I was thinking that it's a little surprising or maybe kind of sweet, too, that there's some opinion among the... certain martial arts traditions that the Zen founder, Bodhidharma, was also someone who started the martial arts traditions in China. I thought it's kind of interesting because he's an Indian. The idea that an Indian Buddhist master would come to China and start these Chinese practices another possibility is that these practices were already going on in China and that the Chinese taught it to Bodhidharma and that he allowed them to do it and when you put the Chinese tradition together with the Indian Buddhist tradition that that was a very fruitful meeting

[01:15]

It's another possibility, so that maybe Bodhidharma didn't, maybe these martial arts practices didn't really start from an Indian teacher, but that the infusion of Buddhism into the martial arts tradition that was going on already in China was an enhancement of the Chinese tradition, which made it even more vital. And again, we have this teaching that Bodhidharma supposedly gave of outwardly in relationships, stop. So one way is to say outwardly stop all relationships is

[02:21]

which in some sense doesn't make any sense, or another way would be, in all the outward world, in the entire universe, that seems to be out there, from the perspective of yourself, whatever seems to be out there, whatever seems to be not you, stop having relationships with anything that's not you. So everybody that you meet who you think is not you, don't get involved in anything that you think is external or not you. And then if you do, He didn't talk about that, but if you do, then I would suggest that the typical thing to do in the Buddhist tradition or the tradition of the Buddha is confess that you're involved in a dualistic relationship.

[03:40]

So if you meet someone and think they're outside you and then you relate to them, then you confess, I'm participating in a dualistic relationship. in a dualistic relationship. I'm participating in this relationship as though this person or this thing I'm looking at is external to me. And I confess this, and I know that this is not what the Buddha taught, but that's where I'm at. And I just thought I might also mention that I've been reading a series of articles in The New Yorker on, I think it's called The Climate of Man, is it called The Climate of Man? In other words, the climate that humans live in on this planet.

[04:45]

And it's about, in a sense, it's about global warming. how close a tremendous climatic change is to us. Some of you younger people might be alive 50 years from now. Some of us might not be alive 50 years from now. But about 50 years from now, if we don't emit carbon into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide and other kinds of carbon-based stuff, if we don't increase the rate at which we're emitting it from our cars and power plants and so on, By 2054, the level of carbon compounds in the air will reach a level of 500 parts per million.

[05:52]

Now it's 378. And already the temperature is rising. It's already warmer than it's been for a really long time. And so then... It isn't just that the sea level will rise and people have to move to Minneapolis. It's that, yeah, it's a nice place. Or, you know, other places inland, but it may be that there will be a big drought or something, too, for many years. And we'll lose all our food. And there will be a very painful... very painful death in the process. And this will be like, you know, some of our grandchildren who have to go through this, which we don't want to have happen. So, I wonder, you know, what does...

[07:05]

qigong and tai chi and zen meditation have to do with how can that help us in a situation where we are part of a process of contributing to what looks like a ecological disaster that's getting closer and closer if If we don't, you know, and of course it could come faster than it, it could come on faster too, but it looks very difficult to turn this around. Again, how can we tune into a meditation of not getting involved in externality and or a meditation of confessing that we are habitually hung up on externality?

[08:30]

or do both meditations. Sometimes remember that we're seeing things as external to ourselves and renounce that approach. And the other way is when we get caught by it, confess our dualistic habit. And then you can tie that in with any kinds of work you'd like to do to reduce carbon emissions. And so I'm wondering, should I stop traveling and just stay in one place? Or if I travel, you know, like it would take me a month to get to Tassajara, right? Could I walk to Tassajara in a month? Is that possible? Yeah, so I could walk to Tassajara in a month and I could maybe get to Berkeley in a day.

[09:39]

Europe would take really a long time. But, you know, you could stop off at various places on the way. You could walk to Berkeley and then to Sacramento and then to Omaha. Minneapolis, Chicago. So I guess you could just start walking around the world. Yeah, so maybe that would be okay. Or just stay where we are and meditate on not getting involved in anything outside ourself. which means don't get involved in delusions that things are outside you. Or another translation is breathe through the illusion that things are outside you.

[10:49]

Be gentle with the appearance that these other people are not you. which is similar to being gentle with the other people. Quite similar. Because if other people were you, you probably would be gentle with them. Is there anything you'd like to talk about? Yes. Yes. Is it related? Yeah. The first column on the right, the first four characters say outwardly stop all involvements.

