Welcome to Green Gulch. It's wonderful to see you all here this beautiful day, and especially because the young people are here in the front. So welcome. Is it a first time here for any of you? Good. Well, you're welcome. So I promise to keep my remarks short so you can go out and have fun with Nancy and Michael and other people. There's a wonderful program planned for today. I wanted to tell you a story, a true story, that I thought might be interesting. And it's a story of a life, of a life well lived. And the person that I'm going to tell you about is celebrating her birthday today. So that's kind of a big day for her. And she was a little girl, only two years old. She grew up in Japan with three brothers, three other siblings. She had a sister and two brothers. Now I know some of you have a brother or a sister.

[01:01]

Do you have a brother and sister or sister? Oh, lucky you. How about you? Do you have a brother or sister? Your mother thinks you do. Anyway, this friend had two little brothers and a younger sister. And she lived in Japan in a very difficult time in the life of the world. It was during the Second World War. And she lived in the city of Tokyo. Has anybody here been to Japan? Any of you? Wonderful. Have you been to Tokyo? Great. So Mayumi grew up in Tokyo. She was born in Tokyo. And she lived there as a little girl when she was two years old. There was a war going on, a huge war, a world war. But for her, it was a war in her own city, in the place where she lived. Now I've told you it's her birthday, so you know she wasn't killed in this war.

[02:04]

She's celebrating her birthday today. But she did live through a very difficult time in the life of her country. And in fact, it was so dangerous to live in Tokyo when she was a little girl that her father and grandfather had to dig a shelter, a bomb shelter, underneath a little lily pond that they had behind their house in Tokyo. They dug a deep hole. And when the bombers went over the city where she was living, they all had to run and hide in the shelter underneath the lily pond. And she describes, since she was the eldest, she describes the great B-59 bombers going over her city with their lights blinking and the children being terrified. And some of the younger, her brother crying and crying, and her mother was trying to nurse the baby so the baby would be quiet. But he was too frightened to be quiet. Anyway, that's the situation that many, many children in the world are living with right

[03:10]

now. And I think the story of what happened to Mayumi may be interesting to you because her family realized it was not safe for the children to stay in Tokyo. And so their mother took them by train to the northern part of Japan to a place called Iwate Prefecture, which was an ancient, ancient part of the country. And it's the place of the Ainu or the ancient ones, a real spirit place. But for Mayumi, it was a place of refuge, a place of safety, a place away from those blinking devil lights of the airplane and away from the shelter underneath the lily pond, which was a little bit like a mole's house. So she traveled with her mother and her brothers. And I think her little sister wasn't born yet because her little sister is my age. So her little sister was born later, after the war ended. And you know, her mother gave her one present to keep her happy.

[04:12]

Can you guess what it might be? Something very simple. Something to draw with. I'm giving you all kinds of hints. Can you guess? The most, what? A pen, she was given a pen. That was a good guess. What else? Who said that? Did you say, somebody say crayons? She was given a box of crayons, her first box of crayons. And when she got to Iwate Prefecture, she missed her dad and her grandfather so much because they had to stay in Tokyo, and her grandmother also. And her mother would take her out in the fields. She was a little baby. And sit down with her and say, look at the mountains and take your crayons and draw the mountains. And she said she learned to look at the mountains then and to take color and put it on the paper and make a world that came from her inside and also from looking at the mountains. Do you guys like to draw? I don't know if you'll get to draw today, but maybe, who knows?

[05:15]

When you go out of here, all kinds of things may happen, including drawing. Anyway, she drew the world and it came back into color for her. And she felt closer to her family. And she went to Iwate Prefecture on the spring equinox, which is the 21st of March, and came back to Tokyo six months later on the autumnal equinox. And when she came home, she found that her city was gone. The city as she knew it was a pile of bricks and stones and houses that had been broken down, and many people had been hurt, and the Great War was raging on. But her house, which was on the outskirts of Tokyo, was still standing, and the garden. And they had so little to eat when she got home. Her grandparents, because it was their house, guess what the only thing they could give her to eat? Actually, to drink. Can you imagine?

