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. Nice of you to come out here on this very chilly winter, not quite winter day, but Phil's coldest, I think, that's been so far here. Hope all of you had a thankful Thanksgiving and ate whatever you ate and it was delicious. We have a big Thanksgiving festival, not festival, feast here with all the produce that we grew and it's all vegetarian and it's a lot. It's their biggest holiday by far. We really enjoy it to come together like that I'm the land steward at this time right here in this temple.

[01:05]

And recently, one of the people who come for the work week, or land work week, which I'll tell you about later, sent me this book, 12 Trees. These are 12 trees that are really important in all over the world and that have deep roots in our future. And I'll just tell you about one of them. But Daniel Lewis wrote this. It's really well-written and informative. And if you get a chance... Yeah, check it out. It's probably in your library. You don't need to have to borrow it, maybe. This is a season of abundance, and for most of us, hopefully most of us, but not everyone. So I want to remember those people who perhaps don't have enough to sustain them. Thank you for making the time to come to Green Gulch this Thanksgiving holiday weekend. We're blessed this week with cool, clear, crisp weather.

[02:08]

It finally feels like autumn moving towards winter. In the fall, most of us have a bit more time to notice the details around us and see into both the light and shadows in our lives. Here at Green Gulch, we started the Thanksgiving day with cleaning and filling the zendo. and dining room with this year's bounty of produce celebrating the farm and land's harvest. Meanwhile, the Tenzo Zenko and the kitchen crew cooked up Green Gold's unique yearly Thanksgiving meal of nut loaf, tasty Green Gold's delicata squash, potatoes, and of course several, I think three types of pie. No one went without. Everyone went away full of nutritious food. delights from our harvest and hard work. So as I said, I'm going to talk about trees this morning and how it relates to Dharma historically in the Buddhist realm. I think it's more a talk about appreciation of trees and what they do to nourish wherever they're standing.

[03:19]

I'm also in charge of cutting them back or cutting them down. based on what's needed. So I just want to give you the full picture. I'm not hiding anything. But we have a lot of property, so we have a lot of trees. And we've wanted to plant trees as much as possible, so now they're all so mature and they're a little unwieldy. And some are moving with gravity downward. If you look at the Buddhist tradition, the Buddha practice, his meditation under a tree, a bodhi tree. He was enlightened under this tree, and he taught and lived under the trees for years. And then he laid down beneath two salt trees, which burst into flowers upon his death, as the story goes. Trees were part of his constant life. Salt timber, which I think is native in India, is known for its strength, durability, and resistance to decay.

[04:23]

The tree is also used to make honey, oil for cooking, lighting, tannin, leaf plates, and bowls for medicinal purposes. Culturally important, sow trees have a long history of cultural and religious significance in the region. There's a deep connection with all our well-being and connection to the natural world around us. Our sangha is blessed to live in this watershed where the mountains flow down from the down to the water. We live in this unique place that's surrounded by property belonging to the state. And we're just a small place in the middle of all that. really unusual. We have people down at Muir Beach who have their private homes, but we are gifted this property and to take care of it.

[05:30]

And we try to do the best we can. Our sangha is blessed to live in this watershed where the mountains flow down to the water. It's a seamless walk from the top of Mount Tam to Steep, but seamless. Down to the ocean through various terrains, including mere wids, old-growth redwoods, and along Redwood Creek. In Zen, mountains walking is a term describing dependent co-rising in the ocean enlightenment. Trees are a bit magical. They convert carbon dioxide to oxygen through photosynthesis, which then uses sunlight to transform the carbon dioxide and water into sugar for the tree and oxygen for us. Did you get all that? They use sunlight to transform the carbon dioxide and water into sugar for the tree and oxygen for us.

[06:35]

We're really dependent on trees, highly dependent. This process occurs in the leaves, with carbon dioxide entering through pores and water being absorbed by the roots. Dependent chlorising is a Buddhist concept stating that all phenomena... are interconnected and arise based on causes and condition. Nothing exists independently. Rather, things come into being because other things exist. And they crease to exist as their conditions disappear. There's a reason Muir Woods is so wildly popular. Spending time in the redwood groves encourages us to open all our senses. We hear the rustle of needles, feel the sway of their branches, and smell the smoky atmospheric air scent of the redwoods. If we look deeply up into the branches and engage all our senses, our minds are allowed to see beyond our limited idea of them.

[07:36]

Muir Woods has a number of 500 to 800-year-old trees. I don't know if you've been there recently or if you've seen them. They're the largest ones, usually down by the water. And they've been federally protected as a national monument since 1908. So that's such a gift for our ancestors to preserve them. President Roosevelt decided to create Muir Woods as a national monument after receiving a private land donation from Congressman William Kent. Kent donated 295 acres of old-growth redwood forest to the federal government and requested it be named in honor of conservationist John Muir. Trees are symbiotes, an organization living in symbiosis with another. Tree rings are like old books. One tree ring, which consists of a light in a dark van, represents environmental conditions of that time. One year of the tree's life, the light band is formed in the spring with flask growing larger cells, while the dark cells is formed in late summer and slower growing smaller cells.

[08:53]

The width of the ring can also provide information about the growing season. A wider ring indicates good conditions, while a narrower ring suggests stress like drought or cold. I often think about how humans exhibit their tree rings, how a year of growth is reflected in their body and their mind. how our intention and actions influence our future, our karma. Karma is a belief that every action has a consequence, and the intent behind the action is a key factor. Karma is tied to sentience. The concept of karma is generally applied to sentient beings who can make choices and experiences the consequences of those choices across lifetimes. I don't know if I agree with the next part of this, but it's thought that animals act mainly on instinct, so their actions do not produce karma, like human choices do. I found that really interesting.

