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. Morning, everyone. Here in the Green Gulch Zendo, which is delightfully full. Last time I was here, I think we were having fewer people in the room. And good morning to those of you joining us online. I'm so glad everyone has taken the time out of your busy lives to be here on this beautiful summer day. It's beautiful here. I don't know if it's beautiful where everybody is. I wanted to thank... the Green Gulch leadership for inviting me.

[01:01]

So nice to see you, Linda Ruth. Welcome back. And Abichiru and Latonto, who maybe is Kokyo. Thank you so much. And for those of you who don't know me, my name is Sarah Tashker, and I live here at Green Gulch with my family and all the other beings. that inhabit this valley. And I wanted to talk to you this morning about some of them and about our practice. So I wanted to talk about birds and the precepts. Can you guys hear the birds? It's been very birdy lately here. at Green Gulch this summer. And I've gotten really into this app that I got for my phone.

[02:05]

Maybe some of you know about it. It's called the Merlin Bird ID from the Cornell Ornithology Lab. And you turn it on, and I've been using the sound ID. So you press a button, and it listens. And when it hears a bird, the name of the bird pops up on the screen. And then if it hears another bird, it'll pop up on the screen. And then as they sing, in turn, the name of the bird will light up. So you can put together the sound and the name, which to me is just like... learning my neighbor's name, you know, like leaning into having a relationship with the beings I live with.

[03:07]

On my way down to the Zendo, in my three-minute walk, and I was walking kind of slow because I was listening to the birds, there was a Swainson's thrush, That's my favorite bird. A Pacific Slope Flycatcher. A Wilson's Warbler. A Chestnut-backed Chickadee. An Olive-Sided Flycatcher. A Stellar's Jay. House Finch. Those are the ones. Beewick's Wren. I've never had that one pop up on my screen before. band-tailed pigeon, that's like the dove. A song sparrow, a dark-eyed chunko. Anyway, all these beings, just two minutes, all I saw was one person, Suki. But there were all these birds that I met on my way to the Zendo.

[04:17]

Yeah, so... just been tuning into life in this way. Yeah, the app's really easy to use. I totally recommend it for anyone. So, you know, that's the birds. And then there's the practice or the precepts that I wanted to talk about. Since historical times up until today, to become a disciple of the Buddha, one vows to live by a set of precepts or ethical standards. I don't know how many of you know that. Sometimes we talk about them and sometimes we don't.

[05:21]

separated from ethics, right? Kind of that part is obscured or hidden or not integrated. But in all Buddhist traditions, meditation is inseparable from ethical conduct. So in some traditions, like the Tibetan tradition and a lot of East Asian traditions, there are around 250 precepts. And they're very detailed about what you can do and not do, or what is considered ethical conduct, or follow the Buddha and what is not. In our lineage, the Soto Zen lineage, the precepts have kind of been consolidated into 16 essential precepts, the 16 great Bodhisattva precepts. Is there anyone who hasn't heard? of the 16 Great Bodhisattva Precepts?

[06:24]

Oh, a few hands. Yeah. And maybe some more hands in your homes. So I'm not going to discuss all of them today, but I encourage you to look them up. Look for them. You can Google them and find different translations or different ways they're phrased. They're also on the San Francisco Zen Center website. Sixteen Bodhisattva precepts. And essentially, again, I'm not going to talk about all of them, but they are the three pure precepts refraining. Well, they're taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. And there are the three pure precepts, which is refraining from all evil or harm. Doing all good. So we vow to do all good. Sometimes that's translated as upholding forms and ceremonies.

[07:30]

And to live and be lived for the benefit of all beings. All beings, all inclusive. And then there are 10 grave or prohibitory precepts, which are probably quite familiar in a lot of traditions. They're quite similar. And sometimes I think of them as... like the karmic acts of the body. So not to kill, not to take what is not given or to steal, and not to misuse sexuality. And then karmic acts of speech, to refrain from false speech or lying, to refrain from intoxicants, which could be seen as actually from the body, right? Also something we do to the body, but sometimes we can be intoxicated by words or ideas. Not to slander and not to praise self at the expense of others.

