This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzz.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Good morning and welcome. Especially welcome to our visitors who've never been here before. Really welcome to Green Gulch, this beautiful Arbor Day morning, February 23rd, 2014. And particularly a warm and hearty welcome to students and learners and teachers. from the University of San Francisco, the class, wonderful class in religion and environment will be with us all day here at Green Gulch.

[01:02]

So welcome, welcome. In the dark of the moon, at the drawdown of the tide, the mind of drought summons fossil rain. Here at the edge, of Mardi Gras and the season of Lent. This Dharma dialogue this morning, and it is a dialogue because we'll be in active conversation turning the Dharma together after my initial remarks. So this Dharma dialogue and this almost 40th celebration of Arbor Day is very deeply and wholeheartedly dedicated to our beloved, um, Dharma friend, Yogan Steve Stuckey, who died peacefully and fully with thorough spirit and engagement on New Year's Eve day, passing to, as Sonoroshi loves to say, the great majority.

[02:07]

So very, very present in this wooden building this morning. So this is a real dedication to Dharma friendship. and patch-robed monks and monkuses willing to live and die together because each one of us also died a bit as Steve crossed over. So... And this is a beautiful time to be able to... turn the Dharma wheel together, the great wheel up in the middle of the air. Turn that Dharma wheel together. From January 30th until April 4th, every winter season, many of us mark a season of nonviolence. How is that designated? January 30th, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in India.

[03:11]

April 4th, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. We remember them as some of the greatest peacemakers in our world and mark these precious two months of awareness and rededication to the path of nonviolence and full engagement with the heart of the world. It's a wonderful time. I love that Arbor Day falls within the parameters of this season of nonviolence, deepening our vow and attention. And then connected also very much grounded in, must be like the 62nd, 63rd practice period on go, a period of deep turning the heart and mind together to the present moment. gathering the heart and mind in this place of practice, Green Dragon's End Place. A good number of dedicated Dharma students coming together for this period of practice, 63rd time gathering, so Rin.

[04:22]

Katagiri Roshi used to love to remind us that any time practitioners gather together, we are a so-rin, or forest thicket of intention. It's a beautiful word. Describing a mixed, let's say, hardwood, softwood, deciduous, and evergreen forest. Interacting with all of the... Many multiple beings grounded in, as Lynn Margolis loves to remind us, four billion years of evolution from microbial ancestors. So not just... the world above, but also the inner and deeper world, the fungal duff, the microbial mystery underneath the edge of the soil. All of that is cultivated in this time of practice, so it's a very good time to be together and to really look deeply. And of course, these are not peaceful times. We know that watching what's happening from Kiev to our own neighborhoods and how we actually live in the world, still we make the intention and turn our attention, stretch our heart and mind toward peaceful presence and meeting the natural world or the more than human world as it unfolds in our hands.

[05:48]

And a great gift is This morning, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is in the Bay Area celebrating, today celebrating a wonderful event, the fourth time, a gathering together of citizens from all different reaches and all different ages of the world coming together to be celebrated, the unsung heroines and heroes of compassion. So they're being... welcomed today in the heart of San Francisco, and special love and attention to our Zen Center leaders who are there present with His Holiness, and just remembering how on the second honoring, physician and practitioner, beloved friend, Dharma's sister, Grace Damon, was honored. And on the third honoring, she spoke to the honorees about her experience of engaging compassionately with challenges of suffering and delight in the world.

[06:52]

So really thinking of everyone today as they gather and turn toward celebrating Those who have the capacity, the stomach, and the intention to be present with suffering and to do everything possible to relieve and meet suffering in the life of the world. So the unsung heroes of compassion and heroines will be loudly and fully sung and celebrated this afternoon. And you'll be able, actually, the ceremony is beginning at 1 o'clock. Those of you who are not staying, who won't be able to stay with us for Arbor Day, do please, this will be streamed. There'll be a stream of unsung singing going on. So you can, of course, watch this beautiful ceremony. I had the pleasure of attending the very first with Mayumi Oda. We brought buckets and buckets and buckets of flowers from Green Gulch. It was before everything was worked out.

