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Tending the What, the How, and the Who of Our Activity

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4/22/2012, Jiryu Rutschman-Byler, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm.

AI Summary: 

The talk emphasizes the interconnectedness of human actions and the Earth, emphasizing that actions and attitudes towards the environment must be rooted in understanding our unity with the Earth to effectively address ecological issues. It explores three insights of Buddhist practice: the significance of our actions (karma), the manner in which we perform them, and the understanding of the self who acts, advocating for a holistic approach in efforts to heal the planet.

Referenced Works and Teachings:

  • Suzuki Roshi: Frequently cited as a source for understanding the fundamental teachings of Buddhism, particularly highlighting that "what we do matters."
  • Zen Precepts: Described as foundational to Zen practice, emphasizing ethical behavior and are central to the transmission of Zen teachings.
  • "Buddha for Beginners": Mentioned in relation to the understanding of karma, illustrating the inevitability of past actions impacting the present.

Concepts and Practices:

  • Karma: Presented as a continuous, active force shaped by present actions, asserting that current choices significantly impact personal and collective futures.
  • Zen Practice: Advocates for mindfulness and presence in every action, valuing how actions are performed over what is done.
  • Interconnectedness and Non-Separation: Discussed as critical to understanding our true nature and fostering beneficial actions towards healing the Earth.

AI Suggested Title: Healing through Earthly Interconnection

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Transcript: 

This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everybody. Happy Earth Day. Thank you for coming to our foggy patch of ground to celebrate the this morning with us. So I know many of you, but not all of you. My name is Chiryu, also known as Mark. I live here. And I spend a lot of my time thinking about water and treating water and distributing water. And so Earth... isn't really my area.

[01:01]

In the division of labor at home, my wife, Sarah, is the farm manager. So she's kind of in charge of earth. And then our two-year-old, Frank, has wind and fire pretty much covered. So I feel a little bit out on a limb here as a water person addressing you all on the auspicious occasion of Earth Day. But I thought that at least until we have an International Water Day, which we probably really should have, in any case, until that time, I can let water fall onto the earth, be embraced by this Earth Day, just as it seeps into the earth and rolls across the earth. I can acknowledge that earth and water are at the same warm core of our practice of Buddhism.

[02:04]

I wouldn't want you to leave thinking that Buddhism is just about water. It's a common misunderstanding, but actually it's also about Earth. So, of course, that we are here today is a wonderful fact that we completely owe to the earth, that we're here at Green Gulch this morning, and that we're here at all, that we have a body and a mind is completely dependent on, completely held by earth. So as we come into our bodies and minds this morning, settling into this room, into the feeling of our bodies and the rhythm of our breath, we feel that deep ground, that deep connection, that deep support of earth.

[03:15]

And we might glimpse to or know into it somewhere deeply that we're never separate from that. It's not that we walk on top of the earth as separate beings, but never have been separate. Earth walking on earth. But as we open to and appreciate and feel maybe some real gratitude for this earth that gives us life, we may also encounter some grief. I know I... Right behind my appreciation and gratitude for the Earth and nature, there's a layer, a level of deep grief about the state of our planet. The oceans warming, the ice disappearing, the air choking.

[04:22]

The river's running drier and drier and dirtier and dirtier. The amphibians, the frogs, disappearing. So in the midst of our celebration and appreciation for Earth, in this meditation of gratitude and appreciation, we're also open to that grief. So for me, Earth Day is about... appreciating our debt, you could say our warm debt of gratitude to the earth, and also opening to our pain at the state of the earth, allowing us to feel that, to really penetrate us for a moment at least. And it's also a day to celebrate our capacity as people and society to give ourselves to the earth, to work for the earth. So we, of course, need the earth and the earth clearly now needs us.

[05:31]

So just as the earth rises to meet and sustain us, sometimes we or others can rise to meet and sustain and nourish the earth. Stepping out of our self-centered habits to give some nourishment. turn nourishment back into the earth. So I can think about our capacity to, as individuals and collectives, to really heal the earth, to really bring benefit to the earth. And I can feel warm about that and fuzzy. And I invite you into that warm fuzziness of our potential to really benefit the earth and each other. But how do we really do that? How do we manifest this longing to work for the good of the world?

