Good morning. And it really is a beautiful good morning. Thank you for making your way here to this place of practice, the Hall of No Mistakes. You might be a little nervous stepping in, but drop that. No mistakes here. Just come as you are and be present. So in particular, welcome to Father's Day, the 18th of June today. And welcome to all of us. And in particular, let me first begin as... Abbott Jiryu did last week by introducing myself.

[01:01]

My name is Wendy Johnson. I lived here with my family from 1975 until 2000. We were among the first residents to be establishing the farm program at Green Gulch. And this morning's talk will be dedicated to farmers around the world and to those who bring in the food and feed us. So that's the topic of this morning's talk and very much where my heart is. So 25 years he lived here. Our two children were born here. I became a mother. My husband became a father here on the 22nd of June, right around the summer solstice when Jesse roared out and came to life and has been continuing ever since and his sister 12 years later. So it's beautiful to remember that this morning, that incredible time here at Green Gulch. And now we live in Muir Beach and continue to, um, be involved in the miracle of growing good food for a hungry world.

[02:05]

Miracle in these times. Let's begin by grounding where we are. we gather here this morning, grateful, humble guests in the unceded traditional, ancestral, and contemporary homeland of the Kosmiwok people. We recognize the history as well as the present-day harm of being removed, displaced, and forced away from traditional lands, language, and cultural life ways that the Coast Miwok people have faced. We commit to moving forward from a place of honesty and respect for where we are privileged to serve.

[03:15]

The Coast Miwok people are still here, alive, in story, song, the breath. of life and revitalized language, still here in the folds of this landscape and in ongoing relationship with their ancestral land and the revitalization, moment by moment, of Native lifeways. From a friend and poet from the Tomales Band of Kosmiwok Sky Road Web, translating bringing back to life the Muwak language, a prayer to Mount Tamalpais, the guardian peak of this extraordinary biological region. Tamalpais, Tamalpais, West Coast Mountain, right eye of the turtle, right eye of the world, West Coast Mountain, Bay Mountain.

[04:26]

Your tears are red. We drink your tears. Your tears are red. We drink your tears. I'm particularly grateful to be reading this poem this morning because Sky and other friends from the Miwok territory, extended Coast Miwok territory, and in particular this bioregion right here, are involved now in the possible founding of a new roundhouse in Nicasio. Very exciting regeneration happening. Beautiful to be able to celebrate. There'll be more to be said if you're interested after the talk. So Father's Day, I remember when our son was born, of course, meant to be summer solstice, meant to be

[05:26]

the longest day of the year and the shortest night. It was the longest night of the year for me. That night, I remember, he was born here at Green Gulch, down by the field. We planted a crab apple on his placenta. He roared out, and I thought, maybe not right at the time, but shortly after, remembering Dogen Zenji saying, study not only that you become a father or a mother when your child is born, you also, Become a child. Become a child, a new child. So may everyone this morning be renewed, no matter what your relationship with your father may be. May you be renewed and revitalized. Summer solstice is around the corner. And also the grave commemorative holidays that we're turning toward, not turning away from the 102nd holiday. anniversary of the massacre in Tulsa, Juneteenth.

[06:29]

We're remembering the murder of George Floyd, not turning away from that truth, not turning away from the truth of racism and violence in our world. And we're remembering the one-year horrible anniversary of shooting in Uvalde, Texas, all around this time of year, as the sun swells and rises up over the horizon at the northernmost point. And all over the world, celebration is convened to honor the summer solstice. Many years ago, His Holiness the Dalai Lama encouraged us, after attending the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, His Holiness was there, and He was also there 20 years later, to stand up and speak for climate justice and climate awareness and protection. He said, we're willing to talk and convene all kinds of panels, but what about one day a year when you get completely quiet and walk for the earth?