[07:54]

And right now they're in the Hyatt Hotel, so it's worked out, I'm sure. In the early first iteration, we decorated with, I remember just going into little glasses on the table, just an outpouring of flowers. to celebrate. And right toward the end of that ceremony, a beautiful voyager, a young man, a powerful man, Nanao Thompson from Hawaii, from the Hawaiian Islands, a voyager, a person bringing back the tradition of voyaging, stood up and gave His Holiness a beautiful lei from Hawaii, which His Holiness gave back to him. Then he gave it back to His Holiness. And it was like that. There's a good bit of that that goes on. We say sending and receiving. Great... And now reminding us that every voyager sets out into uncharted waters with a sense of home in his or her heart. Every voyage begins across uncharted waters with a remembrance of where you come from.

[08:56]

And so very much that's in my heart today. His holiness making a special... dedication for the life of trees, being attentive to the nature of interdependence of all creatures, both animate and inanimate, human and more than human, let us never slacken our efforts to preserve and conserve the true harmony of nature. On a certain day, month and year, Observe the ceremony of tree planting and tending. Thus we fulfill every responsibility and serve fellow beings, bringing happiness and benefit to all. May sylvan joy and pristine happiness ever increase, spreading to encompass all that is.

[09:58]

Beautiful dedication from his holiness. And, you know, it's wonderful to begin with, a dialogue with that kind of intention being put forth. So may it be so. May it be so in a time when so many of our great forests are being cut and so much of the earth is paved over, eroded, damaged, or lost to the connection between the living footfalls of our own consciousness and the living earth. So may it be so. And in the earliest of Neolithic and Paleolithic times, in Taoist and Chan, Zen traditions, at their roots, there was always a dialogue between mind and nature, centered on the nature of consciousness extending. And it's beautiful that His Holiness says...

[11:02]

May we observe the ceremony of tree planting and tending, because tend, to tend, is from the French, attend, which means to stretch toward what's difficult to do. To attend is to stretch toward what is not always easy. It is the same root as the practice word tantra, to stretch toward what is not always easy to do. So may we turn our attention and consciousness to this ancient awareness of the relatedness of mind, landscape, and our deep intention. And so an invocation to this place yesterday with my friend of... three decades at least, me and Monroe, together we walked a good section of this watershed dropping down from the slopes of West Peak or Mount Tamalpais Bay Mountain, dropping down to the edge of the ocean, just observing, receiving the good tidings of the landscape.

[12:10]

On windward mountains, barren crest, the rising spring flows down the west. And drifts of fog on Baymount's breast fill hollows dark with pine. And this is an adaptation from a beautiful plain song that a friend of mine sings, a very beautiful song. On windward mountains barren crest, rising spring flows down the west. Drifts of fog on Baymount's breast fill hollows dark with pine. It's significant to begin this morning's conversation on this beautiful strong axis, the strong axis of this room. Every good farmer, gardener, grower... aspiring student of the natural world and a more than natural world, always wants to orient. You want to find your place to orient, to turn toward the east, to have a sense of where you're sitting so that you can quickly and fully lose your orientation and be free and come to a fresh viewpoint.

[13:25]

But it's significant to be lined up with Jizo Bodhisattva, the A figure that calls up in us, neither of these figures, neither Jizo Bodhisattva nor the figure dedicated to Manjushri Bodhisattva are worshipped in any way in this hall, but are present here to remind us to wake up the active nerve of compassion. So the Jizo figure with that beautiful circle around his, her head is the protector guardian of children carrying in the outstretched hand a wish-fulfilling gem. A burning gem of a jewel, a fire in the lotus in the hand. A gem to answer your wish before it's made. And then a staff to represent, I will walk with a compassionate heart out into the world. And if you have some time later today, come forward and notice that Jesus' right toe is lifted with intention to step out into the world and serve compassionately and fully.

