She's been a long-time practitioner here at Berkeley Zen Center, and she's a disciple of Sojin Roshi, and she's the abbess of the Clearwater Zen Dome in Vallejo, California. And so we're really happy to have her here. Thanks for coming. Happy Earth Day. I'm feeling very sad and so I need to acknowledge that to start off with. And it's not about what one of the founders, Pete McCloskey, says it should be a day of mourning. It's not that, though it is a hard time, a sad time in environmental circles. There isn't anything but environmental circles, is there? I'm sad about place about a tree and I'm reminded of another tree.

[01:31]

It's something I don't know that all of you are aware that this place here is called Old Plum Mountain. But there are people that didn't know that. Old Plum Mountain. A temple should have a mountain name. I guess we have a water name in Vallejo because we're surrounded by water on two and a half sides, whatever. The bay and the Coquina Strait and the Napa River. But this place is Old Plum Mountain. Is it because of the plum tree? Would you care to elaborate? Well, I don't want to elaborate. Okay. Well, there was a plum tree that many of us assumed had something to do with the name.

[02:33]

In the courtyard where the lemon tree is, there was a huge old plum tree for... It was here when you started here, I imagine. Yes? On my way there were five plum trees. Uh-huh. So plum tree, the notion of plum tree came along. Anyway, that tree shaded us and dropped plums. It was one of the joys of Soji was sweeping up little plums. But at any rate, it was here for a long time and then eventually it got fungus and it was kind of babied along and arborists would come and, I don't know, put stuff on it and so on. And it had, I don't know if you've seen such a thing, It grows out of the tree. It's kind of beautiful, actually. It's like half of a plate, this sort of grayish stuff. It's round, but if you see that, you know that it grows inside as well.

[03:37]

And finally it got too much and the tree was cut down. Alan just said, he said like piece by piece. And I don't know if you've had such an experience with a tree that you have lived with. But it's in your bones and it's a physical experience. It hurts to have it cut down. So I just think on this day, on this day, we should remember place. And that's part of this place. That's part of our shared history here. And in Vallejo, when we started, there were two huge, well-established California pepper trees, beautiful trees. And I bought that building in 1998, so I don't know how old they were, because they were already grown-ups. And then one of them,

[04:39]

developed a fungus and I remember the first time I saw it, I thought, oh no, I know what that is. And sure enough, it was the same kind of thing and we babied it along and the guy from Davy Tree would come out every year and we'd look at it and I'd say, well, what do you think? Is it time to let it go? And he'd say, no, it's okay, let's just do this and this. That went on for a number of years and then about three and a half years ago, I guess, he came out, and we did, the fungus was bigger and whatever, and I said, do you think it's time? And he did the same beginning, but this time he said, oh, yeah, I do, I think so. So we had a going away ceremony for it, as was also done here for the plum tree, and had it cut down, We have slices of it here and there.

[05:46]

But at any rate, we planted a new one because I was told by the experts that it was not a problem in terms of the, that wasn't in the, fungus was not in the dirt. So we planted a new one and it was thriving. And just in the last couple of three weeks, I've noticed that it looks like it's a dying and the bark is all peeling off. which means it can't drink, you know, can't get the water up because it needs both the sort of the inner bark and the outer bark goes up between them. And it may survive, but it doesn't look like it. And just as I was leaving, somebody was helping me carry my stuff out. And he hadn't known about it, and I pointed it out to him. And then I got in the car, and as soon as I was kind of alone and quiet, I realized that I could just feel it in my heart. I mean, years ago, I learned that a heartache is a real thing. It's a physical thing. It isn't some phrase at somebody.

[06:48]

This is not a poetic phrase. It hurts. and my heart hurts and I thought I'd start there because if I didn't it would be harder to talk about anything else. And I do want to talk about place anyway. I had a hard time Before that, before feeling the heartbreak, I had a hard time with this talk because I have so many things I want to say. And I want to leave time for you also. So we'll see. This may not be the most organized talk I ever get. So I started by acknowledging, you know, it is, there's a lot of, there are marches today, marches for science, and next week there's a march, I don't know if it's a march against climate change, Jerry has been posting about it in San Francisco, there's a march.

