One of the things that I forgot to do was to bring a watch so I would know what time it was and when to stop. I could wait until you all start leaving or somebody could... Thank you. Loan me one. Which is no guarantee that you're not all going to just get up and leave at some point anyway. So I think I know most of you, but for those of you who I don't know, I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Jeffrey Schneider, and I'm a priest here, and I have been practicing here for a while. And that actually is something of the subject of my talk, or at least the first part of it. In June of this year, I marked my 30th anniversary at Zen Center. I know. And he looks so young, right? I was very young. And so I thought that might be an appropriate time to give a lecture or a talk.

[01:03]

And so I asked the Tonto Jordan, who was kind enough to offer me this date and then get out of town as quickly as possible. Keith in Germany. Thank you, Jordan, wherever you are. So I wanted to talk about what 30 years of practice looks like, at least for me. And I must say, it doesn't look nearly as shiny or as bright or as grand as I kind of thought it would be 30 years ago. It looks quite different. I came to Zen Center in 1978 after having had a very long-term interest in Buddhism and trying to practice on my own in St. Louis. where I was born and raised. There was not much going on buddistically in St. Louis in the 70s, so I decided that I needed to find a place where I could practice with other people. And I looked around, and some friends of mine had read Suzuki Roshi's And My Beginner's Mind and the Tassajara Bread Book, and so I wrote here and was inspired to come out here by the messages I received in return.

[02:20]

So I came here, I stayed for two weeks in the building here as a guest student, and then I went down to Tassajara for the summer and sort of fell in love with Tassajara and the place and the practice. Now, when I say that I fell in love with the practice, I should say almost in spite of myself and in spite of the practice, because I found it almost impossible to sit still. I used to sit there going, just ring the goddamn bell, you know. I was sure that they were going on for hours. But there was something that fed me, something that fed me very deeply. And I knew that I needed more of it, something that nourished me in a way that I had not been nourished before. So I came back here at the end of the summer, got an apartment with a bunch of other Zen students and started to work for Zen Center. Now, the problem was that when I came to Zen Center, I pretty much came with what I could fit in a backpack as far as material possessions, but I also came with a few other things.

[03:23]

The few other things that I came with were untreated alcoholism, morbid depression, and elements of post-traumatic stress disorder, none of which had been addressed, because, of course, I thought that Buddhism would take care of everything. It didn't. And actually, you know, I found the Zen Center and I, at least the Zen Center of those days and I, were a perfect fit because I needed a place that fit my neuroses sort of like this, like, you know, a dovetail. And so when I got here, I realized I had come to a place where no matter what I did or how hard I tried or how many periods of Zazen, I did, or how much I volunteered, or how many classes I took, I would never, ever be good enough. And that fit really well with my ongoing neuroses. I'm happy to say that Zen Center has changed quite a bit since then.

[04:27]

But for me, it was Taylorwood made for my neuroses. So I stayed here for a couple of years, you know, eventually moving into the building, and then moved to Tassajara, where I proceeded to live in hell for five years. Tassajara, a monastery where there's constant meditation. You know, we think of monasteries where we do things together, like we're together all day, but we're in silence most of that time, and it's a wonderful place to isolate and hide out. And this is what I discovered. And so even though I was not drinking, my alcoholism had not been treated. and my depression had not been treated, and my post-traumatic stress disorder had not even been diagnosed. So I was pretty miserable the entire time, and God knows why I stayed, but I did. Maybe I thought that that one period of zazen tomorrow would change things, or if I tried just a little harder, or if I studied more, or if I asked the right questions in Dokusan.

[05:30]

None of it helped. And so after five years, I moved back to the city, started working in the kitchen where I found myself again. Things come around, except this time I'm really enjoying it. I am. I really am. Thank you. Okay. And part of it is because of the wonderful people I'm working with. And eventually moved next door. So when I came back, you know, I sort of fell through. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to proceed. I knew that I was in hell, and I didn't know how to treat it except to go back to my old medicine, which was alcohol. So safe and protected and hidden as much as I could be, I proceeded to rapidly... Actually, it took a really long time. I proceeded to descend into ever more active alcoholism until I had become what we call in the trait tissue-dependent. And, you know, my life was hell for a very long time.

