Good evening, welcome. So this zazen practice we have done tonight, sometimes it seems like we do this alone, profoundly alone, just by ourselves, our own body and thoughts and facing our own piece of the wall. But actually, this is a profoundly communal practice. And we can feel this when we sit together in the zendo, and we feel the support of everyone else in the zendo, but actually also when we sit at home alone, so-called. Also, many beings are there. Many beings are part of who we each are on our seat. Friends, family, everyone we've ever known, really.

[01:04]

And the more we sit, the more we realize, not just intellectually, the more we actually feel how deeply interconnected we are with all beings. So I want to talk tonight about Sangha. And I'm hoping that there will be time for discussion. That's actually the point of the talk I want to do tonight. And I want to follow up in some ways about Florence Kaplow's talk last Tuesday night at DePaul. I think a few of you were there about Zen practices, practices in a troubled world. And I want to talk about, Well, Sangha community and what that means in the midst of the climate crisis that becomes increasingly apparent. So the Soto Zen teachers email list that I'm part of has had a discussion in the last week or so

[02:17]

active discussion about how do we, as teachers, activate our sanghas to respond to this climate disruption, this climate chaos that's affecting so many people all over the world now. that needs to be not just a personal response, but a systemic response. to change the systems of how we as humans live in the world. And this has affected many, many Zen teachers, particularly maybe in California. So I want to read a report from Chris Fortin, who's a teacher in Sonoma, California. She's a successor of Norman Fisher, and there are many,

[03:21]

old friends of mine and Zen teachers in Sonoma, north of San Francisco. So this was November 4th, she wrote, I have just returned home from being evacuated in the Sonoma County fires and then going directly into Sasheen. So I think she was evacuated and away from her home for about a week, which provided an opportunity to sit intimately with all that had and is transpiring in this great burning, the visceral experience of smoke-filled lungs, burning eyes, sleeplessness, how quickly everything that we assume and depend on in our daily life dissolves in an instant, including cell phone and email connection, loss of power, light, gas, locked and impassable major highways, facilities for the elderly and the mentally vulnerable disappearing, as well as the generosity of local grocery stores staying open and guiding us down darkened aisles with flashlights to find food and water, and the courage of 5,000 firefighters who endangered their lives to meet the fire.

[04:30]

Coming home, ashes covered every plant, evacuated and darkened communities felt like ghost towns. And of course, those with limited resources are impacted the most. I offer all this because the reality of the climate crisis, new norms, and the surety of increased suffering in climate refugees is no longer a distant idea. To become very clear, it became very clear to me during Sashin the ongoing importance of offering retreats focused on sitting with and on this precious earth. We did a six-week study in my local sanghas on climate disruption. Wendy Johnson and I have initiated an annual walk for the earth at Green Gulch Farm, but there needs to be longer and more retreats on bearing witness to and responding to the disruption and suffering that is happening and will continue. This is what I intend to work on in the Bay Area. I would be happy to participate in calls to join our hearts and hands as we feel our way in the dark with our thousand hands and eyes.

[05:38]

It is Bodhisattva work. She adds, our neighbor just told me 350,000 people have had their home insurance canceled because of the fire. Also neglected to include that all the local hospitals but one were closed and evacuated. So this is the fire north of San Francisco. I think that those fires are mostly out now. I guess in Southern California, the fires are still going. We might feel that this doesn't relate to us, but the cold that we feel today in the snow, and it's supposed to get much colder tomorrow, I understand is a function of Arctic temperatures coming south due to the warming of the Arctic. So the cold in Chicago and the polar vortexes we had last winter is also a function of climate disruption. And so this is happening all around the world.

[06:42]

And the scientists say that there are more and more dire reports that that we have 10 or 12 years to make a change as human beings in how our energy systems work, and that in 20, 30 years, 50 years, major cities in South Asia will be underwater, millions of people dying. So this is serious. And again, Soto teachers are wondering, what can we do? How can we as Sangha together, well, respond to this? And what actions can we do? And part of that is just to talk about it.

[07:44]

together and there's not one right response, but it's serious. I have my own ways of thinking of responding, but again, the main thing is to talk about it, to look at what's happening. So I wanted to to talk about, to respond a little bit to how Florence Kaplow talked about it last week. She was here last Monday night talking about her wonderful book that she co-edited about the great history of women Zen teachers, women Buddhist teachers throughout the history of Buddhism. But she talked about practices, Zen practices, to face, to practice amid crisis, amid

[08:50]

a troubled world. She talked about steady gaze and courageous heart. So her five practices, and I'll talk a little bit about each of them. One, facing what is happening. Two, practicing not knowing. Three, cultivating gratitude. Four, slowing down as spiritual practice. And five, taking care of one another. So these are all practices that are part of what emerge out of Zen practice. So facing what is happening. So not to use Zen practice as a kind of deflection or as an escape from our own suffering or the suffering around us or our communal suffering. To face what is happening. This means also, in large measure, to face grief, to face suffering, our personal suffering.