[14:28]

and then balanced on this meridian, balanced with Manjushri Bodhisattva, a figure that reminds us of the importance of deep seeing, looking into the nature of what is, sitting still, holding a lotus stem, remembering that all good life comes up out of muddy water. To be... Rooted in muddy water is an honor to hold still, to look deeply, to listen, and to serve. In particular, to waken wisdom, to waken that active continuum of wisdom and compassion. So this meditation hall is dedicated to that intention. And as we go forward today, I wanted to begin with this business of stepping out into the world. what it actually means to make a pilgrimage, to come forth, to go forth, and to walk as a friend who walked for many, many years on Mount Tamal Bias and did a beautiful book about the walking, to walk with a quiet mind.

[15:37]

Mia reminded me yesterday as we descended of the old road that... Many of the trails, the first trails, were named by or called by the first peoples in the name of salmon, Ka'ashi. And they made a provisional sign, the Park Service did, saying the Ka'ashi Road. And gently and firmly, friends from the Federated Indians of Great and Rancheria, the last tribe, to be incorporated, powerful, wonderful local tribe, many different nations coming together. reminded Mia gently, this is not a road. No, we don't walk a road. The salmon doesn't walk a road. There is the way, the path, the trail, the whisper, the inclination. So, kashi way. or the way of the salmon, and stepping as we walk down the mountain early in the morning, facing the pastures of the ocean, recognizing and seeing Redwood Creek running out into the Pacific.

[16:39]

This is one of the shortest and last wild-run streams for the silver salmon in the world. There are many salmon coming home now to their natal rivers, especially with the opening of the rains, but very few are coming up wild in streams that are still unstocked. So this river, this short seven-mile course, is unstocked, and the Kahashi Way is a wild way, a way that is dependent on strength and resilience. And beautiful, that word, resilience, that... to walk with a quiet mind, to plant trees in a time when trees are being devastated and taken down, to work and serve in a world that is being dismantled at every moment and reassembled also. Takes resilience. Resilience, meaning to push against, to go against. Buddhist practice is all about pushing against the stream, not just...

[17:42]

being carried out by the stream, pushing against the usual current and developing strength. Strength and resilience from salmo, salmon. The root is right in there. To sally, to play, to be resilient, exultant. All those words come from to sally, to push, to jump. And please, I do want to emphasize the play, that playfulness itself. and spirit that it takes to push against the stream. So very much yesterday aware, and also aware of a long tradition on this mountain, on Mount Tamalpais, the Sleeping Goddess Mountain, the mountain of West Peak and Deep Bay Mountain. Always the tradition of marking a circumambulation Every year in Gary Snyder's beautiful book, Mountains and Rivers Without End, this is a whole selection of new poems, not new poems, but poems that he offered us in the 1990s.

[18:47]

And in fact, that offering was made in this hall at night. And the reading went on, reading, singing. resilient presentations and surprise poetry and art and dance and song went on from five in the evening until close to midnight as these poems were offered and then collected and now finally written. And they are a celebration to mountains and rivers without end, one of Abbott Steeb's favorite of texts, the Mountains and Rivers Sutra. So... I do remember sitting in this hall. We were so packed, we could hardly move. We were very tight in here. And then Gary, inviting us, he said, it's best not to record these kinds of presentations, although, blessedly, that one was. It's best not to, he said, because we can't always be free to surprise ourselves if we think we're being recorded. And to really go forth means to go forth without any assurance or

[19:51]

or the protection of a record. So we spent a whole night in this hall, many great poets and teachers and unknown beings singing to the mountain. And every year there is a pilgrimage, a circumambulation. It takes a full day around Mount Tamalpais. Has anybody in the hall done anything? Done that pilgrimage? Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Many years ago, we had a friend from Spirit Rock, a man named Dharma Loka. It means teaching is loka. No, the teaching means loka means world. And he was a bit... Anyone who walks as much as Dharma Loka walked, it has to be a little loka. So we had an idea that we would meet and walk from Spirit Rock. Friends from Spirit Rock would come. Friends from Green Gulch would... would walk up from Green Gulch, from Spirit Rock, walk onto the mountain, spend the night on the mountain. Some people began at Green Gulch and walked down and spent the night on the mountain. Some of us joined that overnight and then walked the whole next day down into Green Gulch.

