This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Amazingly beautiful day we have here. So for those of you who don't know me, my name is David Zimmerman. And I have lived and worked at San Francisco Zen Center for the last 11 years. And I am currently in the position of program director. So that's my current challenge, if you will. First, I'd like to offer a warm welcome to all of you. And I'm curious how many people are here for the first time today? Great. Well, welcome, warm welcome to all of you. I hope that in your experience today, you find something that nourishes you in whatever particular way that you might need at this time. And thank you for being here on a July 4th weekend, you know, rather than up in the mountains somewhere camping or something like that.

[01:08]

So as you know, on Monday, it's our national holiday. And we celebrate once again a defining moment of independence and liberation. Get closer to my notes. While many of us at San Francisco Zen Center definitely acknowledge and thank you, this historical significant day of July 4th, being our National Independence Day, the Sangha also acknowledges a slightly different occasion. And that occasion, or moment of celebration, is the founding of Tal Sahara Zen Mountain Center. And for those of you who don't know, Tal Sahara is our monastery that's located in the Los Padres National Forest, which is just east of Big Sur. And it was founded on July 4, 1967. And we celebrate down there by having a little mini parade, a wonderful meal, usually pizza, and skid night.

[02:19]

And then afterwards, there's dancing. So it's always something that we look forward to. But we don't say that we're celebrating Independence Day. We say that we're celebrating Interdependence Day. So we call it our Interdependence Day celebration. Because as Buddhists, we understand that we are not independent beings. We do not have separate selves, but we are rather dependently co-arisen along with all causes and conditions. So we celebrate our interdependence in a way that we celebrate our lives and liberation together with every being, all of us here today. And we acknowledge the awakened connectivity, which is our true realm of freedom. It's the freedom that we really need to celebrate. So as you know, Buddhists seem to have this affinity for the number three.

[03:24]

And so there is a third historical occasion that Zen Center is also acknowledging, if you will, this week and this month. So besides the founding of our nation and the founding of Tassajara, we are also acknowledging the third anniversary of the 2008 Basin Complex fire and the efforts that went into saving Tassajara three years ago from destruction by what became the third largest fire in California history. Like I said, Tassajara is the oldest Buddhist monastery in the U.S. And it resides in a rugged wilderness that's connected to the outside by a single unpaved 14-mile dirt road that goes from 1,500 feet to 5,000 feet and then back down again to 1,500 feet, all in the distance of 14 miles. So you can get a sense of the landscape around Tassajara.

[04:25]

So Suzuki Roshi, our founder, really... wanted to have a monastery there because it reminded him of the wilderness in China, where many of the monks and reclusives would practice in order to get away from the worldly things of the world. However, this location also makes it particularly vulnerable in cases of emergency. So it's very hard to get in and out very quickly. It's about two hours from the closest hospital. In the weeks leading up to the fire, we were advised by fire professionals to evacuate Tassajara several times, actually. And we did evacuate the guest and a number of the students at the very beginning. And then a small crew remained behind and prepared a few weeks to protect the monastery from when the fire actually arrived. And as many of you know... On July 9th, however, when there was a predicted shift in weather conditions, there was a final call for evacuation in which all of us, including all the fire professionals who were helping us, left and started caravaning up the road.

[05:41]

During this final evacuation, five monks, including myself, who was director at the time, and Abbott Steve Stuckey, as well as Marco Volkl, and Colin Gibson and Graham Ross all chose not to abandon Tassajara, but instead to turn back mid-evacuation and return to our spiritual homestead to see what we could do in order to protect it. Next day, when the fire finally arrived, it didn't creep in as the firefighter professionals had said it would. Instead, it came swiftly. with 40 to 50-foot flames at times pouring down the mountains around us into the valley. The wildfire literally converged on us. But with the benefit of weeks of preparation, and particularly with the sprinkler system that we had jury-rigged on the buildings, which we dubbed Dharma Rain, and also with the support of innumerable beings, including many of you in this room,

[06:52]

we were able to save Tal Sahara. So even though we lost a handful of outlying buildings, had we not been there, I think we would have lost all of Tal Sahara. It probably would have burned all to the ground. So the story of the Basin Complex fire and the Zen Center community and wider community's response to it has been written up as an account by Colleen Morton Bush. Hello, Colleen. Welcome. It's here today. So the book will be released on this coming Thursday, July 7th, which is just three days shy of the third anniversary of the fire. So anyhow, the title of the book is Fire Monks, Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara. I need to keep an eye on my watch. So there are going to be a number of book readings and other related events at Zen Center and throughout the Bay Area.

