This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much. For those of you who have your videos on, there are enough of you to fill up my screen. which is lovely. And thank you, everyone, for coming. As Kodo said, I'm Sarah Tashker, and I have lived for many years at Green Gulch Farm in Southern Marin. For those of you who have never been here, we are in the foothills of Mount Tamalpais. We are in the Redwood Creek watershed that runs through Muir Woods.

[01:01]

We are a very short walk from the Pacific Ocean. It's a beautiful, beautiful place. And it's been cared for by Zen students as an organic farm since 1972. And I wanted to thank Nancy for inviting me to speak on Earth Day. Thank you. And I wanted to begin just by acknowledging, by chanting the lineage of farmers and gardeners at Green Gulch who have passed down to me what it means to practice with this land and the earth. And I just want to acknowledge this is, of course, an incomplete list. And as we say each morning when we chant the Buddhas and ancestors, our lineage, this is the lineage known and unknown, remembered through these names.

[02:19]

Alan Chadwick, Harry Roberts, Amigo Bob Contesano, Steve Stuckey, Wendy Johnson, Peter Rudnick, Suki Parmalee, Kuko Alcala, Liz Malazzo, Matt Vivrette, Aria Bettinger, Carolyn Cavanaugh, Kayum Johnson, Sarah Jane Snyder, Maria, Katie, Jordan, and Mariam, and all the farmers and gardeners, past, present, and future. May our lives reveal their compassion. And may we, with all beings and the great earth, realize Buddha's way. So from what I understand from Wikipedia, Earth Day began in 1970 and was the manifestation of a growing awareness in the context of modern industrial capitalism that human beings impact on the environment implicitly out there is inseparable.

[03:56]

from the environment's impact on us, human beings, over here, in here. Earth Day was a visible emergence of a collective awareness within modern Western industrial capitalist culture, popular culture, of one of its foundational delusions that human beings are separate, from one another and the natural world. Earth Day was an attempt to wake people up to this delusion and bring us back into right relationship with the earth and all beings. This relationship between all living beings and all phenomena is at the heart of Zen.

[04:57]

of our Zen practice. Suzuki Roshi said, Zen may be said to be the practice of cultivating our mind to make it deep and open enough to accept the various seeds of ideas and thoughts as they are. When this kind of perfect acceptance takes place, Everything will orient itself according to its own nature and the circumstances. We call this activity the great activity. Reality can be said to be the bed that is deep and soft enough to accept everything as it is. This is what I'd like to talk about this morning. how working with the earth illuminates this practice that Suzuki Roshi is talking about, and how cultivating the mind through practice conditions how we receive, accept, and work with the land and with people and with all life.

[06:14]

So I think it's important to stop and ask, What is this perfect acceptance Suzuki Roshi is talking about? What does that mean? It's good to be wary of the exhortation to just accept everything. In my experience, acceptance does not just happen. And it certainly doesn't happen when we choose. And it is not general. It is both sudden and gradual and specific and embodied. The sudden part, you know, we could say is the moment when our experience shifts from rejecting things with judgment, defensiveness, or numbness to accepting everything as it is. And the gradual part

[07:23]

is all the work that leads up to this moment. Being with and attending to, practicing with our experience is work. It takes effort and diligence and requires clear awareness. If we think that we can leap from our small self, or our resistance or defensiveness to big mind or perfect mind without practicing with and cultivating our mind as it is. This is spiritual bypassing. You know, this is using spirituality and spiritual concepts like perfect acceptance to cover over or suppress aspects of our experience and evolve. avoid something, usually something painful or difficult.

[08:25]

It's the opposite of seeing clearly. It's actually covering over reality. Clear awareness requires stability, energy, concentration. It requires patience and fearlessness. A spiritual friend or teacher is very helpful when endeavoring to practice clear awareness. So in Suzuki Roshi says, we are cultivating our mind to make it deep and open enough to accept the various seeds of ideas and thoughts as they are. I'm suggesting it's important to be specific. to become clearly aware of the specific ideas and thoughts that arise in our own minds so that we can practice with them rather than acting upon them and perpetuating suffering.