[06:37]

How do we enact and manifest our desire to heal, to heal each other and to heal the planet? And furthermore, how do we open to this profound opportunity, this potential that I have, that each of us have, to really make a difference in each other's lives and in the life of the world, the earth? How do we embrace that, open to that, without despairing at our inadequacy to the task? Sounds great. And then remember all the other things I have to do today. And I remember all of my karmic limitations, all of my stuck places, all of my inability to be helpful. And I can despair at that. One can despair at that. How do we do the best we can? Knowing that the best we can also is maybe not enough. Suki, our land steward here,

[07:41]

Suki carries this very beautifully. Restoration. Restoring things that may be beyond restoration, but nonetheless restoring. Pulling invasives that will be back very soon. So how do we keep our energy flowing in the midst of that, in the middle of that inadequacy and... This can sometimes feel like futility. Letting the magnitude of the problems invite and encourage and bring forth our compassion rather than kind of paralyze us. And for me, I don't know if other people are as susceptible to this as me, but... how also, as I think about Earth Day and this kind of beneficial activity, how do I keep this opportunity of doing real good in the world from becoming a kind of weight, a kind of burden, a kind of oppressive storyline that I hit myself with?

[09:04]

I really should be doing something else. I really should be doing something more. My life is really should be differently, more helpful somehow. That my longing, our natural longing to help and to heal can turn into this kind of demeaning of the life that we actually have. So that problem is central to me as I think about rising to meet and nourish the earth and also each other. how do I work for a better world, a better self, without trying to control or thinking that I can control this out-of-control world and this out-of-control self.

[10:06]

So these are some problems that I have with human life and helpfulness. And as I was thinking about these problems and laying them out, I thought, wow, I hope no one thinks that I'm introducing these in order to solve them. I sort of hoped myself that that might happen as I continued to think through the talk, but of course it didn't. These aren't the problems. These problems of how we act, how we accept deeply, and how we act compassionately aren't problems to resolve on Sunday morning at Green Culture or any other time. They're the problems to live by. They're problems that guide us, problems we can find our life in. But I did want to at least talk around them in terms of some way of understanding Buddhist teaching that I feel speaks to them and illuminates, for me at least, this issue of...

[11:17]

caring for the earth in this time. So this way of understanding Buddhism that I wanted to talk about has three different aspects. So three insights, you could say, about Buddhist practice, or three insights that Buddhist practice offers. Three ways of understanding some Buddhist teachings. And in a way, three ways that Buddhism lightens its own weight or kind of disentangles itself. A wonderful thing about Buddhism is constantly presenting something and then untangling you from it immediately after having presented it. So I want to present these three ways of thinking about Buddhist practice. And then at the end, come around and say a little bit more about how I feel these three ways really speak to this project that we celebrate today, bringing forth ourselves to heal and sustain and nourish the earth.

[12:32]

So the first insight that I want to talk about, it's maybe the one that's maybe the most fundamental insight of Buddhism. One could say. In reading Buddhist texts, particularly Suzuki Roshi, you know, you come across that all the time. So the most important thing, the fundamental point, fundamental teaching of Buddhism is that what we do matters. What we do really matters. I see this as really the basis of spiritual life, the basic insight of spiritual life. What I do matters. And it's also the basis of maturity or the beginning of maturity. You know, to the extent that we're immature, there's no real weight to our actions. It's like, eh, nothing we do quite matters. But as we come into maturity, we appreciate that there's a real weight in our actions.

[13:38]

So we're moved to really put ourselves behind. what we do. This is the mark of a mature person, you know, completely behind what they do, feeling the weight of the actions of body, speech, and mind. So in the Buddhist context, to say that what we do matters means that in an interconnected world where each thing is profoundly shaping every other thing, there's no action of body, speech, or mind that's lost somehow, or that's irrelevant. Every single thing we do, every action we make, reverberates, I could say endlessly, through the web of being. Everything has consequence, has profound and lasting consequence. This is the tea ceremony. How you raise the cup has profound, inconceivable consequence in this completely

[14:44]

Interconnected world. Offering another possibility of complete paralysis. Or the maturity of really putting ourselves behind everything we do. Knowing that this step matters. This word matters. So in Buddhism we call this karma. Our actions have the power... to create and maintain suffering for ourselves and each other and the earth and the oceans. And our actions also have great power to reduce and even eliminate suffering in one another. Sometimes when we think about karma, you know, like, dude, that's your karma. We understand it as... as the past. Karma is the things that happened in the past that are locking us into this present.