[06:34]

Oddly enough, I stopped sitting for quite a while, and then I was able to sit again. And sometimes the only peace that I had was on the cushion in the morning. But anyhow, everything was untreated until finally, through a series of... situations that I'm not going to go into, a friend of mine intervened, introduced me to recovery, and I was able to become sober for the first time in my life, really sober, as opposed to simply not drinking. However, just as I sort of thought that Zen was going to treat everything else, I was sort of hoping that, you know, AA was going to take care of my depression. I'm very stubborn, so it took me years to go into therapy. And after that, it took me years further to decide that I needed to be on antibiotics. depressive medications. And then, of course, there was several years where I tried a whole lot of different ones until I found out something that worked for me. So that brings me up to the present. So what is practice like after 30 years in the present?

[07:37]

Well, I have to tell you. Somebody asked me today what I was going to talk about, and I told them that the title of my talk should be 30 Years of Zen Failure. because essentially I feel like a Zen failure in many ways. There are a couple of things that go on for me right now, one of which is I have finally discovered a medication regime and the things that I need to do to keep myself from falling into depression. Unfortunately, the medicine that I am on interferes with my sleep patterns, which means that I can't get up for Zazen in the morning. So I am unable to participate in the prime activity of my spiritual community. The other thing that I've discovered, I actually discovered this quite a long time ago, is that I can no longer sit Sashin. For many years, going into Sashin has been the equivalent of me giving myself over to suicidal despair.

[08:45]

And I've never met a teacher, a teaching, a therapist or a medication that could not, that could alleviate that. So for the sake of my spiritual, mental and emotional health, I don't do sesshin. Because I don't do sesshin, I am not eligible for Dharma transmission, which means that I am not a recognized teacher at Zen Center and probably never will be. So, you know, this is the life of a 30 years end loser. Now, you're probably wondering at this point why I'm telling you all of this ghastly stuff. And I'm surprised that some of you haven't gotten up and bolted for the door already. Oddly enough, the reason that I wanted to tell you all this stuff is to try and instill a certain amount of hope in you and to share the hope that I have found. When you can't do the things that other people do, when you can't shine the way you want to shine, when you can't practice the way you want to practice and the way that is expected of you, particularly if you're a priest, what do you do?

[10:04]

What do you do? Where do you go for refuge? So this has been my sort of ongoing koan. And I want to tell you about some of the things that have helped. You know, Dovin Zenji invites us to take the step backward and turn the light that illumines within. I'm not quoting exactly, but you get the idea. And so what that means for me is to look at myself with some objectivity, to look at myself without claiming I, me, or mine, to look at this person this Zen loser in the world and seeing how he moves through the world and not being attached to his feelings and not being attached to his story and not being attached to his failure or his successes. Because that's not what it's all about. Because as soon as I become attached to this story, to this person that I've created, this Zen loser or this, you know, whatever,

[11:14]

there's no hope. Because, you know, as soon as we start measuring ourselves, we're always going to lose. And so it's kind of interesting to practice as though this person were a character in a story and to see what he does and to realize that, you know, it doesn't really matter a whole lot in many ways. So... you know, cut off from the foundational practice of my spiritual community, I have to ask, what is my practice and what is my refuge? And what I have come to believe, what I know, what I have come to know, what I have come to feel deep inside me is that the main practice is the bodhisattva vow.

[12:17]

The vow to live and be lived for the benefit of all beings. And, you know, in our lives, if we take this vow seriously, it is going to manifest itself in different ways at different times. And we have to look at it within the context of an entire life of practice. So... there are many things that I can't do. But there are other ways in which I can embody this vow to the best of my ability. And I truly believe that this is the refuge. You know, when I think of the Bodhisattva vow, I think of it as a deep, wide, swift river that if I throw myself into it will carry me without my having to do a whole lot. I was visiting the scene of the crime this past weekend. I went back to St. Louis. where I grew up. And I had, not surprisingly, while I was there, a series of pretty awful nightmares.

