Tending the Garden of the World, Tending the Garden of the Heart

and tonight i'd like to talk about tending the garden of the world and the garden of the heart and ramadas once told me that i tell too many stories and tonight i'm afraid i'm going to prove him right so the buddhist texts begin oh nobly born remember who you really are remember your birthright as a buddha as one who can be awakened remember your own buddha nature and begin with a story some years ago not so far in the past there was a beautiful old monastery that was the mother or father house for a big monastic order in the catholic church but it had gradually lost its monks and members as the decline in interest in monasteries in the west had increased and after a time even though it had been there for a century or two there were only five old monks who were left and they were sad because they could see that the order that they were a part of was dying out in some way and they didn't really quite know what to do now it happened in the story and as things are that there was a forest nearby connected to where this monastery was and at the other side of the forest there was a small hut that the local rabbi an old rabbi who was also a mystic used to go for his own meditation and in some way he enjoyed the fact as they did that there was some communion across the woods in the forest feeling discouraged one of the monks went to visit the rabbi on behalf of those five old men who were left and they sat together and talked about the decline of the monastery and the rabbi i very sympathetically said yes the same thing for me not so many people come to the temple anymore they seem to want something different it's hard to know how to serve and connect them with the divine they said well rabbi do you have any advice for us can you help us he closed his eyes meditated for time and then opened kindly and said i really haven't any advice for you but i have a vision that comes to me now a strange vision that somehow among you is the messiah well the monk who'd visited the rabbi paid their respects departed with some deep affection and got back to the monastery and the other old monks gathered around and said did you talk to the mystic did you talk to the rabbi and he said i did well what did he say he said he had no advice for us really except he had this strange vision that somehow the messiah was among us they all pondered what this could mean and in the weeks that followed they began to think could this be true suppose he meant the abbott everyone knew the father abbott was a leader for a generation a holy man on the other hand maybe he meant brother thomas certainly thomas is a holy man he's a man of light maybe he is the messiah certainly he couldn't have meant brother elrad elrod gets crotchety at times but come to think of it even though he's a thorn in people's side when you look back on it elrod is almost always right often very right maybe the rabbi meant brother elred phillip surely not he's too passive and but then almost mysteriously in his quiet some gift of him being there just when you need him magically appears of course the rabbi couldn't mean me said the monk he couldn't possibly meant you don't suppose he did suppose i oh no not me i couldn't be that much for god could i and as they all come contemplated in this manner the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect in the off chance that one of them might be the messiah and in the off off chance that each monk himself might be the messiah they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect because the forest was situated in a beautiful forest grove on one side of that forest people used to come and picnic and wander in the grove and so forth before they saw it as a decaying place but now as they came without even consciously being aware of it they began to sense the aura of extreme respect that pervaded the atmosphere of the place as each of the monks began to treat one another in this sacred fashion there was something strangely attractive compelling about it and hardly knowing why they came back to play to listen to be there in that beautiful forest and bring their friends and so it happened that some of the younger men especially became inspired and one asked if they could join them in another and another and pretty soon it became a thriving order again from the gift of the rabbi what a way to treat each other as if that next person to you might be the messiah or maybe even as ms piggy would say moi now it's not easy the time we're in the climate change that brings so much worry and concern for the planet in all sorts of ways the warfare not just in the ukraine but in myanmar and libya and so many places the scourge of racism that continues around the world the cause calls for social and economic justice what to do maybe how does the story of the monks and the rabbi help us you know the little prince by antoine um santa excu his instructions he said first thing in the morning you look after yourself you brush your teeth and wash your face don't you well the second thing you must do is look after your planet so here's the buddhist instructions of how to practice from one of the very earliest texts early one morning on his arms rounds the buddha approached the area where a wealthy brown landowner was distributing food to his workers he saw the buddha coming with his alms bowl and said oh renunciate oh monk i plow and so i work and having plowed and sown then i eat you too should do likewise you should plow and so and having done so then you might heat a little bit of a challenge here huh and the buddha replied oh brahman i do plough and so and having plowed and sown i eat and the brahmana said you claim to be a plowman but i see no plow tell me what kind of plowing it is you do the buddha stood quietly and said from a place of deep steadiness and connection to the earth trust is the seed and composure the rain clarity is my plow and yoke compassion is my guide pole and my mind is the harness mindfulness is my plow blade and glo and gold well directed in action and speech i use truth to weed and cultivate release wise effort is my oxen drawing the plow steadily toward freedom without regret this is how i plow and it bears the fruit of deathlessness whoever plows in this way will become free in the midst of all things and then the plowman said let me offer you something and poured into his bowl some liquid food for the blessed one to