[15:49]

So what's happening to me now is based on my past karma. So it can't really be any other way because it's conditioned. It's been formed by all this past stuff. So what I have now really can't be locked in to my current life situation and also even my own reactions. even the way that I'm dealing with or meeting situations is kind of locked in, is created by past karma. I remember, for some reason, this picture stuck with me in a book I picked up in a bookstore once before, shortly before I came into Zen practice. I think it was called Buddha for Beginners. It was kind of a comic book book. about what Buddhism is. And there was this one page that showed this giant steamroller. I don't know if any of you have seen this book or this picture, but there's this giant steamroller that represents karma.

[16:53]

And then there's this small Buddhist adept with prayer beads, kind of like counting them off as the steamroller of karma comes. So the point in that, the joke in that, was that we can't really do much about this karma. We can pray or not pray. We can meditate or not meditate. Call on the Buddhas or not, the steamroller of past action is coming. Inexorable, like the tide, you know, bailing out the tide with buckets. And this is a true, I think, aspect of the Buddhist understanding of karma. But what it can overlook is that karma isn't just a past pattern, but it's also something we create actively in this moment. So each moment offers a choice. And Buddhism affirms that our capacity in a certain way of

[18:04]

of taking up that choice and acting in a way that then creates the conditions for self and other for future moments. So the choice, we can say, well, we've gotten here because of past actions. We're kind of locked into being here now. But what we do now, what we do with this now, is in a way within our power and has... huge consequence. Immense potential to generate karma right now. Right now we can generate karma that's helping each other and even helping the earth. Or even just sitting here doing nothing we can create karma that increases and deepens the suffering of the world and ourselves.

[19:10]

So sometimes we think that Zen isn't really about karma so much as it is about leaping clear of all of the delusions of self and other. So Zen people don't get too nitpicky about always doing the right thing. Because the point of Zen is to just leap clear of karma altogether. It's not just a matter of generating good karma. That's understood in Zen as a kind of gradual path. That there's a gradual path whereby slowly you do enough good things and then the tide kind of changes and then you start to go towards freedom. That's understood as kind of a gradual slow path. And Zen is sometimes talked about as the sudden school that you just leap. out of the whole karmic pot, rather than trying to add the right spiritual ingredients to somehow free it. But at the same time, even given that understanding that Zen has, that value that Zen has on not being too confused by karma, even still, it's a kind of Zen heresy

[20:36]

I love that phrase. But there's a lot of Zen heresies. I guess the problem is that sometimes the Zen heresy is just whatever was said in the last moment. But still, there's a very consistent Zen heresy, a kind of unifying, a Zen heresy that unifies all the various Zen sects in criticizing together. We all come together regardless of lineage or sect, to criticize the idea that what we do doesn't matter, that people think, oh, Zen means you can do whatever. It doesn't matter. You just be free and you can do whatever. So a lot of Zen teaching is devoted to correcting this misunderstanding. And it's surprising, too. I've been surprised that at the core of Zen teaching, lineage and Zen Dharma transmission is the precepts of ethical behavior.

[21:43]

So much of Zen language is about just leap clear of right and wrong. But then at the core, kind of at the heart of what's actually transmitted by Zen people to one another is this list of 16 good things to do or 16 things to avoid. And it's this amazing statement at the bottom of our lineage papers that say, oh, by the way, this is the one great gate of Zen, is these 16 rules. A very strange moment, in my life anyway. So that doing good things is actually the core of Zen practice. So part of my sangha includes a group of practitioners at San Quentin State Prison.

[22:45]

We have a long-time Zen sitting group and meditation group there, the Buddhadharma Sangha. And we're actually in a practice period right now. So we have a... people are making extra commitments to training their mind and practicing meditation and practicing compassion and loving kindness. We have a Shusul who's helping to lead us in that. We're looking forward to a question and answer ceremony with him in a few weeks, grilling the poor head student on his understanding and inviting his encouragement. So anyway, at San Quentin, An important part of what we teach and practice is that what we do really matters. The Medes and Quentin are in such a contained and constrained environment that the truth that what you do matters becomes very palpable.

[23:52]

We sometimes call this instant karma. One unskillful word insights violence One skillful word maybe averts violence. So this kind of razor's edge that we're all really on, where every action has great weight, and it's all coming back to us, that this is very clear in this tight container. And so, in my experience, the men really appreciate... the encouragement and the support that what we do matters. But at the same time, part of the life of San Quentin is that the environment is beyond their control. So on the one hand, it's so important that what we do matters.

