We will now begin today's Dharma talk offered by Sarah Tashkar. We will now chant the opening verse, which should appear on your screen now. An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect Dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million Kalpas, having it to see and listen to. to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Before we begin today, everyone, I just want to note that this meeting has closed captioning. To enable, you can click the small CC icon at the bottom of your Zoom screen.

[16:18]

If you find the captions distracting, you can also disable them by clicking that same CC icon. Thank you. Hello. Good morning, everyone. I want to... invite you if you're willing, a few more of you to put your videos on. It's always helpful to see some faces as we're in this little virtual world together. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for coming. My name is Sarah and I live at Green Gulch Farm. with my family, and I have had the great fortune to land in the role of farm manager once again. I came here as a farm apprentice almost 20 years ago to learn how to work with the soil and the land, and I find myself doing this work again every day with a wonderful crew of people.

[17:32]

So this talk is coming from that experience. I want to say I gave this talk for Earth Day a little over a month ago for the City Center Dharma Talk, Saturday Dharma Talk, and the Gringolch Tonto invited me to please give it again for the Gringolch Sangha, many of whom were not at that talk. So I realize many of you were at that talk and If you've already heard this, you know, I invite you to listen again anew to see what you hear in a fresh way. And I will see what I find in a fresh way. And if that doesn't seem to be what you'd like to do now, I invite you to go outside and get your hands dirty and listen to the Dharma talk that the birds are giving this morning.

[18:37]

So I'd once again like to begin this talk by chanting the lineage of farmers and gardeners here at Green Gulch who have passed on and taught me what I know what it means to care for and practice with this land. And I want to include the people that were here before us, before the Zen Center, before colonization even, and who are still here, the Coast Miwok people still here in the Bay Area caring for these places and this land in different ways. So this recitation is dedicated to all our soil loving ancestors, known and unknown, remembered through these names.

[19:45]

The Coast Miwok people, past, present and future. Alan Chadwick, Harry Roberts, Amigo Bob Contesano, Steve Stuckey, Wendy Johnson, Peter Rudnick, Pamela Heller, Suki Parmalee, Kuko Alcala, Liz Malazzo, Matt Favret, Aria Bettinger, Carolyn Kavanaugh, Kayum Johnson, Sarah Jane Snyder, Maria, Katie, Jordan, Mariam, and all the farmers and gardeners, past, present, and future. May our lives reveal their compassion, and may we with all beings and the great earth realize Buddha's way.

[20:49]

Last time I chanted that list, I forgot Emela Heller, who is so close to my heart that she has just melded into it. And I don't even think of her as somebody outside of my body anymore. I definitely wanted to include her as a wonderful teacher and guide into this study of my own mind. So I gave this talk. as I was thinking about Earth Day, which happened last month, which began in 1970, maybe many of you participated in it, I don't know, and was the manifestation of a growing awareness in the context of modern Western industrial capitalism that human beings on the impact on the environment, the environment, which is implicitly outside of ourselves, is out there, is inseparable from the environment's impact on us, human beings in here.

[22:10]

So this first Earth Day was kind of a visible emergence of a collective awareness within modern Western industrial capitalism. of one of its foundational flaws, the delusion that human beings are separate from the natural world. So I had an interesting conversation with my father recently in which he pointed out that this delusion is not unique to capitalism. You know, we talked about what quality of capitalism is it that we're pointing to specifically and decided on this piece of objectification and ownership, which is present in capitalism and many other social and economic systems, communism, feudalism, and that along with the ownership, there's the domination

[23:22]

of industrialism, which perhaps gets closer to the heart of the matter than pointing to capitalism in particular. In any case, First Day was an attempt to wake people up to this delusion and bring us back into right relationship with the earth and all beings. This relationship The relationship between all living beings and all phenomena is at the heart of Zen. Suzuki Roshi said, Zen may be said to be the practice of cultivating our mind to make it deep and open enough to accept the various seeds of ideas and thoughts as they are. When this kind of perfect acceptance takes place, everything will orient itself according to its own nature and the circumstances.

[24:32]

We call this activity the great activity. Reality can be said to be the bed that is deep and soft enough to accept everything as it is. This is what I'd like to talk about this morning. How working with the earth illuminates this practice that Suzuki Roshi is talking about, and how cultivating the mind through practice conditions how we receive, accept, and work with the land and with reality. I think it's important to stop for a moment and ask, What is this perfect acceptance Suzuki Roshi is talking about? What does that mean? I think it's good to be wary of the exhortation to just accept everything. In my experience, acceptance does not just happen, especially it doesn't just happen when we choose, and it is not general.

[25:47]

It is both sudden and gradual and specific and embodied. The sudden part is the moment when our immediate experience changes from rejecting things as they are with judgment, defensiveness or numbness to accepting everything as it is, which miraculously includes but is not limited to judgment, defensiveness, and numbness. And the gradual part is all the work and small shifts that lead up to this moment. Being with and attending to our experience is work. It takes effort and it requires clear awareness. If we try to leap from our small self or our resistance to big mind or perfect acceptance without practicing with and cultivating our mind as it is, this is spiritual bypassing.

