the target
good morning
welcome
to bring god's plan
and green dragon zen temple
and this day which is very close to spring
yesterday someone noticed the
see an office
math
i just the emerged
and that it was won over by the walkway here magnificent has a wingspan
my right five six inches
ah
today i just noticed
really had plum blossoms little while ago now i have little clam spawning i will a green peas
so it's a beautiful day
we've been having what we call a practice period here or to the time more concentrated time mostly in this room and the zendo
and
during this time we've been looking at the matter of how to establish confidence
in buddha mind
more confidence in your true nature that is your true nature
question arises how to even be in touch
where's your true nature when
there's so many ways to be distracted
so many ways to be busy and were so buffeted by events
prevents from the outside and events from the inside when buffeted by our own the mental and emotional events
today i want to consider a little bit howie ah
can see and acknowledge
ah the things that distract us including
our own misdeeds of the past and mechanic consequences in misdeeds
but we don't always see his misdeeds it's really a way in which may we made us distort my perception
i'm the world around us
as and story
from eighth century china
the by john and to
by john became one of the founders of zen chan recalled in china
and actually set out the rules for a monastic living in china but this is before all that happened and he was a young student
maybe he was a
i work practice student at matters a monastery
and maybe he was resident staff
but damn
monday he and much who were out walking
and
some wild ducks flew by i'm not to said what's that
by jiang said royal ducks
matsui said where have they were they gone
and by john says
they've flown away
and at that and not the teacher which is over and grabs by john by the nose gives it a twist
and by john ropes with pain
i'm not so says
how can you say they've flown away
and bhaijaan wakes up
to his own delusion but there was some other place
this delusion that a buddha mine
was
founded
so many people today have a similar kind of delusion but but there is some other place
that's a buddha mind and your own true nature was founded
undefinable
and grasp of ball and identifiable

so many people think that there is heaven
oh hell someplace else
i it seems to influence
much of what we do
influences are who we go for
so that notion of something
there being another universe and they're being someplace that things can fly away has been clearly refuted
and as then but as lineage
so with a twist of the nose and this case by johns delusion dropped away sometimes it takes a little pain
for us to realize that the way we think of things is maybe not quite complete
and bodhidharma few centuries before that when it came to china from india and was asked by the emperor wu of china about what was the most essential teaching
how'd the border way
he said vastness
vastness there is nothing holy
which is another way of saying that everything is holy
vastness there's a boundless world and everything in it wherever you touch
is important
sacred
so it
then i can find ourselves wherever we are
wherever we are in the vastness and n true nature or and buddha mind as we call it
but how do we do that
now we have a practice so we call stopping
returning to ourselves
somebody may have seen that cartoon there's a little chi town and have a kind of a storefront
i said zen center
and down
remember there were
two characters one character was looking in the window and the zen center storefront and there was another person i got a homeless person sitting on the sidewalk
and the person looking in the window starts looking around and
and says well how do you get into the zen center i don't see a door
and the person sitting on the sidewalk says inquire within

this is
i it goes in one of those buddhist magazines
that chair there are several now these days
ah so we have the practice of inquiry within and when you deeply inquire within you may notice that the boundary
between you
and your environment becomes permeable
for example with sound when notice that it's not so clear where the sound is when sitting here and as and on listening to
frogs
ah
listening to owls
listening to big trucks rumbling up and down highway one
i'm creating that detour
ah
for where is the sound i know that the sound is that it's it's vibrations i come through the air and and i have this little bit of skin and the ear that recall an eardrum that just that vibrates sympathetically
get the sound vibrations that are coming through the air and and there these little bones right in the ear then
mood just lately
and send signals to the nerves of the brain and so where is that sound

