This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Do you hear okay? Thank you. Thank you for coming here today. Green Dragon Temple, Green Goch Farm. April is the beginning of our growing season on the farm and garden, and we just welcomed nine new apprentices of this year. The Farm and Garden Apprentice Program started in 1993, and this is the 26th generation of apprentices. I myself came here in Greengoch as a resident first time 13 years ago, 2006, as a farm apprentice.

[01:13]

At that time, I did not know anything about the history of this beautiful land. I was just charmed by this mysterious, misty green valley, colored by seasonal flowers. That was my first impression and image of Green Goch. Since then, I started learning, a little by little, this richness of this place and the people who tended and cultivated this land over the years. Today, first, I would like to talk about tiny portion of the history of this land and the people, those who came before us to show their practice working on the land. Then I would also like to talk about how I am engaging in a practice right now on this land and ask the same question to you to reflect what is your practice.

[02:28]

I would appreciate if the senior member of this community and the long time practitioner of wider Sangha member of this temple could let me know later if some of the recollections of today's stories are not accurate. I'm sure I'm not making up. 200 years ago, The Green Gooch Valley was covered by willows, elders, oaks, and redwoods. It was one of the ancestral homes of the Native American Coast Miwok people. They spoke their own language and lived lightly on the land and shore, hunting and gathering. They lived in small bands, without centralized political authority.

[03:30]

In the springtime, they would head to the coast to hunt salmon and other seafood. Otherwise, their staple foods were primarily acorns, nuts, and wild game, such as deer or cottontail rabbits. In 1838, William Richardson received a Mexican land grant 20,000 acres and established Rancho Sausalito. He hired many Portuguese ranchers and workers who began to settle and buy lands, eventually forming a section of five interlocking daily ranches Green Gulch was one of them. Muir Beach was earlier known as Bello Beach, after Antonio Bello, a Portuguese settler who supposedly bought the entire hillside for $10 gold piece.

[04:44]

In 1919, Bello established a hotel at Muir Beach. and began subdivisions for a blue-colored summer cabin. When George Willilights purchased the Green Goat Valley for $66 an acre in 1945, the ranch was owned by a horse trainer, Ray Button. This Zendo, you are listening to my talk right now, was originally a hay burn, and the area below that is currently used as office space, and the library space was the whole store for Mr. Bottom. George Wheelwright decided to raise cattle in this land, on this land. He eventually brought Hereford bulls from England, began to bulldoze the hillsides,

[05:53]

and see them with drought-resistant bunchglasses from New Zealand. With the help of his connections to the Army Corp engineers, he began to burdoze the ballet floor, straightening out the creeks, creating an interrotting system of ponds and reservoirs. filling and damming the lower wetlands with a levee to prevent salt water from coming back into the fields. This tremendous work of shaping and reshaping the face of green goat was based on Mr. Wheelwright's views. At the same time, it reflects the mindset of that time, molding the natural world, to serve the man's benefit. However, Mr. Wheelight also held an amazing attitude when it comes to the land ownership.

[07:06]

He used to say, my father taught me that no one ever really owns the land. We are only custodians, caretakers of land. I suppose if I can be said to have any strong religious belief, that would be it. After developing cancer, George realized why hope passed away in the late 60s. Mr. Wheelight found it is very difficult to remain on the farm that they had created together. At the same time, he desperately wanted his work to continue.

[08:11]

A number of non-profit organizations were considered over the years. But nothing quite worked out until 1972, 115 acres of the Green Goat Ranch was sold to the San Francisco Zen Center for very modest sum. I couldn't find the number. With two main conditions which we have to honor in perpetuity. The first one is to maintain a working farm. This is a part of Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler's requests. The second condition is to open the land to the public for trails in the spirit of the surrounding Golden Gate National Recreation Authority property.

[09:15]

why the San Francisco Zen Center was interested in purchasing this land. At that time, the Zen Center had already owned the city center in San Francisco and Tassahara Zen Mountain Center as practice places. Before his death in 1971, our founder of the San Francisco Zen Center Shunryu Suzuki Roshi asked his dumb successor, Zendatsu Richard Baker Roshi, to look for a farm near the San Francisco Bay Area, where lay people, lay community, or practitioners could live amongest one another. That was Suzuki Roshi's wish and his view. When Baker Roshi had found just such a place at Green Goat Farm, some members of San Francisco Zen Center were hesitant to commit themselves initially to such an endeavor.

[10:32]

However, Baker Roshi saw the area as a place where communal living, entire families could come together. and live as they practice Zen Buddhism. After selling Green Goch, Mr. Wheelight was still an active person on the land. He came over almost every day just to be here and to give people advice. He also became a regular fixture at the weekly Sunday public lectures like this, in his old barn, right here, having his reserved chair in a corner. I heard that he did not claim to understand anything about Zen, but he thought the new folks were nice enough people.

