Well, by coincidence, our one-day sitting has fallen on the same day as Earth Day. So, we dedicate our sitting to Earth Day. The rain has given Earth Day its blessing, strangely enough. I think that most of the concern centering around the Earth has been our concern for quite a while. So this concern is not news to us.

[01:01]

and we've been dealing with it all along and quite concerned all along. So it's nice that people are finally waking up to the fact that there's a problem. Or allowing themselves to, people are allowing themselves to see the problem that everyone knew was here all along. In Buddhism, our first precept is don't kill. means various things, but basically it means don't kill life.

[02:07]

But it's also a big koan for us, is this problem of how to protect the earth. How to protect the earth is also a big koan. Giving life and taking life are both necessary. So we can talk about saving and giving life. The first precept, you know, in its negative aspect is don't kill life. In its positive aspect, it's nurture life. But both killing and bringing to life are two sides of how we take care of life. So this is a big problem and a big koan, because at the same time as we're taking care of life, we're also killing.

[03:21]

But as Suzuki Roshi said, even if you chop an earwig into a million pieces, you're still not killing life. So it's true that everything that exists everything that appears disappears or vanishes. What appears today vanishes tomorrow, including the earth. The whole earth will sometime completely vanish. But the fact of our life is that here it is now. How do we deal with it?

[04:27]

How do we deal with life itself as this earth? So when we talk about don't kill, there are several ways that we have to see it. One is literally don't kill. which is impossible. So if that's impossible, what is the meaning? Meaning is, don't do something willfully. Don't disregard life when taking life. When we eat breakfast, we're taking life.

[05:34]

Even though you don't eat animals, we're still taking life when we eat breakfast. Or when we pick fruit from the tree. Or when we scratch our nose. When we walk on the floor. There are no bugs to walk on. Still, life is taking life. You may say, I'm taking life, but actually life is taking life. Life is transforming life. So in this realm where everything appears and vanishes momentarily, This realm of transformation is just this realm of transformation. Everything exists for a moment in a certain form and then vanishes.

[06:40]

Sometimes we help it and sometimes we hinder it. So how do we deal with this process of transformation? It's a big question. We're part of the process of transformation ourselves. We say we need something, but actually what we need is not so much, but what we take is quite a lot. So there are several precepts actually that deal with this subject. The second precept is don't steal.

[07:46]

Don't take what's not yours to take. And this precept is difficult to deal with. How do we know what belongs to us and what doesn't? In a sense, does anything belong to us? something comes into our possession and we take care of things. I remember when I was at Tassajara one time, we used to do, in the summer, we used to do fire watch. We'd go out to the flats and out to the, across the hogback and up and down. in the evening and we would not let people squat there. Sometimes people would come in, young kids a lot, and they'd want to camp out at the flats and we wouldn't let them do it.

[08:58]

So one time I was out there and this kid was camping and I said, well, you can't do this. And he said, this is God's country. This belongs to everybody, right? And I thought, well, yeah, he's right, you know. That's right. But I said, it's God's country, but we're taking care of it. This is given to us to take care of and to protect. So please leave. I didn't say, this belongs to us. This place belongs to us. It doesn't belong to you. So, in a sense, we all have some domain that is our domain. But what happens is, because we have some domain, we get the idea that our domain and those things within our domain belong to us.

[10:18]

And then we become very possessive. And then we take advantage of possessiveness. We take advantage of the fact that it's possible that things can belong to us. And then we accumulate a lot of space and place and things. And in doing so, we deprive others of the use of things. So this taking is connected with greed. And greed comes from the idea that we can actually have something, or own something, more than we need. We can have as much as we want, more than we need. So this is a kind of delusion.

[11:23]

And then there's a precept which is don't sell the wine of delusion. And that precept also means don't get drunk, don't get intoxicated by, through dope or liquor. But it's deeper meaning is don't, either sell or use the wine of delusion. We're always buying and selling various kinds of delusion to each other. If you'll only buy this product, you'll be much better off, and of course I'll be wealthier. So we try to sell each other all kinds of ideas and all kinds of conveniences to make our life, this will make your life easier if you only buy my idea.

[12:41]

And so we try very hard to think up things that will make life easier, but actually it makes it more difficult. And we don't care how we do it. and we use up and steal all of the natural resources. We take our world treasure and completely exploit it with our delusive reasons. So, non-exploitation is a Buddhist precept.

