teacher to quite a number of us, Joanna Macy with us. She works very closely with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship where I work and also with the Guardian Project and with a new organization called Gateway and has been helping a lot of people find the direct connection between our spiritual practice and our social and physical environment for many years. So, welcome. Thank you, Alan. Good morning. I'm very happy to be here today. I appreciate very much being asked to come. it refreshes my soul. I think among the many things I love about being around Zen practice, which is not my own root practice, what I appreciate so much is the exquisite care that invites a continual paying of attention.

[01:15]

And I appreciate that exquisite paying of attention, moment by moment, more and more, because that seems to be what our world needs and we need in relation to our world. I don't believe that what is the most important thing right now in the distress and crisis that is global, indeed, in terms of what humans are doing to each other, what humans are doing to other beings, and the forces of destruction set loose on our very natural support system, our environment, the flesh of our earth, its air, seas, soil, trees. I don't think that what is needed is new blueprints for action or new economic political schemes so much as the simple act of paying attention.

[02:31]

I see and hear, it seems, the world asking that, paying attention. And so I would like to reflect with you this morning about the kind of intimacy that arises, that sense of profound intimacy that arises in this paying of attention, in this being radically present to our world, which allows healing to arise. We don't go out and heal the world and its wounds, but healing can arise in that act of intimacy, of presence, of paying attention. I've just been hearing some wonderful teachings about that. I come back this week from several weeks in Australia. I went there to work with some of my old ecological warrior buddies, working mainly to preserve the remaining stands of rainforest, working also to preserve the topsoil

[03:55]

and the Great Barrier Reef. I was particularly struck this time by the ache of the people. I was mainly with quite European-derived Australians. But there's an ache for the land, an ache to reconnect and they're doing it boldly and ingeniously. and an ache to reconnect with the original peoples of that land, the aboriginals. That's very poignant because as in our case in North America, as we turn to the earth-based wisdom of the native peoples, we experience not only yearning but a sense of shame and guilt at what our people, our ancestors, visited on them.

[05:05]

This is very true in Australia now. And it's much harder, actually, for the whites to contact the Kooris, as they call them, or aboriginals. I was exposed to the teachings of some of the elders in the northern territories that have been set aside for them. And they speak, as you know, of the dream time. The dream time isn't located in the past or future. It's an act of being present, too. Ascent practice invites us. Naked, without houses, without possessions or bank accounts, these Stone Age people remind us of our

[06:17]

roots of experience that was ours as well. They've been there uninterruptedly for 50,000 years. That's the culture that is still there and still can feel it in the land. It's still fresh because the white European imprint is only 200 years old. And so they can remind us of what's underneath our civilizational veneer, a capacity to pay attention, to be very, very present to our world. You have to. When you have no machines and structures to separate you from that ladder to rely on, and you move with an exquisite awareness, almost like a dancer, in intercourse, in conversation with all the beings.

[07:26]

And so there is a strong sense of the aliveness of all. That's what reassures me in this Dharma practice of paying attention that aliveness emerges. We wake each other up, we and the world. We awaken to the vitality. So one of these elders, Big Bill Nagey, has some English and he's, this teaching is in English and I'm going to read you a little bit of it, inviting you to experience in your own, our own human, early human history and our early experience as a species. We have that knowledge in us. So Bill Nade, she says, well I'll tell you about this story, about story where you feel tree, grass, star, because star and tree working with you.

[08:34]

Listen carefully this, you can hear me. I'm telling you, earth just like mother and father or a brother of you. That tree, same thing. tree working when you sleeping and dream. If you in city, well I suppose a lot of houses, you can hardly look this star. But might be one night you look. Have a look star because that's the feeling. Strain blood through your body. That star, you working there, see? You working. I can see. Some of them small, you can hardly see. Always at night, if you lie down, look careful, he working, see? When you sleep, blood, he pumping. So you look. He go pink, he come white.

