oh ah to tell the truth of the to dakotas words
good morning everyone
palm
this morning i went outside to the garden before coming to the to this hall to plant
some herbs in front of the greenhouse because i i'm lucky enough to have been able to work in the sense in our gardens for the last twenty plus years ah what a great buddha hall outside of the buddha hall now they're the great green room that doesn't have any walls and coming up i remembered seeing
a little stand of the state flower of colorado the columbine flower in our inner of herbal circle so i went in there and brought a blossom here for you to contemplate and on the way up it appropriately fell apart because you know there's a noble tradition in
in the zen world of offering flowers to the buddha and then letting those flowers on the altar finish their entire lifecycle so they're not a decoration there an offering of awareness
so we endure our flowers in this hall for one week were careful to change the water and take really good care of the blossoms but we don't deprive them of their opportunity to go full cycle and to join us in meditation going for cycle
so when you come on sunday the flowers have been here for a few days
just so they're not gonna be too fresh and we don't freshen them up for your benefit which i always think it's a great thing but for the benefit of all of us i did bring up the state flower of colorado columbine colombo in latin means dove bird of peace you know
on ekklesia
i think colombo means dove in in italian has more that kind of right and achalasia is latin for dove and if you look down at the flower the spurs of the columbine drawback and look if you look at the flower from the top it looks as if five dogs are drinking from a found
one
and their wings or back the wings of the petals of the flowers so please spend some time today after the talk coming up to this altar
a dedicated to travelers in and out of life and dedicated to children and contemplate the columbine flower columbine high school
and the world we live in right now the times we live in
ah i'd like to say something about the closing of the on bombing in kosovo and to acknowledge
the bitterness of this experience i think for many of us this has been a very difficult and challenging time
and i've noticed that people seem to settle into this hall with greater vigor and gratitude maybe i'm projecting that because i feel it
but we do acknowledge that the bombing has ceased for now in that part of the world although the use of depleted uranium
ah that this incredible heavy metal that can penetrate through armor and explode and rate radioactivity that last for close to five billion years that's the half-life of or uranium
continues to stroke the world with its message
so i'd like to begin by according from the buddha he says in a battle the winners and losers the winners and losers both lose
and i think we have the stomach in this hall to handle that
ancient awareness twenty five one hundred year old awareness
this is a peaceful place and our work is to make peace not war
and to make peace not war with awareness and the stomach and gratitude to be able to stay and look at the dark side of our life
i'm on this morning i was reading a report from the worldwatch institute called the end of violent conflict
a small pamphlet
dedicated to looking at the life of war and our world right now and i learned to my horror and i won't say to my surprise that in the last one hundred years there's been something like four times the loss of life as as in the wars from the first century of the common era all the way up to this time it's an extraordinary
truth that we have to have the stomach and heart and mind to endure and to understand and then to ask ourselves what helps us with awareness what helps us wage peace in our times
our good friend of this community of artist and activist miami oda just returned from the one hundredth year anniversary of the hague
gathering of for world peace in may of ninety ninety nine four thousand delegates were designated to come to the hague to talk about waging peace from all different persuasions and traditions and she tells me that double that number showed up close to eight thousand people
gathered in the hague and many many tribal people and indigenous
representatives made the trek that long trek to the hague and they arrived without enough money to stay in the developed world so they set up a camp on the outskirts of the talk and many the peace activists work to feed them into welcome them into listen to their experience of what's happening in our times and
to listen with a stomach and heart for the truth
anyway she came home quiet on affected by this and i noticed that one hundred years ago
the tsar of russia nicholas the second convened the first meeting of peace activists or peacemakers in the hague
with the express purpose of finding a way to live peacefully on earth
and so we have the opportunity at the end of the twentieth century to review how are we doing to take the pulse to look deeply at what our life is
this morning i'd like to draw from one of the most ancient teachings of the buddha our guidelines i think guidelines for stability change guidelines for activism and meditation ah practices called the seven factors of enlightenment or this
