Now today's the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yeah, good. Question is, can I hear myself? Yes. I'm really happy to be here this morning and to welcome all of you to Green Gulch. Is it a first time for anybody? Fantastic. May it not be the last. May it be the first of many visits here, and you're very welcome to be here. have lived at Green Gulch for, gosh, 25 years. And a couple of years ago, my husband and I moved about a mile down the road to Muir Beach. And this morning, walking up from our home, You know, there's a little collection of Zen students who live in your beach and practice it kind of in a widened out circle from Gringotts.

[01:02]

You know, we live our life, says poet Rainier Maria Rilke, in widening circles. So there's a widened circle of us practicing down in your beach and then coming home to the from Anchorage to Green Gulch, and then going back out in the world. And I was very aware of that this morning. I think so many of you are also in that widened out circle, coming here for the chance to be still and to remember what it is to be alive. in these times and then to go back out into the world. And this morning, walking up through the fields where I've worked for close to, I don't know, more than two decades, out there in the farmland, I felt tremendous upwelling of gratitude for all the many beings who've made this place of practice so possible and so available.

[02:04]

And you know it's wonderful in true Zen fashion. They speak in indistinguishable tongues. The cottonwood trees now standing close to 25 or 30 feet running along the creek, whispering about Harry Robert's telling us to go to the mouth of the Klamath River about 20 plus years ago and bring back whips of cottonwoods because they'd be good to protect and hold the bank. And this morning I stopped underneath him and I looked up and thought of Harry, who's crossed over to join what So-and-Roshi called the great majority. about not long after he invited us to bring back the cottonwood whips and we brought back just sticks which we plunked into the ground and prayed the river would rise and nurture the sticks and give them good water so they would grow. And now they stand at 25 feet high. So as you walk through the fields, you may not see them, but they see you.

[03:06]

And in the wind, I can hear their leaves whispering gratitude to the teachers and thinking about my husband who worked for so many years in the fields and looking at the deer fences and remembering him putting those deer fence up at all hours of the night to keep the deer out from coming in. And then continuing up the road, seeing so many old friends, the craggy rock on the hillside that stands in honor of Alan Chadwick, who was one of the primary teachers of the garden program at Zen Center. And a wonderful, in his own way, Zen teacher. standing there overlooking the garden to our dismay, overlooking the garden and all of our voluptuous mistakes, as we like to call them. Anyway, I was very aware this morning of the lineage the transmission beyond the scriptures that's evident in a piece of land well-kept, well-loved, well-nourished, and well-respected for so many years.

[04:15]

And I really want this morning to talk a little bit about this relationship and deep abiding friendship that we have with land and how it actually connects with meditation practice. and in particular to dedicate this morning's talk to the many apprentices. For 10 years, this is our 10th year of welcoming farm and garden apprentices to join us at Green Gulch and to work in concert with one another, to meet each other and to engage with the life of the land, to spend a good six months living and practicing here. And they have to be quite a unique bunch. intimately interested in agriculture and in continuing the life of agriculture, protecting the land and offering life to the land. And they have to be willing to get up at 3.30 in the morning and practice meditation. No wonder we only get six or seven or eight a year, but they're treasures, treasured beings who join us this year from all over the world, from Germany, where the Riesling grape grows in the Rhine Valley, from central Mexico, from French-speaking Canada, of course from Berkeley.

[05:36]

How could we have apprentices if they didn't come from the East Bay, from Chicago, and from all points reaching out? So great gratitude to those of you who are here, who come here to join the practice and give us new life, and for all of you who join us, too. I'm thinking about a line from a good friend of mine who died a few years ago, Judith Stornack. She was a great friend of peace work, a strong practitioner, a marvelous human being. She said a simple sentence which has been really in my heart and mind, move below to an unseen place. that meditation practice and caring for the earth helps us to move below to an unseen place and take responsibility for the world we're living in. And I'm thinking about this world particularly after yesterday when my 15-year-old daughter invited me to go to a movie with her and we went to Mill Valley and saw the movie Super Size Me

[06:51]

Has anyone seen this extraordinary film? I recommend it if you have the stomach, pun intended, if you have the stomach to look at what happens when corporate greed and corporate mindlessness takes over and how in a humorous way we can encounter that truth and respond. It's a really wonderful film, documentary, very bold documentary film. And it made me remember that we live in a culture now that produces more malls in places where McDonald's franchises are found, because the film Super Size Me is about existing on a McDonald's diet for one month, eating nothing else but a McDonald's diet. What happens to your body and mind if you subject yourself to that opportunity? Available in so many malls, and we know now in our culture that we've created more malls than we have high schools in our country.

