I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening. Traditionally, the shi-so's first talk is about how they came to practice. So I'll be talking about my life and practice tonight. When I was growing up, until the time I left home to go to college, I went to a church called Unity, or Unity Society. It's a society of practical Christianity. And Unity was founded by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore in the late 1800s,

[01:06]

about the same time Christian science was founded. And the Fillmore's were vegetarians who believed in reincarnation. And they taught that the mind has power to affect the physical world, and they taught the power of positive thinking. When I went to Sunday school, I was taught that God is love, that God is in each of us, that we can never be separate from God. And that Jesus Christ realized a perfection, the perfection of God. And that each of us had the same potential for perfection that Christ had. And such words as evil and sin, hell and the devil, were not used at Unity.

[02:20]

In fact, they were sort of taboo. When I was six years old, my Sunday school class memorized a poem, which is the first thing I remember trying to memorize. It was a big project for me. The poem was, The Heart is a Garden. And it goes, The heart is a garden where thought flowers grow. The thoughts that we think are like seeds that we sow. Each kind loving thought bears a kind loving deed. While thoughts that are selfish are just like weeds. We must watch what we think each moment all day, and pull out the weed thoughts and throw them away.

[03:23]

And plant loving seed thoughts so thick in a row that there won't be room for the weed thoughts to grow. Later, I realized that this is my first contact with the law of cause and effect. So I participated fully in church. I enjoyed it a lot, and it meant a lot to me. However, when I was growing up, the main quality or feeling of my family was unhappiness. I was the oldest of four kids,

[04:25]

and it seemed like whenever my parents were together, they were always fighting and often screaming, and my brother and sister were always arguing. And there's always a lot of noise and chaos and conflict, and just picking all the time. And I had this desire just to get away from it all, be quiet, sort of some peacefulness. As I grew older and started thinking more about what I wanted to do with my life and looked at how people lived their lives, I didn't really see anybody doing anything that I wanted to do or that made sense or had meaning or would make a difference in the world.

[05:27]

And the more I looked at life, it seemed flatter and flatter until I could reduce it to, people are born, they grow up, they get jobs, they work, they have kids. They get old and they die. Their kids grow up and get jobs and get married and have kids and work, and they die. And it seemed like this endless, pointless, meaningless cycle that never got you anywhere. And what difference did it make whether so-and-so was here or not here or ever had been born or alive? And this feeling grew so that I started to think of people as being caged. I grew up in the suburbs and everybody lived in a house,

[06:35]

and it seemed like these houses were cages, that people lived in their cage, and then they left and got into a car, another cage, went to work, and stayed in another cage all day long. And basically, people were caged by existence, trapped in existence. It reminded me of the lions and tigers at the zoo, in their cages, who paced back and forth, waiting for life to be over. However, because I had the idea of reincarnation, I had the idea that it wouldn't be over, that it seemed like this really meaningless, hopeless cycle. When I was in high school, I had a Sunday school teacher

[07:37]

for four years, that I consider my first teacher. He was this intense, abrupt man who had almost a confrontative manner. And I don't know if he was capable of conversation. I never saw him really have conversations, and he didn't really speak in sentences. It didn't seem either. But he had these very poignant phrases that he would come out with. One of them that I remember was, So that you come by a way where you know, and you know that you know. And for me, he was a light at the end of a dark, long tunnel. And he didn't teach me a practice or a way,

[08:43]

but he really encouraged the idea for me that there was a way or a practice, that somewhere, someplace, somebody had a spiritual practice that I wanted to find out about. During this same time, I read J.D. Salinger's books. And my junior year in high school, I think I read Franny and Zooey four times and re-read many of the passages, memorized them. And that's how I found out about Zen, was in Franny and Zooey. And I liked very much what Salinger said about Zen, but the way he wrote about it led me to believe that it was something that had existed long ago in a faraway country,

[09:45]

and it was all over now. So I didn't really have the hope of finding Zen, and in fact, I didn't even realize there were books about Zen. It just didn't occur to me. In the same time period, high school years, I had heard that the founder of our church used to meditate, and that sometimes he meditated all night, and had a desire to meditate. And I tried it several times. After I did my homework at night, I propped up pillows, sat up in bed and leaned back and shut my eyes and tried to meditate. I didn't know how. But every time, before I knew it, I was asleep. And I found it really frustrating,