seven limbs of enlightenment
anisa limbs are close to my heart because we practice them very very deeply a few weeks ago when we commemorated memorial day by gathering a small retreat at santa sabina retreat center in them about twenty five miles north of here
we've made a vow some of us who are active in waging peace we've made a vow to celebrate and redeem our and commemorate these holidays veterans' day and memorial day
and to spend time looking at the roots of remembering spend time really remembering who we are what we're made of what what it is to find what it is to have violence and conflict in our lives what it is to to work whole-heartedly for them
to relieve suffering in the life of the world one thing i teach said the buddha suffering and the end of suffering
so we gathered at santa sabina retreat center
and my you may be brought gave us loaned us to have her huge banners which we hung on the wall one banner dedicated to the fierce representation of wisdom ah yamanaka fiery yamanaka expressed as a goddess mama yamanaka we called her
a very powerful banner hung right behind the altar on on the other side of the room on the other side of our alter along banner dedicated to
saraswati the goddess or protectors of creativity are represented by water
so we spent three days meditating are pretty deeply practicing exams and walking meditation living in silence recollecting remembering our lives thinking of the dead thinking of memorial day thinking of the war that was
biting into the hide of yugoslavia during that time offering incense and prayers and chance
going to take to fully
inhabit our times and these banners help they've gone to hiroshima japan and hong they've been in the church of st john the divine in new york they've hung wherever peace activists gather than they were wonderful help and reminder of the power of creative expression
in our times

i've been thinking about the word remember
re to turn again and member to inhabit
remember the present moment return to the present moment one of the primary teachings of all meditation traditions
and this potent statement from freeman house whose of
community activist and protector of a natural ecosystem up north about two hundred and fifty miles north of here he lives in the motto river and has just written a wonderful book called totem salmon all about how to remember the ancient life that fills and includes our life so he says in one ancient language
the word memory derives from a word meaning mindful
in another from a word to describe a witness
and yet another it means at its root to grieve
to witness mindfully his degree for what has been lost
so every day in our retreat we began with this remembering
and remembering all along
the parts of our body vowing to be mindful i mean i think it's so much the vow and commitments it fills this room
to vow to live in mindfulness unafraid to remember and unafraid to feel the grief that will naturally spring up when we sink down and remember who we are and what our work is
i don't want to be grim ah but i do want to ground what i have to set a day in this ah recognition for i hope you'll bear with me
i've been thinking within about memory where memory resides
and letting my senses letting my body remember its place and purpose in the were in the world so that means calling up all the senses and when you have the opportunity to practice meditation even for five minutes five precious minutes the body and mind remember
our old lineage
on my friend and teacher tick nhat hahn often when we first began to practice many years ago with him he's suggested that one exercise that's wonderful for meditators to do is to to go into a dark room and get very quiet sit quietly and let your breath and
body and
spirit settle and then after a time when you feel quite settled ask yourself where am i
where am i it's completely dark you can't see yourself and rather than turning your hands toward your own body experiment with turning out toward the world and feeling yourself be remembered by the world this is not a vague touchy feely
abstract practice but an actual experience that we have when we remember through the five senses ah what our work isn't who we are
so turn toward seeing looking deeply and calling up on the sense of smell
during our veterans day retreat a maxine hong kingston told us about veterans smelling a turkey at thanksgiving coming home from vietnam in particular and weeping
and when they unpacked what what was there and that memory that came alive from the smell of the turkey it was both the sense of home and a last feeling of home and also the smell of flesh
of actual flesh so do we have
the current instability to remember that deeply
and can we train our bodies and minds to for this work
look deeply listen deeply
have developed a sense of smell and touch and taste
we say that when farmers in the i'm from north and central vietnam open up a pot of rice and smell the steam or tastes the rice they can remember or know the river system in which the rice was grown just by the scent and taste of the rice so could we be that alive
to our world and to each other

do not hurt terry do not struggle said the buddha put your attention toward remembering
