Good morning. What a glorious, glorious Green Gulch day. I hope all of you get to take a walk to the garden or down to the ocean or just sit on the lawn and appreciate the life that we share with our environment and nature. This talk and yesterday's talk at the City Center are in honor of Earth Day, Earth Week, I guess, and I hope many of you had some Earth Day activities that you participated in both the city center and Green Gulch and probably Tassajara had Earth Day ceremonies.

[01:03]

And at Green Gulch we chanted a traditional verse that we chant to protect life. And usually it's for a person who's ill or not doing well, who's in the hospital or something, we have a regular practice of chanting for people, but this time we chanted for the earth and dedicated the positive energy of this chanting and our deep wish for the well-being of the earth. So I invite you to offer up a deep wish of well-being for the earth as well. I wanted to tell a Jataka tale, which I recently learned.

[02:05]

Jataka tales are stories of the Buddha before he became the Buddha, and often they're stories of when he was Shakyamuni Buddha, before he was the Buddha, was different animals, sometimes a rabbit or a tiger, some of you know these stories, and they often exhibit In the animal that is the Bodhisattva, Shakyamuni Buddha Bodhisattva, before he was a Buddha, they expressed enormous compassion for beings and actions that are selfless. So this one is called the Palasa Tree. It's the Jataka tail called the Palasa Tree. So once upon a time, the bodhisattva was a golden gosling.

[03:08]

And this gosling lived in the Himalaya, the Himalaya, and flew, when it grew up to be a golden goose, it flew amongst the mountains and ate in this beautiful lake where there was wild rice growing. And it always passed this one tree, a palasa tree, and would stop there as he was going to and fro from eating and from his cave where he lived. And he began to be very good friends with the tree spirit of the palasa tree. And... One day, another bird flew onto the palasa tree, and this bird had just eaten a very ripe fruit from the banyan tree. And this bird was sitting in the fork of the trunk of the palasa tree and then flew up, but he left some droppings there on the tree.

[04:25]

And inside those droppings was a seed, a seed of the banyan tree. Well, it didn't take too long before that seed sprouted. And the next time the golden goose came flying by and came to visit his friend, the tree deity, the tree spirit, he noticed this four inch tall little banyan tree, little banyan tree that had just started to grow. And the golden goose said to his friend, that is not a good thing that that banyan tree is growing there. This is dangerous. If you leave it there, it will get bigger and bigger, and its roots will choke you, and it will destroy your home. It will destroy the palasa tree. But the tree spirit did not heed him. The tree spirit said, well, I kind of like it there, and I'm gonna be a refuge for the banyan tree.

[05:28]

And I like its red roots and the little tendrils that are hanging down. I really like it, so I'm not gonna do that. And the golden goose persisted and said, even though right now it doesn't seem dangerous, eventually it will cast down its roots and it will choke you. But the tree spirit would not heed the golden goose, and the golden goose realized it was futile to keep pressuring him, and the golden goose returned to his cave. Well, just as he had thought, the banyan tree began to grow bigger and bigger, and it sent down these roots, and they circled the trunk of the tree and they split it limb from limb and it took up all the nourishments and the soil and the water and it made shade so that the palasa tree didn't receive sunlight and pretty soon the tree was destroyed and the tree's spirit was without a home and the palasa tree was just a stump.

[06:45]

So this story, I think, traditionally was used to illustrate even small, unwholesome actions, small, that we think, oh, that doesn't matter, that's not gonna bother anything, that won't have effects, strong effects, can, if left untended, can grow and really change and alter the whole course of our lives. And I think in this case, we can think of this, if you can picture this scene that I just described, you can think of this as our situation that we're finding ourselves in now in terms of our global emergency, our climate emergency, global warming, And everything that comes along with that, global warming is almost code for the enormous interconnected effects of our actions.

[08:05]

And, you know, a hundred or so years ago, the invention of the combustion engine and so forth, How lovely. We get to enjoy this, the little green tendrils and the lovely bright roots. And how nice. And yet, year after year after year, as this has grown and grown and affected our world, we are at the point now, and I would say going close to the tipping point from what I've read, of destroying our earth and our life as we know it. I wanted to couple this story, this Jataka story, with another story, which is an Aesop story, which I realized goes very beautifully with the palasa tree story, and it's the story of the golden goose, which you probably grew up on.