[20:57]

It was a beautiful event. Anybody present for that? Remember? Oh, my God. There were a lot of ticks on that sacred mountain. And we did. We walked with a quiet mind on the mountain. So the mountain calls to us, come and investigate. Step away from where you're comfortable. Walk out beyond the track. Awareness of emptiness, walking with a quiet mind, brings forth the heart of compassion. Milarepa, a great Tibetan saint who lived alone in the forest. solely and exclusively on stinging nettles, until he became as green as the nettle himself, encouraged us to remember that awareness of emptiness, which you can experience when walking with a quiet mind, engenders and brings forth the heart of compassion. And a call, this is the pilgrim's precepts for the wayfarer, going forth.

[22:02]

I will walk every step of the way, and I will walk always for others and always with others, and I will take with me only what I absolutely need and only what is useful, accepting with gratitude and goodwill all that is offered to me. I will act with respect, kindness, humility toward all beings and reject nothing and cling to nothing and keep heart and senses open, allowing myself to feel compassion for the suffering of all beings throughout space and time. May I regard every situation as my teacher, every being as my friend and kin, and every hardship as an opportunity to cultivate even-mindedness. May I not waste this precious birth, this precious day, this precious awareness. beautiful vow. And you know, to begin a piece of work is good to turn the heart and mind toward intention.

[23:11]

Again, from that word, to stretch. To stretch your heart and mind toward what you intend. So often, pilgrimage or commitment to sit or to train the heart and mind in compassion and awareness of suffering in the life of the world takes an intention that you will stick to. And often your witness in a world that is broken open, the only witness is often your own capacity to walk with a quiet mind and renew your vow in every step. So in order to do that, we are very fortunate to be able to walk on West Peak, on the beautiful Bay Mountain, sacred Mount Tamalpais to circumambulate. A few, maybe a week ago, Sarah Jane and Cayume from Green Gulch. Cayume now serving as manager of the farm, a job that a few of us have been saddled with.

[24:14]

Anyway, he's now the current manager of the farming. Sarah Jane was a few seasons ago, and they thought, we can't really farm and grow food on a land that we don't know the boundaries of. So they spent the day from dawn to very dark, walking the mountain with a quiet mind. And letting themselves be lost. To lose yourself. To live always at the edge of mystery, the boundary of what you do not know. That's from Robert Oppenheimer, who very much lived in that frightening world. To live always at the edge of mystery, the boundary of the unknown. To step out and allow yourself to be lost. And in losing... family or friends or everything familiar falls away getting lost the unfamiliar appears so you lose what you know and you gain the unfamiliar if you can actually allow yourself to take the backward step step into what you do not know cannot control what does Picasso says I do not seek

[25:30]

I find. I do not seek. I find. And the bottom of the mind is paved with crossroads, unknown crossroads. So when you step, when you go forth, step into your work and your intention, those crossroads meet and marry. And you're called to stand at the junction. Trivia, a place where three trails meet. Trivia. Trivia. come into a trivial place where the trails meet and choose the way to go without knowing the answer. And beautiful guidance from Henry David Thoreau on walking. This is one of my favorite of passages. From 1840 until 1850, he spent a good 10 years exploring the 20 miles of wooded landscape in his neighborhood and getting to know it in every way. I wish to speak a word for nature, for absolute freedom and wildness. I wish to make an extreme statement.

[26:33]

I've met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived from Idle people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages and asked charity under pretense of going à la Saint-Terre to the Holy Land. I thought that was great. Till the children exclaimed, there goes a Saint-Terre, a Saint-Terre, a Holy Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks as they pretend are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds. but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from saunter, without land or a home, which therefore in the good sense will mean having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere, for this is the only secret of successful sauntering.

[27:37]

It is true that We are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers nowadays who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours and come round again at evening to the old hearthside from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. Go forth then on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return, prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father, mother, brother, sister, wife, child, husband, friends, partners, and never see them again, if you've paid your debts, made your will, settled all your affairs, and are a free person, then you're ready for a walk. Beautiful. Beautiful. I know I've read that in this... I've read the statement in this hall, but I just... I feel it's such an important teaching.