[07:36]

Could that be instituted or could that be convened? And particularly, he called on us, Buddhist practitioners, students of the way, to consider. And so for many years... We gathered on the summer solstice out on the meadow near the Big Bell and walked up to the top of the ridge and made a circumambulation of Green Gulch Valley in silence, stopping at Hope's Cottage to face the great directions and to rededicate ourselves silently to working for the benefit of all beings. And I remember carrying our children. In that case, it was our daughter. She was born in 1989. She was little. We carried her. She was three years old, carried her up there, turned us in four great directions, and then moved on to look at the city, to stand in awareness of San Francisco and all the cities of the world where so many people are gathered.

[08:43]

And I'm thinking of that this morning and then continuing, without saying a word, continuing down. stopping to look at the different springs and vantage points of the ocean and coming to Muir Beach, some people jumping in the ocean and making our way back through Green Gulch Fields and arriving right at dusk. A long walk, a long, slow, silent walk for the earth still informs my love and connection to this valley and especially around this season. I encourage you, wherever you are, to go out and receive the tidings of the living world around this time of year. And interestingly, just as it's a mystery how parents become parents but also become children, how we can celebrate the most light on planet Earth, the most sunlight, and then also the distinct turning toward the dark. There's a long history of circumambulation under Bay Mountain,

[09:50]

Eye of the Turtle, Eye of the World, Red Tear Mountain, Coast Mountain, circumambulating Mount Tamalpais, the first circumambulation, many, I'm sure many circumambulations, but way back in, oh, many, many years ago, Gary Snyder and poet Philip Whalen and poet and rascal. Allen Ginsberg, circumambulating the mountain, 11 hours. It takes to walk the circle. And then for many seasons, when farm apprentices arrived at Green Gulch, we actually did this walk or part of the walk, circumambulating to really receive the teachings of place and the voice, the breath of life of the people of this place for whom this is always ancestral home. It's so important. to be able to do that, to circumambulate, to make a big circle within a circle, no beginning and never ending, and vow, as we chanted this morning, to taste the truths of the Tathagata's teaching.

[11:05]

Bitter, sweet, savory, salty, sour, astringent. All the tastes in one, conscious moment of eating the truth of the land where you live. Circumambulate and remember and rededicate to live in vow, not even by vow, in the vow to really know the place where you're privileged to practice and to know your legacy and not turn away from that. So welcome this morning to what is probably the 30th, at least, 30th season of Farm Apprentices coming to Green Gulch to endeavor to turn over the ground and turn over an open heart and mind and be renewed, to take the backward step, turn the light inward, and learn something about the living land, this extraordinary land.

[12:11]

We forget the 20 elements make up who we are. We're composed of 20 raw, wild, recumbent elements. The four of them are from the air. Only four. All the rest are from the living Earth. And I need not remind you, you wouldn't be here on this fine and beautiful day without knowing full well what extraordinary challenge planet Earth is facing now due to the way we live. and comport ourselves. We make a vow to take a really deep look at that this morning and to be grateful for the opportunity to practice together and to be together in this being time. A time of reckoning. I love the word reckoning. One of the first, actually the founder of Green Culture,

[13:16]

supporting the benefactor of Green Gulch, George Wheelwright, wrote a wonderful piece as a young man called Dead Reckoning. He was a pilot and he reckoned. He found his way by sighting off of the stars. He was an extraordinary pilot. And in this Dead Reckoning, he talks about how you actually infer and find your way to reckon is to take heed, to be careful. And dead reckoning is a calculation based on inference, not anything solid. The rising and falling of the stars, the dark sky, or if you're a navigator in the ocean, reckoning by the movement of the water, by waves, by everything that changes, you find your way. And this is a time of reckoning. We have wrecked the world. Therefore, we need to reckon. with how we live. And again, we know this.

