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 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 farmer apprentice almost 20 years ago to learn how to work with the soil and the land.

[01:07]

And I find myself doing this work again every day with a wonderful crew of people. 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 Green Gulch Tonto invited me to please give it again for the Green Gulch 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...

[02:11]

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

[03:15]

this land in different ways. So this recitation is dedicated to all our soil-loving ancestors, known and unknown, remembered through these names. The Kalost Miwok people, past, present, and future. Alan Chadwick, Harry Roberts, Amigo Bob Contesano, Steve Stuckey, Wendy Johnson, Peter Rudnick, Emila Heller, Suki Parmalee, Kuko Alcala, Liz Malazzo, Matt Vivrette, Aria Bettinger. Carolyn Cavanaugh, Kayum Johnson, Sarah Jane Snyder, Maria, Katie, Jordan, Mariam, and all the farmers and gardeners, past, present, and future.

[04:20]

May our lives reveal their compassion, and may we with all beings and the great earth realize Buddha's way. Last time I chanted that list, I forgot Emola 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,

[05:39]

which is implicitly outside of ourselves, is out there, is inseparable from the environment's impact on us, human beings in here. 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

[07:06]

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.

[08:16]

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.

[09:31]

It is both sudden and 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.

[10:45]

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,

[11:53]

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 salt water from coming back into the fields.

[12:57]

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 and environmental change. 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.

[14:08]

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.

[15:14]

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

[16:18]

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 Zen 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 levee 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 coarse sediment and spawning gravel to the meander.

[17:25]

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.

[18:32]

I 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.

[19:33]

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. 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, I have become able to shine a light on my own awareness, my own unexamined ideas, where that legacy is still functioning in me.

[20:55]

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. And 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. And with this softening, this acceptance, I am able to turn more fully toward my vow, my aspiration,

[22:00]

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, Rab offered the teaching and the practice of compassionate inquiry. as a way to invite our ideas, thoughts, feelings, and sensations into our awareness.

[23:09]

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. means to allow them to be just as they are, without grasping, trying to hold on to them as true or complete, or averting, trying to avoid or negate them as though they were or were not true or complete.

[24:27]

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. want 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. And if you need them, please seek out more resources.

[25:30]

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. 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.

[26:32]

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. 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.

[27:35]

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, 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.

[28:48]

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, which through the miracle of the soil food web makes nitrogen available to plants, this flush of bacteria. And then specifically, our food crops. Most of our annual food crops grow very well with all of bacterially dominated soil. 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 or 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.

[29:57]

Now, 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 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, 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.

[31:12]

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. 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.

[32:19]

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, 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

[33:42]

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. the fear of not knowing, of thinking I should know, all the physical sensations and words that go along with these thoughts and ideas, 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

[35:07]

to reality as it is. Reality can be said to be the bed that is deep and soft enough to accept everything as it is and to feel the softness in my own body and heart. The grace of the softness has allowed me to feel and turn toward the 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 is where we need to go.

[36:34]

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.

[37:46]

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, and it describes many different local styles of architecture, both environmental and

[38:57]

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 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 called, it's called Waru Waru, and it was developed over 3,800 years ago by the descendants of the Amara and Ketcha 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.

[39:58]

So places that are prone to flooding, but that are also quite dry. So this is like green wulch, 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 beds. 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 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.

[41:00]

And I am, I feel called to explore this, and I am turning it in my kind of slow, in the 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.

[42:03]

Over and over, I find a me, this subject over here, and an it, the object over there, 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. Our true nature is that we are part of everything, completely inseparable, in fact.

[43:14]

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. A couple of things. Zenju said in her new book, The Deepest Peace, Contemplations from a Season of Stillness.

[44:19]

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.

[45:21]

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.

[46:25]

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. body of the earth. There has never been and can never be any separation. There has never been and can never be any separation. Thank you very much.

[47:30]

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.

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