[10:51]

and I started to feel like a failure as a meditator. Nothing happened. And I really wanted some kind of mystical experience or vision or spiritual confirmation. And I remember when I was 17, one night on Christmas Eve, the desire arose for mystical experience, so to speak. And I thought, well, it's good timing, it's Christmas Eve. So about 10 o'clock at night, I drove out to the world headquarters of our church, which was about 30 minutes away. And there were beautiful grounds. There was an apple orchard and golf course and rose gardens and fountains and cottages. There was a chapel there, a small room, that was open 24 hours a day

[11:53]

for people to come in and be quiet or pray. So I went there for a while and became quiet. It felt better. But I had this idea that I wanted this encounter with Christ and that he would appear as this white, vaporous thing. So I went out and walked around the gardens and the old fountain, but nothing happened. So I finally got back in the car and started driving around the grounds, and pretty soon I noticed someone was following me. And it was the campus security. And I felt even worse, keeping somebody up on Christmas Eve, driving around following. And once again, I came home, completely frustrated. Nothing had happened, spiritually. Then, because I couldn't find anything more meaningful to do,

[13:01]

I went to college at New Mexico State in Las Cruces, which is about 40 miles north of El Paso. And my first year there, I read D.T. Suzuki. I found his Zen book. And again, I really liked it. It took my church experience, church teaching, one step farther into non-duality. The church I grew up with really recognized positive and negative and affirming and denying. But again, the way D.T. Suzuki wrote in this particular book, I had no idea there was any living practice in the world today. You know, it's a wonderful philosophy or teaching, but I thought it all happened and was over with 500 years ago. So I kept searching.

[14:03]

I was in New Mexico for two years, and then I went to the University of Oregon at Eugene for three years. When I was in Oregon, I finally came across a bulletin board on campus with a note about a Zen meditation group. And I went. And to my great relief, I was given some instruction, some method for meditation. And I sat with the group and found that I could meditate as long as I had these people in the room with me. And it was a great relief. However, the meditation was early in the morning at 6 or 6.30, and it meant getting up in the dark and walking two miles across campus in the dark. So I gradually began sleeping in and staying in bed instead of getting up and walking in the dark. And over the Christmas holidays,

[15:07]

during the winter break, it sort of dawned on me that I had wanted to meditate for six years. And I had an opportunity, and what I was doing instead was sleeping, and that this might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So I decided, when the break was over, that I would start sitting every day. And that decision, in a sense, made all the difference. After that, I got up every day. And in April of 1970, I came to Zen Center for the first time. I sat a one-day sitting. When I returned, I started sitting, I think, four times a day. And I sat every day. I had this fear that if I ever didn't sit,

[16:10]

I might never sit again. If I didn't do it for a day, what if I never came back? So I had this real obsession or compulsion about sitting. And I sat when I was traveling. I sat when I was at home, visiting my family. And it represented to me a lifesaver that I was holding on to. It represented the difference between life as I had always known it and some other experience or way of living. And I came and visited Zen Center whenever I could. I would get rides from Eugene, Oregon to San Francisco, and then from San Francisco home to Kansas City, and then back out again through San Francisco. And then I started coming down and sitting sesshins. My first sesshin was in February of 1971,

[17:15]

and it's my first memory of Mel. One morning, Mel rang the wake-up bell. And after he rang it, this is my memory, it may not be your memory, he went through the hallways as people were getting up and going to and from the bathroom and told them, go back to bed. It was a mistake. I rang the bell too early. And I don't know if he told Suzuki Roshi or not, but as I put it together, Suzuki Roshi didn't go back to bed and went to an empty zendo. And an hour later, the wake-up bell rang again, and everybody got up and went to the zendo. And as zazen began, Suzuki Roshi began talking. His voice got louder and louder. And this really made an impact on me.

[18:19]

And what I remember him talking about was that when the bell rings, just get up. Don't look at your clock. Don't think about what else there is to do. Don't think about the rest of the day. Just get up and go to the zendo. That's our training. When the bell rings, your body goes to the zendo. In those days, I think Sashin got over around 3 or 4 or 2 in the afternoon. What I would do was quickly pack my things and go down to Oak Street and hitchhike to Berkeley and then hitchhike from University Avenue over to Highway 4 and back up to Eugene. And if I was lucky, I'd get home by midnight and I could go to classes and work the next day.

[19:20]

And I hope my daughter never does that. It's sort of amazing to me now how different life was or how different it seemed 20 years ago. You know, at this point in my life, I was 20 and 21. And I'd gone to Eugene because I'd gotten married to someone from Oregon. And we broke up rather quickly. And I had this feeling of being sort of an orphan. I didn't really know anyone or have any friends and I was a long way away from home. I felt very isolated and lonely and didn't know anyone with similar values. And I was very shy and nervous and especially scared of new people

[20:24]

and having to have conversations with people. And I was really embarrassed about this at the same time. So I tried very hard not to look nervous and not to look scared. After I began practicing, I had the sense that Suzuki Roshi taught that zazen was not a technique. It was not a way to use to try to change yourself or make yourself better or try to improve yourself. That we practice zazen for the sake of zazen. And when we practice zazen, we got to know the Self. Or we got to know who we really are. And when we found out who we really are, we just accepted it without trying to manipulate ourselves into some better kind of person.