[08:35]

And then there are karmic acts of thought or the mind, which is not to be greedy, not to harbor ill will, and not to disparage the three treasures. of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. So when people are ordained as lay followers of the Buddha or as priests, in Sotozen there's a ceremony where they formally receive the precepts and vow to live by them. And they ask support from their family and friends and Sangha to do so. And in fact, there'll be a lay ordination next week, next Sunday afternoon, here in this sendo, where a few students will receive the precepts from their teacher. And it's a really, for any of you who have been to one, you know, it's really very moving and touching, you know, to clarify what the most important thing is and align your whole life with it, to vow to do that sincerely.

[09:49]

So, Living one's life in the world as a Buddhist, either in a temple or in the marketplace, as we call the rest of the world, involves relating to and thinking about these vows and trying to understand how to embody them in dynamic situations, right? All situations. Moment after moment. You know? Trying to discover how to live in an ethical way in situations that you've never encountered before. And live in accord with the precepts. So I'm going to talk a little bit about my own experience with this practice. So for many of you who know me or have heard me give a Dharma talk before, you know I have spent... a lot of my time at Sun Center farming, working on the farm, and working with people to grow food crops, to feed human beings.

[11:03]

And this season, we're primarily growing food for people who don't have access to clean, nutrient-dense food and who desperately need it. as medicine, right, to take care of their lives and their bodies. So we're distributing the bulk of the food we grow this season through three of our community partners, our long-term community partners, which are the Cultural Conservancy, which is a Native-led intertribal organization that does all sorts of really beautiful things to support Native culture. in the Bay Area, reconnection, rematriation of seeds and culturally significant foods, ceremony, things like that. And a food pantry run out of Marin City, out of the People's Intercities Fellowship Church. Marin City is kind of the largest historically African-American community in Marin County.

[12:11]

And anyway, they are doing beautiful things, one of which is making really good food available to anyone who needs it. And then we are sending food to San Francisco through the Congregation Sheriff Israel, a Jewish temple that has a program with the youth called Hamotzi, where they prepare food and, again, prepare meals and give them to anyone who wants needs food, who is experiencing food and housing insecurity. So the stakes feel pretty high. Not only is our daily farming practice one of devotion to the soil and to the plant and animal inhabitants of this valley, but also to the humans who literally depend on this food to survive.

[13:16]

and whom we honor with our labor and friendship. And the other thing at stake for all of us living and practicing here in the temple is our faith, you know, either kind of a seed of faith or full-blown, you know, lifetime of faith that what we do matters, that cause and effect are real. And we are enacting our sincere wish to embody the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha in the world through zazen and the precepts and our work practice, our daily work, which we consider to be our practice, Zen practice. So... If you think for any length of time about where food comes from, and I imagine most of you have at some point, you realize that certainly eating meat involves killing.

[14:25]

And if you think a little bit longer and look into it a little bit more, you might realize that eating dairy products also basically means killing animals because a female animal, a mammal, needs to give birth periodically in order to continue lactation. And those offspring, the male offspring in particular, usually slaughtered for food. I have to say, we could get in a whole conversation about how food is produced and the quality of of the food and how the animals are cared for. And we have and will, I'm sure. But for now, just holding this basic fact, right? And just even this basic fact is, I think, a reason why some people become vegan. They don't want to be involved or have their life depend on this even indirect killing.

[15:38]

But what many people don't know or don't think about very often is the fact that eating vegetables also includes killing. Both intentionally and unintentionally or inadvertently. Gophers and deer and rabbits and beetles and caterpillars and nematodes, bacteria and fungi. just to name a few, all also want to eat our crops. They also want to eat them, and often they do, and they cause damage to the crops. And to protect them, for human beings, protect the crops, farmers, poison or trap. Case of enterprising organic farmers, we vacuum them up with a bug vac.

[16:47]

Or farmers spray using toxic or less toxic, you know, synthesized or organic pesticides or antifungals. And there's also the inadvertent deaths of animals, you know. Mammals getting caught up in fencing or birds getting caught in netting, right? So even the act of preparing the soil, which I've talked about before, often it stimulates bacterial life, but it disrupts or kills fungal colonies that are responsible for moving nutrients all around the soil. So I've often found myself asking, in the context of Zen practice and farming, you know, how much pest damage is too much?

