As I was walking here, I was looking at the apple blossoms. And I thought, it's much too nice a day to go indoors. And here we are, and actually sitting here, it feels like, oh, it's actually pretty good in here as well. But beautiful day. I want to welcome you all here to Green Gulch, Green Dragon Temple. It is nationally recognized Earth Week and Earth Day. I guess began being recognized in 1970, a couple of years before we acquired Green Gulch for Zen Center. The Gulch had been here for quite a while though. And there is right back here,

[01:03]

mastodon tooth that was found here at Green Gulch up the creek. The person who found it, Rob Weinberg, is in my mind today because he just died last week. And he was here in the 70s and then went on to Tassajara and other things. This is an indication that Green Gulch was here for quite a while before. So I think the dragon, the green dragon, has been here for a long time. So it's good to recognize, although painful, and maybe somewhat uncomfortable to recognize that our time here is very brief as human beings, as a human life, very brief. So part of recognizing Earth Day and the Earth is to actually cultivate a sense of humility.

[02:14]

I was at Tassajara a few days ago, and I just wanted to bring greetings from people at Tassajara. Zen Mountain Center. There are many people there, huge work circles, because we're having a work period, getting ready for the summer, and I think there are about 95 people, most of them volunteers coming to help get Tassajara ready and appreciating the mountains. yesterday I was in the city, San Francisco City Center. We had an ordination, a priest ordination for a young woman named Lucy. Some of you know Lucy. Very beautiful ceremony.

[03:27]

And also a powerful ceremony to take up the precept path in a very clear, deliberate way. Recognizing again, that it's not about me. So I greet you all here today, recognizing everyone here is also, each of you is here partly to realize it's not about me. Is it about the earth? We have on our altar here an image of Shakyamuni Buddha touching the earth. So I think Buddha's enlightenment, the story of Buddha's enlightenment is also recognizing Earth Day enlightenment, recognizing that this place, when one is feeling

[04:39]

say, challenged, insecure, having some doubts, you know, by what right am I here to touch the earth, to feel that the earth is already supporting one. And so appreciating that is to take some responsibility for the relationship. Here's a haiku from Mitsu Suzuki. Bean tendril, straight. Nothing to grasp. Burning sun. So this was a haiku that she wrote here at Green Gulch in 1984. Bean tendril, straight. nothing to grasp, burning sun.

[05:43]

So this very moment, each of us is supported by so many beings, the bean tendril growing, not even thinking about it. So here we are, we have also just entered the growing season at Green Gulch, and we have a farm, and garden apprentices here for about six months, and engaging with this whole matter of how to work with the earth, how to work with the four elements, how to work with this matter of what are we growing? I think when we started the garden, started the farm here, the notion was fundamentally we're growing topsoil. And it's easy to be distracted and think, oh, we're growing flowers, we're growing beans.

[06:54]

But this practice, I think, of investigating The way things are, to actually see the way things are means to look at the ground and take care of the ground. So it is said that Zen is two things. Zazen, the practice of sitting, the practice of stopping and seeing, and it's also tending the garden. So fundamentally then, we could say we have these two sides of our practice. One is to... Zazen doesn't just mean necessarily just the posture of sitting, but it means the fundamental intention to be fully present right where one is. Be willing to see what is from the place of being fully present. So that means to carefully...

[08:02]

take into account the many ways in which one may not see what is. The many ways in which one is distracted or deluded or too fearful or too full of desires for something else to see what is. So this zazen is this stopping and seeing. And knowing this moment, knowing what it is to be present in this very moment. And then to extend that is to help, to realize one is in relationship, relationship with the earth, relationship with other beings. And so then, naturally, one can help. One knows how to help based upon seeing, but it's not always so clear Yesterday I found myself in a very awkward conversation with bamboo.

