Greetings, all. Welcome. This is the Saturday Dharma Talk at San Francisco Zen Center. At the invitation of our head of practice, the speaker today is Ango Sarah Tashkar. Sarah has been, in addition to serving in the roles of Shuso, Tassahara and the director at Green Gulch, has spent many years with hands and care in the earth supporting the organic farm and garden apprenticeship. at Green Gulch Farm. An apt day for our friend from Green Gulch to visit as we are celebrating Earth Day. Sarah, whenever you would like, we will begin with the Sutra opening verse. Everyone can find this in the chat. Man unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma. is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept.

[01:14]

I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. 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. We are a very short walk from the Pacific Ocean.

[02:18]

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.

[03:30]

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

[05:08]

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.

[06:09]

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.

[07:26]

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

[08:35]

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. avoid something, usually something painful or difficult.

[09:38]

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.

[10:47]

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? And it's like, 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.

[11:57]

And still today, we might note, 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.

[13:23]

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, you know. 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.

[14:24]

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.

[15:30]

work that was begun decades ago by the very first then 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 core 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.

[16:46]

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 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.

[17:56]

You know, I grew up in California in 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.

[19:04]

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.

[20:21]

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 the 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.

[21:24]

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?

[22:33]

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 might show up. What else is already here?

[23:35]

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.

[24:37]

A sensation, just a sensation. They are never the whole truth. But, 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 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,

[25:42]

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.

[27:16]

without leaping into action or defending my position. And still, this is a practice moment by moment, as I'm sure everyone 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, but really what that means is the painful truth, a painful truth.

[28:31]

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. You know, 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 like 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. This is how we've been farming.

[29:36]

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 in 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.

[30:38]

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.

[31:52]

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.

[32:56]

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. acceptance. 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

[34:05]

is perfect 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. to accept these thoughts and feelings, the following thoughts and feelings.

[35:15]

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. 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, you know, at least right now in this moment.

[36:44]

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 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.

[38:06]

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 bow. you know, with what I have, what I know to be our true nature. So this year, I'm 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.

[39:11]

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 truth of not knowing, to open to the great activity more and more, you know. 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.

[40:32]

So this is the whole name of the book is Low-Tech Design by Radical 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 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 waru-waru are raised planting platforms that 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.

[41:39]

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 waru-waru method and seeing, oh, this is an opportunity. This is a, you know, the waru-waru 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.

[42:50]

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, neither grasping nor turning away, allowing for softness, wideness, deepness, opening.

[43:58]

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. everything. 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.

[45:07]

Dynamic, impermanent, interdependent, empty of separate self. We call this the great activity. I would like to close with one final thought. 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?

[46:23]

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.

[47:31]

Seeing everything, seeing everything as from the earth and the earth as ourselves, we understand life. So reality 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.

[48:35]

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. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless, I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them.

[49:38]

Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it. Thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you to the assembly. Just two brief announcements as we move into a period of discussion. First is a reminder of our practice of move up and move back. That is to take note of who's speaking and who's not. And if you tend to speak often, consider moving back and vice versa. Second announcement is that the theme for our spring fundraiser, the Zenathon, is the heartbeat of practice. And I'll post a link in the chat to the Zenathon website. You can peruse stories by your... fellow practitioners, as well as make a page of your own. And it's through the circle of generosity that these offerings continue. So thank you very much. Now, if you would like to participate in the discussion by making a comment or asking a question, please feel free to raise your Zoom hand and I can unmute you. David.

[51:04]

Thank you so much for the Dharma. The other day I was doing some work on my land, which is low Rocky Mountains, west of Denver. And I've been learning this place now for a few years. And it reminded me of... You know, learning to communicate. And it was interesting. There was a school of thought called linguistic relativity. This was in like the movie Arrival where, you know, the woman was trying to communicate with people who were creatures that lived in, you know, through time. But she was actually beginning to dream like them. and this is linguistic relativity, by learning the language, you learn to perceive and experience according to the culture of that language.