[09:15]

So in the story of the golden goose, there's a couple that very happily realized that their goose, their goose laid golden eggs. And every day there was a golden egg there and this couple who was originally just a very simple farming couple became more and more and more wealthy. And also with that wealth, greed began to grow and they wanted more and more and they wanted the gold, and they wanted it faster, so they decided, well, let's kill the goose and open her up and get all the gold. Well, after they did that, and they just found that it was a regular goose. There wasn't any gold inside. And with their own greed and acquisitiveness, they destroyed that which had been supporting them so beautifully.

[10:18]

So I think these two stories resonate. They're not exactly... The motifs are different, but they both have this golden goose, and they speak to each other. So I realized the unskillfulness of speaking in such a way that that frightens people or that causes despair and despondency. But I don't think the words are what actually will cause the despair and despondency or fear even. But if we open our eyes and bring our full attention to what is happening in our world, we will feel a profound, painful,

[11:20]

feelings. And I, in some ways, I realize I'm preaching to the choir here, and yet I know from my own experience that I can have a kind of, you know, major kind of eye-opening experience and turn towards our situation, and then it will fade. And I'll think, well, you know, of course I'm doing the best I can, and maybe lapse into habitual ways of doing things, thinking about things. And I want to encourage us all to do not out of fear, but because of our practice, because of our practice mind, to take up this issue of the climate emergency or our environment. Now, In looking at the Buddha's teachings, the Dharma, you know, there's so many teachings.

[12:31]

If you take them up, it will help illuminate what's happening. You can pull out the bodhisattva vow, the vow to live for the benefit of all beings, live for the benefit of all beings, not in a theoretical way, but in our daily life, how do we express this in our small actions? in our choices, in our choices of what to eat, what to drive, what to wear, what to buy. And this will take sometimes education and kind of work on our part. But if we're going to make our vows of living for the benefit of others, for the benefit of all beings, make them real, it will take a kind of intelligence and wisdom on our part. I think human beings have enormous intelligence, but the intelligence does not mean necessarily wisdom.

[13:34]

There's cleverness and human intelligence that can invent and create, as we know, enormous improbable machines and events in situations that may not be wholesome, may not be helping, or may be helping very few in a very particular way. So it's not enough to have our human intelligence. We need to temper and or illuminate it with wisdom, wisdom and compassion. So, the bodhisattva vow, there's one way of looking at the bodhisattva vow or breaking it down into four methods, maybe, of helping others.

[14:37]

One is giving, generosity. The second, kind speech. The third, beneficial action. And the fourth, identity action. So just as in the story of the golden goose that laid the golden eggs, there's enormous amount of greed in our culture that is fostered by consumer culture, that's fostered by, as you know, advertisement. And this has been going on so long that it's become, you know, so many years we've been living in this way that it's normalized, you know. the enticing beckoning to get and buy and acquire, and that's equated with happiness.

[15:38]

But as we know, our happiness, as we know very, I'm sure each one of us knows, because we've tried, I know, because I've tried, Thinking, and I remember as a child thinking, if I just got this toy, then I would be happy. Then that would be it. And I would get the toy. And, you know, two days, three days, it'd be like boring, you know. And then there'd be the next thing that I would want. And I remember thinking, oh, this won't last. No matter how much I imagine it will take care of things that won't last. This is samsara. This is our samsaric world where we're spinning and never satisfied and wanting more. If only I had this, if only. And this is studied, you could say, this samsaric mind, and used to sell products and for us to consume more and more.

[16:50]

And of course, the more we consume, rather than our happiness quotient going up, it goes lower. And not only that, we have anxiety and feelings of isolation and loneliness and jealousy, et cetera, et cetera, which fuels more consuming, et cetera. So, we're all caught in this. We're all caught in this, and I think our Buddhist teachings bring up contentment, true contentment, living a simple life, not having an excess of anything, really. And how to live that way in a balanced way is a challenge for us. What are our needs?