[08:01]

and far many more prisoners than farmers, the kind of farmers that are being cultured, cultivated here at Zen Center. More prisoners than farmers. What an extraordinary truth. And where ancient forests the size of a football field are disappearing at one-second intervals. It's amazing to think about that and to recognize that 363 acres of good earth go under every hour. You know, if we move below to an unseen place, then meditation helps us develop the stomach and gut to recognize that this is so, that these are the times we're living in, the best and worst of all possible times. and that we can actually respond to what we're seeing and observing in our culture.

[09:07]

And did you know one other horrible fact? That it's... When tested, young people and regular citizens on the street are able to recognize almost 1,000 corporate logos. But when asked to name 10 native plants or 10 animals in their local ecosystem, they're unable to do that. So these are grave times, and we have the opportunity to respond. to actually do something about this. So, this morning's talk is very much dedicated to how do we respond? What is the true nature? And this is a good year to be thinking about grassroots democracy and grassroots Dharma. The kind of teaching, response, commitment to the truth that comes out of an empty field.

[10:14]

So I want us to keep that in mind and to really ask ourselves, what does the practice of citizenship look like right now? And I was thinking about the word, especially when I wrote it down this morning, citizen. You could say sit-in-zen. Pretty nice. sit in the absolute willingness to not know exactly which way to go, which way to turn, but to be committed to holding still and holding the question right there, keeping it well beneath your sitting bones as you find your place on the earth. The citizen practice. We can have a little... secret understanding of that word. Because these are the times when this kind of cultivation of citizenship, citizen from living in the city, from living in a civil way, citizen is contrasted to someone who is a military person.

[11:37]

So a peacemaker, we could say a citizen's practice is the practice of making peace sitting still on the land where we live and learn, and then getting up and serving. How do we do that? What helps us stay strong, stay true, stay deep, stay connected? Freya is giving us teaching now. Listen to the one who is not quite a year old. She takes the Dharma seat. Daughter of an apprentice. within the next 20 years or so, how we live. And it's amazing we even have that long. But how we live, how we consume or not consume will take on paramount importance. So each one of us is like a good seed ready to sow roots of change, sow good seeds of change.

[12:49]

and possess a field that we really haven't yet taken on. And I think maybe that's why we're here today in this hall instead of racing around on the Dipsy Trail or walking in the sunshine, which you can do later. But here to consider what does it mean to be a true citizen of the world and to take our place to, as my friend and teacher Joanna Macy says, at your age. After all, we're five billion years old. remember our ancientness and take our place in that ancient mind and heart and serve. You know, I've never been fond of the word environmental, environnement, meaning surround, what surrounds you. For me... the land and the earth doesn't surround, but it makes us who we are.

[13:51]

So environment is too vague. I want to bring it closer. I have a mind to make it more elemental, maybe like the handful of red clay that I picked up from the new cob house that's being built, the tool shed that's being built in the garden that was just started during the work week. After so many years of wanting to make a house that one of the little three pigs would be quite proud of, made of earth and straw, and no wolf can ever huff and puff and blow down, this beautiful cob house, which incidentally was inspired and made possible from the goodwill and intense desire of this community to have it happen, but also from one of our apprentices. She wasn't truly an apprentice, but married to an apprentice, who came back and said, I'll help you do it. It's so wonderful to think of Spring here working with her hands and mind to show us how to do this house along with many other people, learning from teaching us

[14:55]

she who learned and studied here. It's a wonderful event. So I have a mind to make environmental practice more graphic, closer, a little bit more earthy and grounded. And I've been thinking quite a bit, what are the qualities that will help us take our place in the world right now and to serve? Environmental practice classically runs two strong lines. One, protecting the earth, using it well, gardening, farming, doing a lot of the stuff that we're doing here. And then there's also the plane or the pole of leaving the earth profoundly alone, just respecting wild nature, not touching at all, protecting that wildness. So cultivating and using the resources of the earth, protecting wildness. And somehow to be a citizen, to sit in Zen, means to take a dangerous position that runs in between those two poles, that uses or respects the gifts of the land just enough while maintaining its wildness and finding a way

[16:14]

to learn, live, be nourished, and be made of, not in a surrounding way, but in a very intimate, personal way, the qualities of the land we love. Now, meditation practice, in whatever tradition you're taking up, is based on absolutely simple techniques. Sitting still, enjoying your breathing, making a pledge to stay awake, to look deeply at what is, including what's difficult and what's wondrous and unknown. And then, when the time is right, to get up and walk into the world. And look at the figures in this room. They're great teachers. They run parallel. They're in constant conversation. Manjushri seated in the center of the room, Generally depicted as a 16-year-old male, and I know now why, being the mother of one that age.

