Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for coming to Green Gulch Farm today. Her Dharma talk will be offered by Green Gulch resident teacher Sarah Tashker. She's offering incense now in the zendo, and the talk will begin shortly. I'll post the opening chant in the chat window, and when the assembly chants, please feel free to join at home with the opening verse. Dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred million kalpas, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept.

[06:56]

I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Good morning to those of you in the room and those of you joining us from your own room whose faces I can't see, but I can see a little light in front of my face that I think is coming from all of you. My name is Sarah, and I live here at Green Gulch Farm, Green Dragon Temple, and have for some time, and I'm happy to say good morning to you all on this very beautiful and cold gray winter day here at Green Gulch.

[08:05]

In this valley, all beings are rejoicing in the recent nourishing and much needed rains. Newt and crows and earthworms and fish all thriving in their noisy and quiet ways in the moist gift of the recent winter storms. It's almost the winter solstice. It's day after tomorrow, December 21st, here for those of us in the northern hemisphere where I sit. I always think about the winter solstice as a holiday very much in alignment with our Zen practice and its emphasis on the dark. The solstice is the longest night of the year and marks the totality of the cycle of turning inward, downward,

[09:15]

Sending energy, energy being very much down in the roots under the dark and mysterious life-giving soil, which supports all the growth we can see and celebrate in the light of the spring. So this is what I'd like to talk about this morning. The two truths, light and dark, duality and unity. and how caring for both is our Zen practice. Later today, there will be a Jukai ceremony right here in the sendo. Five practitioners of the Buddha way will receive the 16 great Bodhisattva precepts from teachers in our lineage, the Suzuki Roshi lineage of Zen. This is a joyous occasion as these practitioners are joining the Buddhas and ancestors in dedicating their life energy moment after moment to the complete liberation of all beings.

[10:30]

Every single one. This is truly an act of radical love. Love beyond like and dislike. worthy or unworthy, way beyond the duality of self and others. And of course, we live in the world of duality. Wake up every morning in the world of duality, of kindness and cruelty, of crows and worms and fish. We are human beings, sentient beings. We are human beings who have experienced suffering and have joined the Buddhist path of studying and living how suffering arises and studying and experiencing living bit by bit how to wake up

[11:42]

how to liberate and be liberated from that suffering. The 16 great bodhisattva precepts guides for our body, speech, and mind on our path and as the path to this great awakening that will liberate all of us together from suffering. These precepts exist in the realm of duality. In one of his talks, Suzuki Roshi says, in the realm of morality, there are two ways, good and bad. That is ethics, which is good. This is good and this is bad. So you have to take good instead of bad. That is morality. But that is because you live in the moral realm. the moral realm being the realm of duality.

[12:46]

He said, we do not ignore good and bad. It's in the realm of duality that we think about how to practice the precepts, how to practice taking refuge, vowing to return to our true nature, the teachings, the dharma, and the embodied wisdom and compassion of the Buddha as embodied in the Sangha. So we vow, I take refuge in Buddha. I take refuge in Dharma. I take refuge in Sangha. We also, in the realm of duality and in the ceremony, we talk about the three pure precepts. We take the pure precepts. I vow to embrace and sustain right conduct. I vow to embrace and sustain all good.

[13:52]

I vow to embrace and sustain all beings. We recite the 10 grave or prohibitory precepts. A disciple of Buddha does not kill. A disciple of Buddha does not take what is not given. A disciple of Buddha does not misuse sexuality. A disciple of Buddha does not lie. A disciple of Buddha does not intoxicate mind or body of self or others. A disciple of Buddha does not slander. A disciple of Buddha does not praise self. at the expense of others. A disciple of Buddha is not possessive of anything. A disciple of Buddha does not harbor ill will. A disciple of Buddha does not disparage the three treasures.

