This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Please take a moment to see if your body needs some adjustment to feel a bit more comfortable. You can or you cannot. Please take a moment to see if your body needs some adjustment or some maybe support cushion if there is any. Feel free, please. Welcome everybody. All of you here in this beautifully intimidating, at least from this perspective. Buddha ho and welcome everybody joining us online.

[01:04]

My name is Lorenzo and I'm a resident priest here at city center. And I have two pairs of Buddhist names that have been given to me first two. by Denshin Reb Anderson in what we call now Bodhisattva Initiation Ceremony, used to say Jukai, and two that were given to me by Christina in my priest ordination. And in 2006, Denshin Reb Anderson gave me the names of Oshin Koan, that he translated as Dharma Heart or Dharma Mind and Radiant Darkness.

[02:09]

And then Christina, 17 years later, gave me the names of Hokyo Yoshin, Jewel Mirror Cultivate or Cultivating Intimacy. I'm saying this because I think the second names of these two sets of names give the sense of a thread, at least one of the threads of my path of practice. I think that Tenshin might have seen something in my darkness that had some light. I had no idea what that might have meant at that time. I trusted that maybe he saw something. And then the second name that Kristina gave me, Yoshin, cultivating intimacy.

[03:20]

And then soon after Nedokasan, Kristina said something like, beginning with your heart. has, I would say, can describe the most recent path of practice for me. It felt something very true and very, I want to say, me. it also felt something that was not available right then. I knew there was something there that required exploration or time. This is my first foray as a chuseau for this practice period, head monk.

[04:33]

this practice period the end of a kind of incredible day that began with a I would say magical at least in my perception ceremony this morning where I want to be honest and say I don't I didn't have much of a doubt about how it would end But actually, the ceremony was not so much about that. It was, I lived it as a swirl of something happening that I could not recognize. And the swirl, I mean, it really felt almost like a, not a violent vortex, but some sort of a round force, like a... That began with the senior staff being around me at the beginning of the ceremony, and then going around at the altar many times.

[05:41]

And then the Jundo felt like there was a movement of reality that I could not pinpoint. And it felt really magical. So thank you, everybody, for the support I felt from all of you this morning an infinite gratitude to Christina, to my teacher, for thinking of me for this role. And I want to say much gratitude to also all the other teachers I've had. During these years, some of them here, some of them at Green Gulch, Tassahara, and some hopefully having a good life at Enzo Village as retirees.

[06:47]

And this day feels also, this moment feels also very special because For the first time, I'm actually speaking from this wooden platform, and the person that was actually sitting on this wooden platform 25 years ago arose my bodhicitta for the first time. That person was Blanche Hartmann, and it was the 28th of July of 2001. which was my 40th birthday. And for my 40th birthday, I decided to give myself the gift to see what a Buddhist temple might look like and came up the steps for the very first time. And so I remembered the date because it was my 40th birthday.

[07:56]

Blanche's presence and words and ease with not knowing, and at the same time, this abundance of wisdom that I felt, this mix of reverence and irreverence, that for me was formidable, especially having grown up as Catholic. That was not something that you would necessarily see so much. arose my wish to know more about this practice. And so after the Dharma talk outside there, I asked someone, how could I know more about this practice? And can everybody hear me okay now? Yeah. Um, And this someone said, well, I would make an appointment with the head of practice.

[09:04]

And so I did. And the following week, I was here. I used to live in Southern California at that time, but I was here to sort of celebrate the birthday. And I had a week in San Francisco. And so I made an appointment with the head of practice. And the head of practice was Tia Strosser. It was incredible because she had no care for my stories. She didn't want to hear anything of what I had to say, except as those of you who know Tia probably relate to. And she said, well, if you want to know more, just go to Tassajara as a guest student. And so I did. Miraculously, I guess, there was the possibility of going to Tassajara the following August. And of course, I was assigned to cabin crew, which sort of determined my existence at San Francisco Zen Center.

[10:11]

Right from the beginning, I should have known. And that's how it began. So I would like to dedicate this talk to Blanche's memory. And I also would like to dedicate this talk to my mother-in-law who turns 89 tomorrow. May she continue to live in good health. So this is the fourth way-seeking mind I've been invited to give to our Sangha. And my previous way-seeking minds somehow followed a chronological sequence of events that had something to do with my life of practice. And just to confuse myself a little bit more, I thought today I could actually reverse the order and start from now, from the most recent times.

[11:28]

And I would say that in the last few months, but I could also say the last year, my practice has been particularly engaged with the study of my perception of harmony. And so my perception of disharmony between sort of a felt sense of a situation. Maybe that sense that we have when we hear with our eyes and we see with our ears, that sort of instinctive sense of a situation that might not necessarily have words. And then the words I hear or the actions I witness, words that can come from my own mind or may come from the outside.

