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. I'd like to dedicate this morning's Dharma Talk on Arbor Day to Jeremiah Nathan, a child of this watershed and a son of a deep ocean. Eyes of compassion, observing sentient beings, assemble an ocean of blessing beyond measure. What a pleasure to be here with you this morning, this beautiful day celebrating the gift of trees and the practice of deep dharma. A wonderful time in the life of Green Gulch Farm, beginning the 61st practice period.

[01:06]

61st practice period, it's wonderful to say that. With Furia Schrader presiding and practitioners coming from the Ten Directions to deepen the work of meditation and mindfulness. And, particularly, Concern and activism and response to the calls of the world. Many years ago, Dainan Katagiri Roshi reminded us that any time we assemble for a practice period, for a time of committing to sit deep and long and strong, looking at the world and also looking at the causes and conditions that give rise to our own awareness and response, We are like a so-rin, he said, a forest thicket. And I always loved that example because so-rin, forest thicket, means that many different practitioners come together to raise up the commitment to sit and to look deeply at the world we're living in and sitting in.

[02:24]

So so-rin time right now, forest thicket. thicket beginning just a week ago or so. Wonderful time to be together. And also a wonderful time to remember the deep work that we're called to do in the world. So this morning, I'd like to reflect a little bit with you about that work and acknowledge where we are in the life of the world today, the 17th of February, Inclining Moon, strengthened light shining on the earth, plants raising up and growing, and also a time of tremendous environmental and ecological challenge. A gratitude to the many who will gather today in consolidation with thousands of citizens coming from all over the country and joining in Washington, D.C., to remember to call out a cry and prayer for mindfulness as we

[03:27]

contemplate how to live with the riches of the world? Will we in fact be, will we in fact continue to extract oil from the heart of the earth to live our life? Or can we actually make a turn and live more like a forest thicket? So today, two o'clock at the, one o'clock at the fairy plaza. many citizens gathering in awareness, in mindful awareness. And we here at Green Gulch, making the commitment to spend a full afternoon, timeless time, in the heart of timeless spring, planting and tending trees. Extraordinary gift, an application of mindfulness. So... We have a tradition which began actually in 1976 with Dr. E.F.

[04:29]

Schumacher, the author of Small is Beautiful. He reminded us that in the lifetime of the Buddha, the Buddha called upon his disciples to spend time planting and seeing to the maintenance of five trees in your practice lifetime. Now, I've never found a citation like that in any of the teachings, but I am set out to believe Dr. E. F. Schumacher. Small is beautiful economics, Buddhist economics. And I know he lived and trained before writing Small is Beautiful for many seasons with... with Gandhi and in that movement in India, looking at peaceful nonviolence and how to create economic reality as if the world really mattered and informed us. So I appreciate that reminder. And His Holiness the Dalai Lama cites from the Vinaya the call to plant and care for the natural world as part of our practice.

[05:31]

So a beautiful reminder. And I love it that five trees were all that was... I remember in the early years of Barbara Dane, after 1976, we planted 500 Douglas fir and Monterey pine, and we're still sawing out the carcasses of that enthusiasm. Sawing that out and hauling it up and burning it on the no-burn days in our chimneys and in our stoves. So sometimes a beautiful and small commitment is sufficient. So today, we... we move out, we fan across this watershed, and begin to learn again what it means to practice in the heartbeat and in the thicket of our lives. We are here to awaken. I love this statement from Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. We are here, poet and activist practitioner, he's in his 80s,

[06:35]

more than 60, 65 years of practice. We are here to awaken from the illusion of separateness. And I think in particular, in this season, and we are in a very memorable season in the Buddhist tradition as well, because just a few days ago on Friday, the 15th of February, we celebrated here in this breathing room. I like to think of the zendo as a breathing room. Every being needs a little breathing room in our lives just to contemplate where we are. This is a great breathing room with porous walls, semi-permeable membrane. And in this breathing room, the... the call to remember the life and passing of the Buddha. So the great pari nirvana, or the entering into final nirvana of the Buddha, is celebrated in northern Buddhist countries in the Mahayana tradition on either the 8th or 15th of February.

