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. electrical current line of Manjushri meeting Jizawa Bodhisattva again and again, fresh this morning. And gratitude to the few friends who came by bike and foot to join us who are outside. Hopefully you can hear the talk as we go forward. And gratitude to, of course, the original ancestors and residents of this territory, the Kosmiwak people, and their families still alive, breath of life in the folds of these mountains and rivers beyond end.

[01:07]

So gratitude for the opportunity to hopefully be respectful guests and visitors on this extraordinary land, the gift of good land. And in particular, I also want to acknowledge an event that happened yesterday in the city of San Francisco in the Mission District 16th and Mission, right in the heart of the mission, a celebration of the first American Indian cultural heritage site district, American Indian cultural district in the city of San Francisco and, of course, in the Mission District. old territory known as the Little Reds since 1930s and as the Red Ghetto in the 50s on. Now a distinct piece of land dedicated to Native American friends and visitors for celebration.

[02:15]

So two days of celebration and huge gratitude to the farm for presenting us with beautiful fingerling potatoes. spiritual presence of fresh beans harvested, the gift of zucchini, the gift that keeps giving, lifetime after lifetime, and flowers. Yeah. In this world, we walk the roof of hell, gazing at flowers. And yesterday, Native people from the Ten Directions coming together in San Francisco gave me such... good feeling to see them carrying away these beautiful potatoes and flowers to share with their families. So gratitude to the American Indian cultural district and to right nearby Latino American district written in the southern end of the mission and now the American Indian designation as well.

[03:17]

So very alive day yesterday in the mission. And I'm So moved to come home to this temple, to Green Dragon Zen Place, and to be present in this room with you. My husband and I were, as I mentioned last time I was here, we were married in this room 46 years ago. So long ago that Tenshin Roshi was Arjisha. He carried the incense. That's how long ago we were married. And I'm thinking of that this morning, remembering that, and also feeling a huge gratitude for practice unfolding here over these decades. Our children are born here. Our son down by the field and our daughter at Marin General. But we came here as quickly as we could. We came home and two crabapple trees planted in their honor on their placentas.

[04:19]

And those trees are embarrassingly thriving. Yeah, they're just loaded with fruit and devilry as our children. And this morning also to let you know that our daughter Elisa is expecting her first child in a few short period, right around the fall equinox. Farmers, Dharma farmers especially, have a tendency to produce our offspring right around the great holy days, the equinox and the solstice. Both of our children, Jesse in the winter solstice, Elisa. No, Jesse in the summer solstice, Elisa in the winter. And now she's expecting on to fall equinox. So it's very lining up of heaven and earth. And I wanted to dedicate this morning's talk to practice, to original practice.

[05:21]

to practice that doesn't turn away from entering into the tangle of our times and of these days and ours. In particular, gratitude to the teachers that have made practice possible here at this temple, ancestral and current teachers, and born, and we say to be born, lifetime after lifetime, so huge gratitude. For those who face the tangle and are of the tangle, in the tangle, and manifesting fully, untangling the tangle from the inside out. It's a huge amount of gratitude. And gratitude for the gift of good land and the gift of being able to farm and learn from the living land, which has been a very moving heritage. I know that the farm apprentices have been studying, and I really appreciate studying, Gardening at the Dragon's Gate, a book that was published in honor of San Francisco Zen Center and is owned by San Francisco Zen Center, copyright, which is rare for a book to be owned by an organization, a Dharma holding.

[06:44]

And of course, the author is also included. I'm part of the... that matrix, gardening at the dragon's gate. It took so long, my husband calls it dragging at the garden gate, which is a little bit more true, 12 years, almost a generation of long birth, long time in the birth canal and changing every moment. And I thought I would talk a little bit about the principles, the original principles that I encountered in harvesting from so many years of practice here, and then trying to decide how to dedicate the book. And in fact, Gardening at the Dragon's Gate is dedicated to the farm, to a field far beyond form and emptiness, and to my partner. It was wonderful. He was surprised. He still hasn't read the book, but he's young, young in the practice.