[07:57]

So if you're interested in learning more about the events during the fire, please come and join one of these. Also, maybe read the book. There is going to be a special main event at Zen Center at City Center on July 14th. So you are welcome. I want to say that I think Colleen has done an amazing job of recounting the days of the fire and the events surrounding it. She's woven through the book wonderful Dharma teachings about practice, particularly in the midst of adversity. So I just want to publicly acknowledge and express my deep gratitude and congratulations to Colleen. This is a three-year effort that she has put into this. So, you know, frankly, I myself have someday dreamt about writing a book, but the closest I've come to now is actually just being a character in this book. So they may have to do it at some point. So, you know, a number of the Zen Center Sangha were actually not so keen of the idea of a book about the fire.

[09:03]

And perhaps they were afraid it would either glorify or defile in some way the experience that was shared by the whole community. Or perhaps they were concerned that that book would raise up the efforts of a select few while not really acknowledging the contribution and the impact that the fire had on many, many of us. So I can understand and empathize with many of these views, but I do feel in the end that the account that Colleen has written is a wonderful Dharma gate. And she has skillfully woven throughout the book with great care the voices experience, and practice of over 100 people. But my intention today is not to recount the fire, the story of the fire. I'll leave that for the book. Instead, the anniversary and the release of the book offer me an opportunity to explore again what I learned from the fire and how the fire, in its own way, taught me about practice, about living,

[10:10]

and how it continues to still burn within me years later as a Dharma friend, a teacher, and a guiding insight. And finally, I want to speak about how we are all so-called fire monks when we make the effort to meet the conflagration of the present moments with a mind of attention, equanimity, and courage. I share some of my experiences with you, not to aggrandize myself, but as I hope that you might find in them something useful for your own life and practice. Colleen actually got the term firemonks from a cartoon by Tom Myers that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle several days after the fire. The cartoon expresses a playful rendition of an encounter between Zenmine, which is represented by a young monk in the cartoon, and an angry wildfire needing to find a place of inner peace and balance.

[11:15]

And in the last panel of the cartoon, after the fire has been subdued by the monk, there is a small child shown jumping up and down, exclaiming, when I grow up, I want to be a fire monk. Mm-hmm. a very delightful cartoon and I really appreciate the kind of what Tom Myers was actually able to capture, not even having been there, you know, about the experience of it. And I want to suggest that simply to be a practitioner of the Buddha way is to be a fire monk. Because in our practice we are called upon almost daily to meet and skillfully engage the often perilous and unrelenting wildfires of of human existence. The Buddha in one of his early teachings called the Fire Sermon spoke to the nature of this particular fire and the conditions that give rise to it. Monks, the all is a flame.

[12:21]

What all is a flame? The eye is a flame. Forms are a flame. Consciousness at the eye is a flame. Contact at the eye is a flame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye, experience that's pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain, that too is a flame. The same with all five senses. A flame with what? A flame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. A flame, I tell you, with birth, aging, and death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, and despairs. The Buddha characterized every aspect of our human existence in daily life as burning. He wanted us to feel this burning in our life with its difficulty.

[13:29]

uncertainty, and stress, and for us to realize that this burning is inherent and impersonal, and that it applies to pleasant and unpleasant phenomena alike. Life is like this. This is the first noble truth. All conditioned things are impermanent, and our engagement with what is impermanent causes and cessation of burning, a sense of dis-ease, and that the sensation of burning only ends when we abide in pure awareness, that which has no movement, has no grasping, and is free of burning. In our modern life, we often hear or witness heart-rendering accounts of war, rape, torture, neglect, environmental devastation, nauseating greed, and crimes of hate.