[11:52]

And then it says, inwardly, there'll be no blockage in your mind, no constriction, no gasping in sort of your, the breath of your mind will not be hindered anymore. And that says, next line says, with a mind like a wall. So walls do not consider the rest of the world external to them. Having a mind like that Thus you enter the way, and that means the way of Buddha, the way of peace and harmony. So again, looking at Buddha's life, he was not a big carbon emitter. He exhaled carbon dioxide, but that was about it. Just his own breath was... Pretty much. And maybe he made some fires, but I don't know of any records of him making fires. But then you say, well, he lived in India, so it wasn't necessary.

[12:56]

It's hot. But he didn't drive in a car, airplane, or anything that we know of. And so if we are radical and go back to Buddha's life and Bodhidharma also, he even went to China where it's cold and sat in the snow without even making a fire. So... Can anyone ask what the four characters are? Yes? It does seem to be something, sorry, from scientists. In fact, they're a size of parts of whole ice. Yeah, so I mean, they're being broken off. It's threshold. Or is it melts? They have something to serve. There was a movie recently that went down the size of a block like that. It dramatically happened.

[13:59]

Five weeks, right, like 50 years. You're saying that some scientists think that something could happen this summer. Yeah, right. Right now. Right now there is. Yeah, it's a sailing boat. It's very scary, sort of. We might have done something that's too late to start. Yeah, that's right. And if that's the case, how shall we practice? Yes? Pardon? Practice what? Oh, seppuku. I thought you said sampaku. Do you know what sampaku is? No, I don't. What is it? It's when the lower part of the whites of your eyes show. It's the lower part, right?

[15:01]

It's a sign that you're off balance. I don't know if we should, actually. Seppuku is a ritual suicide, which usually involves disemboweling yourself. I'm sorry. Yesterday Mark asked how I see or do I have some comments on my awareness of breath in meditation?

[16:32]

One way to approach this instruction of outwardly ceasing all involvements is to understand that this instruction will work best or you'll be able to receive this instruction best when you're already quite calm. If you're not calm, it may be rather difficult to be aware of how you're seeing the world as external to yourself and let go of that sense of externality so letting go of externality is a wisdom training and wisdom training usually works best or is usually recommended on the basis of being quite calm and tranquility or calm is also usually based on

[17:54]

for some period of time letting go of discursive thought. So sitting in meditation or walking in meditation and observing your posture, being mindful of your posture or your breathing and then giving up discursive thought in relationship to your posture or your breathing comes to fruit as tranquility. So a lot of people think of a tranquility practice of meditating on the breath or being mindful of the breath. If you're mindful of your breath in such a way that, for example, when you're exhaling, you're aware that you're exhaling and all kinds of other discursive thoughts are basically released. So, you're where you're exhaling, and that's about it.

[18:57]

You don't think... For example, you wouldn't get into, oh, I'm exhaling, and I'm aware of it, and I'm meditating quite well, and I'll be calm soon. You wouldn't get into that, for example, or that, plus even more, that I'll be calm soon, but I shouldn't be thinking I'll be calm soon, because that's discursive thought, and I should be giving that up. And actually, it's hard to give it up, isn't it? And I'm getting quite upset at how hard it is, and I'm not getting calm at all, and I'll never get calm. And who assigned me this stupid meditation in the first place? And, you know, I think these other people are somewhat better than me. Some of them are. These people over there are better and these people aren't. Of course, this sounds like the way most people are thinking most of the time, this kind of comparison to how other people are meditating or other people are working or other people are talking or how you're doing well. All this stuff is discursive thought. Checking out on how you're doing and how other people are doing and how you're doing in relationship to them and how they're doing in relationship to each other.

[20:03]

and also checking on you know uh co2 emissions from cars and energy consumption and worrying about all this stuff and thinking about all this this this is the kind of thinking that is agitated this is a characteristic of agitated thought so but you can meditate on your breath or your posture and while you're doing it train your mind to give up any kind of conceptual involvement in, for example, your breathing process. And if you do that, you become calm. If you consistently do it, you become calm. Once you're calm, then you can give up that practice of giving up discursive thought. You can stop giving up discursive thought, and then you can use discursive thought to practice wisdom, and you can practice wisdom on the breath. So you can switch from not being discursive about your breathing, now that you're calm, and now look at the fact that you're, look at whether you think your breath is external

[21:09]

Do you think that there's you in your breath or your awareness in your breath? And if you do, give up your involvement with the breath even as being an external object or something that's separate from your consciousness. Then the breath of meditation would shift from a tranquility mode to the insight mode. If you meditate on your breath, if you melt up your breathing or your posture and you give up discursive thought, you will become calm and concentrated. So now in this Tai Chi workshop, we're learning these forms and there's some effort to do the forms without thinking so much about anything else than the forms while we're doing the forms. We're concentrating on these forms. And a lot of times when you're learning a new thing, you actually sometimes find it easy either to concentrate on it with no discursive thought, or at least to notice that when you become involved in discursive thought, you can't do the new form.