[07:46]

You know, you never know. It's always... A possibility for surprise. And the other morning, because we're the parents of crab apple children, how did we know? How did we know? The crab apple is the original apple, the apple from the bottom of time, little tiny, bitter, bright, powerful fruit, not always conducive to full taste, but powerful. So the crab apple is the original apple. from the Tian Shan forests of Central Asia, rolling down to the present moment. And the other morning, Peter took some of the first apples from our home, Red Gravenstein and apples from Friend, and squeezed them together and presented me with a glass of apple juice. I was so... moved to receive this clear glass of apple juice.

[08:47]

It was turbulent, turned around from the squeezing. And on the top of the juice glass was a thick layer of froth, a fringe of froth, fibrous froth. And the apple juice was turbulent, as I said. So I took the glass respectfully into the place where we have a picture of Thich Nhat Hanh, my root teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, or strong root teacher, and offered the glass of apple juice to Tai, remembering that many, many years ago, when he first began to teach Dharma here in the West, and with a number of us who were gathered in the early 1980s and 90s, he said, sometimes our practice is like stirred up apple juice. We haven't really settled. We haven't, as Katagiri Roshi used to love to say, settled the self, on the self.

[09:51]

We haven't let the flower of our life force bloom yet because we can't see through the turbulence, through the upset, through the emergency of the times we're living in. Therefore, he said, put the glass down and let the juice settle. Now, remember, when you drink, a glass of apple juice. It's many apples. So this is essential apple. Beautiful. At the center, wonderful poem from cultural poet Nan Fry. At the center, a dark star wrapped in white. When you bite or sip apple, listen for the crunch of boots on snow that has ripened. Over it all stretches a red starry sky. So I set the apple juice on the table and offered a stick of incense to Thich Nhat Hanh and left the room so they could be alone together, the apple and the teacher.

[10:58]

And a few hours later went in and the juice had settled. It was so clear with a tinge of pink from the red Gravenstein apple. And at the bottom, sediment, actual pieces of the apple, because we have an old juicer from my mother years ago, more than 50 years old. So 50 years old, the sediment had settled and the froth was at the top. And I lifted out a little bit of the froth respectfully. You can actually dry it and make fruit leather from the froth. The froth is, you know, unfiltered apple juice is mixed in. the fiber and the apple juice, but I wanted to look through the essential juice and to lift up that juice and thank the apple, thank the teaching, thank the possibility of tasting essential dharma. And it was a beautiful gift.

[12:01]

And I feel it this morning because we grow Gravenstein apples here. And we've propagated them and shared them with hundreds of people. Every year we had an apple festival for many years, tasting the apple. We had a blind test taste. People would taste the apple, taste the truth of the Tathagata's teaching, and see what resonates with you. And as I drank that juice, I remembered Thich Nhat Hanh, the story of of Thich Nhat Hanh before I knew him in 1970, before his teaching was so manifest in the West. He was participant along with 2,200 other people of religious inclination, scientists, writers, philosophers from 23 different countries, gathering in Menton, France, for the Daidong...

[13:03]

environmental gathering, a world of great togetherness, pleading to the three and a half billion people, or three and a half, yes, pleading, that was the population then, three and a half billion people worldwide, please make an effort to live in peace, to turn what looks like an irrevocable tide of environmental damage, 1970. It's the same year that Earth Day began with a huge awareness of what it means to be alive. And two years later, signing a document in Stockholm with Secretary General Jutta of the United Nations, making a real request for peace in our times. We believe that it is literally true from this document. We believe that it is literally true that only by transcending our divisions will humankind be able to keep Earth as our home.

[14:10]

1970, France. The Menton Declaration. Solutions to the actual problems of pollution, hunger, overpopulation, poverty, and live war may be simpler to find than the formula for common effort through which the search for solutions But with this document, with this gathering, we make a beginning. And, you know, holding up the glass of apple juice, seeing through, looking at the sediment and the froth of our times, tasting the truth, I felt the currency. of connection, the same currency between wisdom and compassion that is in this room, the true reason we never cross in front of the altar but always go around, cannot break into that currency. It's a live wire of connection.

