Welcome. Welcome to Green Gulch, Green Dragon Temple, Green Gulch Farm. I feel like that I'm about to yell fire in a crowded theater. And so I should warn you. that I'm thinking about fire. I've been thinking about fire particularly for the last couple of months. And so today I'll talk about fire from several points of view. Something about the fire at Tassajara. Something about the fire inside each of us.

[01:03]

and something about the fire, which we could say is a global crisis, very big. But first of all, I want to thank you all for being here. And for those of you who saw the announcement that Wendy Johnson and I were both going to talk, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Wendy is here and she will join me during the question and answer. And I want to thank all of the people who are sending good wishes and energy to those of us who are at Tassajara and during the time of the fire around Tassajara. I know that Whatever success that we had in protecting Tassajara was due to the participation, support, preparation, efforts, and I'd say subtle healing and supportive energy that came from many people.

[02:27]

And subsequent to the fire of Tassajara, support that's come in the form of donations and people willing to help repair and rebuild and clean up so that now Tassajara has reopened for what's left of our summer guest season. So thank you. And tell your friends. Thank you. Thank them. I was quoted in the back pages of Buddha Dharma magazine, the last issue that had a paragraph about the Tassara fire. And I was quoted, I have to read it. Fire is not a stranger. We, and there's some dots, dot, dot, dot.

[03:33]

Make friends with it and tame it as it reaches our boundaries. So before and after, that's something that I said before the fire came. Fire, not a stranger. Make friends with it and tame it. Actually, I remember that interview, and the next thing I said was, it says, tame it, make friends with it and tame it. But I think the next thing I said was, sometimes one has to be pretty strict with your friends. So, the spire was caused by lightning striking in the mountains. And...

[04:34]

I must confess that last night I stayed up late watching. I was up in our home in Roanoke Park and I watched the semifinals of the 100 meter dash. And I thought, it's so compelling. I need to stay and watch the finals. And it turned out that the winner I think now the fastest human on the planet, the Jamaican runner. And his last name is Bolt. And so his nickname, his nickname is Lightning Bolt. So I felt a particular affinity. And I really enjoy watching the... I haven't had much time to watch, but just a couple of different days that... the beautiful effort, the great effort, that human beings are capable of making.

[05:42]

So it's the effort itself that really compels me, I think. One of the other interviews that I had during this time of the Ramla Tassar Fire, someone asked, so you're You're Buddhist and you believe in non-attachment, right? So why make such a big effort to save Tassajara? In that case, I think I described our effort as just doing what we do every day. We take care of our bodies every day, even though we're not necessarily attached to our bodies. Of course, we are attached to our bodies, right? We actually usually don't want to get sick because they don't want to get old.

[06:45]

We usually don't want to die. And so we do take care and we realize that what we What we experience and what we have and what we work with in this present moment is not something that is really helped by our attachment to it so much as it's helped by our appreciation and our tending. And so we have a practice of tending, of paying attention and of taking care, taking care of our own bodies and taking care of each other. And I felt that the way that we were taking care of the Tassajara was like an extension, that we actually know what to do because we know how to take care of our own bodies. And we extend that.

[07:47]

And except that we don't know the outcome. We don't know that, you know, we don't know that we'll actually live out this day. And we don't know that, you know, a particular building may survive or not. But whatever it is, that we continue the practice. Continue the practice of attending and being present with it so that we can take care and respect all the, say, lifetimes that have gone into producing this moment, this life, this body. the inconceivable support we are already receiving right now. So with respect to that, we take care of it. And yet it's so difficult, we sometimes can't stand it. It's very, very challenging to stay present with the challenge.

[08:50]

In one of his talks, Suzuki Roshi said that we have just enough problems It may not feel that way. It may not feel that way. Sometimes it feels too many problems, right? He also said, our practice is to welcome difficulty. He kind of said, work on, and some people thought he was saying, work on difficulty. But I think he was really saying, welcome difficulty. So I'm going to quote him a little bit here. He says, he said in this talk, which is for those of you who have the book, Not Always So. There's a section in it called Just Enough Problems. He said, you have plenty of problems. Good. Yeah, just enough.

