This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Good morning. I would like to introduce our speaker for today. Alan Sanaki is the Vice Abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. And he's the founder of Clear View Project, an organization dedicated to engaged Buddhism in the fields of climate change, social justice, and peace. And tomorrow, he's headed for Rome to talk about climate change. And he's going to share some of his thoughts about that with us today. Thank you. Thank you, Rosalie. It's always wonderful to be here at City Center.

[01:03]

We live in this little satellite in Berkeley, but the connection always feels very strong, and I see some of my Dharma sisters, brothers, friends, elders, and then many of you whom... I would love to know. So thank you for inviting me and including me. As Rosalie was saying, yes, there's a Buddhist-Catholic dialogue that is taking place beginning on the 22nd in Rome at the invitation of the Vatican, and the subject of that is suffering, liberation, and fraternity, or suffering, liberation, and sorority. And I've been invited to that.

[02:08]

The subject was evidently framed by Pope Francis, and this happens just, begins just several days after his new encyclical, Laudato Si, was issued. I don't know if any of you gotten to read that yet? Yeah, it's a remarkable document. And so I was given a daunting task a couple of months ago at this dialogue to present something on Buddhist perspectives on nature and climate or the environment. And I knew this encyclical was coming. So it's been, I wrote something, and then for the last few days, I've been having to revise it as I read in it. So I'm going to share some of this with you this morning.

[03:09]

Laudato si comes, it's drawn, it means be praised, or praised be, and it's drawn from St. Francis's from his Canticle of the Sun, which is very beautiful. And interestingly, if you want to look at correspondences, Saint Francis wrote this in 1225, and that was the year that our ancestor, Zen Master Dogen, met his teacher Ru Jing in China. So these things are happening in different corners of the world, all kinds of... creative engagement with spirituality. So I just want to read you, this is a slightly edited piece of St. Francis' Canticle of the Sun. Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, through brother sun who brings the day, through sister moon and the stars, through brother's wind and air and clouds and atoms.

[04:23]

through sister water, through brother fire. Be praised, my lord, through our mother earth, who feeds us and rules us. So long ago, 2,500 years ago in North India, the Buddha-to-be, the prince of the Shakyas, left his palace and wandered through cities in the forests of the north with this determination to free himself from the chains of old age, sickness, and death. And at the age of about 35, after practicing with all of the numerous forest masters and adepts, the Buddha decided, okay, he was just gonna sit down. And he sat down at the foot of a tree, which is now called the Bodhi tree, and you can see at least, well, whether it's the same tree or a descendant, I think it's a descendant in Bodh Gaya today.

[05:36]

It's a ficus religiosa, is the Latin name for this tree. And he sat on the banks of the Naranjara River on a cushion of kusa grass, And later, the Buddha described the scene. He says, there I saw a beautiful stretch of countryside, a beautiful grove, a clear flowing river, a lovely ford and a village nearby for support. And I thought to myself, indeed, this is a good place for a young man set on striving. So after sitting for six days, his awakening was unfolding. And as it was unfolding, he was taunted by the demon king, Mara, who in a sense represents our own deepest doubts, our self-questioning, our fears, our sense of powerlessness.

[06:48]

So Mara asked, who would bear witness to this man's enlightenment? You know, sort of planting the seed and really questioning him. And the Buddha remained in his meditation posture and he reached down to touch the earth. The earth responded, I am your witness. So the earth provided his sense of grounding and power and purpose as she must be the source of ours. Mara fled and the Buddha continued his process of awakening. And when he was fully awake, he said, I, together with all beings and the great earth, simultaneously achieved the way. So the earth was the partner

[07:52]

to the Buddha's work, which is our work. All of our ancient teachers, in all traditions, lived close to nature by choice. The Buddha was enlightened under a tree. His community, his Sangha, spent much of the year wandering through the forests and the villages. walking, meditating, enjoying the environment. They lived in the open lightly and mindfully and drawing from the surrounding culture, the natural culture and the human culture. And these monks and nuns realized that the food and water, medicine, and life itself were nothing but gifts of nature deserving their respect.

[09:03]

So to shift today to today, some of us wish to see the Buddha as a kind of, oh, that's clearer. Some of us wish to see the Buddha as a kind of proto-ecologist. And, you know, maybe so, maybe that's useful. But to respond to the train wreck of the climate emergency, this sort of fossil-fueled climate emergency that we live amidst, we don't have to think about the Buddhas or Bodhisattvas as possessed of an ecological awareness ahead of their time. All we need to do is to consider that each of us in our time needs to find an appropriate response.

[10:10]

So the critical problem that is unfolding right now is this industrial growth society that we live in. For the first time in human history, we have the agency to destroy sentient life on our own planet. And as we live the dream of this industrial growth society, we are creating this crisis. We participate in it. And our children and their children will or already are harvesting the suffering. So we have to take responsibility for solutions. I'm not going to document the aspects of the environmental emergency. I do really recommend the Pope Francis' encyclical.