[17:18]

Tremendous vigor, intensity, fertility, creativity, and capacity to sit still. Manjushri not sitting for us, but to remind us all to sit still in the middle of the earth and the world and be grounded. A historical Buddha touching the earth. representing wisdom and understanding and facing Jizo Bodhisattva and Tara Buddha. Also, see the Jizo figure standing up and walking out into the world. Jizo, the protector of children and travelers, the one who's willing to go down into hell and come back up again, walking out into the world, stepping into action. active compassion, and she, Tara Buddha, jumping up, her right foot ready to touch the ground and to serve and meet all beings. Wonderful teachers right here. So that kind of environmental practice or ecological practice, or what we for years called echo sattva practice, echo from the Greek oikos meaning household, household awareness, awareness of the land we're living in, intimate, personal,

[18:34]

dangerous, a little wild, actually animates the field that we find ourselves practicing in. I'm going to ask us to think together about three qualities that come up very strongly for me When I consider engaged meditation practice, practice that comes up out of the life of the world, and how else could it come up? It has to come up. It has to move from below, from an unseen place, into our hearts and minds, especially when we hold still long enough to let it in, to let it be, to let it grow. So first of all, the quality of rootedness. I call this, actually, in thinking about it, I've come to call these qualities the three R's of ecological practice.

[19:37]

Rootedness, relationship, and responsibility. Here's what I think about when it comes to rootedness. In classic Zen fashion, Rootedness means being rootless at the same time and free, free to move. But in order for that freedom, it's necessary to anchor a little bit, to anchor your body and mind. You could say anchor in the breath, anchor in the unknown, anchor in the mystery, anchor in your own commitment to serve. And rootedness is essential to find your roots. And I think this morning, looking at the unplanted, some of the unplanted fields I walked through from your beach into the cultivated land at Green Gulch, I was looking at some rye plants and recognizing that one rye plant, a single rye plant, has a root system that's been measured at five miles length underneath the ground, all those fibrous roots.

[20:48]

And the lead roots in that plant or each root tip is covered with a little cap. And those roots go diving down into unproductive land or uncultivated land and push into the ground and open up channels. And then they're followed by a wild system of fibrous roots five miles in length. Isn't that extraordinary for one plant, a single rye plant? But, you know, it takes the vanguard root to go down and crack into the open ground, I mean to crack into hard ground to open it. And that quality is very much a quality present in meditation practice. The desire to find your roots, to be rooted, and in that rootedness to remember your wildness in that time when there were no roots in the field. So in Zen practice we say, let's cultivate the empty field, a field that's empty of separateness and individual quality and includes a welcome earth for all beings.

[22:03]

So many people these days experience rootlessness, having our roots be cut off. I think of visiting, going back to my hometown, and land that I played in as a child now is covered with buildings. And the roots of that land are paved over, but still singing underneath the ground. I know that on some level, but there's a lot of grief and sorrow to see how we're living in the world. So rootedness means having the capacity to look at that and take it in, and hopefully to respond. Whatever you have to say, says poet Charles Olson, whatever you have to say, leave the roots on and the dirt just to make clear where you come from.

[23:07]

And you know, when thinking of the largest organism, largest single organism on earth, it's a There's actually two possibilities. One is a huge fungus that spreads for almost an acre, discovered in an ancient forest, almost an acre worth of roots. Living bridges, they're called the living bridge between the inanimate world, so-called inanimate world, the mineral world, and the world of plants traveled by invisible microbes. Almost an acre in size, this gigantic single organism pulsing with life, making life possible. Or else, and there's some contest here, an aspen forest. Have you walked in the aspens? You know, the cottonwoods that Harry encouraged us to plant are relatives of the aspens. But a single aspen tree has a root system that can go out also for many acres. A single plant contains roots that send up a whole entire forest.