[12:32]

So it's a study of harmony, or perception of harmony and disharmony that's within, but also without, inevitably. And through, I mean, I would say the origins of these reflections might be the Yoshin, part of my dharma name and the tokasan I had in which I asked, what is the appropriate response? What is the suggested way in which one could work with this? And then many conversations with my therapist and then many tokasans with Christina made me realize that When I perceive disharmony of that sort, especially disharmony between my thinking mind and this sort of body-mind knowledge, at least my knowledge of a situation, my thinking mind dominates the conversation and

[14:01]

it's not that the channel of communication is completely severed, but there is antagonism between these two forms of knowledge. And that antagonistic relationship between these two forms of knowledge makes me feel uncomfortable. And my thinking mind comes very rapidly to try to fix it. And by fixing it, I mean planning, rationalizing, explaining, strategizing on how to get rid of that discomfort. And I also noticed that that pattern is very much the result of my karmic conditioning.

[15:05]

Probably also my perception, my body-mind perception is a result of my karmic conditioning. But what's striking to me is that that discomfort between these two forms of knowledge is, I perceive it as dangerous. And my thinking mind intervenes as a survival kit, as a way to not be in danger. Even though in the current situations there may be no danger at all, but it's a pattern that has been learned. I was born in Padova, in the northeast of Italy, a city about 15 miles from Venice, in a family that I would describe as fairly uptight, with a great love for rules, rules of politeness, social rules,

[16:30]

household rules. Just to give an example, living no trace has always been spoken in my family as a matter of reciprocal respect. So it was presented as a moral rule. I felt very cared for. There was a lot of attentiveness, maybe monitoring. But also there was a lot of care in maintaining the family together, to have a sense of togetherness and to

[17:32]

Like, for example, I don't think anybody in my family had any space in the house that could be considered a private space. The whole house had to be sort of available to everybody who lived in the house. I remember these words like, it's not a hotel. You take care of the space. to make it available also to the other people that live here. So there was a lot of care in this. I don't remember any lunch or dinner. Breakfast was never a meal in my family, but lunch or dinner in which we didn't wait for each other before having a meal. And I remember my parents would wait even an hour, an hour and a half for me to come back from school before we ate.

[18:33]

So there was a lot of care in that sense. And I learned a lot from this way. So from the outside, I would say we had a golden family. Friends, I think, would think that things were good. But not here. I always perceived, from at least what I can remember, that all this care and attentiveness were never an expression of unconditional love. They were always an expression of some form of exchange that if I fulfilled their expectations or their priorities, then everything would be great.

[19:45]

But if I didn't, I could be kicked out in a minute. That's the way I felt. I was about five or six years old when my father threatened me to send me to a juvenile correctional facility in the city if I didn't stop challenging him, probably unskillfully, about the fact that they didn't want me for whom I was. And this correctional facility was very well known in the city as a terrible place, a place of violence, where rarely kids would come out in one piece. And I delivered him. This was said maybe, I can't remember exactly, but more than once.

[20:52]

And even if my mother and my sister would try to convince me that you would never do that, I believed him. I even asked my sister, who is 12 years older than I am, to take me to see this facility. And I still have it completely in front of my eyes. I remember exactly the street. I remember the buildings. And I've never gone back after that. I don't know what happened to that place. Probably doesn't exist anymore. It's only recently, I would say maybe the last couple of years or three years, I don't know, it's hard to say, but that I began to develop a great sense of compassion for them and for myself, actually, for the little me.

[22:14]

I was born only 13 years after the end of World War II in a city that was pretty heavily bombed, that had lived a lot of displacement, destruction. My parents met during the war. Both of their families had moved to a village in the countryside to escape the worst of the bombing. Many families in the city actually left, if they could, and they would rent a place somewhere that was less likely to be bombed. And there they met and they got married during the war. They had my sister the year the war ended in 1948. My father lost both of his parents maybe two or three years before I was born.

[23:23]

My mom lost her father about six months before I was born. And my mom had a sequence of miscarriages between my sister and me. That's why there are 12 years of difference between my sister and me. And two years before I was born, she delivered a stillborn. and nobody was talking about any of this. I heard very, I don't even know. I remember something about this boy being beautiful and this boy that didn't make it, but nothing more, never a conversation. So I was born in a notion of unspoken grief, clearly.

