This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, everyone. And thank you so much to the head of practice and to all of the other Zen Center leaders for giving me the space to speak. I want to say that I am speaking to you tonight from the unceded territory of the Awaswa-speaking Yuppie tribe in Santa Cruz, California, as it's now known. And before beginning, I want to thank my teachers, known and unknown, and particularly my main Zen teachers, Daijaku Kinst and Leslie James. So... I'm grateful to them for all that they have given to me, and they should not be considered in any way liable for anything that I may say this evening that is in error or unskillful.

[01:06]

So as I have found on Zoom is a little bit easier. I have written out my talk this evening, but I am going to try to leave lots of room for us to have conversation afterwards. So with that, I will just make these questions. So I want to begin my talk tonight with a quotation that has been stuck in my head and also in my craw for the last few weeks. And this quotation has engendered a strange mix of horror and something like awe or even possibly excitement in me. So this quotation, which I'm going to get to... a little bit later on, comes from Jonathan Franzen's little miniature book called What If We Stopped Pretending? What If We Stopped Pretending? This is a bound version of a quite controversial piece that Franzen published in The New Yorker, in which he advocated that we should stop talking about the climate crisis as something to be averted, that we should stop referring to it in the future tense at all.

[02:20]

He wrote, if you care about the planet and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world's inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming and begin to rethink what it means to have hope. So I want to return later, and by that I mean possibly not even this evening, to ponder the question of hope and how we might inhabit it now that the climate crisis is, by all accounts, not coming but here. For now, what really strikes me first is the dizzying sense of how fast things are moving. So Franzen's piece in The New Yorker was published in September of 2019, and he was widely pilloried by for saying what some saw as something as bad as climate denialism.

[03:26]

How could you say the battle is lost? How can we be so confident that disaster is coming? Are you really trying to induce in us some kind of quietism or inaction or excuse for doing nothing? And yet now, in the early summer of 2021, less than two years after that New Yorker piece came out, It is shocking to me how much easier it is to agree with Franzen's grim assessment. Floods, hurricanes, mega drought, and of course, incessant wildfires. The catastrophes just keep coming. So last summer, fire came to my hometown of Santa Cruz in a dramatic event that I'm quite embarrassed to say surprised all of us. 100,000 acres along the coast and into the Santa Cruz Mountains burned in the CZU Lightning Complex fire, and many, many friends and colleagues lost their homes and everything they owned in the first few hours of the fire, particularly in a little town called Bunny Dune, but not only there.

[04:37]

Countless non-human creatures, and at least one human died. along with precious ancient trees in Big Basin redwoods and throughout the coastal redwood zone. Much of the water system for the Santa Cruz Mountains communities was crippled, contaminated by plastic, when the water pipes melted, roads buckled, bridges collapsed, trees exploded. The fire came within a mile of the university campus where I work and have worked for the last quarter century. And everyone remaining on the campus in the midst of the pandemic, which was a handful of students, but also the staff and faculty and their families who live in university housing, had to find some place to flee without carrying illness with them to friends and loved ones. For me, the CZU complex fire experience was mirrored and doubled by the Dolan fire, which broke out at pretty much exactly the same time in the Ventana wilderness.

[05:38]

By late August, Tassajara II was evacuated and a small crew stayed in what has now become a familiar pattern to defend it. The grinding angst of worrying that Tassajara would burn made it difficult to feel very much relief from the gradual improvement of things in Santa Cruz. The Dolan was far from the first fire at Tassajara that I franked with minute attention from Twitter to Big Suricate to geomapping websites and once again precipitated a lot of deep inquiry around impermanence, clinging. the folly of future planning. I am planning to finally move to Tassajara in a little over a year after 20 years in and out of practice there and other rich Dharma material. But this time I want to say that the fire felt less personal. As much as I worried about what would happen to Tassajara and thus in a sense to me, what I felt most profoundly last summer and again just last week with the Willow Fire, thank you Miles,

[06:42]

was the realization, as Franzen insists we accept, that disaster is not only coming, but it's here, not just for me, but for all of us who share this planet. It was as though the frame or the aperture through which I encountered the prospect of losing Tassajara shifted in the span of a year from a relatively isolated local personal phenomenon, albeit immense, affecting me and the people I love to just one small instance of an unfolding ongoing global disaster. I don't really yet know how to put this into language, this shift that I experienced, except to say that I've begun to understand, I think, that these events are not anomalies and that in the years to come, the acceleration of catastrophe we've seen in the past few years is almost certainly going to increase. Which brings me to the sentence, a deceptively simple aside I can't stop thinking about from the Jonathan Franzen piece.