[24:19]

It's good to think about the power of roots and how they spread. Or if you were to go into the old-growth forest at Muir Woods just a couple of miles from here and inject a little bit of red dye into the root system at the base of a tree, that red dye would travel throughout the entire forest because those roots are all interlaced and interconnected, shallow, wild, spreading. So if in our meditation practice we can connect, let ourselves root in the unknown, in ground that hasn't been opened, and open it by our strong sitting, deep resolve, and begin to be made of the place where we are sitting,

[25:21]

That's an extraordinary gift. And I propose that you may, or you may think, oh, it's fine for me to say that because I've been able to sit here for 25 years, a sheltered, safe, deep, and abiding place of practice. But it's my definite experience that this kind of rootedness can happen wherever we live, and in fact has to happen wherever we live. And the quality that we bring to that rootedness is essential, original, fresh. If you have a chance to go to the dining room and look at the paintings that are the gift of the creative mind and heart and practice of Michael Sawyer, longtime resident here, Take a moment to stand before the Medicine Buddha, where a Buddha rooted in garbage is coming up out of the confusion and over-consumptiveness of our culture and finding his place, coming up out of the garbage.

[26:43]

It's an extraordinary painting, one of his newest paintings. maybe all the more meaningful given his own struggle and creative challenge made manifest right there in that painting. So we can root in whatever place we find ourselves, and we must. It's great to be able to come here to remember how to do it. to have a deep field of consciousness so that we can go out wherever we're called to serve and set down roots and serve. Not clutching or clinging to the place, but in fact, in a way, letting it go and being willing to be made of where we're practicing. I look forward to talking with you in the question and answer about how we actually do this, because I realize it's difficult work.

[27:46]

And next, when there's a sense of rootedness or penetrating the unknown, moving below to an unseen place, then quite naturally comes up the experience of being related to every being, throughout space and time that you encounter. And this is not a vague practice, but one that very definitely comes out of engaging with the place where we find ourselves. When you find your place where you are, practice occurs. Wonderful statement from Dogen from the 13th century, Zen master. When you find your place where you are, practice occurs. And how could it possibly be that we wouldn't be related to all the many beings that surround us and give us life?

[28:50]

Beginning to set down roots, we can feel all my relations gathering. So a Buddha is intimately related to garbage. Garbage to a Buddha. Garbage on its way to becoming a Buddha. It's not quite that easy that garbage becomes Buddha, but garbage is fully garbage. And out of that relationship, awakening is manifest. It's a mystery, but one where intimately qualified to take up. There's a wonderful story of a historical Buddha taking his place as his home village was preparing, as villagers in his home village were preparing to war, to make war with another village.

[29:54]

the Buddha took his place underneath a dead tree in the full sun on the edge of the road. This is the story Kadagiri Roshi told us. I love this story so much. He took his place under a dead tree and the armies, when marching toward each other, saw him and said, what are you doing sitting there under a dead tree? And he said, even though this tree is dead, I still feel the cool breeze of my homeland. Something like that. And that had such a profound effect on the armies that they turned away. Now, when awakening is related to being willing to sit with the garbage and with a dead tree, practice occurs. But it's not a formula, not a guaranteed formula, not a strategy, and not a magical thing.

[31:04]

Because later, those armies recamped, as armies do, and went to war and there was tremendous loss. And the Buddhists stood by. One of his students may have asked, why didn't you take your place under a dead tree? He might say, what dead tree? Or real peace, as Kategori Roshi said, real peace is not a matter of discussion. It's based on being in relationship with all that is. And it may not work. So we don't get to bargain with real peace and with real peacemaking. the more we sit like this, the more we realize the strength of human ignorance. These are words from Katagiri Roshi. There is no reason that we create this terrible situation, but we do, constantly. And this is pretty hard, because the more we taste and chew real peace, the more we realize human ignorance.

[32:13]

But the more we realize human ignorance and our relationship to it the more we cannot stop teaching real peace living real peace i love this statement it's a paradox and good instruction for how to live on the earth It makes me remember a number of years ago with a young woman who was one of our early apprentices, a person who has lived here at Zen Center for almost seven years, came to us after the death of her husband and the early death of her mother, came and practiced wholeheartedly in the fields. A few of us went up to the ancient headwaters forest We traveled in Nancy's rather funky, old, battered-up BMW. But of course, traveling into the heart of the activist world up there, it looked like a Humvee, one of these big fancy cars.