[13:20]

However, I had one dream that was so wonderful, I need to tell you about it. I dreamed that I and a bunch of other people, none of whom I knew, really, were time-traveling. And we were going from epic to epic. I don't know how we did it, but, you know, we would... be in one time period and then another time period. And all the time that we were doing this, we were trying to escape some horrible monster who was trying to like, I don't know, what do monsters do? Gobble us up, I suppose. And each time we would manifest in a new time, the monster would come and he would look different each time. And so finally, we were in a big room and the monster came and there was no way out. And he grabbed me and he held me up. And I thought, oh shit, this is it. He's going to gobble me up now. And so I thought, well, what can I do? And the only thing I could think of was to take the refuges. And this is, by the way, I should say an ongoing practice of mine.

[14:23]

I use the refuges as a mantra during the day when I'm working or doing things that don't involve talking or thinking. And so I started saying out loud, which is not easy to do when you're being held by a monster. And he said, what are you saying? I said, well, you're going to eat me up, so I thought I'd take the refuges before I die. And he said, well, you know, many lifetimes ago, I knew the Buddha, and out of respect from him, I'm going to let you go. And he put me down, and I thought, this is great, I'm out of here. And then I felt somebody tugging on me, and... And there was this woman behind me. And she said, well, what about me? So I said, okay, come on. And I grabbed her hand. And then she grabbed the hand of the person behind her. And we all got away. And, you know, this tells me that, you know, no matter what we think of ourselves, if we give ourselves, if I give myself to the Bodhisattva vow, you know, it doesn't matter.

[15:32]

It doesn't matter whether you're the Uddevara flower in the top of the Buddha's crown, you know, or the little bit of gruel left over in his bowl, you know, because there is no personal salvation. There's no cutting ourselves off. There's no being separate. There's no winners and there's no losers. We have to all be winners, you know. because that's the way it works. And, you know, it's not, um, if I think of it, you know, it's not a, um, it's not a concept, although we can, you know, we can talk about it intellectually, but actually it's something deeply felt and deeply experienced, uh, how intimately we are connected with each other. I had some difficulty with someone once and, uh, And I tried thinking of this person as the part of my mind that I didn't like, and I found that that helped.

[16:39]

So, you know, 30 minutes of practice, 30 days of practice, 30 years of practice, 30 lifetimes of practice. You know, it doesn't really matter. So I said that I wanted to give this talk, and this particular talk, because I wanted to share my hope with you. But, you know, there's also a more personal reason that I need to cop to, too. You know, people who are afflicted with alcoholism and depression and PTSD tend to be very protective of themselves and hide a lot and isolate. And... When we take refuge in Sangha, you know, we actively work against this isolation and this fear. And I want to say, this is perhaps, this is my understanding and perhaps somebody would disagree, but I believe that when we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, they're not on a descending scale of value.

[17:54]

You know, they're Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. There's this lovely sutra in the Pali where Ananda, bless his heart, goes up to the Buddha and says, guess what I figured out, Lord? Because he's always a straight man, you know? And the Buddha says, yes, Aranda? He said, I figured out that having good spiritual friends is at least 50% of the spiritual life. And the Buddha, one supposes very gently, says, actually, Sabuti, having good spiritual friends along with the teaching is all of the spiritual life. Um... And, you know, it's very difficult for us sometimes. You know, when we live so close to each other, it's easy to see each other's flaws and failures. And it's easy to want to disguise our own and fear that they are being seen too closely for our comfort. You know, at Tassajara, we all sort of do our laundry by hand and hang it up on the lines.

[19:03]

And, I mean, you get to know people really intimately. You get to know their underwear, you know. And it can be very uncomfortable to be known, to be seen. And yet, you know, who's really there? You know, who's really there to be seen in the first place? Well, it's not very late, and I promised you a short lecture. So I think I don't have anything else to say. Thank you. Holy Spirit.

[19:43]

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