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. Hello. Good evening. I haven't chanted that since I lived in Tatsahara, and that was a long time ago, the Japanese verse. My name's Sarah, and I realize I know several of you quite well, and I know some of you, I recognize some of you, I know some of you by sight, I've seen you around, and then some of you I don't know at all. So I'll just say a few words about how I ended up here on this seat.

[01:09]

Mary, the tanto here at City Center, I live at Green Gulch. I've lived at Sun Center for about 17 years, mostly at Green Gulch, and a couple of years at Tassajara, quite a few years ago now. And Mary asked if I would come and speak about Green Gulch. She said, could you talk about practice at Green Gulch? And wanting to be helpful, I said, sure, I'll come talk about practice at Green Gulch. And then as it drew closer, I started thinking, I don't know if I know anything about practice at Green Gulch. Maybe I should ask some newer students, what is practice at Green Gulch like? What is practice at Green Gulch? You know, I know what my practice at Green Gulch is like now, and it's been many things.

[02:21]

Practice at Green Gulch has been unfolding moment by moment for quite a while for me. I wasn't sure which moment I should talk about, and then I couldn't remember most of the moments anymore. But then I realized, oh, I can talk to you about Green Gulch. And then maybe I can talk to you about practice. And maybe by the end of the evening you may have some sense or flavor of practicing Green Gulch, I don't know. And if you don't, and you want to, then please come to Green Gulch and practice, and then tell me how it is. you can find out for yourself what is practice at Green Gulch. Excuse me.

[03:28]

I imagine part of why she asked me to come was that maybe some of you haven't been there And maybe it would be good to know that it's available and what's going on over there. I know for a very long time, the only place I had been at city center was that basement corridor where the compost buckets are. Because my job for several years on the farm was to do the Tuesday morning town trip where I would... load the truck with produce we had harvested the day before and drive in and deliver them to Rainbow Grocery and go to Veritable Vegetable and pick up vegetables and then come to city center and drop off vegetables and get the compost to take back with me and leave new buckets.

[04:28]

And sometimes I'd use the bathroom down there and sometimes I'd go around the corner and get the dry goods. But I really, like it wasn't for many, many years that I was like, Sendos down here, like there's all sorts of things down here in the basement of city center. And then there's a whole upstairs. So maybe, I appreciate that Mary was like, well maybe people should know things about other temples a little sooner, you know. I spent five years as the director of Green Gulch and that was really when I started coming into the city. We'd have meetings in this building and I started getting a sense of what went on here and what practice was like, what the rhythms of the day were like, what the serve up in the kitchen looks like. Just little glimpses of how this place operates and what kind of a container it is for practice.

[05:29]

So maybe I can offer that to you. And I realize there's a number of you who have lived for many years, some of you longer than I have at Green Gulch, and you may have some helpful things to say also at the end of the talk. Maybe you can add them. Get to know when the end of the talk will be. Yeah, so Green Gulch was acquired by Zen Center in 1972, which was shortly after Suzuki Roshi's death. But what I understand is that he had been talking to Richard Baker, who was the abbot at the time. Oh, no, he wasn't, but he was busy acquiring places for Zen Center. Yeah. that it would be nice for Zen Center to have a farm where families could live and practice Zen.

[06:36]

And somebody got in touch with Richard Baker and hooked him up with the man who owned the property, George Wheelwright, who wanted the property to stay intact and not get developed and subdivided. And he felt like Zen Center would be a good match for that. And, you know, MALT was, I don't know how many of you know Marin Agricultural Land Trust. There's a lot of land trusts around the country where they buy up agricultural land, they buy the development rights, and then it protects the land in perpetuity to be open space or farmland. So MALT, which is the Marin Land Trust, didn't exist at that time. So actually the Nature Conservancy holds... Basically, Green Gulch in trust, it has a great name, it's called, we have a covenant running with the land. And it specifies what we can do at Green Gulch.