[17:49]

How many gophers can we have before they multiply and take over? How much cucumber beetle pressure can we tolerate before the whole crop is wiped out? You know, when to intervene? When is it okay to kill? Yeah, so I just want to say this is not a theoretical question for a farmer. And it's not a theoretical question for eaters. You know, we've all heard stories or maybe seen it ourselves at times and places where entire crops are wiped out by locusts or some other, you know, rats or something or disease and there's famine. So that's a kind of suffering too.

[18:56]

What I'm just trying to point to is this conundrum, right? We can't build a house or eat a meal or stick our hands in the soil or brush our teeth without killing something. So what does it really mean? A disciple of Buddha does not kill. How do we live that? because it seems to me there's no way to get out of it. And, you know, a few weeks ago, I was walking up the farm road from the fields, and I was walking kind of through the back of the garden, and I turned the corner around a hedge, and I saw a blue heron, a great blue heron. and it was really close.

[20:09]

You know, I was maybe, I don't know, maybe I got like 30 feet away from this heron. And for those of you who don't know, they're really big birds. You know, they're probably like three feet tall, and they're real skinny. They have long legs, kind of like in the stork family, or like an egret. They're tall, and they have these really long, skinny beaks. And the heron, it saw me, As I came around the corner and saw that I was approaching, but it was paying attention to something else. And so I stopped and I stood still and I watched it. And after not very long, you know, it kind of curled its long neck back and then it darted out and it got a gopher. Big bat. wiggly gopher. And actually what it did, it had, you know, they have probably pretty sharp beaks, but the gopher wasn't dead and the heron flew to the pond and drowned the gopher so it could swallow it.

[21:23]

They swallowed them whole and then they kind of moved down their neck like a snake eating something. So, you know, it was pretty amazing and Definitely made an impression here. And what was striking to me as I reflect on it, you know, as I walked away and kind of was reflecting on watching it, is that not once in the moment as I saw this, and even since then, it has not occurred to me, that watching that bird kill and eat that gopher, it did not... The heron did not break the precepts. You know, as I was watching, I didn't think that heron just killed that gopher. Like, that heron just broke the precepts.

[22:24]

You know? And it did not... Also didn't occur to me that what the heron was doing... with the gopher and what I do with the flea beetles is the same thing. Right? Why does it seem so fraught when I even think about killing a gopher or a cucumber beetle and so straightforward, so incredibly natural and complete when the heron catches and eats the gopher? What's the difference? So I've been reflecting on this, you know, and reflecting on the teaching of the precepts. And what I can recognize is something like the heron, you know, the heron is in direct relationship.

[23:38]

with what's happening. And I am, generally speaking, operating from a mental model, you know, from my thinking. And the mental model I operate from is based in duality. Suzuki Roshi said it this way. He said, we actually, You know, we say do not kill. But do not kill doesn't just mean don't kill flies or insects. Actually, if you say here's a fly, should I kill it or not? It is too late. We always have this kind of problem even before we see the fly. You know, in duality, where there's me and there's the fly, the completeness, the oneness is obscured, already obscured.

[24:52]

This is the kind of problem humans have. Does this sound like a familiar problem? You think this way sometimes. And yet, when we sit zazen, Or in many cases, when we're present with nature, the more-than-human world, sometimes the self drops away. And we come closer to direct perception. You know, the mental model loosens. And I'm guessing we've all had some kind of experience like this at some time in our life. Whether it's, you know, walking and feeling the breeze on your skin. Or taking a walk in the forest or sitting underneath a tree in the city and kind of maybe noticing the...

[26:02]

dappled light, you know, the light coming through the leaves, maybe moving and kind of being struck by the experience of being present in our body, of just being alive, of just being itself. really experiencing the quality of life for the birds in a more direct way and thinking about it, of conceiving of light, conceiving of birds. You know, as much as I like my little app, I like to think about the birds. You know, there's this other way of being with them. I've had an experience of walking through the city and seeing a little weed flowering in a crack in the sidewalk, not just a little few leaves or something, but actually blossoming and feeling overwhelmed, physically overwhelmed, like my body isn't big enough.

[27:34]

To hold the enormity of it. You know. And it's not the plant. And it's not the sidewalk. And it's not the things I could single out and name. It's the whole thing. You know. It. You know. Like. No inside and no outside. For a minute. So even right now, in this room, here we are. There is, you know, the possibility of seeing something, but really being hit by it all at once.

