mentioned this morning clear, I want to explicitly state the context in which I am speaking. And that is the context of the whole project of life and, in particular, the project of the awakening to the nature of life and freedom from suffering. And also the international movement, Transmillennial International Movement, which is called

[01:06]

Mahayana Buddhism which is the assembled intention of millions of people who are working to benefit innumerable living beings and In particular, the appearance of a Buddha or Buddha in the world is due to many causes. But the main cause, the primary cause, the one great cause of a Buddha or of Buddha appearing in the world is... Do you know what it is? Number one cause.

[02:08]

What is it? Sentient beings. Sentient beings. Sentient beings is the cause, is the main cause of the appearance of Buddhas. Living beings. You could say suffering beings because almost... Well, a lot of living beings are suffering. But actually, you can just say sentient beings are the main cause for the appearance of Buddhas. And then once Buddhas appear, they give teachings to sentient beings, and the teachings are primarily to help the sentient beings be happy, be free, and be effective and unhindered in their work of helping other sentient beings to be happy and free and so on.

[03:17]

And one of the things which also comes along with this is a state, or not a state, quality of peace and harmony among all the living beings. So, the context of my talk is the work to enlighten all beings, to free all beings, and to initiate, to discover and sustain and nourish and protect peace and harmony among them. I'm talking about awakening work and I'm talking about peace work. Is there something happening over in that corner of the room? What happened to it?

[04:23]

A little Buddha attention over there to the hummingbird. I'm going to give you two Zen stories which I have been studying for particularly the last few months out at the Green Gulch practice periods. And these two stories, I think, I find quite helpful in instructing how to do piece work. which by the way is the same as ecological work I feel and I might also say before I start through the stories that I see and propose to you a connection intimate connection between activities which damage and harm the earth

[06:03]

and the way we think, which I guess makes sense. We think in such a way that we can act in such a way as to cause harm to living beings and the earth and plants. So part of what I'm, in a sense, the essence of what I'm going to bring up today is to change the way we think. to a different kind of thinking from the kind of thinking that damages living beings and the whole Earth. So I propose, I don't know what you want to call the kind of thinking that damages the Earth. You can choose your own name for the color, but I would choose to call the kind of thinking that protects and sustains the living Earth, I would call that kind of thinking, green thinking.

[07:10]

So by not thinking green, by not being involved in green thinking, people can do harmful things. And I also propose that the I see a connection between the overweening power of the nation state and also the overweening power of the market economy, which according to certain sociologists, those two, the state and the market economy, are invading and assaulting the world of the living. I propose to you to look to see the connection between these powerful forces which are assaulting the lives of beings on the planet to see their power out of hand as related to our inability to have a community to be in close friendly harmonious

[08:33]

nourishing relationship with each other. So these two stories, I think, point to green thinking and point to how to nourish and live in and protect our little villages. And these two may be very helpful in changing the way the world thinks and changing the way we live together to address these harmful forces of war, ecological abuse, and overly powerful state and business communities. So that's a lot to start with. It's almost time to stop.

[09:36]

But I'll give you these two stories and you can study them for the rest of your life. They're pretty simple, so you can just about memorize them probably today. They're stories which appear in a book called The Book of Serenity. which is at the printers right now. And so you should be able to get it in your hands in four weeks or something like that. It's a book of Zen stories, 100 Zen stories. And so then we can study that book together for the rest of our lives also. The fourth and fifth stories are the stories I want to talk about today. And I propose to you to look at these stories also as songs.

[10:42]

Songs of our village. Of our little Zen village. And I don't know exactly the tune of these. We haven't figured out a melody or a tune to go with these stories. So listen carefully. See if you can hear the melody. I think one way to do this is I'll say a line and then you say a line. I'll say a line and you say a line. Okay? So the first story is the fourth story in the book, the fourth case. And the name of the case is the world-honored one points to the earth. Buddha points to the earth. Awakening points to the earth. So that's really pretty much it. Please remember, Buddha points to the earth.

[11:47]

Buddha indicates and reminds us of our mother. Buddha leaves home, but always reminds us of our mother. So... Now, I'll say a line, you say a line, okay? As the World Honored One was walking along with the congregation, he pointed to the ground with his finger and said, this but is good for building a sanctuary. Indra, the emperor of the gods, took a blade of grass and stuck it in the ground.

[13:02]

said, the sanctuary is built. The world honored one smiled. Now, do you remember it? If we can do it. As the world honored one was walking along with the congregation, the he pointed to the ground with his finger and said, this spot is good for building a sanctuary. Indra, the emperor of the gods, took a blade of grass and stuck it in the ground and said, the sanctuary is built. The world honored one's smile. Okay, that's the first story. And the second story is even easier to remember.