[22:27]

So like, for example, if you're just learning to tightrope walk, Then you could maybe be tightrope walking at a low altitude, like, you know, two feet off the ground or something. You get up on the tightrope, you notice that if you think of anything besides balancing in the tightrope, you probably will fall off right away. But if you can just focus on balancing, you might be able to tightrope walk. So then you're walking across the rope fairly successfully for a few feet, and then you can see that as soon as you think of what day it is or how long you've been doing it or whether you'll make it the rest of the way, you notice that that thought makes it harder to balance and you fall off. And you get back on again, you try it again, and you notice again that if you just... put all your energy into trying to balance, you can do it. But then if you think of something else, you can't.

[23:34]

One time I was trapped in Tassajara because of the snow on the ridge, and I made an appointment to give a talk in San Francisco, and we tried to get a truck out, and people were digging trenches for the wheels of the truck, and then finally we gave up, and came back, and somebody says, I have skis. So I went up the hill again with skis, and started skiing out of Tau Sahara, and I'm not an experienced skier. But anyway, I was skiing up there, and I noticed just this very thing that... And it was so beautiful up there. It was like... Well, you can imagine what it's like up there when it's covered with snow, and also it was sunny. It was so beautiful. And because we made these various attempts, by the time I actually got up there, it was sunset. So it was sunny, and the sky was blue, and the sky was... pink and red and purple and white snow. It was unbelievably lovely, but I didn't get to look around.

[24:41]

If I looked around at the scenery, I fell. That was okay, but some of the falling wouldn't have been okay. I would have gone off the cliff. So I had to give up looking around at the beautiful scenery and just concentrate on one step after another. And that's what I did, and that way I was able to ski over the mountain, just focusing one step after another. So if you could, and in a state like that, you get quite concentrated. You don't get to look around and write poetry, necessarily, but you can ski, and you also have the joy of being concentrated, and you get calmed. So that's the common way to be with your breath. Just breath after breath after breath after breath. This is boring. Forget that.

[25:43]

Breath after breath after breath. This is so boring. Breath after breath. Step after step after step after step after step. That's it. And if you do and live that simply with your breathing or your posture, you become calm. Then when you're calm, then you can open up to the teaching that says this breath is not external to your consciousness. But we do think it is. We're innately inclined to think that the things we're aware of are external. So then we start working on this delusion that the breath, that our posture, that our friends, that the earth, we start working on this sense that the subject and the object are separate. We try to train ourselves to get over that.

[26:47]

And you can do that with the breath. So the breath can be an object for tranquility, and then it can be an object for insight, and then once it's an object for insight, then you can also combine the practice of it being an object for tranquility with it being an object for insight, and then you go even deeper into the insight. Yes? ... For some people it happens naturally or we might say not deliberately for some people. For other people, a lot of people, for example, they may be talking with their meditation instructor about doing this tranquility practice and they're checking in about it. And sometimes they even say, you know, am I calm enough to move into insight? And the meditation teacher might say, no, I don't think so.

[27:49]

Keep working on concentration longer. So some people are like frequently checking with their teacher about whether they're calm enough to move into insight practice. And so they might get to a point where the teacher would actually, before they would have noticed that they were calm, the teacher might say, you're calm enough now. You can switch your attention from giving up discursive thought. You're calm enough now. You can switch your attention now to use your discursive thought to apply these teachings. So the teacher might tell the student before the student even naturally evolved. But if somebody was doing this and they were successful and they had heard these teachings before someplace, and they weren't conversing with their teacher, they might naturally shift from one to the other. They might become calm and these teachings would occur to their mind, but these teachings wouldn't be distractions anymore. They would say, oh, I'm calm now, this is not distraction. This is actually, I can engage this kind of talk without getting upset. And that's another sign, a way to, with your teacher on your own,

[28:54]

I sometimes say that one of the ways you can tell whether you're ready to switch from tranquility practice to insight practice is if you start using discursive thought and it doesn't disturb you, if you feel calm and you start using discursive thought and you don't get upset, then you're probably, number one, calm, and number two, you're using your discursive thought in a way that's insight rather than agitating discursive thought. Ordinary discursive thought is not the application of wisdom instruction. Ordinary discursive thought is habitual, self-serving neurotic activity, which should be given up in order to be tranquil. But then when you're tranquil, you don't pick up the neurotic discursive thought, you pick up thinking about teachings, which you have learned already in a discursive environment. So it can be spontaneous though sometimes.

