This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So welcome. You're all here at the right place at the right time. You have to accept that, where you are. This is the right place, right time. Supported by the many, many elements, the entire phenomenal world right here, right now. So I think maybe it's Easter, right? Easter Bunny is getting his tail wet.

[01:02]

Ears are damp. Kids are looking for eggs in the wet grass. Easter, you know, comes from the goddess of the dawn. Astron, the Germanic goddess. Her holiday was celebrated on the vernal equinox. But now we have Easter Sunday as the lunar, partly lunar calendar. Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox. I think this is pretty late, actually, in the season in April. Also two days after Earth Day. It goes together very well with appreciating renewal, Easter eggs, and a sense of dawn.

[02:16]

I think for us in our practice, it's every moment is moment of dawn. Every moment is moment of renew. Renewing vow. But that's very elusive. So sometimes we need to make a bigger deal out of a particular day. So we say, okay, Earth Day. About a thousand years ago, a Zen teacher in China said, medicine and disease subdue each other. The whole earth is medicine. What is the self? Medicine and disease. Important to know. What is medicine? What is disease? Is the self an affliction on the earth?

[03:22]

Is our selfishness an affliction? in Gaia, the biosphere. This is an important question for us in this technological age. A little different way of paying attention than we must do now, I'd say. It's a little different than the way young men had to pay attention 1,000 years ago in China. because of our technological civilization and its impact. So, we have our fundamental teaching, which goes back to emptiness. We say that there is, fundamentally there is this photodynamic working

[04:26]

Sometimes we call it the empty world. The empty world is a world where we cannot exactly say what is. Suzuki Roshi talking about naturalness in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind is talking about naturalness. saying how much we misunderstand naturalness. Unless you really understand that there are no things, unless you understand emptiness, you really don't understand naturalness. He quoted a phrase, which is true emptiness, true emptiness, wonderful being.

[05:44]

So that, this is appreciation of how wonderful being arises in emptiness. You might say, I think he said, from emptiness, wonderful being arises. Maybe this is our Easter message. From emptiness, wonderful being arises. But maybe more accurate even to say, within emptiness. It's not that there's some separation of emptiness and wonderful being. Emptiness and wonderful being are one. So understanding this wonderful being, which is sometimes this rare human body, our relationships, and working closely with the totality of things, the totality of the environment, we need to pay attention.

[06:49]

I know someone sent me a link to... a speech by Bill McKibben in Washington, I think now, in D.C. there's a whole big gathering of people. I think there's going to be some walk or some demonstration tomorrow. This is from people who are aware that every action that we take has some some effect, and particularly in regard to our carbon, releasing carbon into the atmosphere. So for the whole Earth, the whole Earth has medicine. The whole Earth has medicine does not mean that human beings have some privileged position. Actually, human beings, I'd say Gaia or

[07:58]

Whole earth does not privilege human stupidity. Human beings, we tend to ignore the effects of our actions until it gets pointed out to us sometimes kind of rudely. Or it feels rude. It feels like some difficult teaching when something is pointed out to us that means maybe I have to change my behavior. If I step on my friend's toes and my friend is in pain, saying, oh, I'm in pain. You're stepping on my toes. And I say, oh, does that mean I have to change my behavior? I'd rather stand right where I am. But then, seeing it's a friend, I move.

[08:59]

So I'm not stepping on these toes. So it's more complex when we look at the level of CO2 in the atmosphere that was determined by one scientist at NASA to be the top level of CO2 in the atmosphere that can allow the organisms that are currently living on the planet to continue to flourish is 350 parts per million. So Bill McKibben has this movement of 350. So you can go online and look for 350.org. Find out lots of supportive information. We're already over that. It's 390-something, I think. So the last year was a little warmer.

[10:00]

But we can't tell because, you know, in individual places it may be cooler. Right now there may be more snow in the Sierra than usual. It's hard to tell. But there are fires burning in Texas. And the last wheat crop in the Soviet Union dried up last year. So around the planet, it's hard for us to tell. So we have to receive information and understand that we are part of a big system. Sometimes the system it's much bigger actually than even Earth. So I wrote a little statement for Earth Day that was used in ceremony here and I'll read just a little bit of it. In the Dharma world there is no increase No decrease.

[11:01]

No coming, no going. No beginning, no ending. No earth, sun, moon or stars. No Buddhas or sentient beings. Out of infinite compassion Buddhas and ancestors appear and fully realize that they are the same as the vast sky and the great earth. Mountains rise up. Waters receive the light of the sun. Algae and fish appear in the seas. Lichens grow on rocks. Myriad plant and animal forms express their dependent co-arising of beings, dynamically interweaving the fabric of life. Today, we recall that our individual lives combine to create balance and confess that human activity contributes to Earth going out of balance. So we vow to wake up and remind ourselves to take good care of the earth.