[14:19]

It's absolutely clear and compelling. So a time of reckoning and also a time of discernment. And farming takes reckoning, always finding your way with the pattern of the land to listen to the land and be adjusted. One of my favorite poems. From poet Charles Wright, what I'm trying to say is this. I tell you only this thing that I've come to believe. Indenture yourself to the land where you are. Imagine you touch its raw edge in all weather, time and again. The colors of the land try to imitate day by day the morning's growth and the dusk on the earth.

[15:26]

The movement of all creatures. Surrender yourself and be glad. This is the law that endures. To reckon and to discern and to indenture. yourself, to the land, to remember what we're made of. We say it takes seven years for the blood to turn. Every seven years, you come fresh to a place where you live, hopefully in communion with the ground. So every seven years, all of the cells of your body and even your blood changes and is renewed, becoming more and more native to the place where you live. And I use that word with humility and a little bit of awareness of its tread. To really know where you live and what grounds you.

[16:31]

And so in the early days, when apprentices arrived, we would spend a full morning inviting people who come from the from the four directions, from the ten directions, come from all corners of the world, inviting you to sit still on the ground and find your place where you are. And it was a beautiful experience. I remember, most vividly, I remember 17-year-old Kevin Rowell. When it was time to, most people sat quietly under a tree or in the shade. They were beautiful. They sat peacefully. He was 17 and like a large. over-eager puppy that had never been trained, and I remember him going out into the wet row of the farm and lying down in the mud, face down, and thinking, yes, this is a great being with huge energy and intention and freshness, and getting up and not even wiping the mud off his face, but just excitedly talking about what he had perceived with his nose in the mud.

[17:42]

returning to origin, indenturing. And so when you come to a place and you have the opportunity to really ground and find and make a commitment to speak whatever vow is rising up for how you want to practice, what your work and time will be, what it means to be able to have the privilege to grow food on land that is traditional ancestral land. so important, and to discern what it means to live here. For us, in the early years, my husband Peter helped to work a team of horses. He learned with Abbot Steve Stuckey, one of the first farmers coming from the Mennonite tradition, longtime Abbot, early Abbot, Abbot of the horses. He taught us a lot about working with horses and learning from, we had some milk cows and chickens. We learned a lot. in those early years.

[18:43]

And I remember Peter working alone in the field behind, I think, one of the single cultivating horses, a horse named Joe. I think it was Joe. And turning the ground, walking right behind the ample rump of this magnificent being, working slowly. And this is the way that we cultivated the ground in the early 1970s. And a glint of black obsidian caught his eye. The walking plow turned up. A stone knife, which is clear evidence, if we feel we need it, clear evidence of the original inhabitants of this place, of the Coast Miwok people, who lived and traded obsidianists from Lake County, trading probably from the amplitude of the ocean. And that stone flint knife, flaked flint knife, waking us up. in a fresh way. It has blessedly been returned to the Miwok community.

[19:49]

We found a couple of knives in the early years, and they always were a reminder to be discerning, to reckon according to how we work, and to take responsibility. The Polish psychiatrist from the mid-20th century, Kazimierz Dabrowski, reminds us of the importance of positive disintegration, falling apart, coming apart. Crises are key to personal maturation, he taught. When human codes and established organizing principles are no longer valid, In this world, and only disintegration may allow for a more adaptive and resilient sense of inner being, then positive disintegration occurs and helps us emerge from calamity.

[20:57]

This is an extraordinary, timely teaching from a psychiatrist who knew what he was talking about. Positive disintegration. For those of us who are studying Buddhism and ecology fully as our life path, as a clear and strong Dharma gate, positive disintegration or the capacity to come apart reminds us that in living systems that break down, only when systems that are no longer functional break down and come apart do we have the opportunity to to reorganize at a more robust level, to incorporate in that reorganization, in that fresh commitment, and beginning again, fresh, vivid, fearless, beginning again, we come to incorporate breakdown experience so that whatever continuity there is, is also based on reckoning with breakdown.

