The Incalculable
“The Incalculable” is a chapter in the Avatamsaka or Flower Garland Sutra whose purpose is to blow open our ideas of reality.
In this talk, Zuisei uses this chapter, as well as readings from Hildegard of Bingen, Master Dogen’s “Sound of the Valley Streams” and excerpts of the modern mystic’s Flora Cortois’ record of her enlightenment experience to speak of the beauty and extraordinary nature of our most ordinary moments.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
I am the supreme and fiery force who has kindled all sparks of life and breathed forth none of death, and I judge things as they are. Tracing the revolving orbits with Wisdom, I have established true order there. I, the fiery life… blaze above the beauty of the fields, shine in the waters, and burn in the sun, moon, and stars.
With the all-sustaining invisible force of the aerial wind, I bring all things to life. For the air lives in greenness and flowers; the waters flow as if living; the sun is also alive in its light, and when the moon has waned completely it takes light from the sun, as if it lived again; and the stars in their light also shine as if alive.
And I, the fiery force, lie hidden in these things, and they flame forth from me, as breath continually moves a person, and as the moving flame is in the fire. And all these things are alive in their essence.
I am life entire, which is not struck from stones, nor budded from branches…, but all that is rooted is rooted in me… And since all vitality blazes forth from me, I also serve; and I am life eternally the same, without beginning or end.
This is from Hildegard of Bingen’s The Book of Divine Works. St. Hildegard was born in 1098 in Germany, the last of ten children. In 2012 Pope Benedict named her a Doctor of the Church, a title given to saints with especially important contributions to theology or doctrine. She’s known mostly for her famous visions (which she started having when she was three years old), and the teachings contained in them, but she was also the founder of two Benedictine monasteries (she was abbess of one of them), as well as a composer, scientist, philosopher. She even invented her own language (lingua ignota or unknown language) which she sometimes used to record the visions. It’s a modified form of Latin, which was then translated into English. I read some of it and I immediately thought of Dogen who also took the Chinese and Japanese he knew and transmuted it in order to express the inexpressible.
That’s what I want to talk about today, the beauty and extraordinary nature of our most ordinary moments, language of the everyday, which is anything but common.
As I was working on this talk early on Sunday morning, the sun was just coming out behind Mount Pleasant, which I can see out of my window. The sky itself was a very soft lavender color and there were long wisps of pink clouds streaked through it that slowly turned orange as they settled behind the mountain and eventually disappeared. And the lavender was replaced by a blue so… pure, that it was as if it had never been another color.
And my mind was quiet so I could actually see this, and also the night before I had just finished the loveliest book I have ever read, a French novel called The Elegance of the Hedgehog, with language so exquisite I kept reading pages over and over, as if I was reading poetry. I told a resident if I didn’t have a shelf of unread books waiting for their turn, I would have started it over again immediately. Maybe I will, anyway.
The book itself was like that beautiful winter morning, which one of the main characters had in fact described, though it was a different season.
Do you know what a summer rain is? To start with, pure beauty striking the summer sky, awe-filled respect absconding with your heart, a feeling of insignificance at the very heart of the sublime, so fragile and swollen with the majesty of things, trapped, ravished, amazed by the bounty of the world.
And then, you pace up and down a corridor and suddenly enter a room full of light. Another dimension, a certainty just given birth. The body is no longer a prison, your spirit roams the clouds, you possess the power of water…
…The summer rain, as it washes away the motionless dust, can bring to a person’s soul something like endless breathing.
Every day, sun and moon, clouds and sky, bridges and houses and a flower struck just so by a slanting ray of light, are revealing their true essence, but how often do we see it? It’s ironic that we have to work so hard, be so quiet and still for so long, in order to just get back to a baseline, in order to see what has always been present, true.
We’re not following our breath just for the sake of developing concentration. We’re not doing it in just in order to be a little more mindful, although hopefully that will happen. We’re doing it in order to see that we are the fiery force from which all things flame forth. That is what breath is, that’s what life is—a flaming forth, a burning up of energy and movement, action and will.
At ten, I wasn’t burdened by a lot of knowledge. Before my first communion, I did not spend time wondering if it was possible for Christ’s body to transmute into bread and wine. My mother told me it was Christ’s body I was taking, I believed her, and it changed me.
A story:
“Simon and Victor are terrors. Ten-year-old Simon is quiet, but on the verge of adolescence he wants to see how far he can go. Two years younger, Victor needs no encouragement to push the limits, and so the two of them spend one heady summer upping the ante on a series of pranks. Simon bakes a batch of “chocolate chip” cookies for their mother’s book club with leftover mashed potatoes and black beans. Two weeks later, Victor wraps the family’s Volvo in cellophane. Next Simon spreads a thick layer of superglue on the toilet seat in the guest bathroom, a stunt that earns them both a month without their X-box. Finally, in a collaboration that they both consider their crowning achievement, they suspend dozens of hard boiled eggs from the living room ceiling with strips of glow-in-the-dark tape, making their living room resemble a creepy spaceship pod.
At the end of her rope, Clara, their mother, turns to the parish priest. “I don’t know what to do, Father. They don’t care about punishment. They just laugh and start all over again.”