[12:04]

So this is a vow that we remind ourselves to wake up and realize that things are interdependent. So that may apply to many millions of decisions that we make. What we eat. Where does my lunch come from? Here at Green Gulch, we started the garden and the farm in 1972 and 1973. And we were feeling that we wanted to establish some clarity in our relation with what's on our what's on our plate, what's in the salad bowl, what's in the field, what's in the garden. It's important today that we educate ourselves and educate our children to understand these relationships, to actually love the earth and love the plants and love...

[13:26]

this sense of joy that actually comes with working in accord with things. There's a feeling of joy in this realization that your actions are actually not just your actions. Your actions are in accord with the total working of things. So sitting zazen supports this. Sitting zazen. you actually have some understanding. You may not put it into words so well, but you have some understanding that your life is not just what you think. So you can stop thinking. So in Zazen, we have a chance to stop thinking. Understanding that this life of ours is not something that is a matter of our conceptual being.

[14:32]

It goes beyond, it goes, let's say, it's before that and after that. As I was driving over here this morning, I saw a wonderful rainbow. I just came off, did others see it? Coming off Tam Junction. All of a sudden, phew. wonderful rainbow I was realizing that this rainbow is created in my own mind there's something there something there is not a rainbow actually but in my own mind it's a rainbow and then I think this is wonderful then I thought in my own mind the rainbow and the rain are equally wonderful. When I came to Green Gulch, there was no rainbow. The rain, wonderful.

[15:35]

But in my own mind, I still thought, how wonderful it would be to see a rainbow. So in this way, we tend to get caught on things. Oh yeah, wonderful rainbow. So this is the human tendency is to think that what we see and what we talk about is what's real. Dogen said that when we advance and confirm things we're in delusion. When we actually appreciate that things advance and confirm us, that's our awakening. For things to advance and confirm us means that the whole phenomenal world is supporting this moment of existence.

[16:46]

Usually we think that because we name something, we know what it is. This next weekend I'm going to... do a workshop at Tassajara with Zen and nature and with Steve Harper. And we take walks and hikes in the mountains around Tassajara and remind ourselves that when we see something, we see a particular plant, a particular flower. To name it does not mean that we know what it is. There's a tendency for people to want to ask, Oh, what's the name of this and what's the name of that? And as soon as we name it, it's like, oh, then we can dismiss it. So we have practice then of actually touching the plant. What does it feel like? Smelling the fragrance. Not necessarily knowing that, not necessarily thinking that we know what it is because we have a name for it. It's also okay to have a name for it.

[17:50]

as we have names for our friends, as we have names for each other, and yet it's a mistake to think that we know each other because we have a name, or even some diagnosis, what so-and-so's problem is. Oh, I think I know what their problem is. Even having a diagnosis, we don't really know. So this is a subtle invitation. Medicine and disease, one translation, subdue each other. But it may be that medicine and disease meet and integrate. Medicine and disease make peace with each other. And this then settles. So this is great earth medicine. So when you realize the impact of your car driving, you may drive less.

[18:59]

You may take a bicycle. We're building a building up here, and I know it's a big impact. And we're making an effort to have it be a building that is very, say, efficient in terms of its energy use. Lots of insulation and a and the feeling that we don't need to supply so much more energy to warm up the rooms if we build a building with that in mind. So more and more we have this challenge of making many, many decisions to be in accord with what is. And sometimes this may mean political action. It's maybe not correct for the balance of the earth, balance of things, to have the people with the most money, or the corporations with the most money, make the decisions.

[20:11]

So how to balance that? This is a challenge for us. Whenever I quote Suzuki Roshi, I promised a while back that I would also quote Mitsu Suzuki. Here's a haiku. After long endurance and waiting, today's cherry blossoms. After long endurance and waiting, today's cherry blossoms. Still maybe some cherry blossoms, a little bedraggled. So, without the language of emptiness, other people have observed this process

[21:28]

interconnectedness of things. So about 100 years ago, John Muir was up in the Sierras and he wrote this. No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull or any trace of what in manufactories is called rubbish or waste. Everything is perfectly clean and pure and full of divine lessons. This quick, inevitable interest attaching to everything seems marvelous until the hand of God becomes visible. And it seems reasonable that what interests him, there's a gender bias there, that what interests her, may well interest us.

[22:30]

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies that a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow mountaineers. Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic working man, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go. For the mountains are fountains, beginning places, however related to sources, beyond mortal ken. So here he's inspired in the mountains, realizing that everything that he looks at is intimately connected. with everything else, where he says hitched. Everything is hitched to everything else in the universe.

