Sunday Lecture

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see equally
i would like to wear ask your forgiveness for being late this morning i was talking with a dharma friend and i guess i got carried away didn't attention to return it was
we also have something like every clock in the house as a different time so it's awful

so today is arbor day here at green gulch and in fact this is the time of year when people are paid
trees
here
so my theme for this morning has to do with our consideration of trees trees in our lives
and what i would like to invite you to
join with me in doing is to consider
trees as a focal point
for looking at both the outer in the inner worlds
i think that we might if we have a little law inquiry into trees and
what they are in their nature and how they grow etc we may find some inspiration also for our inner life at least that certainly has been true for me
this morning i made a list of the trees that i'm aware of in this watershed
and in particular the trees that i know a little bit about
and so what i'd like to do is to go through that list with you so that we have some shared sense of the specific trees that are our friends and companions here
is wendy here not yet
i need to ask her advice on a few things but was see
i live in a house at the end of this valley where this valley and frank's valley come together i actually on redwood creek so there are some differences in the trees that surround us where i live and the trees that are in this drainage
in particular but they very much are related to each other
and although we are not in the primary drainage for redwood creek we are certainly very much affected by and related to redwood creek
muir woods as you know is at the hand of frank's valley
and that is where a redwood creek begins in the slope of mt tam up above muir woods and then the creek meanders through frank's valley and at the ocean in of green gulch where the green gulch creek comes into redwood
creek
than the
combination of the to opens into the ocean and all along frank's valley
all the way down to the pelican in there are
beautiful red alders
i particularly love looking at them at this time of year because with leaves dropped you can see the structure of the trees are very beautiful in coloration and inform
the alders our trees that grow in groups and they seem to move the group's move
so as the would that surrounds the pelican inn is beginning to show signs of
terminating it's a climax forest climax would has a relatively speaking short lifespan
there is evidence of the alders sprouting up on the ocean side of the parking lot down at the beach
so you know the wood is dying around the end but it's emerging closer to the ocean
we have cottonwoods planted along the banks of green gulch
a particularly there is a planting of them in what is now what is the third field
second field
second field
beyond the greenhouses
and then there's a kind of nursery band of those fremont cottonwoods which were gathered together under supervision of harry roberts a number of years ago from the mouth of the klamath river way north of here because he knew that these trees were good
candidates for surviving here for helping hold the banks of the greek
but in an environment where they would be subjected to a lot of wind and salt air and they have indeed flourished
we also have the native cottonwood particularly in the creek band green gulch and along the bottom valley where green gosh turns to the right over towards the palestinian
and intermixed with the native cottonwood
his basket willow much is not nave but is harry a close in bulk if you well with the major difference being the kind of golden yellow especially of the new growth the new branches
we are fruit trees in particular we have apples and plums
and earlier in the fall when the apples were all bearing you could see them in especially in the cordon rose in the first garden
but right out here we have a couple of plums which sometimes are called the popcorn trees because during the
season when they come into bloom it looks like someone popped popcorn overnight and glued it on all branches quite stunning
we have a cyprus and pines in the wind breaks and planet around in various crevices of hills the result of tree-planting on arbor day in years gone by
and in particular we have the relative of the redwood tree the crypt an area which comes from japan was the seed was sent to us by fukuoka sensei and was the last planning that harry roberts was involved in we planted the first seeds in a scene flat on his band
i'm very long before he died
bishop pine
we have the exotics acacia and eucalyptus which parent periodically seem to be bashed let's get them out of here and enjoyed depending on your point of view and time of year
but there definitely are presence particularly the eucalyptus
some of those eucalyptus that line the driveway that we all drive by regular later granddaddy trees and they all
there's a long needle pine on the side of the road that you walk up if you go up to her cottage
kind of
pine is it
the great
is it a bishop on
this all
no
above the water tank the next big tree
it's a douglas fir and it's spawned some very healthy babies
the beautiful tree
and we have some red woods which we've planted in which have taken
other native language up for this area
so those are just a few of the trees that are here in this watershed and in particular in this scotch so-called green gulch
one of the memories that comes up for me when i think about the trees here is remembering a walk that i took a number of years ago when stephanie causa was still living here from some of you know she's a great biologist and knows her trees in
one night we went out a was a in the dark phase of the moon and we went out
on a silent walk and looked at the silhouettes of the different trees and i think for many of us i know certainly for myself it was the first time i think i'd really looked at the trees here bring launch in their particularity oh and i was struck by how much information was readily accessible to
me by going out on that night walk with a group of us in silence just looking at the differences in the silhouette of one tree and then another

