How to taste the truth without the talkative words. My name is Tia and I welcome you to Zen Center although it's a beautiful day outside and today we celebrate Earth Day and what in the world are you doing here?

[01:09]

When I hear myself say, celebrate Earth Day, it seems like such a misnomer, for heaven's sakes. It seems so paltry, so small, so human. I mean, think about it. We are going to celebrate the Earth Well, actually, when I think about it, that's not a bad idea. We are the ones who should celebrate the earth. I mean, who else is going to? I mean, the earth gives and [...] gives. So I think it's appropriate at least once a year that we stop and we actually thank God

[02:18]

Thank the earth for life, our life. And, you know, it's not our life. It's not our life. It's not my life. It's life. Just thank you is enough. No earth, no me, no nothing. Just life happens. And for some miracle, some mistake, or some quirk of the universe, human beings have a mind that is aware of awareness. So we get to stop for a minute and... What can you say? Thank you. Okay. Thank you. And while we're saying thank you to the earth, we might as well just stop and thank, be thankful for whatever we receive.

[03:33]

because whatever we receive is our life arising at that moment. And we suffer when we push that away. And we suffer the earth's pain if we push the earth away. If we push our awareness of the earth and what it needs away, we human beings will suffer that resistance, that unconsciousness. Because life doesn't have a problem. Life doesn't know about pollution or anything like that. I'm sure that life is going to keep right on going, and it'll just be us human beings who will slip away, along with tigers and elephants and innumerable other species that we take for granted. Little guppies and birds.

[04:37]

Do you know that bees are intelligent? Do you know that? I read an article the other day in the newspaper. How many people saw that article? You did? Yeah, a number of you. It was staggering. It was staggering. Okay, here's the experiment, how they found out that bees are intelligent. They set up a thing where there was an entrance, and then right after the entrance, there was a fork in the road. So there's an entrance, and then the little bee flew in. Don't we all love bees? The little bee flew in. And then it could choose to go to the right or go to the left fork, right? And right up here, the experimenters, clever, clever people, the people, the clever people, put a round dot, a yellow dot. And on one of the forks, they had a yellow dot. And on the other fork, they had a blue dot. I might have been getting the colors wrong, but something like that.

[05:42]

And then they had lots of bees go in there, and the bee would go in there, and at first it was kind of didn't know what to do, and some of them went this way or that way, but eventually they kind of got that the sugar was at the end of the yellow, the hallway where the yellow dot was, and they noticed that in the very front of the door there was a yellow dot. So they understood that there was a yellow dot there, and there was a yellow dot there, and at the end there was sugar. Okay, so then the experiment is the second experiment, which was at the door they had vertical lines, I think it was, and then where the sugar was there were vertical lines, and then on the other fork in the road there were horizontal lines. Well, guess what? These little bees, these fat little bees, who, according to physics, aren't even allowed to fly. Did you know that? Because they have really fat bodies and these teeny-weeny little wings.

[06:47]

Already they're very unusual. But unlike dragonflies, you know about dragonflies. Let's not get too lost here. But we're talking about the earth. These are the beings, the little beings, that make it possible for us to live. The more of these that we kind of cross off, the less possible it is going to be for human beings to be here. Be here. Did you get that? Okay. Anyway, the bees understood that whatever was at the beginning of the door, if they knew that this was the same as what was at the fork in the road, and if they flew where the sameness was, they'd find the sugar. So they understood a concept. It's a concept, same or different.

[07:48]

Smart little bees. I'm way, way, I didn't, let's see, excuse me. Okay, so there's a display of, we have a display of Earth Day. It's right where you walked in. It's a beautiful, it has green, you know, green 2001. And it has some good ideas on that. Where are the little black posters? In the courtyard, there's some other posters also. There's lots of information about Earth Day. And I hope that some of you look at that information. And although I have a feeling that those of you who are here, I'm like talking to the chorus, I think. However, we each have to take responsibility. Each one of us are responsible for whatever we see we're responsible for. Whatever comes into our awareness, like if a light is on in a room, that's ours.

