Good morning, everyone. I just want to say my Wi-Fi connection is a little bit iffy. It's possible that I will cut out at some point, in which case, stand by, because I'll be right back shortly. So again, good morning. Welcome. This morning, I'd like to talk about a book, a new book, and I'll be reading some from it. This is I don't know if you can all see it. Joanna Macy is about and by Joanna Macy. It's a book called Wild Love for the World, Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time. Joanna Macy's an old friend and mentor of mine. There will be an official Zoom book launch this coming Saturday, May 2nd, and we will put information about that and how to connect on the website this week. So this is a preview of that.

[01:01]

I'll be one of the six people, along with Joanna, speaking at that book launch. And I'm one of about 40 people who are contributors to this book. So the book includes introductions to each section by Joanna Macy, and then many excerpts and chapters. And I haven't had a chance to read it all yet. It's really wonderful. It could be 10 Dharma talks. So I want to read from it a little bit and talk about it and talk about what it says. This was all written before the current pandemic, but I think it's very relevant to our situation now. So I'll try and connect that. And just to say that many people are in distress right now. because of the pandemic. So I just want to remember them, to be aware of them. And we're researching groups and organizations where people can help out in Chicago, and we'll post that this week.

[02:11]

So, you know, African-Americans, people who are generally impoverished or homeless or have lost their jobs. Incarcerated people are all suffering from this COVID. So in some ways it shines a light on aspects of our society that have failed and So we can learn from this and I hope we learn from this. I also want to just mention the heroic examples now, Bodhisattvas, delivery people, sanitation workers, medical people and hospitals. There are a few of them in our Sangha. So there are examples of great heroism as well right now. So I want to start talking about A Wild Love for the World by just mentioning their five sections, and I'll just mention them as a way of talking about the range of Joanna Macy.

[03:23]

Joanna was here at Ancient Dragons back in 2012. Some of you may know her work, some not. There's quite a range. The first part is about our planet, our self, it's called. And it talks about our interconnectedness with the earth, with Gaia, with Gaia consciousness in this time. The second main section is called sustaining the gaze, how to keep paying attention. I'll read an excerpt from that. The third part is the interplay of reality So each of these sections, Joanna has an introduction to, and I'll come back to them. Part four is what I want to talk about the most. This is about deep time and one of Joanna's great teachings. That's the section that my chapter is in, but I'll read a couple of things from there. And the last one is on the move together. How do we move forward? So again, this was, all of this book was written before the current pandemic.

[04:27]

And again, for those of you who just came in, this is the book. It's from Shambhala, and there'll be a book launch this Saturday. So I want to read from parts of it. And I'm going to start with one of my heroes, Dar Jamal. He's in section two on sustaining the gaze. He was a war correspondent in Iraq. He has since, actually through Joanna's assistance after his PTSD, he has become an important correspondent about climate damage. And I've cited some of his monthly reports in Truthout. But I'll just his opening from his section, which is called reading my way into loving the planet.

[05:34]

It was February 2005. And after several months of frontline reporting from Iraq, I had returned to the US a human time bomb. rage my temper ticking shorter each day walking through morgues in Baghdad left scenes in my mind I remember even now I can still smell the decaying bodies as I write this more than a decade later watching young Iraqi children shot by U.S. military snipers bleed to death on operating tables. After deep and lasting imprint, Nick goes on to talk about his serious PTSD. But then he had the occasion to meet Joanna, and I'm going to read from what he says about that meeting. During one of Joanna's discussions, she said, the most radical thing any of us can do at this time is to be fully present to what is happening in the world. For me, the price of admission into that present was allowing my heart to break.

[06:41]

But then I saw how in the face of social and ecological crises, despair transforms into clarity of vision and into constructive collaborative action. Joanna said, it brings a new way of seeing the world, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on earth. And certainly this applies to the current pandemic. Jamal goes on, her lifelong body of work encompasses the psychological and spiritual issues of living in the nuclear age and is grounded in a deepening of ecological awareness. that has become all the more poignant as the inherently malefic industrial growth society of today's corporate capitalism continues on its trajectory of annihilation. Joanna told Jamal, I look at the path we are on to the future as having a ditch on either side. We have to hold on to each other in order not to fall into the ditch on the right or left.

[07:47]

On one side lies panic and hysteria. On the other, paralysis and shutting down. And this is certainly true now. You see this rapidly in the US. She went on. There is more and more social hysteria, greatly aided by the corporate media, and it's finger pointing and scapegoating. On one hand, you have the mass shootings, and on the other, a death-like closing down under the pressures of the moment when you need to just get food on the table. So that's certainly happening now. All of us and many people in our situation now either fall into fear and hysteria, panic, or fall into just shutting down and ignoring what's happening. And Joanna's saying we have to hold on to each other and not fall into either ditch. Darjeelal closes. So after this, he became a correspondent, talking about what's happening to the environment all around the world.

