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. Good morning, and it is this beautiful, tender, precarious time to be together in I feel so buoyed by being in this Dharma hall, this breathing room, coming in the door, coming home, to stand, to sit on a good wooden chair at age 76. It's time. It's time. put the butt down on the chair, six-legged wonderment, four legs of chair, two of human life, and be in the electrical current of Manjushri Bodhisattva, seated Shakyamuni Buddha, touching the earth, and Tara Buddha and Jizo Bodhisattva behind.

[01:16]

We feel that currency. It's a wonderful honor to sit in this place because I'm in the direct current. Feel that. And every address has to begin with gratitude. So gratitude and acknowledgement to the unseated, traditional, ancestral breath of life. First people, the Kosmiwok, for whom this is ancestral and current home. Current, in the same way that there's electrical current of intentionality. We recognize... We recognize their history because it's current and also older than we'd like. And the present-day harm of being removed, displaced, disregarded, and not listened to in these ancestral lands.

[02:28]

Language, land, culture be severed. They are still here in the folds of these mountains. And we are hopefully respectful and honoring guests this morning. A prayer translated from Sky Road Web, his prayer translation from Tamalpata, excuse me, Tamalas Bay. It's Tamales Bay, Miwok, and he's been working on translating language and making music and poetry. And I had the pleasure of being with him in a writing retreat, and he gave permission to offer this prayer, which he's translated, Tamal Pais, West Coast Mountain, right eye of the turtle, right eye of the world, West Coast Mountain. Your tears are red.

[03:30]

We drink your tears. West Coast Mountain. We are in the influence, the primal influence of Mount Amalpais, West Coast Mountain. Feel it. Feel it. Those of you who live here and eat here and drink the sweet water of this mountain are made of the place. So let us be honorable guests as we harvest the bounty. of these ancestral lands. And what a time it is to be alive. We should be known by the company we keep, by the ones that circle around and tend the fire. They are here, right? We shall be known. And today we're in a celebratory and grave time. Buddha's birthday, Ramadan, Easter, Passover beginning tomorrow night, climate repentance ceremony being honored by everyday Zen on Wednesday, Arbor Day, Earth Day, a time of real celebration.

[04:49]

And in particular, it is my... Pleasure to welcome and look forward to meeting today the farm apprentices who've come to participate in a growing season to grow together. First apprenticeship program was 1994. That makes it 30 years. 30 years of welcoming hundreds of fanatic Dharma farmers. I still am in close touch with Paula Krishnovitz. with Jenny and with Patrick Cordray, Shauna, and their daughter Willa from the first apprenticeship program 30 years ago. I had the pleasure of celebrating Shauna and Patrick's marriage. They fell in love at the farmer's market. It's so perfect. She was from another farm. He was from this farm. Not for long now. They're in Northern California growing beautiful food.

[05:55]

And Arbor Day. usually celebrated in the winter in California. But the last Friday in April is National Arbor Day, and in a time when the devastation of the forests from farming and also from fire is so deeply critical and alarmingly powerful statement of our times. It's an honor to be here at Green Gulch and to be celebrating. Golly. We started in 1976, so let's see, it's almost 50 years, right? Almost 50 years of planting trees every year to receive the tidings of the land and entrust to the earth good tree stock. So it's an honor today to be able to plant an oak with you and to celebrate. And to remember, 1976, Dr. E. F. Schumacher came to Green Gulch.

[06:57]

He had a life that many of you may not know about, some may, of practicing in the Gandhian tradition. He knows India inside out. He had a beautiful library entrusted to him from a great plantsman. And in particular, in that library, he discovered a book by J. Russell Smith, Tree Crops, Permanent Agriculture, and remembered. and told us when he visited in 1976 that in the Buddha's lifetime, he admonished, really encouraged, that's better, encouraged Sangha members to plant, let me get this right, Buddha, included in his teaching the obligation, he wasn't subtle, the obligation that every good practitioner should plant and see to the establishment of one tree every five years. And during the walking pilgrimage lifetime of the Buddha throughout India, the extended Sangha, the cloud and water wandering Sangha, did follow this practice, and much of northern India was kept in forest and food.