[07:38]

So this year, the 15th of February. Traditional ceremony, chanting, remembering the lifetime of the Buddha. So today's remarks, I want to... In today's remarks and encouragement and dharma inquiry, I'd like to bring up the pari nirvana or the great extinguishing of concepts which we have the capacity and opportunity to connect with in these times and especially in this season of uplift and gathering. So remembering that awakening from the illusion of of any separateness, right in our body, mind, in the constitution of our physical life. 20 elements make us who we are. Four from the air, 16 from the living ground, from the soil, the grit of the ground. Two of the four key bases of DNA come from clay compounds submerged in water.

[08:42]

So the very clay, the very atoms of water, attractiveness that make up the soil of this valley and our own bodies, connect us to all beings in the human world, and we love to say the more than human world. So take the time in this breathing room today to, as Joanna Macy reminds us, let's act our age, come down to being four and a half billion years old, and remember what we're made of. Forget about the illusion of separateness. and rejoin the awareness of all that is. So four elements from the air, 16 from the living ground. And does it take, does it have to take a gigantic meteor hurling through time and space, falling again on Siberia as a meteor did in the early 1900s, exploding,

[09:43]

Copping out our windows, the glazed world that keep us separate from each other, does it take a celestial force like that to really remind us of who we are? These are times when the elemental world is coming very close to our lives and bracing us, strengthening us, and hopefully shaking us awake. Storm, fire, drought, rain, The record snows, wind, water, and all of the elements of the world calling on us to wake up from the illusion of our separateness and come forward, come forth from the dream. Waking up, written on a wall in the Soho District of New York. Dreaming is a luxury. Waking up is an emergency. So now, graffiti on the wall. so-called graffiti on the wall, a message from the heart of the world.

[10:46]

So waking up is an emergency. It's the emergent reality we find ourselves in right now. How do practitioners of the way wake up from the illusion of our separateness? And I posit to you that that awakening has to begin by facing the world that we have created, that we've conspired to allow to be. through the way we live. So, beautiful comment from Leonardo da Vinci, that we will pay more attention to the celestial heavens above us than to the soil underfoot. Yes, he says, we know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil under our very feet. So in considering the life of the forest, the so-rin thicket of practice, have to begin with the ground underfoot.

[11:52]

Ground. from wonderful old ancient meaning. There's a fish called the grinding that swims along the bottom of the ocean, feed the bottom feeders, taking nourishment from the ground, from the base, from the fundamental awareness. So if in fact we are, and we are, made of the 20 elements, we share these elements with all beings, then it is definitely seasonal time to settle down and come to ground level and remember who we are and what our work is. So the grinding swims along the bottom and the cognate with ground greened and also to grind, to go down, to face the abyss. So ground, the ground of awareness is a mighty matter and it underlies our practice. And beautiful to pause this morning and to look at the Shakyamuni Buddha with one hand, stretched out to touch the earth, not, as we often say, to call on the earth to be his witness, or maybe not only.

[13:00]

Usually the usual interpretation is the Buddha touches the ground to call on the ground to support practice. I think just as much the hand on the ground is a reminder that I am not and will never be separate from all that is. from the ground, from the abyss, from the bottom-feeding world that is this Zaha realm in which we practice. So that hand on the earth is a reminder, touch the ground, come. awareness of the earth the ground come down and be human and often the left hand extended showing the naked palm fear not these two gestures touching the ground the left the hand extended showing the naked palm I carry no weapons I come as a friend to practice with you and with with all members of the human world and the more than human world so carrying no weapons and

[14:02]

also touching the ground and recognizing the joined identity. So in 100 years, it takes a full century for a precious inch of topsoil to be formed. And yet, millions of tons of soil wash every year into the Mississippi River. Every second, every second, a dump load of soil flows into the Caribbean. And each year, American farms shed enough soil, ground, earth, to fill a pickup truck for every family in the United States, and that's every year. So extraordinary loss of this primary wealth through our carelessness and inability to remember who we are and what we're made of. I promise you,

[15:02]

This will not be an hour of bummer. I do promise. But we have to at least sink down to the elemental truth. And without that, we can't be fully who we are without remembering how we live and what the consequences are. So soil is the skin of the earth. I like to think of it as the epidermal frontier that joins together the skin layers, the cellular layers of biology and geology. coming together, flowing together with a monstrous magnetism. In half a pound of living soil, a sheer eight ounces, there is the equivalent through all the little tiny particles of clay in that of 200 acres of land. So can we, in a handful, in half a pound of soil, expand our consciousness and awareness to widen our capacity? That's the call of meditation practice.

