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. The talk this morning, I had planned to bring something up, and then I did a kind of an about face, and this morning something else came up. So anyway, I'm going to do my best to share with you some things that are on my mind.

[01:00]

I wanted to thank the Abbot Jiryu for inviting me to give a Dharma talk and to lead the one-day sitting yesterday. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Linda Cutts. And a year ago, last week, I moved from Green Gulch to the Zen-inspired senior living area. Enzo Village in Healdsburg. So this is the first time since then that I've come back except for a couple ceremonies and stayed overnight and just been in the valley and it's been quite lovely. I mentioned yesterday at the one day sitting the quiet The silence in the evening and the darkness.

[02:06]

No ambient light, really no light pollution. And how wonderful that is. And also this morning when I came out of the Zendo, there were 40, I counted, about 40 quail having breakfast on the lawn of all sizes. And, you know, living at Green Gulch, those kinds of things were quotidian, you know, just life at Green Gulch, including bobcats wandering around and blue herons. And there's less of that where I'm living now, so it was kind of wonderful. Um... So this week, last week marks this one year anniversary for me, and I also heard about another anniversary, major anniversary of a particular verdict that was passed, and I'll come back to that later, but it was something I didn't know about.

[03:27]

Maybe some of you do know about it. And I wanted to, this is what I mean by the about face, I wanted to fuse what I wanted to say about our practice and have this verdict about the climate crisis be shown as an example. of our practice. So, just starting out with the Zen story, one of our ancestors in this lineage, this particular lineage, named Dungshan, he had various teachers, one teacher named Nanuan, who he practiced with for a while and left.

[04:28]

to go on to visit other teachers. And when he left Nanyuran, Nanyuran said to him, make a thorough study of Buddha Dharma, these are his parting words, make a thorough study of Buddha Dharma and widely benefit the world. And Dung San said, I have no question about studying, continuing to study Buddhadharma, but what do you mean by widely benefiting the world? What does that mean? And Nanyuran's response, his answer was, there's two translations. One is not to disregard a single thing. Or do not leave out a single thing.

[05:32]

And Dungshan is one of the ancestors in our particular Soto Zen lineage. And when we recite the names of the Buddhas and ancestors, Dungshan is an important teacher for us. Do not leave out a single thing. and widely benefiting the world. So recently, I was once again reminded of something, but in a way that struck home strongly for me, which was that this lineage, through Suzuki Roshi, our founder, and the other teachers in Japan, to Dogen in the 1200s, who went to China, and this lineage of teachers practicing Buddhism, sotos, this particular school, you might say, or lineage, has a particular wind of the family house, or memitsu no kafu.

[06:52]

Wind of the family house is like It's the way. Sometimes you hear people say that's Suzuki Roshi's way or someone's way. There's many different ways, different teachers, different schools, different countries where Buddhism was planted have a particular way. And the Soto Zen of this lineage and maybe all of Soto Zen, one of the main ways is that the finding of the truth of reality and the absolute is found no other place than in the phenomenal world, our regular, everyday, daily activities and everyday mind.

[07:53]

And this without putting that into words, is maybe why many people in this room were drawn, you know, to practicing Zen. It seemed kind of down to earth and careful about, I mean, all the different arts that flowed from this practice of peace ceremony and calligraphy arts and so forth, and taking care of our daily life and finding beauty in the regular activities. As Layman Pang, the Chinese teacher and lay practitioner, said, my amazing activities are

[08:58]

chopping wood and drawing water, carrying wood and drawing water, just right in those very simple daily activities like fixing my robe just now, you know, taking the time to care for our space, our bodies, and the forms and ceremonies of the practice is this hallmark of Japanese Soto Zen practice. And it, for me, it's always grounded things rather than some lofty, oh, how can I ever reach this in the clouds kind of practice. It was pay attention to chopping in the kitchen, to sweeping, to cleaning and emphasizing the time spent cleaning, dusting, caring for our spaces.