so part of what i find myself instructed by when i look at the trees or attend to the trees
is the shift that happens when i look at each tree in particular when i can begin to be particular and descriptive i begin to see what is here
in a way that is not true when i just see trees
i has been talks about this with respect to bird watching you know there is that time in one's life is a bird watcher when there the there's the category called little brown birds well there's also the category of trees there are some trees
and it is in the observing of the particular detail
that our relationship with the world we live in begins to take on a kind of vividness
a richness which i think is worth noting
in considering how my relationship with the outer world can teach me about how to be in my inner world
realms the more particular and descriptive i can be the more vivid the more rich the more present in an accurate and careful and full way i can be
i would like to were read a passage as an illustration of particularity this is in a text by b d jackson the glossary bd stands for
ah okay to be particular
this is his appendix c the use of the terms right and left
these terms are but seldom required in botanic descriptions being only used to denote the direction of a twist or spiral this is what i'm always talking about when i talked to my friends about how we're practicing let's get picky
this is picky
unfortunately they have been employed in opposite senses so that the meaning of one author may be completely perverted by his misuse of the correct method very picky
in zoology where bilateral symmetry is common these terms or imply always applied to the limbs or organs of an animal with regard to its axis
and the majority of botanists have carried out the same idea with regard to plants
a spiral may be considered as turning to the right or the left
that is to spirals may run in contrary directions
but the same spiral may be differently designated according to the position of the observer
russia mon theory begins to rise
the orthodox way regards the observer as being placed within while noting the direction of the twist
it's not love way
so this image of being inside the tree
or the branch
as if he were looking south and recording the apparent passage of the sun from his left towards his right or from her left to her right
this deck's drawers is the comment acceptance of with the sun or like the clock hands
it is also the motion of driving home a screw
i love that expression driving home a screw
which receives its name of right hand and from the motion and not from the aspect of the pitch of its threads
i think this is a fine example of particular and descriptive language
makes my mouth water

so have some examples one in particular
as you walk into the garden
on ones left there is a grand specimen of the fremont cottonwood
which when it begins to form catechins
there is a smell that is in that region
where is this smell coming from
how can i describe this smell more
pleasant
reminds me a little bit of the smell of paint or turpentine but pleasant
how would you describe backs balsam is the technical description
so over the years as i've paid attention to that tree and the smell of the catkins when they first come
for me now and i smell that smell what arises is oh spring
spring is emerging and of course farther down just beyond the greenhouses where there's a a a group of the same trees smell is much stronger maybe it's the place to learn to attend to that cent
and what comes with the scent is the history of a tree or the trees i remember harry roberts when he was still with us in his vast and amusing form
talking to us about these splendid trees which he remembered he knew were living north at the mouth of the klamath river in which he thought would be very good trees for us to plant here
i remember the particular people who drove up there and cut the branches and brought them back long
supple whips cut from the trees on the river
stuck in the slow moving water bring out creek quickly routing the easiest trees to route and plant
that i'd ever seen

the alders which are such a feature of this watershed the red alders are called as having revolut leaf the edge of the leaf curls under ever so slightly
and as the alders leaf out
you begin to pay attention to the coloration on the underside of a leaf harry beautiful
but also as the leaves begin to show there is some effect of the water level in the creek
i remember that at tassajara when the sycamore with leaf out
and it was like suddenly that is somebody nearby gone
in the creek water level would just drop
so there's is very evident relationship between the trees and the water level in the creek
some hint of what is going on underground
some hint of the complex
relationship between the trees and the environment around them
harry said when we first started planting trees in our very first arbor days you should never plant any tree unless you have at least three reasons for planting it
and i sometimes thought he pressed to find the reasons especially if there was a tree he wanted us to plan just because he liked it
just because he thought it was beautiful then he would come up with these reasons so the the cottonwoods the basket willows he said well they're beautiful
they will be very effective in holding banks of the greek to help with erosion control and they are of course traditionally the source of basket making material in europe
letha sure harry as just what bring auch needs his basket making material and he went on and on about how all the money we were going to make selling basket making material with the cuttings from the basket well as sure air i heard her
and it's true of course that you can make beautiful baskets and people do we have not yet begun making baskets or selling mascot making material but we may have any day now
but they are beautiful
they are very beautiful particularly now
the color of the new growth on those trees is
lovely
and they do hold the banks of the creek
george wheelwright of course nearly killed himself getting rid of the native well hoping in the creek when he wanted to straighten out greenock greek made a big pile of the cuttings threw gasoline on and to kind of get the fire started and cursed the whole thing exploded in his face said he law
lost his eyebrows in that moment of truth
so here we are planting the relative
so i was thinking when i was thinking about what i wanted to say this morning about harry's admonition about whenever you plant a tree always have three reasons
the reasons that has been rising as i think about the trees that we've planted is it with so many of them in are planting the particular trees i think of this especially with the crypto maria
one of the reasons for planting them has to do with the story of hey carrie
so the crypto maria is an example here is a tree that we've planted some of them are flourishing
and they carry our relationship with fukuoka sensei and with harry
and with many of us who were involved in planning those trees
so they carry history
so what are the reasons for planting trees
i hope you'll be able to add to the list but the things that i thought of were that we plant trees for beauty
certainly for beauty
to provide shelter
some of the trees we've planted we've planted as wind breaks
because the wind coming up this valley is very significant aspect
some of our trees provide us with food
some trees provide us with fuel for heat
all of the trees provide habitat for birds and little critters bugs
probably far more habitat than we realize
they were very important function as moisture collectors
particularly these days when we aren't having as much rain as we like to think of his so-called normal but we do have fought we do have a certain amount of moisture here on the coast and wherever there's a tree that tree is collecting moisture on its needles and leaves
and there is a drip line
the tree becomes the conduit if you will for the water being collected and going into the ground
so one of the ways of changing the climate here of bringing more moisture into this valley is for us to plant trees
trees provide structural materials
as bill said this morning everything from a light delicate cedar box to the major timbers used in building a ship
these days may be most important of all the trees are part of the system that provides oxygen