[09:55]

But this is a mysterious thing, the mystery of life. We have just enough problems. If you are patient enough, if you are strong enough to accept your problems, then you can sit calmly and peacefully trusting Buddha, trusting your own being. Because you are helped, and the way you are helped is perfect, you exist right here. If it is too much, you will die. If it is too little, you will die. You are receiving just what you need. So the only way is to trust Buddha, to trust your being here. That is what we call Zen. So this fundamental trust And this existence, this moment, this present moment, is at the basis of what we call Zen.

[11:04]

So even though we have this teaching, just enough problems, it may be excruciating to stay with this present moment, with all the problems. that are right here in this present moment. A friend of mine was talking about his practice of mindfulness, and he noticed that it was very difficult, it is very difficult for him to stay present with fear. So when fear, when he starts to feel fearful, he begins to think of something else. Other thoughts intrude, or he begins to try to move away from it in some way. And this is part of our karmic, you could say our karmic evolutionary structure that is, we need it for survival, right? We need the mind that is sometimes fearful, right? Or we wouldn't survive. This is actually part of our existence.

[12:10]

To take that into account then is our practice as well. But to ignore it is to misinterpret and misunderstand reality. So if you become aware of when you have some fear you can take that into account and notice that you have a choice whether you want to live based on the fear in some say exaggerated way or to relate to it and meet it so that you can see it clearly and then respond accurately, realistically. So there was a lot of fear around fire. And I noticed that just for the fact that we kept getting these phone calls and requests from

[13:18]

Radio stations and TV stations and people wondering, are we OK? And the Forest Service wanting us not to be there because of the risk. In fact, when we were down to, after evacuating all of the guests and most of the students and staff down to about 20 people, the Forest Service wanted the names of the dentists for all the people who were going to stay at Tassajara. So we all had to name our dentists so that they could identify our bodies after we were burned in the fire. So we had this interplay of our own judgment from our own intimate knowledge of Tassajara and the Forest Service policies which came from their experience of losing firefighters with a road that there's only one way in and out.

[14:24]

And if you look at Tassara on the map, and you look at it, and you see there's only one way in and out, and you don't really know Tassajara and how much space there is, and that way you have a creek running through it that has many, many hundreds of thousands of gallons of water running through the creek. And that we have done preparation so that we can take the water from the creek and move it to protect ourselves. If you don't know all that, it looks like this is a very dangerous, risky place to be. So we were consulting with various fire professionals. This time we had, from the time that the lightning struck until the fire came to Tassajara, we had more than two weeks of time. Now we won't, in the future necessarily, always have that time.

[15:28]

But in a few days we were pretty well prepared. We had sprinklers up on the rooftops of all the major buildings. We had pumps in the creek and in the pool. swimming pool there, those of you who know Tassajara, to pump water out of the pool and we could distribute it around through our standpipe system with fire hydrants at various places. A crew had come in from the Forest Service and helped cut fire lines around the perimeter. So we were pretty well prepared. And yet we didn't know what was going to happen. So during this time, and partly because of, I think, maybe the quote that I read earlier, Tom Myers, who writes, he does a cartoon for the Chronicle. Many of you have probably seen it. And here it's, of course, you can't see it. It's too small. Too small.

[16:33]

It reminds me of... I was reading Maxine Hong Kingston's book about the fifth book of peace, and there was a child who, for the first time, was flying in the airplane, going back to China from America. And when he got up in the air, after a while, he asked, when do we get small? He kept looking at himself. You'd see in the airplanes, they get smaller and smaller and smaller. And he thought that when he would go up, he would get smaller and smaller and smaller. So perspective, you know, has a lot to do with how we can take care of things. So it's good to know that. It's good to know that sometimes a very close, intimate perspective

[17:37]

is critical to understanding what to do, and sometimes you need to step back and have a wide view. In this cartoon, Tom Meyer wrote, he has an image of a big flame, and then this tiny little monk. Big flame, tiny little monk. And the big flame says, First the monk says, Namaste. And the big flame says, What? And the little monk says, I'm sensing anger. And the big flame says, I'm fire. And the little monk says, Is that what you believe about yourself? Yes. Or is it what others want you to believe about yourself?