[10:06]

There's an old story which I read before I came to Zen Center in a little book of Zen stories called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, which you may have seen. It was, I think, published maybe in the 50s. Paul Reps, or for sure, 60s. And one of the stories in there was about a student talking, going to a teacher named Yu Shu, who was a calligrapher, and he asked this teacher, please write something, you know, calligraph something of great wisdom for me. And the teacher wrote... This, which translates into English as attention. And the student said, he was unsatisfied.

[11:13]

Can't you give me a little bit, you know, something more, you know, great wisdom. And the teacher wrote this again, second time. And he said, well, that's not very subtle or profound. Can't you do something else? And he wrote it again. Attention, attention, attention. And this, in Japanese, this character is Nen. And I'll say a little bit more about the character in a minute. But finally, this student said, well, what does attention mean? And for a fourth time, he said, attention. So what I said about this way of the family house or this caring for the details and the activities of our everyday life calls upon us to be present and to pay, we say in English, pay attention.

[12:21]

So this nen, this ampe, There's two parts to the character. The top part, like the tent and those other strokes, means present moment, now. It also has the feeling of contact. And then the bottom is the character for heart, and it's also used by in Japanese and Chinese, that character is heart and mind, heart-mind. So, nen, this attention, is this combination of being completely present, right now, right here, with a heart, or, you know, heart-mind, wholeheartedness.

[13:24]

The mind part can be ideas, and it can also mean prayer. So we have a chant, actually, that we do regularly. It's a chant called the Enmei Jukku Kano Gyo, the 10-line verses for protecting life of the Bodhisattva of infinite compassion. And in that chant, the word nen is mentioned many times. It's in Japanese. In the chant, it says chōnen kanze on them. Chō is mourning. Mourning my thoughts or my attention, my being present is on infinite compassion. Chōnen. khanzeyon and bo nen khanzeyon.

[14:29]

Bo is evening. So morning, my thoughts are infinite compassion. Evening, my thoughts are infinite compassion. And these thoughts are attention now, right now. And there's another part in this chan. Nen nen ju shen ki, nen nen fu ri shen. And that translates in various ways. But one is a rising mind and calling mind. So this mind that arises right here and now, be attentive to it, attentive to, in this case, compassion. Another translation of mourning my thoughts is through the day. my thoughts are infinite compassion. And the evening through the night, my thoughts are infinite compassion.

[15:32]

So Nen, it's kind of a cluster of meanings that call up with our full attention, our full hearts, heart and mind. We live out our life and share our life encouraging others with this practice, helping the great earth and one another. That's our practice life. So I've been kind of turning this nen and attention and came upon something that I was reading in, I guess it's a webpage, a website called Meditations in an Emergency, written by Rebecca Solnit, and she's become more and more known.

[16:41]

She practiced at San Francisco Zen Center. I think Blanche Hartmanly ordained her And she has a very keen mind and deep mind, and it's suffused with practice, these essays she writes. So this essay I came upon was about this anniversary, a one-year anniversary of this verdict that was arrived at by the highest court in the world, The Hague, the Court of World Justice. And there's a number of quotes that I wanted to say to you

[17:51]

There's people who have said this verdict that I never heard of, I don't know if you heard of it, but Rebecca Solnitz said you've probably never heard of it, was probably, this is a quote from someone, probably the most important verdict that's come down in the history of humanity. And it was like, it just struck me so strongly. Like there's something of which I didn't know that affects us all and affects all life. And so I wanted to talk about how this came to be in relation to taking care of the everyday, our everyday life and attention. That is my effort this morning.

[18:53]

So the history of this verdict that went to this court, the International Court of Justice and the ruling that came from it, started out in 2019 a group of 27 law students from a tiny, a very small South Pacific island called Vanuatu. Vanuatu. And these were young people. And they thought, and were talking amongst themselves, how can we do something about the climate crisis? A little parenthetically, I was with a young person, spending time with a young person, little, like seven, and we were driving somewhere to get ice cream, and the place that they liked to go was closed, but there was another place, like, right next door.