[09:40]

See him work? He work. And the night you dream, lay down, that star, he working for you. Tree, grass. I love it, tree, because he loves me too. You watching me, same as you. Tree, you working with your body, my body, you working with us. While you sleep, you working. Daylight, when you walking around, you work too. That tree, grass, that all like our father, dirt, earth, I sleep with this earth, grass, just like your brother, in my blood, in my arm, this grass, this dirt for us, because we'll be dead, we'll be going, this earth, this story now, earth, exactly like your father or brother or mother, because you've got to go to earth,

[10:50]

You gotta be come to earth, you're born, because you're blood in this earth here. Tree say thing. You watching you. You look tree, you say, oh. That tree, he listen to you. What, you? He got no finger, he can't speak, but that leaf, he pumping his. Way you grow in the night, while you're sleeping, you dream something, that tree and grass, same thing. You grow with your body, your feeling. When you sleep, good sleep in the night, I ask you. Good sleep? Yes. Well, tree, same way. You work with you. When you're feeling tree, you work with your tree. You cut a little bit, You got water coming out. That's his blood. Same as your blood. So he alive. He alive.

[11:54]

It's very wonderful to be alive now in this turning in our culture when even as much out of science as from spirituality it seems we get news of fresh perceptions of the aliveness of our world. It's about time. It's high time we wake up to that because not knowing that We kill our world. Assuming that our world is dead, assuming a division between self and other, mind and nature, we kill our world. But from science itself, that's why I love to teach the theory of living systems. Every year when I get a chance, either in Berkeley or San Francisco, I try to fit in teaching a course on General Systems Theory because it's another perspective and a very rich and elegant one on the incredible intricacy and vitality of all phenomena and their interconnectedness.

[13:38]

It's very close to the Buddha's teaching of dependent co-arising that everything in its vitality is in relationship and is sustained in that vitality, in that aliveness by relationship. And before I went to Australia, I went to a conference on some of the new aspects of the new paradigm in science. It was a conference on chaos theory and dissipating systems. And Karl Pribram was there, who is a noted neurologist, neurophysicist, who has evolved an extraordinary vision of the structure of reality. as the universe is a hologram.

[14:43]

You know that the particular feature of holography or being a hologram is that looking at any one part, the whole is revealed. That the part contains the whole. Of course, to Buddhists this needn't come as a surprise. In the Avatamsaka Sutra of the Mahayana tradition, that is particularly celebrated, that miraculous, wondrous, and wondering vision of how Reality is so structured as to be fully present at each point.

[15:48]

Not in any hierarchical ladder where you work usually going up to ascend to get to a realm of pure being and that's more real than what's down here. No. It's said at every point, the whole is present. That there's nowhere you can go that is outside the pattern. And in paying attention to any one being, or aspect, even the cell, or the mitochondria in the cell, the whole is there, implicit in thought, So this means, what this means then in our practice, our mental practice of paying attention, when we are bold to attend to any given aspect of this world, or what's right before your nose, or your nose itself, there is nowhere else to go to enter Buddha realm.

[17:13]

Now this, in the Avatamsaka Sutra, there is a wonderful practice described, which is like the, it tells us what can happen when we pay attention, and that By looking at one part of reality or once, going within, we are also going without into the world. And by going without into the world of myriad things, of multiplicity, we are also coming home to the singleness of our being. They're not in opposition, but more like the One and the Many are like the systole, diastole of the heart pumping.

[18:26]

One, Many, One, Many. And you enter One, you come out of the Many. You enter the Many, you come into the One. So the Bodhisattva can perform the Ten Universal Enterings. What are they? They are to bring all the universes into one hair and one hair into all the universes. To bring all sentient bodies into one body and one body into all sentient beings' bodies. To bring inconceivable kalpas into one moment. and one moment into inconceivable kalpas. To bring all Buddha's dharmas into one dharma, and one dharma into all Buddha's dharmas.

