This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I'm interested in how many of you are here for the first time. Welcome. So in this talk this morning, I want to bring up, I realized almost a web of different things which I feel are all connected and it may sound like I'm going way out on a limb and hopefully I'll be able to come back to this seat actually. So we'll see what happens.

[01:04]

join me on this adventure here. At Green Gulch Farm, we've just begun, just this past week, the 60th practice period. This is about a two-month intensive with a schedule, a daily schedule of sitting and study and ceremony. And we have about 30 people who have signed up for this practice. And they make a commitment to stay in the valley and to follow the schedule completely and see what happens. And I've been asking people in the practice period what their intention is. And often this question, it may feel like, what's the intention for the practice period itself for these next few weeks or two months?

[02:11]

Or the question can go much deeper. What is my intention in this life? And people have been saying wonderful things. I've found them to be wonderful. About 100%... throwing themselves into their lives 100%, making effort, finding out what that is to make effort, studying themselves, living in community, what that is. Many different intentions are happening. And it's not easy. The practice period... In one way, it's very simple. You just follow the schedule. And in another way, it's difficult. It might be a very new way of life, and we've left the familiar situation behind. And we face our fears and our difficulties and our loneliness and our all sorts of things, feelings of inadequacy.

[03:25]

sorts of things and this and we face these in the context of sitting and coming back over and over again to your cushion and sitting in meditation and allowing whatever's happening to happen and paying attention with an open heart so this question of what is Right effort. There's a seat right there, a couple seats right there. What is the kind of right effort that we can make? Sometimes we make effort and we end up having a kind of burnout, actually, where whatever that effort was, it wasn't sustainable. So I'm going to come back to that what is right effort, but I wanted to bring up another something.

[04:27]

And I'm refraining from telling you about my vacation, which was a whole other practice event. Maybe I'll weave that in too. So yesterday I was at the Bioneers Conference. And the Bioneers Conference, I think it's 20 years that the Bioneers have been having this annual event. event plus many, many other things have been spawned from the Bioneers, which is quite an amazing group of people all over the world who are devoted to caring for the environment and the environment in the broadest sense, internal and external environment. And I was invited to be on a panel, an interfaith panel, panel called Beyond Belief Bringing Our Faith Into Action how the different religious denominations I guess you could call them or different religions are engaging with care for the earth and the environment and the ecological crisis of our time.

[05:43]

So this panel there was I was there as a Buddhist priest. There was a Native American woman, Marilyn Youngbird, a Hindu woman, young woman named Krithika Harish, and then a Baptist minister from Bayview, Hunters Point, African-American man from a church there named G.L. Hodge. So we sat, and the moderator was Reverend Sally Bingham, who's the environmental minister for the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and also head of a large interfaith group called California Interfaith Power and Light. And there's interfaith power and light in 40 states with about 14 people. congregations and so forth.

[06:48]

Anyway, that was the panel. And... You know, I prepared for this panel. What does Buddhism say about the environment or practice of taking care of the environment? And I had been... There's wonderful websites. I've been asking the group of people at Green Gulch called the Eco-sattvas, which is a play on the word bodhisattva, the beings who vow to awaken and awaken with others and live for the benefit of others. That's the bodhisattvas. And then the eco-sattvas kind of take that vow and... you know, especially look at the environment and climate, the emergency, climate emergency and many other related issues.

[07:56]

So I asked them what they thought were the challenges that we're looking at and also solutions and successes and how to bring our faith into action. These were the questions for the panel. Before the panel met, there was a man who spoke in the Bioneers named a preacher, Reverend Fletcher Harper. And he had some very interesting, he speaks all over the world, actually, about this issue of people of faith and how they can work for the benefit of the earth and the environment. And he speaks to all sorts of groups. And one thing he said that, and this is one of the dangers, this is one of the challenges, is a kind of polarization of bad guys and good guys, you know.