[15:11]

And it animates how we practice in this room and in our times and in the extended world system that is our fragile home. We live in vow, I vow lifetime after lifetime. So I pondered tasting the truth of the apple. I pondered what does it mean to solve for a pattern of sanity. One of my very favorite essays from teacher, farmer, activist, philosopher, extraordinary author, Wendell Berry. The Gift of Good Land. He has an essay written 10 years after the Menton Declaration called Solving for Pattern. A good farm and good farmers, good dharma farmers, because we share the root. Dharma and farm means to uphold, to stand by, to be present, to uphold and open up the teaching.

[16:20]

So good dharma farming. and good farming practice, and good Dharma practice depends on sitting still as Manjushri sits, and then getting up and serving. Hence the electrical current of our practice, the mystery and the call. So I have been delving a little bit into... These words, pattern, principle, origin, origin, sorry, originality. And thinking, what is the root of the vow of these words? These are old words. And when Wendell Berry says, we solve for pattern, it means we look at the true imprint. Of how we practice.

[17:22]

Let me just. This is worth waiting for. Pattern. Padron. To defend. Like a father defends. Loaded, I know. Forgive the binary language, but in its root, patronage, pattern, propriety, an archetype, an original model, an ideal after which things are patterned, a plan, an ideal worthy of imitation. So when we solve, solve like solution. When we solve for pattern, We solve for archetypal good and clarity and continuation and also for coherence.

[18:32]

This jacket I'm wearing that my youngest sister, Deborah, with her, she had a business which actually, sadly... ended during the first year of the pandemic in New York when it was no longer possible to have a business producing beautiful handmade clothing. My sister made this ragged jacket for me when I received lay entrustment from Abbas Linderuth in this room in 2006, in June. And Debbie made this jacket for me and her pattern maker, Unju, is a powerful woman whose family and friends and ancestors come from Korea. She can hold a piece of cloth and see a pattern that fits a body. And in my sister's business, many people came in for fine clothing. Bunju assessed their bodies and could easily make a pattern.

[19:36]

And she made a pattern for me, crawling over me, feeling me, measuring me. She and the other people in the business made this Dharma jacket, a brown jacket in the tradition of San Francisco Zen Center and the Order of Inner being Tie Pien Order. Because it's a shared lineage that we came together doing, practicing here deeply with Linda Ruth and with this Sangha. And then practicing with Thich Nhat Hanh. So she took this cloth, old cloth, old linen made of nettles from England and created a jacket. And presented it, my sister presented it to me on the day of transmission. And I've worn it ever since. It has fallen apart, really fallen. I put it on today because two years ago, they made me a fresh jacket. Just as we were coming out of the pandemic, they gathered, or actually just before the pandemic, they made me a fresh jacket.

[20:38]

Because I told them I wear this every day, every day of practice. The women who made the jacket really held the garment with its, in mind, sacred meaning of the garment and really received it. They sniffed it. I thought, this is downright embarrassing. They sniffed it and felt of it and could feel the practice, women of Asia, of the old world. And Eun-Ju said that when Debbie tells her about people's practice and she makes the garment, as she makes the pattern, She stitches in prayers for the well-being of this dharma community, of the many people who practice, of the people who are dealing with cancer and wearing a silk blouse to their daughter's wedding before they go in for their next treatment of chemotherapy. They sew prayers into that silk blouse so that as the person wears it, she never knows. But the cloth holds the pattern and solves meeting troubled times.

[21:41]

So a pattern. A true pattern carries intention and commitment. And originality depends on two beautiful words. Oriri, to rise up. It's a noun, a Latin noun. To rise up like the sun and the moon. So it's cyclical, rising of the sun, setting of the sun. Sunrise, sunset. Sunrise, sunset. Sunset, sunrise. Moonrise. Blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean. As above, so below. Oriri, to rise. So it shows and tells cyclical creativity. And then origo, which means the continuous upwelling of a spring. Water, fresh water, welling up from the ground. So originality depends on cyclical rising and falling and continuous flow. So what helps you and your practice be original, solve for pattern, find principle, principle from princeps to grab, like tongs or pinchers, and from the prow of a boat, that very part of the boat that plies the water has the same root as the word principle.