[07:57]

Whatever, lots of marches. Lots of problems. And it is a hard time in terms of the environment because Donald Trump is signing executive orders that undermine clean coal and so on, and the head of the EPA doesn't believe in it, and so on. It is a hard time, I don't want to deny that. But the question for us is how do we respond? How do we practice with this? How do we not get swallowed up by hatred and anger? How do we not fall into despair? How do we, or maybe one of the ways to not fall into anger and despair is to remember the joy of place. I wasn't around a lot by the time the plum tree died, but I have wonderful memories of it and I have wonderful memories of that pepper tree

[09:11]

And I have wonderful memories of a banyan tree that was right beside San Francisco Zen Center that also had to be cut down because a limb fell off and crushed a car. A little problemo. So they cut that down and I remember, I don't know how many of you know, Mio Leahy, but it broke his heart. But there's, and there's joy. The reason it hurts is because we loved these trees, because we allowed these trees to be in our bones. Wherever the place is for you, that you allow to enter your heart. And not just trees, and not just mountains, and not just rivers, but cities and buildings. For me, Chartres, for example. My sister told me, approach it from the north, because it just appears out of the plane.

[10:18]

Well, it did then. I don't know. That was in 1973. Whether it still does, I don't know. And my husband and I went the next day to a concert, an organ recital, in the cathedral. And there are columns, fluted columns. And it was one of those sun cloud days. So you're sitting listening to this glorious music and the shadows are playing across the columns and it looked like fabric rippling. And it was colored, you know, colored from those wonderful windows. It's amazing. That's part of my place. and I'll stop, I could go on and on, I'm going to stop, but I'm just saying it isn't just trees. Our environment is also the built environment and we don't have to hate it.

[11:21]

So this ... there is joy and there is attachment, and the attachment in some ways is a problem, but if you don't let yourself feel it, if you don't let it in, then it's sort of dead, it seems to me. So I'm willing to feel the pain of it. And I want to See, we are connected. Recently, on one of the teacher's listservs, there's been a discussion about this that arose kind of out of something else, but somebody wrote to say that the spirit of the place was something that we didn't acknowledge enough.

[12:29]

Plum tree is the spirit of this place. And he said that his, this man is Daishin McCabe. He's a disciple of Diane Benaj. But he mentions his grandfather teacher, Noda Daito Roshi, came to their place in Pennsylvania, Mount Equity. And he suggested honoring the earth spirit of the place. And he asked about the mountains in their area. And it turns out the mountains in their area is, the mountain range is called the Bald Eagle, and it's named after one of the leaders of the Lenape part of the Delaware Nation. And so he, Daishin and his teacher, Diane, decided that they would find something to honor that, and they took

[13:32]

Daito Roshi to the airport, and on the way back, they stopped at a shop that sold Native American goods, and lo and behold, they found a carving of a bald eagle. So they bought that and they put it on the altar, and he, Daishin, gave a Dharma talk about it, about honoring place. Honoring place. Our place is the whole earth, but it's also this place. I don't know how familiar you are with Gary Snyder, but he talks about your watershed or your neighborhood. And he has a phrase for it, which I'm now forgetting. I did not go look at practicing the wild because I knew I would be up all night if I did. At any rate, we have a place. We have lots of places, just as we have lots of sanghas, right?

[14:38]

There's the Berkeley sangha and the wider sangha, blah, blah. But we have this place, and honoring it is important, and we forget. We forget. It's important to remember that. Daishen, he says, I think Buddhism in the West is often thought of and taught as non-theistic or as a means to self-help or therapy. He says this is fine and it's true. I quibble, but anyway. I also feel, though he said, we have a rich polytheistic and animistic heritage that we perhaps downplay a little too much. Or maybe it just doesn't get as much attention. And it was about Sambhogakaya, so I don't want to go there. Anyway, we do, I think we ignore that sense of place.

[15:44]

And another person, Noman Timbernet, responded and wrote about how apparently they go, they're up in, were in Bellingham. They go for their sashins to a church camp, and it turns out that that camp had been the site of a Coast Salish village, a longhouse. And they had a kind of an uncomfortable time there. And so they decided to do a spirit settling and gratitude ceremony. And the local Indian leaders heard about it and came and then they wound up doing a ceremony together. And it hasn't been easy, he says, he hasn't go into, he said, we've had significant confusion about it. I don't know if people don't like the woo-woo-ness of it or what he didn't go into, it doesn't matter.

[16:50]

And we're not there, so we don't have to think about that. So we have, I think it's useful in thinking about the earth to think about the local, this place. And to think about the Native Americans that lived here before we did. And there is a rootedness to that. And you think, well, what about emptiness? What about non-attachment? Where's that? How could you be rooted and non-attached? I think you have to be both rooted and non-attached. You have to be rooted in practice, certainly, and non-attached.