so organ the of a hearing and actually all our sense organs are evidence of our connection with als and frogs and trucks
i'm now on the road it's ah what's clear that we are not actually separate
and the game show con dogan zen master dorgan in japan or roads
something about
how week when we start putting our idea of myself between us and our experience
there we actually wake up to a world that's dynamic in ah
i recently influencing us and changing
so he's he put it like a think simply saying to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things
with delusion
but myriad things come forth
an experience themselves
was awakening
so that when the and you carry yourself for that is when you put yourself in the foreground
we tend to separate yourself
not realizing that you are actually
our yourself an expression of the myriad things
but when you step back
stop for a moment
and just listen
we may notice that the myriad things
i actually realizing himself through you
but your included
so how are how often do you do that how often do you ah
carry yourself forward
mazda most people upon waking in the morning i quickly began a stream of thoughts that creates a sense of identity and confirms we believe in whenever you are on what you are in but you're not and what what irritates you and what you like
maybe even waken up irritates you
that kind of waking up for the alarm clock
it's not really waking up though but it may be the alarm clock that you say that's what irritates me
grow my own feeling around not having had enough sleep
so there's a said away in which we take our experience
and hold it
and i heard that's come into ah say more frequent use these days to describe that as we reaffirm our experience that as we take a piece of our experience ah reapply it
the word that comes from the latin recce
our he asked for thing
so are we actually do and we do that there's we make things out of our experience including making things out of myself scramble process of
ah
finger masturbation
so we advise your this an so we rely on our experience
i used to them actually we don't notice usually that we do this it but it is actually a powerful karmic activity
but there's karma there's consequences from the mental activity have making things our experience
and of course we have to do this our survival depends on
we instinctively do it from the time were rather babies
trying to understand our experience return it into things with and eventually we pretend to turn ourselves into a thing that's separate from other things

so this is all good except we tend to forget that we do it
and then we get out of balance because we don't notice the other side the other side and which there are no things the other side of our experience in it enrich the frogs voice in my ear is one
a frog and upon
i am i sitting here i won
so
i've been reflecting on this and my daily activity
for a long time
and every once in awhile ah
i'd try to find some way to express it
our this week i was
i'm fortunate to have it an hour or so to work in the garden
and so i composed a little
poetic expression of my experience building compost
well be that and with apologies to the people who were here yesterday for the dharma dog guy included it either yesterday
ah so this is a green dragon compose two thousand and seven
mid practice period cusp of spring
in muddy boots i traversed the wet grass of morning
four of us are building a layer cake of compost
greens and green prunings stems and straw to wheelbarrows are fragrant horse poop and heavy buckets have kitchen leavings are seasoned with dried blood and inoculated with the ancestral lineage of aged wisdom compost
when permanent flowing of countless lives are ten thousands of years tens of thousands of years had turned rock into soil
the your garden had farm her body mind that shapes a sense of self
when i in turn in this fragile moment am
and then being am also gone
immersed in an ocean of luminous blossoms seeds or swelling sprouts are bursting unhindered rising into the light that grows abundant with each day rapidly rushing into equinox and beyond
with this ocean i rise like a wavelet
a bobbing cork of indeterminate size i am lifted and dropped turning and being turned
and i tremble with the knowledge of war with its terrorists and killings it's karmic machinery of death rising from this same earth
industrial metal and chemical dust meat tender skin and splintered barn with severed limbs and bled and the threshold of this cusp of spring links sunlit street
i'm torn violated living room carpet
all this surges into the compost as we wash out the buckets of kitchen slops red and green cabbage leaves remnants of bread of soup out of the mind of cooks out of the mind of chopped carrots someone is dying
someone has been born someone is falling in love someone has left behind
seeing what is
i'm taking my turn
for the footfall of weedy greens i offer my blessings

so as part of the fun of making compost
i encourage everyone to appreciate composed
then asked to notice what goes into it and also notice road doesn't suit compose so well
ah

for thousands of years everything that humans did could and worked with thinking and created could be returned to compost but since ah
we i think it's partly because we have such a desire for permanent so he wanted to yeah
take the am metal from stone and make things at last night
ah
so before columbus arrived here and
read some people called turtle island
everything was compostable for some things took a long time like rock was take awhile
but ah
now we have so many so many things that we've created that don't fit into compost we were so ingenious we've created materials that do not return to the earth
so to me it's a tremendous irony that
and i disposable use it once and throw it away
i said we have created things that we can't throw away we have created plastic grocery bags
and so-called disposable diapers that we actually can't throw away because we can always wrong away if we think there isn't a way
but once we realized that there is no way
that is
there is no returning now recent your actual regeneration and these things that we're creating
when we finally we've created something that then is it was the a burden that way somehow must carry how for we're not sure how long thousands of years
how can we take responsibility and we can really think beyond maybe
two or three generations
it's hard for us to practically envision ah
how the process is that were involved in can play out over more than two or three generations for a sixty two one hundred years
so hard for us to grasp