eat but when the food entered the bowl this liquid milk rice or whatever it was it hissed and a great steam came up as the story is told for the bowl couldn't hold it and the brahmana looked and said i see you are a plowman indeed and of course for any of you who happen to know about plowing one of the things that happens to a plow blade when you go down the furrow in a field it becomes hot in fact almost red-hot by cutting open the earth and so this was the beautiful symbol of the buddhist bowl being like the plow blade hot in his hands and then receiving that gift from the brahman so here we are at this time in the earth what kind of seeds are we planting and tending there are unhealthy seeds of greed ignorance fear hatred and delusion and when we plant these seeds or allow them to grow they bring enormous suffering but war now we're putting trillions of dollars of our economy into killing machines as dwight eisenhower said the military industrial complex is stealing the education of our children and the wealth of our nation and the nations and the vision of what's possible for this earth these are one kind of seed creating new enemies and fear but there are other seeds there are seeds of generosity of clarity of gratitude of compassion and mutual respect as tiknot han says consciousness has all these seeds embedded in it which ones will you water for those are the ones that will grow take a moment to reflect when i think of it you know the seeds of social and emotional learning for kids in a kindergarten when they start to hit each other with blocks or in preschool you pause and you say use your words use your words i only wish our political leaders could do that whether it's putin zalenski whoever it happens to be the generals in myanmar use your words can we educate our children to plant beautiful seeds of respect and care for one another reflect in yourself what are the seeds you plant with your words with your deeds what are the seeds that you water day by day moment by moment this is called yoni kara it is wise attention to notice which seeds we plant and which ones we water now for many people it's a time that feels overwhelming and we can fall into despair into grief the opioid crisis the divisive politics and we can drop into anxiety or worry or or apathy where we feel like the problems are too big and we're too small i love this statement by the great anthropologist and explorer wade davis who says despair is an insult to the imagination think of this despair is an insult to the imagination to despair to be apathetic to give up because it's too big you're too small too much too hard it says the imagination is not as grand and magnificent and big as it is and yet we are survivors for generations for so long and we have an enormous imagination to make things different here's a story for you tell me the weight of a snowflake a snow finch asked a wild dove in that case nothing more than nothing was the was the answer tell me the weight of the snowflake and the wild does said nothing more than nothing in that case i must tell you a marvelous story the snowfinch said i sat on a branch of a fir tree closed to its trunk and when it began to snow not heavily not in a giant blizzard no just like in a dream without any violence since i didn't have anything better to do i counted the snowflakes as they settled on the twigs and the needles of my branch their number was exactly 3741 952 when the next snowflake 953 dropped onto the branch nothing more than nothing as you say the branch broke off having said that the snowfinch flew away and the dove since the time of noah an authority on the great changes in this world thought about the story for a while and finally said to herself perhaps there is only one person's voice lacking for peace to come about in this world take a moment to quiet yourself let your heart soften despair and insult to the imagination every snowflake every seed watered becomes something to change the world if you want to practice take a walk and look at the buds on the trees in the springtime or look closely at the grass and the weeds that push themselves up through the cracks in the sidewalk each bud is an answer to despair or apathy each springing up of life is an answer quiet yourself each great windstorm so beyond anything we can control is an answer this earth moving its wind the tides coming in and going out these ants are the small sense of self and you start to sense that you're part of something so much bigger and when you get quiet as the sages say even the leaves on the trees become like pages in the holy books take time in your life to go out and seek out and study one bud one plant pushing itself up out of the earth one flower one blade of grass one seedling they speak to you you know they tell you about something magnificent and huge that you are a part of as the wind does as the tides do now i don't want to be a pollyanna about this we all suffer some more than others and the suffering is going to continue refugees drought from the climate certainly pandemics all of these kind of things but your ancestors and mine have lived through pandemics and epidemics they've lived through storms and earthquakes and tidal waves they've lived through all the vast changes of the landscape and they survived in your blood is this capacity of creativity in your blood and in your cells and in your beings are your ancestors saying yes we can do this now for climate change i have before talked to you about this remarkable book drawdown by paul hawkin that describes the hundred things that we can do to reverse climate change and then the new volume of regeneration ending the climate crisis in one generation don't think this is not possible not an insult to the imagination or a failure of imagination but rather inviting you to see that here and now there are choices to make there's the re-kelping of the ocean and projects that do amazing things across square miles to start kelp forests to draw carbon out of the atmosphere to regrow the health of the ocean there's compelling and wonderful new research on fusion reactors the laser kind that are smaller than the big tokamak in france and look like in the next year or two we'll be producing positive amounts of energy that will be able to be replicated by the thousands the story is not yet ripped and we get to be part of it with the seeds we plant with the courage that we bring rachel carlson puts it this way if i had