[19:33]

To bring an inconceivable number of places into one place, and one place into an inconceivable number of places. To make all thoughts into one thought, and one thought into all thoughts. To make all voices and languages into one voice and language, and one voice and language into all voices and language. And one voice and language into all voices and languages. To make all three times into one time, and one time into all the three times. So when I behold another body, be a suffering body of a sawed tree or a homeless person in the shadow of an office doorway,

[20:56]

or an Aboriginal, an Australian, or your body this morning. I go into that with such attention, that's what this says, that I can find, that I'm finding my own body. And I can be so attentive as I go into my own body, and the miracle of the wife pumping the blood in that, that I can, like Big Bill Nietzsche, enter the being of grass and tree and star. I can read about Bodhisattva brothers and sisters taking action on behalf of all beings, protecting the trees with their bodies as in the Chipko movement in the foothills of the Himalayas, preserving the last stands of trees by hugging those trees, the tree-huggers,

[22:34]

or other bodhisattvas working in the politicians' offices, lobbying, as many of my friends are this very weekend, in relation to the legislation that's going to be voted on before Thanksgiving. or the Bodhisattvas of Greenpeace who are out there in little rubber boats, putting them between themselves, between the whaling ships and the great whales, on behalf of those great beings. And this teaching tells me that I am of that nature too, as are you.

[23:40]

and that by opening our attention both to the valor and compassionate action of these men and women I am opening my attention to that capacity within me for we inter-are And that act of paying attention reveals that to us and brings us into a kind of mutual awakening. And we awaken now to the fact that our acts move far through time. Our technology has developed to the point that we can have a karma now of millions of years because of the nuclear materials that we've created and the ionizing radiation that they release.

[24:55]

And so an act that we do today and one of the bills on the House in these coming days will have to do with whether we're ready to dump that waste where we can't get at it. That will be affecting beings for a quarter of a million, a half a million, a million years. To make the all, the Bodhisattva's last entering is able to make all the three times into one time. and one time into all the three times, three times past, present and future. We're invited at this moment in our history to discover that we are our world.

[26:00]

Just as the Avatamsaka Sutra says that it's not just some poetic, touching, whimsical fantasy, but that it's true, and that our act of attention is part of the Earth's waking up to that. And you can't pay attention, I find, without falling in love. So we're called now to fall in love with our world and that is part of the world's healing as well. Don't know where it's going to take you but in that moment by moment paying attention that is at the heart of Dharma practice that love can arise.

[27:03]

It's not the same thing as hope We can even let go of having to have an assurance that things are going to work out. That can get in the way of paying attention. I was at a gathering night before last of very admirable environmental activists and thinkers They are pioneers, they're breaking new ground, they're right at the cutting edge of a lot of new thinking and strategy. But what was raised when a moment came after dinner and after separate conversations for there to be a general conversation, what arose as our topic was how do we sustain

[28:04]

our action on behalf of the world and our common future. Because things are so discouraging now. The forces destroying our world seem to be growing exponentially, seem to be accelerating. Whether we're looking at the hole in the ozone layer or the greenhouse effect, the pollution of the seas, the loss of the topsoil, the spasms of extinction, deforestation, the desertification of our planet, how do we How do we sustain that action? And one after another, as they reflected, hailed back from making some assertion about their faith that everything is going to work out alright, or their optimism or claiming any optimism or even the necessity of hope, but talked instead of reaching to find a way to act that is free from hope for the results, that's free from having to have the outcome be any particular way.

[29:28]

Voices of these men and women reflectively thinking of how They just can pay attention to their world and then the action follows. You don't have to be dependent on your own desired outcome or even your emotional mood at the moment. And I found myself thinking of 1 Corinthians 13. where those of you who grew up in the Christian tradition, as I did, may remember that Paul there is talking. And he says, he talks about three great things, faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these, remember,

[30:31]

What he said was the greatest of these. And I find myself reflecting that we've lost two of them, at least in my experience and in working with people around the world. People who, developing their skills and their motivation to take part in the healing of our world, I find that the first two are lost or severely eroded. One is faith. The faith of our fathers and mothers, of our ancestors doesn't persuade most people anymore. Traditional handholds, traditional ground of faith and hope People are feeling beyond that and perhaps that's good.