[18:45]

And the big flame says, this is California, isn't it? And then the little monk says, you need... to bring your fire energy into balance. When were you born? And the big flame says, late June. And the little monk says, oh, a cancer. Well, there you go, you're a water sign. And then it proceeds to say, well, more water energy in your life will give you a greater sense of serenity. And the big flame says, I have been feeling a little jittery lately. And then asks for teaching. What should I do? And the little monk says, have some chamomile tea.

[19:51]

And a good soak in our hot tub. And so that's the conversation. And then the last scene is there's... a whole group of firefighters show up, and they say, so you're telling us you talked the fire to death? And then another comment, so maybe there's something to this talking to the enemy thing. And then a little baby appears and says, when I grow up, I want to be a fire monk. So now this whole term, fire monk, has come into existence. I don't want to show any disrespect for professional firefighters.

[21:03]

I think professional firefighters are wonderful when they do They have their training and they have their equipment and they have their experience and they know what to do, how to meet fire. And we poor fire monks don't have all that. We have a little bit of that. We have a little bit of training and we have a little bit of experience. But what we also have is this practice. And the practice of not knowing, but being ready. And a sense that equally we have respect for ourselves and for whoever we meet. So this sense of respect for oneself and respect for the fire, in this case. So keeping that in balance. That's very important.

[22:04]

Now, during the days, as we know, the fire was getting closer. We said. It was moving very slowly. I went down to Tassajara when the fire was three days away. And I was there for a whole week and each day it was three days away. So we called it the three day away fire. And we wondered, you know, is it ever going to come into Tassajara? I don't know. One of our. fire advisors talked about the kind of fire he likes to fight. And I thought, well, it's good to know the kind of fire you like to fight. But I actually don't know. I don't know enough. I don't know enough about a fire that I'd like to fight, actually. Welcome, you know, Suzuki Roshi is saying welcoming difficulty doesn't mean inviting it, you know. It doesn't mean that I feel that I need to have a fire to fight, or any particular kind of fire.

[23:09]

But this practice gives some strength to be ready to meet whatever arises. So not knowing what kind of fire might arise, I'd say is a practice of a fire monk. We didn't really know that we were fire monks until later. Dogen Zenji wrote about mountains and rivers, about how mountains and rivers actually are not what we think. That when we think a mountain is solid and still, mountains are actually walking. When we think that a river is flowing, we should consider that that's a one-sided view, and that it is also still. That is very flowing, is its stillness, is an ancient Zen teaching.

[24:16]

So I took a little section of Dogen's writing on mountains and rivers and substituted fire, and then I've changed it around, so this isn't maybe not quite fair to Dogen, but it is an appreciation of his... investigation of the elements. So I'll read a little piece of this. There is no fire common to all types of beings, no essence of fire. Yet, fire for these various beings does not depend on body or mind, does not arise from actions, does not depend on self or other. Fire's nature is completely beyond fire. Fire's freedom depends only on fire. It is not just one of the four elements. It is not form or color. It is difficult to say that fire is created, or how, or whether it is created.

[25:21]

To say that the earth is held in its orbit by the blazing sun is not the truth of oneness or two-ness. To realize the inconceivable nature of fire is to be liberated from small views. People cling to small certainties because they think it must be impossible to exist without having a place on which to stand. Shakyamuni Buddha taught that all things are ultimately liberated. There is nowhere that they abide. Thus, all things are liberated and not tied to anything, abiding in their own phenomenal expression. However, the usual human view is only to see that fire burns. So something like this was also in my mind when I said that when the fire comes, we will read it.