[16:05]

We sit down still deep and long and strong in the saddle to get up and remember who we are. So 24, one more, 24 billion tons of soil lost annually around the world, all calling us, reminding us, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, reminding us that a nation that destroys or forgets its soil destroys itself or its soul. Wonderful grave words. Ah, well to remember. And of course, the interconnected threads of trees, the root system of trees, connect and hold soil. Sequester, ah, in the time of the great sequester. Rather than representing meanness and avarice, let's sequester carbon. and hold the ground of who we are, and build for the future generations. Join root systems with all beings.

[17:09]

So, a call at the Earth Summit. 20 years ago, there was an Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. And then this summer, in the summer solstice, again, another summit of citizens of the Earth coming together in Rio de Janeiro to listen to the call of the Earth. And in the first summit, His Holiness the Dalai Lama addressed the assembly and said, particularly, he called on those of us who have a love, affinity, curiosity, appetite, for Buddhist practice, to find a way one day a year we could walk quietly on the earth and pay attention to the call of the ground. And refreshing that call this year, he offered a prayer. Being attentive to the nature of interdependence of all creatures, both animate and inanimate, never slacken in our efforts to preserve and

[18:12]

conserve the harmony of nature, and on a certain day, month, and year, observe the ceremony of planting, and I add, and tending trees. Thus, we fulfill responsibility and serve our fellow beings, which not only brings us happiness, but benefit. May the force of observing that which is right. And abstinence from wrong practice and confused action nourish and augment the prosperity of this world. Beautiful call from his holiness. And an encouragement to look at the way we live now in our times as an opportunity for deepening our practice. So it's very much the soul and call of today. Kari Nirvana Day. few days after Pari Nirvana Day. Now, I'd like to say a little bit about this Pari Nirvana of the Buddha, or final entry into Nirvana.

[19:20]

Beautiful definition of Nirvana, the extinguishing of concepts. I love that definition. Dropping away of our concepts of who we are, what we are, what we need, what we do, how we live. Dropping away of that. Pari Nirvana, final Nirvana, releasing of the physical body and entering into a wider awareness. So this is the season we're practicing in. And because Arbor Day is later this year, we have a chance to actually practice close to Pari Nirvana Day. Yesterday, in preparation for Arbor Day, about 35 citizens walked the rim of this watershed. pausing underneath a great oak tree and eating acorn bread made from the acorns of that tree and trees in the extended watershed, climbing up to the ridge and at the top of the ridge sending love and blessings in the ten directions to the practitioners here at Green Gulch in the 61st practice period, to the great ocean and all of its mystery, its capacity to hold and release life.

[20:29]

to the unknown world of the forest and the range and the field. How beautiful to stand up there in the wind and send out blessings in ancient practice, walking the rim of the land, which is home. And beautiful to do that in community. And then to drop down to the valley floor and head home. So to begin with a prayer for the well-being of the world. And also to begin with a willingness to look at the changing world quality of life, and to incorporate into our love for the world an awareness of final nirvana, resting, coming apart. Not only the assembling of causes and conditions that give rise to life, but a willingness to see those causes and conditions be taken apart. So an appetite for deep awareness. One year ago I traveled with my daughter and about 25 other motley group of pilgrims in the Buddhist tradition.

[21:32]

We traveled to India to walk in the footsteps of the Buddha to follow the pilgrimage paths that the practitioners who practiced more than 2,500 years ago followed throughout northeastern India. A time of tremendous poverty and pollution and change in the life of India, but also extremely... encouraging for me to actually have that time, not to nostalgically call up the life of the Buddha, but to see how does meditation practice meet the landscape, the earth, the call of our modern life by walking the ancient path. And in particular, I remember traveling to Kushinagara, which is the place where the Buddha lay down more than 2,500 years ago and his attendant, Ananda, accompanying the Buddha to this forsaken, forgotten place.

