This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Good morning. Sorry it takes so long to get all the stuff of the world organized to be able to drop it all away. There's a wonderful story of Zen students, I think, very much like the many of you who've come from the Ten Directions to participate in the 65th gathering of practice on go, or a so-rin forest thicket of practitioners gathering from the Ten Directions. And I imagine the practice period just opened Thursday night, right? Thursday night. Thursday night, 65th practice period.

[01:03]

Heavens to Murgatroyd. Anyway, there's a wonderful admonition. The senior monks in the places of gathering, those forest thickets that welcome practitioners to come and know the mind, shape the mind, and free the mind. Senior monks gathering to meet the brand new practitioners as they come. And if they come with a load of heavy bags, like I remember doing when I first approach Tassajaras and Mountain Center. They almost just shake their heads knowingly and so many possessions. And then the proud practitioners who come with just a single backpack. So many possessions. So many possessions. What a wonderful opportunity to have this day to put down our possessions a bit and focus on the great matter. As Thich Nhat Hanh, who is right now coming out of a bit from a massive cerebral hemorrhage that he suffered on, I don't know if he suffered, he experienced a massive cerebral hemorrhage on Armistice Day, November 11th, a day when peacemakers all over the world were gathering to

[02:27]

put down arms and stand up for peace. So this Zen monk who's been a monk, he's 88 years old, he's been a monk for 72 years, experienced a massive cerebral hemorrhage and the great quiet. So I'm thinking a lot about him and remembering the years when we practiced together, how he came into this meditation hall and said, You have the most glorious meditation hall I've ever experienced and the most noble pathway leading out to the ocean and back, and you are the grimmest people I've ever met. Helping us lighten up by practicing together, welcoming the children into the meditation hall. I remember Tenshin Roshi Reb and Rusa holding hands during Zazen. It was quite a nice time. those early years with Thich Nhat Hanh. So he reminds us right before this cerebral hemorrhage, he offered a reworking of the Heart Sutra.

[03:29]

And in that reworking, he said, the most important thing to remember is that no matter how we turn our lives, and especially this is coming up for me on this particular Sunday, there is no being and no non-being. He focused, focusing us to remember no being and no non-being. And so we go forth into the great matter. And it was just a short couple of weeks before his hemorrhage. It's extraordinary upwelling of gratitude for the teachings. So today it's a real honor to be here and I want to begin by noting that throughout this country and in Europe and other places of worship all over the world, practitioners have made the agreement today to focus on the great matter of global climate change and how it affects the beings, human and more than human, in the world.

[04:32]

So this Sunday is a dedicated preach-in. We're speaking from the heart of our places of spirit. about the causes and conditions that animate and define our times. And so what better time to be doing it than this very Sunday, right after Valentine's Day, the 15th day of this month, a welcoming practice period here, and spending the day considering how the way we live matters mightily in every way, and in particular this day, when the afternoon will be spent planting together and celebrating a living watershed. So this is a wonderful opportunity and huge amount of gratitude to each and all of you for coming and joining us. Especially, I see some people I practice with every day and I'm really happy that we're together in this hall.

[05:33]

For how many people is it a first time to Green Gulch? Very first time. Yeah, so welcome. a wholehearted and full welcome we sit still together as poet Pablo Neruda reminds us sit still today in the incalculable song of our lives dark and light in that incalculable song we come together to sit and consider how we live and how we can interact more fully and be more alert so I want to say something about this particular tradition, both of welcoming practitioners, the 65th gathering of doing this, and in Japan, where you're greeted at the doorway, the practice period is known as a time of on-go, or turning in, and turning into your deepest concerns, and also turning out and facing the world from sitting still, so very much that double vow.

[06:40]

activates and animates our practice in these times. And the practice period in Japanese is often known as so-rin, translated as a forest thicket. So convening a forest thicket, how appropriate for Arbor Day, we call up the image of a forest thicket, meant to signal a grove of trees, diverse and multifaceted, growing together, sharing a root system, and working and growing in perfect harmony. And I think it's extremely significant for many of us that the head student for this practice period is Kayim Johnson, who's also the person for whom the farm, the person who is run around and guided by the farm. I'd never like to say the farm manager, but managed by the farm. So during this next period of days and nights, he'll be, sitting deep and strong here with other practitioners who've gathered.