[52:12]

And I realized this was happening with my land, that it was teaching me how to sort of, you know, think like the ecology by learning to listen and communicate and just participate in that dialogue. And I was hoping you might reflect especially When, you know, the paddy becomes so soggy and it becomes your problem until you realize it's your opportunity. You just want to hear me talk about my problems more. Yeah. Well, yes. Yeah. So. Yeah, what's coming to mind is the, you know, maybe the way we don't even notice a lot of the time that we're not in relationship or not in dialogue because we're just over here.

[53:29]

listening to this. Even if we think what's going on over here is, is about what's out there, you know, often this is what we don't notice that we're just, we're kind of, it's very one-sided. And so for me, like the, the practice of listening, you know, which requires stillness, inner stillness and silence to receive, you know, what's being given, what's being offered, which is like the water is offering itself. The topography of the valley is offering itself. And It takes me, it takes some real effort and concentration for me to find the stillness to receive it, you know, to notice I'm being offered a gift, you know.

[54:50]

So, yeah, it sounds like you too, like you're, you know, noticing you can, you are receiving. some messages that the land is offering you. You're beginning to understand the language, what it's saying. Yeah. Thank you very much. Sarah, I received a question in the chat. Please ask, how are the animals, that is non-human sentient beings, how are they included in management? The fish were mentioned, but not the land animals. Oh, so how do we farm with all the animals? We have a deer fence.

[55:51]

We try to keep the deer out so they don't eat all the roses. They like to come in and... take one bite of each head of lettuce and then you'll just damage them enough to make it difficult to harvest each one of them. So we have a deer fence. We have, you know, a bobcat. This young female bobcat has been living with us since the pandemic. She comes almost every day on the farm and in the garden with us. She's fearless. There is a tree right next to the packing shed where a hummingbird has made her nest. I don't know if you've ever seen a hummingbird's nest. They're so amazingly small. The ones here, all the ones I've seen have lichen. They're lichen woven into them. The herons come and eat the gophers and the snakes and the baby ducklings.

[56:56]

We kind of give the gophers their share of the harvest. We, you know, we're fortunate enough to live in a pretty isolated place. We're surrounded by Golden Gate National Recreation land, park land, and state land. And we have a lot, you know, there's an organization of a group of us who have roles in managing the watershed called one TAM. So we have wonderful partners who manage the land around us. So we have so much biodiversity by virtue of that, that, you know, the ravens eat the mice and the hawks eat the animals. you know, mice and the snakes and the otters just run around being crazy and they're all included, you know, and I think, you know, maybe we'd need to do more active management if we were really in a place of more imbalance.

[58:11]

Yeah. Thank you. Linda. Hi, Sarah. Hi, Linda. I enjoyed your talk, you know, every part of it and didn't have any irritable objections or anything. And I enjoyed your face and your eyes, your voice. One question came up for me. That's what I'm going to ask you. And it has to do with possibly rehabilitating George Wheelwright's legacy a little bit. Because as I understand it, George Realwright practically gave Green Gulch to Zen Center. And then he was honored and taken care of for the rest of his life. And he lived in the building that is now called the Wheelwright Center. So we had such a kind of negative impression of him from the part that you did describe.

[59:19]

So I wondered if there's another side to the story. Yes, thank you so much, Linda. I was aware as I was writing this talk, you know, of how I was kind of using George as a foil, right? So he was kind of getting cast in this one light. And I certainly, you know, I hope also that kind of what comes across or what I'm very aware of is, you know, all of us are completely conditioned by our time and our place and what we've been taught, you know. And that was the water he was swimming in. That was the world, you know, that created him, that kind of thinking. So I don't want to pin it on him, you know, just as, you know, I've gone through this journey of trying to understand what has conditioned this mind and to take responsibility for it, you know, by

[60:22]

by caring for the seeds before they bloom into, you know, and perpetuate suffering, you know, as best I can. So, yes, I mean, George Wheelwright, yes, and we could say, I did think this, right? I mean, it's like Emperor Wu gets such a bad rap for turning away Bodhidharma, but actually he was a great supporter of Buddhism. He had a great affinity. So why did George give it to Zen Center? Like, he must have taught you. That's right. That's right. You know, I wasn't there, but my understanding is he really wanted a group of people, an organization that was going to take care of the land, you know, that was going to keep it as a farm, that was going to keep it as a working landscape and care for it. And I think he did see that.