trees are part of the planets lungs
and for all of us who are practicing a breath oriented meditation
we have some direct relationship with the breath
so here it is the outer breathing of the planet and the inner breath which each of us attends to

when i think about a particular tree and what i can see what i can observe what i've learned about the tree that which is above ground and that which is below ground i very quickly enter into a meditation
on interconnectedness
because especially to the degree that i begin to see the trees function with respect to oxygen and moisture i realize that my very life depends upon there being trees and this is of course
it's become a very important issue for us in the world
as the great forests of the world are being cut
and we're beginning to see the effect
in the earth's breathing
if the trees collect moisture and are part of the whole system that brings the moisture into the ground look at what happens when we cut them down and the big cuts in a large areas
we have flooding
we lose soil precious soil which takes so many many many many many years to come into being
can in one season be washed away
trees of course contribute to the creation of that precious soil also
so i may sit under a tree and get to see who lives in the tree
there wouldn't be birds if they didn't have places to build their nests to perch to gather food
they're very important in terms of controlling insects there's this delicate balance interconnect interconnection that exists if we will just sit down and observe notice allow ourselves to recognize how important trees are
in our lives
if
i have over the last few weeks been thinking about all of what goes on with trees underground especially in the winter especially with those trees that are deciduous that lose their leaves
where we have perhaps a little more vivid sense that there's something going on here all the energy in the beginning of the winter when the leaves for straw all the trees energy drops down underground
and so i asked myself what are the causes and conditions at creek contribute to a healthy tree it has to have a good root structure and to have a good root structure it needs to be in soil which is inviting to the root system of that particular tree
a good example is again the crypto area we planted some of the coast redwoods
which don't have a tap root which have a system of interlocking roots so that they help each other states stand up
so you can't plant redwoods except in a community of redwoods
and you have to have soil topsoil
so in areas of this valley where the top soil has eroded away if not entirely substantially it's been very difficult to get the redwoods to re-establish but the crypto maria it's japanese relative unlike our native red woods has a deep tap
route
one deep strong significant route that goes very deep as deep as it needs to in order to find water but also as a kind of anchor for the hurry
and the crypto maria are thriving
and of course in the environment that comes into being as the crypto maria are growing it's possible to plant other trees which need shelter and moisture
that's the crypto barrier or providing
in in the areas where we've planted trees there is more moisture there is beginning to be the creation of a deeper level of soil in that area
so the ravines the draws the little cracks that go up out of green gulch are beginning to be filled in with trees if you drive from the top of green gulch down to the beach you'll see on this south side of the a gulch area
does where pines and some of our planted trees of
monterey cypress bishop pine redwoods are beginning to creep up but there also some places farther down the valley where the bays are beginning to come up
and of course you don't see that change overnight you see it over ten or fifteen or twenty or fifty years
in the thirties when harry roberts first was out here in this region he has helped charles borden plant all the trees out near beach
if you look at photographs of this valley from the thirties or forties or fifties there weren't very many trees here in them
george told me when he first came here the man who owned this place re se button raised and saddlebred horses any had a ladder that went onto the roof of the main house the roof over the live
with the railing around the roof and he would serve barbecued chicken and mint juleps
and then somebody would parade the horses were for sale on the roof of what is now or meditation hall
and you could sit over there and look over here because of course there were no trees in between
it's changed a lot just right in this immediate area with the red woods in particular
aware of course not serving mint juleps these days when serving tea
and we're not selling horses
but sometimes when i see the photograph of the house from those days that's on the wall as you go down the stairs from the wheelwright center room down the stairs towards the dining room there's a picture there what it looked like
look at that picture and you'll see how this environment has changed because of the trees right in this medium area
so these trees have transform the look and feel and quality of the valley
we have a little more moisture we have a lot more habitat slowly we may be beginning to have some areas where there is beginning to be a little deeper layering of soil
we're learning a lot about what trees will grow here in which trees will not
what the trade off is with exotics vs natives
plan everything and see what grows
so there there is this kind of obvious
aspect of tree planting that has to do with transformation but there's also the more subtle in important life
oh vital to our life quality of transformation with trees
lots of the reasons for planting trees and cities and along roadways is because of their ability to
work with the toxins that come from cars going by
carbon monoxide
the detoxify the environment
but there's also the natural arising of
carbon dioxide which they transform into oxygen
very important for our health and our life they have more rather than less oxygen
he
certainly this transition that i'm describing about the collection of moisture and sending it into the ground
is a very important kind of transformation work that the trees do
how much of our inner life is about transformation
is about taking that which is toxic the inner toxic dump
of the afflicted states of mind of greed hate and delusion of self cleaning
i think that if we can simply hold the possibility that anything and everything can be transformed that in itself is a significant and important
consideration
oh this grout she
irritated grumpy may be even angry state of mind can be transformed
well how what are some things i can do to transform the state of mind arising in this moment to a state of mind which is more harmonious and peaceful
so if the trees are our reminder our example of the capacity for transformation they can awaken us our sensitivity to our own capacity for transformation
if trees need a of
proper wholesome environment for setting routes for establishing a root system that allows them to be strong to grow tall and not be blown over in the wind
how much of that depends on what is not see what goes on underground
what do i need to do to establish that kind of inner stability and strength and flexibility so that when a big gust of wind comes along i'm not blown over
what would be akin to a tap root
how much of my practice of meditation of sitting down taking a seat letting the spine be as straight as it can be discovering full and deep breath is the cultivation of the underground structure which
may not be visible but which is essential in the cultivation of that stability and strength which allows me to cultivate a calm and a quantum economists mine in are suffering world