[11:38]

This Heibern Zendo was and still is in many people's memories and thoughts, and it distinguished this place from other practice places. The following words were the recollections of Green Gooch by Lou Hartman, who was a Dharma teacher at San Francisco Zen Center and died 2011 at age 96. He was also the husband of the late abbess, Branch Hartman, at the city center. My memories of the early days of Green Gulch cluster around the Zendo. The first time I saw Mr. Wheelight's old burn there were still a few bales of hay where the arata now stands.

[12:50]

But even then, I had a sense that the space which surrounded me would support my zazen in different ways that the zendos of Tassahara or Page Street. This expectation was realized when the first winter storm made the identity of inside and outside a palpable experience. Sometimes, more than wind came through the cracks. Torrential winter rains were common in early days. One morning, before the teahouse was built, the parking lot cobert jammed. And when I stepped out, stepped off the tan to do qinghing, or walking meditation, I was in mud up to my ankles.

[13:56]

Cows came in too. During the scene, someone left the gate open. And when I went into the gaitan, which is now a cloud hall, It was full of black Angus cows. Opening and closing a black umbrella hurried them out again, but not without a few mementos of their visit. The old barn for me maintained an organic connections between meditation and the fields. The feel blended into the ocean, and the sound of waves and the smell of the rain surrounded my Zabuton with a space that was not bounded by Zendo walls. When you come here, especially as farm or garden apprentices, you will hear the stories about two great gardening teachers and masters in the early days of Green Gulch, Harry Roberts and Alan Chadwick.

[15:29]

Both of them now long gone, yet still people who knew them talk endless stories about them. They are often described as raw and ragged prophets. Harry Roberts was raised about 250 miles north of Green Gulch at the mouth of the Klamath River. He was part Native American, part Irish. Early in his life, He was adopted by a high medicine man of Europe Native American culture who became Harry's uncle and main teacher. Harry became a hardworking man with a passion for plants and animals of North California. He was a trained horticulturalist and nursery man who helped

[16:38]

established the native plant section of UC Botanical Garden in Berkeley. Harry was invited to live at Green Goalch in 1973. He was intent on helping Green Goalch people develop practical and worldly skills, especially related to the craft of farming and gardening. He suggested before undertaking any task, you should know the answer to three questions. Number one, what do you want? Number two, how much does it cost? And number three, am I willing to pay the pay? Once you can answer these questions, get to work.

[17:44]

He also advised people here to think of our projects and their effects over a timeline of 500 years. Some people say that Harry's main role at Greencoach was... to help residents to slow down enough to see the land that we are farming and gardening. In the late 1920s, Harry had run cattles for the ranchers of West Marine. When he saw Green Goals Valley in 1927, with the unchanneled creek, meandering in serpentine loops along the valley floor. He thought it was one of the most beautiful places he had ever seen in his life.

[18:50]

Several months before Harry died, Masanobu Fukuoka visited Green Goal Farm. Mr. Fukuoka was Japanese natural farmer and philosopher, and the author of the book, One Slow Revolution. This book actually made me interested in natural farming and sustainable living in the first place, and led me to come green gorge, without knowing that Mr. Fukuoka already visited this place. When Harry and Mr. Fukuoka met, they understood each other as if they are long-lost friends. People in Greengold took Mr. Fukuoka to Muirwood to show him primeval redwood forest.

[19:58]

Mr. Fukuoka told Harry, the way redwoods grow here in Muirwood very much resemble the Yaku cryptomeria forest in Japan. He thought cryptomeria trees might in fact suits the eroded soil here better than original redwood, since cryptomeria has a deeper root system. When Fukuoka went home to Shikoku in Japan, he sent Harry a small body dharma carved from Yaku Kryptomeria, which Harry kept at his bedside until his death. Along with the figure came a package of Kryptomeria seeds. The envelope was addressed to American guardians.

[20:59]

Harry sent him a ball carved over redwood in the town. On the full moon, a month before Harry died, he planted these seeds in a flat as he lay in his bed, surrounded by his students. He told them, these seeds were Fukuoka's spirit, and asked them to take care of them. Harry died in mid-March of 1981. A few weeks later, the cryptomeria seedlings germinated mightily in their seed box. And two years later, his student planted them exactly where Harry suggested before he died. These cryptomeria trees are huge.

[22:05]

Right now. During Ava Day 2011, I was working on a project to take out the cages surrounded and protected these trees when they were young. Some trees actually grew over the cage and cooperated into their bodies so that we couldn't take them out in some case. Alan Chadwick. Alan Chadwick originally came to Greengold in 1972 and had studied the original gardens at Greengold on the exposed southwest facing slope up in Spring Valley. Not in the current garden space. He was a famous British classical horticulture master.