[17:51]

And I think we've proved to ourselves when we're sometimes living with not that much, and in a very simple way, how delightfully happy we can be. I always think of camping as a wonderful example of this, to be out in nature with everything on our back or in our tent, you know, and the deep contentment that arises from living in that way. Or in a retreat, for example, where the usual influx of distractions and entertainments and so forth are let go of, and a deep satisfaction of living very simply arises and fills our body-mind and cannot be denied So this consumerism and acquisitive voraciousness that is consuming our earth, that is changing from the, I would say, you know, even with all the obfuscation and the disinformation and the enormous amount of energy

[19:21]

no pun intended there, the money that's gone into creating some alternative view of what's happening, there is consensus among scientists and the world that we are in a most dangerous predicament right now caused by our own actions and appetites and lack of wisdom about the effects. So these four methods of guidance for Bodhisattva, the first being giving is a direct counter to greed. Generosity is what meets greediness or wanting and going after more than we actually need to turn that and In fact, in the essay on these four methods, Dogen Zenji, the Zen Master Dogen Zenji, offers a practice of leaving the flowers to the field as generosity.

[20:40]

And you could think of that as taking good care of our earth, leaving the beauty without... The kind speech as a method, a bodhisattva method, brings up the power of kind speech, the power of kind speech to turn nations. And I think each one of us can make personal changes in our lives, and you know what they are. And maybe you thought, gee, I probably should get those. compact fluorescent bulbs that I've been thinking about getting. You know, we can do that, we can eat locally, we can get a hybrid, we can walk and bicycle, we can... But it's not gonna be enough, although it has great power. It has great power to change the minds of those around us and also change nations.

[21:49]

Kind speech can change nations. How do we use kind speech to wake ourselves up and wake others up to what's happening? And joining with others to do that and do actions, small and great. Kind speech has enormous power. What tends to not wake people up is harsh speech and angry speech and name-calling and blaming. And people, as you know, as we all know, will put up defenses and close down. So our effort to speak with wisdom, with kindness and intelligence and wisdom

[22:50]

together and with compassion. And part of being able to speak that way is to educate ourselves. The third method is beneficial action. And it's very specific. Beneficial action is skillfully to help all, it says, all classes of sentient beings. So we're not just talking about human beings. People, animals, plants, and I would say the soil, which is really just alive beings of various types, microbes, and home to sentient beings. People, animals, plants, all classes of sentient beings. Beneficial action is to skillfully help all classes of sentient beings. That is to care for their near and distant future, and to help them with skill.

[23:57]

This is from the Avatamsaka Sutra, which is a sutra from India, very, very old, about how a bodhisattva, a one who has awoken to their interconnectedness with beings and wants to live for the benefit of beings, and turns their life in that way. Very specifically, all classes of sentient beings for their near and distant future. So this isn't theoretical or saving all sentient beings, the bodhisattva vow, but what actions can help, not only right now, but thinking in the distant future. I've been reading in preparation for these talks a lot And this information has been... I'm awestruck by the enormity of what's going on.

[25:12]

And the truth of one other main Buddhist teaching of interconnectedness or interdependence when depending on this, this comes to be. With the cessation of this comes the cessation of that. Our actions have effects. So if you begin to study what's going on and see the effects of carbon emissions, the warming of the atmosphere, the acidification of the oceans, the changes in weather with forest fires that are year-round now in California, it seems, the melting of the Tibetan Plateau, the receding of the glaciers. I recently saw a wonderful DVD, it's in three parts, I think, called Wild China, and it was talking about the Tibetan Plateau, these glaciers that are sacred, Mount Everest,

[26:19]

and the Himalaya, and the rivers, the huge rivers that flow from these glaciers, the Yangtze and the Yellow River and the Ganges and other rivers, and then in these deltas of these rivers, literally billions of human beings are alive because of the life-giving of these rivers. And those glaciers are receding and melting And the devastation and the suffering that not perhaps right now, although it has begun, and lakes drying up and drought, but not too distant future, the devastation of billions of people, not to mention other species and animals and plants. So it's... the horrendousness and the pain, the deep pain, is necessary, I think, to wake up.

[27:30]

It has to feel personal. Our compassion is woken up by feeling the personal, that we personally are affected. And we're personally affected when we love and care for the places around us and beings and when we know beings know their stories this will help us to feel this compassion and to have passionate action stem from this so the distant near and distant future, to care about the near future and the distant future. This is hard. We're often, we have some ideas like, well, it'll take care of itself. It always has. Or maybe even some Dharma words that we apply like, well, everything's impermanent.