[08:16]

and complexity during that time because of this admonition and encouragement. So we, this is the source of Arbor Day. I walked with Dr. Schumacher with then head of the farm, Mjölgen Steve Stuckey. Actually, it was Steve Stuckey. Then, and we listened to him and began to plant. At first, with the carpentry crew planting... We planted 1,000 redwoods one year, 1,000 redwoods, and about 4% made it. Monterey Pine, many more percent made it, sadly, and also some Douglas fir. We planted, feeling that if we are building a temple, then our obligation is to plant to make sure that trees are replenished. We're not raiding the earth, Earth Day. So let's take that in. what that actually means, to have that kind of vow.

[09:17]

At the doorway, at the threshold, at the entrance to our home is a wooden bowl from Knoll Farm, and it's filled with acorns gathered with friends from the Cultural Conservancy Indian Valley Organic Farm and Heron Shadow and from the slopes of Mount Temelpais. And only my little, chubby, 18-year-old, toddling grandson has the decency to stop in front of that bowl, collapse on the ground, pick up an acorn, and shake it. The other day, he came over, and he didn't come into the house for 15 minutes. My husband, Peter, was not exactly hovering, but nearby watching because... The acorn can go that way, too, with a child. So it's just shaking and listening to the voice of the watershed, to the old call.

[10:17]

We're made of trees. Complexity of the human hand is tree endowed. Let's not get too far from our diamond root of intention. And also, we're celebrating Earth Day. How many people remember the first Earth Day, April 22nd, 1970? I do. And remember the oil-stained birds in Santa Barbara? See, that was right before an oil spill. Three million gallons of oil spilled into the sea, and 10,000 seabirds died, suffocated. And the world changed. We made a pledge to gather and to speak. 20 million people participated in that first day. It's extraordinary. And a United States senator from the state of Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, was the advocate behind.

[11:23]

First day. Now, one billion people. Last year in 193 countries. And in 2016, Earth Day celebrated with the signing of the Paris Climate Accords. Tender. Kind of agonizing. In 2015, is that right? Yes, 2016. And of course that changed the next year. with the administration that followed and dismantled. I remember because we were walking above Sankawi, ancestral territory of the Tewa people, not far from Los Alamos, when we received that news. And we sat down and had just a circle of grief.

[12:28]

And this is part of Earth Day in these times. I want to drop down. And in general, everything is specific, right? The love for land is so specific and place-based. And I'm grateful to the teachers that have been so clear in Dharma practice of combining and connecting the importance of sitting still as Manjushri sits still with eyes wide open. And also the importance of getting up and serving as Tara Buddha and Jizal Bodhisattva do, stepping out into the world. Both are so needed. We cannot do activism work without the stability of knowing who we are, without sweeping the mind. And we cannot, cannot be sitting without getting up and serving.

[13:35]

Right? Bhikkhu Bodhi. You know Bhikkhu Bodhi? One friend described him as the most dangerous Buddhist on earth. I love that description of Bhikkhu Bodhi. He's a preeminent scholar. I always think of Bhikkhu Bodhi and Alan Sinaki together and others who are scholar monks and also activists. It's so beautiful. It's such a beautiful tradition. Bhikkhu Bodhi, 79 years old now and president of the Buddhist Association of the United States. founder of Buddhist Global Relief, as well as the former editor and president of the Buddhist Publication Society in Sri Lanka. He's a preeminent translator and scholar. But in 2007, he realized, we have to do more. And he wrote a letter to us, a Buddhist encouragement letter. In each historical period, Dharma finds new means to unfold.

[14:38]

I believe that our own era is encouraging us toward appropriate historical stage to bend back upon the world and engage human suffering and the suffering of all species at multiple levels. The Buddha's mission, reason for arising in this world, was to free beings from suffering. This requires that we counter the systemic embodiment of greed, hatred, and delusion and stand up as an advocate for justice in the world. We can do it. And he never stopped translating and making available the ancient teachings of the Buddha. But he did found Buddhist Global Relief, an organization bent on ending hunger in the world. And that organization continues. thriving to this day. So gratitude to Bhikkhu Bodhi and to Dr. Joanna Macy.