[28:43]

And, you know, to go forth with that kind of spirit is a kind of pilgrimage from the word parogen, like the falcon, to travel abroad. Beautiful. To be a foreigner, a stranger... to go forth, and not just walking locally. Some strangers, some pilgrims, sit absolutely still as Manjushri's sitting still, and some get up and step out. Some, like two very brave women I know and admire, make a journey all the way to Ethiopia to bring back their four daughters. Others go right into the heart of the matter where life is most dangerous, stand on the lines with fire, and poison fire all around them, and step in. So we're talking about pilgrimage that is beyond our usual notion of what we can do. And in the walking, some solution comes up.

[29:46]

Solvitur ambulando is the Latin for may it be solved by walking. So a pilgrim carries a question, carries a vow, carries an intention, carries and openness and readiness, not as an armor, not as a deflection, but as something that will always crack open that embalmed heart so it can live again and meet the actual living world on every step. In Buddhism, we say the character for mindfulness is two characters together, heart and mind together in the present moment. Heart and mind together in the present moment. So Buddhism or religion, and the environment meet when we can bring our heart and mind together in the present moment, fresh, ready, surprised, strange, unusual. Make it new, make it strange. The poet Tess Gallagher says, you cannot go slow until you're willing to go deep.

[30:51]

So we're talking about a deep intention to know what cannot be known and to walk into the great matter. My words are tied in one with the great mountains. This is a Jokic prayer. My words are tied in one with the great mountains, the great rocks, and the great trees, tied in one with my mind and heart. Will you help me with supernatural powers? You, day, you, night, you who see me, one with this earth. Beautiful prayer. from the native tradition. And so that intention is extremely important. And there's a beautiful poem that I love by Charles Wright, given me by a practitioner at the city center. She whispered to me, do you know the poetry of Charles Wright?

[31:54]

I don't, I said. She opened up her book and gave me this poem. And it really talks, speaks, the poet speaks directly to walking into a landscape you do not know and shows us the difference between sitting still and not going far afield at all and then the equal balancing, sitting still as Manjushri sits still, reminding us, sit still, don't move, take everything in. So much the vow of this practice period. And then also get up, Walk a field. Have your words be tied in one with the great mountains. Body and Soul is the name of the poem. The structure of landscape is infinitesimal. Like the structure of music, seamless, invisible, even the rain has larger sutures. What holds the landscape together and what holds music together is faith.

[32:57]

It appears faith of the eye. faith of the ear. Nothing like that in language. Here is the story of Tswongtang, a Buddhist monk. He went from Dhyan into southern India and back, on horseback, on camelback, on elephantback, and on foot, 10,000 miles of wandering from 629 to 645, mountains, deserts, in search of truth, the heart of the heart of reality, the law that would help him escape it, and all its attendant and inescapable suffering, and he found it. These days I look at things, not through them. Every true poem is a spark and aspires to the condition of original fire.

[33:58]

arising out of emptiness. It is that same emptiness it wants to reignite. It is that same engendering it wants to be re-engendered by. Wang Wei, on the other hand, before he was 30 years old, bought his famous estate on the Wang River, just east of the east end of the southern mountains, and lived there. off and on for the rest of his life. He never traveled the landscape. He stayed inside it, a part of nature himself, he thought. And who would say no to someone so bound up in solitude, in failure and suffering? Afternoon sky, the color of cream of wheat, a small dollop of butter, hazy at the western edge. I'm getting too old and lazy to write poems.

[34:59]

I watch the snow fall from the apple trees. Landscape, Wang Wei says, softens the sharp edges of isolation. I love that poem so much. And I feel it's such a deep practice poem. Sitting still, not moving at all, opening the heart to suffering and delight, and then getting up and walking, restless, Pilgrim, 10,000 miles. And of course, they each include each other. So I think, how does this connect to planting trees and to taking care of the natural world, meeting the natural world, following the mystery and magic, following the dragon veins of the landscape? And it's actually a description of landscape Qualities, landscape gardening. Follow the dragon veins of the landscape.