[13:44]

Do not exploit either the earth or each other. that is not a specific precept, but it's an implied precept. And of course, the main precept is, don't kill life. Don't kill life covers all those precepts. It's the main precept within all those precepts. It's the thread that runs through all the precepts. And it doesn't mean that things don't disappear after they appear. Everything appears after it disappears, or disappears after it appears. But that's not taking life. That's not killing life. Anyway, life is more powerful than anything we can do to stop it.

[15:00]

Life itself. Here comes a bee. I've always felt that when we have spiders and little critters crawling around, we should be careful to not squash them, but pick them up on a piece of paper or something and put them outside. I've always felt that we incur the insect's revenge. That's just my superstition. My superstitious mind says we incur the insect's revenge when we don't deal with them correctly.

[16:05]

And that may be so. The insect's revenge comes in the form of toxic poisons. Isn't that the insect's revenge? Toxic poison. Do you crawl up your sleeve? Not yet. Maybe you have something that you'd like to express.

[17:07]

I don't want to just do a lot of talking. Yes? Maybe you could say something about how, well, tomorrow somebody might ask me, what did you do on Earth Day? And I'll say, well, I sat quietly facing a wall. And to a lot of people, that doesn't sound like much. And it's difficult to explain. Well, you can say I was giving the world a rest. We tend to want to do everything in the realm of certain kinds of activity.

[18:15]

Because people don't understand what you're doing doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. We each have to have our own true understanding of why we do what we do. We really have to have faith in what we do. People will always have some criticism or lack of understanding. Why do you sit today instead of planting trees? Why did you choose to do that? Because it was Sunday? You know, Sabbath is a day when everything stops. In the Jewish Sabbath, you don't do anything except Sashin. I mean, you don't do anything but study.

[19:27]

But you stop all the activities. You give the world a break. And you give yourself a break. And we're so attuned to going, going, going, going. Ceaseless activity. Ceaseless activity is our practice. But it doesn't mean that we have to continually keep doing something. When we sit Zazen, we keep all the precepts. You may say, well, that's easy when you're not doing anything. But nevertheless, we keep all the precepts when we're sitting Zazen.

[20:34]

Not killing life, not stealing, not breaking our commitment to our relationships, Not drinking the wine of delusion. Not lying. So forth. Not indulging in anger. Being one with the whole universe. This is how we express our unity with the whole universe. We may not be doing some specific act, but this specific act that we do is precisely expressing the unification or the unity of our life with the universe.

[21:38]

This is ultimate ecology. We're not wasting anything. We're not using too much of anything. When we eat, we're eating in the most thoughtful, conservative way. We don't eat too much. And we don't waste anything. And whatever we do, we do with compassion. So before we eat, we recognize and pay respect to everything that has made this meal happen. And we eat the meal just in order to practice. So this is our kind of natural way, but it seems strange to others sometimes.

[23:07]

Zazen itself is a kind of way to express the conservation of energy. In Zazen, we concentrate on just on the total function of both body and mind in the most balanced, mindful, and conservative way. By conservative, I mean not doing more than we need to do in order to do what we have to do. So when we practice Zazen over and over, this is how we express this conservation of energy in our life.

[24:17]

When we practice Zazen, we don't feel like being greedy. It doesn't feel right. And we naturally pay attention to things. We naturally take care of our surroundings. We naturally include our surroundings as ourself. Actually, on Earth Day, everyone should sit Zazen. When you see somebody that's not sitting Zazen, you should say, why weren't you sitting Zazen on Earth Day? Where were you? Out there digging holes in the ground? You know, the Indians were not farmers.

[25:19]

and they always considered the earth their mother. And they used to watch the Europeans cutting the grass. They'd say, how can you cut our mother's hair? How can you dig? They would watch the Europeans digging in the earth. They'd say, how can you cut our mother's flesh? The Indians were completely tuned in to ecology. They were completely at one with the landscape. Completely a part of the landscape. If they did anything to the landscape, it affected them. There was no sense of possessiveness, or this belongs to me and that belongs to you, except in small things. It was very hard for them to conceive of territoriality in the way that we conceive of it.