[09:36]

A Wind Bell article from 2002 on the history of Green Gulch. says, with the help of his connections to the Army Corps of Engineers, George Wheelwright, who owned Green Gulch before Zen Center, began to bulldoze the valley floor, straightening out the creek and lining it with concrete, creating an interlocking system of ponds and reservoirs on the creek, filling in the lower wetlands, and damming it with levees to prevent saltwater from coming back into the fields. Isn't that horrifying? Can you just, you hear that? You know, the power and authority given to landowners and government agencies at that time, you know, largely white men in the context of Western industrial capitalist expansion, and still today, we might note,

[10:49]

these same dynamics going on, allowed the seeds of thoughts and ideas to go unchecked, to become reified as beliefs and views which sprouted and blossomed through human sweat, heavy machinery, and human ingenuity into environmental degradation and destruction. Right? We see this all over the earth, the same pattern again and again. We are living the consequences of this. You know, catastrophic global climate change, mass extinction, many ecosystems on the verge of collapse. I'm sure we all feel this in one way or another in our body. So doing this practice, bringing clear awareness to the thoughts and ideas that preceded the engineering of Green Gulch Creek, you know, using our imaginations, which I've done quite a bit.

[12:12]

You know, what do we find? You know, what thoughts and ideas might lead to a straightened gravel-starved creek? with check dams blocking fish passage and drastically reducing riparian habitat for myriad species. What's come to my mind are some of the thoughts and ideas that I think maybe are operating. Humans know best. Humans can control water, plants, animals, life. The purpose of this land is to support me, my life, my livelihood, human activity.

[13:12]

Human activity is more important than the activity of other forms of life. The success of my human activity can be separated from the success of other forms of life in this ecosystem. I can control the consequences of my actions or there will be no unintended or adverse consequences of my actions. The abundance of the natural world will always be available to me and human beings no matter what we do. And finally, what I see and think is true and complete. We are now in at least year 15 of actively restoring the creek and the watershed at Green Gulch.

[14:18]

work that was begun decades ago by the very first Zen students to come to Green Gulch and encouraged along the way by many, many people aspiring to manifest their understanding of the teaching of interdependence and wholeness on this land. We have worked with the Park Service and myriad government agencies, ironically, many of the same agencies that supported George Wilwright to straighten the creek. to remove the lower levee road, to restore the lower wetlands and the lower portion of Redwood Creek. We have added a natural meander and complex in channel habitat to a lower portion of Green Gulch Creek and restored the connection between Spring Valley and the main creek stem to deliver vital coarse sediment and gravels, spawning gravel to the meander reach. And we're currently working to design and build a completely off-channel water storage system for the farm in order to allow for increased early spring and summer flows that are vital for native coho salmon and steelhead, as well as so many other species.

[15:35]

And all this work is based on an evolving understanding evolving in our Western industrial context. right? This has been known to many people for forever, and yet we seem to have forgotten. So we're now remembering and evolving this understanding of complexity and interdependence of life. And I've had the privilege of being up close to a lot of it and learn a lot about creek ecology and geomorphology and and things that I never thought I would study and which I've understood through in the context of the training I've received in organic farming and in the Buddhist teaching of interdependence and karma. You know, and at the same time, I grew up in the world of George Wheelwright.

[16:44]

You know, I grew up in California, the United States in the 70s and 80s and 90s. So given this historical and cultural context, I can both imagine George Wilwright's worldview and also see pretty clearly that it's based on what I would generously call a mistaken view of reality. And of course, it's easier to identify thoughts and ideas we don't share that belong to another era, another culture that we're far away from in space and time and that seem alien and outside of ourselves. You know, the way it appears George thought or didn't think about the creek and its relationship to the valley. And to him, you know, appears from my modern vantage point to be crude.