[15:40]

I'm thinking of her today, 94 years old, unstoppable, inextinguishable, unsurpassed, penetrating, and perfect. Dharma teacher, activist, scholar, poet, ecologist, deep ecologist, engaged teacher. I remember... During the pandemic, a teaching she gave us to the Buddhist community awakened women speaking truth, and she said, we are in territory without a map. We do not know what to do. Therefore, we call on Akshobhya Buddha, the Buddha of water element and shining courage, Akshobhya Buddha, holds up a mirror and encourages us to look into the mirror. Let's look at how we live.

[16:41]

Let's really look at how we live and do not look away. Do not avert your gaze and do not turn aside. This is a call. We hear this. We hear this. Not only in the Buddhist realm. We hear this. well fed what we most need to hear Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us what we most need to hear is the sound of the earth crying in us complex the sound of the earth crying in us and you will sit and listen and you will get up and serve. I can feel it in this room.

[17:45]

That's why we're here this morning. In her dissertation thesis, Dr. Macy wrote a beautiful book that's one of her earliest and least read, 1976, Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory, the Dharma, of natural systems. And toward the end of the book, she said there are two strong motifs hold us in our place now in this time. The image, the living image of the tree and the fire or the flame. These images are powerful both in living systems theory, And practice. And also in early Buddhist teachings and Dharma. The Dharma of natural systems. So I thought to talk a little bit about that today.

[18:49]

And to see how deeply our lives intertwine. And of course, begin with the tree. Representing relationship. A tree firmly rooted in the earth. You know, tree and truth and Dharma and support. all share the same roots, linguistic and living roots. Whatever you have to say, says poet Charles Olson, leave the roots on. And the dirt, make clear where you come from. And if you think of a tree, huge trees, they're very much like the lungs of the earth, the upside down in the root system, upside down lungs of the earth. And they are, the tree is, this is not a metaphor, tree is actually the lungs of the earth. And a Buddha was born under a tree, caught under a tree, and died under a tree. We say his mother held on to the branches when it was time for birth,

[19:55]

held onto the branches of a supple tree, beautiful, Queen Mayadini, beautiful, beautiful, young mother. And the Buddha came forth from her left side and began, I'm born for the wheel of the world, and I'm going to really teach. Little arrogant baby popped out and said that under the leafy shade of a tree. And, you know, one of the first things in his life was his father, King Sudhana. taking him to the field to welcome, to bless the field and the baby, the young child. He was a little boy. Looking at the field and seeing just carnage from the plowing of the field and feeling devastated by this festival of planting representing also loss of life. And didn't know what to do. Found rest and restoration underneath the rose apple tree. Leaning back. saw a different way to live, even as a child. And children do.

[20:56]

Let them rest in the shade of the tree. And teaching under so many trees. Sitting under the pit bull tree, the bodhi tree, vowing not to move until he understood how to serve. The leaves of that tree, the heart-shaped leaves, falling around him. And when great doubt arose, putting right hand on the earth, and the earth itself coming up, confirming, not in a binary way, but just confirmation, yes, you can be in this place. And the earth then opening up, and bodhisattvas from the Lotus Sutra, bodhisattvas pouring out of the earth to help with service. And when it was time to die in Kushinagara, in the shade of two, Saw trees. Krishnagar is a somber place if you visited.

[21:58]

I've had the gift of being able to be there. The trees are beautiful. And you know, because this is an oaky day, oak day. This is a great coast live oak, Quercus agrifolia, keystone plant. The structure of the original organization of Buddha's teaching was inspired by the tribal governance of the Shakya tribe, inspired by oak trees. Shakya, people of the oak. Shakya Muni, sage of the oak, of the oak world. This is an old world. Old world from the Miocene, 40 to 56 million years old.

