Good morning. And welcome to Green Gulch Farm on a cool morning. So, I thought everyone would be watching the World Cup. But some of you, maybe you'll, it starts a little later actually, so. But some of you made it here this morning, so welcome. I just came from spending a week at Tassajara with Steve Harper, a naturalist who lives in the Big Sur area. We did four days of hiking and meditating and meeting the mountains. So our practice was to actually listen to the mountains.

[01:02]

To actually enter the pathway, we walked the Church Creek Trail up to the Wind Caves, some of you know that area, and the Horse Pasture Trail, and then another down to the Narrows and up to the Waterfall above the Ashes Site, various places. Noticing the recovery of the vegetation after the fire a couple of years ago. So this is the second summer after that. But the feeling was to enter the wild dropping preconceptions. The tendency to want to be thinking about what we're doing or even naming all the plants or something. In fact, Stephen, who knows the names of just about all the plants, said, I'm not going to tell you any names.

[02:08]

Just notice the fragrance. Notice the feeling on your skin. Notice the sounds. So this practice of listening of active, engaged openness to the direct sensation of experience is our practice of zazen. Whether we're sitting, sitting still, or whether we're walking, listening to the mountains. So, There's a story or a dialogue that comes from 9th century China, Dengshan Liangshie. As a young monk heard that the national teacher of China had said that the non-sentient beings are expounding the Dharma.

[03:18]

Non-sentient beings are teaching the Buddha's wisdom. And he wondered about this. So as he was engaged in a pilgrimage, he would go to various teachers and ask about this. When he came to Yunyan, he immediately, so this was a new person for him, and he met Yunyan And he asked, what sort of person hears non-sentient beings expounding the Dharma? And Yunyan answered, non-sentient beings hear it. And Dungshan,

[04:24]

then asked, can you hear it? And Yunyan said, if I heard it, you would not be able to hear my teaching. And then Dungshan said, well, why can't I hear it? And Yunyan held up his whisk. Whisk is a handle with horse hair for brushing away flies, not swatting them. being gentle, brushing away flies. He held up his whisk and said, now can you hear it? And Dongshan, very sincere, said, no, I cannot. So Yunyan then said, well, if you can't hear it when I am expressing the Dharma, how do you expect to be able to hear it? when non-sentient beings are expressing the Dharma.

[05:29]

And then Dungshan asked, well, where in the sutras is there some place that it's written that non-sentient beings expound the Dharma? And Yunyan said, haven't you heard in the Amitabha Sutra it says, forests, lakes, trees, water birds, without exception, are expressing Buddha's name, are expounding the teaching. So Dung San took this in and then composed a verse where he said, it's amazing, it's incredible. Non-sentient beings expounding the Dharma is inconceivable. It can't be heard with the ear.

[06:34]

But when it's heard with the eye, it can be understood. So this is opening up your senses. Not thinking that... Even thinking, oh, that's a sound. That's a sight. That's a feeling internally. That's a feeling externally. Experiencing the totality of experience in this way, this sense of being very immediate, is the eye of wisdom. Hearing with the eye of wisdom. Listening with the eye of wisdom. So listening with the eye of wisdom is a challenge for us. Many ways that we, let's say, interfere or miss the opportunity to hear with the eye of wisdom.

[07:42]

So I want to say a little bit more about the practice of listening. We have this practice of opening up heart, mind, is a kind of listening. And it's listening with a sense of interest, say, and respect for whatever it is that we are hearing, or whatever it is, or whoever it is. A sense of respect. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Yeah. Yeah. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. All I want. R-E-S-B-E-C-T. Find out what it means to me. And one of the lines that Aretha sings is, find out what it means to me. So how are you going to find out what it means to someone else?

[08:50]

To respect them is to... Carefully listen. And so, walking up the path, Church Creek Trail, one of the plants I was particularly listening for was Coulter Pine. Going up through the pine area, the Coulter Pines, massive trees that have been there for, I don't know, decades. some of them well over 100 years, trunks two feet in diameter, are now standing black and falling over. Secultured pines do not survive and come back from the fire the way some of the other plants, like many of the oaks come back from the base of their roots.

