Dogen's Genjo Koan, Ashoka Class

Dragons Leap is happy to share an old teaching on Dogan's Genjo Koan, from over 10 years ago! A big thanks to Stuart Carduner, who put this together. The files are available by clicking below. Once you have downloaded the teaching, please double click to unzip the file, then click on the "1.html" file, you will be able to access the teaching in its entirety from there. If you have any trouble accessing the teaching, please email us at info@dragonsleap.com

SMOKEY THE BEAR SUTRA
BY GARY SNYDER

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings--even the grasses, to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

"In some future time, there will be a continent called America. It will have great centers of power called such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur, Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon. The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature."

"The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth. My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger: and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it."

And he showed himself in his true form of SMOKEY THE BEAR. Click here to read on...