[23:00]

And the oak is a keystone species. You know, a keystone in architecture is that wedge in the middle that holds up the world. The pressure, tension holds up the world, makes the arch complete. A keystone species is habitat, life, community. for many, many beings. And in the Celtic alphabet, dir, di, dor, threshold, fire, maidu, senal people, believing the fire comes up from the earth and expresses through oak. And oak has a direct relationship with lightning, with fire, and with freedom. Well, the oak is a powerful being. Keystone, beautiful word. Technically, a species on which other species inside the ecosystem rely.

[24:09]

Remove this species, as is happening now with oaks. 22 distinct, extraordinary species of oak in California. Then the whole ecosystem changes and feels. the loss. Think of a starfish. Think of a gray wolf. Think of a sea otter. Think of monarchs and milkweed. Think of salmon. Think of the great oaks of California and the genome of an oak. Harry's rich diversity of genes, disease-resistant 250 different species of caterpillars. Nectar and have larval connection with the great oaks. And they are the most vast and powerful carbon sink.

[25:13]

And please, dear ones, the cultural matrix for Native people of what an oak tree is. Life, story, medicine. Pharmacopia. Co-evolution. So I, you know, last week, listening to Jiryu's talk about Roshibat and embodiment, I thought of Gregory Bateson and the early, early As a cyberneticist in the early, early iterations of computer science, he experimented with asking the computers, asking, being in dialogue with the original computers, asking, do you think that you will ever, do you imagine, do you believe that you, do you think that you will ever reason like a human being?

[26:23]

asking that question. What a wonderful Bateson question to be asking. And the computer answered, that reminds me of a story. Get it? We're made of stories. That reminds me of a story. It's a perfect, oblique, and well-rooted answer. This sound reminds me of a story in 1994. I want to make sure my dates are right. Well, forgive me, Jordan, if I've got your Shuso ceremony wrong. December, powerful stormy night, 1994, 1995, in this room. One of our most beloved trees in the central area was blown down, and this tree was planted. in the 1950s by Andrew Singletary, who was a very brave to venture here to California, kind of brave and adventuresome African-American farmer who came to help George Wheelwright.

[27:34]

People don't often know this story. I think he might have planted the oak that just fell in the field or at least been involved. I don't know. Maybe that's an older oak. We can only imagine. But the oak, originally he planted a couple of oaks here in in the central area, and they were beloved, beloved trees. Coast live oak. Two, they were a pair planted. One succumbed early of witch's broom fungus. But the oak I'm speaking of, the coast live oak, that was so prominent and powerful and blew down in that Shusel storm, was an extraordinary tree. And for me, living next door to that tree and working in the fields, coming up every day, walking by that tree, I actually could calculate, reckon my bearings from the power position and seasonality of that oak tree. There were many different species that lived in the branches. In the spring, it was alive with gold.

[28:37]

The whole tree shot with gold from the early flowering. And coming up from the field at the end of the day, the tree just was burning with light, a being of light. So I love this tree and think of it as a threshold oak, a north star plant. You get your bearings from a tree that you practice with and greet every day, sometimes touching when coming home, going and touching its gnarled bark. And as the tree got older and older and there was irrigation involved, it began to weaken. Some of its branches hung low. We had to bolt. the branches up and support the tree with little crutches, not little crutches, big crutches. And some people said, some practitioners said, that is unnatural. That tree wants to, you're just keeping it alive for your own needs. It just, it's finished. I said, I don't know, it's pretty alive. We kept bolting and cabling and doing all these different procedures and people that love beings prevail.

[29:44]

Just saying. We prevail. Because what are you going to do? Cut the cables and saw off the tree? No. The tree, in all of its grandeur and agedness, was a part of this community. And during that storm, we could hear branches and trees coming down. I think right after Shouseau Ceremony Power went out, and it was gone for a week. It was that bad of a storm. And we went out. And the whole air smelled of acrid sap. The rainy, windy, powerful storm. You could hardly stand up. We live right near what was then the office. And the tree fell so gracefully. It didn't take any buildings. It didn't even block the gate to our house. It just was smoked open by this storm. All the cables snapped. They were in the wind. And it just lay with its... wide open there. And it was so powerful to see.