[07:42]

So we really welcome everyone to the 65th Convening of the Forest Thicket practice. I'm also feeling very, I'm old enough, being 67 years old, old enough to feel the comings and goings of life and the huge changes and really feeling that both as a poignant and calling in my heart. So feeling very much today. We're coming around to the 40th anniversary of a wonderful visit from Dr. Jeff Schumacher, who came to Green Gulch in 1976 and walked around the fields with us. And at the end of that cycle, I remember him walking with Steve Stuckey and those of us who worked in the farm in those years. And at the end of the circuit, turning to us and saying, could you find a day, one day a year, when you gather together to take care of the watershed? He reminded us that in the lifetime of the Buddha, there was such an admonition from the Buddha charging his students to spend one day, or maybe not one day, but to spend some time throughout a year to take care of the plant kingdom.

[09:01]

No kings out there in the plant. So the plant kingdom. And so Dr. Schumacher said, could you please do this? And he reminded us that sometimes in the life of practitioners who made the engagement to enter into formal practice in the life of the Buddha, in the time of the Buddha, they were invited to plant and see to the maintenance of five trees. Plant, not just plant, but see to the maintenance of five trees, to follow those trees and take care of them. And whole tracts of land in northwestern India, or I think it was northwestern India, were reforested from that vow and commitment. So we very much, we began in 1976 planting and tending. We made a lot of mistakes. We also had a lot of celebratory and wonderful opportunities to practice together and to learn from the living watershed. When you find your place, Nogen Zenji reminded, practitioners in his day, thousands of years ago.

[10:03]

When you find your place where you are, practice occurs. So we're talking about a Dharma practice that is very much grounded in turning the heart and mind inward but also facing out to the forest thicket of our world and making the commitment to tend and be attentive to. Attend from the French, attend, which means to stretch where you're comfortable and take care of the living world and learn with and from the living world. And we have a tradition that I deeply appreciate of, in honor of Arbor Day and this period of time, some of us gather every year to walk the boundaries of the watershed. And so last Saturday, a week ago, we gathered at Muir Woods National Monument It was beautiful to welcome the new apprentices and trainees at Slide Ranch. The Slide Ranch team came.

[11:05]

The rain was falling long and strong, and we were happy. We began by walking into the forest, about 20 of us walking into the forest, and pausing above Redwood Creek, a water system that is one of the shortest and the last wild-run water systems for the Silver Salmon in the Coho Salmon Line. And this year in particular, there's been huge concern because of the continuous years of drought. So there's been a huge concern that the salmon would not have enough water to come up and enter back into their natal creeks. So we were, with great celebration, we were thankful for the recent rains, the rains of December and the rain that was thundering down around us as we stood above the river, watching the young of the year, they're called, the young of the year, gathering in the dappled pools, drinking in the rainwater, and finding their ancient home in that old-growth forest.

[12:09]

Mia described to us the ongoing challenge, which is very much at the forefront of what we're considering today. Do we protect, because of the calamity of climate change, disruption and climate change very much caused by how we live in the world. And, you know, practitioners who find their way on a beautiful day like this into a dark barn or the temples of the world to consider the great matter know that we are deeply responsible for how the world is unfolding right now. So understanding this, do we respond and try to protect the endangered species that are very much suffering because of the way we live, or do we let the world unfold as it will? And one thing I love about practicing and beginning the watershed walk and the celebration of Arbor Day in Muir Woods is the capacity to do both, to respond and protect, but also to leave the forest profoundly alone.

[13:13]

This is an unguarded river, one of the last and only unstocked river systems in North America. where so many of the rivers now rolling out into the great pastures of the Pacific are deeply endangered, clogged with debris, waters warming. In Muir Woods National Monument, this is all noticed, but we leave the river system profoundly alone so the fish can make their way up. However, this year, 100 young fry were taken from the river because of the great fear that there would not be enough water in Redwood Creek for that water to push through the sands at Muir Beach and enter the ocean. So out of fear for that and out of concern for how we maintain our watercourses, 100 young fish were taken to a shelter, to a refuge. And it's beautiful to consider that word refuge because I do think of the forest ticket, our life here today in this hall as a kind of place of refuge, refuge to fly back.

