Sunday Lecture

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ah today's the truth of evocative words

good morning

i think we must have a
devised some liquid that you paint on cars to make them disappear because they're still seem to be a few people here but not nearly so many cars
her were hiding them in an underground car park
i hope not

i have been thinking a lot in the recent weeks about
thanksgiving and gratitude
i think that the thanksgiving holiday is perhaps my favorite certainly one of my most favorite all american holidays
it's so easy to
celebrate the occasion for giving thanks even if we do eat too much
but somehow it makes a kind of sense which i'm afraid some of our other holidays don't always make for me
but even before i was so particularly aware of thanksgiving i have been appreciating and noticing and working with the cultivation of generosity which of course depends upon the arising of some sense of gratitude
and in seeking to cultivate kindness noticing quite explicitly and widely how much my life depends upon the kindness of others
as so many of you know and are devoting a life practice to considering the central teaching in the buddhist tradition is that teaching about the nature of reality which stipulates that
that wisdom understanding the emptiness of self independent self existence
simultaneously with the teaching about dependent arising
that recognition of how much how intimately how specifically how constantly our lives are interconnected with each other with all beings and things
i noticed that this time of year because there's more of the night somehow i noticed the night sky a little differently than i do at other times of the year
and particularly these days we've had such these nights we had such beautiful starry nights and i look up into the night sky and sea the stars and almost always think of indra's net that image of this great vast cosmic net
and i've been thinking the last few days about each of us as one of those intersection points one of those jewelled knots in the net all connected up close or far but connected
and of course in paying attention to the kindness of others and our connection or interdependence with each other what inevitably comes up has to do with what is an obstacle what are the obstacles in my being
ing aware of this deep connectedness
good old self clinging shows up more often than i care to admit it
you
and arising from that than all the other stuff what we sometimes call almost by code as greed hate and delusion

i want to this morning talk about this matter of thanksgiving of gratitude as it arises out of our meditation on interconnectedness with particular regard to the holiday season because i know that this is a difficult time
time for many of us in spite of the commercials
maybe to some degree because of the commercials
we have so many expectations about what the holidays are supposed to be like
friday morning at to our friday morning meditation group what i heard were stories that people were telling about all of the sadness and grief that comes up in spending the thanksgiving holiday with one's family when one's family isn't quite as one
one would wish one's family to be
they're just still the same old family that we've had for so long
continuing to disappoint me and my vast and splendid expectations of them
providing me the great opportunity to be upset and grieved and angry because they are not behaving distracting myself from the one being that i could do something about
so i think a lot about the holidays i think a lot about this
this period of time between now and the winter solstice which for some of us yawns like a big black hole
the nights get longer and the days get shorter and we sink
i don't blessedly so far have this experience myself
i think perhaps it's because i've fallen in love too much with the night sky
but i know from those that i love and care about that it is indeed a difficult time
and to the degree that i keep paying attention to what my expectations are then i can keep asking myself well is this expectation realistic is it a little more realistic if i let somebody know that i have it
i've discovered that it's far more likely that my husband will say let's go to the movies saturday night if i let him know i have a slight inclination to go to the movies with him one of these nights than if i keep it a secret and hope that he'll read my mind and asked me
and i think that christmas and hanukkah and new years and all of it is fraught with those expectations were we hope someone will read our mind
expectations that someone will behave differently than they have every year up until now
expectations are a big piece of are suffering
in any time of the year but i think in a particular and poignant way these days that we are in the midst of