[26:34]

The greatest challenge, actually, the most interesting challenge, is to live with diminished means. In the Chronicle, the other day, there was a, at the bottom of the letters to the editor, there were just two lines that somebody had written, and it said, I have to paraphrase it because I can't remember it exactly, but it said something like, given Earth Day and all of this ecological consciousness who can now say, use the word, upscale with any degree of something. Integrity. So hopefully people will start taking up the challenge of

[27:54]

how to live frugally and without trying to fill up our lives with so much. We just keep getting busier and busier. And even though we want to not be busy, we can't help it. Even though we want to not have, we have to have. In order to move around in this society, we just have to have more and more. I don't know how we're going to stop it. It'll probably get worse, even though we want it to get better. It just will get worse. You know, I have to have a car and my wife has to have a car.

[29:02]

Everybody in the block has two cars, more or less. Every house has a stove and a refrigerator. It's amazing. We more and more compartmentalize ourselves and isolate ourselves and produce more and more, divide and conquer. But we have a kind of actually, you know, the slave and master thing has always been in existence in human society, but it just takes different forms. In the old days, the slaves were beaten with a whip and tied with chains and so forth by the masters. But now the masters have devised other ways.

[30:05]

They give you whatever you want. It's just the opposite. You can have whatever you want as long as you do the right thing. As long as you keep giving us your money. And then we own you. So it's just, the situation is somewhat the same, but the circumstances have changed. Nobody would stand for being whipped and chained in an obvious way. But it's okay if we're whipped and chained in an unobvious way. It doesn't matter to us, because it feels comfortable. Because people think they have what they want, but the more they get, the more unsatisfied we are.

[31:09]

So, hard to know where to stop, but there's some feeling of wanting to turn that over, but it's too hard to turn over. The momentum is so great. that it's too hard to turn over. There's too much drive to be luxurious. So we've drunk the wine of delusion in feeling that we can all lead a luxurious life. It's possible. So we raid the treasury of the earth store and pretty soon we're going to run out. So we may have to wait until we run out, I don't know. But there is some feeling of turning things around and maybe that will happen.

[32:13]

I'm amazed at how strong the feeling is. I don't know whether it's the whole country or just the West Coast. Maybe the whole country. But when we feel something is really happening on the West Coast, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's happening in the whole country. But still, it's amazing that there's so much It's heartening that there's so much feeling about dealing with this problem of the earth. People realize now that it's sick. Anybody else have to say anything they want to say? I guess I always just think of the zendo as sort of being the model of this minimal sort of thing.

[33:28]

And there are a couple of things that I wonder about that are very similar to me right now in terms of taking care of things. And one is, I mean, I learned to compost the zendo. We don't seem to compost anymore. The kitchen stuff. And the other is that when I look around the garden, beautiful, luxurious garden, and we must use more water than the rest of the block altogether. And I just wonder, I'm not saying that it's wrong, but Okay, well, as far as composting, we do still compost, but we used to compost garbage. And when we first got here, well, I used to compost garbage on Dwight Way a lot. As a matter of fact, I used to have people from San Francisco Sin Center bring their garbage out once a week and put it in my compost bin. When I went to Minneapolis, I met this guy that used to bring it out.

[34:32]

He used to bring over his violin, and we'd play duets after he'd bring the garbage. That was underway. And he said, oh, I remember I used to bring the garbage. I remembered him as playing the violin. And it reminded me that he used to bring the garbage. And then when we moved here, we had everybody recirculate garbage in the compost. And then different people would take their turns doing it. And one person didn't do a very good job taking care of the compost. When you put garbage in the compost, you really have to take care of it. It's not like putting leaves in. And since he didn't take care of it very well, the neighbors complained. And we shut down the operation of garbage and just put in leaves or cuttings. If you recycle garbage, you have to be very careful and take more care with it.

[35:37]

But it's a good question. And it's possible if we made better effort and with good equipment and so forth, we could do that again. I heard that in order to print one Sunday edition of the New York Times, it takes either 75,000 or 175,000 trees. Did you know that? 175,000 sounds like a lot, but I think that's what the person said. It was on the radio, as a matter of fact. But even 75,000 is mind-boggling. Where do they get all those trees?

[36:39]

I mean, if you cut down that many trees, and this is once a week, not counting the San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Times. It's mind-boggling. Recycling paper is happening, but using it is difficult. Everything breaks down in the process. You can get people to recycle their paper, but you can't get them to actually make good paper out of recycled paper and get it to being used. Processes are hard. You can grow vegetables in the garden, beautiful vegetables in the garden, but you can't get people to eat them because people are used to going to the store. We're locked in to going to the store.