[14:36]

And then there are the daily petty annoyances, irritations, disappointments, and concern. How can we bear witness to these seemingly endless fires? And how might we dwell among the flames, doing what we can to alleviate the causes and conditions of the suffering of ourselves and others, while not getting burned ourselves and not suffocating in despair. Although all things in the world are burning, the Buddha taught that we have a choice. The choice is not to add fuel to the fire, not to make the burning personal, and not to be identified with the burning. In each moment, we have a choice to either add fuel in the form of wanting, aversion, and ignorance, or not.

[15:40]

Can we be in the fire and not of it? Can we have a calm, clear, cool mind, even though the inferno of life continues to burn around us and in us? The Buddha taught that we can be liberated from this human fire of existence, and to do so requires that we recognize and accept without grasping and without resistance things as they are, or as Izuki Roshi said, things as it is. That is, that we recognize that all conditioned phenomena are impermanent, constantly changing, and unreliable. As all things are constantly in motion, I experience suffering whenever I try to cling to something, anything. Whenever I try to demand that things be different or expect life, expect another life than the one I have, or I deny the conditions that I actually find myself in.

[16:56]

Can you see the flame on the altar behind me and the candle? When you observe closely the candle's flame, you can see that it's in constant motion. It also appears substantial enough, but if you tried to grasp it, you couldn't. In fact, you would burn your hand trying. Like flames, all conditioned things are in constant dynamic motion, and as such, are ungraspable. Just as I cannot grasp flames, I cannot grasp the fluidity and the immensity of my life, nor the vastness of my true nature. Nor can I grasp the subtle luminosity that is shining from each and every one of us in this room, which is by definition unsubstantial. So what did the experience of an actual wildfire teach me about practicing with the everyday fire of human suffering?

[18:10]

The fire taught me, at a very visceral level, the importance of cultivating the capacities of stability, including equanimity and grounded awareness, authenticity manifesting as a clear flexible mind, and vulnerability by being open to what is as it is, without resistance and defensiveness. And zazen is the training through which we often naturally develop these capacities. Meeting the YFIRE illustrated for me the importance of continually preparing the ground of practice. Despite the presence of the Indians fire, which was standard by a campfire, I believe, started by a campfire and lurked near Tassajara for about almost two weeks before the lightning strike that actually started the Basin Complex fire, which was north of us, we had done minimal effort at Tassajara in order to prepare for fire to make Tassajara fire safe and a defensible space.

[19:29]

But it wasn't until our first evacuation on the 23rd of June when things seemed to be much more serious that we really made a much more concentrated effort in trying to attend to preparing for the fire by clearing extra brush, by cutting fire lines, and by watering the buildings and plants with dharma rain and hoses. So isn't this often the case? that we don't get serious about our practice until something big comes along and throws us out of our normal comfort zone. We don't need to wait for a looming disaster to prepare the grounds of our heart minds by letting go and by clearing out the unhealthy attachments and harmful behaviors which are ready fuel for the flames of our passions. And just as Tassajara residents jury-rigged Dharma Rain on the buildings at Tassajara in order to raise the humidity level in the valley, as well as to keep the flames at bay, so too can we find a way to water our lives with a calling rain of kindness, generosity, compassion, and mindfulness.

[20:56]

so that when the flames of aversion and anger and desire actually approach, conditions are such that our karmic selves are less likely to catch fire. So by attending to our ground of stability, we cultivate a capacity to be not so easily unsettled by the challenges, the fears, and the emotional intensity of our life. This is cultivating equanimity. And every time I get on my cushion, I am training my mind-body continually to return to a state of readiness, what Suzuki Roshi called beginner's mind. This is the mind that is free of concepts about how things should be, a mind that is open, receptive, curious, and welcoming. So with beginner's mind, I simply observe and see more directly the conditions that are arising in the moment, without obscuring judgments, without concepts, self-concerns, and personal agendas.