[14:15]

It's called Sagan's Rice Price. Okay, please do the same. A monk asked Sagan, What's the ultimate meaning of the Buddha Dharma? Sagan said, What's the price of rice in Lu Ling? Sagan said, what's the price of rice in Lu Ling? A monk asked Sagan, what's the ultimate meaning of the Buddha Dharma? Sagan said, what's the price of rice in Lu Ling? Good. Those are the two stories. Okay, now see if I can get into them a little bit.

[15:22]

The first story has two or three or more main points. I don't know how many main points a story can have, but it has at least two or three I'd like to point out. First point is... world honored one pointed to the ground and he said this is a place to build a sanctuary which one simple meaning of that is that this is that this is a good place to build a sanctuary and by this he means he means this he means here He means now. That the Buddha suggests that if you want to know where to build a place of peace and tranquility and ease in this world, the place to build it is always here

[16:45]

and now. Not over there and not tomorrow or yesterday, but right here now. That's the first point. In Zen, we call it, in Japanese, it's called Genjo Koan. Sometimes translated as the manifestation of ultimate reality. or the present manifestation of ultimate reality. Or sometimes it's translated as the issue at hand. Buddha is suggesting that you use what is at hand to build a sanctuary. Wherever you are, however you feel, he's actually suggesting to use that opportunity.

[17:45]

No matter how weird you feel, no matter how depressed you are, no matter how sick you are, no matter how old you are, no matter how young you are, no matter where you are, no matter when it is, he suggests using that opportunity immediately. We had a guy told a story about a teacher. I think he was a teacher of botany or something like that. And he was not just... Maybe he was a college professor. I don't know. But he taught in a very... Like an apprentice type... He taught in an apprenticed type of way. And people came to study with him. And they would...

[18:50]

So they'd come and say, well, I'd like to study plants with you. And then he would say, okay, please find, I think maybe five species of plants and tell me about them or show me them. And if they took a step away from where they were, he said, you can't study with me. He would only accept the people who would reach down at their feet and come up with five species pretty strict but anyway that's the story now I don't know if he did that test on cement but of course not of course let it be known that there are far more than five species of plants on most few square feet of cement in front of you.

[19:54]

You can't see them, but you could even do it on cement. But let's say you're on the ground. If you would reach down with a cup and scoop up a cup of earth, there are more plants, blue plants, and microorganisms in that cup than there are people on the planet. So you don't have to go too far to get something to work on. However, we often would rather work on something else than what we've got. We think that what's happening now is not a very good candidate for our work. So we often want to get a little healthier, a little more enlightened, a little more calm, a little more whatever, and then start working on that.

[21:07]

That seems like a good opportunity. Buddhists say, this spot is good for building a sanctuary. And then Indra takes a blade of grass, and I, again, would see this grass as green, although it could be California grass, which is sometimes brown or golden-colored, but I see it as a green piece of grass, and he sticks it in the ground and says, the sanctuary's built. He could have also scooped up a little dirt or picked up a pebble and put it on the ground and said the sanctuary is built. Or he could have taken his ballpoint pen and stuck it in the ground and said the sanctuary is built. Or he could have taken several logs and built a building and said the sanctuary is built. But I like that he used a piece of grass.

[22:08]

All those other things I mentioned could be things that were right at hand. So he wasn't going someplace else. He just used what was right at hand. He used this spot to build the sanctuary. I think by using a piece of grass, he elucidated a further meaning of Buddha's instruction, namely that the here and the now that you use to build a sanctuary is not your idea of here and now. You use the actual here and now to build a sanctuary, not what you think is here and not what you think is now, and not not what you think and not what you feel is here and now. In other words, you use the real, fresh, green here and now. And the fact that we often don't want to use what's happening to us to build a sanctuary and we'd rather have something else happen is often just because what's happening is green.

[23:14]

It's so green and so fresh, it is not what we would like to have be happening. That's the green thing we should use to build a sanctuary. And also, being green and being fresh, it also is not something you can use again. Because it's so fresh and so green, you can only use it once. If you use a rock, if Indra had used a rock, you might think, Well, you can use the rock to build a sanctuary, and then the sanctuary will sit there, and you can use it again in the next moment. I don't think so. I think he's trying to point out that what you use to build a sanctuary, you use now, but you cannot use that again. You have to use something else in the next moment to build a sanctuary. And in fact, once we are able to build a sanctuary, we often will want to cling to that sanctuary and hope that that would last for a little while so we don't have to build another one.

[24:23]

This is a human laziness. So the first story, I think, is pointing out how to think green, how to find green, how to discover green, and how to make the finding of green in your life the place of sanctuary in the world. I've told this story before I tell it one more time today. At the end of a movie called Hannah and Her Sisters, and I think that's the name of it, and they were having a birthday party for Hannah, and they had the cake out there, and they lit the candles, and they said, okay, make a wish, and Hannah said, well,

[25:26]

It's not exactly a wish. It's more like a vision. And it's a vision of us here, standing around a birthday cake, and we're all happy. But it's just for this moment. It's not for any other time. It's just for now that we're happy. It's okay to wish that people will be happy, people will be happy and people will continue to be happy. But, in fact, inside of that wish should be the abandonment of all desire for people to be happy. The Buddha movement, the movement towards peace and happiness, is very much motivated by the desire for everyone to be free and happy.