[08:54]

It's our responsibility. Even if you didn't want it, there it is. And you can walk down the hall and not look, which is, you know, don't we live a lot like that? Our eyes are open, but we're not seeing anything. I can't do that right now. I'm going someplace else. Somebody else will turn off the light. It's not that big a deal anyway. Just one light. I left the light on this morning when I... Where was I? You turned it off. Kathleen's office right in the morning. I left it on. David turned it off. But David forgot. Okay. All right. Here we go. I wanted to talk about the Sangha jewel, actually.

[09:56]

I wanted to talk about the Sangha jewel in the context of the earth. So, I take refuge in Buddha. I take refuge in Dharma. I take refuge in Sangha. We go for refuge in the vast silence of total dynamic working. We go for refuge in the understanding of dependently co-arising, mysteriously interconnected life. and we go for refuge over and over again to the community of practitioners who intentionally live their lives to wake up for the benefit of each other so that we don't forget the bees

[11:21]

the birds, the trees, and each other. THE THING ABOUT THE EARTH IS WE ALL ALREADY UNDERSTAND THAT WE'RE TOTALLY CONNECTED. SOMEPLACE INSIDE WE TOTALLY KNOW THIS. THIS IS NOT A MYSTERY TO ANYBODY HERE IN THE ROOM. AND WE LONG FOR THAT RECONNECTED, THAT RECONNECTION. WE LONG FOR THAT RECONNECTION. AND MANY OF US FIND THAT OR did find that when we were young in nature. How many of you go to nature for solace and so on?

[12:27]

Lots. So here's some nature stuff. This is from Mary Oliver. So, you know, ultimately we're not asked to do anything particular except wake up. But why? We're asked to wake up just so that we can enjoy the mystery that is life, so that we don't forget that all we have to do is basically play with the energy that we are. It's not a struggle. It doesn't have to be a struggle. It's definitely not dramatic. As soon as it starts getting dramatic, we're way off course.

[13:31]

It's not about your drama. It isn't. When things happen in life, it's about whatever that karma is. We don't grab onto karma and make it our own unless it's our own karma. It's none of those things. We basically just let things be the way they are and wake up and live in that moment and hopefully respond appropriately, although mostly we make huge mistakes all the time. And then, that's okay, we learn from them, but we have to be responsible for that karma. We have to actually walk through the karma that arrives as your life right now. There's nobody's fault in that. Nobody's blaming or at fault for any of that karma. It's all dependently co-arisen.

[14:33]

It's how we respond... to what arises as our life that makes our own lives free or bound. That's the key. So once we respond in a way that is not stuck, whenever we're caught, we're in some kind of pain. Red flags should go up all the time. As soon as you're blaming somebody or you can't laugh at when somebody tells you something that might be close to the truth, then it's a clue. All of those are clues. And the more when things happen in our lives and we can actually walk through, even the really difficult times, with some amount of flexibility or presence, actually to be there on the page when it's really happening, with some appreciation, even when it's difficult.

[15:39]

This is a life of... This is a life like a bear or like a leopard or an antelope. Just being where the next thing is when it's happening right now. This is called the sun. Have you ever seen anything in your life more wonderful than then the way the sun every evening, relaxed and easy, floats toward the horizon and into the clouds or the hills or the rumbled sea and is gone. And how it slides again out of the blackness every morning on the other side of the world like a red flower, streaming upward on its heavenly oils, say, on a morning in early summer at its perfect imperial distance?

[16:52]

And have you ever felt for anything such wild love? Do you think there is anywhere in any language a word, a word billowing enough for the pleasure that fills you as the sun reaches out, as it warms you, as you stand there empty-handed? Or have you too turned from this world? Or have you too gone crazy for power, for things. She's really good. In physics, I recently read that there is some theory about a small movement in a very complex event, and that small change actually can greatly influence this really very complex event.

[18:19]

That seems to make sense to me. I heard on the radio the other day, somebody who was talking about Earth Day, that we don't have to be, what they said was, we don't really have to be depressed at what's happening to us in the Earth, because what they said was, just as long as we have enough, a kind of a, what word did they use, a... significant minority, as long as we have a significant minority, that significant minority that's awake about what's happening right now on the earth will be able to turn so that we go in a way that we can save ourselves. So I'm kind of optimistic today.