[17:55]

Unfortunately, and I give this Dharma talk way too many times, to be non-attached you have to, I mean, to get to non-attachment you have to go through the attachment and the hurt when it doesn't, when you don't get what you want. We say that real love is being willing to let somebody go, and then they come back, or if they come back, they come back of their own will. you know, we're attached to one another. So we have to practice with it and own it and blah, blah, blah. But the answer to living in this world and being of this earth is not to not care. I mean, really, it's not detachment. I think we have to care. Well, I don't know if you have to care, but it seems pretty dull life and maybe not such a useful life if you don't allow yourself to care.

[19:05]

When I first started practicing, I thought that Sojin was teaching that I shouldn't have emotions and I shouldn't care. Sorry. We worked that out. But where, where is emptiness in this? Where is compassion? I think compassion grows from emptiness. We define emptiness as nothing but connection and nothing but flow. Emptiness knowing that one is, is, is, ising, this is thus, whatever. And when I know connection, then I don't see a distinction between me and other, me and you.

[20:07]

And I simply respond, and I don't think I'm gonna respond, I just respond. There is just responding. It's not from a place of not caring. We've been studying in Vallejo the Gakudo Yojinshu. What is it? Guidelines for practicing the way, I think. And Dogen has a description of compassion. He says, it's like animals caring for their young. They go to tremendous pain and effort to raise their young and then their young go off. They don't say thank you. It's just done. And that's just, that's what they do. That's compassion. Avalokiteshvara getting people out of hell. That's just what she does. One of my favorite images is Avalokiteshvara with 11 heads.

[21:19]

You've seen the one, the statues with all the heads, the way I understand it. is that she went down to hell and she saved all the beings, and she's helping the last one out, and she says bye, and she turns back to look, because she's really looking forward to seeing hell empty. And of course, hell is full again, and her head explodes. So she does it again, and it takes ten times before she gets it, that that's just what she does. And it's always going to be full. Rebecca once asked me, Rebecca Mayeno once said to me something like, do you think we're ever going to really make the world good? Something like that. And I said, no, we just have to do it anyway. We have to try anyway. But no, and no.

[22:19]

I want to read a little bit from Mountains and Rivers. What time are we supposed to stop? Is it at 11 or earlier than that? You know, I don't know, a lot of you are familiar with this sutra, Mountains and Waters. Anyway, he talks about mountains, mountains stand in, metaphorically for a lot, form, but also emptiness, mountains flow, mountains walk. You're a mountain, I'm a mountain. I am the Sierras, you are the Sierras, certainly. So you have to kind of loosen your grip about what a mountain is. It's much too complicated or much too much stuff in here. But mountains have been the abode of great sages from the limitless past to the limitless present.

[23:29]

Wise people and sages all have mountains as their inner chamber, as their body and mind. Because of wise peoples and sages, mountains appear. You may think that in mountains, many wise people and great sages are assembled. But after entering the mountains, not a single person meets another. Not a single person meets another. There is just the activity of the mountains. There's no trace of anyone having entered the mountains. That's complete integration. That's practicing in emptiness, right? No separation between you and the old plum tree. Or I believe you like this building. You still like the Marriott Hotel in San Francisco?

[24:31]

You told me years ago that you... I hate it, so... You told me that you liked it, the one with the sort of the fan glass thing. It's not ringing a bell anyway. He's the artist, he gets the... I think it's a Marriott, is that the one? It's in San Francisco. Well, it's glass, but it's got like a big round mirror. Mirror. It looks like a mirror, doesn't it? It's reflective. That's probably why you liked it. But at any rate, it doesn't matter. At any rate, whatever does it for you. Be with it. Be it, we are it, you know? It isn't like we own the earth, or we have stewardship of the earth, or we're owned by the earth.

[25:33]

We're it, we are the earth. I am it. And I guess the attachment comes when I separate and grasp after it. I confess, I do it. Okay, there is just the activity of the mountain. An ancient Buddha said, if you do not wish to incur the cause for unceasing hell, avici hell, the worst hell, right? Do not slander the true Dharma wheel of the Tathagata. The true Dharma wheel of the Tathagata. I don't know exactly what he meant, but there's the Dharma Wheel Sutra and so on. You could say emptiness, connection, flow. And Dogen goes on to say, you should carve these words on your skin, flesh, bones, and marrow, on your body, mind, and environs, on emptiness and on form.