[28:35]

This is what I think Suzuki Roshi is pointing at when he says, do not kill doesn't mean just don't kill flies or insects. You know, I think it means, you know, do not kill means being with what's happening beyond the duality of naming things. And recognizing objects with our conscious mind, like flies or insects or light, trees. You know, that's just our mental model of life. So do not kill means do not kill. And it also means forget the self and realize profound connection. Beyond. our ideas even of connection. So when we are open and come closer to direct perception, sometimes the mental model loosens and the self drops away.

[29:59]

Sometimes we glimpse our true relationship with A co-created, multifaceted, dynamic experience that doesn't fit into a mental model. Which cannot be grasped, but which can be experienced and lived, is being lived moment after moment. we experience with our whole body mind even just for a moment this is all life itself it is beyond thinking and this is the heron and the gopher in the garden yeah not one and not two you know the functioning of life itself

[31:11]

The predator and the prey are the functioning of life itself. And sitting or standing, open and present, walking in the garden or the forest or the city, watching a bird or a stone or a weed, we can experience the seamless connection of things, the functioning of the whole. No thing to kill. No one to kill it. This is the practice of Zazen. Suzuki Roshi talked about this all the time. In one talk, he said it like this. He said, when I say precepts,

[32:13]

you may think of the Ten Commandments or the grave prohibitory precepts. But Zen precepts are not like that. To begin with, the phrase Zen precepts means Zazen. The precepts are an interpretation of Zazen. So the precepts, the 16 great bodhisattva precepts, all of these rules, ethical rules as we articulate them, are an interpretation or translation of non-duality into duality, into a mental model. That separates everything in order to get a hold of it and to talk about it. But when we mistake our mental models for actual reality, when we think that the heron and the gopher are separate, that one is killing the other, then I can also think I am better than you.

[33:38]

am right to feel entitled to take things from you. That I can also lie to you, and I can slander you, and I can kill you. When we think things are separate, when we operate only from our mental model, all sorts of harm can arise. And it does, right? And imagine some of why we're all in here today, or we're all here listening to this Dharma talk, is because we're acutely aware of all the harm that human beings cause. And what the Buddha taught was, it is our separation, you know, these mental models that are at the root of this harm. This is the first noble truth.

[34:44]

Suffering arises. And it arises from conditions. We can study them. So this is what we're doing. We're talking about duality and our mental models. Suzuki Roshi said, as long as you're involved in dualistic concept, it is not possible for you to observe the precepts. The point of practice is to get out of this kind of dualistic concept and fill our being with gratitude. A dear friend of mine, Dojin Sarah Emerson, was here a couple of weeks ago on this Dharma seat and reminded us of something the founder of our Zen school, Nate, called Dogen Zenji. He said, to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things.

[35:45]

So to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. And in a way, right, this is the orientation of the 16 precepts. When we talk about them, there are... We talk about them as self and things for you and I being two. Dogen continued and he said, when myriad things come forth and experience themselves, this is awakening. This is the orientation of the one precept of Zazen. There's no directionality because it's all one thing. One whole reality.

[36:46]

One dynamic relationship from which the world we see arises. So Sarah also said, which I really appreciated, we can cultivate our ability to orient. to this way, we can cultivate the capacity to learn and move in the world, to train our body to move in the world where we're one of the myriad things coming forward and experiencing themselves. And these are the moments of freedom. And I think this is what I felt. as I was there with the heron and the gopher. They showed me I was able to feel the myriad things coming forth and experiencing themselves.

[37:50]

And it reminded and continues to remind me that I am also one of the myriad things coming forth. and experiencing itself. So some months ago, I spoke with a Zen practitioner who had been growing food organically for some time and was going to take the leap to start his own farm in the Midwest. And he found me and wanted to talk about the precept of not killing, felt like, well, Green Gulch, that's a real Zen farm. So how do they do it? They wanted to know. And so as it happens, when you get two farmers talking about farming, we started talking about pests and talking about what to do when they're out of balance and how to intervene and...

[38:58]

just all sorts of methods, what you actually do on a day-to-day basis, how you make decisions, what kind of netting you use, and where you bought it from, and, you know, on and on. And it was not an existential conversation, you know. Yeah, so there's a lot to say, as I said, about pest control practices, about spraying or vacuuming. or physical exclusion, or snap traps, or sticky traps, or invertebrate life cycles, and damage thresholds. And really, when it comes down to it, the limits of daylight, working hours, the physical body, and human ingenuity, this is what farmers talk about. And we had this conversation, and it was really fun, and it was really interesting. And we both learned things and nothing was resolved.