[30:50]

I remember when our son Jesse was a little boy, he was climbing in that oak tree during a Buddhist ceremony that happened out on the lawn, and he was eating green plums. And he swallowed a green plum backwards and fell out of the branches of the oak tree and was caught by his midwife, by Marilyn McCann. His midwife! Thank you. And thank you. Sorry. And I get my species mixed up, but not my arboreal ones. Anyway, upended the baby, hit him on the back. This is the person that brought him into the world. I mean, by extension. My son is here. He lives. Oh, I didn't see you. Well, it's mostly true, right? It's mostly true. Yeah, and he's a front-line fire captain in the fire service.

[31:55]

So he knows about oaks. Anyway, he fell out of the oak. The plum was disgorged, and the ceremony went on. I think the ceremony kept going, chanting. The baby was blue in the face. But I felt like the tree somehow, he wasn't a baby. He was a bad little boy. Anyway, beautiful connection with these beings, interbeing, right? Interbeing. And, you know, in Thailand, when the forests were really being menaced and damaged, monks created Buddhist robes for trees, for damaged trees, and enwrapped the trees in the robes and offered them the precepts. Ordination. And when you see a tree wrapped in a saffron robe, you're not going to cut it. That's radical thinking. And I love, again, we're going back to Gregory Bateson from the early days.

[32:59]

Gregory Bateson, some of his ashes are interred on the hills here at Green Gulch. We can show you. He tells a wonderful story to Stuart Brand of the oak beams in New College. misnamed New College at Oxford because it was a really old college founded in the year 1379. The beams were about 500 years old, and they clearly beetle-infested the roof beams. They didn't know what to do. Diameter of 18 inches for each square of these beams, and they were 20 feet long. What were they to do? Finally, someone had the intelligence to think, let's ask the foresters here at Oxford College. They went and checked with the foresters and said, the oaks are beetle infested. What are we to do? We were wondering when you were going to ask. When the college was established, English oaks were planted, understanding that oaks were on the campus, beautiful oaks, and that they would eventually succumb to beetle damage.

[34:10]

So to provide for the generations to come, trees were planted with the explicit purpose of having them be cut and the beams were replaced from those trees which were tended by foresters for 500 years. That's culture. All right. I want to... I want to move toward fire. You know, one of the images that's alive in the Buddhist world is sculptures or stila of the trees at Sanchi, mystical trees, and each leaf on the trees that are there in the sculptures is burning everything. says Buddha, everything, first sermon, the fire sermon, everything, oh, because, is burning.

[35:14]

An open system. Fire is an open system that endures in shape while constantly being altered by events. So fire shines by perishing. Words from a minister to his parishioners. You, like fire, Shine by perishing. Be consumed and changed. Metabolic fire. The fire of digestion. The fire of taking in the truth of these times. So I'm very grateful for the Buddhist study of this book of fire. Actually, the proper title from the koans is, This Fire Runs Through All Things. And we've been studying this at Heart of Compassion Zen Center every Friday for months. This is the teaching of Susan Murphy, who is a Dharma practitioner and priest. Sen Collins, For Facing the Climate Crisis, I commend this book to you.

[36:16]

She talks about her life changing during the pandemic. She's a native Australian, not indigenous, but a native. She lived her whole life in Australia. Red Earth Zen is my lineage, she says, 60 millennia deep, eastern Australia. In 2019 and 2020, her community was menaced by fire that burned for seven months. The fire was 37 miles wide. It consumed Australia. Unstoppable. And they watched. She sat and watched. I want to, she said, quoting from the Blue Cliff Record, Hekigan Roku, I want to, without leaving the Buddha world, I want to walk in the demon world and understand what it is to be alive.

[37:20]

I want to find action, she called, connecting practice and action. I want to find true traction emerging from emergence. contingent, ever-changing, burning up, and finding new way to be. And Koan, she's a Koan student, an excellent, deep practitioner, well-trained. So Koans help us, she said, to be Christ. Koans are old stories. They're family stories of the Buddhist world. Not a puzzle, not a riddle, not something that has to be solved, but a story of how people lived. So koans, stories of who we are, how we live, how we practice. Help us be crisis ready. And offer us a way to come back home.