[36:02]

Follow the old lines. Follow the, as we're learning in our class at Indian Valley, follow the key line where the mountains meet, where the downward-facing mountains, the beautiful gesture, meet the upward-facing valleys. Follow the key line, those dragon veins, and get to know what your practice is. So many years ago... I remember that every solstice, every winter solstice, we make a pilgrimage. Those of us who are crazy enough to do this on the winter solstice, December 21st, at 5 o'clock in the morning, Yaakov and Dolores and Dahlia have kindled this pilgrimage when their son was just a little tiny baby. Actually, I think Dahlia was pregnant with... with her son. And we went up to Mount Tamalpais. And Jack had made these extraordinary lanterns, had cut out patterns in old tin cans.

[37:06]

And inside the tin cans had fixed a candle. And some of us met at Mount Tam at 5 o'clock in the morning on the slopes of the mountain and walked quietly through the forest for about 40 minutes, at some point stopping and igniting the candles and walking with this flickering candlelight. up to a lonely meadow and sitting in the meadow until sunrise. And at sunrise, Yaakov standing up and blowing a conch shell and everyone's yelling and screaming and gesturing with open arms toward what we thought was the... the bottomless ocean and the mysterious forest. And lo and behold, there was San Francisco in the morning. Well-hidden surprise, under the edge of the clouds. And so standing there, and for me, that's been an extraordinary reminder, and particularly because a good part of the walk is through a very dark forest that you know you will never get out of. So walking through that dark forest and...

[38:07]

coming out in this meadow and sitting, facing the city, facing the great mystery, and remembering the life of trees and how they hold us. And you never know who's with you in the forest because it's so dark. And it's so lovely when the light comes up and you look around. And about, I don't know, maybe close to 10 years ago, I looked around and lo and behold, there was Steve Stuckey and Lane Olson. They were in the meadow. And... When the conch shell rings, we stand up. And, oh, my heavens, Norman and Kathy were over in the corner. People I did not know were there with me in the meadow, with whom I've lived together here in this place and practiced. And so we stood up, and I remember Steve coming up. And at the point when the conch is blown and we celebrate the light, everybody breaks out, hidden muffins and hot tea. And I remember he had some of the muffin crumbs drizzling down his kind of... hairy face. And he was really excited.

[39:10]

And he said, I want to recite Emily Dickinson's poem. Dickinson? Yeah. Emily Dickinson's poem, The Brain is Wider Than the Sky. And so, of course, there are little camps all over, because there are many of us on the mountain meadow. So I remember this so vividly. He was standing there under the edge of the dark forest. And And a woman came up to him and said, I work with young people who've been incarcerated, and we've studied that poem. And Steve said, fantastic. And she said, they feel that the brain is dated language, and it should really be the mind is wider than the sky. Then let's change the poem, said Steve. And I remember that with the backdrop of the forest right there on the mountain. and thinking this is so much an expression of practice life and the ability to celebrate in that way.

[40:10]

The mind is wider than the sky, for put them side by side, the one the other will contain with ease, and you beside. The mind deeper than the sea, for hold them blue to blue, the one the other will absorb as sponges buckets do. And the mind is just the weight of God. For heft them, pound for pound, and they will differ if they do as syllable from sound. And I felt on that morning that the forest was giving us that poem. The mind of landscape was speaking. We'd walked off the edge. We had no idea where we were. There were muffin crumbs on everybody's front and hot cocoa smelling in the back and apple juice. And then poetry coming up out of the earth to remind us that the mind is wider than the sky, deeper than the sea, just the weight of God.

[41:11]

And the mind and forest and landscape all intertwined. And so I am so grateful for that. capacity and for the presence of this mountain and the opportunity to walk with a quiet mind. I also want to say that connected to that, and that's really an experience of being in unplanted forest. Now, this year, I was very aware up there in the morning. Oftentimes, we go no matter what. We don't think. We don't look outside. We try not to realize that it's freezing or, excuse me, in past years, pouring. We've gone up and hidden in the forest when the rain is clattering down, still to celebrate the rising of the light. But this year I was very aware that Stephen Lane were in Rohnert Park and that others of us were sitting there in the meadow. And still the mind is wider than the sky. There was some connectedness across time and space. When I think of how we came to celebrate this...