return to yourself to the island of yourself
so at santa sabina i spent some time a sitting out in a am a small garden that they have and underneath a giant theodora cedar i began to think and remember old teachings from my first years of practice at tassajara in nineteen seventy three when i pray
actus with linda rose and mayor and other people peter and myth and another people who live here now when we practiced together at tassajara we had a precious study period when we got to study and i remember reading about the seven limbs of awakening and thinking these are good exercise is good rememberings so low and behold in the
quiet of memorial day weekend retreat ah this old teaching came back to me and of course it came back at the roots of a tree
this is a magnificent huge cedar that has conveniently enough seven limbs
that oh how nice the the material world cooperates with the disoriented meditator to provide a teaching
and actually i think it's significant that this memory came up for me during the retreat because it's connected with fire and water to with the elemental world of which were made
fire water air
we remembered during our retreat we remembered and we're i remember every day in this meditation hall the press is not ordered or organized by conscious thinking but comes from the oldest part of the brain from a stem of the brain we have no control over over there to bring a breath would never be interested to
conscious thinking what it couldn't be
so on remembering and realizing that and thinking about fire and water i considered these seven lambs and i'd like to go over them with you because i think they're very relevant to our times and then in discussion hopefully will make them brighter so
mindfulness is the is the i'm orienting limits that it's the central or the pillar and in sitting underneath the deodar cedar there three true cedars in our world the atlantic cedar of this of north america the diadora cedar of india and of course the cedars of lebanon which are no more
a great ancient cedars except in our museums
an botanic gardens we may have one or two but they weren't we were admonished in the bible in the words of the bible to cut the cedars and build the temples
so hopefully sitting in this temple made of redwood we can remember the ancestors and that happened for me being in the garden there at santa sabina
mindfulness is the first limb of awakening or the first factor of awakening these are seven factors that help us stabilize and go deeply help us remember all along our bodies
i saw mindfulness and this is not traditional so forgive me but it comes out of some other connection i saw mindfulness as the stem of the tree on mindfulness being true awareness deep awareness based in the present moment awareness of what's going on
i'm going to draw some the tradition
feed you go through foods
the
character for mindfulness
is made of two parts the top part means now
and the bottom part means put the mind and heart together so now in the present moment put your mind and heart together and remember who you are come back to the present moment so i really it's usually in these lists the first factor is quite important it helps you orient yourself so for me i saw the stem as a tree
as mindfulness mindfulness practice because mindfulness practice infuses and invigorates all of the other factors
and there are three only three points that are very important to remember so first of all to see to see life in the present moment if you're mindful when your body and mind are lined up when you're living in the present moment with heart and mind together then we are ready and stable enough
what's going on in our lives
then there are many practices that help us do that
and second of all mindfulness develops all the other functions or the stem if you will the stem gives rise to all the other limbs so mindfulness is destabilizing factor we i'm thinking of trees a lot because we have this or last couple of weeks we've been welcomed
a a young group of students here to gringos to help form our first tricor or a group of friends that are working to take care of the trees or and gringo so we've been putting a lot of attention to the trees maybe that's why i can see so clearly that mindfulness was the stem of this great indian cedar
so the second point is mindfulness helps us develop
all other functions of awakening
and quite important that balances the mind
a few months ago apparently and eddie who's director here gave a very strong talk about balance
practice dutifully with everything falling out of balance since his accuracy so balance finding balances or is walking that thin line between too much into little and correcting all the time in the way same way that we drive a car correcting all the time orienting yourself all the time to the road and
finding balance and stability and a huge zest for change at the same time for my gardening teacher always said find balance instability and a huge zest for change so mindfulness practice gives us both the stability and the zest for change that create balance so you can have a balance
mind and heart now in the present moment
so this is the first factor enlightenment