sunshine and compost
are transformed into an apple
think about all this stuff that goes the compost
yeah
less of crusher gardener the use a oh goody let me have it all wendy says eagerly give me your compost
everything about transformation

trees can cultivate a beautiful rich habitat out a desert
but one must be very patient and perhaps even willing to do work which will not come to fruition in one's own lifetime
there's a tree growing in the garden where i live and there are two more brothers or sisters i'm not sure which up in frank's valley a redwood a chinese i just lost the name of it dawn redwood from china
a deciduous redwood
so people think oh my redwood tree died i'd better cut it down they don't realize it's just lost its needles and that in the spring will come these soft delicate green new needles
but the trees don't come to maturity don't produce seed for seventy five years
so you need to be patient if you're going to plant at dawn red one
you're planting it for your
children are your grandchildren
i think tree planting brings us into that bigger view
when our dear friend harry used to talk about with having the five hundred year plan
if we have in mind the five hundred year plan we will plant differently we will behave differently than if we have the one year or one month or five year plan even
what about the five hundred year view
trees are very much about the five hundred year view i think
so i hope that today we will let the trees that we plant and the trees that we look at and discover something about
help us cultivate that capacity for the long view
in the patients that arises because it is exactly the same patience which allows us to do the work of inner transformation in cultivation
and so for those of us who are bent on a spiritual path the trees can be are good companions and teachers
in our inspiration
there is throughout a part of the buddhist world anyway
a painting that goes along with a story about the four friends
and a few years ago when some friends of ours monks from the a monastery were staying in our house in the midst of our remodeling our house it's a kind of unbeatable combination house full of monks while you're remodeling
so they were there while the walls were just going up and down looked awfully empty and they had a month of holiday with no special schedule so the head artist mom decided he should paint on the walls
and in fact i had to defend a few walls that i thought we needed to put a dish covered up again so we'd have a place to put some dishes because he was gonna pay everything but one of the pictures he painted just inside the front door with a picture of the four friends
say fitting picture for us to hold in our minds for today
in the picture there is a tree quite a big tree and standing right next to the tree is an elephant
and on the elephant's back sits a monkey
and on the monkeys shoulders since a rabbit
and on his back is a bird
and the story is that a great king who lived at the time of shakyamuni buddha wanted to know how to rule his kingdom so that it would flourish with happiness and harmony and shakyamuni him when he would ascend to the king go into the forest
and watch how the birds and the animals live together
because they know how to live together in harmony
so i went to the forest and he saw these for creatures standing in the way i just described
and they were having a conversation about how did this place come to be and who was here first
in the elephant said well i remember this tree being this big tree like this for as long as i can remember
and if i reach my trunk up hi i can pick the fruit and leaves and i have some food but the tree has been here just like this a long time bigger than i am
and the monkey said all but i remember when the tree was smaller
when i can easily jump around in the upper branches i could get up into the tree very easily took me just a few moments
but i remember it's smaller than you're describing it
and the rabbit scratched behind his ear and said well i remember when it was more like a bush
and if i stood on my hind legs i can just nibble the top leaves
and the bird said i have a memory long ago that i was flying in this region and i had a seed in my beak
and it fell from my beak
so then they know knew that the bird had lived the longest and been in that area the longest and so he was the boss
he was on top
so whenever you see these for beings arranged in this way let it be a reminder about a harmonious aspect which these for friends are reminding us out
and i hope that you will all plant a tree if not today
some day this month
there's still enough of february left so that each of us could plant one tree this month
the church
our in tan an equally penetrate every day and plays were true mera buddha
his way
these are number ah to save them
lucia
i couldn't find a hammer
yeah didn't drink much chunk yeah times when when the group has be own and we start to die and i see a problem the trees are just during yeah if you go down if you go down and look at the grove around the pelican and you'll see the perfect example and it's a combination of
the alders having reached maturity which takes about thirty five years
it's also the consequence of the they're having been a lot of landfill in what is an old flood plain area so the whole water table in the area has been disturbed and that made the trees much more susceptible to certain insect
tes that have come in and killed the trees so you've also got some trees dying there because of the phil and the degradation of the environment which then caused the trees to be more prone to insect stuff but there are two places where you can see in aldergrove in climax
fading is that grove and the girl which is much farther along in the process which is on highway one just north of stinson beach