[09:02]

People in certain walks of life or businesses or corporations can be painted as the evil ones or the bad ones, and then there's the good ones. This polarization Polarization itself, I think, undermines the essential truths of we are all one human animal together on this, not even on this earth. That is this earth together as one being. So one of the things this Minister Fletcher Harper was saying is when you talk with people who are in certain professions or in the oil industry or in certain walks of life that you would assume or might begin thinking of them as the enemy, he said, if you can engage people to talk about and bring up stories about places on the earth that they love, places they've visited, often,

[10:14]

places as a child, a river that they went to fishing with their grandfather or when they went to camp or seeing and living outdoors or having some special place. At that point, when these stories... And often people, they're so important to them, these stories of place and the natural world, that they're very private often. And when you begin to talk about the stories... and how these places touch you forever, what happens is you begin to hear and feel that there is not so much difference between people. We all care about the earth and don't want to lose the health and well-being of the natural world. So this is a kind of unifying practice maybe is to find out what those stories are from people and see what happens, see how the conversation changes.

[11:24]

So this is one challenge in this whole area of setting up bad guys and good guys and staying together. How do we stay together? And also work in an attentive way and have countermeasures for what's going on, but without setting up enemies. Another challenge that has come up at Green Gulch, and this is kind of a personal story, the Eco Sattvas brought forth a proposal for Green Gulch to... be clear to the public about Proposition 37, which is coming up on the ballot, or if you've done early voting. This is about labeling labels, basically just about labeling genetically modified GMO things, foods, and that's all.

[12:32]

And one would think we're an organic farm and garden as well as a meditation center And how do we think about this that doesn't somehow hinder people, make an obstacle for people who might want to come to practice and have a different understanding or a different view? And this is the issue. Will people feel welcome if we have, for example, vote for probably support 37 signs? on the farm or at the top of the road. And this is, for some people, that may be very simple. Of course, an organic farm would have that very easily. But in talking about it in the practice committee, there was some feeling that where you enter the temple to have a sign like that would not be appropriate. So,

[13:38]

So win is an issue flowing from our practice, flowing from our understanding of vow and right action and clarity about what's harming and what isn't harming. One of the basic maybe core, core nuggets of our Buddhist practice is the practice of non-harming. And of course, when you begin to practice that, you see that we can't live without harming in some way. We harm in order to live. Living beings have to be eaten, whether it's vegetable or animal. So there's always some harming. So I know Gary Snyder and other Buddhists Practitioners have changed that to no unnecessary harming rather than no harming because it's impossible to purely live without harming.

[14:47]

So when is a sign on the road or in the farm or in a Dharma talk, you know, about 37, Yes, vote yes on 37. I'm not going to be the one to say vote yes on 37. I'm just going to say, let's think about when is saying vote yes on 37 flowing from our vow to live on this earth with clarity and compassion and non-harming. And when is it about something else, power or profit or some other reason? When is it? And what is political and what isn't political? I don't even know anymore, actually. I can't tell, actually. But I know where I want to come from, and that's the practice of being awake and paying attention and being clear and looking at what is harmful activity, what is non-harming or no unnecessary harming.

[15:56]

So... When does a sign on the road make people say, well, I guess I'm not welcome there? And I think that's a danger. And when is it so clear that this is coming from non-harming or compassion or clarity? As someone, one of the eco-safas recently said to me, what they want to see from the Dharma seat is like Martin Luther King speaking out from the pulpit against racism and upholding civil rights. And of course there were many, many laws and so forth that had to be looked at and overturned and championed and fought for and so forth. When is that, you know,

[16:58]

Is that political? Is that not political? Is that religion? Is that spiritual life or is it something else? So this is how to speak from this seat about what is so important to all of our lives and all of the species, animals and plants, without... without also conveying that someone isn't welcome to practice and look for themselves and find out for themselves. This was the Buddha's admonition. Don't take my word for it, you know, that this is Dharma or the truth. Be a light unto yourself, you know. Your practice will uncover and discover these very truths that, this is the Buddha speaking, that I found. But we have to do the practice and stabilize our minds and bodies.

[18:04]

So, you know, at the Bioneers Conference in the morning plenary session, there was this fellow, this minister, talking about the religious power of people. There's between 350,000 and 400,000 religious institutions in the... States, in the United States, and the kind of collective, and there's an interfaith sharing on the importance of care for the earth, whether it's God's creation, which is one way of looking at it, or non-harming, or the Native American woman on the panel, you know, her speech was so beautiful that All things are alive and we're connected with all things. Grandmother Earth and Grandfather Sky. And the whole Earth is church. There's no particular place for church.