[11:16]

It's a remarkable and very thorough and tough-minded document and all the documentation is there, and it's in a lot of other works, including, I would recommend, Naomi Klein's recent book, This Changes Everything. So we have the information that we need. And it's also true that Buddhists have been honing our response over the last decade. Only last month, a Buddhist declaration on climate change was presented at a meeting at the White House. And in part, that statement says this. Many scientists have concluded that the survival of human civilization is at stake. The Four Noble Truths provide a framework for diagnosing our current situation.

[12:21]

and formulating appropriate guidelines. Because the threats and disasters we face ultimately stem from the human mind. Our ecological emergency is a larger version of the perennial human predicament. Both as individuals and as a species, we feel disconnected, not only from other people, but from the Earth itself. So just to say this is exactly the disconnect that the Buddha was turning on its head, putting his hand down saying, I am connected. So as Thich Nhat Hanh has said, we are here to awaken from the illusion of separateness. I would say that is why we come to this place on Saturday, to be with each other, to be pointed towards that connection.

[13:24]

So we need to wake up and realize that the Earth is our mother as well as our home. And in this case, the umbilical cord binding us to her cannot be severed. When the Earth becomes sick, we become sick because we are part of her. So that was part of the statement that was presented at the White House. We study the bodhisattva precepts. Some of you have taken those bodhisattva vows. Some of you will. Some of you, you'll hear the bodhisattva vows at the end of this talk. We do them frequently. And we take these precepts. And the second precept is the precept not to steal. And sometimes I like the way that is framed as not to take what is not given.

[14:31]

Not taking what is not given. So this is a way to frame an analysis of the environmental crisis. as we drive our automobiles and we fly planes, we depend on global production that crosses the world for us to have things to consume. This industrial growth society is based on theft, stealing labor from the so-called developing nations, for our benefit. Stealing the resources from across the planet to support an unsustainable standard of living.

[15:33]

Stealing the human rights and dignity of peoples in order to support privileged lifestyles. So violating the precept of not stealing is also It's not just a personal act, it's an expression of what we might call structural violence. And now we see that petroleum-based lifestyles mean drought, floods, abnormal weather, sea level change, the poisoning of watersheds, that will bring chaos and death in many places. But first of all, and this is again in the emphasis of Pope Francis whose concern is always for the poor, it will first of all affect the poor of the world who are most vulnerable.

[16:47]

And what it says is that their lives are separate, are no more than objects, and that they are disposable. And when we look at the system, it seems like, you know, the image in Zen of the Iron Mountain, it seems like an iron mountain, unassailable. And so often, we acquiesce to it and we allow ourselves to be the victims. Joanna Macy, eco-philosopher, lives here in the Bay Area. She says of this system, for all its apparent might, we also see its fragility, how dependent it is on our obedience and on deception, secrecy,

[17:53]

surveillance and force. So, as we live here in the global north, we live and we partake, even though we do our best to see through it, we partake of a delusion. Some live, some who consider themselves fortunate may occupy wonderful apartment towers and beachfront homes. And we drive nice cars and we fly freely if we can pay the fare. But ultimately the cost of this consumption will affect us all. We are not separate from other beings. The drought will bring starvation. The seas will rise to engulf us all, and there will be no hiding place.

[18:59]

So in the koan collection that we studied, the Blue Cliff Record, Case 14, a monk asked Master Yunmin, what is the teaching of the Buddha's whole lifetime? Yunmin said, an appropriate response. An appropriate response. This is really, this is a wonderful thing to keep in mind in every circumstance. Of course, The trick is, what is an appropriate response? In Buddha's time, he built a sangha, he built a community, a new society within the shell of the old. And this society endures all these years later.

[20:20]

And we are part of it. It's what we are participating in. So to me that's an appropriate, that's an appropriate response. An appropriate response also includes how we see the world. I read you that piece from The Canticle of the Sun And I think echoing the words of St. Francis, we have parallel words from a Thai Buddhist master of the 20th century, Theravada teacher, Ajahn Buddhadasa. And he writes, the entire cosmos is a cooperative. The sun, The moon and the stars live together as a cooperative.

[21:26]

The same is true for humans and animals, trees and the earth. When we realize that the world is a mutual, interdependent, cooperative enterprise, then we can build a noble environment. If our lives are not based on the truth, then we shall perish. So if Buddha nature is actually the manifestation of a reality that is changing moment by moment, then the environment and each of us is an expression of this reality. In terms that Buddhists resonate with, His Holiness Pope Francis, in this new encyclical, speaks of what he calls integral ecology.

[22:32]

It's really the same as what Buddhadasa was talking about as this cooperative. So Pope Francis writes, when we speak of the environment, what we really mean is a relationship existing between nature and the society which lives in it. Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it, and thus in constant interaction with it. Recognizing the reasons why a given area is polluted requires a study of the workings of society, its economy, its behavior patterns, and the way it grasps reality. So what I really appreciate is that in this vision that Pope Francis lays out in Laudato Si, he's completely tuned in to the systemic and interdependent nature of reality.

