August 5, 2015
Cleaning Up the Star Route to Green Gulch—Again!

Green Gulch Farm Manager Qayyum Johnson describes a recent student effort to clean up local litter in the valley, which is becoming something of an annual tradition:

Bottom L clockwise to bottom R: Qayyum, Nathan, Mathias, Vanessa, Courtney, Rebecca, Zach, Emily, Jake, Duras, Emila (photographer/not pictured: Sara Davis).

Bottom L clockwise to bottom R: Qayyum, Nathan, Mathias, Vanessa, Courtney, Rebecca, Zach, Emily, Jake, Duras, Emila (photographer/not pictured: Sara Davis).

Green Gulch Farm residents went out in the early morning of their sleep-in Friday to rove the roadside of Highway 1 and pick up all the detritus that the noticeably increased tourist traffic had deposited on the coastal hills. We picked our way from the Muir Beach mailboxes to the ridgetop, sorting recyclables from trash with five-gallon buckets and trash bags as we went. A unique form of kinhin (walking meditation). To be out in the dawn walking on a road one always drives or rides a bike on is genuinely wonderful. We completed the regular ceremony by gathering on the truck to put all the collected material in its appropriate dumpster.

A grand celebratory spirit prevailed, and we wished to share the good fortune of being able to be of service to the greater good. Pay it forward!

 

See last year’s post.

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On Forgiveness

In this letter to the sangha, Central Abbot Tenzen David Zimmerman writes about forgiveness and repair in his own life, and how SFZC is working with former Abbot Richard Baker to reconcile a difficult past and move forward together.