[07:45]

There are a lot of things we can do. We can use it for religious, aesthetic, scientific, educational purposes. Maybe there's a few more. and it restricts how high buildings can be to take care of the land. And I feel like the very first CEN students that showed up at Green Gulch in 1972 have really been focused on caring for the land. So I think of Green Gulch more than either Tassajara City Center as really land-based. because we're actively stewarding the land. I think of Tassajara as wilderness, you know, so it's a different kind of interaction with the land than farming and gardening and stewarding in a more active way.

[08:47]

So, To say Green Gulch is about 110 acres. I've never been able to nail down that number. It keeps changing. And our neighbors are on... It's a wide river valley with a river running down the entire length. And really, water defines it, you know, because it's a pretty small watershed of hills. And on one side, the hills are owned by... National Park Service. It's Golden Gate National Recreation Land. So it's wild and beautiful. Coastal scrub. And on the other side, Highway 1 runs just parallel down the valley. And then above that is state park land. So our neighbors are NPS, state parks, and Caltrans. And then our neighbors down at Muir Beach.

[09:51]

There's a community. The valley opens up onto Muir Beach. Our creek, Green Gulch Creek, is a tributary to Redwood Creek, which is a major salmon run. It's the creek that runs through Muir Woods. This is part of my practice at Green Gulch, is to understand that I am located in And that part of my activity, my activity has impacts on this place. And part of my practice has been trying to understand how to be responsible for that. So because we're land-based, we have a very, there's a seasonal rhythm practice at Green Gulch.

[11:04]

There's the growing season, which is the summer, April to October, and then there's the practice season from October to April. And in April, new apprentices arrive, farm apprentices, garden apprentices, people that have no idea what Zen practice is often. but they want, but something draws them there and they want to learn how to care for the earth. And in the summer, really year-round actually, we start sitting at 5 a.m. We sit two 40-minute periods of zazen with kinin in between and then we have a half-hour service. I imagine it's much like your service and the forms. are basically the same forms, and then we have soji and breakfast, and then everybody goes off to do their work for the day, the kitchen. There's a guest house where either we host conferences or people come for personal retreat.

[12:11]

We have a kitchen that makes food for all the residents and the guests. There's about 70 people at any given time, 70 residents at Green Gulch. And then there's... Afternoon zazen at 5.15. We sit for another 40-minute period. And then we also have a Wednesday night Dharma talk. Our public program is on Sunday. We have that every week. And then we have classes at night. So that's our summer. That's our basic schedule in the summer. And in the winter, when... There's less light when things aren't growing as quickly. Biological processes in the soil are slowing down. Things grow slower. We turn. We actually, on the farm, put everything into cover crops. We put the soil to bed for the winter and for the rains, and we kind of turn inward more, and the focus of...

[13:21]

the community's energy is more the heart of Green Gulch and the Zendo. So we have two practice periods a year. We have two two-month practice periods, one starting in mid-October, which we call the fall practice period, and one starting in mid-February. And what's different, what I gather that's different than Tassajara or City Center is that at Green Gulch, there's a cohort of people who are fully participating in the practice period schedule. And then there's like a layer of other apprentices and staff that are supporting those people to fully engage in the practice period schedule. So the practice period schedule is less work every day, more zazen, more study, and the practice period cohort is the group that has tea with the leader of the practice period and with the shuso.

[14:33]

So those are things that the smaller group does. They do a half-day sitting every week, eat oryoki twice a week, and then the practice period ends with a sushin. seven-day sishin. So it's kind of gentler in a way than the Tassajara practice periods, which are really rigorous and sitting half a day every day. But maybe a little, it's definitely more cloistered. People don't leave the valley during practice period. So it's really a time of settling. and turning, you know, kind of giving up worldly affairs, although I have to say we have wifi almost everywhere now. So the worldly affairs are there if you want them. So that's the practice container.

[15:42]

That's the container for practice at Green Gulch. the formal schedule, the work practice, just like at City Center. And I'm guessing the practice at Great College is the same practice as the practice at City Center. I think there's just one practice. So, what I see, a lot of sentient beings, some more confused than others, that are turning towards silence and stillness.