[27:01]

Using spirituality or spiritual concepts like perfect acceptance to cover over or suppress aspects of our identity or experience. To avoid something, usually something painful or difficult, that's what spiritual bypassing means. It's the opposite of seeing clearly. It is actually covering over or obscuring reality with some idea of spirituality or enlightenment. Clear awareness requires stability. energy, and concentration, as well as patience and fearlessness. It's wonderful to have a spiritual friend or teacher to guide us and help us when endeavoring to practice clear awareness. So when Suzuki Roshi says we are cultivating our mind to make it deep and open enough,

[28:09]

to accept the various seeds of ideas and thoughts as they are. I am suggesting it's important to be specific, to become clearly aware of the specific ideas and thoughts that arise in our own mind so that we can practice with them rather than acting upon them or ignoring them and perpetuating suffering. A Windbell article from 2002 on the history of Green Gulch says, with the help of his connections to the Army Corps of Engineers, George Willwright, who owned Green Gulch before Zen Center, began to bulldoze the valley floor, straightening out the creek, creating an interlocking system of ponds and reservoirs on the creek. filling the lower wetlands and damming it with a levee to prevent saltwater from coming back into the fields.

[29:13]

The power and authority given to landowners and government agencies at that time, you know, the 1960s, probably early 60s, largely white men in the context of Western capitalist industrial expansion, a system we all know is largely intact today. allowed the seeds of thoughts and ideas to go unchecked, to become reified as beliefs and views, which sprouted and blossomed through human sweat and ingenuity into environmental degradation and destruction. Right here in Green Gulch Valley and all over the earth, we've seen this pattern in environmental this pattern of industrial domination and unchecked profit seeking, resulting in what we all know and see today, global climate change, mass extinction, and many ecosystems teetering on the verge of collapse.

[30:24]

So bringing clear awareness to the thoughts and ideas that preceded the engineering of Green Gulch Creek, what might we find? I've spent some time inquiring into what thoughts and ideas might lead to a straightened, gravel-starved creek with check dams blocking fish passage and drastically reduced riparian habitat. Here are some things I've found, some guesses I have. Humans know best. Humans can control water, plants, animals, life. The purpose of this land is to support me, my life, my livelihood, our human activity.

[31:30]

Human activity is more important than the activity of other forms of life. The success of my human activity can be separated from the success of other forms of life in the ecosystem. I can control the consequences of my actions, or perhaps there will be no unintended or adverse consequences of my actions. The abundance of the natural world will always be available to me, to human beings, no matter what we do. What I see and think is true or complete. So those are maybe some of the thoughts and ideas that might precede the human activity of

[32:34]

straightening a creek, of putting dams in a creek, of destroying riparian habitat. So we are now in at least year 15 of actively restoring the creek here at Green Gulch and the watershed, work that was begun decades ago by the first then students to come to Green Gulch. and encouraged along the way by many, many sincere practitioners aspiring to manifest their understanding of the teaching of interdependence and wholeness. We have worked with the Park Service, dedicated professionals, generous donors, and myriad government agencies to remove the Lower Levy Road, to restore the lower wetlands and the lower portion of Redwood Creek. We've added a natural meander and complex in channel habitat to the lower portion of Green Gulch Creek and restored the connection between Spring Valley and the main creek stem to deliver vital course sediment and spawning gravel to the meander.

[33:41]

And we're currently working to design and build a completely off channel water storage system for the farm and garden. in order to allow for increased early spring and summer flow in the creek, which is vital for the native coho and steelhead populations, as well as so many other species. And all this work is based on an evolving understanding of the complexity and interdependence of life. From the one most of us inherited from George Wheelwright's day, and the one he inherited, from those who came before him. I've had the privilege of being up close to a lot of the work that has happened with the creek and to learn a lot about creek ecology and geomorphology, which I've understood within the context of training I've received in organic farming and the teachings of interdependence and karma, the Buddha Dharma. And at the same time, I grew up in a world very similar to George.

[34:48]

grew up in the 80s and 90s here in California. So given the historical and cultural context I've grown up in, I can both imagine George's worldview and also see pretty clearly that it's based on what I would generously call a mistaken view of reality. Of course, it's easier to identify thoughts and ideas that we don't share. that belong to another era, another culture, that we are far away from in space and time, that seem alien or outside of us. The way that it appears George Wheelwright thought or didn't think about the creek and its relationship to the valley and to him appears from my modern vantage point to be rather crude. The mistaken view is obvious to me. from over here.

[35:49]

The practice of organic agriculture, as I have been taught and as I have been practicing here at Green Gulch for over a decade, appears to me to be subtle and righteous in support of life rather than disrupting it. It's been easy to set up a dichotomy, that worldview, And those actions were crude, damaging, bad. My worldview and my actions are subtle, life-sustaining, and good. You guys ever thought this way? In practicing and becoming more and more intimately aware of the particular and concrete ways, no pun intended, that the creek, the riparian corridor, the entire watershed were disrupted by George's unexamined ideas.

[36:56]

I have become able to shine a light on my own awareness, my own unexamined ideas, where that legacy is still functioning in me. That I, that we, with our nice organic farm are still benefiting from and perpetuating this system at the expense of so many other forms of life. And that the same subtle mindset of separation, of the land being something to shape, to serve our human needs is still operating through me. yet it is through the practice of cultivating a mind that is wide and deep enough to hold this awareness right in the midst of this painful truth that something softens.

[38:03]

And with this softening, this acceptance, I am able to turn more fully toward my vow, my aspiration, to support the unobstructed flow of the creek, the life in this soil and of reality. And this is George's gift to me and to us. Through clear awareness and avowing George's mistaken ideas, I more clearly see my own Practicing confession and repentance, I express my true nature. So how do we cultivate our mind to make it deep and open enough to accept everything? A few years ago, Reb offered the teaching and the practice of compassionate inquiry.