[23:06]

So first cause, intrinsic, So you ask yourself in your practice and in these challenging times. Be joyful, says Wendell Berry, although we know the facts. In these troubled times, what gives you strength and courage to continue under all circumstances? Make a positive effort for the good and not be tossed away from Katagiri Roshi. Just continue under all principles. Just continue under all circumstances. Make a positive effort for the good and don't be tossed away. How do you do that? And how do you offer gratitude to everything that sustains you and holds you up? So, you know, gardening at the dragon's gate,

[24:09]

The book has a rather special history in that Tony Burbank, who was developing editor, now emeritus of Bantam Books, came to Green Gulch. The cookbooks had done really well. Zen Center cookbooks, the Greens cookbooks, really well. She said, is there maybe a gardening book that could come out too? So she interviewed me. She stayed for a few days here, and then she went to Tassajara. She really researched. She invited this book to be written. She listened to Dharma talk. She attended classes. She watched us work in the field and worked with us in the field and then thought, I think it can happen. We can do this. And so the invitation came about and I had the challenge of writing a proposal. And I said right away, I already know that we'll talk about this. the importance of their four main points, the importance of good ground, of soil, compost, plants that are homegrown, and attention, commitment to work, or what Alan Chadwick called fertilization, excuse me, cultivation, fertilization, propagation, and irrigation.

[25:32]

Four great points. I said, that's what the book will be based on. She said, write it up and we'll see. meaning a proposal. And as I wrote that proposal, I thought I should know the principles that will underlie this book, hence it taking 12 years. And of course, they're still alive today. I thought we'd go into those principles this morning, seven of them. They're the opening section of Gardening at the Dragon's Gate. And Hopefully they'll resonate with you. They're not metaphorical. They're actual principles for me that come out of Zazen, Kin Hin Zazen and getting up and serving in the world, writing and growing food and offering food and being food and being fed and nourished and learning together in community and offering the book to San Francisco Zen Center as great

[26:36]

in gratitude for practicing here for so many years. And so this morning I looked, I mean, for a few days I've been looking over these principles and thinking, I'll see how they are. Are they still strong enough and true enough? And can I back them up? May I back them up with words of poetry? And of course I thought of Wendell Berry, a farmer of many generations in Henry County, Kentucky. Many of you know what the state of Kentucky is. has been through with massive flooding, loss of life, changed farmland, submerged under rivers of water. This has been a very dangerous time. Wendell's in his 90s now, along with Gary Snyder, their lifelong friends. They continue to talk regularly. And I met them here as part of the Lindisfarne Hall. Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, Gary Snyder coming. And of course, When the talking got too rich, they took refuge in the farm.

[27:39]

So we had a lot of time together. I remember early on showing Wendell Berry the farm, and he disappeared during the tour. Zen Tatsu Richard Baker Oshie was showing him around, a grand tour, showing him all the beauty parts of the farm, and disappeared. Then he reappeared. And, well, where were you? We didn't know where you went. And Wendell said, whenever I'm on a tour, I try to escape in his southern gentlemanly way. I try to escape. I try to look at the outhouse and I try to look at the tool shed. And I will say you are doing remarkably well. It's true. We had a little outhouse down by the field shed. That was wonderful. I just always remember that. And so drawing from his poetry, particularly from the poems of the mad farmer. So you'll see, I'll intersperse with the principles. And so to begin, and I think seven is good.

[28:43]

It was a good number for me, the days of the week. Shabbat, the day of rest. The root for soil comes from the same root as Shabbat, to sit and rest, to fallow land every seven years. So seven really came up strongly for me. And first of all, beginning at the very beginning, the principle of learning gardening from wildness outside of the gate. And wildness is preservation of the world, words from Thoreau. And, you know, I always, working in the field at Green Gulch, always looking through the fence to the more than human world, to the wild community outside of the gate, to the plants pressing up, Receive the ministry of poison hemlock and old seedling oaks. To receive the old broken song of cow parsnip and yerba buena.