influence with the good fairy who's supposed to preside over the birth of all children i should ask that her gift to each child would be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout the lifetime the sense of wonder there's a beautiful story that lynn twist tells she went to africa as part of a community that was working to end hunger and she went to senegal in west africa along the edge of the sahel which is contiguous tour then connected to the great sahara desert and she went because there was a she went with a team a calling out from a whole group of villages dozens of them along the edge of the sahel which were losing their water and therefore losing their ability to grow their gardens to tend their animals to live at the edge of the desert and they were asking for whatever help could be brought so she and her team went she tells this beautiful story and of course traveling over with their jeeps and going out and it wasn't like oh the great white saviors they went just to listen they said we are your allies or your friends let us listen with you and they sat in a circle and they heard about all the struggles and how it was going to be hard for everyone to survive and the children the young men and women were already moving into the city and that their culture and villages would be lost but the way it was set up the men spoke and the women sat outside the circle silently that was the culture and then lynn and her friend said we would like to meet with the women as well we listen to you and we feel tremendous sympathy and hear that you've tried to do everything you can but you don't know what to do and the men were a little bit disturbed by this you know how men are in this world but because these people had come so long and offered their friendship they said all right and so there was a council of the women and after lynn and the group listened to the women they heard from them a different story they heard their dreams that told them there was an uh an aquifer a lake of water under the desert nearby and if only they would dig for it they would find the water that they needed to save all of their villages the men hadn't believed them and hadn't listened but they begged lynn and those who'd come for an opportunity to see and together they went back and talked to the chief and the men in the village because women were not supposed to do manual labor like digging but they insisted may we try it and so the women went out to the place where they thought the water would be found in their visions and dreams and the men brought drums and made music for the women as the women dug deeper and deeper day after day for a number of days and then as you know how these stories end the sand became damp in the bottom and they dug deeper and deeper like you did the seashore when you're a child and you're digging to get water or find water at the bottom of your hole and pretty soon the moisture came and the water came and the drums went and the women continued to sing and now there is a piping system that brings that water to 16 or 18 villages the gardens are flourishing the animals are growing and all because the women had a vision and imagination that said yes there's something greater than what we know and let us look for it let us seek for it we need this we need this among ourselves we need this in our culture we need to tend the seeds inwardly of trust and courage and vision and we need to tend the seeds together with one another in community outwardly as thoreau said i do not believe for the seed will spring up or i do not believe that a plant will grow where there are no seeds planted but i have great faith in a seed convince me you have a seed there and i'm prepared to expect wondrous so we need a confidence in our hearts and in our lives inwardly and outwardly that we can plant and water and ten beautiful seeds like a carpenter turns wood said the buddha like a fletcher straightens his arrows like a farmer channels water to their land so we should tend our own hearts and minds that beautiful things will grow from them take a breath these are daunting times and difficult tasks a life a lie for us and for many of us there is a deep grief there might be anger or rage or fear underneath it a kind of grief and the grief is there because we care so much let yourself feel the grief for the despair as joanna macy speaks of despair and empowerment until underneath it you can feel the care you can feel what matters that makes that grief arise in you underneath it something really matters and you know what it is now if you're gonna garden in this world inwardly and outwardly when you plant the seeds when you set a direction it takes a certain courage and perseverance and dedication and maybe a moral clarity to say yes this is what matters in spiritual life it is absolutely that way and as in the plowing text where the buddha talks about the seeds of faith and the dedication and the plow of mindfulness and the wise effort that is the oxen the faith and so forth if you garden the same thing will happen you will plant your seeds and there will always weeds there will arrive insects there will be drought the inner side in meditation you set yourself i'm going to do loving kindness or loving awareness or mindfulness practice and what happens restlessness sleepiness doubt confusion fear all those things arise the hindrances we call them and any meditator who's done it even for a little while knows the hindrances they're like mara coming they're your friends when you learn how to recognize them and acknowledge and work with them it's an enormous relief to feel it's not personal it's just part of the way things are so that when you're a gardener you don't say oh insects don't come and the garden needs to be watered more from drought or the weeds won't come you recognize this and these are the obstacles to work with it's the same in business you set a direction you make a business and then the obstacles come not enough capital key employee quits the market changes prices go up the supply chain issues happen you may have noticed that lately the competition grows strong or maybe in parenting you have this sweet beautiful little child who can also you know throw a magnificent tantrum just to make sure you're paying attention and you have to protect them they put they're little and they put stuff in their mouth you know where again they hit each other with blocks you have to keep sure they don't run into