[39:14]

as a way to invite our ideas, thoughts, feelings, and sensations into our awareness. To welcome each thought, idea, emotion, or sensation with kindness, patience, and generosity into our awareness. To make space for each of them without judgment. To wait patiently for and inquire into what else might show up or what else is already present. And then to invite each of these mental and physical phenomena into our awareness and to be careful and compassionate with them. To be careful and compassionate with ideas and thoughts.

[40:16]

means to allow them to be just as they are, without grasping, trying to hold onto them as true or complete, or averting, trying to avoid or negate them as though they were or were not true or complete. When we allow these things to be we find out through our own experience that there is nothing to be afraid of and nothing we have to do. A thought is just a thought. A sensation is just a sensation. They are never the whole of the truth. Each one can be examined, questioned, and cared for.

[41:17]

to say that sometimes being with our thoughts and sensations can take a lot of very particular support, such as when the body is in a trauma response. And please note that there are ways to practice with trauma that are helpful. And there are ways to practice with trauma that are not helpful. You know, and if you need them, please seek out more resources. There is a lot of information on trauma-informed practice and how to practice with trauma online. If you're able to practice awareness with your experience with some amount of calm and stability, you may notice a judgment arise or you may notice fear. I can't accept these ideas or sensations or emotions. Or I feel overwhelmed or afraid of these ideas or sensations or emotions.

[42:23]

The practice of compassionate inquiry would be to then turn to these very thoughts of fear or judgment and invite them into awareness. And then to be careful with them and compassionate towards them. Practice right where you are, right with what is arising. Here is the place. Here the way unfolds. It took me years before I was able to practice in this way with my thoughts and emotions and views around how I was caring for the soil. to have the courage to look directly at my thoughts and ideas about farming and allow in the truth that they and I were causing harm without leaping into action or defending my position.

[43:28]

And still it's a practice, moment after moment, non-defensiveness. The basic foundation of organic farming is that the soil is complex. The soil ecosystem and the whole ecosystem is complex, dynamic, and alive. And if you care for the living soil, full of billions of bacteria, miles and miles of fungi, protozoa, nematodes, gastropods, worms, and arthropods, insects, not to mention other little mammals, The complexity of the soil and the larger ecosystem will support balance, and you will have healthy plants and healthy people. And at the same time, the kind of dirty secret of most organic farming, or really, I say dirty secret, but it's really just a painful truth, painful truth of organic farming as I have been practicing it,

[44:38]

not to mention what we call chemical agriculture. Some people call it conventional agriculture, which has many, many more dirty, disturbing truths. But this organic farming, as I've been practicing it, is that we disrupt the soil ecosystem with tillage. You know, by opening the soil to oxygen through tillage, literally turning the soil, we get a beautiful flush of bacterial activity because there's a lot of aerobic bacteria in the soil that love getting that extra oxygen. And which through the miracle of the soil food web makes nitrogen available to plants, this flush of bacteria. our food crops. Most of our annual food crops grow very well with all of bacterially dominated soil.

[45:45]

So the problem is that by disrupting the soil through tillage, we destroy the miles and miles of fungal hyphae that also transport nutrients through the soil. altering the balance of the soil ecosystem, along with disturbing and destroying the natural drainage created by the living roots and the worm and insect activity, not to mention disturbing the worms and the insects themselves. There's always a price to pay, and there's no getting out of this business of being human. This is what I believe was meant by picking up a speck of dust. in Case 61 of the Blue Cliff Record. And yet, Suzuki Roshi tells us that when we take our place, when we cultivate our minds to be deep and wide enough for perfect acceptance of everything, including, or maybe fundamentally, our human thoughts, ideas, sensations, and emotions,

[46:55]

starting with being clearly aware of them and practicing patience, generosity, wisdom, and compassion with what is arising. Everything will orient itself according to its own nature and the circumstances. We return to our own nature, which is that we as human beings are completely woven into the fabric of reality. We are completely made of and in turn are part of making the relentlessly dynamic, complex, interdependent activity of life. When we find our place where we are, when we avow our limited human ideas, thoughts, emotions, and views, Right in the middle of this amazing, complex and ungraspable activity, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point.

[48:06]

We are immediately in relationship with everything and can act from this foundational and direct knowledge. And by the way, Suzuki Roshi says in the same talk, For a person who wants to understand Buddhism logically, it may be difficult to understand why they should study over and over again Zen stories like in the Blue Cliff Record. Yet when a student realizes how difficult it is to incorporate into their daily life what they learn in these stories, they will acknowledge the necessity of practicing Zazen and reading. This practice and reading will in turn encourage them to read these stories over and over again. To do this over and over again means perfect acceptance. So Tsukiroshi says, so just to practice over and over, to sit zazen, to study the teaching,

[49:16]

to study our limited human experience even without understanding in some logical way what is happening. Suzuki Roshi tells us this is perfect acceptance. Through the support of this practice, my mind has become deep and wide enough To become clearly aware of without needing to grasp or turn away. To accept the pain of having caused damage and harm to the soil and to other living beings. The shame of having made so many mistakes of being wrong. My attachment to knowing, to being right, to being important, to thinking that I am in control.