[19:30]

Here's another one about goldfinches. In the fields we let them have, in the fields we don't want yet, where thistles rise out of the marshlands of spring and spring open, each bud a settlement of riches, a coin of reddish fire, The finches wait for midsummer, for the long days, for the brass heat, for the seeds to begin to form in the hardening thistles, dazzling as the teeth of mice but black, filling the face of every flower. Then they drop from the sky a buttery gold. They swing on the thistles. They gather the silvery down. They carry it in their finchy beaks to the edges of the fields, to the trees, as though their minds were on fire with the flower of one perfect idea.

[20:35]

And there they build their nests and lay their pale blue eggs." Every year and every year the hatchlings wake in the swaying branches in the silver baskets and love the world. Is it necessary to say any more? Have you heard them singing in the wind above the final fields? Have you ever been so happy in your life? You know, when I came back from Africa, I lived in Africa for a year. Africa, in Africa, Africa, I don't know, I don't understand about Africa. It's just an incredible place. Some of you may have been there also. We can share this together. But the thing about Africa is it dominates. In Africa, the earth really dominates. And human beings, you feel like you're the appropriate size.

[21:41]

Like when you see an elephant in Africa, it doesn't look big. It looks like, yeah, that's right, it fits. And when you walk around, it fits. You're food like everything else. I mean, really, you fit right in there, in your place, a little bit lower than the lions and the snakes, certain snakes on the food chain. The thing is, in Africa, you see this life thing happening. You can't avoid it like we can here in the United States. You can't avoid it. Right out in the open, you see birth, death, sex, mostly birth, death, and sex, and illness, and hurt wings, and broken things, and stuff like that. And you're among all of this stuff. It's incredible. It's really, it's just incredible. It feels so earth-like.

[22:43]

And if you stop for a moment and feel what's going on there and settle deeply and allow your mind to spread out over the land, it teaches, just like it does here. If you really live in San Francisco on the earth, Everything teaches. Everything transmits to us the truth all the time. It's just easier to see it in nature. But everything is always telling us the true nature of our own lives. Everything changes. We all arrive together. We're all interconnected. None of us are separate. We all arise out of the same life. And in that way, there is no birth and no death. When my mother was dying, my brother and I went to Katagiri Roshi and asked him about death.

[23:55]

And he said, no difference. Of course, I didn't understand him. Whenever I go to teachers and I ask them a question, I never understand until years later. Here's another earth feeling of earth. And if you close your eyes and you put yourself into some place on the earth that you like to go to, even if it's a tree in your backyard, as I read this, see if you can feel in your own body that connectedness. This particular thing I'm going to read is about the desert. Above it is blue. Below, suddenly, color, a flower. I bend down close and smell. Will it give me its gift? May I know your story?

[24:59]

I want to know who you are. Teach me. Let me be with you. Let me understand. Morning flower slowly opens. I watch, waiting. New shape and color and desert smell. I kneel down. Pebbles and sand press into my knees and palms. Flower and I smell. Eyes smell flower. Slowly now the heat penetrates. Dawn is gone. Colors changed. It is day. It is sun. It is heat. All is sun, everything hot. I melt. I melt. I am heat and sweat. I take the shirt off my back. I glisten. I feel the wind on my body and walk to find my spot.

[26:02]

I'm tired. I sit down. This is my spot. Show me earth. I will watch and wait. I lie down to the sky and watch. It is white cloud, then blue, then nothing, vast nothing. The cells of my eyes move in the blueness of sky. It is I. Wind comes up. Teach me, wind. Wind moves and touches. Feel me, wind. Heat recedes. I put the shirt back on. It is changing color time of dark salmon, pink, beige, and lavender glow. The skylight rests on the earth. More wind. I go back to the rocks. A snake friend also returns and huddles in the cracks.

[27:03]

I huddle with her, safe as long as I am still. And still we watch the night come. For hours we watch. For hours it comes. One star, then three. For hours the sky darkens. The colors fade to glow. to shape, and then darkness. A sharp in-breath catches the moon. Suddenly it appears, the huge round moon. I touch you, friend. Come into me. Dwell in my home. I wait, no longer wanting. I am open. I am surrendered. I am change. Take me. Night cold on my body. The wind again restless. Stop. Let me rest. I can't stand the sound.