[16:44]

So in the zendo, I see all sorts of people making an effort to be silent and still with things as they are or things as it is. Just being with what is, making an effort to not get carried away or knocked around. And then even outside the zendo, I see people, often I see people very confused, noticing their thoughts, you know, making an effort to be mindful of what's happening with their thoughts and their feelings and any sensations that are happening and to actually pay attention to what they're doing.

[18:05]

So not to get carried away by their thoughts and feelings, to be present with them and to be present while they're putting seedlings in the ground or making a bed in the guest house. To remember that silence and stillness. To find their way home to that place. fully knowing and being and accepting and being soft and impacted and present without pushing

[19:22]

anything away or grasping onto anything. And my sense is when people, without even knowing what they're doing, without even knowing really what's happening, somehow people understand, maybe it takes a while, but they understand what is being pointed to in their own body. in their own life. And then they forget. And then they get confused. And then they make up stories about everybody else around them and themselves. And then, you know, the wonderful thing about Green Gulch, the wonderful thing about Zen Center is there's a lot of people who have been practicing for a long time, who know the path and can help kind of show you the way.

[20:34]

The path's over there. You know, they can point to the path and help you find it. I know there are many teachers that helped me that still help me. You know, when I think I'm looking for something else, when I think there's something outside of me or there's some other way that I'm supposed to be or that things are supposed to be. To be silent and still with those thoughts and with the feelings that arise when the thoughts arise with all of it, there's a way to be with our life just as it is. And that clarity can help us move into the next moment and maybe get confused again and maybe not.

[21:44]

Maybe move through our life with a little more ease. and a little more care, a little more resilience to be able to take responsibility for what we see. So I see that happening sometimes at Green Gulch, and I experience that happening sometimes at Green Gulch. It's so beautiful at Green Gulch. If you have not been there, please come out. Just take a walk. Yeah, there's so much more I could say. But actually, I think maybe I'll stop and just see if you have any questions.

[22:50]

or if you have any thoughts about practice or practice at Green Gulch that you'd like to express. Oh, hello, I know you. So I was at Tassajara in the winter. There were so many young people there, well, in their 20s. So I'm wondering if the farm program brings in a lot of younger people out of post-college. It varies. I mean, some years there's an older crowd, like older, like late 20s and early 30s. But a lot of times it's like early 20s, yeah. Yeah.

[23:52]

Yeah, there's a lot of young people with energy who, yeah, I don't know why they come. I mean, they're trying to find their place. That's why they come. I came to the farm program and then got hooked by practice. I was looking for a farm apprenticeship because I, I think I was looking for right livelihood. You know, I was looking for some way to actually just take responsibility for something concrete and not get so confused about like trying to fix everything in the world. And when I got there as a guest student, you know, I started hearing the Dharma and most of it I didn't really understand, but there was something that I understood and I was looking for.

[25:04]

And I think it was something about wholeness. And it was, you know, what I remember is that I thought that right livelihood was kind of like the bottom, but actually the bottom is like... taking responsibility, like fully avowing body, speech, and mind, you know, our karma, rather than just where our trash goes, which is a good thing to be responsible for, but, you know, the trash kind of starts up here. Yeah. So I think people have different, people who come all know... they have to be up for six months of meditation. And some of them just squeak by, like, okay, I can do anything for six months. And then they say, no, this is not for me for whatever reason.

[26:04]

And some people come already with a practice. Those are fewer. And then some people just really, it fits, it clicks, which I'm sure happens at all the practice centers. People come in and find their way and find this is their path or not. But we do, I think with the farm, we're really blessed to get a lot of young, enthusiastic people. Yeah. And by we, I mean Zen Center because then they start moving around. Yeah, so Ed is referring to a couple of phases of creek restoration we did at Green Gulch.

