Verses for Environmental Practice- Ginkakuji, Kyoto

gardeners at the temple of the silver pavilion

SKY Above

Earth Below

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Kizuki

The word "Kizuki" can mean the act of "noticing," "realizing," or "becoming aware of" something (気付き) in Japanese.

POEM

Verses for Environmental Practice by Robert Aitken Roshi

Waking up in the morning
I vow with all beings
to be ready for sparks of the Dharma
from flowers or children or birds.

Sitting alone in zazen
I vow with all beings
to remember I’m sitting together
with mountains, children, and bears.

Looking up at the sky
I vow with all beings
to remember this infinite ceiling
in every room of my life.

When I stroll around in the city
I vow with all beings
to notice how lichen and grasses
never give up in despair.

Watching a spider at work
I vow with all beings
to cherish the web of the universe:
touch one point and everything moves.

Preparing the garden for seeds
I vow with all beings
to nurture the soil to be fertile
each spring for the next 1000 years.

When people praise me for something
I vow with all beings
to return to my vegetable garden
and give credit where credit is due.

With tropical forests in danger
I vow with all beings
to raise hell with the people responsible
and slash my consumption of trees.

With resources scarcer and scarcer
I vow with all beings
to consider the law of proportion:
my have is another’s have-not.

Watching gardeners label their plants
I vow with all beings
to practice the old horticulture
and let plants identify me.

Hearing the crickets at night
I vow with all beings
to keep my practice as simple –
just over and over again.

Falling asleep at last
I vow with all beings
to enjoy the dark and the silence
and rest in the vast unknown.

The Whole Within Us All by Duane Elgin

What is your responsibility?

To anchor, not argue.
To transmit, not preach.
To co-create, not react.
To be, not withdraw.

Yes — offer your prayers.
Yes — tend your nervous system.
Yes — show up in local action, when guided.

But do not do these things from separation.

Do them from the Field. The unitive field.

The One that breathes through you as presence, and remembers that this world is not being destroyed — It is being reborn.

And your coherence is midwifing it.
This is sacred activism. 

Let your presence become the protest.
Let your love become the legislation.
Let your integrity become the invitation.

We are not here to escape the world.
We are here to infuse it with something real.

 So, let’s not argue over which spiritual reaction is right.

Let’s dissolve the question entirely.

 And instead — let us meet here,
in the field of becoming,
where we no longer ask,

What do I do? but instead whisper,

What do I need to embody now,
that the world might remember its wholeness through me?

What do we do? What can we do?

Do we retreat into silence or rise into action?Do we shield our peace or confront the pain?Do we serve from the subtle or speak to the tangible

Beloveds, the truth is not either/or.
The truth is not in the polarity,
but in the presence that can hold both.

We are not here to choose sides between action and stillness, between politics and prayer, between inner peace and outer response.

 We are here to remember that we are the field through which all things arise.

The world is not “out there.” It is not separate from your practice, your presence, your path.

The burning forests, the trembling democracies, the breaking hearts
—they are all you, too.

But here is the paradox:
You cannot fight this fire with more fire.
You cannot meet chaos with a lack of coherence.
You cannot serve awakening by collapsing into the dream.

This is not a call to tune out.
Nor is it a call to armor up. 
This is a call to become the frequency of the world we long to see.

To embody the coherence of a future not yet visible but already pulsing in your heart.

To model a way of being that is rooted in love, resonant with truth and grounded in action
— not from fear, but from wholeness.

Blackbirds by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

I am 52 years old, and have spent
truly the better part
of my life out-of-doors
but yesterday I heard a new sound above my head
a rustling, ruffling quietness in the spring air

and when I turned my face upward
I saw a flock of blackbirds
rounding a curve I didn’t know was there
and the sound was simply all those wings
just feathers against air, against gravity
and such a beautiful winning
the whole flock taking a long, wide turn
as if of one body and one mind.

How do they do that?

Oh if we lived only in human society
with its cruelty and fear
its apathy and exhaustion
what a puny existence that would be

but instead we live and move and have our being
here, in this curving and soaring world
so that when, every now and then, mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives
and when, even more rarely, we manage to unite and move together
toward a common good,

we can think to ourselves:

ah yes, this is how it’s meant to be.

Earth, Teach me- An Ute Prayer

Earth, Teach me- An Ute Prayer

Earth teach me quiet ~ as the grasses are still with new light.

Earth teach me suffering ~ as old stones suffer with memory.

Earth teach me humility ~ as blossoms are humble with beginning.

Earth teach me caring ~ as mothers nurture their young.

Earth teach me courage ~ as the tree that stands alone.

Earth teach me limitation ~ as the ant that crawls on the ground.

Earth teach me freedom ~ as the eagle that soars in the sky.

Earth teach me acceptance ~ as the leaves that die each fall.

Earth teach me renewal ~ as the seed that rises in the spring.

Earth teach me to forget myself ~ as melted snow forgets its life.

Earth teach me to remember kindness ~ as dry fields weep with rain.

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Why I Should Hike Every Day No Matter What by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I didn’t know how trapped I was

in my own busyness until,

walking past a quiet lake

and up through a lush spruce forest

I felt how with each step toward tree line

more calendar squares disappeared

and all my lists dissolved until

I was nowhere but wading

through waist-high bluebells

with corn lilies rising above my head.

How still my mind was then, still,

as I traversed creeks and clambered

over fallen trees. Still as I climbed

to the place where the clear water

streams down gray cliffs and yellow

monkey flower flourishes on the banks.

I was bathed with gratefulness.

Is it true that to know this freedom

once is to be able to carry it

like a touchstone in my body?

Will the larkspur have any dominion

tomorrow while I’m trapped in a deadline?

Will the scent of summer’s last wild roses

return when I’m scrambling

for just ten more minutes?

Oh freedom, I long to contain you.

That thought makes me laugh.

Yet it’s true. I long to find myself

mid-hustle still linked to the gurgling stream,

its waters so cold I can’t help but gasp.