[24:53]

But on the other hand, what we do is completely limited, is totally constrained by this environment. So we can't always do what we want to do or what we think should be done because now it's lockdown. I should go to meditation, but now I'm in lockdown. So the sense of as we value that what we do matters, we also acknowledge that you can't just do what you want. You can't do what you think you should do in a lot of cases. And none of us really can do what we think should be done all the time or can do what we want to do all the time. Some of the men very memorably at San Quentin spoke about how we're all equally unfree, you know.

[25:59]

So you think that we're limited somehow. because we can't go out that gate, and that you're free because you can. But tell me, who can fly? Who of us can fly? We need glasses, some of us, to see. So this idea that they're not actually more limited than we are. Everyone is completely subject to limitation. Our lives are completely limited. There's more that we can't do than that we can do. So this issue is very important to me, that if we understand our spiritual life and our capacity to benefit others just as a matter of what we do, then it seems like our spiritual potential and our beneficial potential is just a matter of circumstances. So if we're privileged enough to be able to go do a lot of retreats or to go spend a day doing the beach cleanup, then we're helpful.

[27:00]

But if the conditions of our life don't allow that, then we're somehow cut off. from the opportunity for helpfulness or for the opportunity for spirituality. You know, if I can't be spiritual, I have to go to work to support my family. That's the kind of problem I think you have when you say that what we do is all that matters to our spiritual practice or to our beneficial potential. So the second insight that corrects this in a way that Buddhism and Buddhist practice bring is that you can say even more than what we do, it matters how we do it. So what we do matters, but how we do whatever we're doing matters maybe most of all. So it's not just a matter of doing more spiritual things and less unspiritual things. It's a matter of how we bring our body and mind

[28:01]

and life into whatever it is that's in front of us. So Zen famously celebrates chopping wood and carrying water as the fulfillment of the Buddhist path. Not because chopping wood and carrying water is so great in itself, but because we have a capacity to... as you'd say, a mature Zen person is able to chop wood and carry water in a way that fulfills their spiritual practice. And the other side of that is also famously in Zen, we often come up with creative insults for our own religious observances. The highest, holiest Buddhist ceremonies are kind of derided as the grossest of distractions and the crudest of temptations.

[29:10]

There's nothing inherently spiritual or special about these ceremonies. It's just a matter of how we bring ourselves to them. So chop wood, do a chanting service, whatever we're doing, not so much fixated on what it is, which is our usual habit of mind, but focus instead on how we're doing something. A good example of this is mindfulness. So we talk a lot here about mindfulness practice. And the way we usually talk about it or understand it, mindfulness isn't tied to any kind of activity. There's not like a certain activity that's mindfulness. It's just that whatever we're doing, we can bring this quality of mindful attention. We can bring... letting go we can bring compassion attention and we can trust that that's beneficial that that can fulfill our spiritual longing and can actually bring benefit to others

[30:20]

People notice, and the great earth notices how we go about our life. We also notice what we're doing, but maybe even more so. I think all of us have brushed across somebody who did something ordinary in a way that communicated some love, some benefit. So how we do things. I remember early on in my practice at Tulsa Hara Zen Mountain Center where we do sort of intensive 90-day practice periods. I confess to Norman Fisher, who was the abbot at the time, in the midst of one of these fairly intense practice periods,

[31:29]

that I was eating too many sandwiches. So many of you know there's an important ceremonial area at Tassajara that is adjoining the kitchen. And in that area, there's the practice of ritual snacking. And this is taken very seriously by the earnest monks of Tassajara can have a real urgency. real zeal, day and night, plunging into the ceremony of snack. So I was also a very enthusiastic practitioner of this ceremony. So at least, you know, as often as possible, I'd say at least twice a day, I would eat a sandwich of, you know, peanut butter, and honey and banana, if possible.

[32:32]

Which is sometimes called the triumvirate. But I was at Tel Sahara, actually, this fall, and it seems like people have gotten smarter or something. There's still the same limited kind of palette of options. You have, like, rice cakes and soy milk and rice milk and molasses and maybe some pears or something and salt and... Soy sauce and honey. And it's amazing. It's amazing what people come up with. It's Zen art, really. It's sort of like flower arranging. You have a vase and three flowers and how you do it. I still think there's a recipe book in there. The Tathara back door. This area is called the back door of the kitchen. And the back door even kind of gets at what I was feeling, you know, which is this kind of shameful implication like the back door. So I came to the abbot, you know, sort of ashamed.