[27:05]

So we inherited a creek that had been channelized. So a river valley was maybe you know this, a river valley is a valley that was formed by a river running through the bottom of it. And rivers move and meander. And that was the case with the Green Gulch Creek at one point. But I think in the, it was probably the 50s or maybe even the 60s, George Wheelwright basically straightened the creek and pushed it over into a lined channel on one side of the property and culverted it in a lot of places and put some dams in. This was with great help and expertise from the federal government, from the Army Corps of Engineers helped him, and I believe the...

[28:07]

Maybe the Fish and Wildlife Service suggested that he spray DDT all over the hillsides to get rid of the poison oak. This was like a different era. That's where our tax dollars went to make a ranch for bulls. He got into raising prized bulls and cattle for studying, I think. So, Yeah, so a number of baby salmon were seen in 2000 and gosh, when was it? By Erin Merck. Erin Merck saw this spawning salmon in the creek when she had just moved to Green Gulch and she kind of looked over and she saw this big red fish and she thought, what's that? She thought someone who was like drowning in the creek so she went over to look and here was this fish flapping around and then she She kind of forgot about it for a while and then mentioned it over the dinner table.

[29:11]

And our land steward, Suki, got really excited and was like, that's a coho salmon spawning in the creek. So then a wildlife biologist checked and there were all these little baby salmon. So coho salmon are endangered. And in fact, the particular lineage of salmon that run to Redwood Creek and and sometimes to Green Gulch Creek, are a very particular mix, genetic mix. They're really unique. They have genetic properties of northern populations of salmon, but also some to the south. So they're really important. And they, in the last few years, basically, what is it called? It's called being extirpated. which means locally extinct. They were in danger of being extirpated. And so the NOAA started pulling the juveniles out and rearing them off creek, and then putting them back in to spawn, just to keep the population going.

[30:24]

Anyway, this is a lot. But so, in 2014, we... after many years of planning, got enough grant money to start restoring the creek at the bottom, the bottom of the property. We made a really, from a straight creek with all these failing concrete check dams in the creek, which they say are fish passage, but we all know the salmon got up past them, so in a good year they can get up to this beautiful sinewy, meandering creek, a portion of it. And we have seen, there have been juvenile coho there. I don't think they've found any babies, so I don't know that they've spawned up there, but they have gone up there, and that's really the value of Green Gulch Creek, is when there's really high flows in the main creek, they have a slower-moving refuge,

[31:28]

for the small ones to go up and that there's food up there. And actually, as sea levels rise, it will be more and more important because the saltwater intrusion will come higher and higher. So for them to have habitat higher up in the creek will be very important. So yeah, and then we did another phase, which I won't bore you about, but it's going really well. Actually, it's great, yeah. Have your hand up, Kodo? Yeah. I don't have a question. Just wanted to say thank you. I appreciate the detail of the description of Green Gulch and its expression of your stewardship and the land. And then when you're talking about the practice there, for me it was like I can hear the voice of Green Gulch.

[32:30]

It's like I can hear the sounds and feel the place in the way you talk about it in practice. Thanks for bringing that in. Yeah, and maybe we'll say one other thing, which is I feel like just as City Center is so lucky to have so many senior teachers, we also have a number of, you know, I don't call them the founding generation, because I think Suzuki Roshi is the founding generation. They're the first generation of American, of Zen Center. So Reb, attention, Reb Anderson, and Ejun Linda Cutts, and Abbas Fuyu Schrader, and then Emila Heller. There's a number of wonderful teachers. And I have to say, hope it's okay that I say, you know, watching them all over these last almost 20 years, and they've all lived together for 40 years, some more, 50 years, right?

[33:43]

Maya Wender and Suki Parmalee and Mik Sapko. So the first thing that's kind of surprising maybe as a new student is that like the teachers are people. And that like they're, or like people, they're like sentient beings. They're like Buddhas and sentient beings. They keep teaching us you're a Buddha and a sentient being, and then it's like, oh, you too. But I really, like, I see how they practice with each other. And I think it's kind of hard to live with somebody for 40 or 50 years. who you didn't choose to live with necessarily. So imagine if you live in the building or if you have roommates, you know it's hard to live with people, and then especially people that you didn't necessarily choose to live with or have an affinity to live with, and yet we share a vow, we share a practice.

