I'm Charlie. I started practice here at San Francisco Zen Center in 1991. And I spent some years living and training at Tassajara and Green Gulch Farm, Green Dragon Temple. And now I live in Sinanoma County. And I teach at a center there with my partner, Sarah, Stone Creek Zen Center. Thank you, Wendy, for inviting me to speak tonight. And as part of the Ongo on nature and experience. And so I want to bring up... The words I'm going to talk about are wilderness and solitude. And I feel like it's really fitting to bring these up in winter... when the nights are long.

[01:01]

And I hope these wanderings will complement what's coming up here in the Ongo. And I look at wilderness and solitude as spaces of transformation, spaces of spiritual working. And I feel like they can be Zazen. They can be ways to inquire into Zazen, ways Zazen inquires into our lives. And to that extent, I feel like Zazen may hold something really vital as solitude and wilderness become kind of rarefied aspects of life with cell phones and social media and texting and lights and buildings.

[02:14]

And I don't feel like this is to devalue all these developments that we can look at as encroaching on solitude and wilderness. but we want to find a balance and inquiring through balance to something that's dynamic. Our practice, sometimes we say we work with the light and the dark. So we don't or we work in the realm of discrimination and non-discrimination. And practice inquiry, zazen, is working through both of these, always turning through both. We don't kind of camp out in one or the other. And I think you could say the same about civilization and wilderness, or interacting, social, relating, and solitude.

[03:20]

And this is like breathing in and breathing out. Or work and rest. Movement and stillness. And this endless dynamic inquiry as a function of awakening. This is what awakening does. We have many... we can have many different images, experiences, associations, impressions of wilderness. And we have currents in our culture like idealizing and romanticizing wilderness, but also currents like deconstructing wilderness, emptying wilderness. Wilderness is sometimes defined as

[04:26]

an uncultivated region uninhabited by humans. And we might view wilderness as vibrant, alive, an ecosystem, and we might also view it as a constant struggle for survival. And, you know, we see beauty, but it's like, it's just this... elaborate multi-leveled quest to reproduce. And, um, and, and, and it's a real, you know, and fight flight or fright freeze, whatever danger, uh, wilderness, um, lays bare impermanence. And death, those are just part of wilderness.

[05:29]

Whereas, you know, landscapes of civilization, it often feels like death and impermanence are, you know, as much as possible paved over and, you know, brushed aside. We might look at wilderness as a place of freedom. of, like, vital complexity, or is just something, you know, really uncomfortable, unaccommonating, inhospitable realm. Wilderness can hold, I think, a sense of mystery, of something that, like, knowing and science and technology can actually control or master or colonize. Something unfathomable about what it is to be alive.

[06:35]

Something that won't fit in any kind of box. It keeps growing beyond it. Any attempt to contain it or define it. In terms of practice... Wilderness can be a place conducive to practice, a place to seek visions and insight. It can also be a danger or a risk. An early sutra says, wilderness can plunder the mind of a monastic who has not attained concentration. In Indian Buddhism, there's various images of wilderness. And I think a basic... wilderness is just as much an embodiment of samsara, of cyclic suffering, as human civilization.

[07:37]

But it is upheld as a good place to practice, a good place for intensive practice. Sometimes wilderness looks kind of pleasant. Sometimes they talk about it as being... a place of fear and dread. One thing that really strikes me about Indian Buddhism is there's these descriptions of celestial realms, like idealized heavenly Deva realms, and they don't sound like wilderness at all. They sound like unjeweled golf courses. Really flat and sterile. And kind of dead. In East Asia, Buddhist traditions, and in some ways especially Zen, were, you know, interacted with Taoism. And Taoism has much more positive embrace of nature or wilderness as embodying the Tao, embodying the true way of things.

[08:48]

And so then something about wilderness can embody awakening. rather than samsara, truth, rather than delusion and karma. So civilization enacts the delusion of separation. It's built up by karma, action, action itself based on delusion. But wilderness isn't shaped in that way. It's not shaped by human delusion and human action. So this becomes a current in Zen. And this might interact with our kind of Western cultural currents of finding deep meaning and value in the wilderness, like Thoreau and John Muir. And these might kind of interact and shape us and be shaped by our own personal experiences or encounters with wilderness.