[33:22]

And people were very suspicious of us as we unloaded box after box of vegetables to help support the activists that were protecting the ancient forest. And we spent three days sitting in the woods and actually participating in a Very simple action along with many people we'd never met before and all the beings of the forest who were joining with us. It does something to you to sit still for three days among redwood trees that make the Muir Woods redwood trees look like little tiny narrow poles. They're so huge and vast. Six of us couldn't get our arms around the trees there. on the edge of the river, swimmer's camp where we stopped. And we walked near the tree where, near Luna, the tree where Julia Butterfly Hill took her place. And in fact, we were guided by a young woman, Banka, who was in our first apprenticeship class here at Green Gulch.

[34:24]

She took us into the forest and we visited that extraordinary tree, Luna, which leans slightly and now has been, as you know, hacked into by people who I think didn't understand, hacking into the tree so that it was curious and debatable whether or not that tree could even stand. We got to see the tree before before this ecovandalism. And then just a few days ago, a friend told me that native medicine people have gathered around this tree, which is in danger of falling, and made a poultice made of bear saliva. Now, how they got the bear saliva, I do not know. I can only imagine it. I can't imagine how they did it. Bear saliva and bear, the breath of bears, the drool of bears and other plants mixed together and injected into the wounds of the tree.

[35:31]

And whereas we've been expecting to see tremendous die-off, the tree is producing massive green growth from the top. I hope you've heard of this story. It's quite a wonderful tale of interrelatedness of all beings in the life of the forest. So I like to think of all our relations and be encouraged by relatedness, by taking our place in relationships. And last of all, meditation practice and ecological practice depends on responsiveness and on taking responsibility. And we know this inside out. Sitting is about taking responsibility for who we are, how we live, what we do.

[36:34]

And that means taking responsibility for the overconsumption of resources that marks our culture. Where we know that on one Memorial Day weekend, the amount of energy used by the city of New York would be enough to keep Africa powered, the whole continent of Africa powered for one year. Now, what is our responsibility for how we live and how do we manifest that responsibility? It's got to be a question that comes up lively and strong in meditation. I love the word, I looked up this morning, the word respond or to be responsible. It comes from the Latin respondere, which means to promise in return. To make a promise in return for all that is, I promise, I pledge, I take my place, I give back.

[37:41]

To reply, to answer, to return. And the ancient root of respondere comes from a word meaning a post. that holds up an arch. And you know the arch, the arches bear great weight. But an arch has to be supported by responsiveness and responsibility. And again, that means taking responsibility for in every way that we can. Again, teacher and friend Joanna Macy suggests that there are three clear ways we can respond right now by holding actions, very much like some of the actions we did in the ancient old-growth forest to protest the logging, by

[38:44]

structural analysis of what is, clear-eyed structural analysis of what is, leads to tremendous change in responsibility. I think of the eco-sophists here at Green Gulch last year who did a beautiful structural analysis of food production. and how we could be more accurately participating within the food web of the Bay Area. Wonderful structural analysis helps to bring in real change. And I think many, many different forms of that kind of analysis are happening every day. And last of all, transforming culture through spiritual life. Religion is for those scared to death of hell. The spirituality is for those who live there. I think that's a great reminder. So this is where our creative life comes most actively to the surface, and you naturally take responsibility.

[39:51]

It's our human inheritance to do so, and certainly the fruit of practice to do so. A few weeks ago with the apprentices, I had the pleasure of going on a field trip to the East Bay, going out of Green Gulch and observing what happens when local citizens take responsibility for the troubles in their neighborhoods. One of our apprentices from a few years ago was our guide. one of her very close friends from college, is doing a wonderful program with the Farm Fresh Choice activists in South and West Berkeley, setting up little produce stands right on the corner of neighborhoods that have no grocery stores. So we stopped on Sacramento Street in Oregon and stood underneath the awning as... as these wonderful young activists spread out a canopy of food that they had gathered from different growers and made it available, just sold it right there on the street.

[41:07]

No store? OK, let's sell right on the street. And behind them, a nursery set up with, again, community residents participating in growing plants that will be distributed to different people who don't have enough food to eat so that they can plant vegetable starts in their gardens and grow food. There's not enough food. Let's do everything we can to respond, to answer, to pledge, to take our place. And then for people that are not able to plant gardens over toxic ground that was right there, they built up Very high raised beds. And many of the plants have been planted for senior citizens and for neighborhood residents. Extraordinary to see. I commend this place to you. Just drive and check it out, what's happening when you're next in the East Bay. Go down Sacramento Street and pause a little bit at Oregon and take a look at this whole world that's happening from community responsiveness.