[31:36]

Remember what T.S. Eliot said in the Four Quartets. I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. So when you really pay attention, moment by moment, to the gift of life, trying to hang on to faith or hope can get in the way to that just being present, what's there. So what we're left with is what arises with that attention, which is love. And it is my conviction that that is totally adequate. That's all we need. That's all we need for the healing of our world. And it's what we most want, I believe. And then we wake up and now I'll conclude so that we can have a little conversation.

[32:40]

Quoting another Christian, a 17th century British clergyman. He wrote a wonderful little book called Centuries of Meditation. His name was Thomas Trehearne. You never enjoy the world aright, he said, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars, and perceive yourself to be sole heir of the world, and more than so because all beings are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. You can see in that poetic language vision some of that same perception that we found in the Avatamsaka Sutra.

[33:46]

All the world and us have heard in the words of the aboriginal elder, Balnechi, that I read. Till your spirit filleth the whole world and the stars are your jewels. You never enjoy the world aright. Till you feel it more feel it than your private estate and are more present in the hemisphere considering the glories and the beauties there than in your own house. You never enjoy the world aright. till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are closed with the heavens and crowned with the stars. And so we are. We are when we pay attention to our world and our being in it. We have 15 minutes.

[34:58]

I would welcome your reflections, comments, questions. I would welcome conversation, my fellow beings. Well, thank you very much. It was the three quotations from the Australian and the Avatamsaka Sutra and then the last were really very powerful. And a number of us have been studying the Avatamsaka Sutra, so it's that more connection. But I don't know very much about, at all, about the Gateway Project. And I wondered if you could say something about that. Well it relates to this because for throughout the 1980s for about 10 years there has been a form of group work that has arisen, experiential work

[36:07]

that takes some of these scientific findings and spiritual teachings about our inter-existence, our interdependence with all beings to make them experiential so that we can know it, and so know it, and so in our hearts, minds and bodies that we can act with that and be part of that healing. There's a term that's arisen, that's familiar now, called deep ecology, and so we call it deep ecology work. I was so happy when I first learned the word. It is coined by a Norwegian philosopher, Arne Ness. And I first heard it through Robert Aikenroshi, the Diamond Song, in Hawaii. and from the Ten Directions journal back in 1982 from the Los Angeles Zen Center and the Kuroda Institute there, they had a conference, the first conference on deep ecology where Arnie Ness and a number of others came.

[37:17]

What this, I immediately saw or sensed that deep ecology is a secular referent in my eyes to the Buddha's teaching of interdependence, of dependent co-arising. Arne Nass himself contrasted that with what he called reform environmentalism or shallow environmentalism, which seeks to sort of apply technical fixes, band-aid approach to the ecological crisis without addressing the fundamental assumptions that are at the root of it, assumptions about who we are in relation to our world and what we are, the nature of reality. So this work has occupied me for the last

[38:21]

this experiential work since for the last 15 years actually. And we... I referred to it as opening to our... making a shift in our sense of identity so that we can work more freely and effectively on behalf of Earth and its beings. Opening to our existence in the web of life. So those work... so owning our despair about what's happening in the world that we see where it comes from, it comes from our interconnectedness in the web of life, and there we can find the true nature of our power. Now this work has been spreading over the last decade, people, folks that practice it, and there have been some books about it. I've brought up fourth about it, fifth, and I've learned a lot.