[08:57]

And he's recently, Darjeelal has recently wrote a book called The End Device. He says in closing, while on tour for the end of ice, I've become encouraged by the deep responses from people, as I've spoken from the heart about the devastation, devastating impacts of climate disruption across the planet and its people. No matter how difficult life on Earth becomes, we will only be able to withstand these times by sharing ourselves with one another. If nothing else, we can bear witness together and not suffer in isolation as the dominant culture prefers. And being a we, humans can live as the deeply interconnected consciousness of Earth. And we already are, just as Joanna has taught all her life. So this is so much the situation now. It's easy to feel isolated as we are each in our little box on the Zoom image.

[09:59]

and as we are each sheltered at home, but we're actually a we. We're all in this together. I'll just say in the next section on interplay of reality, there's an article good by Wendy Johnson, who was an old colleague of mine from Green Gulch Farm. She's been the gardener at Green Gulch Farm for a long time and now teaches about organic gardening around the world. But she talks about decomposition. and composting and how decomposing, the decomposing of vegetable materials is how new growth happens. And she also talks about an exercise that she did with Joanna coming from Tibetan Buddhism about decomposition of egos, of our small ego self.

[11:02]

But I wanna read more from the next section, which is called Deep Time. So this is, one of Joanna's, I think, really great contributions along with all the others. So bear with me while I find pages. Yeah. So Joanna first came to consideration of beings of the future and her work for future beings, through her awareness of nuclear waste and issues of nuclear waste, and how it will be poisonous for hundreds of thousands of years, and how it's not being taken care of by current policymakers. And how nuclear waste is being stored in containers that are brittle and cracking and caused by the radiation.

[12:11]

Anyway, she started the Nuclear Guardianship Project, which I helped work with, because she had this insight that spiritual communities are the best guardians of the nuclear waste to keep alive over long, long periods of time. The knowledge about their poisonousness. So I'll read a little bit from what she says. I racked my brain about whom to ask for guidance. But the only answer that came up was the future beings themselves, those who would have to live with our radioactive legacy. There was, of course, the problem of their not being born yet. But one renowned radiation scientist didn't see future generations as out of reach. I can never forget the words of Sister Rosalie Bertel, quote, every being who will ever live on earth is here now, where? In our gonads, in our ovaries, in our DNA. So since we wanted to, and it goes on, since we wanted to develop an understanding of what future generations will need,

[13:15]

and want to know about our radioactive legacy, we found the best way to hear from them was to have them speak through us in role play and ritual. That's how, for example, we heard the name Poison Fire. So, Joanne started these workshops, she did one here in 2012, about meeting beings of the future and role-playing and... asking future beings what they would like from us. A little more. Thanks to our study group on nuclear waste, which lasted four years, the beings of the future and their claim on life became so real to me, that I began to sense their presence, and to imagine them by my ear. And then if I turned my head fast enough, I could glimpse them over my shoulder. After her husband Fran died, my preoccupation with time deepened from winter solstice 2010 through Spring Equinox 2011, I undertook a home retreat. I felt the presence of the future beings and wanted to open myself with as little interruption as possible for communication and insight.

[14:23]

I spent many hours in contemplation and reading philosophical and scientific studies related to the experience of time. Merleau-Ponty, Ehei Dogen, Yaba Tamsaka, when I'm at Sutra. I was strict in honoring my solitude, allowing only a few thinking partners in my inquiry. On March 11, 2011, near the end of the retreat, the triple disaster at Fukushima Daiichi unfolded with a nuclear, with a nuclear meltdown, which is still going on. In one inescapable horror after another, the world I emerged into was changed forever. I instantly sensed the suffering this would bring for generations to come. So, Joanna, and through these workshops, all of us can, and through considering this, can develop actually connection with beings of the future. And later on, I substituted for Joanna at a conference in Kyoto and wrote a paper that's in my Zen Questions book called Meeting Our Ancestors in the Future.

[15:29]

So to look at the inspiration of ancestors, but also to see them in the future. I'm gonna read a little bit from my article in this book, Being Time and Deep Time. Joanna Macy's work on deep time and on beings of the future echoes and amplifies traditional Mahayana Buddhist teachings on temporality. These teachings include the subtle Chinese Huayen Buddhist holographic array of the 10 times, as well as the writings of the Japanese Zen pioneer Ehei Dogen in the 13th century, especially his renowned essay, Uchi, or Being Time. In the more than 30 years since I met Joanna as a graduate student at the California Institute of Clinical Studies, I've spoken regularly with her about her work for future beings in relation to Buddhist teachings on temporality. Joanna's courage and insight in facing the threat to time itself from the abiding peril of nuclear weapons, nuclear waste, and now from climate breakdown, and maybe now again from pandemics, has deeply resonated with my own concerns and inquiries into the quality of temporality.