[14:59]

Suzuki Roshi told his students, when you ignore your actual activity, thinking about something else, that is not real practice. The precepts support us to pay attention to our actual human activity. Our activity that unfolds in the world we live in, the world of duality. Our small egoic self that thinks it deserves something that it has not been given. thinks that it's better or worse than others, that tries to hold on to objects or feelings or reputation to feel important or stave off suffering, that thinks it can control what is outside to control what is inside. The precepts support us to pay attention to this body, speech, and mind.

[16:08]

even when we'd rather be thinking about how to get out of these entanglements or dream of enlightenment or talk about an intellectual understanding of the teachings rather than do the work of being grounded in the truth of our life together right here and right now. With patience and diligence, with the support of the example of the Buddha, the teaching and our teachers and good Dharma friends, by taking refuge in the triple treasure of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, we may begin to practice the precepts. To entangle the karmic knots of body, speech and mind that perpetuate the delusion that we are separate and that my suffering can end without your suffering also ending.

[17:13]

That I can be liberated when you are not. The precepts, taking responsibility for our dualistic life, grounded in the truth of cause and effect, is the bodhisattva path. However, if we think and act, like the precepts begin and end in the dualistic realm of ethics or morality, we miss the mark. The teaching Suzuki Roshi offered, which is often quite difficult to understand, was this. There is no bad for those of us who understand our inmost nature. In the realm of morality, there are two ways, good and bad. That is ethics, which is good. That's what I said earlier.

[18:15]

This is good and this is bad. So you have to take the good instead of bad. That is morality. But that is because you live in the moral realm. If the precepts are just some kind of moral code, which you have in your mind, those precepts will not work at all. So Suzuki Roshi is pointing to another way. You know, instead of simply going about our usual way of using our thinking mind to measure, categorize, act, and move on, We can relate to the precepts as a reminder and a guide to pay attention to and be genuinely curious about our thoughts, speech and action.

[19:17]

The precepts can return us to presence, return us to relationship with all beings, return us to the practice of Zazen and resume our Buddha nature. Zazen. To settle. To open. To come into a relationship with our present moment human experience. To feel our body. To notice our thoughts. To feel our way back. Like reaching for a pillow behind you in the dark. To our belly. Our heart. In the direct. Immediate. And wordless.

[20:17]

Lived experience. Of being in intimate relationship. With everything. And everyone. From this place. Of embodied experience. We are in relationship with unity. And we can hear Suzuki Roshi's words in a different way. When you ignore your actual activity, thinking about something else, that is not real practice. Your actual activity is this activity, Buddha activity. Getting involved with ideas of good and bad, right and wrong, thinking of reality as self and other, Suzuki Roshi tells us, is not real practice.

[21:25]

He says, if you think, I have to observe the ten precepts one by one, that is wrong practice. So how then do we observe the precepts? How do we live in the moral human realm and take care of relative truth of sentient beings? The answer is Zazen. Just. With no idea of attainment. Just sitting. Relating to duality from the ground or underground of direct present moment experience of unobstructed reality.

[22:33]

A reality where each thing is connected to. and depends on every other thing. Where nothing is separate and no thing or being is or could ever be excluded. This is not the realm we can see with our human eyes, grasp with our human mind. This is the soil beneath our feet. the complex fecund darkness that gives rise to and is the truth of reality. One way that Suzuki Roshi talked about the way this functions was to say religion gives life to morality. He says in religious life, this life,

[23:39]

right here, of chanting and bowing, ceremonies and reading scriptures, dharma talks, sitting zazen, wholeheartedly practicing. In religious life, there is no alternative. There is only just one way. When you become quite religious, you know. There is no other way than to take one way. Water does not come up. It always comes down. So here you see the religion will give life to morality. For religious people, it is the pleasure to take good instead of bad. There is no alternative way. When we practice sazan, there is no other way than to follow the precepts.

[24:46]

From the practice of stillness and silence with the truth of our relationship with all existence. A bodhisattva finds there is no other way to relate to the appearance of suffering beings. whether inside or outside, other than wisdom and compassion. This is what the Buddha experienced. This is what the Buddha taught. Sitting under the Bodhi tree, seeing the morning star, feeling the truth of all existence. The Buddha woke up. It was the most natural thing in the world. Religious understanding is an understanding grounded in the body, in a way of being.