[29:57]

I know some cases where people have heard teachings get calm and the teachings just pop up in the calm and they immediately are doing the insight work without even noticing that they're doing the insight work. In other words, they just have an insight very quickly. But other cases they consciously move from one to the other. Like they say, I think I'm ready, and the teacher says, okay, and then they actually shift their attention to a different type of training. And it's pretty clear which is which once you study the difference. Yes. Yes. No, I wouldn't say become calm before you engage in these issues because you're already engaging with these issues and whatever level of calm you're at, you in particular and me in particular, we're already engaged in that, right?

[31:15]

We've already heard about it. We already are sympathetic to the suffering that will arise if this catastrophe happens. We're already involved in it. So you're already involved in it. We're already involved in it. I'm just saying, as you go forward from here, it will be very useful to you if you're very concentrated. But you're already involved. You're already contributing to the problem or helping the problem in some way. So we're already all involved in it. But I'm just saying, how about bring some composure and concentration into our participation in this very difficult situation? We're in an ecological crisis. How about bringing some concentration into the mix? as soon as possible. If you're concentrated, if you could be concentrated like this really quickly, you would notice that you're much more effective in studying the problem, in talking to people about what we can do, in making plans to walk places rather than drive cars.

[32:33]

You know, all that kind of stuff, you'd be more... buoyant and energetic uh and up for meditating on ways to help the situation if you were concentrated so but i'm not saying to wait until you're concentrated to do something because that's impossible you already are doing something and i'm already doing something and some of the things i'm doing i'm not so happy with like i'm not so happy that i drove down here in a car And, you know, I probably won't walk back because, you know, I said I'd be at a retreat a few hours after this one. I said I'd be at another one. And I said I'd be at another one a few hours after that one. But I am thinking about how to, you know, start telling people as I travel, you know, start warning them that I'm I'm rethinking I'm starting to rethink hopefully from a calm concentrated place how I can schedule my activities in such a way as to reduce the amount of driving and flying I'm doing so you see the difference between saying don't do anything until you're calm and get calm as soon as possible so that whatever you do will be more effective

[33:53]

choosing how you want to do something in response to that crisis. One way that you could emphasize, I'm going to work on Lieutenant Kong, and take up that practice at Lieutenant Kong. Another way that you could emphasize this bombing is, I'm going to study the problem. I'm going to talk to some of people that got it. We're going to break Congress tonight. Yes. So where do you know which path to take? I mean, would you say that you should not take the path of doing political work until you're calm? Again, I think I hear your question as repeating the previous one pretty much. You said, their last question was, should you wait to be political until you're calm? Okay? We're already political.

[34:59]

What we're doing right now, all of us, is political. If we don't write our congressman, it's a political action in a sense. Not saying anything to the government is a political, you know, you're related to the... political people, whether you contact them or not, that's your relationship. So I wouldn't wait until I'm calm. I'm just saying that I think that when you're calm, generally you're in a better place to figure out how many letters you should write today What some people do is they're not, some people who are calm work very effectively to protect the environment and they spend part of their day developing tranquility and they spend part of their day working. Some other people work really hard all day and don't seem to do much tranquility work but they're fairly calm. Somehow they're fairly calm and that works out quite well.

[36:00]

Some other people are working to protect the environment and are not calm and actually get very upset and collapse and get sick while they're working to protect the environment. They don't take care of themselves and then they don't take care of other things too even though they're trying to protect themselves and others because they don't take enough time to concentrate and become calm. So they're less effective. So if you're calm, I think you have a better, calm and concentrate, I think you have a better chance to see the kind of a day that's sustainable for you, the kind of work day that's sustainable. So here you're taking care of the guest season, you're practicing meditation, and you have some free time during which people at Tatsahara can work on this kind of stuff right in this valley. And some people do. Some people work here in order to protect the environment, than some people outside here do. But all of you staying here in the valley, to some extent you're doing pretty well because you're not driving around very much.