[50:24]

The fear of not knowing, of thinking I should know. All the physical sensations and words that go along with these thoughts and ideas of the feeling of being puffed up. the feeling of tightness, the feeling of heaviness in my body. And amazingly, the medicine of practicing with all of this, of inviting it into awareness and being careful and compassionate with all of these contracted, mistaken views and actions over many, many years, has allowed me, for right now at least, in this moment, to open more and more to reality as it is.

[51:25]

Reality can be said to be the bed that is deep and soft enough to accept everything as it is. And to feel this softness in my own body. and heart. The grace of this softness has allowed me to feel and turn toward the support of so many young and energetic and sincere farmers and farm apprentices who over the years could see more clearly than I the limitations of what I was doing. And the grace of this softness has allowed me to see that many of my heroes and mentors, all these many, many old white men, but many old white women and more and more the circle of this modern organic movement is opening up to include many more people and to see that they also are turning toward this new way of farming, of trying to understand how caring for the soil by minimizing tillage

[52:44]

is where we need to go, or it is a possibility of even more thoroughly supporting life. And the grace of this softness has allowed me to feel and turn toward my own knowing. My own knowing all along. of what I was afraid to look at. That many of our farming practice are not in alignment with our vow of what we know to be our true nature. So this year, we, me and the farm crew, we are studying and experimenting with no-till farming. here at Green Gulch to understand how they work, how we can apply them to the farm here at Green Gulch, to take our place in the great soil ecosystem with more humility and curiosity and fearlessness and awe for our human limitations and the boundlessness of life.

[54:02]

It is really a great joy to feel open to the truth of not knowing. to be a beginner, to open to the great activity, the functioning of life, and allow it more and more to guide our practices on the farm rather than, you know, our human-centered idea guiding the farm or the soil. I'm also gathering inspiration from all sorts of places, including a wonderful book who somebody pointed out to me was written by a Western woman in the academy. And I'm not sure what kind of relationship she has with the indigenous groups whose technology she writes about in this book. Yeah, which is another thing to carefully study and be accurate about. And the wonderful, this book is called Low Tech.

[55:07]

And it describes many different local styles of architecture, both environmental and landscape and structural architecture that's based in traditional ecological knowledge, which is like the cumulative body of multi-generational knowledge, practices and beliefs that are the foundation of indigenous life all over the globe. It's just been so inspiring to me to to learn about these different practices and study how they relate to this land and this farm and my own practices. There's this one in particular I've been turning, it's called Waruwaru, and it was developed over 3,800 years ago by the descendants of the Amara and Ketchaw people in the Andes. that's still in use today. And it's basically raised platforms built in a floodplain around a creek or a river.

[56:14]

So places that are prone to flooding, but that are also quite dry. So this is like Green Gulch, you know, our Mediterranean climate of in the summer, it's dry. And in the winter, the whole watershed drains out through our farm fields, you know. down to the creek bed. So it's definitely kind of a floodplain. And so these raised fields are sized differently based on the topography and the water, the very, very local conditions. And, you know, what I understand or what I imagine is, or what it is, What it leads me towards is a way of relating to the land that isn't about dominating or overcoming natural systems, but rather becoming part of them. Having the farm fields be part of how the water moves through the valley.

[57:16]

And I am, I feel called to explore this, and I am turning it in my kind of slow, in this slow, mysterious way, how it is that this might look on this land and in this valley at this time. So in opening to the possibility of these wide and deep ways of being with the natural systems of this valley, the limited ways in which I continue, continually think about the world, continue to be illuminated. And perhaps while more subtle, at least from this perspective than in George Wheelwright's day, the thoughts, ideas, and views that arise over and over in my mind, they are still hierarchical.

[58:19]

Over and over, I find a me, this subject over here, and an it, the object. And an illusion of control, which is born out of separation. And I continue to find through practice and through the body. That clear, stable and bright awareness of any and all thoughts and views, sensations and emotions. neither grasping nor turning away, allows softening and opening wherein there is the possibility that everything, including this body and mind, orients itself according to its own nature and the circumstances.

[59:20]

Our true nature is that we are part of everything completely inseparable, in fact. When we express our true nature, we express humility that we are of the earth. Clearly observing water, completely accepting water, clearly observing the mind, completely accepting the mind. Everything orienting itself to its own nature and the circumstances. Dynamic, impermanent, interdependent, empty of separate self. We call this the great activity. I'd like to close with one final thought.

[60:24]

A couple of things. Zenju said in her new book, The Deepest Peace, Contemplations from a Season of Stillness, Zenju is talking about tea ceremony and tea. And she asks, what if pouring tea could be the activity that reflects our inherent silence and stillness as the body of earth that we are? I hear that question and I think, what if cultivating the earth could be the activity that reflects our inherent silence and stillness as the body of earth that we are? In this way, Zenju continues, We let the unsettling noise from our dark forest, our ideas, thoughts, and views arising from the dark forest of our mind.

[61:37]

We let the unsettling noises from our dark forest be the sound of discovery. We live with the vastness of life and are not stranded on the shore of our limitations. Seeing tea as from the earth and the earth as ourselves, we understand life as awakened eons ago. We live with the vastness of life and are not stranded on the shore of our limitations. Seeing everything. as from the earth and the earth as ourselves, we understand life. Reality cannot be hindered.