[22:07]

Now, every farmer knows this. Every farmer treasures the more-than-human world and the coming apart. Every farmer, every land-based person pays tribute and homage to the three treasures, the consumers, human beings. We consume the world. But we also pay homage to the way we consume and who we are. We are the consumers. And it's consumers' job to recognize the treasure of production, those who produce life and bring us to life, the algaes, the claves, the living soil, the microorganisms, all of the aspects that make life possible and make disintegration possible. And then last of all, pay homage to the decomposers, to the dark web at the base of the world. And, you know, it takes a sunny day coming into an old barn to really feel the importance of honoring those without whom we would drown in our own waste stream.

[23:16]

The massive decomposers. It takes 500 years to create anew an inch of soil. But we're not creating it. We're consuming it. It's the decomposers that are bringing together the web of life. And incorporating disintegration into every movement. So we remember that. And I'm not speaking metaphorically. I always remind friends. I don't speak in metaphors. It may sound like I am. But I'm not. This is the real world. The living web. Life into death into life. We say matter cycles. Energy flows. And life exists in a web. Which is intelligent enough. to incorporate loss and calamity and precarity. So gratitude for living in these times. Now, let me see where we are.

[24:24]

I have only a little bit of time to... I love the statement... From F. Scott Fitzgerald, draw your chair close to the precipice and I'll tell you a story. Because, you know, this may be a little vague what I'm bringing up, but what is not vague is the truth of far-reaching generosity. In the Buddhist world, we teach that there are three kinds of far-reaching generosity that we can provide. So this is a story about far-reaching generosity, recognizing that there's huge hunger in the world. Of the 7.8 billion people, almost a billion people are suffering from radical and consistent and continuous hunger. 25,000 children die every day in the world from lack of water, clear water and good food.

[25:24]

So the first teaching from the Buddha in far-reaching generosity is to provide for material help. And that can be shelter, food, water, to offer material health, the gift of good food. So to be able to grow good food and offer it is extraordinarily important. And second of all, the offering of teaching that gives you ballast in these times, a Dharma teaching that is strong to the root. Durr. To uphold. Durr. Dharma. Farm. They're cognates. Dharma. Farm. Teaching. Truth. Commitment. Find a Dharma teaching. Taste the truth of that teaching. Taste it. Digest it. Giver, receiver, and gift.

[26:26]

Taste it. without always proclaiming before you digest the emptiness of the three. Taste the truth of the teaching that sustains you and brings generosity in these times. And last of all, don't be afraid. The gift of fearlessness. Beautiful. So the three gifts of far-reaching generosity, material help, dharma teaching, and fearlessness, a beautiful gesture. This is a mudra. Mudras are not explained. They're clear. Showing the left hand is extended. Showing I carry no weapons. I come in peace. Please stop. Don't be afraid. Suggest your abaya. No fear. And then the right hand touching the ground. So a double testimony. Don't be afraid. And ground yourself. Because the world is disintegrating. And it needs to disintegrate. It is our job to take apart no longer functional systems and to incorporate that vow into how we live and farm and grow together.

[27:36]

Trungpa Rinpoche says, fearlessness, even fear is frightened by a bodhisattva's true fearlessness. Fear itself is terrified by the commitment to not turn away. And so how do you do it? I've just returned from two and a half weeks in the Southwest at Upaya Zen Center, which is a very deep Dharma home for me, along with Green Gulch. So grateful to be practicing with Upaya Zen Center. Very strong activist Sangha, which is necessary for me. Very necessary for me. And, you know, an opportunity to actually work and practice vividly. It's also obviously amply available at Green Gulch. But for me, it's been really good making this pilgrimage twice a year to the Southwest.