“Bring them to me,” says Father Anselm. “I’ll talk to them.”
The next morning, Claire wrestles the boys into the car, where they fight the whole way to Father Anselm’s.
“Good morning, good morning!” says the priest jovially when he greets them at the door. “Won’t you two take a seat right here?” he says to Simon and Clara, pointing to a couple of chairs outside his office. “Victor, you come with me.”
For a brief moment, Simon considers protesting. This divide and conquer strategy doesn’t suit him at all. But he knows there’s not much he can do, so he reluctantly sits down on the straight-backed chair and stares at a painting on the opposite wall. A raging storm threatens to engulf a ship tilted so far diagonally, it’s almost horizontal. Simon squints, trying to see if he can distinguish anyone on deck, but he’s sitting too far away. Resigned, he slumps back in his chair and closes his eyes. Next to him, Clara takes out her phone and starts scrolling.
In Father Anselm’s office, the priest motions Victor to a chair in front of a big mahogany desk. Victor sits down on the edge of the chair and lets his legs dangle in the air. Every once in a while, he gives the desk a kick. Ignoring this, Father Anselm sits down in his own chair, places his elbows on the desk, and makes a tent with his fingers. Very quietly and seriously he asks, “Victor, where is God?”
Victor looks at the priest, wondering whether this is a trick question. He chooses not to respond. Father Anselm waits. After another moment of silence he stands up, places his fists on the desk, and leans toward the boy. “Where is God?” he asks again, a bit more firmly.
Still Victor doesn’t say anything. Father Anselm frowns and takes a deep breath. “Victor, WHERE. IS. GOD?” he’s almost shouting now.
Outside, Simon stares at his mother and she stares blankly back. Then the office door flies open and Victor runs out at full speed. Without even thinking, Simon jumps up and runs after him. The two boys sprint all the way home, where Victor flies up the stairs and into the room they share.
“Vic?” Simon calls out uncertainly as he walks in. The room looks empty. Then Simon hears a noise in the closet. “Victor?” Simon opens the door and peers inside. His brother is huddled on the floor, his head on his knees. “Vic, what happened?”
Victor doesn’t answer or even look up. His brother sits down next to him and puts his arm around him. “Are you okay? What did Father Anselm say?”
Victor raises his head and in the darkness Simon can see the huge whites of his eyes. “Now we’re really in trouble, Sy,” Victor says, his voice shaking. “God’s gone missing, and they think we did it.”
It’s funny, but contained in it is a profound question: Where is God? You could also ask, is God? Or just God?
Around the time that St. Hildegard was born, in China, the poet Su Dongpo wrote the following verse, which Dogen comments on in “Sounds of the Valley Streams” and which Daido Roshi loved to quote:
The sound of the valley stream is [the Buddha’s] long, broad tongue,
The mountain form, his unconditioned body.
This evening’s eighty-four thousand verses—How will I speak of them tomorrow?
And Dogen asks: “Was it the valley sounds or the tide of awakening that jolted Dongpo?… Who can fathom this water? Is it a bucketful or does it fill whole oceans? … Was it Dongpo who was awakened or the mountains and waters that were awakened? Who sees with clear eye the long broad tongue and the unconditioned body [of the Buddha]?”
Is it you who awakens, or is it your breath that is awakened? Is it you who sees the koan, or is it the koan that sees itself? More important, if we’re constantly distracted, will the tide of awakening still jolt us? Realization isn’t magic and although we can’t make it happen, it also doesn’t take place without our involvement—certainly not without our attention.
Who sees the unconditioned body of the Buddha? What does it look like? Is it different from this body? If it’s our natural state, why isn’t everyone walking around enlightened? Why is it so hard to see? Is it hard to see? What are we practicing for?
In the Avatamsaka Sutra there’s a chapter called “The Incalculable” in which the Bodhisattva Mind King asks the Buddha about the incalculable, measureless, boundless, incomparable, innumerable, unaccountable, unthinkable, unspeakable, untold numbers. The Buddha said, “It's good that you ask about these numbers that the Buddha knows. I’ll tell you what they are…” And he starts, “10 to the10th power times 10 to the 10th power is 10 to the 20th power, 10 to the 20th power times 10 to the 20th power is…” and he keeps squaring the result—accurately—until a couple of pages later he finishes with 10 to the power of a number 33 digits long which squared equals an incalculable, and that squared, is a measureless, is a boundless, is an incomparable, and so on.
Why? Why go to the trouble of doing this calculations by hand? Why include this as a chapter in one of the most important Mahayana sutras? What is the teaching here?
The verse says:
Untold unspeakables
fill all unspeakables;
In unspeakable eons
explanation of the unspeakable cannot be finished.
If untold buddha-lands are reduced to atoms,
In one atom are untold lands,
and as in one, so in each.
Imagine approaching the breath in this way, a koan, a thought. In each inhalation, each exhalation, untold lands are contained. Untold lands are revealed, if we’re paying attention. If you think, at any point, counting or following the breath is boring, try practicing like this.