[26:32]

But in order for that to be effective, it has to be green. In other words, the people who are working for the benefit of others have to abandon all their ideas of what benefit is. If you hold on to your idea of what's beneficial, if you hold on to your idea of what's helpful, if you hold on to your idea of what enlightenment is and what freedom is And what good and bad are, in fact, all that will hinder you from using your fresh reality to live. We must be fresh in order to actually be helpful. And in order to be fresh, we have to abandon all human emotion. by the way, is also the price of rice and liu ling.

[27:37]

And abandon all human emotion does not mean you do not have human emotion because if you don't have human emotion, you can't abandon human emotion. Only those who are emotional can abandon emotion. Also, to abandon human craving, you can't abandon it if you don't have any. And if you don't have any craving and you don't have any emotion, then congratulations, you're not a human. Which is fine. I'm not criticizing you if you're not human. I would like to meet you, but I'm not criticizing you. Buddha appears in the midst of human emotion. Buddha appears in the midst of human craving. But Buddha is not indulgence in human emotion and indulgence in human craving. Buddha is to completely abandon it. But abandon it doesn't mean reject it. It means neutralize it. It means build a sanctuary in it.

[28:41]

It means in the middle of human emotion, in the middle of human craving, abandon it and find peace and clarity right in the middle of it and see how fresh it is and be willing to be fresh in the midst of your emotional life. when we have ceremonies to initiate people in Buddhism, we sprinkle them with water. And the impulse of this sprinkling with water is to wake them up, to refresh them, to get them to abandon their past and to enter the real present. We encourage people to cut Away all attachment and enter into life. Don't hold on to life to help you get into light.

[29:43]

Nobody needs any dry cleaning. Please be fresh and green at every moment. This is called taking a step off the top of a 100-foot pole. You have to do it. I have to do it. If you don't do it, You're just simply blocking yourself from being really alive, and only living people can help. And it takes courage to take a step off the top of a 100-foot pole. But it's not dangerous. As soon as you step off the top of a 100-foot pole, your foot will land on a green grass. And then you have to step off that and off that continuously into the real here and now, which is where you abandon your idea of what here and now is.

[31:22]

That's a little bit about my feeling for the first story and a little bit about turning our mind from the kind of thinking which can abuse the environment To green thinking. When you think green, I propose when you think green, you will not hurt the earth. You will not. You will work for freshness and work for life. And the world honored one smiled. Well, the next story. is simple, and it has a little verse at the end of it, which I'd like to recite. This is the one. The monk asked, say again, what's the ultimate? Ultimate. He didn't say what's the intermediate or beginning meaning. He said, what's the ultimate?

[32:28]

What's the final? What's the vast and great meaning of the Buddha Dharma? And say again, said, what's the price of rice in Lu Ling? What's the price of rice in in San Francisco, or Salinas. And the verse celebrating this story goes, accomplishing the great work of peace has no special sign. The family style of peasants is most pristine. only concerned with village songs and festal drinking. What do they need to know of the virtues of Shun and the benevolence of Yao?

[33:28]

The verse is suggesting that the work, that what people think brings about peace, you can't say for sure what kind of activity, what kind of effort is going to bring peace in the world. It may not work the way you think. However, The family style of peasants is most pristine. Just concerned with village songs and festal drinking. Again, just taking care of what's at hand, and in particular, singing songs with your friends and drinking with your friends. Just every relationship you have. That's all. every person you meet and to meet and find greenness in every single meeting no one knows what that will be no one can say what it means to meet your friend and all the friends in the village you don't know what that will look like it has no particular sign or image or mark

[35:07]

But that is the work. The work is to sing and dance and drink with the people in your village and to find greenness in every single interaction. That accomplishes the work of peace. But nobody knows how. And it's not easy. It's not easy to meet each person with a green mind and a green heart. But to take care of our household, to take care of our household, our village, with a green heart, makes our housekeeping peace work. Green housekeeping, greenhouse cleaning, is piecework sometimes you may understand how that works sometimes you may not the families in a village you have to have you have to work on your relationship with everybody in the village you can't get away you can't just be friends with part of the people in the village

[36:37]

Well, you can be, but then that's not peace. So think about the people that are close to you and think about whether you can feel total devotion to each person that you know. And again, if you have trouble feeling total devotion to each person you know, then I refer you to the land of green. Because if you can think green, you can find the love, the interest, the enthusiasm for being dedicated to everybody, even so-and-so. But without green, in other words, if you're not green, means you hold on to some idea of how people are supposed to be, or who you should help, or what help is, if you don't let go of that, you aren't green, and then some people you won't be able to help, and some people in the village you won't be friends with, and therefore there won't be peace in the village.

