itself is Buddha. You have to imagine that he was practicing for a long time. Maybe it was during a sashin. Maybe his teacher said those words in sansen.
• 28:34
  Maybe it was during a dharma talk. But he heard these words and they struck something true for him. Mind itself is Buddha. Many of you, you know, as we're finishing Sashin, have articulated turning words or turning experiences that opened curiosity or there was an Somebody was talking about really hearing those lines, let go of hundreds of years. The thing about these turning words is they can open something, and then they also can be something that we keep coming back to to keep that realization open.
• 29:20
  So Chosen would often talk about, like, when we're in sashin or when we have an insight, it's like a door opens, some door to truth. And then we we practice to keep that door open, to know that pathway. So we all have touched some aspect of truth in our experience, whether it's mountain mind or something that you received in your sitting with the natural world. Maybe it's a line from one of the chants, and how to keep that door open. So sometimes articulating the words or remembering the words or the image can help us stay connected to that truth.
• 30:03
  And it's not about recreating the experience. It's staying connected to the truth of the experience. So that's often why at the end of Sashin we emphasize reflecting on what you learned during Sashin. And same for those of you who are leaving residency, so we are finishing, or they're finishing at the monastery this summer, a residency program, and a number of people are moving on to the next thing. You can look at, what did I learn during this time of supported continuous practice?
• 30:48
  For Fa Chung, it was mind is Buddha, or mind itself is Buddha. And in this story, Pha Chung was so deeply touched by his realization that he moved to the mountains. He identified the support that he needed to continue to deepen his practice, and for him it was the mountains. This is relevant for us too. It's an invitation to reflect on what supports your practice outside of the monastery.
• 31:38
  The monastery may be an important support. Sometimes after sashin, people go home and they sign up for the next sashins that they can do that fit in their schedule just to block off that time because this is important. It's inevitable that the intensity of practice that we experience during sashim, we can't recreate in our own homes. That's impossible, and to try usually causes a lot of suffering for ourselves and the people who we live with. But coming back to refresh and having ways to support your practice outside of sashin, but coming back can refresh, can reconnect us with what we know to be true.
• 32:27
  That's one way that we can connect to support. I did my first sashin at Zen Mountain Monastery, which is in New York. At the end of sashin, I formed this quiet vow that I knew I would do sashin again. I just knew that. Then to support this quiet vow, and I didn't really articulate this in my mind, but I just noticed because I was holding this idea, like, I need to do that again, and it was really hard that I would practice every day.
• 33:08
  And so I developed a home practice just based on that experience of sashin. Like, it ignited this vow in me, and I knew I wanted to do it again, and I knew I wanted to be ready to do it again, and so I would practice every day. And I did as best I could, and one of the things that was very crucial in being able to sustain a daily practice, because that can be really hard outside of monastic life or if you don't live in a training container, was I found a local sangha. And I happened to move to Portland after I did sashin at Zen Mountain Monastery, so I found this sangha at Heart of Wisdom. And one thing that really, really sustained me was doing Sansen every week.
• 34:03
  So I would bike to I was in my early twenties. I would bike to, the Dharma Center, and I would see Hogan in San Zen. And Hogan would ask me, I don't think it was a koan, but it became one for me, why are you here? And I would just sit there, and I didn't know, or I couldn't answer. And then I would bike home and I would just have all this energy, like all this inspiration for practice, and that would sustain me for the week.
• 34:32
  And I would go back and kind of have the same interaction. And then eventually, I moved here. So after my second sasheen, which was at Great Vow, I made a louder vow to live in residency for a year, and I was told I had to start with a month. That's what everyone is told. But still, I felt this deep call to practice, which for me later turned into ordination and eleven years of sustained monastic practice.
• 35:06
  So we hear Pha Chung lived in the mountains for thirty years. I love that number because it's almost unfathomable. Just to contemplate, like, what if you committed to to doing this practice for the next thirty years? No matter where we live or where we're going, what if you dedicated yourself wholeheartedly for the next thirty years to realizing your true nature? What if you took refuge in mountain mind for the next thirty years?
• 35:52
  It seems unfathomable in a world where we're habituated to instant gratification, to trying something for a few weeks and then on to something else. In a world where there's a promise of something better right around the corner, where we can find an instant dopamine hit by picking up this little device that we have never so far out of reach called a cell phone. I was calling cell phones cheap pleasure, but that's not really cheap at all nor pleasurable. It's expensive. It expends our energy and has a lot of hidden costs.
• 36:35
  If you really want cheap pleasure, listen to the birds. Look at the sky. Take a walk. Sit. Breathe.
• 36:44
  Recite your vows. We don't need anything. We don't need to go anywhere. There's actually pleasure in awareness itself. The faith mind poem says, this sense world is enlightenment.
• 37:10
  I remember one of the first sashins that you did, GKai, at the end of sashin, you said, I wanna call all my friends and tell them they're paying too much for their experience. I just love that. I I say that a lot to people. I I think that's one of the benefits of this practice that we touch is actually our experience is free, and it's good. What if we let the way be endless?