[14:16]

to your most important and deepest request. So the salmon were lifted, 100 healthy young fish lifted and taken to a tank to preserve them to make sure that they would be strong enough to carry on the species. The numbers of silver salmon are low enough now so that this is a concern. And there was a lively conversation, do we do this or do we trust in the wild capacity of the mind of the watershed, or do we do both? And in fact, after long conversation, it was agreed that both systems would be followed. So 100 young fish taken, and now they're growing in cool, dark water, what our friend Bill Cox from Fish and Game likes to call a 3D world, dense, dark, and deep. So they're being grown on in a huge system that's monitored, carefully monitored, cool water with dense shadow, darkness, and depth in the tank so that they can be strong.

[15:20]

And they're being fed only food and debris from this watershed that's collected and brought to them so that they can be raised up and strengthened. But in our unfolding walk in the driving rain around the boundaries of the watershed, now and then we would pause and consider, is this practice conducive to true resilience? And I suggest that today in our places of worship, places of spirit, this is a question we're asking. What furthers, sustains, and engenders true resilience? The kind of resilience that's needed to meet the emergencies of our times. And for that resilience, we need a place of refuge. like Muir Woods National Monument or the deep, dark, and dense tank that was configured for the salmon. We need those places of refuge to come back to our deepest, deepest self and sense. However, it was delightful to stand above the rainy river and to watch the young of the year moving through the shadows because they have in the rains, the thick rains of December, they have found their way home.

[16:34]

By tasting the sweetness of the natal waters, they find their way back. By a monstrous magnetism older than the forest, they find their way back to their place of refuge and spawn. In a dance that's older than the dance of time. Not passed on by parents, because the parents spawn, they release their eggs and melt. The fish are... congealed in the shadows and the salmon die and are carried out by the river. So there's a genetic memory that happens and a resilience that we can only begin to at least appreciate. Resilience, a word that's being used a lot and the root in that word is salmo from salmon to push against the stream of our life that's carrying us in a certain down river trajectory to push against the stream to sally forth. My beloved sister Sally. I always think sally, sallying forth.

[17:36]

It means to jump, to push, to leap, to engage with the river and to build in that sallying to build strength. So here we are. It may seem that I'm speaking metaphorically, please. I'm endeavoring to speak from the heart of the living world. So Salmo says, to be resilient, to push against the tide, to push against the stream. As the Buddha taught, I have a teaching. I offer a teaching that pushes against the stream of conventional reality, pushes against where we're comfortable, and gathers us in dark times. In honor of the poet who calls on, in a dark time, the eyes begin to see. In this dark, dense, deep time, Our dark adjusted eyes have to begin to see. And a new kind of resilience comes up. So if there's a watershed walk planned and it's raining, walk in the rain and get wet.

[18:40]

So we did. We began at Muir Woods. We loitered in the woods until the rain quieted down a bit. And then we sauntered forth to walk the boundaries and made our way up the spine of... the Miwok Trail, out across the meadows, to stand at the top and face, at that point, the rains were so strong we could hardly stand. The rains blowing down, and I could feel the young of the year from Slide Ranch kind of chafing at the bit, following the noble elders, Wendy and Mia and Pam. It was enough, so we stepped aside and said, won't you ride the thermals down to the beach? And they spread their big wings and ran down the hill, and it was so beautiful. to see them moving with that kind of electricity down the flanks of the mountain. And I thought, here we are on West Hill, the first people of this bioregion named the mountain West Hill or Bay Ridge.

[19:44]

And in the great circle of mountains that circumscribes and shows us what it means to live in the Bay Area, we are the smallest of the four mountains. And I think about them today, remembering a great friend, Malcolm Malgalin, who always encourages us to remember the points that give you your compass. You get the news from standing in connection with those four points. News, north, east, west, south. So to the east, let me get this right. What if I'm gonna call them out? To the east, ah, perfect to begin with Diablo. So to the east, Diablo Mountain of the East Bay, standing up and on a clear day, you can see El Diablo, the high mountain of the east, and then turning with heart and mind open, turning to the south to face Hamilton Mountain in the South Bay, and the west, West Hill, Mount Tamalpais, the sleeping goddess, the lowest of the mountains, and to the north, Mount St.