[62:41]

Complete acceptance, the great activity is and has always been deep and wide enough to hold delusion. Reality is the functioning of the great earth, the dynamic functioning of the soil and all its inhabitants and relations, falling out of balance and falling back into it. There's no problem. Reality does not exclude disease or health. That is just the human mind. We already are the great people. body of the earth. There has never been and can never be any separation. There has never been and can never be any separation.

[63:42]

Thank you very much. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. I want to thank everyone for joining us today.

[64:51]

Please know that we do rely on your donations now more than ever. If you feel supported by the Dharma offerings of our temples, please consider supporting San Francisco's Zen Center with a donation at this time. Any size is greatly appreciated, and a link will show in the chat window now with ways to donate. We will also be taking a five-minute break before returning for Q&A. We'll return at 1110. If anybody needs to sign off now and would like to say goodbye, You may do so now. Bye. Thanks, Sarah. Thank you for your inspiring talk. Bye. Thank you, Sarah. Wonderful to see you. Bye. Thank you. So nice to see all of you. Thank you. take a break.

[65:56]

I'll be back in a minute. I hope you will too. Welcome back, everyone.

[69:39]

We'll begin Q&A. If you would like to ask a question, you can raise your hand, virtual hand, which is under, if you click the reactions icon at the bottom of your Zoom toolbar, there's a raise hand button in there. You can also submit a question or a comment in the chat as well. And if you want to raise your actual hand, I'll look through video feeds kind of near the end. And Sarah, one quick question that came from the chat was the name of the book that you were discussing. Okay. Should I write it in the chat? Or you can tell me and I can type it in. Okay. It's Lotech, L-O-T-E-K, Design by Radical Indigenism. And it's by Julia Watson. All right.

[70:46]

Our first offering is from Boris. I think you're muted. Good afternoon or good morning. I'm actually from Maryland. So it's afternoon here in Baltimore. Can you speak a bit more about Big Mind? Big Mind. Yeah, well. If it's possible. Yeah. What do I have to say about big mind? I mean, big mind is reality. It's the, I might say, it's the unfolding of reality.

[71:49]

It includes everything. When we sit zazen, this is big mind. The little mind, you probably know really well, is me, I. Big mind holds that completely, includes the little mind along with everything else. Can that be compared with God, for example, in the monotheistic religions like Christianity or Muslim or Hindu? Or Judaism? It's not. I think you can't compare it because there's no self.

[72:50]

There's no it. There's nothing to hold on to there. There's no. I'm not a scholar of religion, but my impression, I mean, maybe in the mystic traditions, there's some similar feeling, but I do not think people studying comparative religions would say they're the same. And feel free to join in, any of you professor types. Can that be considered as a universal mind or compared to universal mind? Well, what is universal mind? What is that? I don't know. The cosmic mind, the cosmic order. I don't know if you're familiar with the name. You probably do.

[73:52]

I may not pronounce it correctly. Shiro? Cosmic conscience? Okay. I think that any attempt to find something out there is... to miss it okay thank you sorry it's all right well maybe not maybe another question real quick um i think i already asked that but um you heard the name satori right i mean the term satori which is in Japanese translation, spiritual enlightenment, I guess. Satori in Nirvana, is it the same thing or is it two separate things? They're different things. Different things? Okay. Okay. Thank you. Our next offering is from Dalu.

[75:02]

Good to see you, Sarah. Thank you so much. I listened to your talk when you gave it at City Center. And now again today, I really enjoyed both times. And, you know, it's always. I think the talk is always a little bit different. And of course, I hear it differently. To. Yeah, and I just really appreciate your deep love for the earth and for farming and the way you bring in your sincere practice and sort of invite us into all of the complexity of that. And there's one part I've found both times in the talk where I got just very, very tender. I think what it's bringing up for me is this phrase, like, how can we call in and not call out?

[76:18]

And in particular, as I think about George Wheelwright and, you know, I, I know very much in your, your talk that you're saying explicitly, you know, oh, it's so easy to say this is the other person in there. Or at least their views are, you know, crude. And my views are subtle and so on. So, you know, I understand that you're seeing that explicitly as something to examine and be careful about and to be aware of. Oh, all of us have our conditioning. A lot of this is in my own conditioning. And yeah, I think it's... Like, I guess also I just had this thought, like, what if I were George Will Wright's daughter listening to something like that? You know, like I just or like if I'm somebody who has his views and I'm watching this talk, like, how do I how could I feel fully called in, you know, fully seen in terms of like, you know, as I think about George Will Wright, like he loved the land, you know.

[77:34]

Yes, he had. probably had a lot of these views. And yes, I also share this, this feeling of like, oh, that was really damaging. And now we're trying to heal this. And yet, yeah, I mean, without him, like Zen Center wouldn't have Green Gold Farm. Like, it's amazing, you know, so I guess I just, it's, yeah, that's just a question coming up for me is how can we on the one hand, like acknowledge the, the, harmful views and the harm, and at the same time, like, call in this person, and I think you understand what I'm saying. I do. I do. Yeah, and I appreciate you bringing it up, just like I appreciated Linda bringing it up last time. So, I had several conversations about George Wheelwright after the last time I gave this talk, right? I mean, clearly, he wanted Zen Center to have the land, and in fact, he lived here. With the Zen students, right?