[16:37]

Joanna has been an important inspiration and mentor for my Buddhist studies, work, and social activism. And from another section in my article about being time. In the realm of being time, elaborated in the writing of Japanese Zen founder Ehei Dōgen, founder of our tradition, time does not only flow from past to present or to future, Time moves in mysterious ways, passing dynamically between all ten times and beyond. Time is not some intractable, external, objective, or independent container we are caught in. We are time. When we fully express ourselves right now, that is time. We cannot avoid fully expressing our deepest truth presently in this being of time. Tolkien offers the consolation that even a partial, half-hearted exertion of our being time is completely a partial being time.

[17:40]

He says, quote, in being time, there's the distinctive function of passage. There is passage from today to tomorrow, passage from today to yesterday, passage from yesterday to today, passage from today to today, and passage from tomorrow to tomorrow. This transpires because Passage itself is the distinctive function of time. This multi-directional flowing makes it possible for beings to realize how they fully inhabit all times as the present time, rather than seeking some present as a restricted escape from regret for the past or our anxieties and fear over the future. Dogen's concern matches Joanna's call for re-inhabiting time. quote, in a healthier, safe fashion. Joanna cautions that spiritual injunctions to be here now can serve to devalue chronological time and encourage disregard for the future.

[18:41]

So this is an important teaching that being time is not about just being present in the present. The present includes the past and the future and the present and past and future of the past and the present and past and future of the future. So on. So Joanna continues, in this article I continue, throughout his writings, Dogen emphatically highlights responsibility of practitioners. When we realize that we are ineluctably being time, in this very body mind, we can choose to be and act from our deepest and noblest intention. We can choose to express our being time in a way that connects with all beings here now, and also connects with all beings. all our ancestors, throughout the generations of past and in future, we can be a time that accepts the support and guidance from all beings of all times. So from that section of the book, I want to also read a selection from

[19:48]

Oh, I'll just add about Joanna. And I mentioned in my book Faces of Compassion about the different Bodhisattva figures, Joanna as an example of Maitreya, the Bodhisattva predicted to be the next future Buddha. So just a little bit of that. Joanna has expressed Maitreya's Buddhist teachings and psychology in her study of contemporary Western systems theory, and also as active spokesperson for deep ecology. In all of her work, Joanna powerfully brings the truth of My tray is contemplation of the future to bear on crucial dilemmas in our present world. Joanna has used the dilemma of nuclear waste and the multi-millennial toxicity. It's multi-millennial toxicity to offer a positive, hopeful vision of a long-term human future based on guardianship of nuclear waste in a world with clear spiritual awareness. So this would also apply to guardianship of, um, viruses and pandemics and just to have an awakened sense of taking care of our world into the future.

[20:56]

Such guardianship would also apply to the dangers from climate breakdown through implementing some version of a long-term Green New Deal. Joanna's insight and faith are that we can acknowledge and use the dire perils of our own and other species. Opportunities for consciously taking responsibility for our world and our own garbage, living in a more caring, intentional manner. In workshops on deep time and future generations, Joanna encourages participants to envision themselves as beings from specific future times and places. She proclaims the fact that every being who will ever live on earth is present here and now. So this is true as a biological certainty, as all future life will collectively be produced from the DNA of present creatures. But also all future beings depend on our choices now for their lives and health. I'm going to read from one more chapter in this section about deep time.

[22:02]

And again, there's so much wonderful material in this book, and I've just started to read it. There's a lot. But this is from, an article called, a chapter called, Nothing is Impossible by Dan Ellsberg, who's famous as the one who gave the Pentagon Papers and for supporting, and who I got to know the year before I moved to Chicago. He talks about a march that he did in, I guess this is in Germany, continental walk of disarmament. No, this was in the United States in 1976. So he went on parts of this long walk that went from the West Coast to Washington, D.C., advocating the culmination of, it was for advocating and processing nuclear disarmament. So I'm going to read all of this. I was walking near to a friend I'd made on the marsh, Selton Osborne, who had walked the whole way across the country as the oldest member of the core group.

[23:11]

He was 64, which seemed old even to me at the time. I was 44 at the start. He had a grandchild born during those nine months of the walk. At last we walked inside of the Capitol and I said to him, Selden, what do you tell people along the way when they ask, what do you hope to accomplish on this walk? He said, matter of factly, I tell them I want to participate in a miracle. It will be a miracle if the United States decides to disarm, and it will be another miracle if the Russians join them. After a few more paces, he added cheerfully, fortunately, miracles are possible. I wasn't used to hearing such propositions in secular circles, Dan says. One aspect in particular struck me at first. It's an interesting concept, Seldon, I said, a miracle that requires human participation. I tried to think of an example. Within moments, I thought of what was going on in my own household on the other side of the country. My wife, Patricia, was three months pregnant in San Francisco.