[06:15]

So simple. What do you think, Merida? Water. Her grandfather brought her a glass of cold water, and she said she drank the water from the well and felt strong to be back in her city. And they went through a very difficult time. They had to eat, guess what they ate every day? Every day, and it wasn't rice. It grows underneath the ground, and it's kind of pink, and you don't usually eat it too much. And it's sweet. I've given you so many hints. You got it. Sweet potatoes. She said her mother was very creative. She mashed sweet potatoes, fried them, diced them, boiled them. She did all kinds of things, but it was still sweet potatoes every day for food. And that's what they lived on. And yet, with her crayons and with her own life, she did come back to life, and her city was rebuilt. And a few years, a little while after that, the war ended in not such a happy way for the

[07:25]

city, but the war did end, and she found her place as an artist, as a painter. Today, after your program, you can go and look at some of her paintings. They're outside, and she actually wrote a book about this part of her life, which you can also look at, and you can wish her a happy birthday while you're doing it. The main point, the reason I'm telling you the story is because the very simplest things brought her back to life in the very most difficult of times. So let's try to remember. What helped her come back to life? Art. A drink of water, because it was water from her home place. And even though the city had been destroyed, she could still feel her own life. What else? Art, drawing, her family, her baby brother, her mother, the sweet potatoes, even though

[08:29]

she still can't eat them, probably, although she's growing them now. What else? I think maybe some feeling of a world that was bigger than the world around her, a world that didn't have so many borders and edges, and a world that was available to her. So thank you for listening so carefully. This morning, you're going to do great things and fun things outside, but among them, I need somebody, when it's time for you to go outside, to take this basket of beans. Do you see these beans? I'm going to pass them around so you can see them, not from far away. Look at this. Here's another treat. These are from, actually, these are some beans. We grew beans like this in this garden, but these actually come from a wonderful big garden in Berkeley. See how pretty they are?

[09:31]

Those beans in your hand come from the Balkans, from the Kosovo region, and for the last four years, gardeners all over the Bay Area have been growing these beans because the people that live in Kosovo haven't been able to come back to their land and plant their own gardens, and beans need to be planted every year. Now, it looks like this year, some of the gardeners in the region where these beans are from will be able to go back into their gardens, and we have bags, fat bags of beans to send home to them, because during the time that they haven't been able to plant their gardens, we have. We've grown the beans here at Green Gulch, and guess who loved them? They're animals with four legs and black tails. Hmm? No, not the horses, but they're almost as big as a horse. The black-tailed deer, yeah.

[10:33]

The black-tailed deer. One year, we planted the Kosovo beans, and the black-tailed deer ate them all down about this high. They ate all the leaves off, and the beans just flowered on the very top of the vines, so we didn't have many beans that year, but last year in Berkeley, it was hot, and we grew many, many beans, so even in villages that have been suffering from war, there are some people and some children who can plant a bean for peace and make sure that the bean, which is good food, gets back to the people that are waiting to be able to grow them again. So that gets to be your job this morning, to plant a seed of peace, to water it, to include a great wish for the well-being of the plant, and then to continue having a lot of fun, to draw and to play, and you're going to do other great things in the garden. I'm so happy you came this morning. Thank you very much. And if you're ready, you can go out, and then the older young people who are here can find

[11:41]

Rosie. That's Meredith and Zoe. They're out there. You'll help? Oh, they're helping you. Then forget it. Cancel that statement. So thank you very much for coming, and do be sure to go over and meet the birthday artist. She's hiding on the back of the meditation hall. You'll be able to see her. Thank you for coming. Do take the seeds. Take the Kosovo beans and take the blue corn, please. That's a whole other story which you don't get to hear. Nancy can tell you. Anyone who'd like to come forward, there's nice, warm zafus here in the front. Please come up.

[12:42]

It's always such a treat to look at the kids and listen to them. The program this morning focuses on developing patience, but not too much patience. That's not healthy. Especially since Zen practice is not a safe place, we can develop patience within that awareness. And because it takes everything in your body and mind to patiently await for a bean seed to come forth, we do it lifetime after lifetime and save the seed. This is a wonderful day at Green Gulch. Number one, the kids are here. That's always good. It's a birthday. It's a celebration of art and activism.