[20:52]

Helena, unquiet, restless, reminding us that not all will be exactly as it seems. So these are the mountains that circumscribe our life. And there's a long tradition of going out on Mount Tamalpais and walking the boundaries of the watershed, calling up what would have been sacred land, beloved land to the First Peoples. They are not lost in history. Their life and practice their native feedways, foodways, and traditional ecological knowledge, I assure you, is strong and continuing to grow. So standing there at the top and looking out, we paused, and Mia reminded us that not only do we care for the land, the living land, but also the pastures of the ocean. And this... watershed where we find ourselves is one of the, by the Nature Conservancy, considered one of the 25 most important biological regions in the world because of the tremendous diversity and presence of wildlife and wildland and edgy species.

[22:02]

We're right on the edge of the known and unknown world, leaning up against the fault line, the continents rubbing up together. There's a huge upwelling of diversity. However, we remembered standing there on the high flank of West Hill, we remembered not only on the land, but also in the pastures of the ocean. So to stand there while the young of the year flew down the hill toward the ocean, and to remember that not only is there a real admonition, a call, a commitment to protect the land of this tenuous and beautiful country, but also the ocean. So there are about six designated pastures out in the ocean where there's a commitment not to fish, to let the marine life regenerate. And standing there with the rain clattering down around us, Mia also reminded us that above us and below us we saw the unfolding of the rivers. In a minute we'll talk a little bit about the river work that we're intending to do today here in this valley and watershed.

[23:07]

But there on top we could see the rivers moving slowly and quietly toward the pastures of the ocean, the protected pastures of the ocean, about six miles off the coast of Muir Beach is one such pasture, also down heading toward the city and beyond the city. They're designated areas where there's a commitment not to fish and to let regeneration happen there in the depths. But she reminded us that not only are we looking at rivers that run through the land, but atmospheric rivers as well, rivers that are now traveling through the atmosphere carrying bands or strings of water as wide as the mighty Mississippi. As much water is now moving through the Mississippi. We're depending on these atmospheric rivers more than anything to help relieve the dryness of the land. So in December we had a good long week of a gift of the rain being released onto the land from what we're now calling atmospheric rivers and there being studies as such.

[24:11]

And then last week when we stood there in the top, Mia reminded us, we are in the downpour of the atmospheric river, waters traveling from the warmed oceans and rivers of the world and carried. We're finding particulate matter that comes from China, from Asia. We are breathing and building and being nourished and hopefully experiencing the recharge of a watershed and the recharge of our own resilience from waters that are carried across the world. in a large atmospheric river and emptying. So I'm very happy to acknowledge. I don't often think of graduating from Pomona College, which I did do. It took me a long time. I did do many years ago. I'm really happy that Pomona College is leading the, and Scripps College is leading the study of these atmospheric rivers. So in the rain, Tiny airplanes are flying into the stream and monitoring the quality of the water and the character, and it's extraordinary. Do study this if it speaks to you.

[25:12]

And if it doesn't, then study something else. But if this speaks to you, it's been a wonderful study. It's a new study, so very little is known. I love the fact that we're speaking of atmospheric rivers because so much of our practice here That green knowledge has to do with body, mind, and breath coming together and breathing in the truth of the air that sustains us and the moisture that fills it with life. So it was beautiful to stand at the top and to feel refreshed and new. Walker, says Antonio Machado. There is no path. You make the path as you walk. Caminante. walker, there is no path. You make the path as you walk. And Dogen Zenji reflecting the Spanish teaching.

[26:13]

Study the mountains. Use numerous world systems as your standard. A mountain always practices in every place. So pausing at the ridge, and feeling this admonition to come back to being fully human and humane in the world. From the last poem of practitioner and wonderful poet, Lou Welch, the song Mount Tamalpais sings. Praise, gentle west peak, perfect in wisdom and beauty, sweet water, soaring birds, great seas. at the foot of your cliffs. So I was feeling that upwelling of poetry and wind and the atmospheric river. And then remembering naughty, rascally, wonderful teacher, Malcolm Margolin, who addressed friends at Spirit Rock.