[24:14]

In her womb, a new human being, our son, was developing. And for that to be possible, two humans had to come together to begin a miracle. That was true for every person who had ever lived. and every animal. Yes, that process was not predictable, unpredictable for humans, or even unexpected yet miraculous, as is the existence of life itself, and the conditions for it still social miracles. He goes on. I took it that he meant a non violent transformation of society so sweeping and sudden as to be in the eyes of experts and lay people alike. virtually unimaginable, not long before it actually occurred, not merely extremely unlikely, but impossible. And from the perspective of nearly everyone in the world, that is exactly what happened. 13 years later, beginning the night of November 9, 1989, when citizens of Berlin, mainly Easterners, dismantled the Berlin Wall with hammers, picks, and their bare hands without interference from East German soldiers or police who were standing by.

[25:24]

I've never heard of a single person on earth in the early years of the 1980s who imagined there was the slightest possibility of that coming about by the end of that decade. Countless American youngsters, such as our son Michael, then 12 years old, were hauled in front of the family TV to see it as it happened, told to watch and remember. All across the country, dumbstruck parents such as us were trying to impress on our children's minds that they were seeing something astonishing and possible, a miracle. What followed in the next two years seemed just as miraculous, the peaceful dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, unification of Germany, and the end of the USSR. So just the last part of Dan Ellsberg's section, Given the stakes, everything from the perspective of humans, and as Joanna Mason calls us, to attend all other forms of life, can it be worthwhile then to commit one's life and encourage others, as Joanna has done for decades, to enlarge that small but positive probability to participate in seldom possible necessary human miracle?

[26:43]

And then says, of course, So the next section I want to read is called On the Move Together. And this is about how people are moving forward in terms of doing this work. Joanne also calls it the work that reconnects or the great turning. I'll come to that. But I want to read from the introduction to this section from Stephanie Kaza, who edited this book and who was supposed to be here with us in Chicago at Ancient Dragon Zen Gate last weekend. But of course, because of the pandemic, she could not. She was from the West Coast. But I want to read Stephanie's introduction to this section. The legacy of Joanna Macy's work

[27:46]

has only grown more relevant as time goes on. Now, more than ever, the planet hovers on the brink of collapse, with social and environmental disasters on the rise and governments struggling to respond. So this was written before the pandemic. But this certainly applies. Citizens and neighborhoods can barely meet local needs while climate and resource refugees stream out of their homelands. and search safe havens. The work of our time seems to multiply in focus and scale as ecological and political systems erode beyond repair. In her stories, Joanna encourages us to let go of the need for certainty and even for hope. Joanna says, not knowing rivets our attention on what is happening right now. And this present moment is the only time we can act and the only time after all to awaken. So this not knowing is an old Zen slogan.

[28:49]

Not knowing is most intimate. There's a koan about that, that we live with uncertainty. And that's certainly true of the uncertainty about this pandemic. She says this present moment is the only time we can act. But again, this present moment includes future beings and past beings, all of our ancestors in all kinds of different realms. Stephanie goes on, radical uncertainty requires considerable courage. It is not for the faint of heart. As the work moves forward, we are invited to see impermanence itself as a refuge, the ground of practice and action. This is far easier in the company of collaborators focused on the three dimensions of the great turning, holding actions, the affirming, alternatives to business as usual, and shifts in consciousness. We are summoned to work from love, from a place of fearlessness, open to what is right before us.

[29:52]

So this great turning is something that Joanna has talked about and I've talked about. And these three aspects of it, I think I've repeated numbers of times, and I think are very helpful. Just to put them in other words, the first is just holding actions to including all kind of political work to mitigate damage. try and make the damage less. The second is alternative social structures, such as farmers markets and micro banks. And actually also sanghas, other ways of getting together. And then the third is, Stephanie says, shifts in consciousness. This is changing major paradigms from aggression and competition to compassion and cooperation. This is what Arzazan does. So this is one of the three aspects of what Joanna calls the great turning. That fifth section includes a piece

[30:54]

written by my old friend Sue Moon, who was the editor of the BPF journal, Turning Wheel, for a long time. She wrote it, though, from Tassajara, where she was, I think, at the same time that Yezon was there, during the practice period. And Yezon was, what was that? Sue wrote her piece, but I'm going to jump to the afterward, which was written by Joanna Macy and read from that. And then we'll have some time for discussion and questions, comments and responses. Joanna Macy starts her afterward with a quote from Bertolt Brecht. In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing about the dark times. So that's what Joanna's been doing. She starts her afterward. Across the year of this book's preparation, projections of widespread climate impacts now extend to the possibility of widespread societal collapse.

[31:56]

I have been following closely the UN reports on climate change and biodiversity, as well as the bold leadership of Greta Thunberg and the global school strikes she inspires. Looking at work on deep adaptation, which offers new ways to consider openly the prospect of collapse, these hard visions, which are not new to the work that reconnects, another name for some of what Joanna has taught, the work that reconnects, are central now to my talks and teachings. As we look at what our future holds, And then I just want to read the end of her afterward, the end of the book. Okay. I think many of us assumed that we could achieve a life-sustaining society without the collapse of the global economy.