[37:43]

And we plan our meals around going to the store. We don't look in the garden first to see what's there. We think, oh, I'll go to the store and get this. Instead of seeing what's there and using that, We think of, I want this. I feel hungry for that. It's just natural. But it's very hard to get vegetables from the garden to the table, unless it's your own garden. And we used to have this problem in Tassajara, beautiful big garden, growing tremendous vegetables. But to get them to the kitchen and serve to the table, very difficult. Because we think in terms of menu planning and shopping. So even though we have these things, we can't use them very well because we're not attuned to using them.

[38:50]

Plenty of things we could do, but we're not attuned to. Well, a friend of mine works at Corning, and I asked him how much glass they recycle. And he says only about 10 or 20 percent, and I was curious as to why. He said the public, as well as the manufacturers, bottlers, don't like to use inferior glass because it has imperfections and bubbles. It sounds minor, but when it's on the shelf and they've got a beautiful label around it, see a piece of glass that looks more like crystal. It sells. So they don't want to eat it. Well, it's the same with vegetables. The better vegetables are not necessarily the prettiest ones. Pretty vegetables settle, and then ones that aren't pretty, which are probably more healthy and, you know, organic vegetables don't usually look so good. They have dents and funny spots and so forth. People don't, they're suspicious of that.

[39:52]

They're suspicious of the true dragon, but they'll eat the imitation. The quality of fruit, I remember when I was a kid, fruit tasted good. When I was a kid, fruit had flavor. Celery had flavor. Yes? in terms of economies and all those kinds of nice new age things that can be done. And that used to be a great deal, that all these nice people would come together and do a miraculous job on how to live together in the modern world.

[40:55]

I think we're right not to The danger of saying, well, we've got to remember every grapefruit behind them, if it'll break down, and not upset the gardener for having citrus acid. If it'll break down in the compost, we should do that kind of thing, but in fact, because I think it's more important not to ... I think that we can't ... I'm losing my thought. Trying to solve the big problem of how organically

[42:06]

That kind of thought, I think, of trying to solve the whole big problem, is in itself a problem. Maybe the flavor of Buddhism is more to be going over the cliff with the Leninism. Well, in some way we do that too. But in some way, right, we share the same stuff with everybody. The problem is when you feel that because you're doing what you're doing, you're better than everybody else, or escaping from the world problem, that's not so good.

[43:16]

But not setting yourself apart from the world problem and helping people to deal with it, I don't think that's so bad. And we don't do everything perfectly. We don't do everything that we think we would like to or ought to do for some of those reasons. And in many ways, we contribute just like everybody else. Nevertheless, If we don't think in this way, then we're contributing in a mindless way. At least we should know what we're doing and not doing.

[44:20]

Yeah. Well, I was going to say that I think part of the growing awareness has been the closeness that everyone has to each other, especially since what happened in Eastern Europe. There used to be an over there, and there was us. And now that we see them as people with problems, there's just us. And it seems to me that it's very hard to stay in our own neighborhood when we're going through that kind of thing. take care of the community and you fly back east. And we all drive around taking care of other people and the air goes out to Concord. So we're in this process of extending to one another. And in that way, it's not so economical.

[45:23]

But maybe that is just a phase. Right. We do stuff. We drive our cars, we tape, you know, all this. at the same time knowing how bad it is. That's the dilemma. That's the dilemma. But another way is to just stay at home and do what you do. And since the world is getting smaller, the far-reaching effect of what we do right here at home will penetrate and already does and has. People all over the world know about Tassajara, about Zen Center. And without even being here, it's had some effect. It's very true. So I'm content to stick around, which I always have done. My feeling has been, just do what you're doing right here, right now, Mel.

[46:30]

Just take care of this. Right here. And that's mostly. And if everybody does that in their own space, they won't need to travel so much. But it's great to look at other places, too. Anyway, everything's a problem. Whatever you do, it's a problem. When we take part in this transformation of life, we do it with compassion, not just mindlessly. When we use something, we kill it, and we bring it to life. Simultaneously, we're killing and bringing to life. with what mind are we doing that?