[09:09]

Because I had the idea that this is a place my wife, Lena, and I have up in Roanoke Park, and I have a little bit of garden there. So I've been tending this plot and improving the soil. So every year the ground is... has more humus, and I know this, but also bamboo knows this. So we also have bamboo growing nearby. So I was thinking, I had a little short time, I know this bed is all friable, it's been cultivated for several years, it will just take a short time for me to freshen it up. And then I saw this, sprout of bamboo coming up. And I knew I was in for trouble. But I didn't know how much. I started digging. I thought, well, rather than just cutting off that shoot, I should get some of the root.

[10:19]

So then I started digging. And then I dug and dug and dug and the root kept going. And then I discovered there was another root. And there were other sprouts that were just about ready to come up. So I have more to do. But then I'm thinking, okay, so who says? This is quite a karmic act of a human being to say, okay, this is going to be a plot for tomatoes. It's not that I don't like bamboo. Bamboo's fine over there. But this is something that human beings have been doing now. for thousands of years. And so we need to take into account that we have made these decisions. That there is a karmic consequence then to the decisions that we make.

[11:21]

So finding oneself in the middle of the argument, bamboo, tomatoes, bamboo, tomatoes. Well, and this... particular space right here, these questions become very knotty and knot as in node and particularity. So then I could get lost in my own frustration, opinions. So there's no easy answer. I think this is partly conveyed. This is a poem by Kay Ryan. Kay, by the way, is a local poet who, I don't know if does everyone realize, currently our poet, I think still our poet laureate national, right? But she's local and she used to give readings in Mill Valley.

[12:27]

Marsha Angus' house every once in a while. And she taught at Marin Junior College here in Marin. I know my daughter Robin had her as a writing teacher. But I've admired Kay's, her own unique way of viewing things. So this is called HELP. Imagine help, so the word help here is in italics. Imagine help as a syllable, awkward but utterable. How would it work and in which distress? How would one gauge the level of duress at which to pitch the plea? How bad?

[13:30]

would something have to be? It's hard coming from a planet where if we needed something, we had it. So, I'll read it one more time. It's not an easy poem, really. And it's helpful to remember, you know, there are no easy answers. Imagine help as a syllable, awkward but utterable. How would it work and in which distress? How would one gauge the level of duress at which to pitch the plea? How bad would something have to be? It's hard coming from a planet where if we needed something, we had it. So how do we learn the language of this time, actually, of global crisis?

[14:44]

How do we learn the language of intimacy with the planet itself? How can we hear? Is there an advocate who says help? So, And then this is a challenge because then how to practice discernment without crippling blame. How to practice clearly seeing, being able to see, discern difference, bamboo, tomatoes. How to discern difference without Just being fixed in reified, judgmental state of mind. How to confess one's own part in it. How can one confess with some humility that's not paralyzing doubt.

[15:53]

So we have this challenge moment by moment, being fully present. One more from Kay. These I picked out of her new book called The Best of It. And so if you're interested, I recommend picking it up. And there's a kind of a koan quality to her poems. Not easy. But here's one, The Fabric of Life. So it's playful, the fabric. Her poem, I think, is also playful, but it has a little grittiness to it. So here it is, The Fabric of Life. It is very stretchy.

[16:56]

We know that, even if many details remain sketchy. It is complexly woven. That much too has pretty well been proven. We are loath to continue our lessons, which consist of slaps as sharp and dispersed as bee stings from a smashed nest. When any strand snaps, hurts working far past the locus of rupture, attacking threads far beyond anything we would have said connect. Fabric of life. So we don't... like it so much when it stings us.

[18:01]

Maybe we like the stretchy part. Fabric of life, stretchy. Fabric of life, limit. Not so comfortable. I'll read it again. It is very stretchy. We know that, even if many details remain sketchy. It is complexly woven. That much too has pretty well been proven. We are loath to continue our lessons, which consist of slaps as sharp and dispersed as bee stings from a smashed nest. When any strand snaps, Hurts working far past the locus of rupture, attacking threads far beyond anything we would have said connects. So this is working with, say, the interconnectedness of life that sometimes is...