[20:11]

It was very, very hot. It was about 100 degrees, and to get to walk to this second ice cream store was kind of through brambles, and it wasn't like a path. It was like just sort of untended land. And I said, let's drive over, which was, we could have walked, but it was really hot, and I didn't want to pick through the brambles, right? Inconvenient. And so this young person said, we shouldn't drive if we don't need to because of the climate change, climate change. And I thought, yes, that's true, but I actually, I wanted to get in that air-conditioned car and, you know, go over to the next place, but I didn't want to. So I said, yes, I know that, but it's very short, excuse me, it's very short

[21:17]

And I want to drive. But there's the climate change, and we shouldn't be driving. And we kind of locked horns, so to speak. I mean, it wasn't a major thing. But I said, I really just want to drive. And then there was this kind of a sad... breakdown of communication between us. He went, we got the ice cream, but it wasn't fun anymore because we weren't in harmony. And that's a little side story. So these young people from Vanuatu said, we want to do something. And, you know, picturing yourself with a group of friends in college. They're law students. And this little tiny island that not many people even know exists.

[22:23]

What can we do, you know? But they have the kind of, you know, this attention and heart. And I don't think they knew exactly, but we're gonna try. And so they hired a lawyer from an organization called Blue Ocean that does this kind of work. The founder of it is Julian Aguano, I think. I probably got that name wrong. Aguan, Aguan. So this is in 2019. And they brought it. By 2023, they brought it and got it to the U.N., to be taken up this proposal. And then the UN referred it to The Hague, to the International Court of Justice, and they took it up.

[23:30]

And in 2024, it came before this court. And there were 97 countries that were there from Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and small nations, and like 10 different organizations, climate organizations, all of whom, all of which, all of them made statements to the court. And I wanted to say... A few of the things that were in the... They... Well, let's see. I wrote these down. They said that there is agreement among nations, but there's no consequences if you don't do something about...

[24:38]

emissions and climate emissions. And the verdict was that all nations, and this was huge, after all these people spoke and these young people worked together, the verdict from the court was that all nations have a legal obligation to act in response to climate change. And they have to regulate businesses that are harming the environment and cause emissions wherever that harm might occur. And sustainable environment is a fundamental human right. And this part, there's an intergenerational equity intergenerational equity, the rights of the unborn and the young have to be taken into account for all these in terms of interpreting the climate obligations.

[25:54]

So this person who was their special envoy for this group from Vanuatu, a man named Ralph this is a quote, I choose my words carefully when I say this may well be the most consequential case in the history of humanity. That's for that quote then, in the history of humanity. And Christiana Figures, who negotiated the Paris Accords, wrote or spoke in her podcast, this is without a doubt the most far-reaching, the most comprehensive, and the most consequential legal opinion we've ever had.

[26:57]

And I had a kind of thrill that this happened. I hadn't known about it. In July 2025, maybe you're more, I know more about this than I did. But that came down. And then last week, 2026, there was a resolution from the UN to adopt the findings and this verdict of the court. I think it was 114 countries and eight said no. You can imagine who they might have been who said no and tried to stop the resolution. And 28 abstained. So this quality

[28:03]

I was so moved by it, the power that these students had and stuck to and how they did it in a way. It's power that's not based on a kind of coercion and violence, and it's the power of... working together, finding common ground, sharing your life, compassion, thinking of others. It's that kind of power. And there's this book that also Rebecca Zulnit wrote an essay about called How Flowers Took Over the World. Maybe some of you have read it. It's about the unstoppable power of flowers, which were late coming into the world.

[29:14]

Actually, they just came in like two million years ago. And after a million years, there were flowers covering the earth and the main things in terms of food and pollination. And they did it with and attracting fellow beings to work together, this kind of thing. That's the power that these people were working with. And because I've been looking at attention and Our everyday life, that's where we ground ourselves to work with the biggest of issues, like the reality of all life.