[24:40]

And I think by the time I was born, I think my parents had exhausted their capacity to deal with suffering, or that sort of suffering at least. And they were very determined to have an orderly, stable, pleasant life. That's what I think they really needed. And I was challenging that. And I think it was very, very hard for them to deal with that sort of challenge. And so they tried in every possible way to eliminate that challenge by trying to stop me from saying what I was saying. And I think that's where that thread of my karmic conditioning began.

[25:53]

maybe began, I don't know. But that's what I remember as sort of an origin of that thread, that the only way I could take care of, not take care of myself, but eliminate the danger that I was told that that was something that was explicit, for me at least, was to strategize, to figure out how to make it so that I would not be in danger. And what I began to rely upon was my thinking mind, the strategist, right? And the refuge I found was studying. Studying was the only thing I could find at that age or in the following years. that granted me a space that was respected.

[26:56]

And I ended up loving it. I mean, it began to be something I was looking forward to. And so I did always very well at school and that would appease my parents. It felt like a wonderful solution and to feel safe, safer maybe. And I found refuge in women. Maybe not in the way you're thinking about. But I adored my sister. And I adored my piano teacher. If you have seen Madame Susacka, that movie with Shirley MacLaine, where Shirley MacLaine plays a piano teacher, she was more or less like that. When I was about 11 and I was playing for her, she shouted at some point, If you don't fall in love, you'll never be able to play this.

[27:57]

And I was 11. So it was like... I was pretty young for that. But she was a person that lived completely in her feelings. And I felt met by her and really safe with her. And then I had a... a friend, she's still a friend, a 60-year friendship, Paola, with whom I shared everything and grew up with. And that was also a very safe situation. And I was close to her family, who was very different than mine. And all of this made life good. I was lucky enough to always be in good schools and having good teachers. I don't think I've ever had a male friend fully.

[29:11]

I've had and I have many warm acquaintances and sometimes fairly deep acquaintances with men. But I don't think I've ever had the quality of a friendship I've had with some women, with men. And I think this is the karmic condition in working its way. Except with one exception. As you probably guess. My soulmate. Innocent. Michael. That's the exception. So as soon as I could, my father passed away when I was 22, and my sister and I had to take on his business quickly.

[30:15]

was diagnosed at the beginning of December, passed away at the beginning of January. So it was very, very fast. And so it was an emergency. I used to live in Venice at that time and going to college in Venice and had to come back to Padova and take on the business with my sister. And of course it was an emergency. So the emergency sort of lasted three, four years. And then the business began to be stable. And it so happened that I also won a scholarship, a very nice scholarship, to continue my studies abroad. And I took the opportunity, of course, to find my space, I guess, and begin in this path of being a little bit truer. to myself. So I crossed the Atlantic and came to New York and went to graduate school in New York, lived there for seven years.

[31:26]

And I thank you very much, New York, because that's where I came out. And New York gave me the space to just go for it. And then I was hired by a college in Southern California to teach economics, and I taught there for almost 25 years. During my second sabbatical in that faculty position, oh, well, I should say something else that... When I moved to Southern California, I really had a very hard, that was the cultural shock for me. It was not to come from Italy to New York. It was very much to move from New York to Southern California. I think you might, some of you might sympathize with that or empathize with that.

[32:32]

And so I found Laguna Beach as the most Italian place I could actually find. And so I moved to Laguna Beach. And there I found my first therapist. And this first therapist was the first person that began to ask me, how does your body feel? We were talking about that at practice period tea today. How does your body feel? And I had no clue of what that meant. So at some point he said, well, I think you might like to do something somatic. And he suggested Esalen. to take some seminar, some body-centered seminar at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. And so I did. And I liked it so much that I ended up finishing a 500-hours diploma in Esalen bodywork through many years. But I kept going back and taking seminars.

[33:36]

And Esalen has the cutest meditation hat. I've ever seen. It's this round little building, wooden building on top of a creek with a view of windows all around and that you can see the ocean. Just beautiful. And so I went and sat there and one of the teachers of some seminar said, well, if you like to, if you want to explore meditation, maybe you should pay a visit to San Francisco's Zen Center. So that's kind of the prehistory of the 28th of July of 2001. I followed the advice and came and then I've already said what happened afterwards. In 2005, 2006, I had a sabbatical year from my teaching job and I spent it completely

[34:41]

at Green Gulch as a WPA. Guess where they assigned me? The guest program. And I would say that that year was perhaps my formative year in terms of formal practice and work practice. I was very lucky, I had wonderful teachers and I felt very supported and I could go through all the really difficult moments in which all I wanted was to leave and found some arm that came around and just supported me to look into it rather than running away. And at the end of that year, Tenshin gave a Dharma Day in Los Angeles in the house of a student of Fu.