[09:55]

I kind of thought back to this memories of when I was a kid 10, 11, 12 we used to go for long camping trips in the mountains of Vermont and at first there'd be a lot of chatter but after a day or two it got very quiet we'd just walk single file on these trails and and we would go, sometimes we'd go up like a really high mountain. And so we'd go above the tree line and just be like this kind of moonscape, like really rocky and just a few scattered bushes. And, um, it was like, it had a kind of impact and it was really powerful. And, um, I think we, no one tried to talk about it, but it was like, we were all there walking through it, going to this top, this tall mountain and, And there's this kind of, we all just kind of settled into like a natural solitude.

[11:00]

I don't think we need to kind of just confine, or I don't confine wilderness just to uninhabited places apart from civilization. I feel like wilderness is like popping up and pervading our lives. and civilization like grass growing through the cracks in the sidewalk or tracks of mud in the hallway, raindrops falling on a car windshield. I feel like wilderness can manifest in our out of control thinking mind, streams of feeling, eruptions of grief, sadness or joy, And our embodied life, hearts pumping blood, laying bare our impermanence, or like sweat. The wilderness of giving a Dharma talk for me involves sweating.

[12:11]

It's a bodily reality, our bodily reality. or like, you know, our breath, our life-giving breath in and out right here. And not our idea of it, the actuality of it. And wilderness, you know, can break through our denial of it. our version, our kind of forgetting of impermanence, of our own impermanence, of our embodied, amazing, functioning. Something wild and unexpected and alive is always in us. And it's not something we can manage.

[13:18]

And it's always potential for disruption. Disruption of our personal life, disruption of civilized life. And I feel this resonates when we come to the fullness of this moment. There's always something surprising. Something uniquely alive and particular to this moment. You know, so we honor beginner's mind, a mind that's open, fresh and new, to a fullness, and right here, that's totally unique to this person, this moment, this place. And I think part of what we can, when we literally go out in the wilderness, it can speak to our whole being.

[14:23]

There can be a conversation there, not with words, not with ideas. And that the wilderness isn't just out there, but alive in us. And something alive and wild is in communion with something alive and wild. And this is nourishing, or like, we need this. We need to take care of this. Dogen says that grass and trees and walls expound and exalt the Dharma for the sake of all beings, ordinary people, as well as sages, And ordinary people and sages in turn expound and exalt the Dharma for the sake of grass and trees and walls. So there is this communion happening, or this resonance.

[15:32]

And we need to be fully in our life in this moment to appreciate it. And... be nourished by it and for it to be transformative. I think wilderness can teach us something about what it is to be alive in a really basic sense. Something we tend to forget because we can't grasp it. We can't use it. doesn't get anything done. So what is it to be alive? Are trees and mountains worried about getting things done?

[16:34]

Do grasses and streams get discouraged or tired out? Can they imagine being different? Could they imagine that's something, that we should be different? And I feel like in a wilderness, there's nothing to prove. There's nothing we need to do, or no way we need to appear. It's just calling for our complete attention. our wholehearted presence. And this is true of zazen. Zazen's calling for our complete attention. And zazen and wilderness, or zazen as wilderness, or the wilderness of zazen, this is not something to use.

[17:43]

And it's not something to be used by. It's not something to objectify. It's not something to be objectified by. Not something to control or manipulate or exploit. And we need something like this in our life. We need an engagement. That stuff's not what it's about. So kind of opening to a deeper sense of what it is. Civilization is full of many graspable, bright things and ideas and values. But how do we make space for more subtle, quiet, not so shiny, bright and graspable life?

[18:47]

a sense of belonging that's more fundamental than what we can get or lose, what we can own or consume? And how do we take care of this ungraspable life of belonging? I think zendos don't seem very wild in a way. A blank white wall does not seem very wild. but I feel like it's inviting us to explore a wilderness right here. And the wilderness of how this moment happens. The wilderness of how we happen with everything. So wilderness as an image of zazen is about coming home to a deeper, vaster, untamed truth of our lives.