[37:05]

So your lifestyle in some sense is a political statement. But some people might want to leave here because they feel that they can, instead of taking care of the guest season, they might want to take care of an organization which is working to address global warming. But still, if you join an organization like that and you don't take care of yourself, you won't be as effective. So anybody who works without any time for tranquility... and is using their discursive thought all day long is in danger of becoming highly ineffective and make you know highly ineffective if what they want to do is protect the environment if you want to not protect the environment become really hysterical and crazy If you want to help the environment, I'm saying you'll be more effective if you're concentrated, relaxed, energetic, buoyant, flexible, and at ease.

[38:08]

You'll be more effective working to help the environment and all beings in it. But you don't necessarily have to practice tranquility all day long in order to be tranquil. You can practice some, you know, maybe just the morning meditation will be enough for you to get calm enough to work well. But still, that isn't enough to uproot our basic delusions, which also undermine our effectiveness in this world. However, wisdom work can also sometimes be done in the midst of activism. Sometimes you might be able to apply, if you're calm and you're in a kind of struggle with the government about how to intervene in the emissions of carbon dioxide on the part of the populace, you might be able to do this meditation on externality of the government while you're interacting with it so that you actually can do wisdom work while you're doing activism.

[39:20]

It's possible. Wisdom can work and be done in active relationships if you keep checking to make sure that the people you feel opposed to, you don't feel separate from. You don't see them as, you feel opposed to them, but you don't think of them as external. So people who disagree with us do not have to be seen as external to us. I have my opinion, you have yours, they differ. and we're struggling with the difference but it's possible for us not to see each other as external to ourselves that we are one being working with two different opinions we're struggling to find harmony with our difference but as long as we really believe we're separate the harmony is hard to see So the resolution of some of these struggles needs wisdom in addition to tranquility.

[40:24]

But without tranquility, the chance of resolving these conflicts between us, the chances are less, I think, generally. Although sometimes people just seem to have some insight and they don't seem to be very calm, which is great, but... Yes. Yes. signposts on the relative posture and things to check in. What are those posts you would give for breath? Well, the signposts are exhalation and inhalation. And then also the signposts could be where do you sense the breath?

[41:28]

You can sense the breath in different parts of your body. So one of the first instructions that I got from Suzuki Roshi on meditating on breath was to visualize the breath on the exhale as leaving your nose and making an arc outside your body. And then at the end of the exhale, feel the breath enter your abdomen below your navel. and then feel it sort of fill your lower body and then move up through your body and then end at your nose, the inhale, end at your nose, and the exhale starts outside your body. So you're using your body to kind of feel the breath. In that sense, you're combining your awareness of posture and your awareness of breathing. Other people tie the breath into, as you may know, They focus it on the nostril, so there you're using the sensation, the touch sensation, to help you tune into the breath.

[42:28]

And then also some people meditate on the lower abdomen rising and sinking as a way to keep in touch with the breath. So they use the abdominal movement as a way to work with the breath. But again, I'm stressing that following the breath is good, but the point is that to be following it such that all you're doing is following the breath and the discursive thought all around the breath is being released. It's the releasing of the discursive thought that's calming. It's not the focusing on something that's calming. Is that focusing... Is that a way to check that you're actually letting go of that discursive thought? A single-minded attention to sensation at the nostril. Like, is that a checkpoint? And if you actually have that single-minded attention area, you couldn't actually have that if other descriptive thought was still done.

[43:37]

As long as you're checking, there's still a little bit of discursive thought. As you approach giving up discursive thought, sometimes it helps to have checks on whether you're being distracted or not. The reason for counting the breath, the Buddha didn't recommend counting the breath, but later they thought, People were having trouble concentrating, so they made up counting the breath. Counting the breath is a way to check to see if you're actually not being distracted from the breath. Because some people try to follow the breath, and they're unable to do it, but they don't notice that they're unable to do it. Whereas if they count, then they notice they're unable to do it, because if they're counting 1 to 10, they notice that they're on 14. or they notice they don't know what number they're on, so they say, oh, I guess I got distracted. The number makes it possible for them to notice that they're distracted.