[07:47]

He writes, I wonder what might happen if, instead of denying reality, we told ourselves the truth. I wonder what might happen if, instead of denying reality, we told ourselves the truth. Hey, madam. Refusing to deny reality, committing ourselves wholeheartedly to waking up from our delusion, gnawing our way out of the cocoon, this is the heart of practice for me, both the how and the why of it. When I read that line from Franzen, I feel many things, but one of them is a kind of quickening in my heart of practice.

[08:55]

What if, instead of denying reality, we told ourselves the truth? If this is the time we're living into, what better time to be on a path that asks us and even requires us to stop denying reality and start telling ourselves the truth? To put this another way, what if the climate crisis is our last best hope of waking up? But what does it mean to tell ourselves the truth or which truth are we telling? The climate crisis is here. This seems true. And we keep looking away from it. This also seems true. But when we look right at it, when we look into the flames, what is it that we see and how do we position ourselves with relation to what we see or think we see there? If we stop denying the reality of the climate crisis and really turn toward it, how do we begin to relate to this new reality?

[09:58]

I was extremely fortunate to be at Tassajara this past weekend. And as I looked around, as I have done so many times before at the burn scar and the fire retardant, the little monastery in the wilderness, the beloved small community going about their business, rolling up hoses and wiping away ash, I suddenly realized that this will almost certainly be the most important thing for me, at least for the rest of my life as a Zen practitioner. What does it mean for my practice, my vow, and my understanding of the Dharma to be a full participant in the demise of the Anthropocene, of the human-ordered time of this planet, or as some people call it, the Capitolocene? I've been taking a wonderful class this summer through the Mangalem Center for Buddhist Studies on the topic of Buddhist Perspectives on Nature. I... definitely underestimated how impactful this class would be. It's been absolutely fascinating to sit with a small group of passionate readers and thinkers and learn about how different Buddhist traditions over two millennia have thought about things like whether plants are sentient beings, we spent two hours on that this morning, whether the four elements have preferences, and how human beings take our place alongside the more than human beings with whom we share this great earth.

[11:25]

Spurred in part by the class and in part by the Willow Fire, I decided to go back and look at some of Gary Snyder's writings, and in particular, his 2007 book, Back on the Fire. In that book, he reflects back on a lifetime of engaging with fire and uses fire as a, he was a firefighter at one point, I don't know if you know that, and uses fire as a metaphor for experiences so incontrovertible that they take us beyond dualisms. fixed viewpoints, anything we think we know. Reflecting on his life, building a home in a remote part of the Sierra Nevada from scratch, Snyder writes, in California, everyone has some natural disaster to prepare for. I think this essay was written in the 90s. In California, everyone has some natural disaster to prepare for. These things are beyond left or right, good or evil. Since everything is impermanent anyway, we can say our looming fires, floods, and earthquakes give a kind of impartial stability to our life.

[12:35]

We can say our looming fires, floods, and earthquakes give a kind of impartial stability to our life. So I like this idea of impartial stability that comes from impermanence, as though we can at least trust that a disaster is coming sooner or later. even if we don't know what or when, just as it always has in California. As Snyder put it in a 1971 poem called Control Burn, fire is an old story. But is it? I think this is really my inquiry question. Fire is an old story. Natural disasters are a part of life in California. But do we or should we understand the disasters that are happening now, here, and all around us as natural? What does natural mean in this context? And if they are not natural, not part of a predictable cycle of events that lend themselves to some kind of impartial stability, then how might we need to relate to the looming fires and floods, droughts, and heat waves of our time?