[14:16]

And best of all, there's a wedding here today in this old hayloft. A great heifer and cow will be married in this big cow barn. A bull and a cow. A bull and a whatchacallit, heifer. So we're going to have a great Moo-Zen going on today in this hall. One of the most ancient of ceremonies and celebrations, and ordination really, is the marriage ceremony. A celebration of candlelight and flowers, of new life, fresh vows, and deep commitment. And I think probably most meaningful of all in a Zen wedding, the marriage of mind-to-mind, body-to-body, nature-to-nature. We say in true nature to true nature. And a celebration of separateness, which is so important. Taking your place together. So wherever you are today, and if you're married, you're married afresh in this hall, whether or not you're in attendance.

[15:23]

We have, for the last six weeks at Zen Center here at Green Gulch, we have been in a deep course of study, which we call Zen in Action. The first class I was remembering, talking to Mayumi this morning, I was remembering that in 1993, a number of us met on her living room couch down in Muir Beach to plan how to have a course called Zen in Action that included both deep meditation and getting up out of the cushion, off of the cushion, and serving. So we met with Reb and Alan Sanaki and Mayumi and Ty Cashman and a number of us sitting around and talking about how to do this. And we decided that it's a great thing to invite friends who are doing the work to come and talk about their experience. So it was wonderful to invite her home today to talk about her work and experience and life. And we've had a deep time of it.

[16:28]

Fifteen or so of us gathered together, not only listening to the Dharma experience and life experience of the practitioners that have been invited, and I'll tell you a little bit about that in a moment, but each of us in our own lives examining what is that real junction between sitting still, observing what is, and then getting up off the cushion and stepping into the world. This question calls up our most authentic, deepest, and original mind. And I love the word original. It's a beautiful word, a rich, rich word. From orire, to rise. The Latin verb is to rise.

[17:30]

And originality, origo is the noun. It means to rise up. And this is from poet and practitioner Jane Hirshfield, who's done a lot of study into the deep roots of the word, and I love what she has to say in looking, endeavoring, kind of searching out the roots of the word. To rise up in the same way that the sun appears to rise and the moon appears to rise and set. That ancient rhythm, the cyclical rhythm of time, the rising and setting, and of course light and dark, is included in originality. Originality is as ancient and time-bound as the rising and setting of the moon and the sun, the great cycles. But then there's another meaning of the word, which is very strong, and that is the upwelling from out of the bottom of the earth, the upwelling of fresh water, the source water.

[18:34]

And that's a timeless process that we don't understand, especially in these times when fresh water, clear water, deep water is so rare. Especially in these times when a woman in certain reaches of Africa walks five hours, two, two and a half hours to the spring to bring water back, two and a half hours back, just for the extreme luxury of water. And our friend, activist and practitioner Melody Ironshield Chavez telling us last week at Tassajara about that same miracle when she came back from Afghanistan where she went for an incredible pilgrimage. And she opened the tap and wept for the miracle of water coming down. And certainly poets know this miracle inside out, the cycle of dark and light that rises up and sinks down

[19:41]

and then the mystery of water coming up from the rock. These are the roots of originality. Listen to the poet, Denise Levertov. Do not say, don't say, don't say there is no water, no water to solace the dryness at our hearts. I have seen the fountains springing out of the rocks and you drinking there. And I too before your eyes found footholds and climbed to drink the cool water. The woman of that place shading her eyes frowned as she watched, but not because she grudged the water, only because she was watching to see we drank our fill and were refreshed. Don't say, don't say there is no water. The fountain is there among its scalloped green and gray stones.

[20:46]

It is still there and always there with its quiet song and strange power to spring in us up and out through the rock. So original mind springs up through the rock, fresh, surprising, deep, and at the same time it moves as a steady cycle in our lives and minds. And we so deeply came into touch with this during our six weeks of getting to know each other in an original way, never seen before in this class. We welcomed Alan Sanaki who for ten years, kind of equal with the birth of his children, served as director and coordinator of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, a Zen priest, teacher, lifelong activist, father, musician, friend,

[21:50]

came just to ruminate and talk about his experience of sitting still, observing what is, and then getting up and serving. And then we heard from many different young practitioners. One man, a thirty-year-old man who heads up the gardening program, the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Jr. High School, talking about his experience of working with nine hundred middle school children. Nine hundred children in an acre-and-a-half garden, and how gardening seems to bring children back to life in the way that Mayumi's crayons and the taste of the cold water brought her back to life. And then we heard from an old friend of Martha who helped me coordinate the class, Hamish Sinclair, coming and talking about an extraordinary program for restorative justice in the jails. A program called Man Alive, where prisoners elect to live for two years, right Martha?