[33:00]

But given the depth and breadth of destruction, breakdown now seems inevitable and may also be necessary for the emergence of a life-sustaining society. The great turning will be more important to us than ever. not only as a light at the end of the tunnel, but as compass and map, as well as a supply house of skills and tools for nourishing our spirit, ingenuity, and determination. We can start right away, while we can still easily communicate and work together. What we do now in our immediate communities, as well as in wider Rough weather networks strengthens our capacities, which will be ever more valuable as the consumer society falters and fails. Everything we learn from the self-organizing nature of Gaia, the earth is alive, will serve to guide and steady us and to help us grasp the beauty and relevance of Gaia's laws. It is our great good fortune that we are beginning to listen to indigenous voices as they share, despite genocide and betrayal, their millennia old earth wisdom tradition.

[34:06]

And I would add that Buddhism is, in part, is one of those old earth wisdom traditions. She continues, the solidarity we grow in our work together will help us meet and move through the Bardo, the intermediate state of the breakdown of our globalized political economy. Bardo states are phases of transition from one form of resistance to another, often described as changes in consciousness. In the Tibetan tradition, Akshobhya is the first Buddha you meet in the bardo, in the intermediate state between lives. He is known for his mirror wisdom, which reflects everything just as it is. This is the bardo invitation to not look away, to not turn aside, but to be fully present to what confronts us. The mirror wisdom is a radical teaching calling for total attention, for depth of acceptance, a call to quote, just fall in love with what is, unquote. This leads me to a state of utter gratitude.

[35:11]

China writes, it is so great a privilege to be here in earth at this time. I have the good fortune to drink from three great streams of thought, the Buddha Dharma, systems thinking, and deep ecology. Each gives me another way to know Gaia and to know myself. Each helps me be less afraid of my fears. I have had the joy of helping others experience this too, of seeing them take the work that reconnects further, building our collective capacities and our trust in reciprocity. And who would not want to be here at this time, including this time of pandemic? Joanna says, I would hate to miss out on this. I sometimes imagine Buddha fields out there in the universe with long lines of people applying to be born on earth now to take part in this evolutionary moment. Not how we usually think. Being fully present to fear, to gratitude, to all that is.

[36:18]

This is the practice of mutual belonging. As living members of the living body of earth, we are grounded in that kind of belonging. We will find more ways to remember, celebrate, and affirm this deep knowing. We belong to each other. We belong to Earth. Even when faced with cataclysmic changes, nothing can ever separate us from her. We are already home. The practice of mutual belonging is the medicine for the sickness of the small self and can accompany us through the Bardo, through the hard times ahead. Our belonging is rooted in the living body of Earth and woven of the flows of time and relationship. that form our bodies, our communities, our climate. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke expressed this sense of belonging in the closing lines of his Ninth Dueno Elegy, which I'll read. But this is Joanna Macy, amongst all the many other things she has done, has done translations of Rilke.

[37:24]

So this is a poem by Rilke. Earth, isn't this what you want? To arise in us, invisible? Is it not your dream? to enter us. So holy, there's nothing left outside us to see. What, if not transformation, is your deepest purpose? Earth, my love, I want that too. Believe me, no more of your springtimes are needed. To win me over, even one flower is more than enough. Before I was named, I belonged to you. I seek no other law but yours, and know I can trust the death you will bring. See, I live on what? Childhood and future are equally present. Sheer abundance of being floods my heart. So that's Rilke's poem. Join us translation. So when it closes, when we turn and open our heart mind to earth, she's always there. This is the great reciprocity at the heart of the universe.

[38:28]

My gratitude to all, may we experience sheer abundance of being and know that we truly belong here. So that's the end of the book, but there's so much in it. Again, I could probably do 10 Dharma talks from what's in there. So I've been grateful to be connected to Joanna through work on deep time and talking with her a lot about regularly about Buddhist ideas of time and temporality and her work on deep time. My book on the Lotus Sutra and Dogen and the visions of awakening space and time, she was assisted in that in terms of her understanding of these questions of deep time. So again, We are living in an extraordinary time today, in this time of pandemic, which unites us around the world.

[39:31]

How do we respond? How can we face our fears, not be afraid of our fears? How can we continue to move forward together? We are all in this together, all around the world. And all of us, each of us, every person in the world So thank you for listening. Again, I will post on our website the details about the book launch on Saturday evening, 7 p.m. Chicago time. I'm interested in your responses to all of this. It's a lot. So comments, questions, responses, please feel free. Dale? Post, I wanted to just ask people to keep yourselves muted unless you're asking a question.