[22:32]

begged the Lord with this wonderful phrase, Lord, may the blessed one not pass away in this forgotten, forsaken Kusinagara place, this miserable little town of waddle and dob, right in the jungle, I love this, right in the jungle of the back and beyond. I think that's just such a wonderful saying. The Buddha said, you know, this is the very place to lie down, come apart. and to welcome final resting. And may I do it with awareness. And during the time that he traveled and before he actually settled in that forgotten and forsaken place at the back of beyond, before settling down and lying down on his right side between two salt trees, and I did bring home this beautiful leaf from the salt trees. In Kushinagara, we say his robe, he called for his robes to be folded in fourfold fold, like the fourfold sangha of monks and nuns, lay women, lay men, practicing together along with the natural world.

[23:42]

He lay down on that robe underneath two trees, and the trees were in, this season, the nakedness of winter. burst into bloom, coral-colored flowers raining down on the Buddha, but not before he walked throughout India offering his teaching. He was in his 80s, walking through ancient India, offering his teachings to any who would hear, encountering Mara, the trickster, the evil one, the other side of Buddha's nature. not separate from Buddha, the other side of Buddha's nature. Mara speaking to the Buddha saying, isn't it time for you to lie down in that mud and wattle forsaken place and let go? Go, go ahead. And the Buddha said, I will in the fullness of time lay down and rest in three months time. But during the time before final entry into nirvana, teaching and offering insight all the way along the rivers and water courses and and rice fields of northern India, teaching up until the last moment.

[24:46]

And it was wonderful to go to Kushinagara. It is truly a mud and daub, forgotten, forsaken place at the back of beyond. And it was a delight to go there in rainy, cold India, to go into the temple with... practitioners from all of the different traditions in the Buddhist world, and to settle in there around a 16-foot figure of the reclining Buddha made of carved black stone covered with an epidermis, again, of gold leaf biology and geology coming together there in that temple. And we, as Zen students, not doing much practice, just sitting. at the back of the hall while pilgrims from all over the world came to pay respects and to remember the importance of laying down the body and releasing to the great mystery. So this is the season when we remember that. And whether or not it's truthful, historically correct, doesn't matter because Zen practice...

[25:49]

finds its heart and soul beyond the written words of scripture in the daily, moment-to-moment, face-to-face encounters with the living world, the living and the dying world. And in this season, we all have the capacity to do that. So the Buddha did lie down between those trees, be a lamp unto yourself. He asked his assembly, is there anything... that you'd like to ask me anything I haven't made clear. Please ask me silence. And again, please, is there anything I haven't given you? Is there anything that's unclear? Silence, confirmation of clarity and reception of the teachings. And a third time, is there anything, anything I haven't offered you? Silence of the assembly and the sangha gathered around him. And beautiful, I declare to you then, I declare, all conditioned existence is of a nature to come apart and be recombined, is of a nature to decay, strive on untiringly.

[26:59]

And then closing the eyes and releasing, as a human being does, and a more than human being does, releasing into the great mystery, what Sola Nakagawa Roshi loves to call the great majority. joining the great majority and letting awareness get wide. So the pari nirvana, the final entry into extinction of concepts. Beautiful teaching and at that time the teachings got wider and broader. So I'd like to offer three of the plant world to respond to this pari nirvana laying down of concepts of the Buddha and to connect these stories with the teachings.

[28:01]

I know I've been very encouraged by the call, the calling to accommodate, to adapt to apply meditation practice to the work of the world. Really delighted and inspired by that opportunity and by seeing so many practitioners doing that, by being grounded in the teachings and then applying them to the living world in whatever way, and then letting the teachings of the living world come in and broaden and deepen and ground us even further. So it's a story. Beautiful comment from Jonathan Goschel. He says, we can never resist the suction of story, the gravity of alternative worlds. I love that. And F. Scott Fitzgerald, great writer, saying, pull your chair close to the precipice and I'll tell you a story.

[29:04]

I love that. And so today, the story from the plant world. meeting us and encouraging our practice. So the story of three plants that I hope... Three short stories. So see what you think of this. And these stories connecting up with the encouragement from the Buddha for practitioners. And you see this up until the very end of his life. The encouragement to... ground in the primary teachings. And he spoke very compellingly of the dharma mudra. Dharma is cognate with form, with truth, with teaching. Dharma mudra. Mudra is gesture, like the gesture of touching the ground. Not a metaphorical gesture, the actual calling on the identity of the ground and the identity of the mudra of non-fear. Abhaya, non-fear. touching the earth. These are mudras, representations, expressions of the Dharma, of Dharma teaching.