[78:35]

And I was told that he used to walk down to the fields every day to check out what they were doing down there. And he approved. He really thought it was great how the Zenies were taking care of the land. So, yeah, that's right. He completely loved the land in the way that... You know, probably he understood to love the land and take care of it. Right. And part of what I think is so helpful for me is to understand, you know, like everyone's doing their best. This is, you know, you can see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. You know, so we're all in our circle of water. And do we know it? Do we know we have a limited view?

[79:36]

Are we practicing awareness, including our limited views as we move forward? Do we understand their limitations? And are we being careful with that? And this is a never-ending practice. We never get there. always confession and repentance, right? There's always, we're always doing something. And we don't know. We don't know what the result is going to be. We can just care about the result. We can just care about causes and conditions. That's about it with this limited human consciousness and to practice. Yeah, I think I just understand us all on the path.

[80:39]

I am on the path with George. And that's right, to really soften. And the point is to call that in. I mean, really, it's each of us calling ourselves in that allows each other in. To really understand and have compassion for my own limited view right now. Even if my own limited view is I got this. I like I'm on top of it. I'm doing the right thing to call that in and to be careful with that. To love this limited being is how I love George. And if I leave this one out, I'm going to leave him out. And if I leave him out, I'm leaving this one out. So. Yes, this practice is relationship practice. It is including one another. And again, if we don't, you know, I think it's taken me so long to understand that this practice is about love.

[81:48]

And if I am practicing and I notice there's something I can't find love, Or what I find is judgment, then that's what I get to practice with today. So, yeah. Yeah, and I think the love comes through. And I think I'm just always thinking about, yeah, like how can I make sure that I'm leading with the love so that somebody else doesn't just shut down? You know what I mean? Like I could just imagine if I was. like I say, like George Wheelwright's daughter, if the first thing I heard about him was that, then I might not be able to get to the other part. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. And this was my father's having this conversation being about capitalism. It was really hard for him when he felt like that was the wrong word or was pointing at the wrong thing to get past this word or pointing at the system when it didn't seem accurate.

[83:02]

So, so this, and by the way, George Wilwright's granddaughter was an apprentice at Greenwich farm on the farm. So she did come, I think it was in the nineties, maybe in the nineties. I wasn't here yet. Anyway, so. What I would say is we need this practice of compassionate inquiry. Is love here? What is here as I am going to speak about or to someone? What is actually here? And to allow what is here, which may be, as we said, like judgment or separation or. confusion or some hesitation, right? Like, I don't want this to go badly. So to actually slow down and connect and to really care for what is there rather than rushing ahead and thinking we have to do something, like say something really righteous or teach someone something or

[84:17]

show ourselves to be knowledgeable or whatever it is to find out what's here. And if there isn't love there, then maybe we sit with that. Right? So part of this is patience. And patience is like go at the speed that is appropriate. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for taking care of that. It's really important. Our next offering is from David. Hello, David. I can't hear you. You're unmuted.

[85:21]

Maybe you're... Uh-oh. Okay. Okay. Now the offering from Linda. You are muted now, Linda. There you are. Hi. Probably, David, when that happens, if you check out and then re-log in, the problem sometimes goes away. So while you're working on that, I just wanted to, just because of the last conversation you had with Dawu, and it was a similar one that you had with me on the first round of this talk, which I enjoyed just as much, actually more today than I did the first time.

[86:25]

I think there's just one thing I would like to add because you fully acknowledged what I brought up and what Dawu brought up when we did. Just the one thing I would like to add is please include in the talk the love for George and the acknowledgement that George practically gave Green Gulch to Zen Center and then lived there. Just include that in the talk, because that's what I felt wasn't there, and maybe that's what Dawu also felt wasn't there. And I hope you'll write this and publish it. It's a beautiful essay already. Thank you. Looks like Cecile has her hand raised. Can you hear me? Yes.

[87:26]

Thank you so much for this talk. I, too, listened to it for the second time. And it was the first time, you know, really, really. I just really feel very, very close to this talk. And I have recommended it to many people. I'd like to ask a more personal question, because I am a woman of many, many years. And I have never been a follower, but I'm doing it anyway. In other words, I can never join a group. I am so rebellious. I could not live at Green Gulch, but I am so envious that you live at Green Gulch. So that's my nature. And I've kind of accepted it. It makes me extremely lonely, but it is my burden to carry. Yesterday, I joined Naomi Shihab Nye and Paul Haller. I've done two workshops at Tassajara with them.

[88:30]

And I am so aware of how much, like, the whole idea of egolessness is so hard for me. In other words, I felt depressed after because I couldn't say what I wanted to say. And I feel so sad about that, about myself, of why I cannot release the self. So I don't know what you might say about that, but I would love some guidance on that. Yeah. Yeah, I have that too. The part that wants to be seen and heard and recognized and loved, acknowledged.

[89:41]

I think probably everyone has that. And I think it's really helpful when we remember that. that when we give that to other people, you know, it's also a gift to ourselves. When we give our attention, when we can center somebody else's expression as complete, this is how we learn to also make space for ourselves and our expression. You know, for you, I heard you say how you appreciate this about yourself. You know how you can kind of understand your karmic, your karma that you get to take care of in this lifetime. That that is your practice to be devoted to this person who seems to have a really hard time being around other people or doing the thing they want you to do.