[30:25]

The fact that these people have said this, the consequence of this for turning things is... you know, hard to even describe the most consequential for humanity. So I, it encouraged me, it more than encouraged, it inspired me in a way to once again vow and re-consecrate myself to care for that which is right in front of us. And because of the truth that that which is what in front of us is the entire one mind,

[31:33]

interconnected, whole. Those practices are not just to take care of my space and my stuff. Each thing that we do with our daily life is, is Buddha Dharma, is connected with all, has an effect on not just right here, but we don't know even the effect. So our careful and attentive practice, attention, attention, attention, has unknown consequences. So what does that mean for us? I'm not meaning to have a... I'm asking us all to ask ourselves, I'm not saying what anyone should do.

[32:36]

And what this Julian Aguan was saying, the person who started Blue Oceans to take up these issues, every single thing you do can help. The smallest thing, whatever it may be. And he said, even... you know, staying at home and taking care of kids and raising kids to be caring and loving. And, you know, that has enormous consequences. And then there's people who are on the front lines of this kind of work, international work. But that's... You know, each person has their own unique way to contribute and with joyous effort to the well-being.

[33:46]

I think often people get the wrong understanding of practice or feel like it's can be self-serving or separated from the world, or those are important practices to stabilize and deepen and train ourselves to be attentive, to be able to stay with what is in front of you, because it's not always, as we know, easy. And it can be intense and it can be painful and sad. It's not all flowers and beauty. But there's beauty in our way of being with everything. So we do need to practice and train and maybe step outside a regular

[34:55]

active life for time. However, we are the world. The whole human body is the entire universe. Our human body is the entire universe. These are teachings of oneness that you know, we touch into in our life's practice, in our sitting, in our time in nature, and our time with beings. So, I think that's

[35:55]

what I had wanted to bring up with you. And I'm not sure what time it is. It's 11. And we have time for questions. Is that true? A little bit? Yeah. Okay. So... Does anyone have anything they'd like to add or ask about? Yes. I don't know if this is on. Hi, thank you. I've worked extensively in social change and I've become very disillusioned and jaded and lost hope. And so everything you're saying when the small things really do matter, I find that hard to believe anymore and I want to so badly. So please help me bring back hope.

[36:59]

Well, I think that often happens when we're doing really intense work and working with people and the clashes and the anger and the hatred that can, you know, our good works can... also touch into shadow side where we're just angry all the time and bitter and you're not doing enough and I am and all that happens. And I don't know what your practices are but to know we need to have restorative time and rest and care for ourselves, that is part of the work. That makes a lifetime activist if you have time for restoring, regulating your own needs, and then back on the front lines or in the trenches.

[38:01]

And for some people, it has become burnout. And they can't go back, but they can do other things. read, stay up on things, give money, demonstrate maybe you're, yeah. But taking care of yourself is just, I can't emphasize it enough. You know, we have these practices called the six perfections, and one of them, well, generosity, ethical life, patience, and one of them is effort and joyous effort. And in the commentary on joy as effort, it talks about rest, as you have to have rest. You can't just do joy as effort, joy, and on and on. You can't. So rest is part of it.

[39:05]

OK. Thank you. Thank you for your work that you're doing. Ray is heading to someone. Hi, thank you so much for your talk. I really appreciate the guidance to rest and the perfection of joyous effort. And I'm also finding that as I look more deeply into some of the green talk, you know, the green technologies and even some of the mainstream green nonprofits, frankly, are now kind of headed up by the same people that, in my opinion, have a vested interest in the status quo. So although there is a lot of investment happening right now with green tech, for instance, there's some that looks very promising, but there's others, frankly, that are not about life-sustaining processes on planet Earth.

[40:16]

And so my question to you is, when you witness so much suffering in this time and you see so much of what's going on, how can you remember to take the time for practices such as restoration and sweeping and taking your mind off the problems when... there's just a lot coming at everybody all the time. You know what I mean? And like, I just, I'm thinking also of, there's a Zen priest in Ukraine who planted trees by a lake a couple of years ago. And I just, I'm very inspired by that ideal, but I'm wondering if you have any additional suggestions for just maintaining, uh, joyous effort and composure in these times that we live in.