[22:56]

For two years in a special pod at San Bruno County Jail and examine the roots of violence in their lives. Examine and turn. This program is extraordinary. I'll come back to it because I want to talk about it. And we heard from a practitioner, a long-time practitioner and teacher here at Gringotts, Lee de Barros, who along with the Bride and Groom and many others, has been serving in San Quentin, going once a week on Sunday nights to practice meditation with incarcerated members of that community and creating community within the heart of the prison. Making an altar. Finding freedom in the simplicity of the breath. And this program has been going on for two and a half years. There was recently an ordination within the prison, a lay ordination. Extraordinary work. And last week, a deep session with the Interfaith Chaplaincy

[24:03]

headed up by Chris Highland in San Rafael and members of the congregation who serve the homeless in the city and talked to us so deeply about erasing the borders that block us from each other. And today, sharing and listening to our friend and also lifelong Buddhist practitioner, Mayumi Oda, hearing about her experience of art and activism and facing a dedicated effort to stop nuclear armaments in her country and in the world, in the world court. And after every class, we've taken the teachings that have come up into our own lives and examined how does this teaching figure in my life and in my practice? How can I really take the deep water that's welling up and drink it, take it in so that it's my original self I'm looking at,

[25:07]

my original request, my original experience? So this is so important, and it's been an amazing time. I feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to be present with the 15 or so people who've been part of this collegial examination. And I think that probably a core question is this question of discovering or uncovering or revealing or seeing your original self, tasting your original self. True originality depends on what's familiar and on what's never been tasted before. I'm sure that a three-year-old child coming back to her city, her bombed-out city, and tasting water knew that on some very true level that that water had never been tasted before.

[26:12]

And it woke up in her some older memory and commitment. So I want to tell you a little bit more about what happened in our session with Hamish and the Man Alive program, just to single out this experience of looking at violence and how violence figures in our world and in our life. And Zen practitioners have been called for thousands of years to observe what is and to respond. Suzuki Roshi came to this country with an active feeling of opposition to war and carried that into his practice and what he offered us in the original founding of this place. And he often would say that Zen Center was important

[27:16]

because it might mean a new experience for the Japanese. If American students took up practice with the original nonviolent intent, then perhaps the whole world would be renewed. It's a great vision, but that's called for now, especially in times with no guarantee. That great original vision is called for. So in the Man Alive program, Hamish, who was a community organizer and a labor advocate for years, noticed this stream, and he noticed it in his own body and mind, that stream of violence and patriarchy that ran through his system and influenced how he saw the world and determined to meet it directly by looking at it,

[28:18]

by sitting still and looking at it, and by going into the most difficult corridors of kind of forgotten places in our culture and dealing directly with violence and the seeds of violence, the roots of violence. And so this Man Alive program was founded, I think it's called Restorative Justice, is that correct? Martha knows much more about this, but she'll tell you later in question and answer, more carefully about the program. What I know is that they found a pod in the San Bruno County Jail and how many men? Fifty-four. Fifty-four men made a two-year commitment to examine violence in their lives, to examine and turn it around. And that's a rather amazing experience, to take that on, to look not only at violent behavior, but the violence of speech, of thought, of your dreams,

[29:24]

of violence in every aspect, and to really focus on that and to dismantle it. So in the program, the men, and it is all men involved in this program, are taking a look first of all at what they call the hit man, or the one that perpetrates violence, and how deeply and strongly they identify with that person so that when that self, that violent self is dismantled, there's a moment of what they call fatal peril, when everything falls apart, and you don't know who you are. And it was beautiful. In our session with Hamish, he also brought along a friend who teaches in the program and was an incarcerated felon and is a graduate of this program, a man named Urban Poole, a very strong person. And they told us that when that moment of fatal peril

[30:27]

comes up and you notice, my God, I don't have a self, it's almost universally, the response is kind of like this, putting the hands up, fatal peril. And in the program, there's such an attentive awareness of this moment, which is the moment where original mind can come up and take hold again, and in this moment of surprise and fatal peril, when it comes up fresh for individual members of the program, the entire congregation does the same movement of holding the hands up, kind of in solidarity and camaraderie. And it's extremely grounding to do that, to recognize, yes, your self, your violent self as you know it is coming apart and being dismantled. And there may, there may be a chance of new life.