for those of us who live on this side of the ridge and for those of us who hang out in a garden
this time of year is a great reminder about how we might we humans might behave the world of plants and animals i don't know about the fish but i know about plants and animals and birds they all change their behavior at this time of year
they rest
they hibernate
they drop their leaves and pull their energy energy in and go deep
in a way that you can't see but for any of us who love the garden in the spring we know now is the time when the real work is going on that deep renewing
but how many of us take this time of year as an occasion for our own renewing
we have electric lights we can pretend it's daylight any time of the day or hundred
we're very busy people we americans
we become addicted to our business and we forget about how to slow down and this time of year is certainly about simplifying and slowing down for those of us who are a little more deciduous than others we might even lose our leaves november
i favor the deciduous mode
because it's a chance to see the bones the structure of the tree or the bush or ourselves
i wonder though there's that thing about gaining weight in the winter a little fat to keep you warm that's not quite deciduous is it
well he get my point anyway
pam
so friday morning as i drove over the hill to go to the church and tiburon were a group of us practice meditation practices and consider various practices having to do with the precepts
as i was driving on the road going up the north side of this valley
i nearly drove off the road with ecstasy because of the beauty of that time of day or night or not really either just between
enough light so that i could see the lines on the palm of my hand barely
and as i drove up that the the road friday morning
a beautiful young i imagine young because his coat was so fluffy and beautiful a gray fox skittered across the road and jumped in between the railings of the guard rail letting me have a fine glimpse of his tail
there were as is almost always true especially in the early morning and in the evening they required number of deer of all sizes and shapes looking around calmly saying oh one of you here in our place
ace wagging their tails
later in the morning when we went for a long walk up on the ridge we saw a splendid dear leap an unbelievable leap almost frozen in space as he went off higher up out of the way of the dog
but friday morning in that wonderful time before dawn
when you could just begin to say the line of the ridge the silhouette of the trees up the upper end of the valley or the gulch as we call it
i had a kind of palpable sense of all the critters all the beings who live in this region
skunk and possum
bob cat
every once in awhile some sign of mountain lion although not for a while
great horned owls and
hawks all kinds of birds that come and go and some that stay all year round
wonderful trees and bushes and flowers
and what came up for me that morning and has lingered quite persistently is some deep gratitude for this valley that we all have this place
we are of course part of the great watershed which is marked and most known by redwood creek
which begins in the ridgeline the mountain above muir woods and which bring out creek meets just at the end of this valley
we're part of that watershed
we are part of this western facing slope of mount imo bias surrounded by this great big huge park
early this morning i sat down and i wrote a list of all the people that i know about for whom i can express my thanks that we are here in this valley sitting in this old barn
how lovely that are great benefactor george wheelwright is with us and that we can repeatedly thank him
there are lots of people who whispered in his ear and in his lawyers air about maybe you should think of lettings and center take care of this place
and it was interesting when i started making the list of all their names how many names i could remember how many names came up right away
and at the end of the list where the names of the people who somehow almost came to have green gulch if one can have a place like this and to buy one reason or another made mistakes or whatever didn't didn't work out
lucky for us
so friday morning i was very aware of this place as green dragon zen temple
i'd like to use the that name more often actually
and where are you going today i'm going to the green dragon and place
the dragon often represents the dharma the truth with its head in the sky and its tail in the ocean
so it's a good name for this place because the piece of at that we are particularly concerned with taking care of indeed as its head in the sky
up there in the region of hope cottage going up towards the ridge and its tail is literally down there at the beach going into the ocean

so i had this very long meditation friday morning as i drove up the road going very slowly
meditation on everything about this place for which i feel gratitude
if you need a little inspiration go into the meditation hall and look at the altar
a huge potato and some sampling of the harvest of what has been growing here
the great figures that help us remember our capacity for wisdom and for compassion
and that wonderful room where people have been practicing for a long time
this spring we will have been here for twenty years it's gone by like a flash
startles me to think of twenty years how can that be