[41:20]

Thank you. You know, we have an enormous amount of power and we often direct it in ways that are just dissipation or not of benefit to ourselves or anyone else, but we get into habits of spending our time in that way. And I think at the end, your question was, how do we remember, I think you used the word remember, to take care of ourselves. And I think... It's almost how do we remember to practice, you might say. There are ways where you build it into your life.

[42:24]

And because why? Because you need to. And there's choice points, you know. Do I take a walk in nature or do I fiddle with something? And sometimes... It's habit energy. Oh, I'll just watch this. Not that watching things are not okay. How to build in these ways that are very sustaining. And you can ask for help, too, from your friends and family and people who love you and your dog. Let's go. Let's go for a walk. And it builds on itself because the more you take care of yourself, the more you're able to respond to others, be there for your life, be there for your work, your family, the earth.

[43:32]

It comes together. It's not just for yourself alone. Thank you for your question. Hi, Linda. Hi. I want to make a little offering on this topic, if I could. May I just make a comment on this topic in general? Yes. A year ago in January, I was in this room after a three-week intensive period. It was the last question of the last moment. And my teacher, I think your teacher, Reb Anderson, was there. And I said, Reb, are we practicing because... The Buddha didn't know about climate change. So what has all this got to do to help us with, and I actually use that example of climate change. And so are we practicing just because we have it or because it actually has something to do with these times and the climate?

[44:39]

And my recollection of the answer was, no, the Buddha did not know about climate change, but that when we practice, when we do the practices, We become people who are more able and more resourceful and more grounded in our work on climate change. And somehow that just kind of all came together for me. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you so much. Hi. My name is Jerry, and I just want to say how grateful I am for being here, for your talk, for the wisdom you've impart upon us. And it seems to come full circle in the sense that I lived in a shared space. And yesterday I went to this beautiful event outdoors. And when I came back, I was tired from the heat, from the excitement.

[45:41]

Say it again. I was tired from the heat and the excitement when I came back. And a friend offered to sit and relax and watch TV. And I looked around in my setting and I said, that's wonderful. Thank you for the offer. But I think I'm going to stay outside and pull some weeds. Clean. And in those moments, I found that peace, that sense of mindfulness just to be present with what I was doing and fully immersed. But I noticed people who lived there came out and suddenly they were cheery and brighter. And they said, wow, it looks so great out here. but they hadn't noticed them there to begin with. So when you talk about being present with the everyday things, it really shows to me the interconnectedness that we have and how some small act can have such an impact on a person's experience in the moment.

[46:43]

So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Anne from Austin's Inn. Yes. And thank you so much for your teaching and presence this weekend. I was wondering, in light of learning about the decision that came down from the Hague, would that influence your approach to getting ice cream? Would you go through the brambles or... ride to the car at this juncture? Oh, maybe that wasn't clear. We did drive over.

[47:47]

And that was after you had heard about the decision from... Oh, no, no, no. It was before. It was before. It just came up this morning because part of this decision included the rights of the unborn, you know, as so important, the intergenerational. Just thinking of this little person... And so much of our young people, you know, have this burden that we of a certain age didn't know we have, but we didn't have of our earth is being destroyed. You know, I mean, we had the atom bomb, that was one thing, but this all pervasive, and it's psychologically, I think, very detrimental, and there's depression in children, and somehow that story came up to me when I heard about this verdict of that thing that happened with us around.

[48:52]

I was just wondering if you were in that circumstance again with that knowledge of the decision that came down, do you think you would bushwhack through the brambles, or would you ride in the car, and what would inform that decision, I guess? Yeah. Yeah, I might have just... It's hard to say. I was really hot. You know, that's the other thing. It was so hot. And recently, I had a friend who was coming from Italy, supposed to be coming for a visit for two weeks. It's so hot in Rome. And then his mother was affected by that and got sick, and he couldn't come. It was like... I just felt it was... It's our world. It's our world. Yeah. Anyway. So I can't say. What? Yeah.