[90:45]

I know some of other ones of you. And. You know, I mean, for me, it's just to soften around this being that so wants to be seen and heard. To see and hear her. You. For you to see and hear her. To see her pain and her longing and her disappointment. And to be... wide enough to get big enough to hold that and not need to rely on anyone else to do it for you and then what you find when you can really just be with her you know invite her in practice some compassionate inquiry who are you what do you want what other feelings are here

[91:49]

You know, what sensations are here? What memories are here? What thoughts are here? Without needing to make sense of them or have a coherent story, without dismissing them or holding them as true, to just allow them is then to be able to love this person and to love everybody else. You know, to understand our nature, which is to be in relationship with each other and then have some freedom in there. Like, okay, even if you don't call on me or I don't get to see my thing, that's okay. And if you do call on me, that's great. And we're actually doing this together, seeing each other, you know, hearing each other. So, you know, but first we do our work quietly, you know. like a fool, like an idiot. But I think I am as a preacher in disguise.

[92:52]

I want, for example, I can't tell you how many people I told had to listen to your talk. I want to spread the gospel. I want everybody to go online. Whoever is here today, you have until the 31st. Go online to Carnegie Hall, Voices of Hope. and watch Jordi Saval's great concert with my friend Dimitri in there playing and the great musicians playing. And that is such a great gift for every book that I love. I want everybody to read George Saunders' book on the Russian short story writers today. Like, get the book. A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. I am a preacher, and I don't know how to express it, and I'm blocked in my own writing. So that's the real torture. And I'm going to call May the farmer today, who is Vietnamese origin, and she goes and sees where land is in California that's not being used, and she plants wheat.

[94:08]

Do you know May the farmer? Well, I have to put you two together. She is a very beautiful soul. And I'm going to call her and tell her to listen to your talk about tillage. Tillage. Yeah. So I don't know. I'm left with just this, you know, I don't have so many years left of this life. And I feel I have to kind of transform it. Yeah. Yeah. Or be transformed by it. I am, I am, I am, I am. And I am a lover of tea. And so everything you said about tea. And in the five minute break, I walk downstairs in this lovely house I live in. And I put the water in the kettle for my tea because I will have my breakfast. And I pour tea a lot. Thank you to all who are here and listen to me as well. Thank you very much, Cecile.

[95:09]

All right. Well, I'm going to spotlight David again. I'm not sure if his audio is going to work, but in case not, I have his question from the chat. Let's see. Want to give a try, David? Thank you again. I was here on Earth Day and it really was fresh today. Very, very rich and, you know, even even grown some since you first gave the talk. So thank you. I wanted to ask if you would talk some more on this stillness and activity, the activity that reflects that stillness in this sort of relational practice with the world, this practice of sort of radical kindness or if you like love. Yeah, I often feel like this practice is kind of like, you know, when you pat your head and rub your belly at the same time.

[96:18]

Like, and at first when you try and do that, it's really hard and you can't do both things at once. There's this kind of internal relationship, a relationship with the thoughts and feelings and sensations. This kind of what appears to be the separate body and mind. And then there's this like outward awareness. And there's some kind of internal stillness and silence that I need to find in order to be present, to actually be present. Mm-hmm. And it took me a long time of going to the Zendo every day, every morning, and not being present. You know, my body was still, but my mind was not still.

[97:24]

And I didn't really, something wasn't connected. I didn't understand. But... Over years and years of this practice, you know, years and years of study, I have found this path home to silence and stillness. Where I remember that I am in relationship and can act from this place. Or maybe weave the silence and stillness into my activity. Yeah. So I often am walking around the farm thinking I'm doing something, you know, thinking I'm getting something done or that something needs to be done or something.

[98:34]

out there needs to be taken care of. And so often I'm missing, you know, I'm missing something. And when I remember, I can be present with that feeling that I'm missing something, you know, I can practice. I've been enjoying A little derivation of the mindfulness bell that Thich Nhat Hanh suggested for active practice where you can stop for a moment. And I think someone told me that in Tibet, the women, their practice is often in the middle of doing housework. And they have this, you know, practice of in between times, that moment between one thing and another, between one activity and another. You have this moment to just sort of you know, settle into this, you know, present in between time.

[99:37]

And I know that I've noticed that and also just sort of practice of minding the gap, where I just pay attention a little more to the space around my activity. You know, the space between and about things, time between activities, and that sort of space is a little greater bearing for that really sort of receptive mind. that is truly, you know, kind, has that intimacy with the activity that is going to happen next and next and next. Yeah. Yeah. And then sometimes we realize it in the activity, right? It's not just in the gaps. Sometimes it's right there, right there. Yeah. Yeah, and then we let go of that. It just seems different from that constrictive sense of activity, that constrictive sense of doing or achieving an object, you know.

[100:44]

It's just a very different character of unfolding in practice. And I feel that very much with, you know, my gardening. I think gardening is good. Yeah, it's good to... Yeah, plants are really helpful because it's it's hard to it's harder to project on plants than it is on people, I find. Or I project nicer things on plants than I do on people. I don't see so much of myself in them, maybe. So, you know, to really they help us wake up to like what's what's happening, which is amazing. And then sometimes if we're lucky, we can do that with people, too. Oh, my God. You're amazing. What do you think? What do you feel? What's going on? What are we doing together? Really? Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely much easier to love plants and be less threatened.

[101:45]

It's good. Yes. Let us expand that. That's right. It's good beginner's practice. Thank you very much. Yeah. Our next offering is from Jose. Hello. Can we take a breath in and a breath out and then meet in the place between? Thank you so much, Sarah, for your offering today. Nice to see your face. Nice to see Dawu's face. I'm glad you found a home.