[28:04]

It answers. Now open to me. Let me be wind. Let me caress you. As I am, let me be. I huddle in rocks, waiting, then standing, shouting, I am wind, let me be. It is night, stars beyond stars. I want to lie down on the earth, put body down on pebbles and sand, gently put my body down and wriggle into the earth. The night is cold. Stars cover. Moon covers. Shirt covers and rocks. I lie down. Snake and I sleep. It is all like that.

[29:09]

You could say the same thing of the city as we live in it, as long as we are open physically to being itself. There was a movie a long time ago called Koya Naskatsi. Koya Naskatsi is a Hopi word, I believe, that means out of balance. I think I believe personally that as much as human beings are out of balance is how much the world is out of balance.

[30:11]

There are just too many of us. Too many people. Did you see that movie Amadeus a long time ago? And if you remember the time when the... Mozart just wrote this incredibly beautiful I forgot what it was. I think it was an opera that he did. Well, I don't remember. Anyway, it was incredibly beautiful. And then the emperor, it was too long though, right? So the emperor comes on the stage afterward and he says, terrific, terrific. It's just that there are just too many notes, too many notes. Just take out some of the notes. So anyway, my personal opinion is that there are just too many people So we have to say all together.

[31:18]

You don't have to. I'll say it for us. All of our ancient twisted karma, and it's true, you know, all of the ancient twisted karma of human beings, generation before [...] generation, it's our karma. just as our individual karma is brought to us by our parents and grandparents and so on and so forth in society, and that's how Sangha gets bigger and [...] bigger. From generations ago, all my ancient, ancient, ancient twisted karma, from beginningless greed, hate and delusion, born of body, speech, and mind, I now acknowledge, I avow,

[32:26]

And I hope that it only takes us a few things, a few decisions, like when you shop, read the label and see if it has genetically altered food in it and buy something else. Or even better yet, don't buy very much, so that we all have a chance to make it I think the way we can do this, the only way that we can do this, is to live with the understanding of the middle way. We must walk in the middle. We must understand that our life is the same life as everything.

[33:31]

We live all together one And at the very same time, it's our own personal life. So we are, as individuals, completely responsible, totally, for the survival of the earth. But the way we're totally responsible, the way we're totally responsible is in the context of its all one life. So all we can do is take care of how we shop, whether the next car we get is an electric car, whether we use wind energy, whether we vote for, I won't say, or not. Anyway, I'll just read another thing or two.

[34:34]

So you know, when you take the precepts, we take the first precept, the sixth, seventh precept we take is don't kill life. So that's what I've been talking about. If we think about it in terms of you know, oneness, so-called oneness, we can't kill life. There is no such thing as birth and death. We can't. It's too big. But on the other hand, we really have to pay attention. Don't kill it. Don't kill yourself and what you feel. And don't. try not to anyway. And I know we all do our best all the time, but try not to. We have to try not to hurt each other, even though we make mistakes constantly. All right, so here is a couple of Indian things, Native American.

[35:51]

This is from the Chippewa. As my eyes search the prairie, I feel the summer in the spring. Ms. Pima. Far on the desert ridges stands the cactus. Lo, the blossoms swaying to and fro. The blossoms swaying. And here's the last one. Do you see me? Do you all help me? My words are tied in one with great mountains, with great rocks and great trees, in one with my body and my heart.

[36:55]

Do you all help me with great energy? And you, day, and you, night, all of you see me, one with the world. You know, I do. And I think we all do. Sometimes we have this romantic thing, you know, that in the time when it was a simpler life, that people were, I don't know, more happy maybe? I actually don't know. But surely I sort of think that the closer we are in touch with the earth, in touch with our own true nature, the chance for being sane, you know, the chance for being sane is closer anyway, I think.

[37:58]

So if you live in the city, you know, I hope you have a plant at home. You know? or a cat, or a dog. Or if you don't have something in your immediate thing, when you walk down the street, don't miss the trees. They are really speaking all the time. They're telling us who we are. They don't ever reject us. We're never alone. Yeah.

[39:46]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_89.72