[25:53]

It is not the usual way of understanding with the thinking mind, the small self. When we are grounded, In the religious way of being and knowing, sometimes called big mind, reality is vast and wide. Everything fits. When we are in our small mind, our human mind, something is always left out. Grounded in zazen, big mind. Buddha mind is expressed. Our very being expresses the way reality is whole. The way the whole works. Being spacious and inclusive and fully present with things as it is is not a moral code.

[27:02]

It is what underpins or supports the arising of actions of body, speech, and mind that we can recognize as ethical or moral actions. Practicing zazen, the way things actually are, is how the precepts are kept. Suzuki Roshi said, when you forget all about the precepts and without trying to observe them in the same way as you eat when you are hungry, then naturally the precepts are there. When you forget all about the precepts and can observe them quite naturally, that is how you keep the precepts. When you do something just through your skill or just by your thought, you will not be supported by people, and so it will not help others.

[28:11]

Only when you do it with Zazen mind can you help others. You will be naturally supported. In your Zazen practice, you just sit. You have no idea of attaining anything. You just sit. What do we mean by just sit? When we just sit, we already include everything. And we are not simply a part of this cosmic being. We are one with everything. That is just an expression. But the feeling is that you include everything. And actually, this is true not just for Zazen. When you drink a cup of tea, that activity includes everything. Actually, it is so. If you become you yourself, and if your practice includes everything, moment after moment, the precepts are with you.

[29:26]

That may be more important than a verbal transmission of the precepts. If I try to explain the written precepts, it takes time. But how you keep them, in short, is to live in each moment. To be sincere with yourself always, without looking around. would like to express deep gratitude to Suzuki Roshi for coming here, for giving us these teachings and giving us his life and for entrusting the lineage and the precepts to us. May we all observe the precepts just like this.

[30:32]

so that all beings may be liberated, so that all beings, including all of us, may be free from suffering and know the true peace and joy. Imagine this, the true peace and joy that comes with everyone, every single being, knowing peace and joy. Can you imagine the joy? and peace of every single being, knowing that joy and peace all together. May the Buddha's teaching continue to live through each of us and may it go on endlessly. Thank you very much. Tension equally extends to every being and place.

[31:49]

With the true merit of Buddha's way, things are numberless. I love to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become them. Do you want to say anything, Jenny, about the Q&A?

[32:53]

So, Sarah will now take questions. She'll take some questions from people in the room. And if anybody online would like to ask a question, please send your question as a chat to GGF Zendo. And someone in the Zendo will read it. Yeah.

[34:03]

Yes, I will. Yeah. Someone asked if I could say something a little more about the darkness under the ground, pointing out that I am currently the head of the farm of the fields here at Green Gulch. So spend a lot of time thinking about the soil and what we can't see down there. Yeah. Maybe I'll just say, as a farmer, When you can see a problem, it's already too late. You know, when you have some kind of imbalance, some kind of pest buildup or disease, you've already...

[35:13]

of missed what you need to missed caring for the system, you know, the whole thing before the individual plant or insect that you can see. So the foundation of organic farming is actually taking care of all the life that we can't see, which then supports the crops, the plants, the animals that we can see, the conditions. So this is true in our practice too. What Suzuki Roshi is saying is if you practice Zazen, if you cultivate big mind, you won't see any problem, right?

[36:19]

You will naturally be able to meet each thing and each, you know, find, help each thing be nourished, you know, be itself. So... Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting time to be a farmer because, and a human being, we've developed the tools, we think, to see more and more. You know, now we can study all the bacteria and the fungal hyphae by looking at their DNA, by measuring them, right? So as humans, we really want to get to the bottom of it and cut it into little pieces and be able to grasp it and control it. You know, which in a way is why, again, like there is the wish in the organic farming community to come back to this big mind, to understand that what we're trying to do is create, to include everything.