[38:20]

First koan for Jean, who is the leader of the Heart of Compassion Zen group and part of. Very first koan from Maizumi Roshi. Show me. an immovable tree. Show me an immovable tree in a fierce wind. Show me an immovable tree. And don't just think it has to be upright. Continues to teach, smoked open and displayed. Show me an immovable tree in a fierce wind. These are the times that we're living in. And when times of great difficulty arise and come to visit us, asked a monk during the Tang dynasty of his teacher, Zhao Zhou, he of shining lips and 120 years old, an old monk who never gave up.

[39:24]

When times of great difficulty arise and come to visit us, how should we treat them? How should we greet them? And Zhao Zhou pulled back his shining lips and yelled, Welcome! Welcome, precarious, unsettled, broken, unraveled world. Welcome. You're my country. You're my home. And, you know, there's a wonderful call. We don't have time this morning, but Jojo, a wonderful call. A student asks this monk, this old monk with the shining lips, What's the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from India to bring the teachings? What is the meaning? And Zhao Zhao said, the oak tree in the courtyard. Thich Nhat Hanh translates it as the cypress in the courtyard.

[40:26]

But I love it because we have an oak and a cypress here, and they've been in dialogue for many, many decades. So oak, cypress, what's the meaning of Buddhism coming? From India to where we, what are we supposed to do? What's the meaning? The oak tree in the courtyard. And another student said to Zhao Zhou, do not teach me with reference to outside things. And Zhao Zhou said, I don't. Then the student asks again, what's the meaning of Bodhidharma coming to teach. The oak tree in the courtyard, not an outside thing. And yet, if you hold on to it too tightly and colonize it, occupy it, territorialize it, personalize it, it's not yours. Thich Nhat Hanh said, the story is only true if you're active in the circle of circumstances.

[41:34]

Active now. Even my story is an old story. Jesse's right to raise his hand. In the circle of circumstances, we're focusing on a tree that fell a few months ago when a lot changed at Zen Center. A lot of very big loss. What holds, though, ancestral kindness and the diamond root of our intention to keep practicing? So make it new and make it strange, whatever you pick up. Today, we're going to plant an oak tree. Not to replace the fallen oak tree, please. That is so boring and binary and transactional. We're not doing that. The oak. Suki had found a beautiful oak. This tree will be entrusted to the earth today with ceremony. We used to plant a thousand trees today. One oak. Very sad. Very sad. One. Yeah. Oak tree in the ground.

[42:37]

And our depth, as Jiria reminded us last week, our real depth comes from being alive together and doing the work now. Unknown work I speak of this morning. So I'm going to close with a poem I love. about an oak, specific oak, and then we'll merge into conversation. This is the oak tree at the entrance to Blackwater Pond. The poem is by Mary Oliver, young Mary Oliver. Every day, on my way to the pond, I pause and pass. The lightning felled chesty, hundred-fingered black oak, which summers ago swam forward when the storm laid one lean yellow wand against it and smoked it open to its rosy heart.

[43:49]

It dropped down in a veil of rain, in a cloud of sap and fire, and became... what it has been ever since, a black boat floating in the tossing leaves of summer, the coffin of Osiris descending, the cloudy Nile. But listen, [...] listen. I'm tired of that brazen promised death. Resurrection, I'm tired of hearing how the nitrogens will return to the earth again through the hinterland of patience, how the mushrooms and the yeast will arrive in the wind, how they'll anchor the pearls of their bodies and begin to gnaw through the darkness like wolves at bones. What I loved, I mean, was that tree. That tree. Tree of the moment. tree of my own sad, mortal heart.

[44:53]

And I don't want to sing any more of the way Osiris came home at last on a clean and powerful ship over the dangerous sea, tall, beautiful stranger. So in general, everything is specific. thank you for the invitation to be here today and to offer experience and practice and love for the Dharma Dharma Farmer former Dharma Farmer still very formally farming so formlessly Dharma of natural systems Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[45:57]

Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[46:17]

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