[13:49]

I'm thinking of the small, largely indigenous town of Lytton in British Columbia, 90% of which was burned in an hour last week, as I'm sure many of you know, or the 107 people who died in Oregon's most recent heat wave. Is the truth of the events that they are part of the ordinary cycle of impermanence, or are they something different, extraordinary, not natural at all, but engineered by human greed? negligence and wanton disregard, not only for the more than human, but for our very human existence. Certainly when we refuse to turn away from what is not natural in the current climate crisis, we are shaken out of our equanimity in what I think of as a good way. When we stop denying the reality of our complicity, In climate change, it can bring on a range of responses from grief to anger to compassion to remorse and repentance.

[14:53]

Ruben L.F. Habito, a Zen teacher and university professor who wrote a book called Healing Breath, Zen Spirituality for a Wounded Earth, which I recommend, writes about the ways that recognizing how implicated we are in the climate crisis and other ecological disasters can actually be salutary, be good for us, dissolving some of the sense of separateness that even Snyder's impartial stability leaves us with. Ruben Habito writes, one is enabled to feel as one's very own the pain of the whole earth being destroyed by human selfishness. and greed, and short-sightedness. The mountains being denuded, the rivers being polluted, the species of life forms being decimated. In all this, one feels one's own body racked in pain. He goes on, such a sensibility to the pain of the earth may thus become the source of the energy that can lead to the transformation of the way we live,

[16:03]

and relate to one another and to the earth. Such a sensibility to the pain of the earth may thus become the source of the energy that can lead to the transformation of the way we live and relate to one another and to the earth. So like Franzen, Habito insists that we need to look directly at and we need to allow ourselves to be touched by the pain of the reality unfolding in front of us. before we will be capable of transforming how we live and how we relate to one another and to the earth. We transmute the pain of the earth into our pain and from there into energy for change, fueled by our willingness to engage with the reality of climate change and its associated catastrophes. So far, so good. But I find myself hesitating over the question of whether we can or should feel as our very own the pain of the whole earth being destroyed.

[17:08]

So this is a matter of separateness and not separateness, and that's what I want to talk about just for the remaining few minutes. This phrase, feel as our very own the pain of the whole earth being destroyed, wouldn't that be yet another form of appropriation? Habito says elsewhere, one is enabled to feel and see things from the perspective of the mountains, the rivers, and the great wide earth. But I find myself hesitating over what feels like the hubris of imagining that I can see anything from the perspective of a mountain. Don't get me wrong, I would love to believe that I think I can, that I would like to think that I can. I would love to think that I can. Nothing could make me happier. but I think our tradition is very careful to caution us against this kind of fantasy of knowing. I think about the famous poem from the Chinese poet, Xu Shi, known in our tradition as Le Mandongpo.

[18:10]

Among his many well-known poems is this one. Why can't I tell the true shape of Mount Lu? Because I myself am the mountain. Why can't I tell the true shape of Mount Lou? Because I myself am the mountain. So there's kind of two ways that this poem is read. In one, the poet and Mount Lou are merged, entirely the same suchness. So it's impossible for the speaker to identify where the mountain begins and ends. Why can't I tell the true shape of Mount Lou? Because I am Mount Lou. Because I myself am the mountain. He is the mountain and the mountain is him and subject and object cease to exist. So that's reading number one. In the other reading of the poem, which you can probably figure out all by yourself, the speaker can't tell the true shape of Mount Lou because Mount Lou only exists in his mind.

[19:11]

He cannot know the mountain's true shape because the truth is always obscured by the idea he has of the mountain. So one of these readings is an expression of profound union between humans and nature and endorses the idea that we can see things from the perspective of the mountains, rivers, and the great earth because we're not different from them. And the other is an expression of profound humility and separateness, recognizing that we are fundamentally distanced from the natural world by our human delusions and our concept-making mind machine. In either case, we might want to notice we end up not being able to see the mountain clearly or at all. So those of you who are deeply versed in the Zen tradition will immediately have recognized this phrase, mountains, rivers, and the great earth. It appears regularly in texts in our tradition and particularly in those that engage the age-old question or questions of whether and how insentient beings preach Dharma.