[09:52]

some of the manzanita. But the pines don't. So that whole area, there are blackened columns. So I was looking, and Steve Harper and I last year were looking. We found some last year. And this year, we found fewer. I think many of them were engulfed by the... massive growth of some other things, like Seenothis, for those of you who are interested in these things. So I was impressed with the strictness, the limitations imposed upon a seed, upon a pine, upon a seedling. Now maybe six, eight inches tall into the second summer, Maybe some will continue to germinate the next couple of years.

[10:53]

So this is listening to wild nature. Listening to what's a very complex interplay of causes and conditions that allow this particular being to appear. at this particular moment, at this particular place, and not some other place. So I noticed I had some desire to see more pine seedlings. And someone later asked, are you going to go and put fences around them and protect them? I said, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to we're going to observe and listen and see how the mountain vegetation recovers from this particular fire and appreciate and listen and learn, okay, how does this apply to me?

[12:05]

That I am also living in a wild world. That each of us here in the room exists because of... very complex interplay of causes and conditions. So with that thought, it engenders some sense of gratitude, some sense of appreciation for this rare life and this rare moment. Then, I had one of my teachers, this Harry Roberts, Yurok, a shaman, and he talked to me sometimes about listening to rocks. And so here's a poem. This is a poem, Conversation with a Stone, some of you may know, the Polish poet, Isova Simborska.

[13:17]

She won the Nobel Prize, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 years ago. And wrote this poem, Conversation with a Stone. I'll skip some of it, but I won't read quite a bit of it. So this is her poem, Conversation with a Stone. I knock at the stone's front door. It's only me, let me come in. I want to enter your insides, have a look round. Breathe my fill of you. Go away, says the stone. I'm shut tight. Even if you break me to pieces, we'll all still be closed. You can grind us to sand. We still won't let you in. I knock at the stone's front door. It's only me. Let me come in. I've come out of pure curiosity. Only life can quench it.

[14:20]

I mean to stroll through your palace, then go calling on a leaf, a drop of water. I don't have much time. My mortality should touch you. I'm made of stone, says the stone, and must therefore keep a straight face. Go away. I don't have the muscles to laugh. I knock at the stone's front door. It's only me. Let me come in. I hear you have great empty halls inside you, unseen, their beauty in vain, soundless, not echoing anyone's steps. Admit you don't know them well yourself. Great and empty, true enough, says the stone. but there isn't any room. You shall not enter.

[15:23]

You lack the sense of taking part. No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part. Even sight heightened to become all-seeing will do you no good without a sense of taking part. You shall not enter. You have only a sense of what that sense should be only its seed, imagination. I knock at the stone's front door. It's only me. Let me come in. I haven't got two thousand centuries, so let me come under your roof. If you don't believe me, says the stone, just ask the leaf. It will tell you the same. Ask a drop of water. It will say what the leaf has said. And finally, Ask a hair from your own head. I am bursting with laughter, vast laughter, although I don't know how to laugh.

[16:26]

I knock at the stone's front door. It's only me. Let me come in. I don't have a door, says the stone. So how to... listen and how to hear, how to see, how to meet the stone having no door. Can you see the not-doerness of the stone as a place of meeting? I think to see that, this missing sense, this section where The stone is saying, you miss the sense of taking part. To me, that speaks of compassion. That the sense of taking part is a sense of compassionate awareness, being willing to actually, say, be in the place of the other in the relationship.

[17:37]

Not asking anything except that the other be what it is. Ask the stone to simply be completely stone. Ask the drop of water to be completely drop of water. Ask your friend to be completely who your friend is. So, this is, say, this sense of taking part. This sense of being connected. Sometimes, is this notion of compassion that has to be joined with the sense of wisdom or with the sense of listening or seeing with the eye of wisdom. Now our usual tendencies interfere. Usual tendencies interfere.

[18:40]

Usual tendencies described in Buddhist teaching as poisons of the mind, the poison of greed and the poison of ill will or the poison of delusion that contaminate the meeting. So it's important, and we do take this up, we take up the practice of studying our own, say, limitations. our own tendencies to get involved in, say, not listening, not seeing, being blind with our own desires, with our own irritation, impatience, or some idea that it should be different.

