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 by people like you. How are you doing? February. Sunny day. Arbor day. We're going to plant some trees out here, here at Green Goats. I feel pretty good today. I don't know what it is. And I feel happy, actually, to be here. And I feel, I don't know, accurately or inaccurately, I feel like I'm among friends. This is a little bit of a surprise to me because yesterday I spent most of the day in a kind of terror, in the grip of terror.

[01:11]

What will happen? What kind of humiliation will I suffer when I go to give a lecture at Greenville's? I decided to come anyway. So as I mentioned today, you know, as Arbor Day, here and we've been having Arbor Day for many years, 20 years more, 30 years now. 30 years. So I was remembering a passage from Suzuki Rishi, one of his talks where he said, I am a tree and each of you is a tree. You should stand up by yourself.

[02:19]

When you stand up by yourself, we call that tree a Buddha. In other words, when you practice zazen, meditation, in its true sense, you are really Buddha. You are a tree and you are Buddha. Buddha, tree, and you. are many names for one Buddha. Of course, in another lecture he said, and there's no Buddha. But it will do for a word. You are Buddha. So, you know, when I come here, I believe this. You know, when I'm not here... and I'm just imagining being here, then I don't remember that you're all Buddhas.

[03:23]

So I worry about not being good enough. I started going to see a chiropractor recently in Mill Valley. She has many little signs and aphorisms around the office, so we were talking about some of them. And she said that years ago, she had done many workshops with Stephen Levine. Some of you may have done workshops with Stephen Levine. He and his wife, Andrea, did many workshops for a while in a lot of places. And I actually had been to them. We probably had been to the same workshops. Didn't meet each other. Stephen Levine studied Vipassana meditation and also had an Indian guru. I don't remember, but I wish I could have conversations with Suzuki Roshi in the afterlife. I don't know, I'm not good at that sort of thing. Anyway, we were talking and my chiropractor, Nancy, said,

[04:38]

Her favorite Stephen Levine quote was when he said, if we each told each other our deepest, darkest secrets, we would laugh uproariously at our lack of originality. So, you know, I think it's pretty common to, as I do sometimes, worry about not being good enough. and not being able to get up here. Now that I'm up here, it seems like my mouth is working and words are coming out, but the day before, I'm up here and no words are coming out. I've forgotten what words are. And I go to use my mouth and nothing comes out. And so I start to worry People will say, loser.

[05:39]

Incompetent. We heard you were actually funny. And now you can't even say anything. And that's not very humorous. And that if I have a poem, I won't be able to remember the words. So sometimes, just in case, I bring them. in case I get up here and I can't remember. And then that would be very embarrassing actually to have to use my notes. Excuse me. And then I'd have to get out my glasses. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad. Maybe a little later in my talk I'll try it. So one kind of shame I have, possible shame is you know, incompetent loser. And then another one is, you know, to say something and then be attacked.

[06:45]

How could you say such a thing? That was so hurtful, that was so mean. And nowadays, you know, you never quite know what's going to be hurtful or mean. We all apparently need a lot of, you know, politically correct languaging skills. So, you know, there's another possibility. And then, you know, I worry about not being Zen enough for you, of course. Some people, you know, some critics saw the movie I'm in and that said, Edward S.B. Brown is moderately enlightening. There's nothing profound in this movie. Why don't you watch MTV? Or The Cooking Channel, if you want to know anything. Okay. So in my world, you know, I have certain kinds of things I rely on or come back to, you know, and one of them is, well, all I can do is, you know, what I can do is offer what I have to offer.

[07:59]

I think this is also what trees do, you know, offer what they have to offer, share what they have to share. And, you know, Dogen Zenji quotes a line from an old poem, you know, the plum tree, the old plum tree blossoming is its offering. I didn't notice, is the plum tree blossoming? It's starting over here between, behind the office over towards the dining room there, there's an old plum tree that usually blossoms about this time of year with this the warm time in February offer what you have to offer and you know it's pretty you know this is very simple and also it's very challenging for us you know it's also to you know share what we have to share and it's difficult

[09:11]

I find, in our modern world, you know, to do this. Oftentimes, you know, our friends aren't living right next to her. And people that we might get together with for dinner, you know, we have to drive, we drive an hour or two. And it's also, it seems so challenging, really. You know, not to have, I spent 20 years at Zen Center, and then your friends are next door. And you walk across the path or the road, and there's somebody to have tea with or to say hello to. So it's very sweet having an actual community. When I say this, of course, I think about trees. which seem to have a community. And trees, one of the things that trees have to offer is habitat.

[10:15]

As you know, pavement doesn't offer habitat. It seems like pretty simple, but trees actually offer habitat. And various creatures can live in the tree. When there's trees, there's usually birds. And the trees offer shade and fruit and a home. And they share very graciously their wonderful height. And of course, nowadays, some people say, for instance, you don't notice the sky unless there's a tree. Partly we notice the sky because there are trees, which is also the same as the silence in the mountains is deepened by the song of the bird.