[30:09]

So the Buddha encouraging us, remember the Dharma mudra of the three seals that mark our life. Number one, that there is suffering in the life of the world. We know this. It's not even, Thich Nhat Hanh says, that isn't even one of the seals. It just is what is, that there's suffering, narrowness, in the life of the world and a capacity by not turning away from that to actually come into touch with the Dharma mudras, with the gestures of teaching that everything changes. That there's no permanent self in any direction and that we have the capacity to enter when we call on our deepest nature, we have the capacity to enter nirvana, to drop away, to extinguish our concepts. So we'll look at these three gestures through the plant world. Now, many years, first of all, beginning with impermanence, anika or anicca.

[31:11]

Many years ago, we had a magnificent oak tree. Some of you may remember a coast live oak on the front lawn. We never should have planted that tree on the front lawn because we irrigate the front lawn. And coast native trees do not like irrigation, yet we had this beautiful being. And in fact, in the early years of Green Gulch, there were twin trees in dialogue with each other. Anybody remember that? There were two beautiful oak trees. planted by Andrew Singletary, who worked with George Wheelwright. He loved oak trees, found two acorns, planted these trees. The one tree closer to the tea house died of a witch's broom fungus, died a beautiful, strong, and complete death, collapsed to the ground and was hauled away. And another tree remained, and we love that tree. And yet it always showed a little sign of disease. And we had numerous long meetings about whether we should put the tree out of its misery, cut it down, and not look at death and decay in our midst.

[32:14]

That would have been so convenient. And then there were a few who will not go named here, but will be very obvious to you, who dramatically and vociferously proclaim the value of the tree. We have to protect the tree. So we kind of won out. Those of us, the howlers. and the hawkers. And, you know, many years ago, we had a first practice period connected to Dharma and ecology in the 90s. And I remember offering this practice period, participating in this practice period, which I had the pleasure and the invitation to help lead with Tenshin Roshi, with Reb, in the early years. And it was... a great lively practice period. We moved together, about 25 of us gathering here in the early 90s. We went to Muir Woods and had a day of mindfulness in the woods. I'll tell you a little bit more about that in a minute. And we also had part of that practice period was looking at the coast live oak tree and actually offering it ordination.

[33:23]

So Tenshin Roshi ordained that big tree. It was a riot, wonderful. This was with the encouragement and persistent, pestiferous persistence of Stephanie Caza, who's the head of environmental studies at the University of Vermont now, but lived here as a practitioner in the early 90s. And together, many of us gathered around the tree and wrapped cloth around it and proclaimed it as a great teaching being in our midst, teaching about birth and death. in our midst, and the great sale of the tree filled with birds and awareness. So that was a wonderful experience, chanting and offering. And it's, you know, in consolidation with the forest monks of Thailand who have been going through the great forests that are endangered by the saw and by greed, human greed, and ordaining, wrapping in saffron, some of the noble trees in Thailand. So understanding that, and Stephanie conveyed that... home to the teachers here, we did this ceremony of ordaining that great oak tree and celebrating its beauty and short life.

[34:32]

Not long after, during a, actually about a decade later, during a chuseau ceremony in this hall for Jordan Thorne, a great wind blew up, wind and rain and storm, and violent, became more and more violent, And during that night, that beautiful tree was smoked open. Beautiful line from Mary Oliver. When the storm laid one lean yellow wand against the oak tree and smoked it open to its rosy heart, it dropped down in a veil of rain in a cloud of sap and fire and became what it has been ever since. So that did happen at the end of the chuseau ceremony or during the chuseau ceremony. A giant wind blew through Green Gulch, and that tree was actually split open and fell apart on the ground. And I don't know if you remember, it was sometime in the 2000, I can't even remember when it was, but it must have been, I don't remember when it was, but it was dramatic.