• 37:48
  Thirty years of mountain mind, not a bad way to spend the next thirty years. Cultivating, recognizing the silence and stability and functioning of your mountain mind. If you did, you would really know something about stability, openness, the care of your own being. You'd really know something about merging with the activity of mountains in anything that you do. To be a mountain for everyone you meet.
• 38:27
  The generosity of mountains. We have this phrase in the Zen tradition, long maturation, which maybe we don't like either of those words in our culture. Long maturation. I want instant. Well, insights into our true nature take but an instant.
• 38:53
  Truly developing the stability of mountain, the refuge of mountain, and functioning from it, trusting the silence of our own mind, takes time. There's talk in some Buddhist circles of developing a button that you can press in your brain that is an enlightenment button. People are working on this. Shin Zhenyang is one of them. He's a teacher.
• 39:35
  It's like you put on this helmet or they stimulate something in your brain. My partner is really interested in this. And and you're enlightened. I don't buy it. It's like totally denying this long maturation.
• 39:53
  Something happens, like, through our bodies when we do this practice. This practice isn't a brain practice. It's kinda shutting off the brain, letting the brain dry out, becoming in uninterested in the thinking mind. And it's like something gets worked out in the embodiment of doing the bows, sitting, just trusting sitting is enough. It takes time.
• 40:28
  Hogan Roshi often says there's no shortcut to spiritual maturity. Can we let the way be endless? Something excites me when I do that. It's like I let go of some idea of what is gonna happen in the future, who I'm gonna be, what I'm gonna get. Because maybe it's not about that, this path.
• 41:00
  Maybe it's about being here and the preciousness of being here. When I made the commitment to stay here, which is the commitment you make with ordination, at least five years, you say, I'll be here for five years, I just put down the future. Like, I couldn't fathom what five years would mean. Like, what would I do in five years after I finished my ordination? It didn't like, I couldn't think about that.
• 41:34
  We are often in or often constantly in a state of discernment. Is this the right place? Is this the best place? Is this the right job? Is this the best job?
• 41:47
  Are these teachers enlightened enough? Do I belong in this spiritual community? Is this gonna work for me? When we commit to staying with a practice, a community, with the dharma, we can begin to let go of the mind of picking and choosing. FOMO.
• 42:08
  We can start to cultivate trust in this path, this way, the one we're walking right now. And if we do that, interesting things open up. I love this line from Pha Chung when asked, how long have you been on this mountain? And he says, I have seen nothing but the greens and yellows of the nearby mountains. There's a way in which this was probably literally true.
• 42:46
  He looked out and all he saw was you know, when you're in the mountains, all you see is mountains. It's quite amazing depending on how high up you are, like above tree line. If you look out, you see just like mountains and rivers throughout space and time. It's true. It's like literally true.
• 43:04
  That's all you see in the sky. But there's a deeper response to this that that I feel when I read those words. Because Someone could ask you, how long have you been in this Zendo? And you might say, I I see nothing but the golden floor, blue cushions, sincere practitioners. From mountain mind, everything is part of the flow of mountain.
• 43:49
  Another way we say this is everything is your life. From the seat of your life, whether you're standing, walking, serving, whatever you're doing, whatever you're interacting with is your life. I see nothing but my life. I see nothing but the path of dharma. This is all the path.
• 44:20
  All is included in the cultivation of our mountain heart. The last thing I wanna highlight from this story is faith. Va Chung had faith. You must have faith to go into the mountain and live there for thirty years. And I think there's something unique about the sashin that we just did because it requires more solo sitting.
• 44:57
  So often in sashin, we're doing everything together. And during this particular sashin, we would be invited to go sit in the forest or in the field, or with the blackberries or wherever, but somewhere in the natural world where you're not next to other humans. And in a way, it requires more faith to keep or more determination, faith and determination to keep with the practice even when no one's watching or we think no one's watching. So we know something about that from doing this sashin. But Falcheng had faith in the practice, had faith in his experience, and he kept with it.
• 45:49
  Faith can lead us to keep going to the dharma center, to keep doing sashin, to keep going to the monastery. We don't have to move to the mountains or do this by ourselves. Faucheng wasn't doing this by himself. We might say he was being ascetic or stubborn. We could also say he was wholeheartedly following the path, opening up for him.
• 46:16
  So he was practicing at a time it was the time of the An Xi Rebellion in China, so two thirds of the population had died from war or starvation. There's this book that recently was published called In This Body, In This Life, and it's stories of people's awakening experiences from the time after World War II in Japan. They were all studying with this teacher, Nagasawa Sozen, a female Roshi. One of the things that was touching to me in reading their stories was a kind of determination and faith that through their realization there was this desire to seed the next generation in Japan from the mind of Sashin, from the heart of practice. Sometimes we're so moved just given the circumstances of our lives to compelled to do this path, to realize the dharma, offer our hearts as fully as we can.
• 47:48
  That can take us all different ways. It can take us up a mountain, it can take us to live at monasteries, it can take us to practice diligently in our daily lives, to seek sangha wherever we go. So have faith in your path, have faith in your practice. We practice this path together and let's do it wholeheartedly for the next thirty years.
• 48:25
  Jomon: Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast, and thank you for your practice. New episodes air every week. Please consider making a donation at zendust.org. Your support supports us.