[19:09]

And loving your neighbor and caring for your neighbor and caring for beings. Total united feeling around this. And to galvanize... the number of people that 400,000 or 350,000 religious institutions, the number of people that that constitutes to bring their practice and their faith into action or into the ballot box, which is one way of expressing oneself. Only one way, but an important way. How... how powerful that would be. So at Green Gulch yesterday, there was like this mirroring of the Bioners. We had our own little Green Gulch-ineers thing going on there yesterday. There was a Women in Recovery retreat.

[20:15]

There was a Yoga Zen retreat here yesterday. There was just regular old Green Gulch work. There was a farming or gardening, farming, food workshop with Executive Chef of Greens Annie Somerville and Wendy Johnson, our past head gardener. That was going on and there was the coming of age sleepover last night for the boys, the group of young men. This was all going on in the Valley yesterday. And all these activities were also going on at Bioneers. We had the youth movement, lots of youth activities and what the youth had to say. We had feminomics track conference. There was women's issues, and there was lots about gardening and farming.

[21:18]

the importance of this. So I was kind of marveling at this kind of resonance between what was going on here yesterday and all the different things that were thought to be important enough to bring up at this huge conference. Another of the speakers at Bioneros was, I think it's pronounced Gabor Mate. who's a medical doctor and has done an enormous amount of research in body-mind, interconnected body-mind, one psychophysical being, and how that relates to the environment and the loss of the habitat and the stress that people feel and the depression and the effect of depression and stress on the body and then on people around you because we're open systems.

[22:23]

So the children of stressed and depressed people are stressed and depressed. He said 50% of adolescents in this country now have mental health issues. This is a kind of phenomenal figure. And I was thinking, you know, with our coming-of-age program going on at Green Gulch, you know, addressing the young people, giving them an environment of beauty and peacefulness and to study and be with one another and make community. He also talked about... when mothers are depressed and stressed out, the physical changes in the unborn child and how that manifests later as all sorts of rise in things like ADD and Asperger's and autism.

[23:33]

And he's making these connections between the environment, not just individuals are having a hard time, but environmental issues, poverty, the stress of, you know, air that's not good to breathe and water and all these issues that are wide, wide issues and then how they manifest in each person and are passed on. Anyway, and addiction problems. So, you know, we had the women's... Women in Recovery here yesterday, and he was talking about the stress in the body in children and then how drugs and alcohol for some children, this is the first time they've ever felt kind of happy and calm.

[24:34]

And so it's not just an issue of... The issue is so wide, it's brain functioning and cortisol in the blood and all sorts of stress factors and then gets played out in these ways and all the social ills. So this is all being looked at as, this is the environment, you know. What do we call the world? There's a koan. What do we call the world? It's our own little world, but we're completely interconnected with every other person, animal, and plant. So on this panel, when asked what does Buddhism have to say about care for the earth and the environment, you know,

[25:37]

It was interesting. I had been working on this and looking at, oh, there's so many wonderful websites and a website called EcoBuddhism, I think, .org, and fantastic articles by scientists and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I was spending time, really, so I could carefully say in my five minutes, you know, really hit the points that I felt were the most important. And I had my little... jotted down notes. And then I got to the panel just to let you know my challenges, and I couldn't find the notes. They were just like gone. They were gone, absolutely gone, gone. I looked through, and the other panelists said, well, they must be there. Just take it easy. Just look through your things. The Baptist minister said, you know, just slow down, just look for it. And I looked and I looked.

[26:39]

They were gone. They were not there. And they were gone. They were home. And I had shifted from one folder to another, and this little thing had stayed in there. So that was good. It's like, do I need notes after 40 years of expensive Buddhist practice? Do I really need a little cheat sheet to talk for five minutes about, you know? So, you know, that was... I just... you know, kind of made some, I jotted down and just spoke. But the main points that I wanted to make were, you know, came down to teachings that you've heard many, many times, but the teaching of impermanence or everything changes, nothing changes. is substantial, solid in and of itself. It is constantly flowing and changing.

[27:40]

That means each person, each moment actually is dependently co-arising. This is because the truth, this is what the Buddha discovered. This is what's for us to discover through our practice. that each thing, and we don't have to look too far to see that everything is changing, but underneath it, I think we have some belief that certain things don't change. This is a kind of held belief, which is a kind of delusion. So everything is changing and flowing, and therefore, there is no solid, abiding self. There's no separate self that's solid and going to be there like that forever. And it was interesting having the Hindu practitioner on the panel because what she talked about is the abiding self, that each person has Atman as a divine, an eternal self that's there and goes on from life after life.