[26:44]

They're already carved on trees and rocks, on fields and villages, already carved. So it's there for us to see, to remember connection, to remember non-attachment, to remember to not separate from trees and villages and rocks and each other. Let us not forget each other. if we can allow ourselves to experience the joy of connection and the joy of the beauty of so much of our surroundings and of each other, of Buddha nature, that we also are, then we can take that joy out into the streets if we're marching and so on. We can use that. to not hate. We can use the knowledge of our attachment and the pain that it causes us to remember the pain of other people and to not hate.

[27:56]

To act from some place of compassion, to just respond. This is our situation now. How do you respond? And what encourages you? Bristlecone Pines, if you go see the Bristlecone Pines, amazing, amazing. But whatever it is on Earth Day, joy is for you, whatever it is for you, joy is available. So let us remember that, remember our deep connection and go from there, rather than from that place of hurt and anger and fear, which is all too familiar these days, but not useful. Okay, that's enough for me.

[29:00]

Has this brought up anything for you? Are there places that matter to you or whatever? Yes? I'm really excited about the Earth right now. I've done a collaboration of all the telescopes, not all of them, but many telescopes in the world. The whole Earth has become an eye, and that collaboration has allowed us to see into space, talk about locating in place, as if a base, you could read the words on a baseball 8,000 miles away. So this collaboration, possible because of the internet, possible because of human tendency, and possibly because of the technology, is just a wonderful example of Earth Day, of collaboration, and of place, location allowing vision. Right. And well, then you remind me, you know, for many of us, when we first saw the pictures of Earth from space, how moving that was. Yeah.

[30:04]

Okay. I was thinking about encouragement. And in 2007, I went to Japan with some people from this sangha, and we went to Hiroshima. And all I had seen, I studied the history, I saw the movie, Hiroshima Monomore, with people's skin peeling off and all the horrors of the bomb. And so when we got in there on a train, it was the most modern train station I'd ever seen in my life. But the most amazing part was walking around where the bomb had hit, and it was just trees and gardens everywhere. And there were some big, beautiful trees. I mean, I thought, wow. I couldn't believe it took, that they could grow in 50 or 60 years. I was just amazed that life wants to live.

[31:15]

It wants to go on. I mean, so anyway, that was something that really encouraged me. In the middle of all that, because there's that mangled building and all. Yeah. After all that destruction, all the gardens and the trees and everything. Yeah. Yes. Yes I am, Charlie. Okay. Surprisingly, your talk reminds me of Rayner Bannum, an ecologist who wrote a marvelous book called Los Angeles, the City of Four Ecologies. And one thing, he mentions a lot of things in there, but one thing he mentions is that Cabrillo, anchoring in sin, No, no, it's in L.A.

[32:18]

Yeah, I can't, I don't know. Well, it's a basin, right? But you remind me, I can't, I... One of the many things that I looked at for this lecture and decided it was too much is there's a Gary Snyder book called, oh for God's sake, it grows out of his relationship with the Mountains and Waters Sutra. Thank you very much, Mountains and Rivers Without End. One of the poems is about the night song of the Los Angeles basin and he talks about a calligraphy of cars and the lights on the freeway. And you know how in the, what do you call it, the interchange downtown where the freeway is down below street level?

[33:24]

And that's a perfect description. And it's beautiful. So, never all one thing. Yes, Alan? Well, it was actually Not so long after I came here, I was reading a book of Gary's called, I think, A Place So I should deviate from you. And with that as a route, I've gone to lots of places, but have you ever thought of moving? And it was really, that catalyzed it.

[34:27]

And it also catalyzed another understanding for some of us, particularly coming from a Jewish background, and there are different people who've been displaced or deep waste. And so the part of the difficulty is that we carry a place, we don't carry a real connection to place, we carry, it's in our mind. It's not enough. It's not enough. You really, when I committed to place, then everything really shifted in my life. Thanks. I brought a few cards about an observation of April 29th that's happening next Saturday at Lake Merritt and I've been struggling because I volunteered and I don't have the energy I thought I did or I'm distracted and sometimes the practice

[35:35]

to do the practice in the world and it's been helping me but I need to step back now because it can be overwhelming and the connections to my whole life are coming back about how I got here and trying to see if there's anything in that that can help other people transit this confusing Mentality is searched forth that is so difficult for many of us to have compassion for. Yeah. It's hard practice. Do it anyway. Anybody else? I'm sorry? Kind of similar to what Alan was saying, thinking about people who have been displaced, when is it important to stay in your place and stand your ground in your space?