[28:41]

And in the winter for a solid month of deep sitting, no talking. And then in early June, right around Memorial Day, the opportunity to plant a garden in the center of the meditation community. This year, we started a brand new garden from scratch. For 12 years, we've been growing beautiful ancestral crops of the Southwest in conjunction and communion with leaders and teachers and knowledge holders from the Tewa world, particularly from Santa Clara Pueblo, working with Roxanne Swenzel, who's a sculptress, activist, and the founder of the first indigenous community permaculture organization, Flowering Tree Permaculture, right in the heart of Santa Clara Pueblo. Beautiful work that she's doing, and she's entrusted us with the gift of blue corn, which we've grown at Upaya for 12 years, and lately returning the seed and the bounty of the harvest to Santa Clara Pueblo for distribution, which is right action right now to rematriate

[29:54]

the seed and the food grown in gardens like the gardens here at Green Gulch or in the Southwest. So it's been an extraordinary gift to see this little dusty plot of land be. It's not any bigger than about maybe a third of this room. And many people coming together and mounding up and planting. the three sisters of antiquity, corn, beans, and squash. But this year, the original garden was disbanded. And because of drought and deluge, because of the huge fires that ravaged New Mexico last year, and also because of the community, because of the way the community is organized right now, a giant water tank during the winter, After the winter practice period, after I'd gone home, a huge water tank was buried in the heart of this garden.

[30:59]

And Roshi John let me know a water tank had to be buried in the garden. The garden is not there anymore, but we have a new place. A brand new garden was started this year. And it's always daunting. to be involved in a brand new garden because the soil culture takes so long. But luckily, the students and the people that were helping with the transition picked up every single bed's worth of soil and moved it to the new site so that when I actually arrived at Upaya and got over being pretty altitude sick and dropped a fork into the ground, to my amazement, the ground was alive. and open and fertile, because every single bit of good topsoil had been moved and new soil had been returned to the area where the tank is planted.

[32:05]

And not only that, sunflower, oh, sunflower, weary of time, the sunflowers of the southwest, the Hopi black-dye sunflower, are completely... grown into a thick mat of regeneration on that site, that disturbed site. Sunflower is aligned not only with life and sunniness, but in that interlocking spiral Fibonacci series in the head of every sunflower is also the truth that sunflowers are the flower of the dead. When ground is disturbed and burial happens, when there's been lost, sunflowers come up to heal the ground. So the whole garden is covered now, the original garden with sunflowers. It's beautiful. And we had a new plot. To our amazement, early in the life of this new garden, Roxanne Swenzel from Santa Clara Pueblo entrusted us with a seed vessel, a small clay vessel. And she said, I know you're going to start a new garden.

[33:09]

Would you consider entrusting this seed vessel to the ground? And offering prayers and seed that you've been able to grow in perpetuity, bury it in the ground of the new site where you're working. It was an amazing experience to be asked to do that. And not only that, after 12 years of growing blue corn, faithfully, Roxanne confessed to me and also to others who were rabid farmers, growers, that she had been breeding a rare corn that was in her mind, which is what every breeder carries, the seeds of continuity and new life. So she did a genetic crossing between corn she found in the very bottom of the Grand Canyon with the Abu Supay Nation. Some of you may have had the privilege to visit this area

[34:10]

tribe down in the at the very roots of the Grand Canyon they're growing a sweet a sweet corn a soft corn it's pink and Roxanne tasted it and imagined crossing with the dry corn of the Hopi world and for five or six years she's been doing these making this cross and finally she has had enough she has enough cobs to share but as is often the case not the land to grow the corn, not the land or the capacity. And so we made a sacred pledge to her to bury the seeds of antiquity in the seed vessel and to plant the entire garden to her pink corn and to give her every single cob of corn as it comes off. She said, you can taste a few. I said, no, you don't taste new seed until three seasons in. That's a strict law in the farming world. It's a little...