[22:10]

Resting in a settled, clear, and grounded awareness, I am more able to let go of reactionary impulses and see circumstances as they actually are. So being novices in fire at Tassajara, we didn't really expect a particular kind of fire to come in, whether it was gonna be fast or slow or from any particular direction. Although we certainly ventured a number of guests along with the fire professionals who had come in to help us at times. Stuart Carlson and some others, Jote, who Stuart Carlson is a fire captain and one of our main supporters and friends during that time. would joke often that the fire would come in slowly enough, because fire has a tendency to back down mountains into valleys in that way. He joked that he would be sitting on a lawn chair on the front lawn with a hose in his hand and a bottle of beer, and just sit there and drinking and just kind of slowly putting water on the fire as it made its way in.

[23:15]

But the rest of us really didn't know what to expect. So all we did was prepare for what eventually would arrive. With beginner's mind, we can see that the nature of fire is neither malicious nor magnanimous. Fire is simply fire. Fire heats. It's the nature of fire to simply burn. And it's the nature of humans to have emotions, desire, and confusion. But it is also our nature to be able to let go of this delusion and settle into a space of natural clarity and essentialness that's always there, that's at the heart of being. Fire has no intentionality. It's I who make it personal. Any fear that I may have felt was simply part of my own consciousness.

[24:16]

The fire is burning in my own mind. Any sense of danger that I had is something that I created. One has to notice that and take responsibility for what is in one's own mind. And it's also important to recognize that we are the elements. We are fire, wind, earth, and water. Fire is part of our nature. It is not other than us. We must learn to befriend our entire being, including those parts of us that we are afraid of or uncomfortable with. My experience with the fire affirmed for me the importance of taking reverence in what is called don't know mind, a mind that is akin to a beginner's mind.

[25:19]

in which we have no expectations. We are simply ready to meet whatever arises, trust, and then let go. So we had a nickname for the Basin Complex fire at Tassajara. It was nicknamed the three-day-away fire, because when we first evacuated, we were told by the fire professionals that the fire was three days away. And then three days later, when it hadn't arrived, they said, well, it's three days more away. And this continued for two and a half weeks. So all we could do to avoid a constant sense of anxiety was actually to rest and don't know mine, accompanied with lots of patience. I was also new to fire. I've never had an experience with fire before. And I was new to taking on leadership of a community, particularly during a time of crisis. For me, there were many unknowns during this time, and I didn't have all the information I thought I needed, nor did I often feel actually confident in the decisions I made.

[26:33]

So I simply had to trust and let go. I had to rely on some innate wisdom inside of me, turn to that, and let my actions flow from that space. But this often required flexibility. It required not being attached to one decision when, perhaps a moment later, a totally opposite decision would be required. Should we evacuate or should we stay? Should we keep eight people or should we keep 22? Should we seek shelter when the fire arrives or should we venture forth to meet it as best we could? I could only make the choices that I could with limited information and make my best effort and prepare, but then let go. It's always really like this, isn't it? Always like this. So in order not to become overwhelmed or anxious, I needed to release thoughts and fears around possible future scenarios and merely engage in fire preparation.

[27:44]

and being with the moment as it was. This was the activity. Not waiting for the fire. Not waiting for another life, or a better life, or a different life. Just being with what is here. For the occasion of the gate reopening ceremony, which happened several weeks after the fire, when we once again opened up to our summer guests and welcomed them back in, I wrote a poem. And one of the stanzas of the poem is this. What, I ask, has the fire taught you? What, during these past weeks, have you discovered in the blaze of your own being that is beyond all displacement, beyond all destruction, beyond the ashen hand of death, and beyond the regenerative nature of the living wild? And what, even now, are you willing to lose in the conflagration of the present moment?