[28:47]

But she was also talking about interconnectedness. So that didn't stop care for the earth, but it was interesting to have this strong... expression of Atman as I was speaking about Anatman, no abiding self, which was one of the Buddha's what, you know, part of his realization or awakening is no self. And this no self means no abiding self. It doesn't mean that each one of us doesn't have an existence. It means that our existence is not no other than and part of the interconnected, dependently arising life that arises in connection with everyone else and everything else, and the air we breathe, and the water we drink, and all the ecosystems support us, and we support them.

[29:48]

Not only support us, but we are the ecosystems. We are... not even part of, but we are existence itself that is arising and vanishing moment after moment together with all beings. This is the, you know, you could say the content of the Buddha's awakening. This, everything changes and therefore nothing is separate in and of itself. Because how could it be if it's changing? It's changing in response to everything else in one web, one net is an image, one jeweled net. And so this interconnectedness, out of this interconnectedness flows almost naturally, you could say, compassion

[30:50]

for all beings who suffer, and this is the other part of the Buddha's awakening, how beings suffer, and they suffer because they're trying to grasp at what isn't real and is ungraspable, namely, something solid, something to hold on to that's going to be there for me, you know, forever. And along with that comes a belief in a separate self and what's mine and not yours, I, me and mine. And what flows from that is often greed and hatred and delusion. And you could say all the problems, all the challenges, environmental challenges, the emergency, the climate emergency right now comes down to greed and delusion, and you could say greed, hate, and delusion, you know.

[31:59]

And the greed is fueled by our not understanding our interconnectedness, not only with everything now, but everything that is to come. There's the past and the future and the present is one time being. So out of that, you know, then what do we do? You know, and it's sometimes so vast and so disheartening, so discouraging. We don't know how to make effort. We don't know what is right effort. And we can feel our, you know, hearing about some of the things yesterday, the loss of species. And in 100 years, like 99% of the species, it's just like some huge, like... You know, impossible to even fathom. But loss, and loss of ecosystems, and as we know, it's happening now.

[33:02]

It's not some future. So feeling the discouragement, and what can I do? You know, what can anybody do? Maybe there's nothing to be done, and the earth will just, and this has been voiced. The earth will just take care of itself and it will all disappear and it will come back in some other form and there's nothing to be done. You hear this and is, you know, that might be a response someone has. And there are other responses, you know. What can I do? One... Action, first of all, to realize that our actions, the way we think about things, is then manifested in our speech and our body.

[34:04]

So how are we thinking about things is one way to start. And what is important to me, you know, choose something. And it may be, you know, when I said we all have stories about... and about the environment that we, you know, if we were to tell our stories, that matters to us. It matters deeply. It may be a turning point in our life, some experience in nature. And so that might be where we turn, that that's where we work. Recently, someone told me, with the rest of the life that they have, they're in their 60s, they're going to work towards or to turn around what's happening with fracking. They're from New York. And this is, they've decided, this is it.

[35:06]

They've chosen where they're going to put their energy and their effort and their intelligence and their creativity. So we can... And it comes from a story about a place they love, a small town they love that's changed drastically. And, you know, each one of us can do this. So when I said, you know, what is right effort and how can we sustain right effort, this is a, this is a, you know, can be a wonderful practice question and question for our life. How do we make the right effort? Because if our effort just makes more anger and more discouragement and more polarization, even if the mission, you know, is to save some habitat or to, it will be at cross purposes and we'll destroy our own

[36:16]

peacefulness. You know, when we're living in accord with everything changes and there's no abiding self. There is a self, but it is a self that is codependently arising. It's not in an abiding substantial way. When we're in accord with that, there's peacefulness and I feel a peaceful creativity together with others. And when we're not in accord with that, There's not peacefulness. There's suffering and creation of suffering more and more. So being in accord with this, I think, right effort to start with being in accord with everything changes and that there's no abiding self. And this no abiding self means, therefore, you could say, everything is interconnected. There's nothing that stands outside of this web. Everything is flowing and interconnected.