[19:45]

delusion, sometimes it's just that thought, oh, it should be different. There should be a door in the stone. Or there should be some kind of mouthpiece. So the poet's imagination is able to create a voice for the stone. One of Harry Roberts' phrases was... The fawn lies quiet in the grass. The lily does not speak. So to hear the natural world and to find what is the sense of alignment with the natural world means, let's say, stopping

[20:49]

usual busy active mind involved in desire, involved in irritation, involved in wanting things or believing things to be the way in which they really aren't. So this practice of stopping then is a preliminary to listening. So we can actually cultivate the practice of listening, cultivate the practice of stopping. Cultivate having an open mind by noticing the things that we're already carrying in our mind and setting them aside. We're inviting them to relax a little bit. So as I came out of Tassajara, I had a conversation with someone who was from another Zen center down the coast, who had been really upset about something for about 10 months, and was now ready to talk about it.

[22:22]

I heard some people giggling, but you might consider it's hard for some people, hard for any of us actually, to talk about what's painful. In fact, I know of some kind of vendettas that are going on where people, and families, where people will not talk to each other for weeks, months, years. even generations. So this listening then is a serious matter and I think in the case of this person, the first step was for him to say to himself, I had a part in this conflict. And the conflict wasn't with me, actually.

[23:25]

The conflict was with someone else who I'm also close to. And that other person did not want to talk to this person. So part of what I could offer was to be a witness and hear a confession, actually. So this person confessed that for months He was not able to even imagine that there was any other way except to expect an apology from someone else. Or expect some kind of redress or some kind of justice some kind of fairness that the other person in this case is going to have to shape up, come to their senses.

[24:33]

So it's a little bit like talking to a stone. Expecting something from someone else, expecting something from the stone, expecting someone who is also determined to hold their position. So for him, the practice of confession was, I'd say, possible when he finally stopped his mind that was active and full of accusations. stopped that mind and was able to settle and come into alignment actually with himself. And coming into alignment with himself, he discovered, oh, there's some stuff going on in myself, which was part of the conflict. In fact, if I hadn't sort of jumped into my own righteousness so fast, we might not have even had the conflict.

[25:51]

So this is, for me, it was wonderful and sad and painful for me to also feel the pain that's being held by various friends of mine who are not ready to talk to each other. because of the conflict or the inability to listen to each other early on, there have been many consequences. Things that could have happened, didn't happen. And all that actually has to be accepted now. So that listening can happen now. So,

[26:54]

I invite you to consider in your own relationships, to check your relationships within yourself, with each other, friends, family, and with the natural world, with the earth, with water, with rocks, trees, with oil, We have a very intense relationship with petroleum as a culture. We know that we have petroleum gushing out. I hear that they're going to cap it off today in the Gulf, if they can, if this latest thing works. And what part does our own, say, greediness play in this? What part does our own ill will or blame of someone else play?

[28:01]

What part does our sense of entitlement as human beings, as some separate special case, play? This all should be investigated carefully. So each of us sees that we have some personal part in it. We have some personal issues with greed and hate and delusion with these poisons that contribute to suffering happening, to harm happening. And then it's a matter of more study. It's how is this something that's a collective Participation. Our whole culture, our whole society is participating in these matters of greed, hate, and delusion. I have a little quote here from David Loy regarding this collective level.

[29:09]

This is from an article in Tikkun Magazine, May and June. which had a whole section on spirituality and the environment. David Loy is an American Zen student and social philosopher and teacher and author. So just this short statement, he says, today our economic system has institutionalized greed, our militarism has institutionalized ill will and our corporate media institutionalized delusion. So that's something also to consider. How do our institutions continue to support our own personal tendencies and how do our personal tendencies and proclivities contribute to

[30:17]

the sustaining or creating of a culture that is a larger collaborative expression of these poisons of the mind. So I suggest that we here at Zen Center and you, wherever you are in your life, consider. your own personal role in working with greed, hate, or ill will, or anger, and delusion, and how do we work to educate ourselves and educate the next generation in ways of wisdom and compassion. and ways of wisdom and compassion that offset, encounter, and free us from the bondage of the suffering that comes from greed, hate, and delusion.