[17:52]

You know, the mistaken view is obvious to me. You know, the practice of organic culture or organic agriculture as I have been taught. And as I've been practicing here at Green Gulch over. almost two decades, appears to me to be subtle and righteous in support of life rather than disrupting it. You know, working with complexity rather than abolishing or dominating it. So it's been easy to set up a dichotomy. That worldview and those actions were crude and damaging and bad. And my worldview and my actions are subtle and life-sustaining and good. In becoming more and more intimately aware of the particular and concrete ways that the creek, riparian corridor, and entire watershed were disrupted by George's unexamined ideas.

[19:09]

I have become aware of how that legacy is still functioning. That I, we, our beautiful organic farm, are still participating in and benefiting from this system at the expense of many forms of life. And that the same subtle mindset of separation and domination of the land and the water as being something to shape and serve our human needs is still operating through this body and mind. And yet it is through the practice of cultivating a mind that is wide and deep enough to hold this awareness right in the midst of this painful truth. that something softens.

[20:12]

And with this softening, this acceptance, I'm able to turn fully towards my vow, my aspiration, our aspiration to support the unobstructed flow of the creek and of reality. This is George's gift to me and to us. You know, through clear awareness and avowing George's mistaken ideas, I more clearly see my own. Practicing confession and repentance. True nature is expressed. So how do we cultivate our mind and make it deep and open enough to accept everything?

[21:21]

You know, a few years ago, Reb, over January intensive, spent a lot of time offering the practice of compassionate inquiry as a way to invite our thoughts, ideas, feelings, sensations, our experience into our awareness. You know, to welcome each thought, idea, emotion, or sensation with kindness, patience, and generosity. You know, he talked about like comes and knocks on your door and you open it and you say, please sit down. Can I get you a cup of tea? Can we just sit here? You know, to make space for it without judgment. To wait patiently for and inquire into what else it might show up.

[22:22]

What else is already here? And then to, you know, invite them into our awareness and be careful and compassionate with them. To be careful and compassionate with ideas and thoughts means to allow them to be without grasping, trying to hold onto them as true or complete, or averting, trying to avoid or negate them as though they were true or complete. When we allow things to be We find out through our own experience that there is nothing to be afraid of. There is nothing we have to do. A thought is just a thought.

[23:25]

A sensation, just a sensation. They are never the whole truth. I want to add, you know, sometimes being with thoughts and sensations can take a lot of very particular support, such as when the body is stuck in a trauma response. And I just want to note there are many ways to practice with trauma that are in our thoughts and sensations and feelings that are helpful and beneficial. And... And there are practices that are not appropriate at all times. So there's a growing body of information and resources around trauma-informed practice that you can look into if this feels relevant to you. And if and when you're able to practice awareness with some amount of calm and stability,

[24:31]

You might notice judgment arise, or you might notice fear, like, I can't accept these ideas or sensations or emotions. I don't want them. Or I feel overwhelmed or afraid. The practice of compassionate inquiry would then be to turn to these very thoughts, ideas, and sensations. And invite them into awareness. And to be careful and compassionate with them. Not grasping them as true. And not turning away from them as false. Being with them. Opening to them. Finding out what else there is. Here is the place. Here the way unfolds. It's taken me years, years, years to be able to practice in this way with my thoughts and emotions around how I have been caring for the soil, to have the courage to look directly at my thoughts and ideas about farming and allow in the truth that they were and are causing harm.

[26:05]

without leaping into action or defending my position. And still this is a practice moment by moment, as I'm sure one who works with me can tell you. You know, the basic foundation of organic farming is that the soil is a complex, dynamic living system. And if you care for the living soil, which is, you know, full of billions of bacteria and fungi and protozoa and nematodes and gastropods and arthropods and all sorts of forms of life, the complexity of the soil and the larger ecosystem will support balance and health. And you will then have healthy crops and healthy people. And at the same time, you know, I wrote here the dirty little secret of organic farming.

[27:14]

But really what that means is the painful truth. A painful truth. And let me just say conventional farming, which is farming what we euphemistically call chemical farming. Farming has many, many, many more painful truths, right? Anyway, this truth is that we disrupt the soil ecosystem with our activity, with our tillage practices. By opening up the soil to oxygen through tillage, literally turning the soil, we get a glorious flush of bacterial, activity because the aerobic bacteria likes what we like, likes oxygen, which through the miracle of the soil food web makes the nitrogen available to plants and specifically our food crops.