[23:45]

And this is a ground that we share. We share that in our understanding. So integral ecology is not Christian. It's not Buddhist. It's just truly human. We are responsible for the world and to the world we live in. A gift has been given to us to share with everyone. And we all stand on the same ground. but due to our actions, this ground is unstable. I think about a quotation from Reverend Martin Luther King who said, I am my brother's keeper

[24:50]

because I am my brother's brother. And so that's true for all of us. For those who are the poorest, who suffer most, in light of our relationship to them, we all bear suffering So I've been looking for an appropriate response to the Industrial Growth Society. And the answer, I don't think the answer is in carbon trading, which allows wealthy nations to preserve our consumption levels. You know, this to me is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The answer is not in corporate greenwash.

[25:53]

where more money is spent creating an environmentally friendly message than reducing environmental impacts. The other day, I was at some meeting, and they had little bottles, really little bottles of water, and I was reading the label, and on the label it said, our new environmentally friendly cap uses less plastic, you know, for the good of the planet. Well, you know, that's not going to save us. And better light bulbs are not going to save us. These are all mindful consumption and local production are commendable practices. but we have a world population of 7 billion, one quarter of whom live on less than $2 a day.

[27:03]

And they're not going to sustain themselves on the basis of an idea of simple living. They're already living simply. Our needs for food and shelter and clothing are urgent, and they're complex. It's a complex reality. So it's hard to see, for me, an appropriate response that doesn't call in some way for the dismantling of a carbon-based economic system. And I don't know how this will happen, but Pope Francis writes about this. He says, we know that technology-based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels, especially coal, but also oil and to a lesser degree gas, need to be progressively replaced without delay. Or, as he puts it elsewhere in the encyclical, a little more bluntly, the earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.

[28:14]

Most Buddhists I know would agree with what he's saying. I mentioned the recent White House conference, the Pope's position, and of late we have seen universities and religious institutions and remarkably even the Rockefeller Brothers Fund divest themselves of their interests in that are producing and are based on fossil fuels. And I just want to say parenthetically, I understand that this is a discussion that's going on here at Sand Center, and I really applaud the intention to be part of the solution in whatever way, whether it's small or large, and the wish not to be part of the problem, but to understand our connection and see how as an institution, we've taken this on at Berkeley and how as an institution, that question is also raised in the context of a wonderful place like this.

[29:36]

Sooner or later, the system is going to fall under its weight. And we need to know, is there the political will and the human connection to make the shift. Who among us will form new communities within the shell of the old? We look to create the kind of non-hierarchical communities that Martin Luther King Jr. called the beloved community, which Joanna Macy and others call a council of all beings, a circle in which insentient and sentient life are recognized. And this is difficult. I found this quotation from a play by Jean-Paul Sartre.

[30:42]

He wrote it in 1943. It's called The Flies. 1943, during the, well, the Nazis were occupying France. And this quotation says, human life begins on the far side of despair. So I'm a hopeful person and I keep my eyes open. And I often feel despair nearby. I think many of us do. I don't have a lot of answers. And I see that all of our teachers lived close to this despair. Each was tested by failure, by the failure to end suffering, and they cracked open

[31:52]

in that test. We can see this in the life of the Buddha. We can see this in the life of Jesus Christ. We can see this in the life of Martin Luther King, of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and so on. And we see also, as Sartre says, that despair brings to us a quickening of life and of creativity. So rather than avoiding despair, I recognize an energy within it that points towards transformation. And I think many of us have experienced that as well. We may have experienced it in the circumstances of our personal life, We've experienced it in a period of zazen or seshin.

[32:58]

Letting it crack you open. And this is something that, again, Joanna Macy speaks of in the 1980s and she developed what she called despair and empowerment work. Joanna writes, people fear if they let despair in they'll be paralyzed because they are just one person. Paradoxically, by allowing ourselves to feel our pain for the world, we open ourselves up to the web of life and we realize that we are not alone. This is the big message. This is the message of Dharma practice. This is the message of all religion at its core. We're never alone. I spoke with Joanna Macy the other day, and she describes the moment we're in as a time when what we might call the great turning, a planetary awakening, is occurring simultaneously with the great unraveling

[34:24]

which may be the destruction of our culture. They're happening simultaneously, and that really, ultimately that's gonna get our attention. Whether we will survive or not, we will be alive until the last moment. We live in the shadow of Damocles' sword. and we can't walk away. There's no place to go. Science fiction movies used to say, you know, used to imagine us, you know, sort of shipping off populations to Mars or to some, you know, going, clicking in the phasers and going to some other solar system, but I don't think that's going to happen. We can't walk away and we are not alone. And I believe that as we connect,

[35:28]

with all beings, appropriate responses will arise. And I'm always yearning for that connection. And really, what I most would like to do is just have some friends and walk side by side talking on the beach or through the hills. in ease and safety. So I want to close with words from a fable written by one of our teachers, Robert Aitken Roshi. Late in life he wrote a book called The Sayings of Zen Master Raven, which was all these animals talking to each other. And at one point in the book, They're having a discussion of right view.

[36:29]

And the owl says, what are right views? And Brown Bear responds, we're in it together and we don't have much time. So, thank you very much. Thanks for listening. I think we have like a couple of minutes for questions. Oh, I didn't know that. In that case, we are right on time. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge. And this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[37:37]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:40]

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