[31:31]

So this is a great challenge, a tremendous task. It's extremely difficult for individuals. So just as with this person who I was talking about who's confessing, many months of carefully kind of reflecting and gradually settling into some recognition that, oh, I had a part in this conflict. And how can I... What's the next step? I can't even go to the people I have the conflict with, but maybe I can find someone else. And because... I have a close relationship with the other side here. He asked me if I would talk with him. So this may be a way for you in some conflict in your life to find someone that you can talk to and acknowledge your own part.

[32:35]

So maybe first step. And then the next step is to... be willing to see if there's a place that could be created where it's safe enough, where there's some trust, where there's some understanding that we're not gonna make things worse by seeing each other, talking to each other. And that sometimes requires some help. It's quite impressive how powerful our emotions are and how literally one cannot hear, one cannot see someone else when one is in the grip of desire or in the grip of feeling irritated or resistant and fearful. Or when one is being gripped by a particular belief

[33:45]

that if I'm gripped by a particular belief that I don't want to let go of, it's too scary to let go of it, or I just believe it's true, so I'm not going to give it up. And because of that, how that interferes with being able to hear, see, appreciate, take up a practice of compassionate listening. Now it's interesting, when I was walking up the path through the Church Creek, I was looking for coulter pine seedlings. And that was partly my mistake. I had an idea what coulter pine seedlings should look like now at this time. And I was keeping my... my eyes open as I'm walking up the path and I couldn't see.

[34:49]

Because I had a particular image in my mind that I was looking for, I couldn't see it. So this is like having a particular belief about how it should be and then actually not being able to see how it is because I'm thinking how it should be. And not even really being aware of how much I was thinking how it should be. I just thought, I wanted to recognize it when I saw it. So it actually took Steve Harper to help me. He saw one first, pointed to it and said, oh, that's not what I thought it would look like. So this is just a recognition. that almost anything that one does, even to try to help the situation, can be unsuccessful, can fail.

[35:57]

And so it's quite sobering and quite a challenge to be willing to stop again, be with what is, listen to the way it is, not the way I think it should be. Occasionally it's nice when something works out. Some mistake that I make actually works. And so much of the time it doesn't. So I'd say moment by moment, this is a practice of moment by moment, many times a day, to return. To alignment. Return to stopping. Return to listening. Noticing the ways in which I feel kind of restless. I don't want to stop. I don't want to listen. I want to get on with what?

[37:00]

I want to get on with my life. After all, there's only so much reality I can take. So this practice that we have of zazen, of sitting and taking time, setting time aside regularly to sit, very important to support tuning into the real, not just believing the world is the way I think it is. I think people are getting up to prepare for what's next, so I should draw it to a close. So this, even this practice of coming to sit together supports that.

[38:02]

This practice of coming to even ask questions that we don't have answers for supports the conversation. supports the conversation that's difficult or the conversation that is in a whole different plane that we're used to hearing or seeing or feeling. Like the conversation with the stone. Like hearing the mountain as actually offering teaching. Like hearing the field here at Green Gulch. the earth itself as actually offering teaching by carefully observing its condition and taking care of it. So there's always this ongoing interplay that Zen practice is to stop and then to go forward and help.

[39:07]

But we can't go forward and help without stopping and seeing. So, it's a lot of work. I was just thinking, since I mentioned this other conversation, yeah, I have to follow up now with some people. And I don't know what'll happen. So it's a matter of step by step, going forward, not knowing, listening, Stopping, step by step, going forward, not knowing, listening. Noticing the way in which I tend to resist. Noticing the way in which I tend to have opinions about how it should be. It would make it a lot easier for me. And stopping, listening, receiving new information, going forward, step by step.

[40:18]

So this is our practice, endlessly stopping, listening, confessing, and going forward step by step. So thank you for listening.

[40:32]

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