[35:12]

Harsh, but necessary. Because people will eat everything if you don't hide it and protect it until it gets established. So to help her establish the seed of this corn. And to my delight, I can report that the corn, we planted about 25 mounds of this corn. And it is germinating wildly. Standing up strong green banners. unfurling and beginning to really establish at Upaya and around the garden. Scarlet runner beans, a single mound, a heart-shaped mound of Taos, Pueblo squash, Hubbard squash, a single mound because the garden is small. It's smaller than the other one. And then all around, amaranth, sunflowers, and tobacco to protect. I see the kitchen is going, makes me hungry.

[36:16]

But I wanted to tell you this story and also to say, I'm going to read the pledge that we took for this. And just, it's deeply encouraging. And also the work that's happening at Green Gulch is deeply encouraging. So in the question and answer period, I hope someone will be a good shill and ask me to tell the story of the Ozette potatoes. And I can do that when we have question and answer period. But this planting happened with a wonderful guide, wonderful guides coming. Melissa Nelson from the Cultural Conservancy, who lives here in the Bay Area, was there to help us with the planting. Alonzo Mendez, who's an archaeoastrologer from the Mayan world, helping to plant the corn. He oversaw the corn planting. Cato Troy Fernandez, 13th generation. and cultural guide from New Mexico, native New Mexican, so that local people did the planting.

[37:23]

I got to boss them around, but the planting was in the hands of those who lived there in that area. And then in the end, we took all of the seeds we had planted in different varieties and buried the seed pot in the center with this pledge. So let me close by reading this pledge and also recognizing how important it is to live in vow, not only to be digging around and planting, but also to live by vow and in the vow. of what you're doing. So this is a sacred covenant, a covenant that runs with the land. And it's between the New Mexico, let's see, let me get this right.

[38:26]

New Mexico indigenous group, New Mexico food and seed sovereignty Alliance. So at the very close of the day, again, this is in the heart of a Zen center. in northern New Mexico. The abbot of the Zen Center made this pledge, or signed this pledge, and buried the seeds, recognizing that seeds are shared freely in the hope that through this traditional seed banking and storage, we will support health for all communities, continue cultural traditions and farming life ways, and help protect Earth's incredible diversity of seeds. I recognize that in choosing to care for this seed pot, I take on responsibility to use my voice to speak for the health of seeds, waters, land, and to protect against any attempts to steal, degrade, commodify, or harm this indigenous precious heritage.

[39:36]

In storing these seeds in the earth, I promise to honor Indigenous nations, Pueblo communities, and other land-based peoples who have protected and passed on seeds and their stories for countless generations. In receiving this seed pot, I promise to bury it in ceremonial practice relevant to my cultural heritage and tradition, in continuance of an ancestral practice of seed saving, and I commit to acting with care, respect, and reverence as guardian of this seed vessel and promise that I will never sell, commodify, or exploit these seeds in any way or any seeds and earthen vessels as seeds and earthen vessels are gifts from the living earth that give and help sustain life. It was just a beautiful experience to do this ceremonial, dedicated planting.

[40:44]

Every season here at Green Gulch, the farming season begins with vow to protect and to sow the seeds of antiquity with care and to return the seeds and the food to people for whom this food is essential. So that is a practice, but somehow burying this seed pot in these times was so deeply significant. and meaningful. I'm glad to be able to tell you a little bit. And, you know, I brought, I set up a table outside so that when we go outside, in a moment we'll transition to questions. When we go outside, right now the table is covered, but I will uncover it. You can gather around and actually see these seeds because talk is cheap and seeds are real. To feel and to hold them, they do not belong in the Bay Area. They are the seeds of the dry mind of the Southwest. but you can see them and feel. And also, there's some of the ozette potatoes that we planted here at Green Gulch also on the table, so you can say thank you for your attention.

[41:47]

It's a little bit like a speed race to finish. There's so much more to say, but gratitude to the apprentices who come to bring new life to this valley. Thank you for your practice. Thank you to the residents and protectors of this temple for your solid, advocacy. Thank you to the children for being so quiet this morning. We're going to have some fun in a minute. There's fun things outside that we can see. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. 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.

[42:41]

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