One scholar says that the purpose of this chapter is essentially to “blow your mind.” (I don’t think he used those words, but that was the gist of it). The universe is incalculable because in a single hair tip, a single atom, there are numberless universes, all interbeing with one another.
I know my mind was definitely blown away when I read this chapter. I had just started practicing, and I found the book in our library. It’s a brick—it’s more than 1500 pages long—and I thought, “Great, I want to read that.” I did not read it cover to cover and understood very little of it. But even then I could sense that this was a book that needed to be approached… respectfully. That there was something going on that was utterly mysterious and yet completely relevant to my life. I have no idea how I knew that, and I don’t think it was even conscious, but every day, I read a little bit of it as if I was reading a sacred text (which I was) written in an ancient language that I barely understood.
Maybe I’d been reading too many books, but it actually felt as if my reading was creating the very worlds that were being described—which, as it turned out, was not inaccurate. In any case, I knew I had to spend time with it. I knew I needed to enter that world and give myself over to it, that’s the only way it would work.
A woman by the name of Flora Courtois began to find it strange that with all the books in the world, all the laws, all the advice from parents, teachers, priests, no one could tell her how to live fully in each moment, since each moment was unique. “Surely there must be something that applies even to the everyday tasks of life, even to how I wash dishes. But how do I find it?” She read the Western philosophers, she read psychology: “‘World’ is simply a projection of the neural activity in the visual centers of the brain.” And she got it: All the world, even the universe, was her! The answer, she realized, was in her.
But if reality pervades the senses, why are the senses so partial, incomplete? How do you apprehend reality all at once? How do you grasp it immediately? She realized she saw her center in her head, her brain, body disconnected. But it must be possible to “think with one’s feet as well as with one’s head,” she thought. She felt completely alone in her search and in the little glimpses she was getting. People thought she was crazy and she was acting quite peculiarly. It would take her all afternoon to iron a shirt because she kept asking herself, what is reality? Where is it?
After long periods of sitting, of saying “No, not this,” she had a realization. “If God—or truth—was the word for this Presence in which I was absorbed, then everything was either holy or nothing; no distinction was possible. All was meaningful, complete as it was, each bird, bud, midge, mole, atom, crystal, of total importance in itself. As in the notes of a great symphony, nothing was large or small, nothing of more or less importance to the whole. I now saw that wholeness and holiness are one… If I could continue in this state of ‘Open Vision,’ I felt certain that whatever happened, everything would be right just as it was.”
This last line is so important. Sometimes these experiences of insight come with flashing lights, booming voices. Often they’re very quiet, very subtle, but the undeniable feeling is: “Everything is right just as it is.” I am right just as I am.
But I’m not telling you all of this so you can go looking for this experience. That is the surest way to dig yourself into a hole. It’s simply to remind us all that there is so much more happening in our zazen, in our practice, in our lives, that we can be aware of or name. Zazen is incalculable. Our human mind is incalculable. The truth is incalculable, it is also utterly ordinary. That’s what makes it so powerful. It’s not a Hollywood movie filled with special effects, it doesn’t have a predictable ending, the characters don’t follow a set script. That’s why freedom, why transformation is possible. That’s why realization will never look the way we imagine it, it’s not that small. It’s not grand, either.
I am life entire, which is not struck from stones, nor budded from branches…, but all that is rooted is rooted in me… And since all vitality blazes forth from me, I also serve.
I love that last line. I love how matter of factly St. Hildegard says that since everything blazes forth from me, I also serve. Since I am life eternal, I serve, of course, what else would you do with all that life? If I’m struggling, if I’m confused, if I’m feeling uncertain about where I stand, what my purpose is, I can try serving and see what that shows me. I should paste that on my forehead.
If I’m feeling tired, discouraged, insecure, angry, envious, what if I try to give something, even if it is my breath, to this moment? Instead of fueling my distress, what if I offer it up, relinquish it, and serve me and everyone in this room with the simple act of breathing? I could even go further and do something for someone when I get off my seat.
Again, it’s ironic that it truly is so simple to turn one’s mind, and yet when we’re struggling, everything seems difficult and justifiably so, but the simple truth is that the purpose of life is to live itself. It is to offer itself in every possible way. And as I said in my last talk, this is something we do naturally. We give because we can, adults do it, children do it.
A woman lost her baby when she was four months pregnant. She was utterly devastated. For a month, she was out of work, recovering and when the time came to go back, she didn’t know how she could face her kids—she taught in a middle school. But she had to work, so she went back. She went into her classroom early in the morning before anyone else got there. She turned on the lights and saw hundreds and hundreds of paper butterflies hanging around the room, each with a hand-written message, for her.
We have a little more than one full day left in this year. A day filled to overflowing with moments in which to return, in which to serve, in which to see a little bit more of what we have not yet seen. And every time we choose wakefulness, it becomes that much easier to choose it in the next moment, and the next…
This is also from The Elegance of the Hedgehog:
I have finally concluded, maybe that’s what life is about: there’s a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It’s as if strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never…
That’s it! An always within never… beauty, in this world.
The Incalculable, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.
Explore further
01 : The Book of Divine Works by Hildegard of Bingen
02 : Sounds of the Valley Streams (pdf) by Master Dogen
03 : The Incalculable