[21:26]

And when I had that sense, I tried to stop pretending that I wasn't nervous. And it took something like courage to expose myself as a nervous, shy person. But I grew to appreciate the strength it seemed to take when people expose their vulnerability or their weaknesses rather than trying to be strong all the time. In June that year, I graduated from college. And a few days after classes were out, I bought a backpack and sleeping bag and hitchhiked down. I decided that I'd try to live at Zen Center as an experiment for six months.

[22:30]

I really wanted to be with other people who were practicing and meditating. And I wanted a teacher. But I knew that I would hate San Francisco. I would hate the buildings, the concrete, the broken glass on the sidewalks, and the lack of greenery. I remember at that time there were a lot of kids in the neighborhood. And there were these little boys who would play on the sidewalks a lot. And they'd get on skateboards and go from one end of the block to the other, about 60 miles an hour, and somehow avoid colliding with cars. And that seemed like a pretty unfortunate way to spend your childhood. And I remember during evening Zazen, during 5.30 Zazen every day,

[23:32]

there was a fire alarm on the sidewalk down the block. And I assume a bunch of kids would get together and pull the alarm. And day after day for months, during 5.30 Zazen, the alarm would go off, the fire trucks would come out, the sirens would go off, and this is routine. And this is what the city was for me, a lot of noise and concrete, hardness. But, you know, coming to Zen Center was worth it. Zen Center was different in those days, too. Most of the people who were here then were about 20 years younger than most of us are now. And there were about 60 or more residents. And people lived everywhere. The three rooms in the basement under the kitchen

[24:34]

had residents in them. In the closet, or the room that's used for storage, near the Zendo door, the Laguna Street door, had someone living in it. And the rooms upstairs were all used as resident rooms. The large rooms had two people in them. And there weren't classes in the evening, so we had four periods of Zazen a day. And we didn't have one-day sittings. Instead, we had a Sashim every other month, either a five-day or seven-day Sashim. And I worked cleaning house, and most people had part-time jobs or very flexible jobs, house painting, cleaning house. It was very easy. It seemed much easier then to support yourself. Things didn't cost as much.

[25:35]

And there were lots and lots of people living in the neighborhood in flats, shared flats and apartments. So these Sashims often had 80 or 100 people. And I think I sat 10 Sashims in two years before I went to Tassajara. That fall of 71, Suzuki Roshi became sick and died at the beginning of the December Sashim. And then Richard Baker became the new abbot. I practiced in the city for about a year, and then went to Tassajara in the fall of 72. And that first practice period, for me, Mel was director,

[26:36]

Rev was Shuso, and Baker Roshi led his first practice period at Tassajara. I really loved Tassajara. It was sort of like, for me, it was like going to kindergarten without all the uneasy fears and shadows that were in the corners. I felt a real freshness and sort of innocence, like I was starting my life over again. And I felt a safety and security that made it much easier to open up to others and to myself. There was a monastic schedule. It's every day, we did the same thing at the same time, in the same place, with the same people. And more than any other time in my life,

[27:39]

there was a sense of shared reality, or shared experience. Another aspect of Tassajara, for me, was the natural environment, mountains, trees and sky and stars had a very strong, real presence, as if they were alive and participating in practice. I practiced at Tassajara for three years, and then in 1975, I came back to the city center. I worked in the office for a year, and I was secretary in charge of the office for two and a half years, and Bekroshi's assistant for two and a half years. What I remember about that time was how hard I worked

[28:39]

and how hard everybody else worked. And it seemed like it was just real working Zen. And during that time, I had the idea that if you were really practicing, you never stopped practicing, that your practice continued, whether you were in the zendo or at work, awake or asleep. You were practicing 24 hours a day. However, I felt that I wasn't, that when I sat Zazen, I had a sense of practice. I tried hard, and even in the city, I went to three periods of Zazen a day. But when I left the zendo, my life was very hectic and busy, and I felt that I lost practice

[29:39]

or left it behind. Occasionally, I would think, right now, I could be practicing, but I'm not. And I'd have this sadness of how I wasn't quite able to do it. Also, during this time, when I returned to the city, I began studying tea with Suzuki Sensei. And when I was in tea class, I did have a sense of practice, how to bring practice into activity. When I went to tea, I had this almost tangible sense, a setting aside past mind and future mind, and my tracking mind, and entering my body

[30:41]

or physical presence with full awareness. And in tea class, there are many details and many different steps involved that have very precise ways of being done. And I tried not to memorize tea, but rather to go in and just do it, until I got to the point where I didn't know what to do. And then Mr. Suzuki would point to something or say something or poke me. And I would remember and do the next so many steps until I reached a blank spot again. And it helped me feel more comfortable with not knowing what I was doing. Or, it's probably a better way to say it. But it helped me learn to trust my body.