[29:48]

And to listen to the wild voice. To look at the wild bird, stone, plum trees. And see when they're flowering, they are reminding me it is time. to go into the garden now early January, maybe even late December, and begin to prune the elephant heart plums. There is resonance and relationship between the wild and the cultivated world. And it's the subtitle of the book, Gardening at the Dragon's Gate, at Work in the Wild and Cultivated World. So learn from wildness in your practice and keep the lynx alive. between wild land and the cultivated row. Follow, as Wendell says, follow fox tracks in the snow, the imprint, the impact of lightness upon lightness, unendingly silent.

[30:59]

Follow that. trail home and back into the garden. So to honor wildness off the beaten path, beautiful poem, essay, not poem, essay by Gary Snyder in Practice of the Wild, Off the Beaten Path. Yes, cultivate your practice fully ardently and originally in a meditation hall, but go a little off the beaten track to be renewed and reminded of what your work is. Originality depends on living in both worlds on the track and way off. Of course, gardening organically has to be said. For all of the tread and difficulty and complexity and expense of premier or the 1% only sometimes organic produce,

[32:02]

Still, we grow organically lifetime after lifetime. In the beginning here, we didn't want to certify. We said, if people don't know we're organic, we don't want to say it's downright not Zen to say we're organic. Couldn't you please, for the benefit of the many, ask farmer who lives down the road, Warren Weber, couldn't you please just join us? Let's make a pact and show the importance of organic. If Zen Center... and more farms that are non-profit farms certify, more people will believe in the efficacy of farming with a pattern, solving for a pattern. And so Wendell says, one of my favorite parts of solving for pattern, he says, the introduction of the term organic permits me to say, more plainly and truthfully, some things that I have not indulged myself in saying earlier.

[33:04]

In an organism, what is good for the part is good for another. What is good for one part is always good for another and for all. What is good for the mind is good for the body. What is good for the arm is good for the heart. We know sometimes a part may be sacrificed with a whole, a life may be saved by the amputation of an arm, but we also know that such remedies are desperate, irreversible, and destructive. It's important to improve the body, for such remedies do not imply safe logic. A tenderness and an openness is necessary. And so I turn and accept and practice with the word organic. It's a kind of amputation of his integrity to have to talk about organic when it should be so obvious that, of course, you're not going to poison soil, water, animal, plant your own memory by spraying chemical additives to the ground.

[34:21]

You're not going to add these materials. And yet, It is a principle of our farming, and we're principally committed to farming organically, lifetime after lifetime. And you know your soil, third principle. Know your soil in every way. Put from the Mad Farmer's Manifesto, put your faith in the two inches of humus or living soil that will build under the trees of your farm every thousand years. Put your faith in that two inches of living ground, of soil, and let your practice come out of that. So know your soil. Amigo Bob writing the wonderful manifesto, know your soil, and teaching it here, the early drafts he taught here. Know your soil. What are the components? How does a whole soil system function together in harmony? I think of the Sicilian farmers.

[35:23]

I think of the story of a Sicilian farmer who came from Italy to the New World, to Ellis Island, completely empty-handed. Have you no documents? He was asked as he came into Ellis Island. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of his soil. Here's my passport. Here's my identity. Though know your soil, blood of the land, Every soil is a beautiful soil. And then, of course, compost. Life into death into life. Life made of death. Positive disintegration. everything is of the nature to come apart and be recombined.

[36:27]

Tata Buddha, everything is of the nature to come apart and be recombined. So, of course, fertility of imagination, pattern, principle, comes from decay, from brokenness, from honoring 4 billion years in culture from microbial ancestors, as Lynn Margulis says. Now we honor 4 billion years of intelligence, microbial ancestors and Wendell saying now listen to carrion put your ear close and hear the faint chattering and the song that are to come listen to carrion put your ear close hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come Again, from Wendell Berry, enter into death yearly.