[35:41]

The tree... It blew open and fell elegantly toward the office, toward the ranch house, toward the tea house, toward the Zendo, and didn't take down any other buildings, but just lay in state. And it was such a dramatic moment that all we could do was live with it for a solid month. We just let the tree lie there, teaching us about impermanence and change. That was, for me, it was an incredible time of practice. I remember our 23-year-old daughter climbing on the branches, and children from her class coming out on her birthday in the end of December and celebrating and climbing all over that fallen tree, enjoying impermanence. And the oak is often considered a being that grows at the threshold of worlds. In the Celtic tradition, the oak is seen as a doorway.

[36:47]

The sign for oak means doorway. And the symbol of the tree is lightning or fire. So that it went down and the storm just seemed incredibly important. And then after a month, we cut it up into pieces and took it away. And I think we had a... A dream of making a Han on the wooden sounding block that we strike to call members of the community to meditation. We thought, how wonderful to make a Han and to write on that Han. Great is the matter of birth and death. Awake each one. Don't waste your life. To write that with ink on the face of the Oak Han. And bang it. I'd like to imagine that that happened. No matter what. the voice of that tree continues, and the message of impermanence continues. So in that particular fall and coming apart, the tree continued to teach. And I often, when I walk by the spot where that tree grew and where it's witch's broom sister grew, I can still feel them moving like a body feels a phantom limb.

[37:58]

It's been torn off. And I think we do, I submit that we do carry awareness... We carry in our cellular composition and awareness of not only the composing of life, but also the impermanent and decomposing of life. We carry that. And sometimes it takes a fallen being like a tree to remind us of the grandeur and mystery of impermanence and the dharma mudra, the gesture of that again and again in our presence. So in this pari nirvana season, find in whatever way is right for you, Connect with the gesture of impermanence and let it fill your body-mind as you go forth on this sunny, beautiful day as a lamp, a cataract, as a star in space, as an illusion, a dew drop, a bubble, as a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning. View all conditioned existence like this from the Diamond Sutra. And then another example of non-self or the connectedness of all that is from the redwood forest, not far away.

[39:10]

Yesterday, we went into the redwood forest with Mia Monroe, the site manager of the woods. And in the forest, she took the group to a redwood that fell down on the winter solstice. on that much anticipated day in the Mayan calendar when time would stand still and the world would change and new order would begin. On that very day, the 21st of December, 2012, when there was a huge and violent rainstorm happening in the woods, a redwood tree fell across the path and lay in state. Mia tells a story of one of our friends, a practitioner who's been with us for a long time at Green Gulch. His name is Garth Gilchrist. He puts on a large, hairy beard every now and then and walks through the woods in the body-mind of John Muir. So he was present in the woods that day. And Garth is a wonderful practitioner. Garth from the garden.

[40:11]

That's what Garth means. From the garden. So Garth was walking in the woods and actually opposite the very place where that redwood tree fell down. And he was telling a story of John, as John Muir, he was recounting how he loves to feel the strength of a storm by climbing to the topmost branches of a Douglas fir tree and lashing himself to the topmost branches of the Douglas fir tree so that he can feel the power and grandeur of the storm. So he's telling this story with his wild beard flapping in the wind and the rain, telling this story. I'm going to lash myself to the top of these trees in his beautiful Scottish brogue when suddenly there's an explosion like cannon fire, which was heard all the way at the top of the valley, and this giant tree fell to the floor of the forest. So I think that was at midday in the height of the storm. a couple of months ago on the winter solstice with all these predictions

[41:18]

for the great calendars, what's happening. And in the heart of the forest, that tree fell down, reminding us that there is no such thing as a separate redwood tree or a separate self. Garth cannot be separate from John Muir, separate from the intention to lash himself to the top of the tree, separate from the life of the tree, separate from the mystery and the rain and the wind and the smoke and the stories. Absolutely no separate self, but pure identity. and fearlessness in the face of that monstrous identity that we feel. So in the case of the redwood forest, when you inject into the root system of a single redwood tree red dye, dark red, carmin red dye, the trace of that dye can be followed for acres of root system out. It will appear in the root system of the trees, acres away. So the forest is a continuous organism, a sangha of awareness.