[44:43]

Okay? To follow your breathing and count the breaths one to ten and back one to ten, your mind will become less coarse than the mind that can't even do that. But as your mind becomes more refined, you notice that counting is actually disturbing so then you give up the counting and you just follow and then if you're able to follow actually not just thinking that you're following but actually following you'll find that even the following is a little bit discursive because people often say i bring myself back to my breath but bringing yourself back to your breath is discursive Even that bringing yourself back, your mind is still going back and forth between being away and back. When you're actually with your breath, you don't have to bring yourself back to your breath. But if you're able to be with your breath without even bringing yourself back to your breath, then you can stop following your breath. So one traditional method is called counting, following, stopping.

[45:52]

It's breath meditation. Counting is the coarsest. Of course, not even paying attention at all, it would be even more coarse, but in terms of meditation, counting is, in some sense, the coarsest type of breath meditation. Then it says, once you're able to... consistently count, you notice that the counting is too rough for your state of mind. So then you give up the counting and go to following. Once you're successful at following without even needing to bring yourself back to the following, then you notice the following is too coarse for your mind. It's actually roughing your mind up. So then you give up the following and then you follow your breath in a way that's called stopping. So you actually stop any kind of involvement with your breath, any kind of discursive involvement with your breath. I also often use the example of sandpaper. If the surface is very rough and you take rough sandpaper and you rub it, it makes it smoother.

[46:53]

And it gets smoother and smoother and smoother. After a while, it gets so smooth that if you took a new piece of that same grade of sandpaper and you started sanding, the sandpaper would make scratches. Does that make sense? If you use the same piece of sandpaper and just keep going, the sandpaper gets smoother too, of course. But if you have a 60-grade sandpaper on rough wood and rub it over it, it'll make rough wood smoother. but then that rough wood will start getting scratched after a while by a new piece of 60-grade sandpaper. And if you go to 80, it'll make it smoother. But after a while, 80 will start scratching it. Then you go to 120, and that'll make it smoother, but then 120 will scratch it. And you go to 220. And of course, if you went to 220, you went back to 60, 60 would really make big scratches. So the same way, these scratches are, you know, you add the activity of your mind around your breathing. or the activity of your mind around your posture. So when you first start focusing on your posture, your mind's kind of coarse and not focusing on your posture can actually make your mind get more refined.

[48:06]

But the first way you focus on your posture after your mind's refined will start disturbing. You have to go to a more refined awareness of your posture and then that will make you even more concentrated. But then after a while, when you're more concentrated, that more refined way of relating to your posture will be too coarse for your newly developed state of mind. You have to go more and more and more refined levels until finally you have no sense, hopefully, of doing anything with your posture. It's just your posture. And then you're getting close to wisdom meditation. But at the beginning... it may be better to counter-breathing than to try to follow it with a mind just so coarse that you drift away and don't even notice that you're drifting away. Does that make sense? One time over in old zendo, I was having trouble concentrating on my breath, I was counting my breath,

[49:15]

And I had, I not only counted my breath, but I had waves of, you know, one to 10, but I had waves of checking to see how many times I was successful counting one to 10. So I had to cross-check, I not only counted, but I cross-checked on how many times I had counted. So that was very coarse, but it did sort of corral my mind into a certain level of concentration. But it was very coarse, even though I definitely was counting my breath. It was for sure. No question about it. But not very quite coarse, and I didn't like it. Yes. Yes. I noticed this concept of poverty and doing something separate from the truth, kind of going through the conditions.

[50:23]

If you want you to stop using a fire, you'll be around here. So I want to make Jesus' concept of separation and get to like I pretty much understood all of us to write because I did it, too. It feels very capable for you. Suddenly, you know, not go to a friend's visit because you don't want to use a car and not do things you want to do because it's in a car. So I wanted me to just, I don't know, a champion. It's a system trap. You need to understand if you want to put up the practice. You need to understand what you're doing. Yeah. Well, in this case, I'm telling you people that I'm reading this article. It's having this impact on me. I'm telling you about this, and I'm, you know, so you will know that I'm, some of you probably will ask me, how come you came to Ta-Sahara?

[51:27]

You know, the next time I come, you say, did you walk? Or maybe even people to Ta-Sahara say, we'd like you to come, but we don't want you to drive, you know? We want you to walk. And so the more you discuss this with people, the more they'll probably start working together with you to figure out a way to help you change your life so that you can feel supported in these changes or so that they can share the pain with you of making these changes in our lifestyle. I think of Gary Snyder. For a long time, he wasn't riding in airplanes. And, you know, he lives in... He teaches at Davis, and he lives near Nevada City. So he doesn't live so far. I don't think he walks from Nevada City to Davis, but I'm not sure. if he does or not. You know, you could ride a bicycle. It wouldn't be so hard to ride a bicycle if you could ride bicycles. It would be not so hard to ride a bicycle from Nevada City, especially from Nevada City to Davis, mostly downhill.