so some of this comes i think because we want to live and like royalty
we all want the comforts of kings and queens as part of the a part of the math i think of a democratic manner
a world is that everyone can live like a king or queen so so we have this job
built into a kind of
ah a structure and i particular culture
but it goes way back
ah
see how much time i
when they can fit this and there's a story have fun i became
and the time of the buddha
ah his name as as a judge tasks up to bed the could die
i discovered this name man
hello weeks ago and it's events are familiar to me it's and one of the earlier texts really early buddhist texts
ah he was a king who ah roseanne you're a local king i read customer we'd say it was a raja something he was the head of our of i maybe it maybe the lord mayor and or the town of magadha
and
he was quite a comfortable being a king except that he realized somehow he didn't sleep so well and he thought that maybe we could learn something
from now considering the values of a spiritual life and so he asked his advisers you know who are the teachers who might die might recommend for me to learn something about the value of his spiritual life and so the sutra goes on and lists
on dozens of these various teachers and they all had some limitation he wasn't so happy i was wasting his time i'm finally they got down to the the as wise sage of the shakya clan who read today referred to as the buddha
and so
that mattei there are some good stories some good reports about his teaching and so he said well as the settled up my royal elephants and let's go on over there and
we went over him
we had to get off his elephant elephant and then walk and and as he was walking into this kind of forested area we became alarmed because for so quiet
returned to his at his he turned to his advisers and said in i thought you told me there was a big gathering here and it's much too quiet as as there's some kind of a plot on my wife was quite worried but they assured him that nervous was actually people being peaceful
so he he was then now reassured enough that he was able to approach and eventually ah wrote his way and close and was then recognized by the boat and he asked
who's question which is the question or what are the benefits and what are the rewards of a spiritual life
can you really tell me what they are and the buddhist buddha was ah pretty alert and he said well haven't you already asked this question of dozens of other teachers and he said yes so well so what did they say and so then there's this old i repeat of this this
sudo it explains various teachings or other teachers
and then now
and then he says but can you describe anything that's more that's really completely satisfied
that's complete that's a big order and what can be completely satisfying and and the buddha says yes my can
and so then he described in some detail the life of the people who had come to join him
morality
where they had
well i embarked upon a life in which they restrain her tendency is to cause harm
may i actually made vows to no longer cause harm to any living form of life
any living being
and then the buddha pointed out that because of this practice of morality
the people in his gathering
for a free from fear
they no longer lived in fear
so this is that a significant teaching and the the
course the the king may not have realized that just a short while ago he himself was too afraid even to walk into this quiet place
and then the booted describes the benefits of having a concentrated mine that the where the concentrated mind one can actually develop a clarity
and in the process of this than the various hindrances but interfere with are having a clear mind and a compassionate mine and mine they can see that the things are the world are actually not separate from oneself
the process of this one overcomes the various hindrances
i'm physical there's a class they're currently going on in studying hindrances
the hindrances of fire say compulsive desire for hindrances of carrying animosity or ill will the hindrances of having a worried mind the hindrances of mouth wow
fine
the a tendency to get really tired and go to sleep when faced with things are unpleasant in particular
the tendency to doubt ah once on true nature
so all these hindrances actually i'm not overcome as the buddha explained
when the life of the people have gathered within
i'm not further than a tight in more detail about various states of meditation and the satisfactions and the the joy that i can actually can arise
when you drop off these ah notions of redefine
identity of yourself and others
and finally said that if you live in this way you can actually accomplish what you're really meant to be here for what you want the the complete ah realization of the potentiality of this human form of life
life
and the king was really really happy to hear all this
now he rejoiced and he was so lucky to here on this
and said i want to take refuge in the buddha the dharma and sangha
when the buddha said that's that's a good thing to do
he said but it isn't there isn't there something that
what you need to tell me about and the king said well there's there's this one thing
but then i've been meaning to it
to confess to someone and in your a good person for me to make this confession to with this this matter of time that you know i was i was really wicked and i was carried away ah into your transgressions and i deprived my father of his life
so that i could have the throne
and now i want to acknowledge and confess him
on the british said well that's very good
what's actually very good to acknowledge and confess your misdeed
and tom
so he accepted
good sign a confession
and then the king said well thank you and i'm really busy and i need to go and
got a lot of things to do
and so they hurried away
and after it after he laughed the buddha i talked to the people around him and said we fit
of the king had sealed
because of his his coma he's not able to actually see clearly what i'm teaching
what's a sobering statement
ah but the king was not able to see we can the king was not able to actually release
his grasp
on all the things that he had accumulated in his own business in his own activities and so he couldn't actually stay and undertake the practice that the buddha was laying out for him
and so historically it did happen that ah kling i just had choose
sun
eventually assassinated him
so this is sad just a cautionary tale