[37:20]

And when we are in accord with that, there's a kind of peacefulness and creativity. And when our effort, and this is our effort in our Zazen practice, our effort in social justice, environmental work, when what's supporting us is interdependence and interconnectedness, another way of saying that is emptiness, empty of separateness and full of interconnectedness, when that's supporting us in our practice, in our zazen, then our effort is right effort. When we don't forget this, then the whole world is supporting us and all beings are supporting us And all eco-sattvas and bodhisattvas and Buddhas, awakened ones, support our practice. Suzuki Roshi, the founder of San Francisco's Zen Center, said about right effort for him that this was a very difficult issue and for many years he made wrong effort.

[38:36]

That's what he said. He had wrong effort for a long time. And he didn't talk about it with anyone. He didn't bring it up with anyone. Nobody helped him with this. He finally kind of came to realizing that the kind of effort he was making was for gain. He had a gaining idea. I'm going to get rid of my problems and my afflictions and my... bad practice or whatever it was he was thinking. And then I'm gonna get out of my problems, for me. And he was making effort in that way. And it set up, I imagine, from my own experience of that, setting up a kind of competition with our Dharma friends and constantly looking at how am I doing, which is separating us from whatever it is we are doing.

[39:40]

And not feeling supported because we're always trying to, you know, get ahead or get better, get outside of our problems so then we don't have any problems. And then we'll be okay. So this kind of effort of trying to get something, trying to get something out of our practice or get something out of our environmental work, a certain kind of self-satisfaction for me. I did it. I was able to turn this around. This will be, it's kind of unsustainable and will set up a subject-object kind of situation that is based on delusion and will support grasping mind. And I would think also an inability to relax and allow and open to each situation, whether we find it difficult or not difficult.

[40:52]

So when we practice without gaining mind, without trying to get something, and this came up in one of my discussions with one of the practice period people about their intention, their intention was just wanting to sit, And I asked, it was not exactly a trick question, but if there were any obstacles that this person saw. And what they said was, it was almost like they didn't understand the question, which was really interesting for me, because they said any obstacle is just, they really said this, it's just another kind of practice. It's just another way to practice. It was really like there's no such thing as an obstacle. What would that be? And it was just a wonderful, I felt, expression of no gaining ideas. You just continue your practice if there's something, even discouragement, okay?

[41:55]

Now we practice with discouragement. It's all just devotion completely to practice. So I think that's where my vacation came up, where I wanted to bring up my vacation, because... Steve and I went on this vacation. We had big plans, big plans for this bicycle vacation, going to New York and seeing our daughter and her partner and then going off into the Adirondacks for a bicycle vacation for eight days on the bike in the fall leaves. You know, doesn't that sound wonderful? And we prepared for this for quite a while, including sending our bikes to to northern New York to be put together in a bicycle shop to go or actually buy it. Anyway, bicycles were sent and cold weather clothes like lobster claw gloves were bought for the bicycle trip.

[42:56]

Anyway, we arrived on a Friday and Saturday morning. Steve, I think it's okay to say this, woke up not feeling so well. Probably just the flight, you know. Anyway, he proceeded to get sicker and sicker and sicker until, you know, he ended up in the hospital. And, you know, it was a big derailing of our vacation, you know, big plans. And I remember all the while doing this, that this will be really interesting to talk about later, you know. And, you know, it'll be a great story, that vacation in the Adirondacks on bikes. We ended up... renting a car and carrying the bikes in the trunk, you know. We did see the fall leaves, and it rained every day. And I got sick for a couple, you know. It was just like, and thinking that this is just one opportunity of letting go and taking care of one another and finding joy in whatever it is.

[44:00]

You know, this is just like Zazen. It was exactly no different from Zazen. of whatever comes up, okay, you practice with that. There's no obstacles. It's just that's what it is, that kind of mind, and relaxing with it over and over. So the same with the practice period, the same with environmental work, the same with all the conflicts and difficulties we have in our lives, to feel supported by... interdependent life. But that supports us in everything we do. And this is expressed beautifully through our Zazen posture. You know, taking a posture that's supported and relaxed and a finding

[45:03]

how it is that we're not relaxed or where the pain is and practicing with that. That's not an obstacle. Those aren't obstacles, the difficulties and pains. Those will help us to find those areas that we're not so familiar with, that are undeveloped, that need our attention and honoring and support and asking for support. So right effort, each of us, please find our right effort in whatever we do. And that kind of right effort will be sustainable. That isn't the burnout effort. That's an effort that is renewed.

[46:05]

refreshed and restored each moment thank you very much thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center our programs are made possible by the donations we receive please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[46:45]

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