[20:08]

And again, this real life of our lives is unpredictable. There's this part we can predict, or at least... things will cooperate for a while and seem predictable. And that's never the whole thing. That's just a part of our life. But we can limit our attention or our perspective to the kind of graspable, predictable parts of our life and just not attend to the messy, wild, unpredictable stuff that's actually always happening. And there's... reasons why we might do this like it might feel more safe more secure but it's also kind of dead and we don't feel we don't feel um alive so becoming intimate with uh this life this person

[21:25]

fully intimate. And Zazen, like wilderness, is not something to know or figure out or control, but to enter, to enter with our eyes open and our attention engaged, our awareness ready, our attention engaged, don't really civilize wilderness. There's a saying in the Book of Serenity, one does not pull weeds in a wild field. It's like an image of Zazen. Zazen is not a technique or a tool.

[22:30]

but just living the truth of our radical belonging. And we don't enter Zazen or the wilderness as a consumer. It's not a transaction. it's not something we use it's not an instrumental approach it's taking care taking care of a mystery you know if we go camping and we bring too much civilization we kind of miss the wilderness we have too much gear you know If we bring too many tools and techniques and tricks and ideas into zazen, we miss zazen.

[23:43]

And sometimes I think the zazen we offer can feel a bit austere. We don't offer a lot of tricks. We don't offer a lot of techniques, a lot of comforts, accommodations, answers. And over our practice, over the years of our practice, we're not here to collect like a... a bag of tools or insights or attainments and drag them around with us. We're just learning how to meet each moment more and more fully, each moment empty-handed. Beginner's mind. Just being ready. How we actually open. Not getting, but opening. And how awakening lives. I feel like solitude is really closely related to wilderness.

[24:47]

And kind of like a turning within and entering wilderness are kind of intertwined. Wilderness is a place of solitude or entering wilderness is entering solitude. And both wilderness and solitude have a kind of quality of a challenge. of renunciation. We're giving up our usual accommodations. We're letting go. We're giving up company, giving up comforts of civilization. This is part of my feeling. Zazen is not an easy way. Sashin is not an easy thing. But we're not here for something easy, but something that meets a deeper request. And I think solitude speaks to how we really enter wilderness.

[25:51]

So we're not kind of talking about a sightseeing tour. Just kind of passing through, looking for a nice vista, but an actual encounter. Or an intimacy, like I was speaking before, a communion. A total giving and a total receiving. Seeing as wilderness, hearing as wilderness, thinking the way nature is. Solitude is not just a matter of finding ourselves alone, but attending to the fullness of this life and actualizing this self as the universe in all directions.

[26:59]

This distinct and individual self is at once all-inclusive. In Genjo Kwan, i think dogon expresses solitude and you know practice intimately and return to where you are or you are immediate you are immediately your original self or to study the self is to forget the self to forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things so solitude is being fully with uh ourself So feeling isolated or feeling lonely, those are usually based on feeling separate. Or... Yeah. And so this solitude is distinct from that, and distinct from a kind of self-serving individualism.

[28:08]

Or I also feel like solitude, there's a way in which I think you could get confused with introverts can get... restored by being alone, which is fine, but that's not solitude. That's not the real value of solitude. And solitude's not coming from avoiding intimacy or disappointment or fear of relationship. Solitude is a liberating wilderness. Solitude is belonging completely to ourselves, belonging completely to our life, belonging completely to this moment and this place.

[29:15]

And solitude is to embrace being here so fully that everything is included. It's being whole with ourselves. And zazen is a way to take care of this. I think we can look at zazen as a ritual of communal solitude. Zazen makes a space for solitude that we share and support each other. And I think, like wilderness, solitude has gifts and dangers. And solitude can foster creativity, imagination, deep insight, and it can also foster forms of being out of touch.

[30:25]

being isolated, disconnected, arrogant, delusions of grandeur. It's easy to think you're really great if you're not talking to anybody. And in solitude, we can get caught by a small view of solitude, a small view of zazen, a small view of ourselves, and we can live in that small view. And one of the things I think that's nice about having a kind of zazen as a ritual of communal solitude is that it's a way of taking care of solitude, and it's also demarcated. And in our practice, in this tradition, we emphasize the importance of zazen, and we also emphasize the importance of engaging in conversation.

[31:32]

And so one of the traditional forms is like a Dharma talk. And then we also have like a Tokasan, one-on-one meeting with a teacher. So conversation and solitude work together and both are vital to our growth. We need both of these kind of spheres of work. Because, you know, we can get lost in... in the solitude of zazen. So what are we doing on our cushions? So it's important to be in an ongoing, honest, vulnerable discussion about our practice and what's actually happening. What do we think is happening? And silence and stillness, kind of like two major facets of Zazen, we can look at those as embodiments of solitude.