[34:55]

And actually what's been really heartening and inspiring to me is to see even these very wise people continue to kind of like deepen their enactment of practice with one another and care for each other and turn those relationships has been so helpful to me. in understanding my own life. It's just been such a gift, you know, to have their support and then also see how they understand that in their own lives and are still practicing with it, you know, endless, endless practice. to share work practice space with you, very little time to practice practice with you.

[36:05]

Hope that changes sometime. But I just wanted to ask, what is your greatest wish for green culture's future? That's a good question. What's coming to mind is like fearlessness and creativity. I think it's really easy, both at Green, anywhere, anywhere we are, to kind of get stuck in how things are as though it were inevitable and that

[37:13]

we didn't have any effect, couldn't actually engage in a different way. And I think I see that at Green Gulch, you know, it's so big and so complex, I see it at Sun Center, it's so big and so complex, and we care so much about everything, it's hard to, really leap you know I don't know what we'd be leaping into but I just wish for that yeah some kind of feeling of aliveness or lightness with so much responsibility you know Mm-hmm.

[38:18]

Yeah. Okay. We have just a couple minutes. Are people complete? Yeah. Okay. Can you say something about the children at Gringotts and family? The children at Gringotts. I have some children at Gringotts. I came early to the city so I wouldn't be late, and also so I could not hear the screaming. There are, right now, there are five children at Green Gulch. The oldest is my son Frank, he's nine, and the littlest is Calliope, and she's two. And they're like a sweet little, the little ones, there's four little ones. There's also Luca and Miro, and Dusty, my other son. And they're like a little pack. And Frank's like, he's too cool for school.

[39:21]

Yeah, and it's interesting and challenging to be a family anywhere and at Zen Center also. And the kids can be kind of free, because we're kind of out in the middle of nowhere. And... There's a lot of adults around to relate to, and I think some people really enjoy the kids, and I think some people don't enjoy the kids, and some people are probably neutral about the kids. I don't know, there's so much to say, but I feel really blessed. And when I moved to Green Gulch, Nancy had a small, she had Olivia was like two, I think, two or three. So there were a pack of kids then, and then there weren't any kids for a while, and now there's another pack of kids. Elizabeth was there, but she was kind of older. And then in the 70s, there were kids everywhere.

[40:25]

It was like a zoo of kids. They had a school and a teepee, and there was all sorts of stuff happening. Yeah, maybe that's enough. Yeah, last. I'm sorry. The horses. The horses are... So I was going to say something about this. Back in the olden days when Green Gold started, they worked the fields with draft horses and they had like hundreds of chickens that I heard all got massacred by raccoons and they had cow, a cow, and they... They had a windmill, they had all sorts of stuff. My understanding is what they realized is that animal schedule and zendo schedule don't work so well together. And so I think Sun Center hasn't had animals in quite a while.

[41:30]

When I was the farm manager, I really was trying to get a chicken tractor going to get all the bugs. People want to know, well, if you leave, are you going to take the chickens? And what are you going to do with the chickens? It was a big deal, so we didn't get chickens. But the horses are... There's a stable in Muir Beach community. There's a stable down the road, and they board people's horses, both local people and, I think, people from different places. And they... kind of rent out the side hill and that bottom pasture from Green Gulch in the dry months. And they bring us their manure. So, which I've always said, don't tell them. I'm like, you're paying us and you're giving us the manure. It's like, it's a really good deal for us.

[42:31]

So we use the manure in the compost, which is really... healthy for compost to have some animal biology in there. So that's the deal with the horses. Yeah, okay. Okay, I'm a little over, I'm sorry. Thank you all so much for your kind attention and your practice and being here and yeah, come out to Green Gulch if you feel called even just to hike through and go to the beach. lovely. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:34]

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