[11:23]

I try to remember that when I'm at my riding retreat on Tomales Bay and the cars are going by, just deepening the stillness. And from one of my windows, there's a huge, I don't know what kind of tree it is, but huge awning of a tree. This time of year hasn't yet, but again. But it's a magnificent, you know, being to have in my vicinity. And of course nowadays we know that trees, are, you know, it's not just burning carbon fuels, but cutting down trees, which is part of what's led to global warming, because the trees were, all those acres and miles of trees and forests that were turned in the newsprint and everything, you know, were otherwise turning carbon dioxide back into oxygen.

[12:32]

So, you know, it's interesting. For me, I've been thinking about, you know, what to offer. And, you know, there are certainly various possibilities. And, you know, each of us has, you know, various things to offer. And sometimes we think it needs to be a skill. And many of us, of course, have useful and important skills to offer. doctors and lawyers, and some of the people who were at Zen Center years ago, we had a couple weeks ago a reunion, and one of our graduates... Is he a graduate or a Zen dropout? We're not sure if anybody succeeded at this business just yet.

[13:54]

This sin business. But one of our graduates, you know, he restores rivers. So people hire him. He went back to Harvard after Zen Center and finished his degree, and now people hire him to restore rivers to their natural flow and natural habitat from having industrial things come down and various things that have degraded the river. And another one of our graduates is, you know, working, lives in Japan and then is working to combat global warming. And some of our students are, you know, have started a Humane Farming Association and, you know, anti-cruelty to animals in farming, also in Europe. So some of us, you know, and some people, one of my, one of the things I have been interested in studying is, you know, communication skills.

[15:07]

So some people have pretty good communication skills. And they actually seem to be able to listen and hear what you have to say and, wow, what a concept. And are able to say things to you that, you know, aren't off-putting and Don't cause me to be defensive and feel small and humiliated. So some of us have, you know, we have various skills, so-called skills. And some of us, you know, we have the capacity to be of service. And so, you know, we can, and we can be of service in various ways to, like, you know, today, planting trees. And we find ways to be of service to cook for one another or to garden and to offer our efforts, you know, to benefit other people, other people, plants, gardens, the world in various ways.

[16:17]

And some people, of course, you know, are gifted... in terms of writing or in terms of playing music. Sometimes I think, if I have a chance, next to life, a musician, if only I could be a musician. It seems so otherworldly and mysterious. I ask musicians, how do you do that? And they just say, well, you just do it. And I say, no, you just do it. I don't just do it. I just cook. And... People say, how do you do that? Well, you just do it. But now Oliver Saxon has a new book now about musicians, about music and how not everybody has an ear. So at last I'm vindicated. Because my music friends just tend to say, oh, you can do it. Everybody can do it. It's not true. Anyway.

[17:21]

But I mention this because also, finally, our great offering is our own presence of mind and our own good-heartedness. And our good-hearted presence that can come into this moment, show up here in this moment, and be awake and alive and responsive to what's going on. What's going on in our own being and what's going on around us. We can, with our presence, we can show up and respond. And we can be awake and alive. And sometimes, you know, it will be like a tree in winter. It won't look like much. And sometimes there will be fruit. And there will be birds in the branches. So our presence, doesn't always look like much, and it's easy to overlook this capacity we have to show up, to be present, awake, alive, and respond.

[18:32]

When I was many years ago at Zen Center studying, our Japanese teachers used to use an expression, I'm not sure actually how literally it's translated, but mei nitsu no kafu. And they used to translate it, kind, considerate, compassionate, attention to detail. And I realized with all the things that I knock over and spill, I must not be practicing this. And it's not just things, but people and my own awareness. You know, I want to move more quickly and get something done rather than just being present and responsive and kind and considerate. You know, taking the time to say good morning and how are you, and taking the time to sit quietly, taking the time to prepare food, to clean the floor,

[19:50]

So I'm endeavoring to renew my practice. We'll see how it goes. And this, you know, apparently Buddhists I didn't know this, but Buddhists over the centuries, in Tibet anyway, there's actually a doctrinal debate between two schools about the nature of emptiness, which is Buddha's technical term for the fact that things do not have any inherent self. So this is why we can say when you stand up by yourself, you are Buddha. You are truly Buddha. You are... a tree, and you are Buddha, Buddha tree, and you are many names of one Buddha. And sometimes we get caught by some momentary description we have about ourself.

[21:05]

You know, not good enough. So, apparently this emptiness, or no inherent being, you know, there's been a debate whether this is absolute nothingness, emptiness, nothing, or if there's a presence. So I guess I'm in this school of, you know, there's presence in this emptiness. And I'm also now practicing, you know, having that, you know, presence that's there, you know, smile. Do you understand? and to respond and to take care of things. So I want to share a poem with you today, which is, you know, it's my favorite poem, one of Rilke's sonnets, one of the sonnets to Orpheus.