[35:54]

His daughter lived in LA, and so he would sort of combine a visit to the daughter and also have sort of almost like an informal one-day sit, let's say. And... So, of course, a whole crew from Green Gulch went. I went with them. And a fool told Michael, who used to live, work, and live in Orange County in Southern California, to go. So Michael had done a number of practice periods at Green Gulch already, and so knew most of the people, if not everybody. And I had been there for a year, so I knew... pretty much everybody, but we had never met. We didn't know each other. And a student of Reb said, you don't know each other, and introduced each other.

[36:58]

At seven o'clock in the morning, we were still setting it up, setting up the place. And I think we began to live together two weeks later. So it was a good encounter. And after that year, there was a long period of time in which my practice was very much a householder practice. I went back to work, became department chair, responsibilities increased, and... And I would say that that was perhaps the most challenging time of figuring out how to bring practice. And I think this is a question that hopefully we can maybe explore more in Chusotis or in other situations, but how to bring practice to an economics professor position.

[38:04]

It's not so obvious. And so I... It took a long time, and I also explored other Zen centers, Zen center of LA, Upaya, a number of places, and none of them felt home. They felt very familiar, but it was almost like going to a house of an uncle rather than your own. So I continued to speak with Tenshin read during those years, but it became really complicated because Tenshin did not do phone docusans or he expected people to go in person. So living in Southern California, it was always a three-day deal to have a docusan. And it could not happen that frequently.

[39:08]

So in 2016, in Tokasan with Reb, I asked him, Reb, would you suggest anybody that I could actually see from Southern California? I think you know where it's going. And so Reb said, Well, I've heard that Christina Lennar sometimes does Skype Dogasan with her students. And I had met Christina in maybe 2010, 2009, 2010 here for one practice discussion when I was here for one of Paul's summer sessions, July sessions or summer sessions, no sessions, intensives.

[40:10]

And I loved the practice discussion. I loved Christina, but then I never followed up. I mean, it was just a, she was here probably on Wednesday, who knows? And so, but I knew the person Reb was recommending. And so I wrote an email to Christina and Christina accepted the idea of meeting for DocuSan. on Skype. And that was 2016. And then in 2019, Christina offered a practice period here at City Center. And that was Benti. And I remember at Tokasan, with Christina, where I had tears in my eyes already before we even began to speak.

[41:18]

And I remember saying, if you could see what I have inside, you would want to ordain me now. And Christina very gently said, no, thank you. I don't know if I had to ask three times, but anyway, I had to ask. The conversation then went on. And what Christina said was, in order for you to be trained as a Zen center priest, you have to at least be in San Francisco, if not in one of the temples, and specifically city center. So that was 2018. fall of 2019, and Michael had come for the Rohatsu Sesshin. And when we went home, there was this moment that we sat on the couch, we looked at each other and said, almost at the same time, it's time.

[42:38]

It's time. We had talked about doing it so many times, and then because of work, because of the dog, and so many different things, we never did it. But it happened like that, that we went home, a home that we had just redone, and realized that that's not where we needed to be. And so Michael quit his job and applied for jobs here in San Francisco. And I wrote a letter to the president of the university asking for a three-year leave, thinking they'll never give it to me. I mean, three-year leave is a lot to hold a position without being there. And they did. And they knew why I was asking it. So it's pretty extraordinary. And so we came, but by the time we came, it was May 2020.

[43:45]

And if you remember what the situation was in May 2020, it was not the best moment to move to San Francisco or to City Center. City Center was completely closed, like a closed bubble. And because Michael was still sometimes going to the, had sometimes to go to the office, here in San Francisco in school, we couldn't live, we couldn't be in the bubble. And so we found a place here on Oak Street, right around the corner, thinking that, oh, it's just the closure of a month or two, and then we'll be right there. But of course, it wasn't so short. Thanks to Michael McCord, who had just become director, and Christina, an exception was made and I became a remote resident of city center.

[45:00]

So I had a house job, which was to take out the garbage bins on Wednesday or Tuesday, because it was the only job I could be given that did not imply that I had to enter the building. I could do everything from outside. And everything was online, and so I began to do my work practice position in the online program. And became a Zoom host, made a lot of mistakes with Paul. Everything went blank. Do you remember when? Paul was offering I think Fundamentals of Zazen in the conference center and I was hosting this program and all of a sudden the screen became black like there was nobody no little squares were visible and it was difficult even to know if

[46:05]

I could communicate with the participants because I couldn't see them. I couldn't see anything. And it's been a mystery that has never been resolved, but it resolved itself. Like at some point, then the faces showed up again, and Paul showed up again. Many adventures like that as a Zoom host that had never thought to be do anything online. I mean, when the possibility of teaching online courses showed up, I always said, I will never do anything online. And then the job I was given was Zoom host. And then in September 2023, Christina O'Damia is a priest.