[09:56]

So this is one of the first things that happens as we start to practice Zen, as we start to do Zazen, we see our own patterns of grasping and anger and confusion. And that's the hardest part of this practice in some ways, to actually face that and not to run away from it and to see our patterns of running away from it. And then how to face this. So Florence said, to be a human being is to live in calamity. Zen developed and flowered in China during very tumultuous times toward the end of the first millennium. War and political chaos was sweeping over China again and again. It was easy to end up on the wrong side and find yourself exiled or worse. And I've been speaking about the period in Japan before Dogen in the 1200s. So in the 1100s, there was great civil war and earthquakes and calamities.

[11:00]

And so it's not that so often there have been calamities that have drawn people towards practice. Given the mass extinctions going on now, we might, you know, an actual threat of human civilization, we might see our own period of the world's suffering as unique, but many people have felt that in the past too. In terms of facing suffering, we can't afford silence and denial in times like these, Florence said. Whether a relationship, well, she talks about to the rise of authoritarianism or the climate or any number of other troubles. She says, over the last two or three years, I've watched as people's concerns about the climate, formerly called the shockingly neutral term climate change, and now more and more called what it really is, climate crisis.

[12:07]

Climate emergency has risen from a background concern to a foreground concern for all generations. So anyway, this is all part of the first of her practices facing what is happening. As she mentions, Rebecca Solnit, another guest speaker we've had, her book called A Paradise Built in Hell, where she describes a number of disasters, the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, Hurricane Katrina, and the extraordinary acts of human kindness that happened during those times. So the second practice is the practice of not knowing. This is really central to Zen practice and bodhisattva practice.

[13:09]

not to hold on to what we think we know, to not know the answers, because we don't know the answers. So we don't know what's going to happen. According to science, there already are mass species extinctions. And more and more science is predicting that. the apparatus of human civilization that we take for granted is not going to be viable not in the distant future, in the lifetime of many of you. And yet, we know that nothing happens exactly according to our expectations. It's impossible. Whatever you expected this to be tonight, it's not that.

[14:19]

Whatever I expected this to be tonight, it's not that. Nothing ever happens exactly according to what we expect. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know reality. And she points out, as I've pointed out, she pointed out, as I've pointed out, things that have happened that were totally unexpected. The Berlin Wall coming down 30 years ago this week. Soviet Union coming apart, gay marriage, which would have been unthought of, I don't know, what, 10, 15 years ago. All kinds of things change unexpectedly. And yet, it's not these things that happen seemingly suddenly. Lots of causes and conditions go into it. So we don't know what's going to happen with climate. It's not set. We can make a difference. We can make a difference as to how bad it's going to be.

[15:22]

And it's going to be bad. We've reached tipping points. Things are going to be bad. But how bad, we don't know. OK, her third practice, cultivating gratitude. And this is the month of Thanksgiving. And I think of that as a Buddhist holiday. But just to be grateful. In her talk Tuesday night, she mentioned something that Bo said when she was here, that he has this practice of just saying, yay, whatever happens. So we can appreciate whatever situation we're in and feel grateful for it. And what are the possibilities of it? And Dharma gates are boundless. So how do we see each situation as an opportunity? So again, there's more to say about each of these, much more, but just how we can be grateful for each situation. Each situation is an opportunity.

[16:22]

Her fourth practice is slowing down. So just sitting for 30 or 40 minutes gives us the chance to see the possibility of slowing down. stopping and just sitting and being present and whatever comes up, thoughts and feelings and whatever, sensations, just slowing down. And in our everyday activity too. Of course we live in a busy world and we think we have to do this and we have to meet this deadline and so forth, but sometimes the best way to do that is to slow down. She said that we should consider rest as a radical act and getting more sleep as a radical act. And I think so.

[17:26]

And when we're in the middle of some difficult situation, just to pause and take a breath and exhale. So part of our Zazen practice is to study our inhale and exhale, to really appreciate our breathing. So I've had situations where I had to, in some ways, act very quickly. I used to edit TV news, and there'd be somebody standing behind me waiting to take the film to be shown on television. Now it's all digital, but that hates me, but anyway. But the only way I could do that was to actually pause and to really know what I had to do. If I was trying to rush, I couldn't do it. Anyway, to slow down is very important.