[37:36]

Come back rejoicing. See the light lie down in the dung heap and rise up again in the corn. Life into death into life. Be compost. I asked a Jesuit Zen priest many years ago, do you say grace that combines your Catholic training and Zen practice, I do, he said. What is your grace, I asked him. Eat and be eaten. Beautiful answer. Eat and be eaten. Be made of life into death into life. That's a principle here, to be fertilized by death and to live again. Number five, of course, welcome diversity. Now we talk about kin-centric awareness, kinship. No kings in the plant kingdom.

[38:38]

We're talking about kin-centricity or a story, a long-winding story of connection between the plants. So we're protecting genetic and traditional ecological knowledge and heritage by growing the crops of antiquity respectfully and returning them, rematriating them, as the Ozet potatoes will go home to the Macaw people this summer through the gift of the Cultural Conservancy in connection with Green Gulch. We're keeping the links alive and continuing a concentric way of practice. And this is code, except for those of you that are doing the work. It's a code you can crack or uncode in your own practice. But concentric complexity and diversity, bringing together a house of stories, seed people, seed keepers, a house of stories from M. Scott Momaday.

[39:42]

Every seed is a house of stories. And learning spirits in the seeds, jumping to life when they're grown again and they begin to whine and tell that long winding story. So respect. the genetic complexity and kinship in each seed. And each seed is a mystery and an honor to hold. And hence, beginning the growing season with a ceremony of the seeds, as you do here. I shouldn't say you, as we do here at Green Gulch. Beginning was a ceremony welcoming the seeds, recognizing their parentage, their story. and releasing them to the ground so they could live again, sing again, tell their story again, and freshen them at the end of the season, closing with a ceremony honoring the harvest. We're close to that now. So, keeping the lynx alive, honoring complexity and kinship.

[40:47]

Number six, a little connected to compost, but in everything we do in the farm, welcoming loss, brokenness, fallowness, insecurity, thinking of Suzuki Roshi going through the farmer's market when he was a monk in his temple, choosing the rattiest and most forgotten vegetables and bringing them home. Old turnips, soggy lettuce, soggy cabbage, probably not lettuce, battered radishes, bringing them home and creating a feast from brokenness. So we want to honor From the Mad Farmer's Manifesto, Wendell Berry. We're calling on us to do something that doesn't compute. Work for nothing. Take all you have, all that you have, and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it.

[41:50]

Ask questions that have no answers. And ask yourself. Will what I am doing, will this work, satisfy a woman who is satisfied now to bear a child? Will this work and way I'm living disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth? And again, circling to the fox, be like the fox, who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction, Practice resurrection. And last of all, as you go to the kitchen, give the harvest away. No matter what, share the harvest, share the bounty. Every single leaf you touch in preparation of the meal, think of those who cannot come to the table and be fed as we are fed here. You give the harvest away, lifetime after lifetime. Even a single leaf becoming a 16-foot Buddha.

[42:54]

A 16-foot Buddha. willing to become a cabbage leaf, you always give the harvest away. Thank you for your practice, kitchen friends. Let me close with an afterword and we'll have a chance to be in conversation. This is a poem at the end of the Mad Farmer poems written by Wendell from his friend who wanted to offer Before and after Wendell Berry. An afterword. Kind of an afterword to these principles. And I love this poem. Here we go. Oh, earth, water. This is from, excuse me, always acknowledge the poet. William Cloakorn. K-L-O-E-K-O-R-N. Connected to corn. Kernel. Truth. Discernment.

[43:55]

William Cloakhorn. Afterward. Oh, earth, water and wind. Oh, sunlight and shadow. Hands deep in the soil. Oh, work and love. And the greatest of these is work. Work and the gift of good land. The immeasurable equation of knowledge and concern. O work and love of good land, as the sun goes, as the sun does its own savage work, and the harvest comes in, behold, the harvest is in. As the sun does its own savage work, and the harvest, behold, is in. Thank you for your attention.

[45:23]

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