[49:54]

A couple questions from the online sangha. Susan is... looking for where she can find what was written regarding a sustainable environment? What I was talking about? Yeah. So the website, I guess that's a website. That's what it's called. Anyway, it has her essays, Rebecca Solnit's Meditations in an Emergency. And she's a great writer, and she goes... at it in a way that I can feel her practice in there. So meditation's in an emergency. Yeah. Thank you so much. And Lee asks, can you talk about attention with regard to Zazen meditation? Yeah. So we... You know, when...

[51:03]

When we sit, cross-legged sitting, imagine she's asking about sitting meditation, zazen. We start paying attention before, you know, if we're going to sit, we also have to take care of whether we got to sleep at a good time the night before and not having... too much stimulants, so you're already taking care of your zazen long before you put your bottom on the cushion. What are you going to wear? If you have meditation clothes that are easy to move in or take your posture in, so you're aware of that and the underclothes and being clean, brush your teeth, that's all good. paying attention to your zazen. Actually, zazen is your life, you know, so you're paying attention to all the aspects of your life.

[52:10]

But then you come into, let's say you're sitting in a temple or a meditation center where there's forms. Those forms are meant to support your practice. They're not meant to make you into an automaton who does it just... perfectly like everybody else. It's to be present, be in your body, be conscious of your limbs and feet and head. And so you follow the forms that were created by human beings for us, for our meditation practice and our life's care, which means being present when you step in the room. when you walk, when you take your seat. So all that's part of it. And then arranging yourself. Let's see. In the Fukan Zazengi, the Universal Admonitions for Zazen, it talks about, you know, how you tuck in your clothes and arrange your robes or your clothes.

[53:26]

All that's paying attention, and that will help your zazen. If you just sort of land on your chair or your cushion, your mind is, all these things are helping to bring yourself moment by moment right here, right now. And so, yes, we take care of our posture and breath with care and heart. and find our best posture, which changes over time. That includes the right cushion, the right height, the right softness, or chair that works, the right height, all those things. That's your asem practice. And I could go on, actually, forever about that kind of attention. Breath.

[54:29]

unifying your body, your breath, and your mind. Start with body and breath. And also pay attention to what arises, the bubbles, and pay attention to tendencies to grab and push away. And find upright, allowing. Letting go, allowing. Sorry, I don't want to give us an instruction exactly right now, but... Attention. Nen. Okay. Yeah, thank you so much. My name is Liliana. I come from the Austin Zen Center. Thank you for your instruction. Thank you for being here. And your talk. yesterday during the one-day sit and your talk today. And I just have a comment.

[55:31]

I don't know if you all followed the soccer World Cup that just took place. And there was an article about the Japanese fans who were known to clean the stadiums after the games. They even brought their own trash bags. And they would just do it spontaneously. And people were like, why are you doing this? It's like... just an extension of their cultural practices that I understand that, you know, I haven't been to Japan, but that they're so clean and so conscious of taking care of their environments. And I think they've made people reflect and go like, wow, we're making a mess of this place. Kind of be a little embarrassed, you know, by their generosity in a way. Thank you. Thank you. There's a documentary about children in Japanese nursery schools and this is cultural, this is taught very, very early, cleaning together as a class and serving each other food and different things that when you come to practice as an adult, this Soto Zen practice and you're shown

[56:52]

these kinds of forms of serving and cleaning and doing temple cleaning. We have to be trained. I think many of us were not trained really thoroughly in the art of what is that Marie Kanto? The art of tidying up as a practice and a daily life's activity that you appreciate and want to do. Yeah. So very, very early. And I don't, I don't think it's quite the same in this culture as far as I know. Yeah. Which Suzuki Roshi had to deal with, like teaching people to wash their feet after they walked around San Francisco all day with no shoes and then wanted to go to the Tatami Buddha Hall. You know, it's like, no. You have to clean up your act.

[57:57]

Thank you very much for your attention. Let's dedicate the positive energy of our time together. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[58:33]

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