[31:47]

And it also taught me the usefulness of having a method or form for doing things, which, for me, gave me a release from the dominance of my thinking mind. And I felt, and I feel quite clearly, that practicing, studying tea really enriched and continued my Zen practice. In 1977, I was ordained as a priest by Bekaroshi. It was actually a two-day ordination where 25 people were ordained, 13 on Saturday and 12 on Sunday. And what I remember about my interest,

[32:54]

desire to be ordained, that it was coming forward with a commitment to Zen Buddhism, to Zen Center. To Zazen. To Bekaroshi. And since then, a lot of things have changed. And I guess at this point I don't quite know what to say about that. I practiced as a priest for five years before I became pregnant. And in 1982, I had a baby. And when I became pregnant, I had some joy and happiness at the idea,

[33:56]

and also fear, that I would at last get into this very unhappy cycle that I felt in my home life as a child. But after the baby was born, I was surprised at how much fun it was. And my baby liked to be held. And for the first six weeks any time I put her down, she would cry. So for six weeks, I sat and held her. And when I held her, I looked at her, and what I saw was this perfectly pure being who had no ulterior motives. I just saw this pure being. All she did was just be. And I'd never felt such,

[34:57]

I should say, thorough love before in my life. I felt nothing but love. There was none of the other stuff that comes up or comes up for me in relationships. And it seems sort of like during that time, my heart sort of melted and opened up. And somehow as a result of that, I felt like my emotional life became much more integrated in practice. And also, at some point, it seemed as though I was able to bring my sort of wholehearted willingness to face each moment in that situation as a mother that I tried to bring to Zazen.

[36:00]

And for me, the experience of being a mother, of being a parent, I think, has at last brought me the sense of how to practice outside the zendo, throughout the day, throughout my life. And when I look at my practice life, I think of things that stand out for me are sitting lots of sashins, studying tea, and having a child, or being a parent. When I was in the last month or two of pregnancy, I stopped sitting Zazen. And for several months, when she was still pretty little, I started sitting again about once a week. And slowly, over a period of years,

[37:06]

added more, so that by the time she was three, I was sitting almost once a day. But it stood in sharp contrast to my earlier Zazen. And again, I had this fear that maybe I would never follow the schedule again. That, you know, by that time I was about 35 or 36, and maybe I was too old to get back into the Zazen schedule, or maybe I was too warped from not sitting every day or something. In 1986, when she was close to turning four, I was asked to be Shiso, which really scared me. At that time, we were having Zazen at five o'clock in the morning, six days a week, and my daughter was still waking up and waking me up every night. And I didn't really know if I could follow the schedule. And also, I was terrified

[38:10]

of the idea of giving a talk. I'd never spoken publicly before, and I had a real strong fear of public speaking. And I didn't know really how to articulate practice. So it was very hard. It was a real challenge for me. But once I started being Shiso and giving talks, although it was very hard, I found it was very satisfying and, I think, very important training. A few years after that, Zen Center focused a little bit on outreach, on how to support people's practice who are not in the Zen Center community and began sending older students and priests to visit other groups.

[39:10]

And for reasons that I both know and don't know, I volunteered to go to North Carolina to visit a group. And I went out for two weeks and led Zazen and gave lectures and did one-day sittings. And again, I was really scared and nervous about going out, an unknown place. I'd never had any interest at all, really, in going to the South before. And I went and really enjoyed it a lot. It was wonderful to be able to sit and study and work on lectures for two weeks with nothing else to do. And as it turned out, I stayed with Tom Hardison. He hosted me during that time. And it really

[40:14]

was really a very supportive experience for me. And I visited a couple of other times in the last two years. And this winter, the group made a request to come stay on an ongoing basis. So, I talked to my husband and we're going to try to go to North Carolina this summer and see if we can make the situation work for us. So, after being at Zen Center for 20 years, it really feels like I'm leaving home again. And I can't think of anything else to say. Are there any questions?

[41:23]

Thank you.

[41:33]

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