It's good to see you. Last night we had a meeting with Wales. least as close as most of us can come to meeting with whales on an event at the building after Sashin. And I find such an event something of a disturbance in our practice and something of a disturbance to our Sashin and our life in the building. in the city, but maybe such disturbance is necessary or very good for us.

[01:16]

I wanted us to come into some kind of contact with, well, in this case, what we can call inter-species communication, what Paul Spong called inter-species communication. Of course, we are actually In that context, here, all the time, at Green Gulch, or anywhere, but at Green Gulch we see it as we farm and garden, take care of the chickens and each other. But it's especially interesting and poignant to see it in confrontation with the whales, the context of what we're doing to them.

[02:33]

And there is some pretty big similarity between trying actually to communicate with ourselves and communicating with whales. There isn't so much difference. that you are, that your real self, we can say, is as foreign to you as whales are. And so in our zazen and in our practice, listening to our own being is not so foreign, not so different from listening to the whales and their own intelligence, which is so similar or reverberates so with our own.

[03:52]

And the whales have a number of things in common with us. One is they're quite independent and they have no possessions. And in Zen practice, in Zen Buddhism, we should have no possessions. Even what you have as a possession is only something temporarily, something temporary that you use. And they are conscious, maybe all the time, or active or conscious, twenty-four hours. And again, this is some ideal but realizable way, through the practice of Buddhism, to be conscious or nearly conscious, even when we sleep.

[05:07]

the whales all rest in, when they do rest, they rest by, it looks like, I mean, no one knows exactly what whales do, I think, but it looks like they get together and for very short periods, ten minutes or fifteen minutes, they coordinate their physical activity, breathing and other modalities. as I think he implied last night or said, a short time on the surface and then in another phase underneath the water. This is not, again, so different as a way you will find of resting if you practice being able to rest for a very short period and bring all of your rhythms together, and once they're together you are rested. But we also coordinate ourselves

[06:14]

like that, practicing together, sitting quietly, breathing, is actually a form of profound rest in which we assist each other in resting. And also the whales exist in primarily in spatial and auditory, auditory and spatial realm. And again, in Zen practice, in Buddhism, as you may know, the sutras say, may be the best way, best tool to achieve enlightenment.

[07:23]

That sound and space are closely related, you don't have to see, you can experience space through sound and spatial consciousness. A peculiarly intense experience of sound is characteristic of people who meditate. And whales have no not only possessions, but buildings and cities. And I want to point out how Buddhism is... Well, we can't say that Buddhism is opposed to civilization, or especially the siddification part of civilization.

[08:46]

But actually, to the whole idea of civilization, Zen is rather opposed. But I would not express it as opposed, but rather we don't take as a reference point civilization, we take as a reference point culture. And if you look at the root of the Indo-European root of civilization, it comes from K-E-I, K maybe, and it means to lie, to lie down, to rest, to stay in one place, maybe to be with one's beloved. And so K is related to a habitation to groups of people inhabiting, and hence to citizen and civic.

[09:57]

So a civilization is something that's politically and socially and culturally highly developed, you know. German, I think it comes to mean home or house, and French, a village, and in England it, I think, comes to be a word meaning a measure of land. Again, measuring and possession. And in Dutch I think it comes to mean covering, covering. All these meanings are quite different than Zen. Culture, of course, obviously is to cultivate, to cultivate the ground, not a covering, not a habitation.

[11:06]

Maybe in the simplest sense to inhabit, to use, And our mind, you know, our reference is to our mind as the ground, and practice is a kind of cultivation, expression, turning over, turn over. And cultivate comes from, I think, quell, K-W-E-L-L, I don't know how to pronounce it, but anyway, K-W-E-L-L, which means to turn or to move, to circulate, to transmit, to complete a cycle, perfection. It means chakra, the wheel. So it's quite different from to lie, to recline.

[12:20]

to establish security or possessions. It's the opposite, it means no fear, no possessions, to move. Maybe for us it means to sit rather than to lie, because for us sitting is a turning, a turning of the wheel. We sense what our real movement is by sitting, otherwise we're distracted from it by our superficial moving. So Buddhism, Zen, is very directly related to culture but not to civilization. It doesn't mean that Zen is opposed to cities or opposed to living in cities, but it means that even in the midst of a city, a monastery, a very small monastery or temple, will have its own garden and won't shop so much from you know, in the supermarkets or the local stores, but will as much as possible be independent, self-sufficient.

[13:26]

So, while K extrapolates into city and civilization and citizen, quail extrapolates into a colony, not the colony of something else, but a colony of like-minded plants or animals that live together, stay together, so much like our idea of sangha. K, the civilization side, is based on affection and household. And Quell, the culture side, is based on no fear. And we in our ordination ceremony say, Oh, the ties of affection are hard to break.

[14:41]

the ties of attachment are hard to break. It's based on the colony or sangha, not family. Family may be all right, but it's not the highest, the family which possesses and then creates a city and state to protect its possessions. So a sangha, a Buddhist sangha is some self-sufficient colony, you know, within a civilization or society and is itself a source of culture, a turning over, a finding out over and over again how to do things. So culture is the transmission of our ways of thought and doing. So a community like this is passing ways of doing and thinking and practice, not to our blood descendants, but our light descendants, sharing this way which must be of some benefit for others.