[27:15]

Many of us in the Buddhist community are making a commitment to wholeheartedly speak. about global climate change. So Malcolm was asked to come and address the community at Spirit Rock and about the Bay Area, how we can actually know the Bay Area and know how it's changed. And it was a wonderful talk, a very lively, Malcolm is the founder of Hay Day Books, the publisher of Hay Day Books, a wonderful naturalist and the author of The Ohlone Way. If you've not read this book, it is a wonderful Dharma book, The Ohlone Way. So he asked us to close our eyes And imagine the first time you've come into a fresh encounter. And it was beautiful to watch today. When asked how many of you are here for the first time, we need to raise our hands too. Those of us who think we've practiced here solidly and doggedly for 25 years, it is our first time here today to see each other fresh, to have a new encounter.

[28:20]

Years ago at a retreat of practitioners, artists, gathering the Traveling Jewish Theater, Thich Nhat Hanh was the convening teacher, the Traveling Jewish Theater said, how many of you here are Jewish? First hand up was Thich Nhat Hanh. And I remember that. It made a very deep impression. And it was furthered last Saturday after the Watershed Walk to come into this hall and celebrate the bat mitzvah of one of the daughters of this community. celebrated fully and wholeheartedly in this temple where she's been raised in her parents' practice. And many in the Sangha members gathered around her to have a full bat mitzvah in this temple. Beautiful. So we share this newness. What was it like to see the Bay Area 13,000 years ago when the first people traveled from the north? Those who speak the Panushan language, a language as diverse and remarkable and different as Mandarin Chinese is from English.

[29:22]

Communities of human beings, more than half of the population of the Bay Area in those early years, native people speaking these languages that were marked and clear examples of their diversity, ability to live in peacefulness, and also to live from the gifts of the land. What was it like, asked Malcolm, to see this land for the first time? 13,000 years ago. To look out at the bay that was then 13,000 years ago in the Pleistocene, not a bay, but a large plain. You could walk all the way from San Francisco to the Fairlawn Islands. It was an open meadow, and there were two rivers running. Their courses join the San Joaquin River and the Sacramento, and at the Golden Gate, moving into the ocean, a giant waterfall of the rivers crashing down into the ocean, or into the other rivers that led to the ocean beyond the Fairlawns.

[30:28]

Beyond imagination, and yet it's in us to imagine, to travel back in time, to imagine the great beings, the Colombian mammoths wallowing in vernal pools. Here on this altar, we have a remnant, from that mammoth, the top third of the tusk of a mammoth from that time discovered by a mindful student walking quietly through the river systems right here, found this relic, took it to UC Paleontology at Berkeley, and they said not only is it a mammoth, a mammoth's tooth, it's the top third of a tusk from a mammoth that wallowed in the vernal pools in this very area 13,000 years ago. Can we remember the voice of the ancestors? in this valley of ancestors, the voice of the watershed. Can we, in our sitting and prayer and practice and dedicated work, can we remember the dire wolf, the saber-toothed tiger, the herds of bison, the ground sloths, the short-nosed bear, and the pronghorn antelope that Malcolm marvels at?

[31:42]

Why did it have to run 60 miles an hour. It only needed to run 21 miles an hour to escape the coyote that would have chased it, but instead it doubled that to run 60 miles an hour through that landscape. And this is a world that is not that far back in our memory, the world that we interact with every day. Shell mounds encircling the bay like the mountains do, almost 500 of them clear signs of settled life, of settled, peaceful, diverse first people's life. One shell mound right near Emeryville, 270 feet in diameter, and at its core, 30 feet deep. This is a sign of people gathering around to share food, to share stories, to live together in harmony. And of course, he mentioned, we could also imagine the fires smoldering from abandoned villages, 10,000 years or more of settled life.

[32:55]

And it was not until 1769, really late, that the Portola expedition of Spaniards coming in, captained by Captain Ortego, for the first time traveling across the spine of the mountains, this gathering of Europeans for the first time entering in and seeing the opening to the second largest harbor on earth, the Golden Gate, so slight and small as that opening that it was passed by, by the ocean and by land for centuries. And Captain Ortego exclaimed that he entered into the immenso brazo del mar, the immense arms or embrace of the ocean and seeing that gateway. So can we imagine on the very first time and make a commitment to see our lives fresh and new during these times of, of course, the largest extinction in the history of, the known history of the world, the sixth extinction

[34:08]

of a Holocene extinction, human-caused, an extinction that's been going on for probably 10,000 years, 100 to 10,000 times the expected rate of extinction happening right now, and caused very much by the way we live on the Earth. This, whether or not we accept all of the science, there is clear indication that this, in the fifth synthesis report coming from the intergovernmental Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the fifth synthesis report from Lima, Peru, recent human-produced emissions of greenhouse gases are at their highest point in history. Never in the history of California have we had a January without a drop of rain. We've just experienced that. Some of the driest times on Earth were looking at living and growing food in hotter, drier climate. And the... Every continent on Earth experiencing the impact of global climate change.