[19:22]

Really, really painful. Painful to completely be willing to acknowledge the way suffering comes about. So the Buddhist enterprise, the experiment has been to investigate how suffering comes about. So we have the teaching called the Four Noble Truths. but I'd like to suggest not thinking of them as truths, but thinking of them as practices. First practice is to take stock and see suffering for what it is, which means to engage in the practice of experiencing your life.

[20:25]

This is the practice of experiencing. So this is at the most direct level, the most immediate, to notice what is happening. To notice what's happening with your body, to notice what's happening with your feelings, to notice what's happening with your tendency to resist, or your tendency to desire. So this is at the experiential level, I think, the practice of the first noble truth. So maybe this is, for some of you, maybe never heard that there are these four noble truths in Buddhism. Usually they're called suffering, is the first noble truth, that there is suffering. And then secondly, that there is a way that suffering comes into being or there are origins of suffering.

[21:37]

And the third is freedom or the cessation of suffering or liberation. And the fourth is a path, a path to realize that freedom or that cessation of suffering. So taking it as practices, saying that the first is to experience, experience everything in life just as it is. And then the second is that really the big work of seeing the root of suffering, seeing the origin, seeing how suffering comes up as soon as one forms an opinion.

[22:39]

This may not be so obvious right away. You might like your opinions, right? Hard to see that the forming of an opinion itself is suffering. To form an opinion means that one has a notion of one's own existence, right? That there is some ego or some I involved. So as soon as one has some ego, some I involved, that is... kind of a constriction or a constellation around some preference. So some opinion. And then to notice then that the more closely or more fixedly and determinedly one holds on to one's opinion, the more there is suffering.

[23:51]

So by opinion, I don't just mean thought. I don't just mean, although thought is involved. I don't just... And opinion can be something that you experience as some tension in your body. Even just a little twinge. There's a... wisdom teaching in the Dagara tribe, Burkina Faso in Africa, a wisdom teaching that physical sickness or pain is a wise teaching being offered by the ancestors. That the ancestors communicate wisdom to you, to me, now in the present moment, as pain.

[25:01]

I don't particularly like that. I remember Suzuki Roshi quoting, Zen Master Dogen says, Dharma teaching, to really experience Dharma teaching is to experience it as something hard that you don't want. Something difficult. So even though we may say, yes, I want Dharma teaching. I do want to know the truth. And I think we all do deeply want to know the truth. And at the same time, there's many feelings that resist wanting to know the truth. So if the truth, if some wisdom shows up as some pain, this may be...

[26:10]

The reason to have some teaching about wisdom showing up as pain is to encourage the capacity, to cultivate the capacity to be present with what is uncomfortable. So some people find out sitting zazen after a while. You sit zazen after a while, that's uncomfortable. It's not so comfortable just to sit. It may feel fine, you know. five minutes. Not too bad. When I first started sitting Zazen, which is almost 40 years ago now, amazingly enough. It's amazing to me. I feel like I'm just getting started. Just getting to know this practice. And But I remember I was living in Chicago and I discovered that there was a little Zen group that met down the street.

[27:11]

And so I went there and I'd read about Zazen in a book and I was able to sit for about 10 minutes. I went there and they had these 30 minute periods which were just excruciating for me to sit for 30 minutes. And so I went a few times, and then one night they said, we're going to sit again. I was shocked. What? We already did this for 30 minutes. Sit again for 30 minutes? So I was quite naive. Then it's possible for people to take this up and sit again and again for a whole day. And then it gets more difficult. You may think, oh, if I mastered sitting for 30 minutes, then I could just, with a little break, I can do it again and do it again and do it again.

[28:18]

But then, Houston Smith, who we honored as one of our great teachers, A couple of years ago, we honored him at the Green's Restaurant Benefit, and he told me then that before he went to Japan, you know, he did some Zen practice in Japan, so he read about it first, and he discovered that in the Soto school, people sit for 40 minutes. In the Rinzai school, they sit for 25 minutes. So I said, I'll go for the 25 minutes. And then he found that he couldn't sit at all cross-legged, and so he prepared himself for the whole academic year. He was gonna do a summer in Japan, and so for the whole academic year he prepared himself. He got a small table, a low table, and this is a strategy for a very intelligent person, a very deliberate, patient person.