and then the next three factors are factors that arouse and intensity arouse your mind and body give strength courage fire to your practice and the last three or once the quiet you like water
so of course i thought of mama yamanaka and the fierce deity that's found in fire that admonishes us to wake up and serve to wake up and recognize what's happening in our world what's happening right right in front of us on arousing and quieting again they have to find it so
some balance with mindfulness in our bodies and minds so that we can function if we're to aroused and too excited and too worked up and when we first began our retreat a number of us were quite fired up about what was happening in the world and it took three days of silence stability and a huge zest for change
to arrive in the present moment to stabilize and be able to endure what we were
smoked up about
so i have a visceral sense of the importance of both of these qualities and in i'm in every tradition there's a balance of fire and water in the body a balance of fire and water and those of you involved in medicine and mental health and working with children and in just about every walk of life know very well
through the five senses this importance of balancing and this is an ancient teaching twenty five hundred years old balance fire and water and make them real
the buddha says if there's in when he talks about the seven factors of the seven limbs of enlightenment if there's too much fire on do you add more fuel to the fire or do you put damp branches on it and of course his obedient students recommended dampening down the fire damping down the fire
our decreasing the oxygen decreasing the fuel and when in fact your fire as wet and slow do you add wet branches to it or do you increase oxygen and put dry sticks and twigs and of course you balance the fire up your torpid state or your quiet mind
and you calm your agitated fiery mind by finding a balance and here are three beautifully three limbs of of 'em intensifying and three of quieting so the first in the on the fireside the first his effort energy
t v area
i'll just i'll tell you what the three are so you have a sense okay so effort effort or energy or investigation and joy rapture i'm happy that's their i'm really happy that there and on the other side the water elements the water limbs concentration
tranquility and even mindedness or equanimity
now of course this is not limited to the buddhist tradition but it was a primary teaching of the buddha and he spent many years working with his monks and nuns and lay people to develop a capacity for these factors and enlightenment and enlightenment is awakening if you are
sensitive or slightly allergic to the word enlightenment as i tend to be awakening helps to wake up to the situation of the world
so let's begin by taking a look at the varia or energy
show gin in japanese
shogun show means wild herbs the kind of herbs you get from the mountain wild food i like that kind of gives a sense of hunters and gatherers from before the time of polished rice going out and getting energy from the wild mountain herbs and the chinese jin jing team
in essential advance and go forward so those same words you advance and go forward to the essence with a by touching tasting the wild taste effort and energy gets one of the or five one of a six part meters to effort for energy i remember years
ago with cutting hiroshi we ask him what is right effort or right energy and he encouraged us not just to look at the human realm to look at the energy and effort the vigor of all forms of life animate and inanimate censured and and and incense
thousand and to recognize that our own effort and energy comes from their connection with the wider mountain bike tasting the wild herb
on your three points and the practice of them energy and effort to make the effort to be aware to see direct directly and pay attention that's one point so make the effort to live in the present moment again this is where mindfulness comes in
in
and give it your all i like this a writer annie dillard says don't if you have an insight don't save it for the better day when you can ride don't save it for the story you haven't written yet put it all out play whole wad says natalie goldberg also a great writer don't don't hold back
so first make the effort to live in the present moment don't hold back
and i'm not i'm sensitive to the fact that ah that this may be dangerous has to be tempered but don't think i'm going to hold back i'm going to save my energy because i won't have enough energy by
experimenting and giving generously more energy is is generated and certain in the buddhist time the admonition and remembrance that physical exertion helps with mental stability and meditation that some exerting of the body some expression
some active care of the body is necessary and i'm unhappy that that's twenty five hundred years old from a yoga tradition
so exercise physical and mental provides and sustains effort
these are such wonderful teachings we could have a seven day retreat and spend seven days looking at energy one day looking at energy one day looking at mindfulness one day looking at investigation but briefly again from the old texts on
the buddha spoke of for great efforts that we make just consider these