there's a small kind of the tag and of an olive grove that's just got a few trees but also if you just go along up frank's valley towards muir woods you'll see there are a lot of which were trees are trees that are fallen down or that are dead and going to paul nam soon you've got the whole
phase along the creek
but because it's such a good environment for the alders they're constantly regenerating themselves but when you get a big grow of like the grow we've got down here which is about nine acres it's beginning to go and what thrills me is to see that young alders are now really is taboo
wishing them several snakes june at ah
on the beach right next to the
parking lot so maybe we'll continue to half an older girl it'll just be a little bit different and you know people who live out here now remember when the aldergrove around the pelican in was a field full of
irises it was an irish field run by old man band gucci
well that's why we still back calories and
so that's you know like thirty years ago it was an irish field
so you get this wonderful psych
and we're not so used to seeing that cycle because most are woods are made up of trees of him a longer lifespan
for me it's a real lesson and attachment because i find the trees a beautiful and that particular would provides extraordinary habitat we have great horned owls we have a couple of clutches of what editor what you call a fan fox family but we have a lot of fox in there
in there are three stories there's the low story the middle story and a high story of the wood and the radically different plants and animals and birds that live in those three different stories and when you live near an environment like that you begin to realize how rich it is it's quite wonderful
and as i say i think as an opportunity to do a meditation on interconnectedness it's very easy way into the territory and the minute you begin doing that in that kind of external way it weakens our sense of interconnectedness that's much more subtle and more interior
so i
so what would you like to talk about yes or no probably work
i have a better spot cottonwood
mom which reminds mean that's what you see any problems or are know of cases of is corona
ambition pines and overhear some red woods know if you look at go down the current go down through the road goes through the valley and the minute you get through the garden or if you go around the garden there's a leyland cypress hedge on to
size if you go on the creekside you will immediately see a combination of the native willow in basket willow there's a basket willow that's now good tree as planted right by the ranch road goes through the garden next to this end up burned
it's not a very good specimen it's been hit by the dredger once coming to dredge the pond a couple of times and to youth and shows but farther down you'll see some basket willow which will be this golden yellow
and right in the field across the street from the balcony in there are several down there that are very beautiful mixed in with the native will on which is much more green and then farther down kind of around the pelican in and then beyond going up frankie valley you have a lot of what's
conrad ocher which is a kind of purple you seen his long purple branches which haven't lived out it's the local dogwood
and before it leaves out and flowers you get these incredible streams of very purple barge growth that's also placidly basket material
and very beautiful but all that stuff grows in a creek environments and is very important in terms of erosion control and that surface to review
the particular and descriptive of the outer world as well as the underworld and
well i'm i'm operating on the thesis that process is pervasive
so if i'm interested in cultivating my capacity to be particular in descriptive i can start with that which is easy for me to be particular and descriptive there's a way which it's not a big deal to the particular and descriptive with a plant or a bird or a tree
and as i cultivate my ability to be particular in descriptive about a tree that informs my ability to be particular and descriptive about states of mind
so that i begin to notice the difference between i am angry and so and so said something and anger arises
or irritation arises or fear arises what's the anatomy of it ten sing in the stomach
tightening in the through
in the more i am describe accurately
the more information i have that allows me to see how and when and what to do in the interests of transformation
and the language which is particular in descriptive is free of judging that habitual judging than such a barrier for most of us so it's among other things the practiced for stopping that habit of the inner rant rant ran telling me about what a creep by
i am and i can't do this and i always had a bad back and my mother in you know endlessly which is such an obstacle in a spiritual
so i'm interested in cultivating a descriptive in particular language as an antidote to the habit of judgment
and the more i learned how to describe the more i learn how to see so that i can describe the way the needles are on this kind of redwood tree which is different from the way they're placed in arranged in the coloration and with texture on the dawn redwood prince
well that refinement of my capacity to observe is absolutely what i need for an effective cultivated in
the book i recommend to all of you is by a woman named joanna field called a life of one's own and it's a book in which she describes her own discovery of the power of her ability to observe accurately and our life changed
yes it's it's
well she's also got a worker or not being able to paint but it's the life of one's own is really the one that read it's very
very effective joanna field
yeah
most recently