[35:12]

And yet from our pulpits today, we're also remembering the People's Climate March. Practitioners in this room made their way to New York City to join with 400,000 other human beings, human and more than human beings, in that march calling on one another to wake up, to respond. And those of us in the Bay Area also gathered in Richmond, or actually in Oakland. to remember the importance of awareness right here in the Bay Area. So I love to think of the Citizens' March on Global Climate March being led at the very head of the march, First Peoples, the indigenous people, and at the end, people of the cloth, the religious people. I loved hearing from Abbas Linda Ruth telling me that the wait was so long for the march to begin that some of the clergy fainted from exhaustion. and then were revived by intention. So I think it's so perfect that the First Peoples led, and that the end of the march was from people of faith and spirit.

[36:21]

So this is where we find ourselves. To effectively mitigate the influence of greed, hate, and delusion requires global effort that valorizes generosity, human empathy and social justice. This from Bhikkhu Bodhi, one of our great translators of the canon, who knows how important it is for us to all stand up and join arms and move together. So this is a day of remembering and being aware of that and also celebrating. I do want to transition and talk a little bit about the celebration that we will engage in today because it's a celebration that depends on a long time winding commitment in this sangha and throughout to taking care of the earth and to learning from the living land and the waters of the earth. So I'm thinking very much of friends who've practiced here at Green Gulch since the very beginning in the early 1970s when we practiced with Harry Kellett Roberts, raised up in the Yurok tradition at the mouth of the Klamath River.

[37:31]

reminding us that we need a plan here at Green Gulch that goes for 500 years so that everything you do, you think of the effect of what you're doing for the next 500 years. Wonderful to have that teaching coming from Harry's wisdom and those of us who practiced with him in the early years, wanting to find what he remembered as the most beautiful, sinuous river that he saw in the early 1930s when he traveled as a cattleman. over these hills. He described the Green Gulch Valley with the sinuous river running down the center of the valley as one of the most beautiful valleys he'd ever seen on Earth. So we carry that in our long memory, the fact that the river was straightened during the years when we practiced and lived in the years before George Wilwright lived here and then in the years after, channelized creek running in a concrete channel around the back. There's always been a dream of freeing that channel. So the river used to run underneath this very building. in slow, swooping loops out to the ocean.

[38:33]

So there's been an intention carried by the land and also by practitioners here. This morning I spoke to Dr. Stephanie Caza, who's head of the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Vermont. She said it was three degrees above zero when a down coat felt like a T-shirt. The weather is so intensely cold right now in Vermont. And she, in her early years trained here, in this temple before going on to head the oldest environmental studies program in the country, working with Eric Larson and other friends to really find the voice of the watershed and the creek and let it be freed, and tremendous amount of collaboration and intention going toward making this happen. A real gratitude to every single being who's helped with that furtherance, particularly recently thinking, really thinking about Tonto head of practice, Jeremy, Levi, the father of the bat mitzvah, working to write a grant to Fish and Game, asking for the kindness to help us restore the river and be not only us restoring, but may we be restored by the memory of the land and the water meeting in a fresh way.

[39:45]

So writing grants, speaking out, going to public meetings, really thank you for that, for that early work. and for the full collaboration of this entire sangha to make sure that would happen. Dreaming the old dream for the first time. May we see the river run and turn. And then we've actually begun to do this. So I use we in the grand way. My friend Bill Sterling always says, one should never use the we pronoun unless you're royalty or possessed by maggots in the gut. So being neither, I would like to ask our director of Green Gulch, Sarah, to ask her if she'd come up. Now, Sarah, for years, was charged to take care of the farm, and the farm took care of her and raised her up. So here's a woman. who's strong and has been very involved in the restoration of the creek. I think it's beautiful to hear her tell a little bit of the story of the restoration that we're going to be involved in today as we meet the challenge of the watershed.