[37:52]

As Robert Penn Warren said, us that now know only at the death of ambition does the deep energy crack crust, spurt forth. The energy which can, the deep energy, inexhaustible energy which can sustain you in being devoted to all beings comes from the death of ambition. The death of ambition to be someplace else and to be somebody else from who you are. The death of ambition of building a sanctuary someplace else besides here. When that ambition dies,

[39:03]

you get a gift of creative energy which can figure out a way to be interested in helping everybody, every other, especially strangers, foreigners, and enemies. I can't get all my examples here today, but I'll tell you one. We recently had a, we recently planned to do a peace ceremony at Tassajara. And we wanted the children to be involved.

[40:05]

And I thought it was a good idea when I first heard about it. And I tried to get the children together before up here in San Francisco. And they didn't seem to be interested. And so I was thinking that this ceremony was going to be kind of a flop. And I was getting worried. I never did a peace ceremony at Tassajara with the kids before. I didn't know how. It wasn't in the manual. for Soto Zen ceremonies and the kids weren't cooperating. So I looked forward with some fear to the weekend of the flop. So finally it came time to do the ceremony and we gathered the children together and some of the adults who were interested and Part of the idea of celebrating peace was that there is some feeling that the Cold War is abating or winding down.

[41:18]

Some people even say ending. I didn't feel comfortable saying ending myself. But anyway, to celebrate the possibility of peace and the recent changes in the world which seem to be working to support that possibility. So we talked to the children about this, asked them if they knew what the Cold War was, and so on. Asked them what they thought peace was, and none of them would say anything. So I wound up making a suggestion about the shape of the ceremony, being that each child would pick a flower someplace at Tazahara and bring it to the Zendo, And would go in in a procession carrying the flowers and each child would offer a flower to Buddha, offer a flower for peace and happiness and kindness to all people and animals and plants.

[42:21]

And then they would offer incense to all the people who have suffered and all the beings that have suffered in war. That would be a kind of formal ceremony. And then one of the parents said that someone, we didn't know that someone was her son, someone had suggested to her that peace could be like a game. Peace could be fun. And I think some people think that peace wouldn't be much fun. You know, kind of like, take away war, take away passion. take away selfishness, you know, just level everything out, and then it's peace, right? Take all the hormones out of little boys, and then there would be peace. There were little boys down there at Tassajara, several little boys, three of them, and, you know, if I say hi to those little boys, they don't answer me.

[43:32]

Hi. Another adult being friendly. Oh, that's all I need, you know. What a distraction. But if you say to them, you want to punch me? You want to fight? Immediately, they're very interested. And the same little boy who doesn't want you to say hello to him loves to punch his dad. There's something there that wants to exercise itself. How can that energy, how can those hormones be turned towards fun, towards happiness, towards peace, toward the game? If we don't figure that out, that energy is going to go someplace. It is born every generation.

[44:38]

It's the energy that makes arms extend and enjoy extending with energy. Little boys sometimes get a big thrill out of a nice tackle. The feeling of contact is a joy. You can't eliminate it, but how can you turn it towards peace? So someone said, well, we could have a tug-of-war, but that doesn't seem appropriate. And then someone said, well, maybe we could all push on something. And then, this is like going back and forth between adults and children. An adult said, we could have a tug-of-war, but it doesn't seem appropriate. And then a kid said, we could all push on something. And then another kid said, Yeah, we could have a peace push. A push of peace.

[45:41]

And then someone said, we could put up a wall and push it down. And actually, the T-shirt, this event happened at the weekend where we have what's called a no race, and the T-shirt that week had a wall motif, and the wall was being broken. And so we said, yeah, we could put up a wall and we could push the wall down. And then someone said, yeah, the wall could be adults. And the children could push the wall down. And we can make two walls. You know, Berlin Wall has two walls. Each side had their own wall, right? So we thought we could put up two adult walls and the children could push them down. And we said, okay, but when you push the wall down, Don't hurt the wall. Don't kick the wall. Don't bite the wall. Don't poke the eyes in the wall. You just push kindly, but you can push as hard as you want.

[46:49]

So we did the ceremony in the Zendo, and we came down, we made these two walls, and the children came running at the walls, and they didn't hurt the walls, but they really did push, and they really did knock a lot of the wall over, but they didn't knock the whole wall over because some of the adults really, you know, were not pushovers. But they actually did push them over. And then they pushed the other one over. And then they wanted to do it again. So they did. And they pushed it over again. And the piece was fun. The piece was like a game. And the community created that together. No one knew how to do it. It was fresh. It was green. And it happened.

[47:40]

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