the
we're on function
morton

can you know the more i know about the root structure of a tree and see what the relationship is with what shows and when i can't see it gives me some information about what it takes to be stable
the root system that's underground in relationship to the upper there's a definite relationship
so you know if i'm standing with my feet close together i'm not stable i can be pushed over much more easily than if i have my feet a little bit separate if my feet are parallel i have a certain kind of stability that's different than if i do this or this
it affects my breathing i began to pay more attention to detail in my inner life to the degree that i can observe some relationship between structure stability strength flexibility all of a i i completely agree
and it gives me some language that i can apply to the experience i have in a more in interior way because a lot of what's going on is that for many of us we aren't in touch with certain levels of our experience because we don't know how to describe the experience
science
yes and we tend to hear you talk them so amazed at how much notice and wondering
if you can give her
practical can act i'm unhappy to walk
notice because i'm always bizarre in to answer
i'm pay attention to the sensations
in the bottoms of your feet
and the surface you're walking her
the more you're attending to some specific relatively neutral physical sensation and breath the more present in the moment you will make
jack kornfield tells a wonderful story of a shortly after he came back from asia haven't been a monk there was still in his monk's robes kind of wandering around america try to figure out how to live now what am i to i don't know what he was doing in his monk's robe and against casino
vega he said look at that a dharma teaching on the wall even have a place like that tech you have to be present to win
her life
it is also true when you go on a walk and my mom
example for example
in doing that kind of walking miniature automatic on on teachers which is it's a wonderful practice to do out of doors because it's not so strict it's more about listening
noticing and there's a gentleness in in this particular style of walking meditation which i appreciate life
one of the things that i notice some i hear this from people that i practice with over and over again is the where i was attending to the bottoms of my feet and the surface i'm walking and my breath and i my eyes dropped a little bit
all the other sense perceptions become quite heightened
so i begin to hear sound and feel the breeze or the sun on my face
have a greater degree of sensing from the bottoms of my feet
then if i'm looking around because i'm distracted in my mind goes from one thing to another in sight dominates tends to dominate the other senses
if i walk along and suddenly i'll go buy a flower bed they'll be this brilliant purple of an irish just blew me i'll let my i go to that flour and then gently returned to walking and breathing
so it's not strict or a tight but there's a way in which suddenly that hurtful her herbal of the douglas iris it's there in the corner of the bed that just caught my eyes i was walking by and i really see it i hear all the different sounds of the birds and the bushes nearby
when you're sitting in the sandow especially during breeding season and you hear all these birds just carrying on especially the birds and a bill nests and their babies chirping and feeding etc and you sit there are you hear the frogs there you are sitting ten
into your body and breath and like this whole extraordinary symphony
suddenly you think is it always been you
like bill saying that going on bird watching and there's this category little brand words
well as you begin to know the details of yellow crowned sparrows are song sparrows or house finches the more you know about the specific birds the more you see
a couple of days ago i was sitting at bills desk in his study which looks out the window on there is as abundance of bird feeders immediately outside the window and there were may be i don't know easily twenty or more house finches
the range of coloration on was
quite why all the same time all house finches but within that category there was this quite quite big range of coloration and of course a difference between the males and females are the yellow ones also house vicious the
the shade of orange and on over to the com
there were two that were really like canary yellow and then the purple ones are a different
well i've not seen here but it slide ranch i've seen house finches that were purple more than for balloon were purple matches which and balloons you know which we will conquer
barry white house
so they mean
and the more you are with birds the more you begin to realize the same species of bird singing in one area will have slightly different song in san francisco
me is the detail takes you into the landscape in a way that is like it's really entering a tapestry of such satisfaction enriches who needs tv tv looks pale compared to the world of birds and flowers
rs to say nothing of the inner landscape of the breath
but we're so overstimulated were so entertained were so jazzed that we don't slow down enough to attend to the inner landscape so then when we got locked in her bed with you know cancer or reagan broken leg or dying it's like wow
don't know where we are
we get freaked out oh my god i might be bored
how could we be bored i mean it's just we just don't know any better yet the perfect
may i really appreciate enormously the natural world for teaching me how to see what is there
and sometimes what is it
one time years ago up in this year as i had a quite remarkable experience with a brilliant green parrot
who knows if you compare with a thick or i have ever done
i'd hold them
but you know i just hung out in this tree with this bird for a couple of hours i don't quite know what was going on but it was like the world opened

this time of year our friend patty schnyder whose some of you know from her calligraphy work
and she started to the incorporating in her calligraphy a watercolors of wildflowers she does a lot of practice vs to you know so we have signs to hang up to remind ourselves about what it is we want to do so she went out on the me walk yesterday and she came home to her eyes were like this she says
as you can't match my outfit
slink pods it's other name is vetted adders tongue
the blossom comes at the end of this long slinky stam and then out yours is little tiny or giddy flower not that many years ago i'd go for a walk in the woods of frank's valley this time of year
sleep pod what's that i never saw any know just walked past a hundred of them
anyway she just came home just just ecstatic with all the she said you remember that tree that we saw that day when we went out with our friends that was all covered with pink blossoms a little pink buds are just showing
you know she was positively thrilled
to be alive if i mean this is what we mean when we talk about being awake the word buddha means the one who is awake
this path is about being like waking up so we see what is thing clearly clear sightedness
in my experience is that developing one's capacity to see in this way is the cause of joy
and you can't buy it
it's not for sale
yeah i mean effort and work and attending and cultivating and practicing
leads us to the cultivation of opening our eyes instead of worrying about the future and really living republicans that it's an alternative so when you talk about you know where your mind is when you go walking so you don't see the flowers it's because you're in the past to the few
chur that's where most of the sub mutually live
but walk down in the garden in a way where you're really attending to some detail and physical body in the breath
so you're really in each moment with each step
and you will see you will see once you from you you will sense what's in front of you you'll smell from you'll feel the breeze on your scanner your hands are in your hair
we all have far greater capacity i think in this way the way we just begin to know
somebody
i know that know someone who is a very sincere practitioner given to being a little bit idealistic and she's been reading some things about how ah the buddha and turned his mother away when she came and said i want to be ordained and practice when and she'd been worrying about it for the last three weeks
so she started out our conversation with i don't know if the buddha really wasn't lightened
i guess i'm just gonna continue this path but i'm not so sure the buddha was really like
i think the name buddha the word buddha means the one who's awake so that's like saying the one who is awake as a asleep is not awake
i mean you're either away for your not awake
it it never occurred to her that some guy a few centuries later had gone back and rewritten the early sutra with some of these things and suitor
she said oh i am thought of it well that makes me feel much better