[18:27]

So I want to get through this talk and have a chance for everybody to talk together, but I can't do it if I rush. OK, the fifth of her Zen practices for facing difficulty particularly involves Sangha, taking care of one another. So how do we take care of each other? How do we allow others to take care of us? So I've had to learn that through my sabbatical and having had medical situations. How do we allow others to take care of us? How do we take care of each other? This is the practice of Sangha. And the famous koan where Gunman was asked, what is the teaching of Buddha's whole lifetime?

[19:35]

And he said, an appropriate response. How do we respond appropriately? So that's also, how do we respond appropriately to this situation where the planet's burning up, where there are calamities in so many places? So I want to throw into this just briefly an article from Joanna Macy that also circulated on this email list of Soto Zen teachers trying to talk about how do we activate sanghas to actively respond to this situation. She was talking about how serious it is. How do we face the wholesale collapse of what we take for civilization?

[20:48]

How do we face the mass extinction of species? And Joanna, who's been a mentor of mine, talks about the work that reconnects and the importance of song, but the importance of community. Again, that we have to face grief and uncertainty together. She talked about how practice sometimes gets privatized. And we think of practice as about something we do by ourselves and how We need to face this together and make friends with our despair, even. So one of the things that we have to do is acknowledge and talk about how we feel. I feel hopeless and despairing of what is happening. And a lot of people are feeling that now.

[21:50]

There's a whole new category of climate trauma. And yet again, we don't know how things will happen. Joanna said to me, one of the last times we talked, that maybe in the future, whether it's in 50 years or 100 years, people will be studying Doguen in the back of caves. What we're doing here is important. Joanna talks about the great turning and three modes of action, one of which is holding actions. Dylan, can you see what's happening out there? Just invite Eric and whoever came to come in. So, political actions and responding to Congress and doing mass actions, which is my own inclination.

[22:54]

I like the things that young people are doing, the Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion. But she also talks about alternative structures. like spiritual communities. That's what we're doing. And talking together, sangha. And then also seeing, changing how people see the world. So through new ways of seeing, through the teachings, talking about cooperation and collaboration rather than competition and aggression. what the Dharma teaches. This is part of those other two. Revisioning reality and alternative communities are part of how we will make these changes. So, There's a lot more in one article, but again, I want to try and leave time for discussion.

[24:08]

The last part of what I'll throw into the mix is an email that Kathy Bingham sent that some of you saw, which is also part of it. How do we hear others? whose views are different from ours, and that means including all of us and our varied views, without judgment, and how to speak to people who have different views than ours. And she asked the difficult question, especially how do we talk to people who are unaware of the massive suffering that's happening in the world? So. Yeah.

[25:12]

I can send more people out to the entryway. to talk to the others, but I'm tempted to go out myself. Or maybe we should all just go out into the hall. Knock, knock. But we don't know what it is. OK, well, maybe that's an, you know, so we have a little bit of time. And again, there's so much more to say about everything I said. And really, what the scientists are saying now is that things are really dire, and yet we don't know.

[26:27]

And they keep changing how bad it's going to be. Anyway. I was just looking at this book that I wrote an essay in a Buddhist response to the climate emergency, and that came out 10 years ago. So this is not new. None of this is new, but the situation keeps getting more and more critical. So I'll open it up to comments. Hello, come in, come in. So I've been talking about a lot of things, but it's time for discussion. So the question is, how do we talk to each other? And how do we hear the suffering of the world? And how do we respond? So responses, comments, questions?

[27:33]

Decision I don't think that means that every moment is an emergency or a personal emergency or a panic.

[29:28]

Good, yeah. So just to say passivity is not the practice. And it's very tempting. And I think a lot of us sometimes feel that way. And a lot of people go there because there's nothing we can do. It just feels like the forces, the tipping points and the forces in society are so beyond us that it's hopeless and there's nothing we can do. just become passive, but that's not the teaching. That's not the reality that the Dharma shows us. It's not helpful. The teaching is the practice, and what we see is that actually everything we do makes a difference. and everything that happens has innumerable causes and conditions. So yes, everything we do makes a difference. But what Florence was saying and what Joanna Macy is saying and what the Soto teachers are saying is that it's not just a matter of individual actions, but that actually

[31:19]

community, Sangha. And Joanna talks about Thich Nhat Hanh talking about this is the age of Sangha, that Maitreya Buddha is the Buddha of love, the future Buddha is the Buddha of Sangha, that that community is how we can act together. And that's what is needed right now. And what that is, we don't really know. But this is why I want to encourage us to be talking about this. Acting alone is not the point. Everything we do makes a difference. And what will happen in terms of the effects of the climate crisis certainly will be I mean, there's already mass extinction. There certainly will be dire effects. How bad things will be remains to be seen.