[40:01]

It did not in any way get to the heart of the matter. As human beings, right? As farmers, as whatever it is you do with your life, I'm sure you know there are endless things to do and endless things to try. And as long as we're in the paradigm of wanting to get something or get rid of some other thing, it's unsatisfying. Because as much as we believe our mental models to be accurate, they can't quite get a hold of reality. You know, there's no such thing as the perfect balance, the perfect crop, the perfect Zen student who does not kill.

[41:09]

And when we settle down and we let go of kind of the giddiness of problem solving and of talking about life and farming as though they were problems in need of solutions, We returned to practice. We returned to humility and to connection. We confessed our limited understanding of cause and effect. And we reflected on our connection to life. Our lived connection. of years and years of inquiry and attention and effort, of kind of patient and impatient relationship as farmers and human beings with plants and animals and insects. We talked about and returned to our love for and awe of the beauty,

[42:27]

And the power of life. Of what we do not know. And that which we ultimately do not have control over. You know, and finally, we return to our profound experience of the generosity of the land. And our love for it. And the unspeakable gratitude. Unspeakable. In our own animal bodies. As we turn toward the mystery of life as it unfolds before our very eyes. And as we talked about the one precept. about our allowing our actions to flow from this unspeakable, inconceivable way that we are part of this unfolding, inseparable from it, despite our ideas.

[43:42]

You know, I could feel him getting really excited. And he told me he was inspired right then in our conversation, you know, we probably talked for half an hour, right then to rework his pond design and to ground it in and orient it towards connection, you know, with all the other animals, the non-human beings that share our need to access and to be in connection to water, you know. So he was rethinking his decisions about where to put the pond and how to fence the pond and started thinking about how to integrate wildness into his farm, how to welcome the connection with native plants and animals and the larger ecosystem, planting hedgerows and pulling life in.

[44:45]

rather than reinforcing a false separation between the wild and the cultivated. You know, when he started thinking about, you know, how to cultivate the soil, to honor the soil ecosystem, and how to integrate his neighbors and the wider community into the landscape that would be feeding them, you know, internal and external landscapes. So he, you know, there's this turning and relaxing into, you know, and joyfulness about cultivating all the possibilities to nurture and express interconnectedness. You know, our one life together as relationship, as an expression of his

[45:46]

and love and true interconnected self. Of being one of the myriad things coming forth and experiencing itself. Heron, gopher, and farmer. And it was a truly joyful, beautiful feeling. So I want to close with a section from one of Suzuki Roshi's talks about this. He says, we are not interested in explaining the 250 or more precepts because the point is not to observe those precepts one by one, one after another. The point is to learn how to be yourself, how to be a person in a way that a stone is completely a stone.

[46:52]

And I would add, as a heron is completely a heron. When you are just a person, you will have the complete precepts. So when you're just a person as one of the myriad things coming forth to experience itself, You will have the complete precepts. If you understand how to observe our precepts, even just one of them, you can observe the rest of the precepts and you can practice Sazen and observe our rituals. If you say it is difficult, it may be very difficult. But, you know, it cannot be such a difficult thing if you say, I will do it. That is how to observe our precepts. Even without thinking about whether you can observe them or not, you will say, I can do it.

[48:00]

So this spirit of, this vow, this intention to turn toward relationship, this wholeheartedness, To really understand what is it to follow the precepts. To really want to know and to find your place. You know, it may be difficult, but this, when you say I will do it, that's how you observe the precepts. I will do it means do not kill animals. You can say yes to that because originally it is not possible to kill anything. You think you kill something, but actually you cannot. Even if you think that you killed it, it is still alive. Even though you eat something, it is still alive in your body.

[49:10]

If something leaves your body, it is still alive. It is not possible for anything to be killed. So the only way is to be grateful for everything you have. That is how you keep our precepts. The only way is to be grateful for everything you have. That is how you keep our precepts. Thank you. Thank you, Suzuki Roshi. You worked really hard, I think. 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.

[50:18]

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.

[50:32]

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