to enhance and foster wholesome states make the effort and energy find the energy make the effort to enhance
that and don't get entangled in a in unwholesome states so it's you know both both poles make the effort toward a wholesome don't get entangled in the unwholesome
and you know this because you're familiar with them for your own body and line and five senses and then the next to again another diane
are encouraged skillful states that have that are not yet part of your life energetically encouraged them to grow just like a gardener encourages seeds that have germinated yet by watering aerating the soil providing adequate temperature and light encourage those wholesome states to come up to germany
and make every effort not to germinate what isn't wholesome and what hasn't yet arisen in you
i find these teachings i'm very pertinent to our times
we can talk more about these later in question answer investigation dharma protea
ah again i'm impressed by the fire and relevance to modern times of this old teaching to investigate deeply to look deeply to find out what the world's made up and to put the fire of your attention toward doing that
in hand information the first in from the first admonition here when you investigate investigate with your own experience be a lamp unto yourself and use that lamp to look
now this can be dangerous
because doing that may mean that you in your investigation will confront on
discouragement
disillusionment
ah anger remorse whatever may come up but face it facing it is part of the fire
so you put the full effort and energy of investigation toward looking deeply it's one of the limbs of enlightenment and awakening to tree depends on the nourishment that comes from investigating actively
and it requires courage and curiosity
so true
a spirit of inquiry
ah insatiable desire to ask questions and investigation is balanced
by face or confidence
i think it's important to remember this because you can get pretty i don't know i know that i can get pretty lost in fire and smoke and darkness and
other states without the balancing factor of 'em
confidence confidence that i put together to look deeply to be able to look at to be able to investigate the use of depleted uranium by the north american armed forces in iraq and yugoslavia is my inheritance as a human being and the fire that comes up and me
when i do that investigation is meant to be and meant to be tempered by confidence that through working together with other people we can create a peaceful world
yeah maybe i'm deluded and lazy but part of my inheritance is this limb of investigation
looking deeply
i was thinking about curiosity last week or i guess last month when i went out with the children we were talking about curiosity and looking at curiosity and how healthy curiosity is and i don't know if you remember a couple of years ago or maybe it was a year ago
yvonne ran gave a talk to the children about curiosity and she told the story of llamas being employed by sheep farmers in south america because when coyotes come llamas are curious about what these beasts or and rather than running away and hiding they go toward
rd the coyotes they investigate the coyotes with curiosity and llamas are large animals and the coyotes are not used to being met head on by curious ones investigated by curious ones so coyotes flee therefore law must have a good business in south america protecting shape and a
other more meek a creatures
the teaching a simple that curiosity is part of investigation balance your curiosity with confidence and stability

all the third factor
actually the fourth factor of enlightenment is joy rapture
joy as balanced
by compassion willingness joy as the willingness to celebrate life even in dark times and compassion is the willingness to recognize that their suffering in the life of the world even in bright times so the to go together and they give fire to your practice
oh at santa sabina there was a tremendous amount of sorrow having to do with loss and the recognition of war for the veterans with us it was have a very intense time
it was difficult to generate joy
every morning we chanted the metro ceuta and we had singer and
peace activists betsy roles with us and we set the phrase of the metro suited to song someone saying to you what we developed and it was it was wonderful i'm not not rob anderson and i will not promise you i will not in the torture you with with too long singing not that he does that excuse
that was
probably not great speech but anyway i just want to sing a refrain of the song
you can make your connections but don't make that one
the this song we we worked with and i've actually found in the last weeks since being at santa sabina on it comes up and very unexpected times like listening to the news
oh may i be happy may i be joyful may be filled with peace this is the refrain ancient refrained from the buddha and betsy put it to isn't she beautiful isn't she lovely whose whose songs and stevie wonder thinks so it goes may i be happy may ibp
peaceful may i be filled with joy just like that and then you begin with yourself then may you be peaceful may emissivity may you be happy may you be peaceful may you be filled