[28:32]

Or some, what I would say as a distortion of Dharma, you know, we have the teaching of impermanence, but the teaching that all things that have come to be will come apart. All composite things will come to an end. But that teaching isn't, and my actions will help to destroy them. That's not the teaching of impermanence. So to take a Dharma teaching and apply it in an unexamined way, I think is dangerous and is not compassionate. Same with the teachings of karma. Karma is action, and consequences that come from action are kind of the two kinds of karmas, the karma of voluntary action and the fruit of that action.

[29:33]

Both together are karma. And the distortion of that teaching is something like Well, you know, because of past actions, they deserve that. They deserve this, you know, that this happened to them, as if they were living there and they flooded or Katrina happened and they, you know, some kind of, this is a distortion of the teaching that doesn't include compassion and understanding and compassionate, beneficial action. So I think we have to be very careful about the two glib ways of applying our Dharma teaching to this situation. I think another one that I've actually heard is, well, it will be better for the earth if the population goes down anyway. And this is a kind of...

[30:34]

I think it would not be kind speech to say to families and villages and whole countries that, you know, it's better for half your population and half the species to be wiped out because then the earth will flourish or something. These are, I would say, distortions and faulty thinking, you know, a faulty way of taking Dharma teachings. So the last of these four methods is called identity action, which is, I would say, interdependence, or knowing that our life and the life of others and the life of the earth and the mountains and the waters, you cannot pull them apart. We are identified completely.

[31:43]

And our nature and the nature of others, the nature of the earth, is the same nature, which is without an abiding self, without a separateness. And to have our thinking and action flow from this identity. studying the interconnectedness of all these things, the temperature rising, deforestation, the lack of ability to take carbon dioxide out of the air, the albedo effect, which is, that word albedo comes from albus, which means white like albino. The albedo effect is when these glaciers and snow, because of, it's called, Black carbon, which is particulates in the air that then, coming from coal and diesel engines and cooking fires that use vegetable matter and dung, that is cooking fires on a mass scale, millions of people, and the particulates go in the air, then fall back down on the snow and hinder this reflecting back effect of the glaciers and the snow.

[33:10]

So there's... and wood fires, you know, and these... So seeing it all, and populations rising and needing fire, needing food, how this all comes together. And seeing the enormity of it, knowing it will take enormous... coming together of people of like minds, not just our own individual actions, but we have to start there, but coming together with others. And I recently read something about the caterpillar, which I'm quite fond of, the story of the metamorphosis of butterfly caterpillar to butterfly as a story of our own transformation in practice, where we you know, take time and make a space or a container, the cocoon, and within that, you know, transform, actually change.

[34:17]

And I've told that story as a way of talking about initiation and transformation in practice, but recently I read from a website, which I'll mention later, the Pata Mama website, where they take this same teaching about the caterpillar and in a very helpful way for how we can think about what's happening now. The caterpillar makes this cocoon, this environment, right? And then it eats and it's a voracious, I didn't really think about this part, and it eats and eats and is consuming everything. And at this point, there are what they call, in the molecular structure of the caterpillar, imaginal cells within the body of the caterpillar that find each other and they're not the majority of the cells but they have had this imagination that things can be different than this voracious consumptive you know the imaginal cells find each other and come together and kind of leave the caterpillar which actually turns into soup and they

[35:32]

are the beginnings of the transformation and turn into butterfly. So out of this consuming machine, out of this seemingly voracious, unstoppable situation that we find ourselves in, there are beings. I would say we have a room full of them right now. who have imagination, who find each other, who will work together to do what we can to turn this, to turn this. And it's, this is our opportunity. I've often imagined, what would I have done had I lived in Europe during World War II? What would I have done? Would I have seen what was coming? for my family as a Jewish person from a Jewish family, would I have seen, would I have been able to, you know, come together with people and the resistance, what would I have done?