[29:20]

He sat with his legs crossed under the table, And he noticed his knees were right, he could barely get his knees under the table, right? But each week he would slide another little thin pamphlet under his knees and force them down gradually until through the course of the academic year he was able to stuff whole cushions under there and his knees finally came down. So then when he went to Japan he met the teacher And the teacher said, you think you can sit and do this practice with us? He said, yeah, I've worked it out. I can sit 25 minutes. And the teacher said, so you think then with a short break for walking, you can sit another 25 minutes? And he said, oh yeah, I can keep that up. He was quite confident, although he hadn't really done it. And he said, that was a big mistake.

[30:23]

He really suffered from that. So this matter of being willing to be present with what's uncomfortable is something that we actually build into our bodies in the sitting practice. Somewhat uncomfortable. Please, sit comfortably. Move. Those people, now I've been talking too long. People are moving, and I haven't even gotten to the third noble truth. LAUGHTER The third noble practice. But the third one is the one everyone likes. The third one is the cessation of suffering. So it's best really not to think about that. It's best to stay with the second noble truth, I think. Although it is helpful to realize, and sometimes one may realize, even you can't predict it.

[31:43]

You can't predict that you will realize that, oh, there's no suffering. Yeah. We just finished a practice period of three months, 90 days at Tassajara, and pretty difficult for people to stay. At Tassajara, those of you who know, it's over a mountain, and it's 14 miles of rough road, and then you're there at the end of the road, and there's no exit for three months. And during that time we do sit a lot of zazen. We have several sessions. So it's hard to hold on to your usual idea of who you are. Hard to hold on to your usual idea, your usual opinions.

[32:50]

So there's a deliberate way in which we challenge ourselves. to just be mountains. Not to just be caught and bemused by our human thoughts. To actually be wild mind, open mind, mountains and rivers. And that practice of being mountains and rivers enters into the body of a person over time. But then you don't necessarily know it. So someone, I just went back last week, and someone who'd been in the practice period told me that they had just come back from a week vacation. And during that week vacation, she realized that she had actually

[33:56]

gone beyond her usual opinions. But she didn't notice it while she was in the mountains of Tassajara. She noticed it when she went back and visited various friends and the kinds of things that usually disturbed her beforehand were no longer a problem. And this is, for her, a wonderful confirmation. Sometimes it's good to have a wonderful confirmation. Sometimes it's good to have the realization of the third noble truth that suffering actually in this moment doesn't exist. When you're truly present in this moment, there's no suffering. So this moment is the time when you can completely stop

[34:59]

investing in desires and regrets. Stop investing in thinking about, oh, if it were only this way or that way. Stop investing in wishing that, oh, I had done something differently. It's okay to notice those things, but not to believe or put your heart there. So the third noble truth is actually coming home to this moment. So this then is... It may just be fleeting because what happens is the tendency of our karmic habits to reappear.

[36:11]

Pretty soon, again, I'm involved in rooting out bamboo. rooting out the weeds of one's own mind, the weeds of one's own opinions. The notions that one has, that one is actually holding someone in disregard, holding someone else to be less than who they are. And realizing that that's something that I'm doing, I'm actually holding that. It's really not them, it's me that's holding them in this particular box of my opinion. And that the opinion that I'm holding for them actually imprisons me in the opinion. So this cycles back then to the second noble truth.