[23:39]

And this thought that there may be some beating heart in every crystal, in every cell, in every raindrop. A beating heart. But there is something that we share in emptiness. So he doesn't say emptiness. He says, source beyond mortal ken. Source beyond mortal ken. Some sense that there is some subtle nature of things that those of us who appear and then disappear are not quite able to understand, not quite able to grasp So today I want to just invite you to appreciate that subtle quality, that subtle sense, that somewhat mysterious, that somewhat wondrous, wondrous being appears.

[24:52]

So actually the word myo there in wondrous being sometimes has the quality of also meaning. subtle or mysterious. So a wondrous being appears. And so this is a challenge also for us to accept the way in which our lives happen, come together, and pass away. That we're actually in this ongoing process of transformation. So I think of it here with the garden and the farm. I noticed that we have the cover crop turned in to the earth. The green leaves are entering the soil, bringing nutrients to the ground. I'm reminded of this poem from Plum Village.

[25:57]

It says, exquisite the rose, exquisite the rose on her way to compost. Fragrant the compost on its way to rose. Wheeling my barrel of dung, impermanence greets me in beauty. So it's a wonderful thing to be wheeling a barrel of dung, contributing to this transformation, actually bringing energy, putting my own energy in the harness, my own energy in the service of this nourishment. So the rose, sometimes we forget how, and we see that exquisite rose, you know,

[27:00]

how it is also impermanent. It's already gone. We try to prolong it, right? When we cut roses and we give them this special, whatever, solution to try to keep them from fading, we want to prolong them. This is our human tendency to prefer the rose But when you actually are willing to fully participate in what happens moment by moment, then you're equally happy with the fragrance of compost. Sometimes it's pretty strong. But understanding that compost and rose are codependent. Compost and rose exist together. the rebirth of something is dependent upon its dying.

[28:10]

The dying of something is dependent upon its birth. So this is always, always a profound matter that we need to find our composure with. Big challenge. So sometimes it means... To sit with some pain, knowing the way in which I have held on to something, wanting things to be a certain way, creates a tension in the body. It creates a kind of a fixed idea in the mind. And then we have our emotional association with that. So it's hard to accept. Sometimes. But this is the teaching. This is Dharma teaching. The teaching of impermanence. When we experience that pain, this is actually our realization. It's a chance for us to wake up to who we are.

[29:18]

So, this is... It's not easy for human beings to realize that we're not privileged. Each individual has to come to terms with our own mortality. We have to come to terms with the birth and death of members of our own family and our friends. The birth and death, sometimes caused by other beings. I planted a little cucumber seedling a couple of weeks ago, and this morning I went out and found that the slugs had eaten it completely. It's gone. I have to plant another cucumber seedling, another seed.

[30:30]

and protect it. Pete Seeger wrote a song, which sometimes I think of as a kind of a death, a good song for a burial site. But it's also a song for birth. that goes my old brown earth to my old brown earth to my old blue sky, I now give these last few molecules of I. And you who sing and you who stand nearby I do charge you not to cry. But it's all right if you cry.

[31:36]

So this gave my last few molecules of I. Be willing to give your whole being. Our great... Zen founder in Japan, Dogen Zenji, said, let go of your whole body and mind. Realizing that your whole body and mind is actually not yours, when you realize that, when you realize that it's a gift, it's not so difficult to let go of it. But until that is very clear, it's very hard. So when Pete Seeger says, okay, I give his last few molecules. Maybe those last few molecules are the hardest ones to let go of.

[32:45]

You may notice, what is it that I'm holding on to? And then he says, guard well, this human chain, guard well this human chain, take care to keep it strong as long as the sun shines, as long as the sun does shine. So that would be quite, that would be quite amazing actually if we're able to take care of our human species as long as our local star shines. another, I don't know, another billion years or so. We might not be so much in balance with things. I'm trying to remember the rest of it. I'll have to sing it and then I'll remember it.

[33:56]

So we'll see what happens. If I sing it, I'll sing it once and then maybe the second time you can join in. To my old brown earth and to my old blue sky I now give these last few molecules of eye And you who sing and you who stand nearby, I do charge you not to cry. Guard well this human chain. Watch well you keep it strong as long as sun does shine. And I remembered it now. And this our home, keep pure and sweet and green, for I am yours and you are also mine.

[35:14]

So see if you can join in and hum along or harmonize or whatever. To my old brown earth And to my old blue sky I now give these last few molecules of eye and you who sing and you who stand nearby, I do charge you not to cry. Guard well this human chain, watch well You keep it strong As long as sun does shine And this our home Keep pure and sweet and green For I am yours And you are also mine

[36:31]

So for I am yours and you are also mine, I think he has some glimpse of dependent co-arising. So maybe we'll stop. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:18]

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