[33:36]

I've been visiting the back door very frequently. And Norman said two things. He said, first he said, yeah, we don't really get enough food in the zendo. I don't know. It would set up that we don't get enough food in the Zen. And the second thing he said that struck me more deeply was, oh, so you don't have any discipline? Who cares? Who cares that you're not disciplined? Well, I thought I was doing a practice of discipline. I thought Zen was about being disciplined. And I was failing at that discipline. So to have the abbot say, well, who cares about discipline? Really opened a window for me about what Zen practice is and isn't. It's not Zen practice isn't just about doing, carrying out the things that we've set up as the right things to do.

[34:45]

Discipline, there's a... as in phrase that the golden chains of discipline, golden chains. So in a way, discipline kind of carrying out our own idea about how we think we should be living is another kind of self-centered trap in a way. So in this model that I'm presenting this morning, I feel that discipline is about what we do. We need this kind of discipline to do the right things, you know, and that what we do matters, so we need some discipline. But freedom, real freedom, and I think in a way, at least equal benefit comes in the how we do it. So forget what you do. Bring back, retract a lot of energy, maybe 98% of your energy. Retract it from what you do and apply it, I feel anyway, as the invitation of Zen tradition. And apply that energy to how you do it.

[35:51]

Should I do this? Should I do that? Forget it. How should I do whatever it is? So we value very highly how we do things. And we also value very highly how we do them. or what we do rather, these two aspects don't obstruct each other. You know, sometimes we think, oh, what you do doesn't matter, it's just how you do it in a way that demeans or overrides what we do. But that's not at all the feeling. In fact, as we realize in the San Quentin Sangha, paying attention to how you're doing things also kind of leaks into what you do. That attention of... of taking care of your attitude and taking care of your mind and taking care of the way that you do things has a kind of subtle transformative effect on the things that you choose to do.

[37:01]

So what we do and how we do them are related. So some of you may have noticed that now we have an additional problem of thinking that not only is there a what that I'm supposed to do to be a spiritual person, but now there's a how that I'm supposed to do. Now I'm always supposed to be mindful and attentive and compassionate. And so I'm going to pick up this weight and I need to control my life to become more mindful and I need to reject my own life insofar as it's distracted and unmindful. You know, when we dig into our own attitude, into our own responses and reactions and ability to be mindful and compassionate and let go, we can see in a way that that's just as much out of our control as what we do.

[38:10]

You know, I can't always control what I do in my day. And I also can't always control my attitude or my... the way that I'm bringing myself forward to meet the things that I do. So if we stop here, if we stop at these two insights of what we do matters and how we do them matters, then we might get the wrong idea about how much control we actually have over our life. And we might also have the problem of setting up a spiritual life that's based on success and failure, self-centeredness. Both of these things, what I do and how I do them, are failable. And for some of us who are excruciatingly open to our own failure, this just becomes another kind of weight, another kind of distraction, really, from appreciating the depth and completion of our spiritual life.

[39:13]

So... How do we take care of what we do and how we do it without demeaning everything else? And demeaning each other when we're not doing it. So the third insight of Buddhism that I feel gets to this issue, we could call the who. Who is doing this stuff? Who is doing... these good activities, and who is doing them carefully? Who am I? Who is this person? This isn't something that you're going to get right or get wrong. This isn't something that can be caught up in success and failure. So in a way, this is the deepest aspect or insight of Buddhist practice. The invitation to look...

[40:17]

At who I am. Who this is who's living out this life. Sometimes we call this who that's free from success and failure. That pervades everywhere. And exists always. We sometimes call that just this person. Just this person. Or... I suppose if you really want to know who you really are, then the answer, just this person, may not be satisfying. We also call it suchness or just so. The reality of life itself, that there is existence in any moment. Opening to that, did you fail at that? Did you fail at existence? We also talk about emptiness and interconnection, Buddha nature, all of these ways of pointing to who is involved in spiritual practice or in mundane practice.

[41:30]

Who is this? My current favorite expression of who or kind of definition of who this is, is the word life. I'm really appreciating the English word life. It's a very simple word and it carries all of this wisdom that I think is just obvious to us. That life, you know, life is everywhere. Life is always everywhere. It's not something that can be that you like, that your good deeds add to or that your bad deeds subtract from. And it's good. Life is itself good and beneficial. Something worthy of appreciation and veneration. And it's not just mine. Life, you know, I'm alive, but I don't think I own life. And I also don't really think that I'm like in addition to life.