in my considering joy and gratitude for this place
starting friday morning but quite continuous since then
what has come up as a part and parcel of that consideration is how much it it is an instance of our interconnectedness
how much this is a place which cannot be taken care of cannot be enjoyed cannot be developed with what our dear friend and teacher harry roberts called the five hundred year plan
to be here and make decisions here with an eye to five hundred years
he said it'll help you be more patient
you'll do things differently if you're doing them for five hundred years than if you're doing them for this year or five years
but to do that will take the energy and attention and intelligence and creativity of all of us
this is a varied and complicated piece of property place it lives in our imaginations in our hearts in very complicated ways
it is a place which has come to be important too many many people some people who have never even been here
years ago when send center was just in the process of buying tassajara the hot springs where zen shinji whereas and mountain center is located
we made a big
a big kind of brochure i suppose you would call it kind of big poster with wonderful photographs and quotes poetry
little bits of teaching about what zen is what buddhism is what a place like that would be about
and we sent it to more people than most of us could imagine
this was in the late sixties ten center bot tassajara nine hundred and sixty six and the purchase price for tassajara half of it came from people who made donations of twenty five dollars or less
who sent some donation which they would send often with some i wish it was more but this is what i can send you i want a place like you describe to be in the world even if i never come there it will help me to know that such a place exists
i was secretary of zen center at the time and i remember how moved and encouraged i was all of us were at the response of many many many many many many many people
who each gave some small gift to help tas are come into being
and how a kind of life a kind of existence arose out of that relationship that sense of connectedness about a vision a possibility that we were somehow able to articulate and explore and bring into being
and i know because i've experienced it when i've been halfway around the world that green gulch has become such a place particularly in the buddhist world i was struck to go to japan or to india on pilgrimage and to meet many pilgrims
going on traditional pilgrimages in asia who knew about us knew about this place new a little bit about what was going on in some cases new a lot more than i wished to they knew
and of course unlike tassajara this is a place which is beautiful which is a zone of calmness and quiet or at least i think that's our intention
so close to a big urban city
if we stand up on the ridge we can see the buildings in san francisco
we can hear the fog horns ethical at the mouth of a golden gate
we're not very far away from the business of our lives
and i think to make a place a place that's dedicated to awakening a place where way can come and renew ourselves so close to the city is very complicated and will take is taking all of us to do it together
so as i was
cruising along slowly at a snail's pace as it were up the road friday morning
and in the time since then
out of the car
walking and ridge
thinking about how much we're all connected together in this place being a kind of home for all of us a home place for that place that can exist in each of us for quiet and calmness and renewal that will help us remember
the various practices that we learn and cultivate for centering and groundedness that will hopefully help us be awake in the lives that we lead and the world we live in
and my sense not only of this place but of all of you have all of us here today and not here
out of that arises for me a deep gratitude and thanksgiving
early this morning i wrote it all down because i found oh surely i'll forget something and of course i will because the list of gratitude is so long

i've lived out here either a green gulch or as i sometimes say over the fence since nineteen seventy three
and as i either walk or drive up the valley i've been watching the trees growing and there are a lot more trees in this gulch than there were in nineteen seventy two and nineteen seventy three
and of course the trees that were here are a lot bigger
and so slowly the valley is beginning to change a little bit wave of course planted some of those trees but some of them have planted themselves growing from seeds that were dropped by the tree is already here
this is a very small valley compared to some
and we have to figure out how to be here how to have enough of us to take care of it but not too many how to be open but not so open that we destroy the very qualities that we all came here to enjoy
how to get here without bringing quite so many cars very practical consequences of this question how do we take care of this place
how do we develop and ten steward
green gulch the green dragon how do we let the green dragon steward us