[61:23]

He saw that in the Zen students, right? So yes, and he stayed with us. Yes. Okay. Yes. Thank you very much. All right. I just want to thank you for your incredible... profound talk. It was mind-blowing for me. And I want to look at the transcript and get that list of all the things you enumerated, the assumptions of George Wheelwright. I think it's an amazing list to have to help understand the world and myself. Thank you so much. Yes, and just, again, to say, this was my mind, right?

[62:24]

That was not George's mind. I don't actually know what George was thinking, but. I think it's a very helpful list. So this is. Yes. For our civilization. Yeah, that's right. To help with our civilization. And that's how I could write that list, is it's all right in here, right? Yeah. Miguel. And then Cecile, I see your hand up after Miguel. Hello, and good morning. I just want to say, first of all, thank you, Sarah, for your talk. It resonated very, very well with me. A lot of my family from Mexico, well, we started out as farmers and then we moved to the cities, but there's still a lot of folks still on the farm back in the old country. I appreciate that reflecting on our impact on the ecology. And I also, this gave me an opportunity to reflect on kind of like the urban ecology that I live in within the city.

[63:26]

That is to say, seeing how different communities are affected by just what would be called now unwise actions. You know, how in an attempt to gentrify an area to quote, make it better, we tear up the old systems displace many people, scatter them all over the place, and then end up with a stagnant area and with new pockets of problems. Just what comes to mind for me, though, is that I think one of the issues that I do have with urban farming and organic farming in general is just the role of the worker, the migrant worker, the minority worker. I've seen a lot of these programs pretty much almost emphasis on the gentleman farmer. But I'd like to see more cultivation toward the people who have been tilling the land in California for generations now, for the people who have been tending the Louisiana shrimp farms, the Midwest farmers who don't look like the 1940s Dust Bowl pictures anymore, but look more or less...

[64:42]

like our urban development, our indigenous peoples who are now watching their methods being rediscovered and credit not necessarily given to them for, you know, having already invented the system. So I guess what I'm touching on is that I appreciate talking about how we can go back to a system that had originally been cultivated in what was thought to be the greater good, that is to say, a straightened creek bed with concrete and different pools to hold different areas and then come back and bring it back to the land. But how do we touch on these elements of just, you know, racial justice, people ecology, I should say. That's a better word, people ecology. How do we tend to our people and our community and our systems that have been uprooted and torn apart so many times while trying to take care of this earth? Yeah.

[65:44]

Thank you very much for all of that. Yeah. I was just thinking on my way over to give this talk, you know, this talk, you know, this talk is about farming and the earth, but this practice, you know, this talk is also about everything that you just said. This talk is also about how we, separate from one another, how we, and also how we return everybody to our true nature together. This practice of becoming clearly aware of everything you just said, specific, you know, embodied ways, thoughts, feelings, systems of how we are perpetuating the separation from one another and from the earth, how we cover up and do not see each other or the earth.

[67:02]

And bringing this, doing the work, becoming still and silent enough to allow the specificity of how this happens into our awareness, receive it, and therefore find the ground to, you know, rather than acting that out, find the ground of our real relationship. which we can't just leap into. We can't bypass that other part. Everything that you're pointing to, we cannot bypass it. Yeah, so the practice, what I understand, the practice is the same and must be turned in all directions. You know, so may we all...

[68:08]

find good spiritual friends and teachers that can do this work with us. And for everybody to have the support they need to find calm, to be able to open to this work. So thank you very much. Thank you. Cecile. Cecile, I can't hear you quite. There we go. I am so grateful that I came to this talk today. I am a very irregular practitioner. And it is one of the most extraordinary Dharma talks I have ever, ever, ever heard. So that is my main message for today.