[31:32]

But meditation practice and activist practice has no guarantees. Even in the heart of a well-intentioned, deeply committed meditation community, cruelty can be. And even in the core of a prison, there is extraordinary kindness, original kindness. So there's no guarantee that anything is the way it seems, especially when you're willing to have that moment of fatal peril when the world reshifts and resettles. And do you think we have a choice? I don't think so. Not in these times. That has not been my experience. In any way that we can train our bodies and minds and be ready to meet the emergencies of our time, waking up is, no, dreaming is delightful,

[32:37]

written on a brick wall in New York City, dreaming is delightful, and waking up is an emergency. And that's the training. That's happening, not only in extraordinary places like Gringoltsch, but also in the heart and bowels of our prisons, on the streets, in our public schools, on the outskirts of nuclear labs, in many different places. And I would wager that every single one of you here today can bring up another place of transformation and original mind arising. So there's this moment of fatal peril where you recoil and stand back and then sink down into a fresh life. And the program is rigorous. I know that Martha goes every Wednesday in the afternoon, the entire afternoon is spent with men,

[33:38]

violent offenders, talking very deeply about their acts of violence, dismantling it by investigating. They spend a good hour or more talking and listening to each other. And then every Wednesday there's a moment for, I want to make sure I get this right, Victim Impact Day, it's called. In particular, I remember Martha telling me about one day when she was in the jail and an 80-year-old survivor of the Holocaust came in, an old white Jewish woman. She took her seat and the violent offenders, all 54 of them, surrounded her and listened to her. And she told her story, extraordinary violence, what she had endured. And the facilitator of the group rotates between people who are part of the community. On this day, the facilitator was

[34:40]

a young man who was a violent offender and a neo-Nazi. For him to listen, and he had to listen for an hour, to this woman tell her story in all of its detail, and then get up and leave, and the men take a breathing moment and process what they've heard. Not only what they heard her say, but how what she said woke up what they've been working on. Deep work, very like meditation work. Examining the mind, knowing the mind, shaping the mind, freeing the mind. Ancient teachings of the Buddha, know the mind, shape the mind, free the mind. Only by really settling, coming into contact with fatal peril of what you know and don't know, softening and opening So this story in particular

[35:42]

had tremendous meaning for me. And there are a couple of points that I think are worth mentioning. And then we'll open the doors and let you out into this beautiful day. And this is so much from the teaching that Alan brought us on the very first day, and looking at what qualities help us make this connection, this interlacing of meditation and activism. First of all, and this is so much from many different traditions joining. First of all, of being willing not to know what to do. That in itself is a moment of fatal peril. Not to know or if you'll have a place to sleep or sit.

[36:43]

Not to know what you really think and to recognize it. You don't know, I don't know. Every shuso ceremony here begins with that recognition of bodhidharma, not knowing, and crossing the river and keeping going. Now, in the Zen tradition, not knowing like emptiness has become a bit of a fetish, I'm sorry to say. Oh, I just, it's don't know mind, don't know mind, that's cop-out mind. I'm not talking about cop-out mind. I'm talking about engaging and really not knowing, not just talking about it like one of your trophies. But when you really don't know what to do, that kind of mind is essential for true original nature to come up.