i do a practice that involves meditating on
the butterfield a field of buddha's a field of awakened ones
and whenever i do that meditation i visualize this valley because it's what comes up most immediately
and it's specific enough in my mind's eye for me to be able to see this valley with every spot every atom
in the valley filled with an awakened one
and in fact the way i can do that is by saying the valley filled with all of us who are actually hear those who live here those who come as regular practitioners those who come as visitors those who walk through those who ride through
those who drive by in tour buses on the road who don't think of themselves as visitors to green gulch but who knows what they think of when they looked down in this valley and of course now the tour bus guides are telling them all about zen center and green gulch
who knows what they're saying
some years ago i actually rode one of the tour buses to find out
it was great
not true but great
people
so when i go away for awhile and i continue to do this meditation on the buddha field green gulch is right there filled with buddhas
and i don't think it's just in my imagination
i actually think it's true it's a true picture of this lovely valley
and my expression of thanksgiving and of gratitude today is also one of invitation to all of us to hold and cherish this place in such a way that it will be here
in some blooming condition five hundred years from now
that we work together to discover how to be stewards of this piece of the watershed
of all that way not imagine that any gift we have to give of time of energy of attention not just of money but of our whole selves that whatever we are able to do is a treasure and that there is no such thing as oh what i have
to offer is too small to unimportant it won't count
it's not good enough
i know from actual experience that what arises from many many many many people is what builds stability and diversity and depth
sometimes you know we think oh we wish we had a sugar daddy
i don't know if we still talk about sugar daddies but when i was a child
my mother certainly talked about trigger headaches
and i imagine we still talk about sugar daddies we just may call them by a different name
one or two great benefactors who will solve all our problems
i actually wish that what we have for the green dragon is thousands of benefactors
i think that's what will make this place truly bloom
and develop
and it's not you giving us something it's all of us together allowing something to arise out of the connection that we have
i've been listening to a tape of talk that oliver sacks gave i don't know if you know his work but if you don't i recommend his writing to you
it was clear from listening to this tape of his talk that the audience had fallen madly in love with him and i of course fell madly in love with him listening to the tape but i was already in love with him for reading some of his books
he wrote a book recently about the deaf called saying voices
and in this talk that i was listening to the last few days he was talking about what happens when language occurs and what happens when it doesn't and how important it is to humans development to have language develop widely and deeply in the for
first five years of life
and he talked about language as arising out of the relationship the child has with the parents or whoever is taking care of that child
what a lovely way to think of language
as arising out of relationship
listening to that description brought me back again to this interconnected field
of which we are all apart
at some point somebody was asking oliver sacks about some question about
politics political action about what's good or not good for deaf folk and schools etc and he got quite aroused and he said i am not a politician i'm a neurologist
my work is to describe not proscribe
and he described his participation when the students said gallaudet the universe at the college for deaf people
where they had a big kind of revolution
against having a president of the school who was not himself or herself deaf
and as they were out protesting the students were out protesting one of them came up to him and said to him what are you doing here and he said i'm up as an observer and they took him by the arm and they said no you're not you're a participant
he said it was the perk first political act in my entire life
and he talked about their revolution as being a peaceful and harmonious revolution
in which although they were vehemently opposed to what was happening at the school the entire process was done in a very kindly and friendly way
an active engagement in which people had many different opinions about things but they were out there talking about them talking about them in this wonderful language he was describing which is visual spatial
i think that's the kind of dialogue and kicking encounter with each other that i would hope the green dragon will bring forth
the more varied we are the more points of view we bring forth the more lively and rich our relationship and our association and are attending of the great green dragon
here is our opportunity to know directly experientially how deeply connected we are
how much what we do affects each how we affect each other
how much what we don't do affects the other one
how much we help each other and our presence in each other's lives
it's complicated to take care of a place like this so close to the big city
to let this be the place that we need and want it to be
and there are of course many wants and needs
how will we ever saw it out which ones we will go for and which ones we will not go for
we will need to listen and attend
and be present with each other to do all that listening
sometimes arguing
hopefully and a kindly way that helps me remember that i am not other than you and you are not other than me
so on this lovely winter day i guess it's close to wonder
fall in between transition
clear day
maybe cold tonight
when we can say the slanting light glinting off the leaves of trees
a day when we can enjoy the clarity of the air here
on the edge of the pacific ocean
on the western facing flanks of our lovely mount tam by bias
please join me in your own particular meditation on all that you have to be thankful for
all of the kindness that comes to contribute to your life
your actual existence my actual existence
gratitude and thanksgiving are good for our hearts and souls or minds
very hard to be cranky and contemplating allowing thanksgiving
and i for one feel better when my heart is full of thanks
thank you very much
sure
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