[42:15]

yearly event of planting trees. I did want to return to it because it's almost been 40 years. And Dr. Ernst E. F. Schumacher, the author of Small is Beautiful, came to Green Gulch in 1976. And Milgen Steve Stuckey was head of the farm during that time. He trained my husband to work on the match team of... Percher on Horses, Snipp and Jerry, not only Peter, but also others. And we were in the thick of building the farm and starting the farm. And Dr. Schumacher, who had just finished writing Small is Beautiful, wanted to come and see the work we were doing at Ten Center. And we had an incredible walk with him. He said, let's not hurry. And we spent the whole day... walking slowly through the fields. And he's an extraordinary teacher, well-trained from Oxford and also from Columbia University. As a young man, he was incarcerated in England because he fled Germany, not wanting to live in Nazi Germany during the war.

[43:19]

And he was incarcerated in England, and it was Keynes, the famous economist Keynes, had read a paper by E.F. Schumacher and actually... spoke out for his freedom and freed him from prison and had him be able to begin teaching in England. So his writing and work really originated from tremendous suffering and from a commitment to living in a world where small is beautiful and living as if people mattered. This book is considered one of the hundred most influential books since World War II. Have people read Red Small is Beautiful. There's a beautiful chapter in it on Buddhist economics, and he was remembering that with us in 1976. I was looking today at his dates. He died about six months later of a heart attack while he was teaching. But we didn't know that at the time, as we don't know.

[44:20]

And that day was a timeless day, and I remember in particular him interacting with Steve and really looking at the farm and the fields because he had a huge Fritz As he said, call me Fritz. Fritz Schumacher had a great appreciation for farming and had studied with the Gandhian movement in India. He really knew farming and how to grow food very well. At one point in the walk, he stopped, and actually we were close to coming up back to the Zendo, and he stopped and said, you know, consider having one day a year where you actually... plant some trees to take care of this landscape, he said, because you could use some trees. The wind was barreling through the valley, you know, like a wild train. He said, you could use, some trees would be wonderful here, not too many. But he said, you know, in the lifetime of the Buddha, there was an admonition for every person who practiced deeply with the Buddha to, in their lifetime, see to, plant and see to the establishment of five trees, in their lifetime.

[45:30]

monks and nuns, lay people and lay women, lay men, plant a tree and see to its establishment. So that was an incredible encouragement. And the next year we began with Arbor Day. But, you know, shortly thereafter, Steve and his family moved into Mill Valley. But he... He would often come back to Green Gulch. He was only in Mill Valley. He studied to be a contractor and started a wonderful group, Dharma I, in downtown Mill Valley. And came back, and once on one of his visits back to Green Gulch, we were remembering Dr. Schumacher's admonition, and he noticed a redwood tree, not even planted, that was living or barely living in a five-gallon bucket. He said, what's that? He said, oh, it's a tree that Suzuki Roshi planted a redwood tree, or somebody planted a redwood tree for Suzuki Roshi at Tassar, and that tree is suffering.

[46:31]

He said, I think it's suffering a little bit more now. He took it upon himself, even though he lived in Mill Valley, to plant that tree out by the guest house. And every week, he came to Green Gulch and watered it for years. This is a branch. and that beautiful tree, it's a good 30 or 40 feet high. Now it is the guardian tree out by the guest house. And every time I see it, driving in at night, I see that dark silhouette, and I feel the intention and presence of Steve Stuckey. And also a practice, not just Steve, well-trained and serious about this relationship and relatedness. So it takes that kind of presence... to keep going lifetime after lifetime. And the last story I want to tell is about some later years at Green Gulch after Dr. Schumacher encouraged us to plant trees.

[47:43]

And we did. You'll see if you look at the posters in the dining room. The carpenters then thought, yes, it's true. If we're going to be building buildings and harvesting wood from somewhere in the world, then we're going to be planting back trees. I remember Paul Disco and the carpentry crew. When I look at those records, I think we really did do that. 500 redwood seedlings, 500 Monterey pine. Oh, my Lord, why we did that, I'll never know. 500 Douglas fir. We went out, and a sign of a good and honest carpenter who was also planting as well as practicing was he or she would be covered with boysen oak for the entire month of January and February, scratching and... and remembering what it took to plant the trees. But we began that in earnest in 1976 and kept going. And years later, we were in the field one day working with our teacher and guide, Harry Kellett Roberts, who helped us in the early years of Green Gulch and had a particularly strong relationship with Steve Stuckey.