[37:44]

Activist, Zen priest, teacher, Bernie Glassman, founder of the Zen Peacemaker Order with his wife, Jisho Holmes, now Zen clown. He is, he's practicing active clowning right now, trying to cut through all the crap. He talks about this not knowing. He says, you may not, you certainly don't know the meal, what the meal is going to be, but you can know the ingredients. You can know cold water. You can know a handful of beans. You can know a ground-up blue cornmeal from the Hopi elders. What to do with it depends on your hands, true life being in your hands, taking life into your hands, taking practice into your hands,

[38:50]

taking the original mind into your own hands. And that may be a mixed metaphor, but tough. Take, take what is our true inheritance. Act your age, says Joanna Mason, five billion years old. Let's act our age. Stop sniveling. Take our place. We don't know what to do, and we don't have any choice, but to take our place. The second, the second point is to, well, willingness to bear witness. That means staying still and looking at what is, what is coming up. And it was amazing hearing Alan talk about this all the different times that as a member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship he's done this, held still when he didn't think he could bear to look at what was happening.

[39:52]

Like the forest monks, forest monks in Thailand watching their ancient forest be taken down and recognizing out of that that there was a path of service that they didn't know at first. And that path of service only became clear by sitting still and watching what was happening. Bearing witness. To bear means to endure, to uncover, to continue. So bearing witness is a big deal. And sometimes bearing witness brings up latent urges to help, to make things better. I've seen what happened. I really want to do something. I remember Bernie Glassman telling us that one of his students came to him and said, you know, I'm getting kind of old and I really want to work in the geriatric units. I want to bring my practice into the geriatric units. I think I can do it. Why don't you sign into the geriatric unit?

[40:59]

Why don't you join them instead of trying to help them? So this is a steep, a steep calling to stay still, to bear witness, not move and continue. As Katagiri Roshi said, every time just continue and out of that comes the third point, which is pledging to work for the well-being of the world, a grand pledge. Years ago, we modified this ancient chant, beings are numberless, I vow to save them. We thought it sounded a little presumptuous. I vow to save them. How about I vow to awaken with them? I vow to be with them. These are reflections of this vow to save all beings. And I remember

[42:02]

teacher and loudmouth Robert Thurman coming here and exploding with ire and reminding us, shaking us and saying, you know, you've got to make an impossible pledge. The world needs impossible pledges. It's the messianic dream. It's the call to action to wake up. So by not knowing what to do, by bearing witness, some deep vow to heal the world or to be whole with the world rises up like the spring water from the bottom of the rock and gives us refreshment so that we remember who we are. Healing the world. It makes me think of the word, the word for peace,

[43:04]

the Hebrew word for peace and the Arabic word for peace. Salaam, shalom comes from wholeness. It means, the word has the same meaning, peacefulness and wholeness. And health. We share those three roots, peacefulness, wholeness, health. It also happens to mean paying, to pay for, to pay the price that it costs for health and wholeness and peacefulness. It's a steep price and we pay it again and again and again to give rise to a world that is original beyond measure and expression and as refreshing as a taste of cool water from the bottom of the well and as necessary for life. So,

[44:06]

thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity to share our six weeks of Cultivation of the Way with you and I'd like to close by reading a poem that Martha gave us on the first class, coming back to this wonderful poem from Pabla Neruda. I wish we had it in Spanish. Maybe another time we can find it in Spanish. I'd like to embarrass Martha by asking her to come and read it herself. You thought you were safe down there? Trudge up here. So this is Keeping Quiet, a poem by Pabla Neruda. She's going to read it slowly. Why don't you hook up? Hook me up. Okay, this is called

[45:09]

Keeping Quiet. Now we will count to twelve. And we will all keep still. For once on the face of this earth, let's not speak in any language. Let's stop for a second and not move our arms so much. It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines. We would all be together in a sudden strangeness. Fishermen in the coal sea would not harm whales. And the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands. Those who prepare green wars, wars of gas, wars of fire, victories with no survivors would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers and sisters in the shade doing nothing. What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. Life is what it's about.

[46:12]

If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as the dead in winter than later proves to be alive. Now I'll count up to 12 and you keep quiet and I will go. So again, thank you very much for coming to Green Gulch today. Please practice in your own life.

[47:14]

Please hold these experiences that I've offered that have been gleaned from six weeks of deep practice. Please hold them up to the mirror of your own life and see if they have original truth for you. And please just continue under all circumstances and enjoy the beautiful day that surrounds and fills this hall. Thank you very much.

[47:53]

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