[37:32]

not to chop it up into smaller pieces and to work for the benefit of every single part of the living system, which is everything. So this is our practice too, not leaving anything out, not thinking that we can get away with something or figure it out and control the outcome. Yeah, which kind of requires falling in love. every day with this mystery. So the question is, can I say more about how Zazen fulfills the precepts?

[38:42]

And the questioner points out that we'd see long time meditators breaking the precepts. Yeah, which I appreciate. Minds are quite good at manipulating and justifying our actions and using the ideas of morality and ethics to hide from how we separate and from one another, from our actions and create suffering. You know, this is just, I think, par for the course of being a human being with a human mind and human body.

[39:51]

So Zazen includes, completely includes, the human mind and the human body. And includes everything else. So I think the practice here is when we are involved in our thinking mind, when we are involved in what we can see and grasp and think, the light, the practice is to remember the dark. Remember what we are leaving out.

[40:53]

Remember that we are always leaving something out, that we never see everything. can ask, what else? What am I not seeing? What am I not seeing? Who am I not including? You know, and then know that it's bigger than that. Any answer you can come up with, it's bigger than that. And not to lose sight of this human mind, that and this little small self. That is still trying to grasp and turn away. You know, that is still involved in greed, hate, and delusion. We include that and take responsibility for it by practicing. By practicing Zazam. By opening up to the truth.

[41:56]

So... So you can try it for yourself. If you are practicing truly grounded in not knowing, truly grounded in opening to the way we all actually are, you know, if you can have this experience, not this experience this experience belly experience this heart experience the teaching is that the precepts will be kept you know on a on a more relative note you know it's helpful to have

[43:04]

teachers and mentors and good Dharma friends who can help us see what we are missing, you know, who can help us remember that our view is limited before we act, you know, before we get carried away and cause more suffering. Sorry to repeat this whole question.

[44:43]

I think the question is something about how we all appear different. Maybe we all have this idea that we're keeping the precepts or practicing the precepts and how people practice the precepts looks kind of different to you. We can say, or someone can say, that person's practicing the precepts, but it doesn't look like it to us, or we don't understand how, because it looks different than the way somebody else is practicing the precepts. Some people are very tight, and then when, so they, the practice for the, of the middle way would be for them to be loose, and for someone to loosen up, to loosen, and somebody else may be very tight, and the practice for them is to loosen, or, so, How does this work? Or how do we get a hold of this?

[45:46]

And I would say, again, we're in some ways we are trying to talk about something that can't be talked about, right? We are in the light and we are trying to talk about the dark. So keeping the precepts is only something each of us really can ever know in exactly the particular circumstances of what's happening, you know, that we're practicing in. So we don't know what's going on in another person.

[46:49]

We don't know if they are open or closed, if they are trying to manipulate what's happening or if they're letting go. Like we can get some clues. Again, we can see the growth above the ground and have some sense. But what's, if somebody is actually grounded in their life and including everything, And acting from that place. We don't know. We can never know. We can only know it through our own experience of it. And then we can check it out. You know, this don't know is really a don't know. So it may be that we act and we find out later, oh, that really hurt somebody.

[47:50]

Or, oh, I wasn't including everything. I left something out, you know. Now I see, you know. And the practice there is to get wider and more open and include that. You know, so the practice of the precepts are endless. There's no getting them and achieving them. You know, this is. This is really just our whole life. And the tightness and the looseness, this we can each explore how we think we're following the precepts. What is our habitual pattern of... thinking about the world and approaching it and getting stuck in right and wrong and good and bad. And when we learn about that, then we can include it in our practice and we can use that to be curious about what we're actually doing and what we're not including.