[102:51]

Some of us continue to be home leavers. On this Mother's Day, I want to bring in a Quechua Mama. So how do you find home as a home leaver? I don't look for it. Or I found it on this planet. founded in the vastness. I have a question about Daruma, Bodhidharma. Was he soft?

[104:01]

It was a rhetorical question. I'm here in the land of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee. Near a river I heard called Old Man's Beard. My first time in southern Appalachia as a Cali kid. Yesterday I drove by a planned parenthood. Saw good Christians at the driveway trying to save souls. I just pulled over and got in their face and stayed in their face. And it wasn't polite. It wasn't soft. I wasn't waiting for them to come to some understanding on their own through my grace.

[105:12]

I was just doing harm reduction. my body, this limited body, between their bodies and the other bodies. How did it feel inside for you? Not then. Did it hurt? What does that mean? I don't know. Was it, did you feel constricted? Did your heart Did you? No, I felt as full as I can be. I felt fully myself in that moment. Aggressive, powerful. Did you understand you were doing it with them?

[106:18]

have a separation between me and them to do that. I was just doing all I do. That's what we do. And you think you're capable in that organization and that structure and that hierarchy and that karma called San Francisco Zen Center to do what's need to be done? I don't know what's needed to be done.

[107:31]

you're finally getting to no-till. Yeah, take care out there. Take care in there. I'm going to look for some hands, maybe anybody who has their video feed on. I have a offering from Yashar. Hi, Sarah. Hi, Yashar. Always a pleasure. I also don't know what needs to be done or what's right. No, I think I do. I really think that I do sometimes, especially I think it's

[108:43]

very relevant question based on the topic of today and thinking about George Bill Wright and everything before, everything before Green Gulch and even Green Gulch itself. But my original question has to do with the farm. And something that I always come back to is this feeling that practicality in the form of time and money And we're having to think about how things work in this world or how we let them work in this world. But the time and money, what I'm describing generally as practicality, gets in the way of big mind. It actually inherently cultivates small mind when we're maybe forced to think about these things. Or for me, this is how I see it. And the time and money keep us in small mind because constantly being available to big minds insights would force us to constantly change and take up more time and money to enact those changes.

[109:53]

And the time and money would be in such demand that they would disappear in a blink of an eye. If we really tried to keep big mind with us and keep trying to incorporate big mind and change and being open to our consciousness being altered over and over again. That makes me wonder, how do we cultivate big mind when the realities of the world inhibit us and push us into this? I feel that the realities of the world kind of inhibit us and push us into this stuck, unchanging, small mind and ultimately the ego. Yeah, I mean, the first thing that I... occurs to me to say is that, like, nothing can obstruct big mind. There is no obstruction. So I just wanted to say that.

[110:56]

You can maybe see what that feels like. There is no obstruction. We can hear that. Small mind does not obstruct big mind. It is completely included. There is no problem. And this practice is to care for small mind, which means to allow it without grasping or averting. And to inquire into it. And what arises with the small mind, with the small self. What feelings and sensations, ideas, thoughts, views.

[112:05]

Something will happen. You don't need to worry, you know, something will happen. And as it does, what are you practicing, you know, and are you practicing awareness with what's happening or are you asleep or reacting, you know, or can we, or do you respond? With all these things that are arising, including not knowing, can you include not knowing with all the things you know? Whether you believe it or not, can you include it? And can you include that you don't believe it or include that you do believe it and still not know, you know? So all of this practice, this functioning is big mind expressing reality, expressing itself.

[113:23]

We don't have to control it, you know. We just make our effort and offering. Yeah. And confess over and over. This is what we get to do together down on the farm. confess, and hopefully enjoy our continuous mistake of thinking that we're doing something. And maybe we can laugh and enjoy the beauty, you know, of being down there together. you're willing to take another question from Boris. Yeah, is there anyone else? I am feeling there's no one else. Maybe this can be the last. Okay, question. Thank you. Too many questions.

[114:33]

For me, at least. You said confess. Is there such a thing as a confession on Buddhism? How do they confess? Confessing. Confession and repentance is one of our main practices. And you can confess to the Buddha. You can confess to a Dharma friend. It can be very helpful to confess to a teacher if you have a teacher. You know, to confess and repent is to acknowledge our delusion specifics, right? And to taste, feel remorse.

[115:37]

So to taste the bitterness of holding views or covering up reality. with our views. And therefore, you know, coming back into alignment with the truth that reality is much bigger and more complex than what we think. So we come back to our vow of through the practice of confession and repentance. I mean, do you confess in your own words? I know there is a suture, for instance, like when you confess of your bad karma and greed and hatred, or you just confess in your own word in front of the Buddhist statutes. I mean, how did... Yeah, here at Green Gulch, every morning we confess and repent in a general way.

[116:45]

We chant. all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, current body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. So if you're actually present with what you're saying, you may feel remorse for your karmic life. I also find that when I have an insight into my own delusion and how I have enacted my delusion and caused suffering, it's very helpful to confess specifically. Okay. Thank you. All right, looks like that's all the questions for today.

[117:53]

Thank you, everyone. If you'd like to unmute yourself to say goodbye, you can do so now. Thank you, Sarah, so much. Thank you for sharing, Sarah. Thank you all very much. Thank you so much. Thank you, Sarah. Feedback is welcome. Thank you, everybody. Take care. Bye. Bye, Patty.

[118:37]

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