[40:53]

So Sarah, can you unfold your long, lanky legs and come up here and tell this beautiful story? So just, I love the encouragement from F. Scott Fitzgerald, where he says, draw your chair close to the precipice, and I'll tell you a story. So here comes a beautiful story. She is now doing what no practitioner ever does, which is sitting on the tan, and I think the tan must be happy to have your warmth upon it this morning. Thank you. creedled by Wendy and the abbess. I feel very safe on the edge of the town. The edge of the world. Perfect. I have had the privilege and the responsibility of kind of birthing this project of the creek restoration that I think, as Wendy said, is as old as this river valley and that has taken...

[42:05]

I feel like all, there have been so many generations of practitioners at Green Gulch who have cared for the watershed and who have made it their work to bring it into our consciousness as something we have the responsibility to care for and the privilege to care for. And the latest iteration that I've been part of is this community had a kind of visioning process about the next 500 years of this temple. And the principle that kind of lit everybody up and brought kind of clarity and joy to the process was this idea that the creek is what should be free. We should free the creek. We should, over time, take the buildings that were built in the historic creek bed and move them so that the creek can run where it wants to run, and we can witness that rather than forgetting that it's here under this building.

[43:13]

So that was in the early 2000s, and then Jeremy as director, and even before he was director, started writing grants and talking to people about this vision and Suki as our land steward started, you know, or started, she continued to poke around in that creek bed and see what was in there and sing about it to the rest of us. So many times she comes back kind of her hair in a must because she's been crawling under brambles and willow trees that have overgrown that creek channel. And she tells us about the wonderful things that are happening down there. So in 2005, a young woman living here saw a salmon flapping around in the creek, kind of right across by the farm shed or the glass house, if you know where that is down on the farm. And she didn't think much of it. She had just moved here. And she went on her way. She actually thought it was a person who had fallen in the water.

[44:17]

So she went to go help. It was a very high-water year, you might remember. It was kind of the last time we had a really wild winter. So later that spring, she mentioned it to somebody who said, you should tell Suki about that. And Suki was very interested and brought Bill Cox, who came from Fish and Wildlife, who came and said, coho, baby coho. There were about 1,000 baby coho. That's right. So that was 2006 in the summer. So all of these things came together to galvanize us. And the whole community, the wider community that's taking care of the rivers and the waterways. So NOAA Fisheries is a federal agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that's really trying to take care of these fish, fish and wildlife. Our county has been very involved, the Marin Community Foundation. our county supervisor.

[45:20]

So all these people, we were able to provide a place of focus and a place to cooperate, to express this wish I think we all have to take care of things, the greater than human world, as Wendy says. And so a plan was born, a creek restoration plan that would go from the Redwood Creek, which was recently restored, up all the way to the Zendo Pond, which we decided is kind of a major fish barrier that we don't have a plan yet to remove. We dream of it. I had a dream last night about the pond, actually. And then we started asking if people wanted to be part of it. And we were lucky enough to have fish and wildlife give us a major grant. And we're so excited the work happened between the end of the bird nesting season, August 15th, and the end of the dry season when you can work in creek beds, which was October 15th.

[46:31]

So the meandering creek channel and new bridge were put in in that short period of time after years and years and decades and decades of wishing and noticing. And I will say that many of you actually have participated in the planting of native species in that acre and a half. We restored and went from 400 linear feet of straightened creek channel to 750, almost double, 400 to 750, almost double. We will have planted over 2,000 native plants by the time we're finished. And this afternoon, All of you have the opportunity to go down and put a plant in the ground and be part of that piece of land and restoration. And a few weeks ago, the landscape architect who designed the meander and placed most of that wood with an excavator himself, he was in there telling them exactly where to put the wood and buried it with love.

[47:37]

He saw two five-inch fish probably smolts. They darted really fast under some of that woody debris that's meant to protect them from predators. And I hear that fish moving fast is often salmon, actually. So we're very hopeful that they're coming home and will find a refuge here. Yay! Thank you, Sarah. Poet Charles Olson said, it's undone business I speak of this morning with the sea stretching out from my feet. So we begin to dance, that ancient dance. I'm so happy to think of Suki, who is such a great dancer, pulsing, sitting still and dancing in the midst of the incalculable song of this restoration. Huge amount of gratitude to every single being.