[26:22]

There's a sense in which a friend is both old and new. even a close companion, both old and new. Someone who you see every day, yet is completely unknown and mysterious. If you're willing to open your heart to that possibility, that you actually don't know who you're greeting when you say good morning. And likewise, someone who you have never met is also an old friend that you know in a fundamental way because you're deeply, deeply interconnected. And so you can greet someone who you've never met as a stranger and as old friend simultaneously. Likewise, to get to know yourself, how do you, you may think that you know who you are

[27:26]

But then if you're ready in the morning to wake up and consider that there may be other aspects, other parts of yourself. It's like letting some guests come into your own house, your own body, your own thoughts and your own feelings. Rumi talked about this with his poem, The Guest House. Many of you know Rumi and many of you know this poem. Which is, it goes like this. This being human is a guest house. Every morning, a new arrival. A joy. A depression. A meanness. Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all. Even if they are a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still greet each guest honorably.

[28:33]

He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice. Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. This is not something so mysterious, really. It's this guide from beyond our usual frame of reference. So whatever you feel is right at the edge of your familiar world. we'd say that's the edge of your bodhisattva vow, that's the edge of your practice, the edge of your deep intention to wake up with what is. So, this is a practice that we have within ourselves, and we know then that there's fire in ourselves.

[29:41]

We're taking in fire when we eat. We eat breakfast, You're taking in fire. The oatmeal is, you know, seeds that come from plants that are taking in the fire of the sun, right? Can actually take in that light, that energy into the body of the grassy oat plant and put that fire into the seed and then... When you eat oatmeal, you're actually eating sunlight. This is part of every day. Your metabolism is burning. So we actually know fire in our own bodies. That's just one example in many ways. So when I say that to meet fire, not as a stranger, it's with that intimate knowledge that we have in ourselves. That we have this warmth and this connection with sunlight.

[30:47]

But to live like this is a revolutionary way, really. To not be holding on to some fixed view. Not to just think that you know what fire is. This is... than also something to contend with on a global level. We have in the last 150 years or so as human beings become very good and clever, very ingenious at manipulating some of the fire from the sun. That fire from the sun has been collected in plants 90 to 150 million years ago and stored as coal and as oil and as natural gas. And so we have discovered, we're very clever, and we've discovered how to work with that fire.

[31:52]

And now we have become accustomed to it. I showed a movie here the other night called Crude Awakening. Some of you may know which talks about the point that we are actually at, a peak oil. That the oil that's easy to get has, we basically, in the continental United States, have really done that long ago. We've gotten all the oil that's easy to get. And now we're looking farther afield And it's become a political issue, of course. And it's become an issue at the gas pump. And so we are just beginning to recognize what some of us have known for a long time, but I think as a culture, as a civilization, there's a sense of anxiety around this that's very hard for us to stay with.

[33:05]

and to stay generous and peaceful with. I want to read a few statements from Barbara Kingsolver, who gave a talk at Duke University to the graduating seniors this year. This is reprinted in the Land Report, which comes from a project that Wes Jackson is headed up in Salina, Kansas. not very far from where I grew up. And Wes is working on how to cultivate, say, food plants, nourishing plants that don't have so much of a negative impact on the soil. And he's thinking that by cultivating perennials rather than annuals, and you don't have to go in and plow up the land every year, So he's been on this project for some years.

[34:07]

And it's really wonderful work. So bear with me a few more minutes here. I see the kitchen people who are working on lunch are now leaving. And they're working on sunlight and fire that's going to be available to you in the form of lunch. Barbara Kingsolver then was trying to strike a balance between being hopeful and encouraging to graduating seniors, but also let them know that the stakes are very high at this time. So she says, we are a world at war, ravaged by disagreements. A bizarrely globalized people in which the extravagant excesses of one culture wash up as famine or flood on the shores of another.

[35:09]

Even the architecture of our planet is collapsing under the weight of our efficient productivity. 20 years ago, climate scientists first told Congress that unlimited carbon emissions were building toward a disastrous instability. Congress said, we need to think about that. About 10 years later, nations of the world wrote the Kyoto Protocol, a set of legally binding controls on our carbon emissions. The United States said, we still need to think about that. So, We have responded, I'm skipping over some of the things she's saying, but we responded by following the rules that we know. Efficiency. Isolation. We don't think that we can slow down our productivity and consumption.