[32:25]

And we can make a difference, but we can make a difference only as only acting together. And we're not isolated actually, actually. So anyway, that's my response to, you know, the realities you pointed out. So I'm sorry I'm preaching. But I really want to hear what you have to say. Dennis? almost like I can't stop it, you know?

[33:32]

And so I feel guilty because there are parts of it I like. Yeah. Yes, of course. And the guilt is extra. The guilt's not helpful. We're all guilty. So what? I mean, we're part of this system, this consumerist system that led to this, you know, as human beings. So the human species, you know, some people say, so Joanna said in her article that maybe the human species needs to commit suicide so the planet can go on. You know, I don't believe that, but that's one view. But I don't think that's helpful, I think. humans can act together to make things better. But yeah, so we can, that's the part of acknowledging grief. We can see that we are part of this, but our personal, you know, Our personal responses to climate, our personal activities to respond are not going to be the solution.

[34:41]

The solution has to be systemic, which is why I think things like Extinction Rebellion and some of the things that the young people are doing have more of a chance of changing the system. I don't know. But the whole ... the whole works has to shift. And as more and more of these calamities happen, maybe more and more people will see that and there's a chance of making that kind of change against the forces of the fossil fuel companies who are making profits from this. Anyway, it's complicated. But personal guilt is not, I don't think it's helpful. at the same time that we can feel, yeah, we're all part of it. We're all part of the system that led to this. Again, I'm preaching, but yes, Mike. compassionate to ourselves in some way.

[35:55]

But then also when you're talking about Cathy's email about how to talk to others whose views we don't agree with. And I think using compassion in the sense of when you, if you're someone, if you care, being compassionate to someone. I don't like conflict, and it's hard for me to do that. So I think that being able to talk about those things together and have a community that's talking about where we're all doing that, it can make that easier and stronger. Yeah, yeah, good. Yeah, speaking our truth, but not demonizing others who disagree with us, but actually listening and really, how do we be together with?

[36:59]

Yes. Sure, we can't, you know, trying to avoid politics is like not facing our grief, you know, we have to face that, but it's difficult, you know, it's not, yeah, it's difficult.

[38:39]

And, you know, we're running up to the edge of our time, so we're just starting the discussion. So, you know, I really feel like this is a long discussion that, you know, as a Sangha, and there's many, many, many more people who are part of our Sangha, that we all need to be considering, and it's not something that, and how do we think about acting together? And it's not that there's one right action, and there's not one right response. It's not that everybody, and it's not that we all have to agree at all. But the first step is just facing this

[39:45]

and being willing to talk about it and to speak, going back to what Mike was saying, to speak our truth, but also honor other people's truths. Yeah, Dylan, maybe the last word. teams that will really step up and do that work, whatever that important project is. And sometimes it can feel like it's not happening quick enough. But just encourage us to not give up. Yeah, we can't. We can't. This is happening, so we have to face it. So just to repeat the five practices that Florence talked about, facing what's happening. and facing our own response to that, facing our grief. Practicing not knowing, not knowing the answers, not knowing what's going to happen, how it's going to work out.

[40:54]

being willing to be in the middle of not knowing. Three, cultivating gratitude, being grateful for the situation, as terrible as it is, because it's an opportunity for us to work together somehow or to respond or to look at the world in our lives. Four is just slowing down. It's urgent, our heads are on fire, the world's on fire. How do we respond? And yet, if we try and run around to feel like we have to fix it tonight or whatever, it's counterintuitive in a way, but it's really slowing down to look at it. And then the fifth one is to take care of each other, to take care of the people who we don't agree with, How do we listen to each other? So this is a very difficult and subtle practice, and it's urgent.

[41:58]

And at the same time, a part of Sangha is important, and maybe one of the main functions of our precepts is respect, radical respect, to respect all beings, to respect each other, especially in this time of calamity and mass extinction, to respect the whole process, to respect ourselves. So going back to what Dennis was saying about feeling guilty, okay, you can respect your own feeling guilty, but then Respect that part of yourself that, you know, can look and try to feel how we can act positively together. So, I'll stop there.

[42:51]

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