[47:06]

and gave me these beautiful names. There are of course, I mean, in 25 years of the life of my practice, there have been many turning points, as you can imagine. I think one turning point that I will never forget is the opening ceremony of my first practice period at Tassajara that was led by Paul. The opening ceremony at Tassajara is this beautiful procession that begins from the Zendo and then follows a number of actors.

[48:13]

And Paul had introduced this opening ceremony as waking up the energetic nodes of the valley that then would contain our practice for three months. It was a beautiful, it's such a beautiful way. Maybe you remember too, And maybe it was the way in which this opening ceremony was presented. It was early morning, so complete darkness. The smell of the incense, there was something very, very sacred about this whole procession. All these monks walking in silence towards the bathhouse that has an altar. And that's kind of on the extreme west, almost extreme west side of the valley.

[49:22]

And I remember walking with no concept of what was going on in the hills. Animals that might have been watching us, who knows? You couldn't see anything. And the unknown, as I have tried to describe earlier, was very dangerous for me. It was not a place that I could stay and feel safe. And that was the first time in which I felt completely supported. by the ground, by the other monks, by Paul, by Tassajara, I don't know exactly by what. And it felt very transformative. And I think that to me is a very deep turning point of how I relate to practice and how I relate to the way practice works, which is completely in my perception.

[50:36]

It's not something, it's never that you do something to get somewhere or for something else to happen. Who knows? Something else might happen than what you had thought or the way it works is very, the transformative power of practice in my perception is very mysterious. And the first time I related to that was during that ceremony. And that applies also to how I have perceived priest ordination. It's interesting because when the process of becoming a priest for Zen Center happens, You meet with all the abbots that are willing or interested in meeting with you, and you have a talk or a conversation.

[51:45]

And one question that's always asked is, what sort of priest would you like to be? Or have you thought of what sort of priest you would like to be? Something of that nature. And of course, you have some idea about what sort of priest you would like to be. And then... if you ordain, a whole other thing that you could not have imagined before begins. And again, it's the power of a ceremony, but not just that, it's just the way practice works, that sometimes you realize you're a priest and you're acting like a priest and you're thinking like a priest while you're washing dishes. And you would have never thought that that was a place where this vow or set of vows shows up or all these various situations in which, at least for me, of course, the perception of priesthood keeps evolving and the way it evolves is not something I could pinpoint or predict.

[53:04]

Maybe that's a better word. Depends on the conditions and who knows what. Another important moment for me of a turning point for me has been serving as Anja again at Tassahara for Abu David. And, you know, the... the schedule of Tassajara was still the harder one. The one we had before, where I don't even remember when the wake-up bell was 3.50. By the beginning of the first hit of the hand of the beginning of the wake-up bell, the Anja is supposed to be already with an elephant of hot water outside the abbot's cabin. At least, in my experience, how it was. And it was winter and it was super cold, maybe for a month.

[54:12]

And my room that was supposed to have heat was about 48 in the morning. And I would have to wake up like at three just to be able to have a cup of coffee for myself and then make the elephant. And I remember the level of complaining my mind was able to do. I was miserable when I would wake up. I would wake up and begin to think about, what am I doing here? It's cold. And now, why am I going out so early in the morning? There could be mountain lions on the path. And there are all sorts of stories. but in a very substantial way. And Abbot David did not take one break during that practice period, so every week was the same, for three months.

[55:21]

And then I would knock at the door of the Abbot cabin, go in with the elephant, make him tea, put some wood in the stove, undo his bed, and I was happy. Like the complaining that almost if there was an Uber, I would have taken it like an hour before. It was gone. It was not even something I could remember. I was just happy. And I think... That experience changed my relationship with my thoughts. For good, I would say. It's not that I think less or I complain less. I still complain. I still have my various stories in my mind of how things should be and how miserable I am and that they're not the way they should be.

[56:28]

That happens. I just don't trust them. They come, and then they do go. That experience was such a clear example because it was a matter of a minute. I was outside with the hat and the gloves and the scarf and this elephant. Miserable, and then a minute later, I was just completely happy to be there. So how does that happen? So I think it's 8.45, which is the time. So thank you very, very much. And if there is anything I said you would like to know more about or to converse about, we'll have

[57:36]

wonderful Shusottis that are beginning the week after next, that our valorous Benji will organize, and please, you're more than welcome to ask me any question, even at lunch table, dinner table. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, And this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[58:23]

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