[47:35]

That's the important part. So we eat with thankfulness and we consider how everything comes to us and It's like the flies, Tassajara. We used to kill flies, millions and billions of flies. We still do. And people would say to Suzuki Rishi, how can you kill these flies if you're a Buddhist? Precept says don't kill. How come you're killing flies? He said, well, when you kill the flies, do it compassionately. It's not that you want to kill flies, but you have to kill the flies.

[48:41]

But you do it mindfully. We used to, when we captured so many flies and then burned them, we'd always chant the Heart Sutra. It's not that we want to kill flies, But we have to kill flies. It's not that we want to eat lettuce. We have to eat lettuce. It's not that we want to eat oatmeal. We have to eat oatmeal. But we do it with compassion, with some feeling for the oatmeal, some feeling for the lettuce. We don't eat flies, but we kill them. with compassion. You don't kill too many of anything, you know? And our feeling is that we want to nurture life, but on the other hand we destroy it.

[49:46]

So we nurture while we destroy, and we destroy while we nurture. And within nurturing there's destruction, and within destruction there's nurturing. And within compassion, there's cruelty. And within cruelty, there's compassion. And within happiness, there's pain. And within pain, there's happiness. And within dying, there's living. And within living, there's dying. So our practice is the middle way. If we practice Middle Way, we always know what to do. The literal precept is don't kill, but we have to kill.

[50:54]

The precept, according to Buddha nature, is you can't kill anything, even though you chop it into a million pieces. But Bodhisattva's way is Middle Way. don't kill, yet you have to kill. Even though it matters, it doesn't matter. Even though it doesn't matter, it really matters. Yes. She's leaving a letter. I asked a teacher, a Buddhist teacher once, about the problem that happens often in the fall where the moths come and eat your grain.

[52:01]

And his comment was, it's better to let the moths eat the grain. And I've had this problem lately where I have ants in my kitchen. And they say, well, that's because it's And so each time this comes up, I wonder if I have some discomfort and some feelings of guilt if I kill the moths, or you don't belong in my brain, or you don't belong in my kitchen. And I understand what you're saying, and I guess I feel somewhat confused because I've heard it much more directly. Right. It's because there is no rule. You're looking for a rule. There's no rule. That's why the Middle Way is not a rule. The Middle Way is, you know both sides, and then you take some action, depending on the circumstances.

[53:08]

I always use ant powder. Ant powder is an old remedy. You don't find it everywhere anymore. People come up with different kinds of ant remedies, but ant powder is an old remedy. You put a little bit of ant powder on the line where the ants are coming in, and the first few ants will be sacrificed, but the rest of the ants will not come back. Great deterrent. Whether or not you should kill the moths or the grain, should you kill the moths or should the moths kill the grain? The question you have to weigh, who's going to teach the moths? You can't teach the moths. They won't listen to you. Are you going to starve your children or are you going to kill the moths?

[54:11]

Even though you kill all the moths, next year there will be just as many moths. points where you really don't want to even talk about it. You've got a serious problem. Also, you know, there's a time when you should just let the mosquitoes eat you up, you know? And there's a time when you should not let the mosquitoes eat you up. If you're digging the Suez Canal, you should not let the mosquitoes get anywhere near you. But sometimes, around here, mosquitoes, you know, you can let them if you want.

[55:18]

But every time you walk across the floor, you're killing microscopic beings. The Jains were a group of people who existed in the time of Buddha. And they still do exist. As a matter of fact, these two schools grew up together. And the Jains in India carry brooms, the Jain monks. And they're always sweeping the way. They don't have any insects. That's very nice. But even though you sweep the way, you miss some. The Buddhists have a staff with rings on the top and it goes, jingle, every time they walk, jingle. And that's, here I come, get out of the way. It's very nice. That's more our attitude. Here I come, get out of the way. But you cannot possibly eliminate every living thing from your path. And some things are a barrier and compassionately we have to get rid of them.

[56:35]

Monks, like a Buddhist monk, will not carry money. or will not, strictly speaking, grow food or anything. The monk is completely dependent upon people taking care of him, right? So for that person, it's wrong to kill moths. But for someone who has a field of grain and knows that many, many people depend on that field of grain, should kill the moths. Should feel okay about killing the moths. Compassionately. For the sake of the grain and the people. And the monk, who will benefit. But he doesn't care. He should starve to death. It's alright. He's doing what he should be doing, and the farmer's doing what the farmer should be doing.

[57:49]

It's not necessarily the same thing.

[57:52]

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