[28:50]

Give it all to the flames. Hold nothing back out of the mistaken notion that something, anything, must be or can be saved. For equanimity and generosity only fully ignites in that space of total love renunciation, where nothing is left to lose. Suzuki Roshi said that when you do something, you should burn yourself completely like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself. For this means we should make complete effort in everything that we do, holding nothing back and leaving no residue of self. in our activity. Simply give our full heart, mind and presence over to the activity in the moment. Act as if you have nothing to lose because in truth there is no separate you to be lost.

[29:59]

This is how we cultivate the ground of renunciation where true generosity can flourish. What the fire clearly illustrated for me, very literally, in a physical expression, was the importance of value of giving oneself over to the task at hand. When I burn cleanly in my activity, I can encounter something greater than myself and become intimate with a vastness that is beyond living and dying. There's another Zen saying about how we should practice as if our heads are on fire. This is more about the urgent matter of life and death. It's about experiencing the immediacy and the intimacy of this very suchness.

[31:05]

Can you, in this moment, feel that suchness that is beyond duality that is beyond life and death. Fearlessness requires that I meet and walk through resistance and clinging. I can't say that I was totally without fear during the time of the fire, but what I registered it as was more of a keen concern for our well-being, the well-being of the community and the well-being of Tassajara and Zen Center. But I did have what I call the oh shit moment. And that was when the fire popped, crested the mountains on all three sides of us, which I witnessed standing next to Mako on the front lawn. I had a momentary thought of running into our safety bunker, which was the stone office.

[32:11]

but I also was so in awe of how amazing the being that surrounded us was as it came towards us. Wildfire is amazingly beautiful, amazingly beautiful. And many of us at Tassajara during that time kept speaking to that, particularly when we went on the night patrols. And there you are in these deep mountains, and it's pitch black. And all you see are these glowing flames resonating here and there throughout the nights. And kind of all through the universe at most. It's kind of hard to tell the difference between the sky at times and the ground in the darkness. Yet there was this illumination everywhere. So despite our concern, we were able to appreciate this tremendous being that for hard weeks has been coming towards us. our Cohen was, how are we going to meet this one?

[33:20]

How do we meet the unknown which looms before us in any moment? We have a choice, as an adversary or as a friend. With fear and trepidation or with respect and perhaps even appreciation, for the unique mystery rushing towards us. You can hear that awe and respect in the voice of Mako Volko, one of the so-called fire monks, doing a 16-second video clip that she was able to take on the front lawn as the fire crested. If you have a chance, you can get online. Watch that. Listen to it. Feel that. During the final frantic evacuation on July 9th, we took the time to remove the 2,000-year-old Gandharyan Buddha that's on the altar at Tassajara.

[34:27]

It's actually the brother to the Buddha that's here on the altar. And we wrapped the Buddha up in blankets. and yoga mats and put it in a hole in the bocce ball court at Tassajara that we had dug strictly for this purpose. We did this because in 1978 the zendo at Tassajara had burned down and the Buddha at that time shattered into many pieces. And afterwards we had an expert from the Asian Art Museum who was able to put the Buddha back together again almost in exactly the same way that it had been before. It's very difficult to notice any difference. So I imagine now that by burying the Buddha in the ground in this way for safekeeping, or some notion of, that the Buddha, which means the awakened one, literally became the ground beneath our feet.

[35:28]

I imagine that the Buddha's steadfast compassion and all-seeing awareness, radiated from this particular center of the universe in Tassajara, and extended its abiding presence throughout the valley, through the roots of the trees, through the groundwater, up through the hoses and the sprinklers, up through and out of the sides of the mountains, and through and into the flames themselves. all literally was alive with seeing. And this seeing, and in this seeing, we five were not alone. All of you were with us. All of you observe from this fundamental ground of awareness as we together met the fire.

[36:32]

No one was really outside of the valley. No one truly evacuated. All of us were there and present as dependently co-arisen existence. Five monks, everyone in the San Francisco Zen Center Sangha, everyone who had ever come to Tassajara, every person alive or having lived or to live, along with the mountains and the trees and the wildlife and the oceans and the sky and the fire and the stars from the beginning of time. All of it converged at once into that valley, along with the fire as it circled and raced down the mountains towards us. our ground of practice.