waking up
i think the buddha dharma is about waking up being awake being able to see these beautiful narcissus that wendy thought of planting for us a couple of months ago
smelling them
you can absolutely they were it's very scary the you also have
dogs get me st stephen
to ban i just noticed what you just say when i called the great it it's scary reality is
let me make a suggestion
i feel some fear arising in this moment because i have a sense that i will also then the letting him suffering warm
it's a little closer in it's not so distant than when i say it's scare it's a little more out there and the language we use to talk to ourselves has a big effect on our view
i love the word it it is so troublesome every time it arises it means oh you put it out in our little
and of course i think that's exactly accurate i remember after a five day a retreat that a group of a stake here with tecno phones and years ago where we spent those days doing loving kindness meditation and for all we did have been receiving and sending loving kindness and at the end of those
five days we were puddles we were puddles of tears enjoy and what was so striking for me and that retreat was i had a direct experience that joy and sadness are of a piece they are not separate they're not even different faces of the same
thing they are the same character
my capacity for joy is one with my capacity to endure being witness who with mine and other suffering
and so the price i pay in protecting myself from the suffering of the world is that i also minimize my access to joy
it's that's a big class
yeah yeah concern may as well
we use in the way we talk to ourselves about our experiences
it's it's the place where i can enter into what's going on with my mind
and have some access
with state of mind immediately
no not at all i was thinking you are going to consider your words from
judy them
the same
some fashion
application
you bring them it's lack of attention really
ah
point
talk about that
where'd ya we have this sense tho those cars are living today
some mysterious way something we've heard about or and it's those space
we're but what me was the the rabbits to are becoming blind
the eyes
i will not happen to
but you like
well this makes me think of the conversation that i had with joanna macy when she came to visit with troia on brushing last week
and she was talking about the guardianship project as the work of dharma practitioners in the world this is our great opportunity
and how much the project has to do with are being informed having good accurate information
and the project is that a
the way to take care of the toxic waste nuclear toxic waste dumps is to watch them
if we try to hide them or bury them or put them away that's when we're in trouble because we have the technology for containers that will contain this stuff for a while but you'll have to watch the containers to see when they ceased to be effective so you then get a new container so
that means you get to observe and watch and a tim what is so that she says it absurd of with a smile on her face it also means we get to meditate on our our shit
we made this stuff
but the only way we can take care of the nuclear waste is to attend to it
and the minute we start to pretend it isn't there or hide it put an underground put it in the ocean where we can't watch it that's when we're in trouble but he isn't that true of the i mean this is where the relationship between the outer in the inner mean i immediately got off on you know
the inner nuclear toxic waste dump
the elements in the waist down
it's exactly the same so i've taken to describe this sanga of observers as a mob of in many observers he got bird watching and a great hot birds been sighted and then every month they sent a list around about all three birds that have been sighted and they'll be the initials of
rich stock up r s l few the really hot burners have seen all these birds and then every once in awhile on the list thus a mom
who's there it means many observers
i think that's the name of our saga
playing on the word mom i think it's just delicious
a new kind of man
interesting to see how terrified i
really
this is why i think we have to practice because if we don't have a strong root system if we don't have our seat we will freak out our despair and grief as we really mean what is so it's
knox as over i think that's completely right and i imagine that every one of us has a similar this incredible fear and grief that comes up in us when we really look at how thoroughly we have spoiled earnest
and of course to to imagine that it's not too late you know this little piece of paper that i've got hanging on the bedroom wall
do not say too late reverend s scissors nineteen sixty three
who knows what's possible if we keep that mind of right now i can do something what is
can i bear to neural that the rabbits and patagonia are going line and what are the implications
i have a tape of about some indians called the cherokee indians who live up in the andes
who have finally they they're they're a medicine their their priests if you will and kept in a cave without with little bit of candlelight until their nine
and then they come out into the world they go through this very intense training
they're very far out people they finally decided to let somebody
talk to the world about their western tradition because they see all the evidence of the world coming to an end in their environment and they know from what they see in the high mountains where they live what's happening in the rainforests thousands of miles away
and they want to get our attention
so when we think about trees as being part of the lungs of the planet the way of imagining how the trees that are being cut in tibet are being cut and rain forests around the world that affects me right now today and this piece of the plan that were all sitting
now

and i i agree with you i think to consider to notice to observe what is so in the world today what arises in me is fear grief haneke oh my god feel overwhelmed
and it makes me appreciate my seat my cushion
because that's where i come back to center in breathing and from there i can figure out what's possible in the next moment
how many trips if i made to berkeley have i done the maximum number of things with this trip so i don't make two more
because every time i get into my car what are the consequences
pm
f please
ancient egypt course