with joy and last is truth towards the world if you want to you can sing with me but you don't have to make me we and it's like the french army we
may we be peaceful but sorry me would be happy may we be happy may we be peaceful may we be filled with jaw the we practice with this is a question may we be happy we actually as
ask is it possible to be happy in the middle of this recognition may we actually be peaceful when the world is burning up with for me would be filled with joy and the middle of all of this
and to have
ted six our was a veteran of the vietnam war a medic who practiced in the front lines in combat be able to sing that song with us was very potent
so these are the fiery limbs of enlightenment and they're meant to be balanced by the cool water of solid meditation concentration samadhi first of all
one point ignace steadiness
and
we practice this in the morning letting the water of samadhi run through us the water of one pointed concentration paying attention to the breathing to the body to the heart and mind and dedicating that concentration to the well-being of the world
it's interesting what we discovered we discovered that when we were at when a number of us found that when we were agitated or burning
on concentration balanced us meditation balanced us and settled us and made the fire kind of bank the fire didn't put it out but it banked it and made it burn at a different level and when we were sleeping from too much concentration which does happen right and in these retreats you get a little too i'm relaxed and flow
audi than just paying attention with mindfulness paying attention oh i'm sleepy paying attention to them was a kind of fire that woke us up and made us aware oh i'm sleepy when it with awareness with the fire of earnest going towards that we balanced and woke up so this was very potent practice with we experience
the balance of fire and water samadhi has to to features to features of concentration that that are ancient teachings from the bureau
and let's just look at the word psalm means together and ah some r d some together ah to a certain place and d dhi means energy of the mind so let's go to a certain place with energy of the mind put energy of the mind to meditation
and to features are focus on a on a fixed object you can watch your breasts not that your breath is fixed but you can watch your breath and a number of us worked with breath watching during the tree and feel that pulse of breath in and out
and secondly you can watch change you can watch how your breath changes can watch how it stabilizes and is unified you can also watch our changes
so we floated we worked that river we were in that river of komsomolets
now and then

tranquility the sixth limb or factor of enlightenment six limb of the tree is also translated as ease
satisfaction because tranquillity comes when you're when you're satisfied with what you have with just enough
tranquil mind tranquil body
the buddha is the food for tranquil mind
and a sign of serenity
is non diversion
staying focused a tranquil not tranquilizing yourself but finding satisfaction in quietness and then just enough and having just enough these are hard ones for me but i did experience i do experience ah this
especially in the presence of others who are working
working
again category or she sang settle yourself on yourself and let the flower of your life force bloom
tranquil and ease commies

and last of all as even mindedness equanimity i always hear gary snyder reminding us that
compassion without wisdom can be a little sappy but wisdom without compassion feels no pain
so we're not talking about that kind of equiniti that feels no pain
we're talking about balance again but balance on the cool in the water element side no way equanimity related to joy economists even mindedness has a sense of joy and energy to it just as joy and energy have a sense of if even mindedness it's really interesting to watch out
a tree balances itself on i like the image of a turbulent or stirred up apple juice settling i saw the sediment goes down to the bottom of the glass and what we drink is clear even mindedness often times on equanimity is presented in the buddhist
iconography as a mountain be a mountain and let snow and wind and rain and water
come on to you and off you you more accepting and grounded
i think of the picture i have on the door of my house and last when steve weintraub spoke recently i went and got this picture and brought it tried to bring it to him actually missed him didn't have a chance it's a picture of i'm a cellist many of you may know this picture a cellist on
who lives lived in yugoslavia and made hit made it his practice to dress in a tuxedo on numb sundays during the war during the bombing of bosnia and the fighting in bosnia and he would take his cello and sit in the ruins of the national library and sarajevo and play the cello
in the afternoon
and a bombing stopped during that time and he played the cello
and after a certain time he would pack the cello up and go home
so that kind of courage and even mindedness is part of our life and and vow

it's difficult to get the news from poems said william carlos williams good men die every day for lack of what is therein
so i'd like to close by i'm reading two pawns
and thanking you for giving me the opportunity to share my experience