[52:33]

But anyway, he lives near where he teaches and he doesn't fly around the world so much. You know, he used to like go to conferences all over the place and stuff like that and do all these things. I don't think he does that anymore so much. So... if we share with our friends and they know we have this situation and maybe they can work it out so that we visit less often or we have to plan ahead so we have a long time to get there or quite a few people are riding from Marin to San Francisco on bicycles now more and more There's problems with that too, but anyway, it will be difficult to change our ways. Even Tassajara, you know, used to not have so much electricity.

[53:44]

And so we have so now solar power for some of our electricity and we're, I think, doing quite well with using the hot springs to heat the Zendo instead of propane and electricity so much. So we're trying to do something here to have less and less hostile impact on the world. but we're still using quite a bit of stuff and we're struggling with that. Green Gulch, we're trying to make organic food and flowers. Trying Yes.

[54:46]

Well, you said the Vinaya, the rules, the regulations for the practitioners in the community? And one of the first things that comes to mind is that the monks didn't have much possessions. So in some sense, you could say this is instruction for their own meditation, but it's also instruction for their relationship with the world, that they were instructed not to have much impact on the world. They weren't even, they were not even supposed to dig the earth. However, that was in a condition where other people were digging in the earth, and those people were giving them the plants that they grew.

[55:49]

But I think that that would be, this is in some sense, in some sense we're talking about here is an environmental vinya. We're trying to make an environmental vinya for the world. that it won't be just for the disciples of Buddha, but for the disciples of Jesus and the disciples of Muhammad, all disciples of all teachers, can they make regulations for their religion or their spiritual practice, which are also regulations for ecology. For ecology with the sky and the ocean, but also the ecology of other beings who have different religions. different cultures so we want to make instructions which could promote actually understanding even of what is the proper ecology ecological so i think we have we have this it's a huge job we can't just like make the rules now because we don't understand what they should be because during the time of the buddha

[57:00]

His instructions seemed to be quite ecologically sound. But they didn't have high technology at that time. They didn't have all this, they didn't have these machines that emitted all this carbon into the atmosphere. So he didn't have to make, he wasn't able to make instructions for the kings and ministers of the governments at that time to tell them how they should deal with the technology because they didn't have it. One of the things it says in these articles is that one of the scientists says it may be that sometime in the future someone will come to visit this planet and they'll find signs of intelligent life. And as they study the situation they will see all these intelligent beings were unable to make the transition to high ecology. I mean high technology. Huh? What? I don't understand what you said. Oh, I see.

[58:04]

No, dinosaurs didn't have high technology. Yeah, I think we are intelligent myself. It's just that we've made these things like steam engines and so on, but we didn't know how to deal with the consequences of steam engines And steam engines were running on coal at a certain point, right? Coal's worse than gas. But now that we've got gas, gas isn't as good as solar. But we're having trouble to make the transition to solar. You know, we could have solar generators on the moon or, you know, in the jet stream and so on and so forth. We could have wind power from the jet stream. There's a lot of possibilities, but are we going to make the transition fast enough We could do it. We have the means, but we also have greed, hate, and delusion. And can we put the brakes on soon enough to deal with the consequences of our intelligence?

[59:14]

We almost can do it, it looks like, but we might not. and uh for a long time we were had some intelligence and so did dinosaurs but uh the dinosaurs were not wiped out because of their stupidity they were wiped out looks like by a meteor right was it a meteor looks like they were doing okay and then humans did okay for a long time hunting and gathering but then as we got in some sense, technologically more advanced, now we get this problem due to our technological investments of creating all this pollution. And actually, carbon dioxide isn't exactly pollution, it just creates greenhouse out of the world. Venus is, I think, 96% carbon dioxide. and the temperature there is 870 degrees on average.

[60:21]

Carbon dioxide isn't a bad thing, it's just that if it's in the water, in the ocean, or in the sky, it makes the planet hotter and hotter. And as a result of our technological development, we have more and more carbon dioxide. So let's all think about that and let's practice tranquility so that we can think about it in a way that we can come up with some loving response, some effective response, rather than just think about it and become another, a basket case on drugs. Yes? I was thinking about the flow. So how can we have this message of qi?