[09:55]

This seems debatable. Yeah, they act on instinct, but it seems like they act, they have so much more to offer than just instinct. I just feel like they have love and admiration, too. I'm a dog person. I think my dogs all love me. The web of water flowing down from Mount Tam follows or perhaps accurately dips and dances with the terrain as it makes its way down through Muir Woods and Muir Beach Estuary. Meanwhile, here in our modest Green Gulch watershed, we see progress and are looking forward to the removal of the Zendo Pond in a few years, allowing the creek to flow freely all the way to the ocean year-round. It's a project we've been working on for, I don't know, a decade or two. Try to take this pond. We've had irrigation pond there. It's not very attractive.

[10:57]

It's got pond weed all over it, just over there to my left. And we tried to dredge it several times. And... It's kind of like taking a pea out of a huge bowl of peas. It's really hard to get an excavator in there to remove anything. They're all... Here's a sad story. They're all weed that came from aquariums that got dumped in there. There's two types of aquarium weed in there, and they've really manifested themselves completely. And it doesn't seem like a very healthy... environment for most animals. I've seen newts in there. I don't see, has anyone seen fish in there recently? Yeah. Frogs. Frogs. Newts and frogs. Antibians. So we're looking forward to actually removing that pond, the Zendo pond, which would be a huge, such a huge project, obviously, and putting a sinewy creek in there.

[12:07]

to connect to our weather restoration area at the top of the garden. So we'll have water flowing all the way from the spring in the far outer parking lot, beyond the outer parking lot, all the way to the ocean. We've been talking about this for so long, it's surprising if it'll happen at this point. But it's due to happen in the next couple of years. Still, this whole current administration and various grants and things are just, yeah, the people in charge are just changing things a little bit. So we have to be patient with that. But we're really looking forward to that. It would be such a relief not to look at the pond weed constantly and just shy, turn my head. It is really good for compost, though. It was really good. We used to have this raft.

[13:09]

It was like two 55-gallon plastic containers, and there was a deck on top of it. And we'd go out there, get the pondweed, lift it up, put it on there. Actually, I didn't do it that much. The farmers did it. And then it went down to the composting area. But we gave that up. I don't know if it was because the raft. I was at Tassajara then. I think the raft perished. or our interest perished in trying to get it out. But we do make efforts, although you can't really tell sometimes, to really take care of things. This is a poem. It's called Redwood Dharma. It's by Laura Grace Weldon, and she's from Ohio. Redwood trees have lived on Earth for over 240 million years. Home with safety is only about 2,000.

[14:13]

Despite massive size, old-growth redwood, root systems are shallow. Trees reach 350 feet tall, yet don't topple in the strongest winds. Each one's roots interlace with its neighbor's roots, creating a vast network of support unseen on the surface. They hold on for 1,000, 2,000 years, maybe more, all the while showing us how to grow up. Salt trees are a closely related species, have been in dominant trees and species of forests in the Indian subcontinent for 49 million years. 49 million years. The oak is also significant for its symbolism of strength, wisdom, and endurance, and its connection to Zen koans. Being an ancient tree in a high wind suggests cultivating a grounded, steady presence that can withstand the turbulence and emotional challenges without being uprooted or swept away.

[15:25]

Resilience, wholeheartedness, maintaining a simple, unwavering presence when things fall apart. If Buddha was born along the west coast, I imagine he might have found himself sitting under a coast redwood instead of a salt tree. The web of water flowing down from out town follows or perhaps more accurately dips and dances with the train as it makes its way down through mirror woods and mirror beach estuary. Meanwhile, here in our modest watershed, the Green Gulch Creek, we see progress. but are looking forward to plumbing the garden and farm to benefit the riparian habitat. Redwood trees can be used to determine their age within each light and dark band representing a one-year growth.

[16:26]

While counting rings is the most accurate method, Science used specialized techniques that take core samples and dating to ensure accuracy, especially with coast redwoods, which can have emissing or false rings. The oldest known living coast redwood is over 2,500 years old, and the oldest giant sequoia is over 3,200 years old. I'm missing a page, which maybe is a good thing. The braided way is a framework to see every faith tradition as a strand, braided into a larger whole of spiritual awareness.

[17:29]

In the braided way, combining spiritual practice from various faiths allows us to explore sacred experience, and wonder informs... that resonate with our personal spiritual needs and sacred intuitions. This also talks about the Versuchon Pine, who they lived for thousands and thousands of years. and that's the best chapter by far, but I, we don't, we don't have Bersilk and Pines around here, so I didn't bring it up, but, um, it's quite remarkable what they did to try to, um, do you guys all know where they live? On the east side of the Sierra, uh, across from Bishop, basically you take a road up and, and, uh, none of the trees are marked.

[18:30]

They don't want you to know which one's the oldest, you know, to take a souvenir, a cutting of some sort. Um, But it's an amazing place. It's on the top of like 10,000 feet. I think it's pretty high. I haven't been there lately, to tell you the truth. But it's really a special, unique place to have that. There's only three redwood species in the world, despite a fossil record littered with others from the dim past. One survivor is the dawn redwood, which is native to just one valley in south-central China, although it plants well around the world. The second one is our personal, coast redwood's cousin, the giant sequoia. Another huge tree often mistaken for the coast redwood, despite no overlap in their ranges and different biology.

[19:33]

The coast redwood lives almost exclusively along the upper California coast in maritime climate. It runs from mid-state down to just around Santa Barbara, or Big Sur, the bottom of Big Sur. The mature redwood adds an average ton of wood to its mass every year. It can be up to 25 feet in diameter near the ground. Obviously, they log redwoods for wood, and they still do. People build houses. We have things made of redwood here. But it's good to know the effects we have when we take down a redwood tree.

[20:38]

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 Dorma.

[21:03]

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