[42:31]

And I think all of us, when we think about that word, it's hard to be separate from it. I feel like I'm over here and life is over there. It's kind of non-separation. I've been meditating a lot on this word life. So open to who? Open to life itself. In the midst of all of our good actions and bad actions and careful attention and distracted attention. To have some foot on the ground of by the way you're alive. To ground ourselves in that truth. Who am I? So there are a lot of beautiful teachings about who we are in the Buddhist tradition. But For Zen people especially, it's the practice of the question, who am I? Who am I? What is this? The not knowing, the mystery that arrives in response to our question, who am I? And this question disentangles, you know, if we're caught, and I am frequently caught, in whether I'm doing the right thing, or whether I'm doing, particularly, when I think of the suffering and the pain of the world.

[43:47]

Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing enough? And am I doing it in the right way? Am I sincere enough, wholehearted enough, kind enough? Am I letting go enough? Who am I? Untangles all of that. It doesn't undermine it. I can still continue to work doing good things. If there are good things, I can do. And doing them well, if I'm able to do them well. But the weight of that is unlocked. The tangle is disentangled. when I can also be touching, who am I? A basic Buddhist teaching on this who we really are, though, also includes that who we really are is compassionate activity. Who we really are longs to benefit others. So in a way, when we touch this who we are, we find ourselves moved to be back caring about what we do.

[44:52]

Who we really are, we could say our Buddha nature, our true nature, longs to take expression in wholesome action or through wholesome action. And this again, I think is why the precepts, why beneficial action is so central to Zen, because it's understood that the awakened mind, the basic nature wants, to do good, yearns for expression through good action. So when we touch that and feel that overwhelming longing that's woven into our basic nature, that longing to benefit others and benefit the earth, then we're moved to look for wholesome actions. But it's not a matter of discipline or of what I should be doing. It's a matter of who I am longs to do good. Who I am longs to be attentive. So I want to briefly close by suggesting how this way of understanding, how these three ways of understanding Buddhist practice might

[46:16]

speak to or inform our practice of stewarding the earth, of healing the earth and one another. I see it as three kinds of gifts that we can give to our suffering planet and to the beings walking on it. The gift of what we do and the gift of how we do it and the gift of who we are. So when we take up the practice of healing the earth, we naturally feel that there are some things we should do. You know, we should change out a light bulb or write a senator or clean the beach or sit in a redwood tree. Even maybe just completely to meditate, take time to meditate on a blade of grass or a flower. So taking up the practice, we feel that there are some things that would be good to do. But then before we get overwhelmed by the question of, am I doing the right thing?

[47:19]

And am I doing enough? We keep the context of how am I doing these things that I'm doing? Sometimes it's easy to think that benefiting the earth is just about, or is more about the right light bulbs and cleaner beaches than it is about walking gently. Our abbot, our abbot Steve Stuckey often tells the story of a Native American teacher, Harry Roberts. who lived with him here in the early days of Green Gulch, who called him over one day as he was walking across the compound and said, you seem angry at the earth. Why are you angry at the earth? Something like that. A teaching that moved Steve greatly, that the earth cares how you're walking. You're manifesting anger at the earth through this careless walking. I think it's kind of an unusual idea for us in our kind of materialistic mindset. Healing the earth means doing these good things doesn't mean walking lovingly.

[48:21]

But in the Buddha Dharma, it's equally about walking lovingly. But who are we who is walking? So in Zen, particularly, any activity, any action that's based on an idea of separation, I think I'm separate and I'm going to put some good on top of this other thing that's out there. Any activity like that, which is pretty much all of our activity or all of the way we understand our activity, all of that is tainted by this separation, by this delusion of separation. So we've brought the planet to the state that we've brought the planet to by the delusion, the painful, devastating delusion that we're separate from it and can manipulate it to our own ends. So in dropping into this layer of who we are really, we can make sure that the action that we do, or we can watch that the action that we do to then heal the earth

[49:35]

doesn't come from the same basic place of being separate from it. To notice if our actions are subtly reinforcing the idea that we're separate. And to consider that in Zen, if we're participating in that, if that's really the basis of our action, then its benefit is going to be limited. There's only so far we can help as long as we think we're separate. And it's only once we see that we are exactly of the same life, that we are the same life, only then can real benefit begin. Again, which isn't to diminish or demean these other efforts, but to give them context, to free them, to deepen them. So thank you so much for your kind attention this morning as we celebrate Earth Day and the jewel of Buddhist practice.

[50:42]

It's always our hope that we come together and consider Buddhist teaching and practice Buddhist meditation together in order to bring real healing to the earth and each other. May everything we do be of lasting and profound benefit the earth and each other. Thank you. 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 sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[51:38]

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