[40:36]

And if you are joining us just without video, you could type a question in the chat box, or I believe Steve, there's an option on your screen to raise a hand and then Taigan can call on you. Thank you. Yes, if you go to participants on the bottom of the Zoom screen and click on participants, there is a list of all the participants, and if you would like, in the bottom of that, on the bottom right of the participants list, you can click on where it says raise hands. So that's one way you can let us know if you have a question. So I think Dale Kaufman had a question or comment. Dale, you have to unmute yourself. I do have something I wanted to mention.

[41:38]

I saw Michael Moore's new release called Planet of the Humans, and I can't recommend it enough. It's quite disturbing, but seems to fit right in with what you were saying. Yes, I saw it myself a few nights ago. It's kind of depressing, just a warning. But he looks at all of the ways in which the alternative energy to fossil fuels all have problems. So it's how we get free of the climate damage of fossil fuels is a huge problem. But yes, it's quite an illuminating film. It's on, I think it's on YouTube. Other comments, responses, questions about Joanna Max's work on- Just very quickly, what is the name of that movie again, or Dale?

[42:47]

I forget the name of the movie. It's, Dale, do you remember? Yes, Planet of the Humans. Oh, Planet of the Humans, yes. Michael Moore's not in it. He's the director. He was one of the producers of it. Producers, yeah. So, Planet of the Humans. So, other comments, responses, questions about the material about and from Joanna Mason? Or anything related to it? And I don't know if some of you were here in 2012 when Joanna spoke at Ancient Dragon. And there's on the chat box a question from Dylan.

[43:49]

Let me see if I can get to that. I can read. The question is, how do you know when you're fully present versus partially present? Well, I would say, thank you for the question, Dylan. I didn't see that you were here. The answer is we don't. And not knowing is most intimate. Are we fully present? Are we partially present? Maybe it's impossible to be fully present since to be fully present in this present time means to be present in all times of the future and the past, ultimately. we might feel, we might think they were being fully present. We might feel like, oh no, I'm only partially present, I'm distracted. And this is very common for Zen students to feel like, oh, I'm sleepy or I'm distracted or I'm thinking too much or whatever.

[44:55]

Dogen again says that a partial presence of being time is fully partial being time. So I think it's to make those judgments about whether to try and make judgments about about how am I, am I really present? You know, so mindfulness movement encourages presence and that's good, but we're all always partially present and in that we're all always fully present and we don't necessarily know. I see something from Peter, from Peter Pearson in the chat box. Beautifully perfect or perfectly beautiful response to Dylan's question. I'm smiling here. You don't know. And that is a gift. Yes, it's a gift. And I like to quote my favorite Zen koan, which was from a great American yogi who said, if the world were perfect, it wouldn't be.

[45:58]

So Dogen talks a lot about our human limitations. We have limits to our, because of our limited perceptual faculties and intellectual faculties and spiritual faculties, we are limited beings. But knowing that those, becoming intimate with those limitations is part of the work that reconnects. It's part of our way of expressing our time of being. So aspirations to perfection can be traps. Other comments, questions, responses, reflections, please feel free. Well, possibly to piggyback a little bit on what Dylan was touching on in the notion of presence and the idea of presence is I always think about presence to what?

[47:00]

So in terms of it, and then I think presence to what is fundamentally a choice of will. And that tails back into what I think largely to the author that you were discussing earlier in the talk, in that that's an action that's really based on one's own choice. And that's the essential character of presence is choice. Possibly, maybe, I don't know. I just throw that out there. Yeah, thank you, Ed. I think that's important. There's the piece of intention, that our intention to be present perfectly or imperfectly, right with our human limitations. There's a limitation to our perceptual faculties and so forth, to our cognitive faculties. But our intention to be present in our limitations is that intention connects us.

[48:05]

And then how do we do this in a way that from the perspective of Bodhisattva precepts that is helpful to all the beings, everyone else who is sheltered at home or the people who are now heroically helping us by doing deliveries or working in hospitals and so forth. Yeah, so that intention is important. Thank you, Ed. Other comments? Yes, David Ray, hi. Thank you. I raised my hand the old-fashioned way. Thank you for that rich talk. So many things really struck a chord and also raised my curiosity and interest.

[49:10]

And so one of them was this connection between or this thought of Buddhist tradition as an, I forget the term, like an ancient earth tradition, that surprised and delighted me because I've, for whatever reason, tended to think of Buddhist tradition on the one side and then sort of earth-based spiritualities, be they polytheistic or like even sort of pre-Hindu, like Shiva traditions. So this thought that Buddhism includes, or Buddhism is a kind of ancient earth wisdom, is really interesting to me, and I'd love to hear more about it. Yes. Thank you. Yes. So in the article in the book, I talk about that some, and how connection to space and time connects us to the Earth, and Joanna talks about Gaia as the Earth's consciousness, but it's very much part of the Buddhist tradition.