[32:46]

They embody and enact the work of solitude and how we can support each other in that work and in that wilderness. The silence and stillness empowers zazen as a form for engaging solitude together. No one else can work on our stuff for us. We need to walk to the center of this self. We need to... bring forth the unique offering of this life. And we need a totally personal encounter with universal truths.

[33:56]

So looking at solitude and wilderness as ways of opening zazen as a transformative space. And a space is not a thing. A space is a medium of dynamic possibility and exploration. It's an opening and it's ever-relational. and actually connecting. And so we open to spaces of wilderness and solitude and zazen, and as we open, we open into and through these spaces. And bringing up zazen as a ritual, sometimes we talk about zazen as a ritual of Buddha's awakening.

[35:17]

And you could say we're approaching Buddha's awakening in a kind of mythic mode, not like a literal reenactment. So we don't have to literally go by ourselves and sit under the Bodhi tree. We have this ritual we can support each other in engaging. And the point is not whether we do it literally or not. The point is, are we fully meeting this life in its wildness in a way only we can? And sharing it. And part of this is fully facing the wilderness of our suffering, what's hurt, wounded, what's painful, what's difficult.

[36:42]

To fully face, fully meet, become fully intimate. with that. That's pork here. And part of it we can support each other to do. And there's a way in which no one else can do this for us. No one else can face our life for us. But the path of awakening is also not something we do by ourselves. We wake up together because we're waking up to or through this delusion that we're separate to how we actually don't do anything by ourselves. And so I think this kind of

[37:54]

contradiction is kind of embodied in zazen as a ritual of this expression of communal solitude of being deeply alone together of taking up this like solitary challenge of totally being this person or a truth of like relational individuality meeting and transforming a delusion of individualism that we exist by ourselves i think we when we sit together we invite each other into solitude in december um my eight-year-old son loka participated in a well it's a kind of ritual of communal solitude called a winter spiral or sometimes called like an advent spiral or a spiral walk.

[38:58]

And it takes place in an evening during the kind of darkest time of year and get a big room and arrange kind of greenery in a spiral. And in the center is a kind of large, I've usually seen it as a stump with a lit candle on it. And then also intermingled with the greenery are small little stumps. And one by one, each child, in the presence of the whole class in this case, walks alone to the center of the spiral, holding an unlit candle. They get to the center, they light their candle, and then they walk out of the spiral and put the candle on one of the stumps. And so there's this kind of walking, walking into the center of darkness, of wilderness, of solitude, of truth.

[40:11]

And you get to the center and there's a light. And then you light your candle and then you, you offer this light. And it kind of, as more and more children do it, the whole spiral kind of gets more and more illuminated. The light from all the candles seamlessly interfuses. And how each child kind of walks to the center of the spiral and lights their candle and then puts it down is, you know, wonderfully unique and particular to each child and you know so each child walks alone and then collectively they uh illuminate the path and so i kind of bring this up as kind of embodying this kind of uh balance

[41:25]

And kind of walking in and walking out is like our dynamic balance. Zazen inquiring through wilderness and civilization through solitude and social interaction. And so we don't engage this truth of wilderness as a rejection of civilization, but as a resource for bringing heart. and deeper life to civilization. There are significant ways in which civilization is built on the delusion of separation, but it's also deluded to view civilization as separate from wilderness. And I think part of what our practice offers to the problems of the world is taking care of this very deep and basic delusion of separation, trying to really address that, that that's driving a lot of these destructive forces in the world.

[42:45]

And so we have a practice dedicated to addressing, facing, and transforming this delusion. And then that's a foundation for healing and also, you know, well, the endless good stuff that needs to happen. And likewise, not engaging in solitude as a rejection of human relating, but to open to true relationships. to learn how to really meet each other. Bell Hooks says, many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. So we share the light we find in the center of the darkness, the silence, the wilderness, the solitude.

[44:01]

And this unfolds as like endless bodhisattva activity, innumerable acts of kindness and warm-heartedness. And these offerings in turn illuminate walking in and walking out. So, thank you very much. What time is it? Time, okay.

[44:38]

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