[48:40]

who has participated in this project, and we're just beginning. Fresh start, brand new, young of the year. Young of the year, moving into dark times. And we have dark adjusted eyes. So let me finish, please, this morning's address by joining with all of the different faith-based groups, whether whether they are great believers or great questioners, agnostic, atheist, believers, dreamers, gathering together on this weekend of love and connection to interact with the living world and to be renewed, to find a kind of resilience that we can only dream of by working together and by turning our attention to the great matter. In the Buddhist world, I'm happy that there is a document called The Earth Will Be Our Witness, The Earth As Witness.

[49:44]

It's an international statement on climate change with right now more than 500 Dharma teachers all over the world signing in and thousands of practitioners joining in too. And basically this document says our practice calls on us to open to open our eyes, to be aware of suffering in the life of the world, and to look at the causes and conditions that give rise to that suffering. Greed, hate, and delusion that Bhikkhu Bodhi mentioned in the short passage I read you before. To look at the historic, ongoing use of fossil fuel and greenhouse gas, how they are burned, and to take responsibility for how we live in this world. Not too much to feel that the entire turnaround comes from deep introspection, and not ever to believe that it could come from deep looking out

[50:46]

from the world, but the combination of looking at how each of us lives in the world and then how we interact with the living world. A lot of that has to do with raising food and making sure that the food we eat and enjoy is strong and well-raised and shared with the hungry world. That's very much, it was very, 1900 of us gathered just at the close of the winter practice period. It was great to be there with Liz Milazzo and Cayume and and everyone who's helped to make farming possible here in this valley to be together to hear, 1,900 of us, to hear the keynote address be offered by Bill McKibben and Brock Dolman and Gary Paul Nabham calling on us to wake up to find how to live more carefully and fully in a hotter, drier world. So we're not turning away from the causes and conditions that bring us to practice right now. Not at all. We're meeting them with a full heart. And then the pledge goes on to say, led by an industrial growth society which has an insatiable appetite for more, more.

[51:56]

I remember one of our teachers years ago working with five and six year olds and he consolidated the Four Noble Truths into, ouch, says suffering. More, says greed. walk the Noble Eightfold Path. So it was wonderful. He worked it into a song to the kids. And this means that we find ourselves at the edge of possibility, where Dharma practice matters mightily, the principles that will sustain us, wisdom and compassion, a love for the world, the ability to see systemic change as well as personal change, and a moral compass that helps us find our direction, a moral compass that turns us again and again to orienting toward the world and meeting the world as it is.

[52:58]

Sometimes, says a friend of mine, Peter Levitt, who's a longtime Zen practitioner and poet, sometimes seeing what is not there other times seeing what is. We live mid-stagger with pure hearts, unborn and undying, no being and no non-being. When was wholeness ever not whole? Gather your Zen spirit and meet the living world. So let me close with a prayer that's being read. throughout the country this morning. We hold this earth, the brothers and sisters of the human world and I add the more than human world who suffer and endure storm and drought intensified by climate change and our presence on planet earth.

[53:59]

We hold one another and we hold the world leaders delegated to make decisions for the care of life. praying that the web of life may be mended and strengthened through courageous action, through the limitation of carbon emissions, through full awareness. We pray for right action, for adaptation and mitigation to help suffering in the life of the world. We pray that love and wisdom will inspire our every action and our actions as communities so that we may with integrity look into the eyes of one another and of all beings and truthfully say we will do everything in our possibility to protect the living world and the future of the living world. May love transform us and this world with new steps toward life.

[55:03]

Go forth on your journey for the benefit of the many a call from the Buddha 2,500 years ago. Go forth on your journey for the benefit of the many, for the joy of the many, out of compassion, for the welfare and benefit and joy of all beings. Go forth and deepen your practice and come home. Thank you very much for this morning, for an opportunity to speak together, to listen, and to listen to the voice of the land and the waters. We'll have a chance... in a little bit, to come back into the hall and practice together, and then a beautiful afternoon outside, receiving the good tidings of this first place on the flanks of West Hill in a world new every moment. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive.

[56:05]

Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[56:22]

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