[37:36]

Together, we and the whole universe met the fire. In that moment, we were all fire monks. In this moment, we were all fire monks. What I continue finding myself returning to since the days of the fire is not the experience of the fire itself or the weeks leading up to it. What I keep returning to is the image of the mountains immediately after the fire. I remember how my gaze was constantly drawn up to their sides for months afterwards. I felt for once that, having been stripped of their foliage, I could finally, truly see the mountains. They stood silent, gray, barren, yet majestic, with just the charred bones of certain chaparral and trees still clinging to their sides.

[38:46]

Any time I walked outside, I would look in the mountains. I was fascinated, and I couldn't figure out why. It wasn't that the fire was still out there lurking somewhere. It wasn't. It had passed. What I felt myself drawn to was the new vulnerability that was expressed in these mountains. Their stripped-down essentialness. They were so beautiful in a way that a dying person can be beautiful. Pared down significantly in their life until there is nothing extra. Just being. Even the skeletal fingers of the dead branches that were still reaching up to the sky, maybe trying to hold on and grasp the sky, they too would eventually have to let go.

[39:51]

Even they would need to give way to impermanence, decay, and eventually to new growth and rebirth. And this is the natural cycle of the wilderness and of our lives. The mountains in this farm express the profound teaching for me, that when everything extra is burned away, what is essential in our lives is exposed in all its beauty and defensiveness. When we are willing to be our most vulnerable, we are also the most grounded, the most open and genuine and authentic and tangibly alive. And we are also the most free. What's truly essential cannot be defended. Our practice of Zazen is to sit like mountains, to be upright yet exposed.

[40:59]

to be unguarded and therefore revealed, to be non-manipulating, and simply to allow everything to be as it is. To sit like mountains is to sit still, unmoving, and yet not unmoved. It's not that the mountains didn't feel the pain as the fire progressed. It's not that they didn't hear the cries of the dying animals or refused to bear witness to the trees and plants consumed by flames. I believe that the mountains did feel this and that the heart of the mountains fully dwelled with deep compassion for the suffering that was arising. Each mountain did what it could to help a life that relied on its vast body. true compassion requires acknowledging our inescapable mutual vulnerability.

[42:05]

So for almost a year afterwards, I viscerally missed the fire. I missed it like someone misses a dear friend that you have met once, only briefly, yet whom has had a profoundly impactful engagement on you. I've come to realize that the teachings of the fire still smolder in me, flaring up every now and then as some kind of flame, revealing another insight, another reminder to attend to the present moment and to focus on what is essential. What a gift the fire was to us in so many ways. And how grateful I am to have had such a powerful, assistant teacher, one that kept pushing me to attend, attend, attend. In fact, I demanded that I be willing to lose my life in order to discover what it means to live and be free, to be open to allowing everything to burn down to what is essential and to start over from there.

[43:25]

Don't leave this moment. The fire reminded me. Don't leave your spiritual homestead, which is your true nature. Like a mountain, always dwell there. This is also what my teacher, Tia Strozier, reminds me often when I forget, when I lose my sense of equanimity, spaciousness, and clarity. It's what any teacher worth their salt turns you to and shows you in their own way, through their own being, what it means to turn towards what is difficult, meet it with courage, and discover the truth of who you are. So whatever insights we have in our practice, whether they're profound or transformative, whether they're small or subtle,

[44:27]

We need to live them. We need to take the truth that they show us, to test it, enact it, trust it, see if there's another expression of it, another unfolding of it. I've learned that it's important to live our awakenings, to live our insights. And I want to encourage all of you to embody this learning as well. And I confess that I'm a very actually slow and difficult study when it comes to this. And I struggle quite a bit. But in doing so, this is how we become free of the fire and free of suffering. And this is how we discover the illumination of our own true nature and how we might become worthy of the title, Fire Monk.

[45:39]

So happy Liberation Day and thank you all for your attention. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge And this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[46:13]

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