[69:13]

I am just blown away. I've never seen you when I've been at Green Gulch. I didn't even... know you before this and I have one gift that tells me when I need to be somewhere and this morning I set my alarm clock to get up for this talk so that's my great blessing today but with that I went to bed hearing about 400,000 children that may starve to death in Yemen And all of the deaths of Black Americans in this country by police violence, I just cannot, I literally, I weep a lot. And I cried in your talk a lot, too. And interestingly, a very close friend of mine who loves gardening came to do my little raised bed.

[70:16]

And I like feeding her. We trade. picks weeds and I feed her. But I don't know how to take this all in in the larger context of what Miguel was talking about. The great injustices, it's so big. And I take, I live in Berkeley. I am always aware of my privilege. I can walk to the cheese board. I can even walk to Chez Panisse and enjoy a meal once a year or something. And I am very aware of my privilege, but I am just aching, aching, aching. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm carrying a number of those things also. And was carrying them in. Yeah. into this talk, into thinking about this, you know, practice and, you know, one, again, I think there's a way, you know, first of all, stillness and silence, you know, actually, actually, um,

[71:40]

giving our body and mind space to receive and to be with what is. I think sometimes we try and leap over it by thinking and thinking and thinking, oh, this is terrible. Oh, I don't like this. I have to do something about it. You know, we can get really caught up and just being, you know, just really stopping. I have found to be or at least noticing when I'm not stopping has been very helpful to become aware of that pattern. And then, you know, it's the same thing. We do need to understand systemic violence, systemic racism. And what I'm talking about is we need to become aware of it in the very particulars of our own body and mind.

[72:51]

And also to remember the truth that we are not in control. You know? The impulse to fix reality, you know? very hard to be still with that impulse I find and to accept what's happening which is delusion creating this world of suffering you know this is delusion this is yeah so this is very complex and I Yeah, I also struggle with these different ways of understanding and seeing and feeling the world. And so this is how the Dharma supports me to continue.

[73:57]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I think just time enough for a brief exchange. Tova had one last question and then we'll wrap up for the morning. Good morning, Sarah. Thank you for your talk. I think my question may be related to what Miguel was sharing, but I really appreciated the way you began with naming the farmers who've cared for the land at Green Gulch before you and that wonderful legacy. And what was missing for me was the Native American people who cared for the land even before. And I wondered if you had thought about doing a land acknowledgement as part of your opening. For me, that would have made that connection. Yeah. Yeah.

[74:59]

Thank you very much. Yeah, I appreciate that. I am, still working on, you know, what my own relationship to this phenomena of land acknowledgement, you know, and like where that lives in me, how am I acknowledging or not acknowledging indigenous people? who are still alive and caring for land and who are in relationship with this land through the cultural conservancy, a wonderful organization, and also the past, you know, the lineage. And so for me, I think because I don't,

[76:10]

don't want to take something that's not given so in some way I hear like maybe by not acknowledging there's some feeling of taking you know what is not given this land and in some way for me the gesture of the land acknowledgement I I that to be an authentic relationship you know for me and so that hasn't quite um revealed itself yet but I do appreciate you bringing it up and I'm so happy that's in your heart you know um and I think what's in my heart is yeah what is that I hold that what what is that what has happened uh how is that part of me Thank you.

[77:15]

Thank you very much. Sarah, thank you so much. I believe that brings us to time. Would you like to offer a closing word? It looks like you're about to start, too. I'm sorry to interrupt. That's okay. I just wanted to mention I wrote in the chat the name of the book that I mentioned, Low Tech Design, in case you were interested in looking that up. It's, yeah. Thank you all so much. very much. Thank you, everyone. And we should be able to unmute you. Happy Earth Day. Thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks, Nancy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great Dharma talk.

[78:17]

Thanks so much for this birthday celebration. Thank you. Hi, everybody. Hi, Vicki. Hi, Barbara. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, David. Thank you so much, Sarah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah.

[78:46]

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