[37:21]

But it's helpful to have the fourth... Noble Truth, which is the path. Realizing that even once you see, even once you see that things are completely peaceful, that things are completely unified and perfect, then we continue to tend the garden or continue to cultivate the path of awakening. knowing that awakening actually has preceded us, and awakening is right here. We have to do the work, the inner work, and the outer work. So I think Earth Day calls to mind, the notion of Buddha touching the earth is calling to mind both the inner work and the outer work. Inner work,

[38:22]

Noticing the tendencies that one has to cut oneself off. To grasp at something. And the outer work to notice all one's relationships. And to offer oneself to take good care of all one's relationships. So this is being a good neighbor and it's also listening, I'd say advocating, when you hear the earth crying, help, help, some quiet voice, we say that pebbles, rocks, water, all express the Dharma, all express the truth.

[39:23]

So it takes careful listening, careful attending to hear and see what is being said, what is being requested. How does one respond? So the fourth noble truth is cultivation, ongoing, endlessly cultivation, which is sometimes understood as building one's character, building one's own character. Which means that when you notice, when I notice that I'm doing something in a limited way, to acknowledge that, to confess that. When I notice that I haven't offered myself completely, or I haven't met someone completely, to acknowledge that, to confess that.

[40:26]

So character is actually built upon this practice of humility, of confession. It takes courage to acknowledge one's own limitations. Ultimately, it takes complete fearlessness. Underneath all of our protections, all of our opinions, we have fear. So ultimately it takes a willingness to be completely present with one's own fear. It's pretty good. I don't need a clock because I can see people leaving to go make preparations for lunch. Next thing... Coming back to this matter of cultivation, to me the second noble truth and the fourth noble truth really work very closely together.

[41:43]

That the investigation of the origins or causes of suffering is very closely aligned with cultivation of character. So it means information looking at one's relationships very intimately. So now at this time, recognizing Earth Day, which was first established in 1970. Senator Gaylord Nelson came out to California in 69. There was an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara. And he felt at least this motivated him to call for a teach-in day, a day for a teach-in about the earth, which started in 1970.

[42:49]

So here it is 40 years later, and some people may say, well, that's an old idea. We don't really need that anymore. But I think we need reminders. It's good to have an annual reminder Of course, every day is Earth Day. But then, sometimes it's helpful to have a particular day to remind us. So I just want to recommend that people take this as an opportunity this week to study. I was happy to see that National Geographic put out a supplement this month, April, a special supplement on water. Take a look at that. Water is so amazing. What an amazing element. Is it an element? No, it's a molecule. It's not an element, right? What an amazing molecule.

[43:53]

And we live in it. Basically, we live in water. We're completely immersed in it. And every one of our cells is mostly water. But then I just learned in the National Geographic that most of the water on the planet is salty. 97.5% is salty. Only 2.5% is fresh. And of that fresh water, most of it's frozen. It's amazing to me. When it freezes, it gets lighter. It floats. What if it didn't? What if it sank? We wouldn't be here. I don't know if that's true of other things. I don't know when rocks become liquid, do they float?

[45:02]

Or do they sink? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe someone knows. It depends on different kinds of rocks, maybe. Or when iron turns liquid, does it float? I kind of think it sinks, but I actually... Huh? Yeah, what about... Molten rock, lava, yeah. The lava sinks in, but I haven't seen, you know, do little bits of rock cinders float on top of the lava? Or do they sink? That's what I'm... Huh? Yeah, you just mentioned Iceland. Yeah, big volcano, right? So anyway, I'm confessing my ignorance here, but I'm amazed at water, you know, that... So I don't want to take it for granted.

[46:04]

And I'm happy that National Geographic put out a whole supplement, very beautiful, with a map of all the rivers in the world. So it's an opportunity to take care of one's own place in relation to water, one's own watershed, where you live, do you know your watershed? Do you know where your water, how your water flows? And just do appreciate it. Water's been around a long time. The same water. It's been around for, I don't know, billions, billions of years, right? And the way in which our bodies, I think, coming out of the ocean, our bodies are salty, like the ocean.

[47:16]

So we have this need to continue to find this balance within ourselves, taking in water, releasing water, water flowing through us. So maybe we're just water's idea of how to get around. So maybe that's enough. And then we can go outside and enjoy the day. Is that okay to end it here? Thank you for listening.

[48:07]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.65