[28:20]

This is how we've been farming. Many of us have been farming for many, many years. The problem with that is that by disrupting the soil, through tillage, we destroy miles and miles of these tiny, you know, microscopic fungal hyphae that also transport nutrients and support the soil ecosystem. And we alter the balance of the soil along with disturbing or destroying the natural drainage caused by plant roots and worm tunnels and insects and their activity. And also, you know, the worms and insects themselves. So lest you think I think there's some purity somewhere to be found, you know, there's always a price to be paid. There is no getting out of this business of being human, of birth and death.

[29:26]

You know, I think this is what... was meant by picking up a speck of dust in case 61 of the Blue Cliff Record. You know, and yet, Suzuki Roshi tells us that when we take our place, when we cultivate our minds to be deep and wide enough for perfect acceptance of everything, including our human thoughts, ideas, sensations, and emotions. Starting with being clearly aware of them and practicing patience, generosity, wisdom, and compassion with what is arising. Everything will orient itself according to its own nature and the circumstances. We return to our own nature, which is that we as human beings are completely woven into the fabric of reality.

[30:41]

We are completely made up of and in turn are part of making the relentlessly dynamic, complex, interdependent activity of life. And when we find our place where we are, When we avow our limited human ideas, thoughts, and emotions, right in the middle of this amazing complex and ungraspable activity, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. You know, and by the way, Suzuki Roshi says in the same talk I've been quoting, for a person who wants to understand Buddhism logically, it may be difficult to understand why they should study over and over again Zen stories like the Blue Cliff Record.

[31:45]

He doesn't say that last part, but that's what he was talking about. Why they should study over and over, yet when a student realizes how difficult it is... to incorporate into their daily life what they learn in these stories. They will acknowledge the necessity of practicing zazen and reading. This practice of reading will in turn encourage them to read these stories over and over again. Then he says, to do this over and over again means perfect. So just to practice over and over, to sit zazen, to study the teachings, to study our limited human experience, even without understanding in some logical way what is happening, Suzuki Roshi tells us that this is perfect.

[32:54]

acceptance. To practice sazen, to study the Buddha way, to return over and over is already perfect acceptance. Through the support of this practice, my mind, it seems to me, to my great astonishment, has become deep and wide enough to become clearly aware of without needing to grasp or turn away, without mistaking them for the complete truth.

[33:55]

You know, to accept these thoughts and feelings, the following thoughts and feelings, you know, the pain of having caused damage to the earth. The shame of having made so many mistakes of being wrong. My attachment to knowing. to being right, to being important, to thinking that I am in control. You know, every day when I walk down onto that farm to do my work. You know, the fear of not knowing and of thinking I should know. And all the physical sensations and words that go along with these thoughts and ideas, you know, tightness and heaviness. And like feeling puffed up.

[34:57]

And amazingly, you know, the medicine of practicing with all of this, of inviting into awareness and of being careful and compassionate with all of these contracted, mistaken views. These thoughts and ideas over many, many years has allowed me, at least right now in this moment, to open more and more to reality as it is. This reality that can be said to be the bed that is deep and soft enough. to accept everything as it is, to feel softness in my own body. And the grace of this softness has allowed me to feel and turn toward the support of many young, energetic, and sincere farmers and farm apprentices who over the years could see more clearly than I, you know, who are less defended than I, the limitations of what

[36:19]

I was doing what we were doing together. And the grace of this softness has allowed me to feel and turn toward the steady, skillful inquiry of many of the giants, these old timers, these farmers that have been farming in California, leading the organic farming movement for decades, who are now turning with great skill and dedication toward new farming practices and new relationships with the great earth. And the grace of this softness has also allowed me to feel and turn toward my own knowing. My own knowing all along of what I was afraid to look at. You know, that how I was being with the earth, how I was farming was not in alignment with my vow.