[39:35]

It's very much informed by the teachings of the Lord Buddha, and about how these teachings are being applied for social change. So, there has been, it's come to be called Deep Ecology Work, it's one of the names for it, or the Inner Work of Social Change, or Empowerment Work, and there's been a need to, more and more people want to be trained in it, because it's lovely to do, and it's not hard. So, Gateway. Gateway is an organizational structure that's arising for disseminating this work and holding trainings in it.

[40:39]

And that's what took me to Australia, doing this work. I did a deep ecology workshop Three of them, the first was in the Melbourne Zoo, which was wonderful. I had never done this work in a zoo before. And through two windows that came into the room, indenting into the room, floor to ceiling, glass, appeared a family of cotton-top marmosets. Now I didn't know what these were, but they're monkeys from South America and they have heads about the size of a tennis ball, little faces, they're very black, they look like shrunken human heads with these great tufts of white hair coming out like a Dr. Seuss painting. And so we felt their blessing on us as we looked at them. Deep ecology is a sneaky way to get Dharma teachings out without a label. to having people experience their interconnectedness with all beings and moving beyond anthropocentrism.

[41:51]

Now, what do you do exactly in the work? I mean, as far as action and stuff like that, I mean, what goes on? The work itself, works on the assumptions and attitudes and practices that can sustain actions. And then after the pit, we don't, rather than mounting our own. And so from these workshops, people then would go and be active in the Rainforest Action Network or any form. There are many, many avenues or creating fresh so that they're, an exquisite number of opportunities now for anyone to be, and of organizations to support, and of organizations and agencies that can tell us what we need to know. But most of us feel so overwhelmed by the immensity of the problems that we aren't really rushing and battering down the door to these organizations, you know.

[43:07]

And so the work, and in this work it involves opening to, first of all, opening to our own responses. Not listening to anyone else's plans or analyses so much as hearing, listening to ourselves. Listening to ourselves and each other about what we feel and know and see is happening to our world. So it means a kind of truth speaking, a kind of, like Gandhi's term, Satyagraha, to come together and without any embarrassment or apology, to simply say what it feels like to be living on this earth now with what's coming down. That's very liberating. right away releases a lot of energy because what comes up is grief and anger and fear.

[44:11]

And none of these emotions, when we really look at them respectfully and honor them, can be reduced to the isolated personal ego. And we see that what they are is a revelation of our capacity to suffer with our world. And we say, oh wow, we're able to suffer with our world. That's amazing news. You know what that means? That means we're compassionate beings. Because compassion, literal meaning is to suffer with. And then we go to what the, when we reframe that and see that, what are we? What are our connections that allow us to suffer with our world? And we see, then awaken out of the kind of cultural amnesia and cultural programming that has conditioned us to see ourselves as separate, isolated, competitive, insatiable egos.

[45:16]

So a whole shift in the way we see ourselves in relation to our world. And then we do lots of forms of exercises, practices, rituals, games, whatever, to help decondition ourselves from this disempowering notion of who we are. Susan? I especially loved the thing you read by Big Bill Neji. Yeah, Big Bill Neji. Big Bill Neji. with the aboriginal people. For us, the Native Americans. And I wondered what you meant by that, and I also wondered, or if you could say a little more about that. And also, Quinn, who was he talking to when he said those wonderful things?

[46:19]

What was the context of that? He was talking to a white friend. So he's one of those who is speaking. But more, there is distrust. Compared to the Native Americans here, there's more distrust on the part of the aboriginals. It may be, from what I've heard of the sufferings that they've experienced, that you can understand that in terms of... They are, just now though, just now, realizing, I heard a number of some Aboriginal women elders too, that because of the urgency of our situation, planet-wide, because they experienced us killing our world, experience this all as being on the brink of disaster, they're saying, okay, now's the time to share the teachings in a way that they would... that their very structure of the society was, first of all, is to not to speak.

[47:32]

But we've seen the same thing among the Tibetan teachers, coming out what had been previously secret is now being shared, given so generously for us all, for the benefit of all beings. I now see that it's... My time is up. Thank you for letting me be with you today.

[47:52]

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