[49:03]

You know, what we're missing and in opening and turning toward what we're missing, And understanding that there is something. That we are being completely supported by everything and everyone. That's actually what's happening. Not our idea of it. And act from there or speak from there. This very. still place. Yeah, we find out more. We find out more about our human nature and Buddha nature. remember the whole thing to repeat can you i'm gonna say it after you yeah when i was listening to you i felt connected connected to all beings i get so frustrated with myself i'm often doing and saying i'm loving things

[51:00]

if I can stay with that feeling of connection, I can stop doing and saying unloving things and free myself from this chronic regret. So when we hear the teaching, when we hear the teaching of the truth of reality, Have an experience of it. You know. This is. Have an experience of recognizing the truth. You know. Not everyone can hear the teachings in that way. Not everybody is. Has. figured out or had the experience of understanding what that means in their own present experience.

[52:14]

So this place of knowing in you, you know, that you, I think you're describing as like, I feel connected, you know, it's like the knowing of the truth of connections and feeling, the feeling and way of knowing is I want to say something like this is available all the time, but I think more what I want to say is this knowing the way you're connected is there all the time, whether you can recognize it or not. Sometimes we think, we're having an experience that we recognize as, I don't feel connected, right?

[53:15]

I don't feel nice and I don't feel connected. And actually, the way to connect, the truth is that that feeling, I don't feel connected, is included, is completely included, is the way. through which you are connected to everyone. That feeling. So it's not a particular feeling, you know. Or rather, it doesn't exclude other feelings. It exists right there with them. And so it's not a matter of getting back. to some particular feeling, but rather opening to the feeling we have and the truth of it. It doesn't mean to act on it, you know, by being mean to ourselves or being mean to others.

[54:22]

It means opening to it, you know, as part of this whole that we want to care for, you know, part of the suffering world that we'd like to heal, you know? And with that mind, we meet the small mind that doesn't feel connected, you know, that's deluded, that thinks it's separate and that it can get something or get away from something. So it's good to be reminded, you know, it's good to sit zazen every day for however many minutes you have, you know, to come back to the truth, to come back to being in relationship.

[55:25]

Yeah. Yeah, I hope that's helpful. Sorry, I can't see your faces. Are there recommendations for celebrating the winter solstice? Well, here at Green Gulch, we have a lovely ceremony every year where we share poems and words of the season, some written for the occasion, some found. We read a poem by one of our Zen ancestors, The Harmony of Difference. No, no, no. That's on the equinox. That's the equinox, the harmony of difference and equality of the light and the dark balancing. What do we chant?

[56:27]

We chant a Gary Snyder poem, Prayer for the Great Family. So American Zen. Farm, Gringold Farm Zen. Yeah, I think for me too, just... Remembering, you know, remembering to honor and experience the light, the dark, our life, you know. The solstice is just one day to do this, and I encourage you to do it, and then I encourage you to do it every day. You know, are we here? Do we notice? Do you notice the light every day? Do you notice, I've noticed that the sunsets seem to be brightest in the, well now actually, but also in the fall and the spring. They're amazing, the colors, amazing.

[57:32]

Do you notice what temperature the air is where you are? Do you notice the sounds? So you can celebrate every day and you can, Take time to connect. What does it mean for you to honor the dark that supports our life? And what words or offerings can you find that resonate with that feeling? yeah maybe maybe just if there's one more question that everyone is patiently sitting in the window here please be comfortable everyone okay okay thank you all very much thank you all very very much

[58:44]

Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much for coming. The moment here I will enable, so anyone who wants to unmute and say goodbye is welcome too. First, I wanted to direct your attention to the chat, where I've put in a link offering a way to donate to Zen Center. We really do depend on and appreciate your donations, and anything you can offer really is sincerely appreciated to keep these offerings and our programs going. So thank you very much for anything you can offer and for being here today. And if you would like to unmute and say goodbye, please do so now. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah.

[59:54]

I will thank her. I will thank her for you. Nice to see you guys. Thank you. Yes. Okay, everyone. See you later. Thank you again. We'll end the meeting now. Goodbye. Good friends.

[60:12]

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