[36:59]

Always. People getting kicked out because of rising housing prices and other things like that. It's always important. to stand in your place, because you can't stand anywhere else. It's not useful to stand anywhere else. From my knowing me and my situation, I can know other people. And if I get out too far ahead of what I know and what I can do, I'm not useful. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do things, but it should be from a grounded place of your practice. Okay, and there's not an answer. You know, when should we? This is ancient, ancient reference. When should we go stand in front of the International Hotel and protest the eviction of all these old Filipino guys? When should we stay home and sleep because we're exhausted?

[38:01]

When should we whatever or whatever? And there's, you know, 50 million things that you could do. It has to, you have to find a balance, and that's one of the things that practice is about. It's one of the things Sangha's about. You talk to people that you practice with. Is this a time, should I be, is this a time to be active? Is this a time to be more passive? And there are a million factors. For each person, it's different, so, and I don't, I mean, I can't, you sounded like you wanted an answer. I don't think I could give you an answer, you know, if I talked to you for an hour, maybe, but anyway, and really, you have to find it. Again, I'm sorry, hard practice, so, too bad. Yes? I changed it for reasons I don't want to explain.

[39:18]

I'm referring to the plum tree that we had in the courtyard, as you explained. And so I named it Red Plum. And then when Hamitsu came, he said, it's not about the So he said, so instead of calling it red plum, we should call it old plum. Can you repeat that? It's not about the fruit, it's about the what? It's about the blossoms. The color of the blossoms. Yeah, and they're early. That's one of the things that blooms early. So he said, And then it's a mountain because you're supposed to have a mountain name, right?

[40:24]

I've never talked to him about it, so we don't have a mountain name. Right, well... That's right. Yes, were you raising your hand or scratching your ear? Okay. One, two, and then I think we better stop. how to practice with that when the most important thing seems to be to connect with the visceral pain? Connect with the visceral pain. Cry. Feel it. You know this. There's no way around it. Maybe do it in pieces, right? You can't always do And plus, when my mother died, I learned about grieving.

[41:25]

And I thought that if I cried hard one time, I'd be done. No. But you just have to do it. And that's reach out to your friends, take care of yourself, include things that do bring you joy, get massages. But I don't think there's an alternative. We turn towards it. It arises and it abides and it passes away, but we have to let it. Well, it sounds like there's a joy and some kind of faith of that impermanence. There is, and there's also, I think, as we practice, there's a joy in exploring that kind of thing, in that, what is this? I'm learning about grieving, about trees, or about my mother, or whatever. The more I know about that in this one, the more useful I can be to other people. When people come and talk to me about their parents dying, I know something about it.

[42:29]

And I know better than, it's not like I know what you're feeling. No, but I have a sense of what you may well be feeling. So there is a joy in doing that work and doing that homework and that exploration. And also because We have to do it, and you have to physically experience it, feel it. God, it gets easier. You do it and you survive, and then you think, oh, okay, I can do this. It's all right to say okay and phooey. It's got to be okay. Yes. Yeah. That's different, though.

[43:59]

I work with lawyers a lot, and anger can be a difficulty and common experience. We feel anger, and we don't have to act from there. But there's a distinction, there's a difference, there's something that I call fierceness. And sometimes we have to be fierce. We have to say, this will not stand, this is not okay. This is a boundary, that kind of thing. But that can come from a place of loving response. It doesn't have to come from hatred. And so, That's right, absolutely. Hatred is more like holding on to it, I think, and so on. Anger is a natural, physical, really, response. And that's okay. It would be dumb to not allow it. Again, it arises, abides, and passes away. And even so, it's not the place from which to act.

[45:07]

But it is not a good idea to deny it. or to denigrate it, because it's there. But again, I think that action is more useful when it comes from a place of fierceness than when it comes from a place of anger. Because for me, anger is when I don't care what harm I may cause somebody. I'm just going to say it. or do whatever. And I don't want to act from there. But I also don't want to deny that I feel it. I do feel it. I certainly feel it. I feel it a lot nowadays. I practice hard with it because I get all this clickbait from Daily Kos and you name it, you know. And I look at it and I laugh. But I don't want to act from there. I want to act from some other place. But that doesn't, it doesn't mean you don't act. It doesn't, it doesn't mean you don't say no.

[46:12]

So that's, that's how I think of it. That's a whole, you know, that's, we need to stop. We could talk about it some more if you want. Because Maile used to talk about this and she felt that anger was really useful, but we never, I was too kind of young in the practice to, to get into an actual discussion about it. And so I'm not sure what exactly she meant.

[46:33]

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