the street you have to socialize them and then that's just the beginning then they start to ride a bicycle you know but where will they ride and will they get in trouble and then they start to do sports and the possibility of injury and then they become go through puberty you know and become a teen and they have to deal with sexuality and independence and cars and alcohol and drugs all these things the obstacles that you need attend i remember when my daughter caroline was about six or seven months old she wasn't yet crawling and we were driving down the coast to do a retreat or some teaching at esselyn and she was in her car seat and somehow she found a penny that was there on the cedar nearby and she played with for a little bit and then she stuck it in her mouth and somehow my wife saw it or maybe i saw it in the mirror and we were terrified stopped the car looked out try to get the penny out it wasn't there well maybe she dropped it who knows what happened but we were frightened so we called our pediatrician hey our daughter might have eaten a penny something terrible might happen and the pediatrician asked a few questions and said if she seems all right don't worry about it here we are trying to protect this child [Music] so a couple days passed we'd been worried but things seemed okay and then two and a half days later in her diaper she was still wearing diapers one morning opened the diaper and in the middle of the diaper was the shiniest penny you'd ever seen it had obviously been gone through the car wash inside she has the penny still it's taped inside her baby book but there we are the obstacles puberty sexuality independence putting things in their mouth protecting them that's what it means to care for something and in a love relationship it's the same thing you fall in love you have this beautiful connection but then other things appear the little shadows and the difficulties and the conflict when i have had the privilege of performing wedding ceremonies which i don't do anymore one of the things that i will say i'll tell people you know when you go into the used car lot there's a sign in the windows of the cars that are used that are sold and it says as is and i have them in the couple look at each other and say do you accept accept each other as is can you love each other not with the idea of how you're going to change them but can you love each other as is and then water the seeds of love water with love and goodness that they might blossom in their own way stay connected to the best of these seeds take a moment to reflect what is your highest intention in your love relationship in raising children if you have them in doing your work your intention is part of the seed come back to it again and again and water it what is your intention for this world and you feel it and you carry on as nelson mandela said do not judge me by my successes judge me by how many times i fell down and got back up there's a famous biologist the father of biodynamic gardening at the university of california santa cruz named alan chadwick and he gardened in an unusual way he wasn't growing plants he said he was growing soil and he was growing the connection between the soil and the seeds and the phases of the moon and the direction of the wind and the cosmic magic and the way the doves cooed in the trees and the mist from the ocean near santa cruz and everything you could imagine and when things were bleak he would say the seeds underneath are waiting to erupt in beauty they're pushing up saying come on life life to show that this was possible he took his students to a plot of land that was owned by someone there that had been a junkyard and it was full of rusted cars and trash that was thrown there of all different kinds and he said could we use this as a sample garden plot and the man who owned it said you can but the soil is dead and of course alan chadwick and his people his students came and they amended the soil and watered it and brought things in and tended it and turned it over and after a time it became a remarkable garden it was filled with the most beautiful flowers and plants it's still there and it was a demonstration that if you plant good seeds and you tend them even in places that seem impossible something something gorgeous and beautiful can grow like the poet dina metzger says give me everything mangled and bruised and i will make a light of it to make you weep and we will have rain and we will begin again i think of wangari matai who started the greenbelt movement in east africa she won the nobel prize yes but on the way there she was thrown in prison several times she was targeted in ways that you know maybe would have killed her she became a world renowned activist but she overcome incredible obstacles and by the time she received her nobel prize she and the followers in the decades that worked with her had planted 51 million trees in kenya to build the beginning of the green belt in east africa this is the this is the gift of gardening you just keep doing it and even if they throw you in prison as they did or disparage you or throw up their hands or say it's too small you can't make a difference remember what thoreau said if you have a good seed there i'm prepared to expect miracles for here's the secret and the secret is in the bhagavad-gita i know you've listened this evening so it's time to tell the secret and the secret is to act beautifully without attachment to the fruits of your actions as thomas merton said to an activist who was discouraged do not depend on the hope of results you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no result at all if not perhaps bring about its opposite as you understand this and concentrate not on the results but instead you concentrate on the value the rightness and the truth of the work itself let the seeds grow as they will i don't know whether nice people tend to grow roses or growing roses makes people nice rolling brown so a story i haven't told for a long time concerns a math teacher in ohio and i don't even remember her name now but i'll call her mrs matthews in her classes she was a high school math teacher there were certain times when things would get rowdy or the students would fall asleep or get bored and she tried to make it her math relevant and useful to them and there were some students that had resistance or whatever but she loved them anyway one of her favorite students was a young man we'll call him