[37:30]

You know, with what I have, what I know to be our true nature. So this year, um, really happy to say we're studying and experimenting with no-till farming methods to understand how they can be applied here at Green Gulch to you know take our way take our place in the great soil ecosystem with more humility and curiosity and fearlessness and awe for our human limitations and the boundlessness of life you know so Trying to figure out how do we do this in a way that really supports life, you know, all of it. And it is a great, great joy to feel open to the truths of not knowing, to open to the great activity more and more, you know.

[38:42]

And I just wanted to tell you, I am drawing inspiration from this amazing book. It's called low-tech, which describes in detail many different local styles of architecture, both landscape and structural, that have been formed by tech, traditional ecological knowledge. defined as a cumulative body of multi-generational knowledge, practices, and beliefs. So this is, the whole name of the book is Low-Tech Design by Radical Indigenism. It's a really technical book. It's amazing. It's like blowing my mind. I love it. And in particular, I am completely intrigued by this waru-waru method.

[39:42]

of raised fields, which were developed over 3,000 years ago, almost 4,000 years ago, by the descendants of the indigenous Aymara and Quecha people of the high plains of the Andes Mountains, and passed down, even until today, the Wara Wara are raised planting platforms. But some are huge, right, hundreds of feet, and some are very small. They're built in arid areas that are prone to flooding. The reason I think I'm so excited is because Green Gulch itself is, you know, our fields are just right in the creek bed, in the valley bottom. They are prone to flooding. That is where the water wants to go. Maybe not flooding like a big creek floods, but definitely they get inundated in the winter. We have standing water. And I notice I have really been the subtle ways that I have thought of this as a problem, you know, and seeing this, this waru waru method and seeing, oh, this is an opportunity for,

[40:58]

This is a, you know, the Wara Wara system is, as far as I can tell, I mean, I've only read a little bit about it, but it seems like it's not based on dominating or overcoming the natural system, how the water wants to flow. In fact, it's becoming part of that system. It is... Yeah, not based on dominating or overcoming natural systems, but rather becoming part of them. Coming back to our true nature. And I feel great enthusiasm for trying to understand how to practice in this way, in this valley, in this place. So through practice and through the body and clear, stable, and bright awareness of any and all thoughts and views, sensations and emotions, either grasping or turning away, allowing for softness, wideness, deepness, opening.

[42:46]

wherein there is the possibility that everything, including this body and mind, orients itself according to its own nature and the circumstances. Our true nature is that we are part of everything. We are nothing more, nothing in addition. And when we express our true nature, we express humility that we are literally of the earth. Clearly observing water. Completely accepting water. Clearly observing the mind. Completely accepting the mind. everything orienting itself to its own nature and the circumstances.

[43:55]

Dynamic, impermanent, interdependent, empty of separate self. We call this the great activity. I would like to close with one final thought. Um, because it just has really moved me recently. I read an excerpt in Tricycle Magazine from Zenju's new book called The Deepest Peace, Contemplations from a Season of Stillness. She's talking about tea, but she's really talking about reality. She says, what if pouring tea... could be the activity that reflects our inherent silence and stillness as the body of earth that we are. And I hear today, what if cultivating the earth could be the activity that reflects our inherent silence and stillness?

[45:11]

as the body of earth that we are. In this way, she continues, we let the unsettling noises from our dark forest, our ideas, thoughts, and views arising from the dark forest of our mind, we allow the noises from our dark forests to be the sound of discovery. We live with the vastness of life and are not stranded on the shore of our limitations. Seeing tea as from the earth and the earth as ourselves, we understand life as awakened eons ago. We live with the vastness of life and are not stranded on the shores of our limitations.

[46:20]

Seeing everything, seeing everything as from the earth and the earth as ourselves, we understand life. So reality is cannot be hindered complete acceptance the great activity is and has always been deep and wide enough to hold delusion reality is the functioning of the great earth the dynamic functioning of the soil and all its inhabitants and relations falling out of balance and coming back into it. There is no problem. Reality does not exclude disease or health.

[47:24]

That is just the human mind. We already are the great body of the earth. There has never been and can never be any separation. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[48:16]

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