have a reminder that chance that many of the troubles that that we encounter as humans actually i come from on on activity
and we often don't actually fully account for and the consequences which are unintended night we didn't intend
to cause global warming time
halves
so my now
ah my wife's lane i clicked out from it
the paper last sunday's chronicle
an article that says sam
dire warning
global warming effect on humans
you can see that bias there already how are concerned about humans
that makes the headline and
if it was by warning on the effects of global warming effect on the see know this math
there'd be a footnote wouldn't be the headline
carnatic and that's this is the way we are him
and of course many have been aware for decades
read on the activity of humans has created the stresses
and the planet better having effects
murray really don't know how to manage
i just wanted to be a couple of quotes which i'm sure i must have you're already aware but finally the this isn't how report of the
richard governmental agency and
what's to come here
a gavel intergovernmental panel on climate change which has been making these reports and and now we're finding out of course that some of the report sir
watered down
because a political interests him
the the last one was a few years ago and this one is finally accepting that
changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems and every continent
this is in marked contrast to a two thousand and one report by the same agency
things are happening and happening faster than we expected
said patricia romero langkow of the national center for atmospheric research in boulder colorado one of the many co-authors
current problems
change and species habitats more as certified oceans loss of wetlands bleaching a coral reefs increases an allergy inducing pollen
can be blamed on global warming
but still not a step and blaming ourselves but
but there is some the consideration that humans have contributed any way to global warming
share this report which apps a is going to be officially be released in june
how
that's out what this article calls the emotional height of climate change this is the as story of how it's going to affect people
the science on the scientists says sam
the science is one thing
but this is how it effects you may and the person next door
many of those effects and is that the the hope is that many of those effects
can be prevented if within a generation the world slows down its emissions within a generation well but that's ah
when you can save our generation is usually considered to be it's thirty years right but ah
maybe we need to act
no quickly i think well we have thirty years ah
many of these effects can be prevented if the world slows down its emissions and if the level of greenhouse gases stabilizes couple if there
if that's the case know if most major impacts on him and welfare would be avoided
but some major impacts on ecosystems are unavoidable
wow
so it's important for us to be willing to acknowledge the situation mary that we are in and particularly how we contribute to it
so
as we look at home ah practice of understanding the nature of self
relation herself and environment
it said
it's it's it's helpful i think
to stop
i consider the effect on our actions
so that includes appreciating those who make compost
appreciating what goes into compost and making some of iran
i'm take some time every day to stop and let your mind clear
listen to sounds as sounds
see if you notice when you reapply them
the same girl is actually for all of your senses
ah acknowledge and confess
rare misdeeds
could someone said preferably as wise as yourself
or even little wiser
the listen to them response
slam keep your inner voice
tuned
keep tuning in your inner voice to the sounds and the great way
what is true nature right is buddha mind
now i like to and the to do this is an active actually relaxing your grasp
and what you usually think or to usually hold onto
and tab
just as a reminder i just wanted to teach you the phrase relax your mind
there's a song that was written by now
man a blood belly hoodie lead better read valley
when i appreciate you helping me saying that's called relax your mind
and he wrote the song talking about driving
no whole books now have been written about how to relax your mind while driving
we still have to do it met remember it
and it's harder and harder with my my traffic light
ah
so the chorus goes like this relax your mind relax your mind helps you live a great long time sometimes you have to relax your mind
and then as tend to turn to turn down and down
okay relax your mind relax your man help you later regret loud sounds as may be too low and has picked it up or bit
come relax your mind relax your mind helps you live agora a long time sometimes you have to relax your mind i'd still not very good
what
as i get guthrie said you know if you're gonna change the world you've gotta sing loud
relax your mind relax your mind perhaps you had a long time sometimes you got to relax your mind so here's a verse
i ran the light turns green party referred on the gasoline
last time you have to relax your man relax your man relax your man perhaps wagner a long time sometimes you got to
relax your mind and when the lad turns red first that break down to the bear
where's the time you've got to relax your mind relax your mind relax your man helps you
good long time was a time you got to relax your man
thank you for a singing and thank you for listening
our intention