[48:43]

So Harry Roberts would do every Sunday afternoon, we had a meeting in the field where he would sit with some of us, and we would just look, look at something. It was torturously slow and quiet. And we would look and stare at the landscape until we could see something. And Harry would often see something there that we didn't see. We were talking about planting fruit trees, beginning to plant fruit trees. And I write about this in Gardening at the Dragon's Gate. But this experience of sitting there with Steve Stupke and the garden crew and the farm crew, looking at a naked hillside with intensity. It was September, hot and dry. And Harry kept saying to us, what do you see? What do you see? What do you see? Finally, I'm happy to say, I noticed a little blur of green underneath the grass. And Harry went ballistic with joy. He said, right. go out there. And he sent Steve out, because Steve was tall, and we could see Steve through the grass.

[49:48]

We sent him out with a big, tall pole, and he went out onto the meadow, and we directed him from where Harry was sitting, where to actually plant that pole in the ground, and yelling, no, to the right, to him, sorry. Anyway, thank you. Thank you very much. Anyway. He planted, we planted that pole on the ground and then in the winter planted a King David tree there, an apple tree. And we planted other trees around that meadow. There's pictures of that Arbor Day planting. I think it was 1980. And none of the trees succeeded except the King David tree because I had, with consistent encouragement from Harry, seen that blur of green and the tree had its roots in a secret spring. that was on the meadow. And Harry knew from the lay of the land, from the key line of the land, there must be water moving through that hill. We didn't know it. And he taught us to see and took a long time and a long risk.

[50:51]

And Harry Roberts is buried right above that site. He said, when I die, throw me on the ash heap. We thought, well, we did our best. And you are, in fact, the ash heap now. So he's buried on a pile of rocks. And he reminded us very strongly, very simple teaching. Let me see if I can find it. The heart of the tree holds its history. Without heart, no tree can stand. The heart of the tree holds its history. Without history and memory, no tree can live. He really was trained in the Yurok tradition and living on the mouth of the Klamath River, trained in that tradition. And every summer he went home to the Smith River and the Klamath.

[51:53]

And a number of those summers, Steve Stuckey went with him to learn how to see and to be a more observant practitioner. So a huge amount of gratitude today is for the opportunity to continue this tradition. Harry and Steve dreamed a long dream of planting a border, a shrub border of Northwest Coast native shrubs and actually celebrating the natural history of those shrubs. And we're going to be doing that today, I'm happy to say, in the lower fields where farm and wildland meet. So we'll have a beautiful planting day. Lots of other wonderful projects are settled and we're waiting to do. But, you know, most important of all is to walk. Walk on walking. Walk on walking. Under root, under foot, earth turns. Streams and mountains never stay the same.

[52:55]

Gary Snyder's insight into Mount Tamalpais. Walk on walking. Underfoot, earth turns, streams and mountains never stay the same. So a huge amount of gratitude for each and every one of you coming out and just the opportunity to remember and celebrate Dharma friendship and the capacity to work together and learn together, religion and environment running together. We'll have a great dialogue about that, how that actually works. And I look forward to being in conversation with you and for those of you who can stay to planting this afternoon. And then just to close with, I will not sing because I'll get too choked up, but this was one of Steve Stuckey's favorite songs. We always sang it when we worked in the field. And it was a signature song for Pete Seeger, who followed Steve to the great majority. A few weeks after Steve died, Pete Seeger died.

[53:58]

To my old... Brown earth, and to my old blue sky, I now give these last molecules of eye. You who sing, and you who stand nearby, I charge you not to cry. Guard well our human chain. Watch well, keep it strong, as long as sun will shine. And this our home, keep pure, sweet, and green, for I am yours and you also are mine. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful day all day. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize

[54:59]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[55:12]

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