[36:39]

This has always been a, you know, since I've been little, like, what would I have done? And the fact is, we are in a situation like that, where people are saying, where we can find out, we are at, in a dire situation, And it's very hard, you know, especially living at Green Gulch, right, where the beauty and the frogs and the springtime and the sound of the ocean in the morning crashing and the stars, we can see the Milky Way here, you know, can, will this lull me into things seem to be fine for me, you know, and people I live with, this is, or can Can I, out of that love that swells in me as I wake up each day here, can that spur me to open my eyes and to do what needs to be done and join with others?

[37:51]

Out of love, Bodhisattva vow, living for the benefit of others in this life, in these days that are left of this very life. You know, we have these wonderful bee workshops here, and they're getting to be quite... well attended there was like 30 or 40 people at the last beekeeping workshop that alan hawkins has been doing uh for experienced beekeepers and also new beekeepers and i heard um i was either reading it or heard it on npr something about the collapse you know of the of the colonies that's happening and i think i was reading about it and in this article it said something like well you know the bees They only pollinate a certain number of crops. They don't pollinate all the crops. So if we lose the bees... And I thought, if we lose the bees... So I looked up what other crops that the bees pollinate, knowing, having read that by the middle of the century, we could lose 20 to 50% of the species that are now alive now.

[39:16]

This is a figure that I've read in a number of places. the possibility of losing that many of the species on the earth. And bees are particularly close to my heart. And so I just read, and I thought this would be interesting, the crops that are essential to have bees pollinate them. And imagine, if you will, while I'm reading this, a life for yourself or your children or your grandchildren or the beings that are to come. These are the crops that we would lose. These are the essential and that need these greatly. Kiwi, Brazil nut, canola oil, turnips, watermelon, coriander, cantaloupe, cucumber, squash, macadamia, apple, mango, passion fruit, avocado, allspice,

[40:21]

apricot, sweet cherry, sour cherry, plum, almond, pear, blackberry, cocoa, vanilla. And then those that moderately need bees, mustard, coffee, figs, strawberries, soybeans, currants, red currants. This is, we create our world through our karmic actions of body, speech, and mind. We create a world ourselves by our thinking and collectively, our collective action as a nation, as a human, as the human species.

[41:24]

through our actions, create worlds. But these worlds are not fixed things. These are the teachings. They are not solid things. They are able to be changed. They change and are able to be transformed. And our actions are part of this change. So to feel this is our responsibility, and I had mentioned this Pachamama, which means nature, I think, means nature in Ecuadorian, or a tribe in Ecuador, and there's a group called Pachamama that's very active all over the world, and I've just been introduced to...

[42:26]

what they're doing and want to check it out more for myself. I can't endorse it other than I trust the people that I've met who are involved. And someone sent me something about Ecuador, which I didn't realize, but they passed with 64% a new system of environmental protection which gives nature rights, like human rights, but it's nature rights. And this is part of their constitution now, which I didn't know of, maybe some of you did. And nature, or Pachamama, has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions, and processes. And the right to restoration. These are written now into their constitution. I was so moved by that. To... And this way of turning and the ability to think in this way and think with others in this way, this is our wisdom and our compassion.

[43:37]

This comes out of wisdom and compassion. So I encourage all of us to take this up for both self and other, which is really the same. And find the joy, you know, in working with others in this way. And also through our practice, you know, these very sad things that I've been talking about to practice and practice our meditation, our sitting, our Sangha life, our teaching and studying the Dharma, so that we will be able to find our composure, our calm mind, our flexible and buoyant mind, our compassionate mind, to be able to be stable enough to be there for others during these difficult times.

[44:44]

So in all these different ways, we can be of benefit to others. So not to neglect our practice. our actions and the actions of nonviolence are both, you know, on the cushion and off the cushion. I just wanted to leave with a, or end with a kind of retelling of the Golden Goose fairy tale. So this couple, this couple that had the Golden Goose decided how grateful they were to this goose for laying day after day these beautiful golden eggs that they exchanged for food and clothing. And they gave lots of contributions to groups that were helping others in hospitals. And the eggs kept coming and they kept giving.

[45:48]

And through their entire life, till they were old people, they gave, they received and gave and took good care of that goose. fed her, petted her, gave her comfortable quarters. And the goose finally died, you know, ripe old age. And she was, you know, there was a big ceremony to thank her. May our intention equally extend to every being.

[46:38]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_98.09