one of the before i read the poems i wanted a
recognize that in our retreat at santa sabina the bill mistress is a student who practice for years at zen center and as a young woman was attacked by a bear in the wilderness around glacier national park and this completely changed her life as you can imagine she was nearly killed and her whole internal system was rewarded by the by her and
counter with the bear so she's been practicing meditation lying down and she hasn't been able to sit upright for a number of years but she's very courageous person so during this retreat we had the pleasure of inviting her to be the bill mistress and she said you want to lying to help and film distress what have i fall
all it's leave we said you owed if you're the bill mr you won't fall asleep so we had the incredible experience of watching her ring the bell from the lying down posture think it was very moving to a number of us because our
so many of us have experienced rupture in our life and damage and so to know that we have the compare full capacity to awaken the factors of enlightenment is so important so it was wonderful hearing her bail her bell was very clear in fact it was stronger than most people's bills i said to her
could you play off a little bit of
you're getting us to aroused you just bought ah but she said afterwards that it wasn't a very incredible experience for her to ring the bell but and to shoot you know the bell master or mistress minds the meditation periods for the whole day and you have to be very alert and conscious and it called her
out of her sinking watery state and fired her up
and another friend a man who lives here at green gulch
came and brought a beautiful painting he's done he's been numb
dealing with parkinson's disease for the last fourteen years of his life and he's a painter and hasn't been able to paint because his hand doesn't hold still
last fall he ordained as a priest
and took up a challenge the spring of trying to paint well i'll just see what happens he said and so when he had a spaz attack he included that in his painting
on the painting is beautiful
it's very beautiful on
i didn't bring it because it's it's i think it should be in our hearts and minds we can all see and imagine he drew a beautiful buddha and usually his buddhists a very complete in this case the mid section of the buddha was missing in a river was running through his meds because that's what his hand presented him with
it's a beautiful painting and we put it on the middle of our alter so that we could wake up on together this courage to be fiery and to be watery of the same time and to find out how the limbs of enlightenment support our
practice
so i'd like to begin by reading a poem by poet denise lever toss about water
come close with fire
actually i think i'll do it the other way around
following the admonitions of the buddha here by poet poem the fire by poet jane hirschfeld who will read tonight as we celebrate
the kindling of our tea garden you've been hearing we're going to have a special dinner tonight and immersion in poetry this evening and poet to poet and practitioner jane field the fire
again open the book of reds and golds study the faces of poppy and lion the bright carpet of your own life
what looks back and seems to be burning is burning though not all the same
in the moment of turning away from rain the day gives off red and gold the slightest cent of peaches
this too so you might know things as they are
so you who are already walking within will come in
else take up the bodies single candle if not to see how everything is consumed

and she's echoed but i call it denise levert off the fountain
don't say don't say there is no water to solace the dryness at our hearts
i've seen the fountain springing out of the rock wall and you drinking there and i to before your eyes found foot holes and climbed to drink the cold water
the woman of that place shading her eyes frowned as she watched but not because she grudges the water only because she was waiting to see we drank our full and were refreshed don't say don't say there's no water
the fountain is there among its scalloped green and grey stones it is still there and always there with it's quiet song and strange power to spring in us up and out through the rock

hey know you're in the presence of many great noble trees here when you come to zen center i hope that you will follow the ancient tradition and admonition of the buddha to put your heart and mind together in the present moment and find some time today to lean your back up against
a great tree and to feel how the seven limbs of enlightenment are your own home territory the body is a tree the body of your own mind and contention and will find some way to make these teachings relevant to our times so that we can numb light the light of
peace and conflict resolution for our world and beyond and make the vow to do it together to not terry
and not rest
and to find out to investigate joyfully and energetically to find out mindfully with concentration and i'm calm tranquility that even mindedness that provides for the wellbeing of 'em
all beings on earth
thank you for coming here sunday morning and joining your practice with her practice