[50:11]

I talk about this a lot in my book on the Lotus Sutra, Dopamine and the Lotus Sutra, Visions of Awakening, Space and Time, so you might look at that. But, briefly, yeah, when Shakyamuni Buddha came awake and became the Buddha, the story goes that He was asked by the spirit of temptation or delusion, who are you to be a Buddha? And you can see it in the statues of the Buddha. There's one like this in our kitchen at Ancient Dragon, whenever we get back there. The Buddha put his hand down and touched the earth. And some versions of the story says the earth's testify, yes, this is a Buddha. Some versions say that an earth goddess appeared and confirmed this is a Buddha. So that's one aspect. There are many others. One is the connection of Buddhism to trees.

[51:13]

So before Buddhism moved to China and we had Zendos, meditation halls, Buddhist disciples in India used to wander around and they would sit under trees facing the tree as we face the wall. There's also a great master Rinzai, Lin Chi, there's a story about him planting trees near his monastery in China, just as a kind of welcoming to future beings. Many other ways in which There are lots of references to Earth in Buddhism. In the Lotus Sutra I mentioned, there's a section where the Buddha has been asking for the disciples to, who will come back in the future evil age, in the future evil age of climate damage and pandemics and corrupt politicians.

[52:17]

I mean, he didn't say that, I would say that. But anyway, in the story, after he asks that, he says, some bodhisattvas who are visiting from a different world system or different dimension or whatever to listen to a Lotus Sutra and say, oh, we'll come back and Dogen says, oh, no, Shakyamuni Buddha says, no, you don't need to do that. And then suddenly, from out of the open space under the earth, spring forth thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of ancient bodhisattvas, each of them with a retinue of other bodhisattvas, who are always there under the earth, the Buddha says, to help in times of need. So this is just another image of the earth. So yeah, and So, Joanna, it's about indigenous, Native spiritual traditions. And I think Buddhism in the West may be fully mature when we connect with our Native American roots.

[53:23]

and have done a little bit of practice with Native Americans, but in every culture and country that Buddhism has spread to, it has connected with indigenous people and their wisdom. In China, the old Taoist teachings, in Japan with what's now called Shinto, and in other countries in Asia too. So, yeah. So another way to talk about this is in terms of religious studies, they talk about immanence, I-M-M-A-N, and transcendence. And the Western religions primarily are about transcendence, about going up to heaven, that the ultimate heaven is someplace up there. In Buddhism, it's more like, and in the native traditions, the spiritual, reality and spiritual benefactors are immanent.

[54:25]

They are present in this world. And Mahayana Buddhism, which we are part of, is very much about the interconnectedness of the ultimate or the universal and this phenomenal world and all its particularities. So yeah, in many ways, Buddhism is, we could say, is an earth religion, although it also has an element of transcendence. So maybe some of both. Anyway, thank you for the question, David. A lot more to say about that. Thank you. Other comments, questions, responses? If I can see you, you can just put your hand up if you're not visible on the Zoom screen. You can raise your hand on the participants list. And Jerry has raised her hand.

[55:27]

Oh, Jerry, hi. Do you have a question, please? Hi, I was at the workshop that Joanna Macy did in whenever it was 2012. And it. There was a part of it where you write a letter to the future, your future and your future descendants. And it profoundly changed the way I think about the future. It made it much more real and intimate to me. It was really a wonderful opportunity to really think about what the future is and your role in it. Yes, those workshops with beings of the future that Joanna does are wonderful. There's writing letters to beings of the future. There's also some people who represent, sometimes the way she does it is half of the people are beings of this presence and half of the people are beings of some particular future. You can pick 100 years from now, 500 years from now.

[56:30]

And the people who are people of the future come back and express their requests or perceptions or whatever to we beings of the present. So, yeah, to think about how is it that we communicate with the future? It's really interesting to realize that, you know, I mean, our future is at risk. We know that. that the Michael Moore movie talks about overpopulation and the difficulties of that now. And climate damage represents an existential threat to our human future. And these pandemics may as well, they say that there will be more after this one. I don't know. But to think, to imagine, And not just imagined in a way that's kind of a fantasy, but to really...

[57:38]

feel some being of the future at some particular time gives us a connection to those future beings. And whatever happens, Joanna Macy once said to me, and I was talking about my work in Chicago and taking care of ancient Dragon's End Gate, and we were also talking about time. And Joanna said to me, well, maybe in a hundred years, there'll be people in the back of caves reading Dogen. So we don't know what's going to happen to civilization that we take for granted. Now, obviously, that's at risk. But anyway, the future is not yet set. It's not predetermined. And this is part of the point of all of this, that it's up to us to, you know, I've been thinking about the beings who are suffering in this pandemic, but also what will happen after. And again, can we, encourage this awareness of compassion and connectedness in the future world of post-pandemic Earth.

[58:48]

or inter-in-between pandemics, I don't know. But how can we help to, just by how we think about things and how we talk about things, to foster, to encourage a world of compassion and caring and and seeing that we are all interconnected rather than the world of aggression and competition and building walls to keep certain people out and all of that. We've had way too much of. Yes, Jerry, do you have some follow-up? I just wanted to say, I think also, When you think about the future generations as here, it sort of offsets that tendency to, when you think about what's coming, there is a tendency to say, well, I'm not gonna be there.