[61:40]

and surfing in San Francisco because I know the program they have is an environment not related to shooting or surfing at this time. But the people give a clap also on surfing and shooting. So they don't see at all on the air. practicing meditation or breath, it's going to be answered. Even though they are inviting us to think that way, but there's no any program in San Francisco is going to be in this regard. If San Francisco hasn't had any message or voice in this 60 years of anniversary, So one way to rephrase what you said is, can Zen Center or Zen Center friends have some voice in the 60th anniversary of the UN, which is focusing on ecology or the environment?

[62:53]

And so we'll see. We'll see if our work with our breath and our chi is such that we can come up with some contribution to this. The idea is that if you work with your chi, if you work with your breath, if you work with your life in a calm and wise way, you might be able to make a positive contribution to, for example, some event like this. You might be able to bring your presence to that meeting and make a contribution. So we imagine, if Buddha was alive, Buddha could probably go to that meeting and beam some really good energy into all those people at the meeting. Probably so. Probably Buddha could go sit there and people would say, who is that guy? And he could tell them who he was and then he could maybe make some positive contributions to the conference.

[63:58]

Can any of us make some positive contributions? So I think let's meditate on that. See if we can think something that we could do. Some way we could support and positively contribute to this mindfulness of 60 years of the United Nations and in particular the environment. Yes. I was wondering, is there a higher priority like nuclear proliferation or population expansion, explosion? I mean, how do these fit in for this ecological priority? So he's asking, is there, did you say a priority? I mean, how would you prioritize? When I was reading these articles, I thought, you know, we had, I thought, you know, there's human rights issues, there's overpopulation, and for, during most of my life, there was like nuclear disaster.

[65:09]

But nuclear disaster, in some ways, doesn't sound as bad as what might happen as a result of this You know, it's not so poisonous. Like I said, you know, just to imagine the greenhouse effect. It doesn't sound so terrible. We're just going to overheat, right? It's not terrible. It's not terrible, you know, deadly radiation. It's just things are going to get hotter and drier, and then people are going to starve to death. And it could happen in a few years. If it stops raining, it just takes a few years for people to die. So in some sense, nuclear disaster can be more immediate, it seems, other than what Bill mentioned. But the thing is that nuclear disaster doesn't seem as inevitable at this point as this global warming. So the thing about the global warming, although it doesn't seem so horrible as blowing each other to bits on purpose, Because it's not like everybody's trying to make the environment warm up so we'll have this huge drought and disaster.

[66:17]

Nobody seems to want that to happen. And it's a global thing, right? It's not going to be just for Mesopotamia or Guatemala or something like that. It's going to be the whole planet's going to have this happen. So in some sense it doesn't seem so evil and cruel, this environmental thing. The thing about it is that it seems more inevitable. whereas nuclear disaster no longer seems it definitely gonna happen if we don't make a change so I don't know how to adjust those priorities I think we have to work on all fronts we have to we have to keep watching out for nuclear disaster but this other thing is it looks more and more like it's coming it's coming it's coming and again you and I probably be gone before it hits but all of our grandchildren will be have to suffer with it so we we really so we sympathize with that we do not want to leave the world in a condition that's gonna gonna cook up to such a level that it's gonna eliminate you know not just the humans either because it's gonna dry the ground up real deep probably

[67:38]

So I guess that's one of the reasons for working on being calm so you can be open to a number of potential disasters at once. We have to be relaxed so we can tolerate how much danger there is in this world and work positively under such stressful circumstances. So maybe we can, I think we should stop pretty soon. But maybe, Lon? Yeah, we're 20%. 20% of the world, carbon emissions come from our country. 20%. And by the way, China, by... Pretty soon, China will surpass us, of course.

[68:42]

And China and India, they're coming. Yes. not a common thing for us to go around telling the rest of the world what they ought to do. Besides that, our government is certainly a highly part of the sales strategy. They want to keep it. Even those roles, as I was quite appalled by what we talked about, and primarily conservators and these other things, their best suggestion so far to change is nuclear. And, of course, we still don't know what to do with it. So it's a complicated situation now.

[69:48]

What I've done personally is I drive a high-grade following. Good for you. Right. putting water in. I don't use my gas-fired part. I try to conserve in every way possible. But that's what one person do. Well, if 100,000, one person's do the same thing, I don't look at them. So it really starts right here. In the middle of the way. May I

[70:36]

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