[16:12]

So you can see how fundamental and important Green Gulch as our place of work and farming and gardening and cultivation is. And you can see too how difficult it's going to be for us to understand how a family unit exists within Green Gulch, within Zen Center, San Francisco or Tassajara too. How we bring up children. How your child is not your own possession only in a Buddhist community. You have to give up that possessiveness if you are to live in a Buddhist community. That possessiveness even of your own child. and share its transmission with others. Buddhism, as you know, Buddhism has never been just concerned with

[17:43]

human beings. We've always said, save all being, even inanimate objects, even inanimate beings. A field of flowers, as Sterling Bunnell pointed out, is a field of intelligence. And a pile of rocks even is a kind of intelligence. So maybe a motto in Buddhism is do not disturb unnecessarily. So everyone's talking now about planetary consciousness or responsibility. maybe we should say, the consciousness of the planet.

[18:48]

David Rauer, who's head of the Friends of the Earth, begins lectures often by saying that if we took the cycle of seven days in which Christianity says the world was created. Then the first couple days are something or other, and the second couple days are another phase. And in that scheme, man came on the scene eleven seconds or eleven minutes, maybe eleven seconds before midnight of the last day. And during our eleven seconds we're using up, you know, the resources of the other 6.9999 days.

[20:03]

And we may find some other media or some other power. We may find some other way to... Because everything is energy and there's no reason we can't find some other kind of energy. But it's pretty clear, I think, even though gasoline shortage is partly manufactured by the people who benefit from it. It's pretty clear we don't have too many decades, one or two or three, before this very complex and inefficient system which uses so much energy, so much of the planet's energy in such a short time, is going to flash out.

[21:16]

And since so many of our economic, social and political mechanisms are based on this situation, this technological energy situation we've created. It's all going to come unglued, as you see actually, right now it's coming unglued. And there's no way for us not to be involved in it, involved in the event, in the process. If we are only a small, to a small extent, like the whale, independent, without many possessions, teaching and passing culture, but not dependent on civilization.

[22:23]

If we have even a small part of that aura of the whale, even if it's not quite true, but we look like some independent Zen Buddhist community, many people are going to align their energies, their kindred energies with us, or want to, or ask us. And last night was interesting because not only were we confronted with the consciousness and activity of the whales, but with the coming together there, the whales have come to represent some way we can enter this wider being through our similarity with them. There last night were many of the people leading or deeply involved in the confrontation with the Vietnam War or with our political and social system or with

[23:37]

Watergate or with the environmental crisis. So there's no way for us to avoid this, evade this kind of confrontation, this kind of alignment And so we must be ready to turn over and turn over and widen our practice with all being, with all sentient and inanimate being. You know every time I, we talked the other day about save

[24:41]

all beings. And people say, what does save mean? And I've tried to respond to that in various ways, maybe mostly related to our intimate experience of it as an alternative to always attempting to save ourself. It's the opposite expression of giving up of trying to save ourselves always, save, possess, you know. And someone said, oh, whenever you say, or I hear the phrase, save all sentient beings, I flash on the blackboard in grammar school or high school, in which somebody's written equations or a map or something on the blackboard, and then they write, save, put a circle around it. And that's maybe rather similar, you know.

[25:44]

We're just little chalk marks on a blackboard, on the ground of being, you know. And it's so easily, so easy, especially if Nagarjuna's around, to erase us. Emptiness. Maybe we should say, We vow to be with all beings instead of save all beings. We vow to be with all beings and that be in the wide sense of our culture, our colony, our sangha, based on emptiness, based on jnana, based on big mind, not based on living together and possessing together. not based on just social responsibility, but based on, excuse me, cosmic responsibility, or very wide responsibility, which includes everything animate and inanimate.

[26:55]

I'd like to tell you a story just now that I've told you before, but it's a rather interesting story. There was a disciple of the sixth patriarch named Nanyo Eichu Kokushi. Kokushi means state teacher or national advisor. And he was quite a great Zen master. lived maybe 1,300 years ago or so. And a monk came to him and said, actually Tozan, who founded this lineage, asked a Zen master named Isan this question.

[28:05]

He said, I don't understand this question. So this question is maybe third But as far as we know it, it's the third main question, third main confrontation of Tozan when he was a young man with life or reality or practice. And it's at the very beginning of your own lineage, our own lineage. And this bothered him deeply enough to visit Isan and say, that there's this story about Nanyo, Echu, Kokushi that I don't understand." And Isan said, please repeat it to me. So the story is, Nanyo, what is the ancient mind of Buddha? And Nanyo answers,

[29:09]

an old wall and broken tiles. An old wall and broken tiles. And the monk says, is not an old wall and broken tiles, are they not inanimate objects? And Nanyo, Echu Kokishi says, yes, they are inanimate objects. And the monk said, well, how can inanimate objects expound the Dharma, the teaching? And Echu says, do you not know that inanimate objects are vigorously and constantly expounding the Dharma? And the monk said, No, I do not.

[30:19]

I can't hear it. And Nanyo H.U. Kokeshi says, although you do not hear it, do not hinder that which hears it. Although you do not hear it, do not hinder that which hears it. If you can understand this statement, you can understand how we practice Buddhism, how we cultivate Green Gulch, how we transmit the ways of working and thinking in a way of life and practice that doesn't close off anything that you may not be able to make complete sense of, but allows you to feel your identity and moving with all beings, animate and inanimate.

[31:45]

So if we can turn this wheel in ourselves, this wheel of the Dharma, we can turn the wheel in this country too.

[31:59]

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