billy and she tended him and they made a really great connection even though he had difficulty in math and one day before the holiday maybe it was before spring break or something like that the class was getting antsy and tired and nobody was really focused and she stopped the class and she said we can't do any more today and i know you're going to go away for a break for a little bit so here's what i'd like to do and she wrote on the blackboard a list of the 29 names of students in the class she asked everyone to copy the list down name by name on a piece of paper and then she said your assignment for the rest of the hour or session will be to write next to each of these names one thing that you see that you admire or like about that person at the end of the class she collected those papers sometime later in the spring when the class again got antsy maybe it was before exam time got frustrated she paused the class again and she handed each student a piece of paper with their name at the top and pasted on it where the 29 things that their colleagues that their fellow students had said that they admired or liked or saw good in them well a couple or a few years later she got a phone call from billy's mother who had known that mrs matthews had had a deep connection with billy and his mother called and said i have tragic news to tell you billy was killed he went in the army and he was killed in combat in the middle east and we're going to have a memorial service would you like to come she said of course i will come she loved her students so there they were and a number of her other former students and friends of billy were gathered around the gravesite and people spoke about him and then his mother spoke and he said you know my son carried only a few things in his pocket when they got his body after he was killed and one of them was this and she pulled out a piece of paper that had been folded and unfolded clearly a number of times and the top was written his name billy and pasted on it were the 29 things that students around him had seen as good and beautiful in him and she said you let him see who he really was and of course everybody in the circle the other students said oh yeah i carry mine in my wallet still or i posted it on the wall in my house we all have it it meant so much to us we can plant beautiful seeds wherever we are we can tend them and water them and make the earth different because who we are is earth tending herself we are life we're not separate from it oh nobly born you are consciousness this is what you are you are the gardener you are also the garden you wear all of it you can't separate yourself from the amazon and the atmosphere and all those ancestors who've been there before you and buried underneath your feet cheering you on by the way you are all of this and in fact you are the vastness when you get quiet and deep he realized as this argadata said wisdom says i am nothing and love sees i am everything and between these two my life flows or as tiknot han said i was never born i never died i'm like the raindrop i'm the cloud that then turns into snow and rain and enters the river in the ocean and then becomes a cloud again i was never born i was never died i am this life living through this body at this time but this is who you really are and when you get quiet and listen deeply you know this this is your true nature but of course there's that little dilemma okay buddha nature true nature the divine the oneness you need to remember your buddha nature and your zip code you have to remember both the vastness and the uniqueness of your own life and seed and both of them come together this is your time this is the time the earth is calling you to plant beautiful seeds to tend them to make beautiful things grow whether you see them in this lifetime or not it does not matter because all of us doing it together is what makes it work so again get quiet let yourself reflect you are the garden and the gardener you are all of it come in your form now this amazing mystery maybe even close your eyes what three things is the earth calling you to do to make a real difference you can know and with all the divisiveness and conflict in our society in the world in the human world what three things are you called to do to make a real difference this is what the sufis call so bad a conversation with the heart so i end with a poem along with your beautiful reflection your shining faces your good hearts the fact that you are in fact magnificent gardeners this is by roger keys who is a steward of and a expert in the wood cut art of hokusai the great japanese printmaker the one who you know you see those japanese prints of mount fuji and the boats and the waves or all those gorgeous prints hokusai the great artist and he speaks with hokusai's voice the artist who looked at the world so deeply and brought it to us so we could see it hokusai says look carefully pay attention notice stay curious there is no end to seeing hokusai says look forward to getting old keep changing you just get more of what you really are repeat yourself as long as it is interesting keep doing what you love keep meditating and praying everyone is every one of us is a child every one of us is an angel every one of us has a body every one of us is frightened every one of us has to find a way to live with fear everything is alive shells buildings people fishes mountains trees water is alive everything has its own life everything lives inside us everything lives with the world inside you [Music] it matters that you care it matters that you feel it matters that you notice it matters that your life lives through you contentment is life living through you joy is life living through you satisfaction is life living through you peace is living through you don't be afraid don't be afraid look feel let life take you by the hand let life live through you beautifully so let's just sit for a minute or two okay foreign i'm getting quiet listening with the heart allows you to be the gardener and the garden to plant and water beautiful seeds and what else matters as you pass through this incarnation this life to make blessings i don't know whether nice people tend to grow roses or growing roses makes people nice however you want to look at it you can do beautiful things so thank you for your kind attention and when you reflected on what you're being called to do you know you actually do know thank you dear ones see you again