[59:55]

So how much do I have to really worry about it? Or how much do I have to really stress over it? But when you think about it in a more intimate way, as being here now, it sort of offsets that tendency to sort of just say, eh, not my issue, or not my problem, or it's, you know, I'm not gonna be here anyway. And it sort of softens your heart, I wanna say, or softens your ability to look at the future and the world in a different way. Yes, thank you. Yeah, so that's Joanna's teaching about re-inhabiting time, not to be afraid of the past, to see the past freshly and to bring new meanings to the past. And then also, to see how we're connected to the future.

[60:58]

And this totally is congruent with everything that Dogen says about being time, that time is not just past, present, future. All times are interwoven. So this is a basic Buddhist teaching from Huayen, the 10 times, to Dogen's being time. Thank you, Jerry. At least in theory, one other way in which we might communicate with beings from the future is if beings from the future are reverse reincarnating. Take the Tibetan scheme where you go through the bardos and approximately 49 days later, you're born into your next incarnation. If you're lucky, you're a human again.

[61:58]

Could, at least in theory, work the other way, in which, let's say, you die in this lifetime, and in your next lifetime, you die 49 days before you were born in this lifetime. And if you do it, If you ride the local train, so to speak, you could keep going back one lifetime at a time. I've written about this in one of the stories that appears in my collection of short stories, The Velveeta Underground, that was published in 2006, where one character is explaining the possible uses of a reverse reincarnation to another character while they're walking their dogs in a dog run. Cool. So they could be walking among us right now without us knowing it. Yeah, Doris Lessing, a wonderful writer, wrote a series of science fiction, so-called science fiction.

[63:00]

The Argos and Canopus books. Yeah, Shikasta is one of them, which is about that idea. And that's a way of seeing Bodhisattvas as choosing to be born in this difficult world. And it's what Joanna is saying when she says there are beings in many world systems and many other futures and by Brian, he says he has to leave early, that there are beings in other world systems and in other times who are waiting in line for the chance to be born here now on this planet. So this is an idea that Joanna has talked about that Being in a difficult time is what bodhisattvas wished for. Bodhisattvas are trying to help awaken all beings.

[64:01]

And so Joanna's talked about this as the most fortunate time to be. to be around on Earth. And it's interesting, Nichiren was a later contemporary of Dogen, who founded one of the major branches of Buddhism in the Tamakura period when Dogen was active, talked about the same thing, that based on the Lotus Sutra, that bodhisattvas try to appear in difficult times. and being in a difficult time, which some people in that period thought they were the end of the Dharma. But that's the best time to be a Bodhisattva. So here we are, we're fortunate enough, all of us, to be alive and present and practicing, each in our own way, each with our own context, in the time of pandemics and climate damage.

[65:02]

So forth. So that's an interesting perspective. Thank you, Ron, for that. What's the name of your book again? The Velveeta Underground. Okay. I used to like The Velvet Underground, but I'll check out The Velveeta Underground. So Ron's joining us from New York. Peter's here from Kansas City. Juan Pablo was here from Argentina earlier here. Are other people here from distant? Oh, there's an echo. I'm here from New York also. Oh, great. Welcome. So. Yeah. Ko, who's not on here, she's from Cleveland. She was on the other day. Yeah, she was on here before. Yes. Yeah. She was on earlier during the Dharma talk. It's one thing that I made.

[66:05]

When you're talking about time and travel, immediately what comes to mind is Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five and how he goes back and forth in time. And it's just interesting how that can happen. Yeah, so I mentioned the 10 times, just to enumerate that for those who don't know, this is from the Flower Ornament Sutra that Dylan is leading a reading group of. The 10 times are the past, present, and future of the past, the past, present, and future of the future, and the past, present, and future of the present, and then the 10th is all nine of those times together. So they talk about 10 times, which are interacting all the time. So time is not some, we all have clocks, and I have my watch here, it says it's 11.25, something like that. So maybe we should, you know, not go on too much longer. But we tend to think of time as some external container, as some something objective.

[67:15]

And this is what Dogen is talking is refuting that time being time means that our time of being is fluid and moves in all kinds of directions. By Douglas, he's saying goodbye too. So I know some of you have to leave and please just do that when you need to. But anyway, that's the 10 times. If anybody has a last comment or response or question, you could do that. Just thank you for your talk. Really, thank you. Well, again, this is a wonderful book. It's out from Shambhala, A Wild Love for the World. Joanna Macy at the work of our time. And there will be a book launch on Zoom that I'll post on the, on our Ancient Dragon website next Saturday evening. So any other comments, questions?

[68:20]

Peter, oh, thanks, from Kansas City. Okay.

[68:27]

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