[36:11]

That's unthinkable. Can we just go home? Put a really big lock on the door? Not this time. Our paradigm has met its match. The world will save itself, don't get me wrong. The term fossil fuels is not a metaphor or a simile. In the geological sense, it's over. The internal combustion engine is so 20th century. Now we can either shift away from a carbon-based economy or find another place to live. Imagine it. So she's talking to these 22-year-olds. There may be some 22-year-olds here in the room. She says, we raised you on a lie. Everything you plug in, turn on, or drive, the out-of-season foods you eat, the music in your ears, we gave you this world and promised you you could keep it running on a fossil substance.

[37:22]

Dinosaur slime exists. And it's running out. The geologists only disagree on how much is left, and the climate scientists are now saying that they're sorry, but that's not even the point. We won't get time to use it all. To stabilize the floods and firestorms, we'll have to reduce our carbon emissions by 80% within a decade. Heaven help us get our minds around that. We're still stuck on the strategy of bait and switch. OK, we'll keep the cars, but run them on ethanol made from corn. But we use petroleum to grow the corn. So most of you have heard a lot about this already, I'm sure. And I have heard about it myself for years and I've been thinking about it. And I still need reminders.

[38:26]

A philosopher-scientist named Bill Vitex, also writing in this land report, says, active engagement and resistance, active engagement to create a new paradigm do not have to be violent, but must be as single-minded and insistent as someone yelling fire, when in fact there is a fire. It's not that radical. It's just prudent and morally required. And he quotes Frederick Douglass, who said, Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Without it, there's no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom... And deprecate agitation are people who want crops without plowing up the ground and rain without thunder and lightning.

[39:36]

They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. So we do have to look at this big fire. How can we eliminate the automobile as a form of personal transportation? myself bought a car not long ago and I thought okay I think this is it the last car in this lifetime and yesterday I was riding my bicycle and you know you notice things when you're riding the bicycle so as I was riding along the country road up in Sonoma I looked over and I saw a the carcass of a dead deer. And I thought, that's also me.

[40:38]

The time that we have in this life is limited. So we need to work together, I think. We need to cultivate the bodhisattva vow which includes generosity with each other, respect for ourselves, and not turning away, but not also getting entangled so that we can't see. To stay right, stay calm and poised, alert in the present moment, moment by moment. This is my... I thought that if, you know, all the people in this room can make a million good decisions, if each of you can make a million good decisions, you know, in the next few days, not getting too distracted, not reacting from fear,

[41:58]

Remembering to be generous with each other. Remembering that we are all completely interconnected. And that's a fundamental basis of love. And then we can pass that on to all the people that we meet and encourage them to make a million good decisions. This is an intimate practice that there are, just as a fight in the fire, then a Tassajara was an intimate event. I was behind the, those of you who know Tassajara, the tent yurt where we have yoga and other retreats, and I was behind it with a kind of narrow space with my shovel, and the flames are right here, and there's poison oak burning, and I'm thinking... thinking, why am I going to all this trouble?

[43:05]

And Mako was on the other side of the yurt with a hose, which didn't reach far enough to come around. So I'd go to the side and I'd say, more water to that side. And then I'd go around the other way and more water to that side. And meanwhile, I was very grateful for people who had cleaned the leaves from underneath the deck of the yurt. because it was all I could do just to keep the fire from coming down under the deck and kind of shoveling it away as the fire was coming in and then retreating and coming back again. And I feel that there's this intensity there, and it was very wonderful and simple. It's harder for us to see the intensity that we need to make those million good decisions. moment by moment when it seems like, well, it's just an ordinary day, right? Quite pleasant.

[44:05]

Maybe the sun will even come out. There'll be fresh bread baked for a sale out here and tea. Even in that context, how can you stay present? Make each moment a good decision in how you relate to each other, how you take care of your own fear. like Rumi's guesthouse. So I encourage you to do what I know you have the capacity to do. Be true to your own Buddha nature. And today I'm reminding you and I know tomorrow I'll need you to remind me. So please Let's help each other. Thank you for listening

[45:03]

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