[42:08]

And then we continued... into the heart of West Oakland, where 32,000 people live 70% under the poverty line, the highest industrial pollution in the entire Bay Area and some of the highest in the country, present right there where the flatlands meet the industrial world. In that neighborhood, 36 liquor stores and one grocery store. So gratitude to three young people who thought, we can make a difference. We can do something here. And they're ingenious. They found an old postal truck and converted it with biodiesel fuel into people's grocery. Painted it bright orange and purple. The great logo on the front, they have a solar-powered sound system that plays hip-hop music. And they're driving through West Oakland and pausing on neighborhood streets and opening up the van to feed people.

[43:12]

There's no grocery store. We'll be, not we'll make a grocery store, we will be a grocery store. as in Shantideva, where there's hunger, let me be food. Where there's loneliness, let me be a bridge we can walk across. Where there's confusion, let me be a soft couch where you can sit down and gather your heart and mind. So this wonderful truck, I mean, we sat, the apprentices and I, we were exhausted. We sat on the lawn and watched as Little kids whizzed up on their bikes and ran in. The People's Grocery, young people are running the program, so they're smart enough to know that little kids don't want broccoli. They want Cheetos. But not Cheetos. We don't want to supersize them. We want to give them real food. So Mountain People's Grocery is providing People's Grocery with organic Cheetos. I can't imagine how they must taste. But when there's no other choice, you'll buy them.

[44:13]

You'll buy Barber's potato chips. You'll buy Luna bars in honor of Luna. Luna bars made with hopefully bear saliva and who knows what else. You'll buy them. And you'll eat them and be nourished and serve. And the kids were doing that. And produce grown from five different community gardens in that neighborhood on toxic land. Where City Slickers Farm, it's built over the reservoir of pollution from the Acme River. That's, excuse me, from Red Star Yeast Factory in Oakland. That land is very polluted. So they've stacked up tires about this high and planted potatoes in the tires, and they're spilling over with potatoes so they're not touching toxic ground. And lettuce growing out of perforated pipe being hung from poles. It's just an extraordinary farm. It was so beautiful to us. And the gates were locked, but we pressed ourselves against the chain link fence. And Araceli was telling me about how food is distributed in her community in Puebla in Mexico.

[45:18]

And Tilo talking about how people don't go hungry in Europe or in French Canada or in Chicago where Heather was telling me about the angelic organics where there's congregationally supported agriculture. Churches get together and make sure people are not going to go hungry. There's a huge movement happening in our country And it comes from responsibility, responsiveness, and knowing how connected we all are. So years ago, Wendell Berry, who's written a wonderful book called The Citizenship Papers, years ago he visited us at Green Gulch, and he said, when asked, how can we make a difference?

[46:21]

I mean, we live on the urban fringe. How can we have a simpler life? He said, you can have a simpler life by stopping the wish for a simpler life, because life isn't simple now. You long for bread and fishes, go to people's grocery van, support them. The complexity of figuring out how we're nourished, how we're fed, and tasting that food is a huge gift, and it's a meditator's gift to know where we come from, to remember how rooted we are in what we eat and how we live, how related we all are. how tentatively and sensitively and deeply related we all are, not only to the goodness but to the garbage, and how responsible we all are. It's so important to remember that. So it's a wonderful thing when you begin any task to set your intention.

[47:30]

Certainly the intention of this morning's talk is to offer gratitude and appreciation and commitment for the world we live in and for the opportunities that are available to us now in difficult times, the best and worst times. And then to offer the merit back to the well-being of the world that surrounds us and gives us life and to the many beings that make it possible. Lifetime after lifetime. I'd like to close with a poem from a friend who's a really good farmer, an excellent, I think an excellent, playful and rambunctious, rather disobedient, naughty poet who incorporates humor and wisdom and playfulness and all the qualities that are necessary to take our place in these times.

[48:36]

Who knows how to turn things while being turned by things? How to keep, it reminds us how to keep ourselves harmonious and wholehearted. and just continue under all circumstances, even when you think you can't continue any longer, remembering that we are connected by a slim, unchangeable thread, a vine like watermelons growing on an empty field, their roots going deep down, moving through the land to an unseen place. Watermelons and Zen students. Hmm, I hope I can see this. Hmm, I need a pair of glasses. Oh, thank you so much. They will work for me because they're yours.

[49:42]

Oh, yeah. Watermelons and Zen students grow pretty much the same way. Long periods of sitting. Oops. Long periods of citizen sitting. Long periods of sitting till they ripen and grow all juicy inside. But when you knock them on the head to see if they're ready, sounds like nothing's going on. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful day. May our...

[50:17]

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