[22:35]

And I thought about this poem because someone mentioned to me that one of the things being planted today is some, you know, apple seeds that have sprouted. And apple seeds are very interesting because they're what's called heterogeneous. In any apple, the seeds are not, nobody knows what apple will come out of those seeds. Most of the apples that grow from seeds are not very good. The trees that grow from the seed and then the apples from the seed are often sour and small and Michael Pollan, who now has a new book out, he did The Botany of Desire and then a book called Omnivore's Dilemma, which is tracing different meals, and now he's written a book about food and eating, so he's summarized, this is a little bit of a side, but don't worry, we're going to get to the poem and everything else, but I love it, you know, he's now summarized in his new book, apparently, you know,

[23:53]

Food and eating in seven words. Eat food. Less of it. Mostly plants. This is because a lot of what we eat is so manufactured and processed. He's not calling that food. Food. Plants. Things. Eat food. Less of it. mostly plants. But in his earlier book, Botany of Desire, which shows how apples are one of these plants that has managed to get humans to help along, just like corn is another one of those plants. Corn can't grow unless somebody takes it out of the husk and puts it in the ground. So corn has completely tied its destiny to human beings wanting to plant it. with the amount of corn we're growing now in the United States, you know, it's very successful at this.

[24:56]

It's colonized us and gotten us. And so we're, you know, now become, Michael Pollan suggests, you know, corn people. And you can tell this by looking at, you know, the molecules and cells in the body and the kind of carbon it is because corn has a very distinctive carbon element. whatever it is, molecule or something. And of course, in the Omnivore's Dilemma, he says that nowadays we don't care about corn. We're so affluent. We don't take care of small things like grains of corn. Now there's whole corn by the roadside and in the gutters and gullies and by silos and things, and in the mud. And the Aztecs or Mayans, you know, who grew corn wouldn't want to waste a grain.

[25:59]

They felt the corn god would be angry with them if they wasted anything. But in Botany of Desire, then, you know, Michael Pollan explains how apples Johnny Appleseed really was Appleseed, and he took the apple seeds and he went out beyond the Western movement and started growing apple seeds in little orchards and got land ahead of others so that when they showed up he could sell them little apple trees. And everybody wanted an apple tree for their front yard, and it wasn't so you'd have apples to eat. It was so you'd have apples to juice. And in those days, in a few days, any apples you juiced became hard apple cider. So you wanted to have your own apple tree so you too could have hard cider and plenty of it. So Johnny Appleseed, this cultural hero, was actually helping people to get drunk.

[27:08]

Interesting man. But, so anyway, the apples, you know, we don't know what this apple will be, but if we plant an apple tree from seeds, and any apples, like now Fuji apple is fairly recent, you know, somebody discovered it, and then all the Fuji trees are from the same tree and taking branches and grafting them onto other rootstock. That's how you get Fuji apples or Gala apples, which, when I was growing up, there were no Fuji apples or Gala apples, so somebody... planted some seeds and they got lucky they found Fuji or Gala and then you can sell them all over the world. The world switches over to your apple if you find the right one. So I mention all of that because we're planting at least one apple seed or tree from an apple seed today.

[28:12]

And so this poem of Rokas is about presence and actually being, showing up, being present, observing, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching. I think we have some confusion, you know, that to be sometimes a good Buddhist or a good human being would mean we didn't have so much feeling. But feeling is actually what connects us with ourself and with one another and with the world. So in this poem, there's also feeling. So here's the way the poem goes. round apple, smooth banana, melon, gooseberry, peach, how all this effluent speaks death and life in the mouth.

[29:27]

How all this effluent speaks death and life in the mouth. I sense observe it in a child's transparent features while he tastes. This comes from far, This comes from far away. You are a tree and you are Buddha. Instead of words, discoveries flow out of the flesh of the fruit, astonished to be free. Dare to say what apple truly is. This sweetness that feels thick, dark, dense at first, then grows clarified, awake, luminous, double-meaning, sunny, earthy, real. Oh, knowledge, pleasure, joy, immense.

[30:38]

So, for me, it's our presence, our good-hearted presence. that brings life to life, brings life to our own life, to our own body and mind, our capacity to respond to life and brings life to the world, you know, to apples and to trees. And, you know, if we understand, as Suzuki Rasha says, when you understand More deeply, you will see you are a tree. Each of us is a tree. A tree and Buddha. He says, when you experience enlightenment, you will understand more freely. You won't worry about what people call you.

[31:39]

I guess I have a ways to go. Ordinary mind, okay. I'm ordinary mind. Loser, okay. I'm loser. Say the wrong thing, okay. I'm Buddha, yes, I'm Buddha. So we're all like this. Ordinary mind and Buddha. And when I come here, I do feel this energy in the room, presence, our presence together. Good-hearted people who have this capacity. We all have this capacity to be present, awake, alive. and respond to things. And of course, this responding to things is different than controlling them or telling them how to behave.

[32:54]

It's more like a tree providing habitat for birds and various insects in its branches. And again, you know, so again, I want to, you know, encourage you to offer what you have to offer, regardless of, you know, what it appears to be or whether it appears to be valuable or not so valuable or skillful or not so skillful. You know, this is finally all we have, you know, is to offer what we have to offer, share what we have to share.

[33:59]

And, you know, whether it's skills or resources or our simple good-hearted presence. Thank you. Blessings. 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.

[34:37]

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