[20:18]

This question is taken up in many texts by Dogen Zenji, including a fascicle by that name, Mujo Seppo, as well as in the Mountains and Water Sutra, which we studied when I was at Tassahara with Abbot David, and the Sutra Valley Sounds, Mountain Colors. So just by way of conclusion, I want to sort of begin to address this in Sentient Beings Preach Dharma. So I want to conclude my remarks by simply saying that I think the phrase in sentient beings preach dharma may well be the most important koan of our time as we individually and collectively turn toward the present climate emergency and its effects both near and far. Engaging with the phrase in sentient beings preach dharma forces us to look deeply into our relations with the more than human world. and especially with the world of mountains, rivers, the great earth, fire, water, and wind. When we say that these entities preach or speak or teach Dharma, what exactly is it that we're saying?

[21:29]

How do they teach, and what would it mean for us to learn from them? How can we learn from them without appropriating them, without projecting onto them, or anthropomorphizing their interests and turning them into our own? given that we would be foolish not to listen to them, given, you might say, that they are shouting at us, not only about their own plight, but about our own, how can we begin to practice the deep listening that would be required to truly receive the dharma of mountains, rivers, and the great earth? John Dido Lurie issues a stern warning to us, paraphrasing Dogen, when he writes, Mountains, rivers, and the great earth are ceaselessly manifesting the teachings, but they are not heard with the ear or seen with the eye. They can only be perceived with the whole body and mind. They are not heard with the ear or seen with the eye.

[22:30]

So they are teaching, but we can't hear them. In Mujo Seppo, in Sentient Beings Preach Dharma, the fascicle of that name, Dogen makes this point even more strongly. He says, the Buddha way... I love this. The Buddha way does not appropriate the voice of sentient beings and apply it to the voice of insentient beings. Insentient beings do not necessarily speak Dharma with a voice heard by the ear. Okay, so all these mountains, rivers on the great earth are teaching, preaching, speaking, talking, but our ears are not the thing that can hear them. And in particular, the Buddha way does not appropriate the voice. of sentient beings and apply it to the voice of insentient beings. So one of my great worries about this phrase and sentient beings preach Dharma is that all of a sudden we turn the whole world into a kind of lesson just for us, right? So it's another way of overriding the world's interests with our human interests.

[23:31]

And I'm interested in thinking about how this phrase can support us as ethical beings and as people of vow and people of bodhisattva vow. in the current climate emergency without our sliding ceaselessly back into seeing the whole world as in some sense for us. So this notion that everything is teaching and we can't hear it, it might seem a little hopeless to return to Franzen. If insentient beings are preaching Dharma, but we can't hear them with the organs of sense given to us, how can we receive these teachings? I think this is the fundamental question. How or where? Do we receive these teachings? And what does it mean to receive them? How can we possibly learn what we need to learn from the wise mountain and water beings, let alone from the fire and flood, if we do not possess the capacities or attributes necessary to hear or see them? And Dogen actually has a little bit of reassurance for us in this regard, also in Mu Giuseppo, when he writes, don't think...

[24:39]

that you are not benefited by hearing the Dharma if it does not reach your mind consciousness. So don't think that you don't benefit from the Dharma just because you can't hear it being spoken to you and translate it into your mind consciousness. So there's hope for us, it seems. Or at least the question of whether we can get the benefits of mountain, water, and fire teachings doesn't rely entirely on our ability to understand those teachings with our minds or, as Dogen put it, with the voice of a sentient being. So the voice of a mountain may not need to be translated into the voice of a sentient being and understood with our mind in order to benefit us. How it does benefit us, we are left to figure out. by our great teacher, Dogen Zenji. So the teachings go on with or without our conscious awareness, and we can even benefit from them.

[25:39]

So I wonder if maybe this might be the beginning of rethinking what it means to have hope, or if not hope, perhaps trust. Trust that the mountains, rivers, great earth, and fire... are offering us teachings even if we cannot hear them. I do not know truly if this is another form of delusion or if this is the beginning of waking up, but I know that this question is going to be with me for a very long time to come. To quote Dogen with a twist one last time, once a monk asked Changsha, Zen master Jingchen, How do you turn mountains, rivers, the great earth, and fire into the self? How do you turn mountains, rivers, the great earth, and fire into the self? Shang Sha said, How do you turn the self into mountains, rivers, the great earth, and fire? How do you turn the self into mountains, rivers, the great earth, and fire?

[26:48]

Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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