lunch
a couple of you've heard me tell this story yesterday so bear with me but i think it's a pertinent
because the sort of subtext and what i'm bringing up about trees as to do with are cultivating our capacity for transformation
this
lama that's doing the series of talks with joanna macy
whose name is cho yola vishay who is himself trained as it to a chunk of hair
the other night after a
spending some time with him mind for it was driving a drove him back to berkeley to joanna's house in the
after he went to bed joy innocent oh before you leave i want to show you some pictures that he gave to me that are not for sale as he selling a lot of his pictures to raise money for some projects he's doing the tibetan refugees in india and nepal in some of his people and com in eastern tibet
and she showed me this watercolor that like so
and it looks like in the middle is kind of very muted
watercolor drawing of a monastery glowing fiery orange ran but then over it is is kind of overlay of grey like rainstorm
it's a drawing he did remembering the experience he ham
i've heard the story twice now once he was eleven and the other time he was thirteen young he was the avid of his monastery in com and the chinese soldiers were headed towards the monastery so his ah
to peak hi i'm so his teachers and tutors quickly got him out of the monastery and up into the mountains
overlooking monastery and from where they were hidden he could look down and he watched the soldiers come in and
get all the monks into the pooja room related their daily practices and they then burned the monster
and he sat there and watched them as they as the monastery burn
and as he showed a joanna this picture of the day he gave it to her he said or this is a drawing of my remembering that experience through my tears
they put the drawing down on the table and he said or chinese
the poor chinese they are making such terrible karma points

and when you meet this man today he is a person of remarkable presence
and softness and open heartedness
it took him a year to escape from tibet and get to india
and as he talks about the experiences when he first left there were a thousand of them trying to leave together and they very quickly realized that they wouldn't all make it in that bigger group and they had such an investment in saving his life that a smaller group of thirty including a family took a
him
in most of the remaining group didn't make it they died they were killed and imprisoned but he and the group he was with did make it although they were captured twice
and he said you know i knew their the chinese would destroy tibet completely there would be nothing left including the environment
and so part of what i've been doing especially in those first years after leaving to bet is to paint what i remembered so that we would not forget what you like
so many of his paintings are these absolutely beautiful
renderings of this exquisite landscape and the life of the no man so are his people in eastern tibet in this exquisite landscape so that we will remember
and when joanna said how have you transform fear anger your grief and sadness great sickness he said throw on a painting and through my practices
and when i think about that picture than the that that night i came home and i i wasn't able to sleep and it wasn't so much my response to the horror of what he was disappointed he was remembering as much as as sense of his ability to stay present he didn't turn away
he watched what happened
ah and to see the quality of his mind and his presence today just having a slight glimmer of what is history has been from the last
what is it since nineteen fifty nine
and i think gee when i'm working with his pale
so what comes up for me is feeling inspired to apply my energy and attention once again to the inner toxic waste dump of lima
and to feel inspiration that this man is able to continue with a happy and joyful an open heart perhaps then i can also
in he's going back into tibet and working with the people who were there in finding a way to have the tradition which he knows so deeply be relevant in the world is living in so he's not trying to recreate the monastic strict structure as much as he wants to wow
would lay people he wants to train lay people in this great and ancient wisdom tradition he's particularly interested in cultivating women teachers
so remarkable being
and i think we all need examples of people who are actually able to transform our experiences that bring us to a halt in the way that this person is able to and i think it's totally what joanna's work with the guardian project is over
anyway i encourage all of you to well here the two of they're doing a talk friday night
ah at a church near cis and san francisco
they were
right to thirteen ft waller friday night at seven thirty and he's also going to be speaking at term in santa cruz on sunday
but you know their we all have if we're lucky upon occasion matt
people who are inspiring and i think what inspires us are people who have shown us that this path is actually possible to the on it's not some sort of theoretical description of something some mythic being did once twenty five hundred years it

how do we look at the apartment year
well impermanence doesn't mean the end
when i think it's it's the trap or in our western philosophical system
you know if if we really believed this is where everyone's real than when this gets burned up we don't notice that own our to ash
impermanence means everything changes it doesn't mean everything comes to and and the am no more the void
so the earth is this extraordinary constantly change room system which is out of balance how do we to me the question is how do we come back into balance
you know the uruk indians thought that they have to do the job dance at times like this
they had to jump on the side that was down too far or up to hide to bring it back in balance with the other part of the world that's why you do the junk things and you'd have to fast and purify yourself before you do the germans or why you do the deer days would be to bring the world back into balance back in harmony
everything changes is
the mean you know that's that's where we have this extraordinary meeting of quantum physics and particularly the articulation of emptiness emptiness and dependent arising comes out of the buddha's teaching
the same description what exists is relationality
a we freak out because we think oh emptiness that means voidness
just a misunderstanding

why the central focus of meditation practices his unemployment
so we become more accustomed to noticing that what is true as everything changes
him

so where do i get caught where do i get scared where's that
come for when does that arise
let loose hold onto your hat and enjoy the ride
that's not though
have you noticed
i am
i bet that involved in fact