[23:11]

and Shakespearean actor. But most importantly, he was a passionate gardener, working to bring forth the Garden of Eden on modern ground. However, after less than a year, it was clear that Alan Chadwick could not fully develop his vision of Eden at Greenwich. According to the book, Gardening at the Dragon's Gate by Wendy Johnson, he wailed at top volume each time the wooden sounding block was struck for meditation. And faithful Zen student mindfully put down their tools and headed calmly for the meditation hall. Look at this, look at this, Alan ranted. and sheathed, perfectly able-bodied young men and women, running to the atavistic sound of wood, beating on wood, running without shame, and leaving an old man like me to walk alone in a garden.

[24:28]

Wendy continues, nevertheless, the seas of earthy paradise had been sown by Allen's passionate spirit, had lodged itself in hearts and minds of some of the green gosh community. He exalted us to do better, to push against our own limits, and to work wholeheartedly. He never relented. The garden had its own rules, own time, and own its laws. He reminded us regularly, we only believe today what can be absolutely proved, only the visible.

[25:34]

Yet, everything that is absolutely true is invisible. Alan Chadwick returned to Green Gulch eight years later at the end of his life, terminally ill with cancer. Alan dedicated the last six months of his life to teaching and offering his vision of the garden to a lively team of students gathered at his bedside. Wendy Johnson was one of them. After Harry and Erin died,

[26:38]

Many people came here and have stayed to take care of our land, as well as to develop and refine our present field location and system. Wendy Johnson, Peter Rudnick, Emera Hara, Skip Kimura, and Sukipa Marie, to name a few. Since the time of Mr. Wheelwright's development, we have a different view of our land and its fragile ecology and have been re-examining some of these early days projects. Working closely with the Park Service, we have studied the ecology of our watershed and asking ourselves questions about

[27:39]

how the land might look and behave if it's left to itself. As long as I have been here, I always felt and still feel some tensions between our work practice and formal practice, which includes Zazen, forms and ceremonies. When my work was taking care of this meditation for Ho, forms and ceremonies, if someone in community felt tired or sick and did not come to Zazen, but still were able to show up for their works, I simply thought,

[28:41]

They are not practicing. However, once I started taking care of Green Goch Garden, working with my crew, and also working closely with farm and land stewardship programs, I wonder more about what is our practice. Our Japanese Soto Zen founder, Dogen Zenji, once described our practice as, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by immediate things. I take our sitting practice very seriously, and I still believe that the sitting practice is the core and the base of our practice.

[29:55]

I realized how much anger and sadness I held after I came here and started sitting regularly. I remember I was so disappointed about myself. I was not only the kind and nice person I thought I wanted to be, but also I could be judgmental or hold ill-feeling towards people long time. Although it is very difficult to see and sit with negative parts of myself, I really appreciated and still appreciate our sitting practice in order to study and familiarize myself. Now I work in Green Gooch Garden as well as continuing daily sitting.

[30:56]

I have discovered something new about me. For example, I noticed that Efficiency is very important for me when I work. Probably, it comes from my cultural and educational background as a Japanese. Sometimes, the efficiency is important. However, if the efficiency starts ruling work, it usually creates some problems, such as ignoring some people's feelings. I am also very attached to the beauty or the neatness or tightness of the garden. This attachment often shows up as critical attitude towards myself and other people's work. I discovered that I still have a desire

[32:04]

to make money to prove the value of the garden and myself. I also struggle the contradiction between a developer and conservationist traits within myself. I choose certain kinds of plants important and try to protect them and take care of them. At the same time, I call some other plants as weed or invasive and try to get rid of them. Since we have lots of those, I am the responsible person for the massacre of weeds and invasive. I have been vegan for 13 years now, yet I crash. Japanese beetles between my fingers when I see them chewing and pooping on our coronary herbs.

[33:12]

Every year, I spray neem oil to protect our hundred roses from soulfly lava. How ironic. How ironic. I spend many, many hours pruning shrubs and trees in the garden. I often cut off so-called dead, damaged, or dysfunctional stems because I learn that is the base for pruning. However, I have some uneasy feeling about getting rid of damaged and dysfunctional stems. Because, first, I am the one who choose which one is damaged and which one is dysfunctional and terminate them. Second, I know some damaged branches live for a long time.

[34:24]

And I don't know the total function of so-called dysfunctional branches for the tree. Damaged or dysfunctional are based on my ideas, which come from my own unique experiences. Having this mixture of fear and uncertainty, I try to observe every year how the plants I pruned the previous year behave, and I try to dance with their responses. I learn from them and recognize my mistakes. I feel that that is the best I can do. As all of us experience some time in our lives, the nature

[35:31]

seem to have its own way beyond our ideas, concerns, or efforts. That makes me feel powerless in front of them at some time, but also feel some relief from my own ideas of what is right and wrong. It teaches me Being humble in front of the unknown, something bigger than my own life. And open my heart to listen more carefully the words Alan Chadwick said. Everything that is absolutely true is invisible. Thank you very much.

[36:37]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:01]

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