[42:20]

And when one tree comes down, we're all reminded of the impermanence of life and no separate self in any direction, that mudra. So I love that story, and I wanted to say, I had forgotten but remembered today, At the same time, during that practice period I mentioned a moment ago when we ordained the tree and played around in kind of rambunctious ways, we spent, as I said, a day of mindfulness in the woods. And me and Monroe let us, let our little sangha come into the heart of the forest. And we sat, and it was raining on that day too, and we sat in the redwoods. And I remember visitors going by and spotting us and saying, they're homeless. They're definitely homeless. They are homeless. And what a great memory. And what a great truth. What great awareness. Because we are all homeless. No separate abode. Homeless wanderers sitting down at the roots of the world.

[43:24]

Remembering and feeling that great Dharma mudra. That unifies us. And then last of all. A story of nirvana. The ground of being. The substance of all that is. Wave and water unified. Birth and death. No birth, no death. The extinction of all notions. No birth, no death. No being and no non-being. The great mystery of nirvana and pari nirvana. And for this. I think of a noble. Simple. common, elemental, elegant radish lying on its side. Dharma friend and sister and teacher, activist, artist, Mayumi Oda, paints a simple white radish lying on its side, remembering an original painting by Ito Jakushu, Japanese monk and painter.

[44:26]

He was called the bushel monk. because he sold his paintings in exchange for a bushel of rice. He was a wonderful painter. In 1796, he painted a beautiful painting of a radish lying on its side, the pari nirvana of the radish, vegetable nirvana. I love this, and Mayumi saw that painting and did a modern representation of it on a canvas canvas. banner that hangs above her altar on the big island of Hawaii, of a radish, a simple radish. Rappinus sativus, variety, longipenatus, a radish lying on its side, grown since 500 years before the common era. A simple radish surrounded by vegetables, by the vegetable kingdom, looking and celebrating that entry into final nirvana. If a Buddha can lie down on a four-fold robe under great waving salt trees in northeastern India, why not a simple radish?

[45:31]

The root radish from Radix, root. The haiku poet Isa, remembering the man pulling radishes, pointed the way with a radish. So a radish, a redwood tree, an oak tree, a simple handful of leaves can represent our commitment to full awakening and not turning away from the truth of suffering or narrowness, anguish, angusto, anguish, suffering in the life of the world, not turning away from that and remembering that all conditioned existence is of a nature to change, to come apart, to represent interconnectedness no separate self, and to call on us again and again to extinguish our concepts of what a Buddha is, what a practitioner is, what awareness is, to let all of that decompose and come apart like a simple radish does, lying on its right side, surrounded by weeping vegetables.

[46:41]

Wonderful, whimsical, and wise painting. calling on us. So today we have a chance to fully engage with the great mystery and to find a way to respond to the call of the world, to respond to the cries of the world, to respond to our deepest intention, to come together as a forest thicket of practitioners, whether we find ourselves at the Ferry Plaza building in conjunction and consolidation with other activists and artists and friends gathering together, or staying here close to the root of the world, planting and tending trees. Whatever place we find ourselves, we have the capacity to connect and remember and respond in a deep way.

[47:43]

So let me close with... on the Buddha's last instruction beautiful poem from poet Mary Oliver and then a final dedication from his holiness make of yourself a light said the Buddha before he died and I think of this every morning as the east begins to tear off its many clouds of darkness to send up the first signal of a white fan streaked with pink and violet, even green, and an old man lay down between two salt trees. He might have said anything, knowing it was his final hour. The light burns upward. It thickens and settles over the fields. Around him, villagers gathered and stretched forward to listen,

[48:47]

even before the sun itself hangs, distracted in the blue air. And I am touched everywhere by the ocean of yellow waves. No doubt he thought of everything that had happened in his difficult life. And then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills, like a million flowers on fire. Clearly I'm not needed anymore. Yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value. Slowly, beneath the branches, the Buddha raised his head. He looked into the faces of a frightened crowd. Well, these are the times we're living in. At times when art and activism and sitting still matter more than we know and far more than we can say. So let's remember what it means to be human and alive in these times and fully meet the challenge with an open heart and a deep intention.

[50:01]

And to close with this dedication from his holiness adapted for the earth. May the force of observing that which is an abstinence from confused practice and misdeeds nourish and augment the prosperity of the world. May it invigorate all beings in the ten directions, human and more than human world, and may all beings flourish. May sylvan joy and pristine happiness take root, spread to, and encompass all that is. Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[51:04]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[51:15]

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