This is such a lovely moment. Oh, it's just become an even lovelier moment, I guess. So, thanks everybody for coming. It's really such an honor to be sitting in this seat and giving another talk. And you'll be happy to know that I'm way less... I've had a way less anxious and anxiety-ridden day today. I've actually been kind of looking forward to this talk. So, this afternoon, a group of us sat... here in this room in honor of International Women's Day.

[01:05]

And this talk comes out of the energy that has been created for me as a result of this day. And it's actually a completely different talk from the talk that I had planned. So I was just very inspired by being asked to talk on this particular day as a kind of representative of women, I suppose, although that feels like a big task. So this talk feels very communal, and it would not have come to fruition without the input of quite a few people in this very room. So International Women's Day, for those of you that are not aware of what it is, it's a global movement. celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. And the day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender equality.

[02:09]

And the theme, every year there's a different theme, but the theme for this year is be bold for change. Be bold for change. So it takes courage to speak up and to point out disparity. And this statement is asking us to do that. It's asking us to be bold and to be courageous. But it's also important to consider how vocal we want to be when advocating for women. Because there may be days when we feel more emboldened than others. But my particular commitment towards forging women's advancement this year is specifically to seek out and support women-owned businesses because that's something that I really feel passionate about and I also feel that I'm not willing to override this important value just for the sake of ease or because it's more convenient.

[03:14]

So that is my commitment for this year and I intend to hold to it. It's my form of engagement with the Be Bold for Change statement. It's something that I can really take up. So this morning at work meeting, Eli produced this wonderful organizational chart. And I won't do as good a job explaining it as Eli did this morning, but long story short, this organizational chart represents the women in senior... within the structure of Zen Center. So you'll see that some of the boxes are gold and some of the boxes are black. And the differentiation is that the gold boxes represent the percentage of women in these particular areas. I think 33% or up.

[04:17]

33% or up in the gold boxes. Okay. And I haven't got my glasses on, so I can't actually tell you what they represent. And the black boxes are women in positions of seniority at Zen Center. There is a copy of this also on the table out there. So for those of you that actually want to take a closer look, you can check it out after the talk. So to me, when I... looked at this I really love the visual aid aspect of this like I found it really interesting and exciting and it's interesting to see how evenly distributed the marks are and it leaves me feeling encouraged that Zen Center really has a pretty equal amount of men and women in senior roles and actually It's pretty unusual, I think. I think it speaks to how progressive San Francisco Zen Center is within the context of a traditionally male-dominated school of Buddhism.

[05:26]

And it's one of the reasons that I've stayed here over the years. Because seeing women in spiritual leadership was a very important part of my spiritual journey. Because I believe that women mentoring women is an invaluable asset. And here at Zen Center, we have many strong women in teaching positions. Also, I'd like to bring to attention where we are, this building that we're sitting in. It was designed by a woman architect, and she was way ahead of her time. So in 1904, Julia Morgan was the first woman to obtain an architecture license in California. And she actually had to go all the way to Paris, to France, to actually get that license. And this site, 300 Page Street, was completed in 1922. And it was originally commissioned by Emmanuel Sisterhood for personal service.

[06:33]

And it was created to provide a physical educational and spiritual place of refuge for women. who were finding their way in San Francisco. So, there is a lineage of women between these walls. And sometimes, I like to imagine what it must have been like when this room was a space used by women to socialize in. Because behind the altar, you may notice, there's a marble fireplace. And I have an idea that the two large couches that we use in the dining room were originally installed in this room, and that this was the place that the women used to relax in, that it was kind of sangha of a different kind. So sometimes during service, I imagine a fire roaring in that fireplace and those couches and some tables scattered around and just this room filled with the energy of women, as it still is.

[07:40]

So a teacher I greatly admire offered me an important piece of advice recently. And she said, when giving a Dharma talk, always speak about something that engages you and that you are practicing with. Which is why I've chosen to talk about the practice of relationships and intimacy. And so in the theme of this Dharma talk, which is a communal Dharma talk, this morning... Carmen and Nick, in the front office, came across this commentary by Chris Fortin, which they shared with the community earlier in an email. And it's taken from The Hidden Lamp, it's a book called The Hidden Lamp, stories from 25 centuries of awakened women. And this particular story is called Miao Zong's Dharma Interview. But it's a bit of a racy story. so I'm not going to read it.

[08:43]

It's racy for a Zen story, actually, I have to say. It's racy for a Zen story, so if you are curious about it, you can pick up a copy of the book. It also happens to be outside on the table, and you can look for the paragraph which I'm about to read. Although in the ultimate there is no separate self, no female or male, We become true human beings through embodied relationship. The heart awakens to compassion when we are able to open ourselves to one another. We embrace the truth of our interconnection through the poignant beauty and vulnerability of revealed and intimate meeting with another. Although in the ultimate there is no separate self, no female or male, we become true human beings through embodied relationship.

[09:48]

The heart awakens to compassion when we are able to open ourselves to one another. We embrace the truth of our interconnection through the poignant beauty and vulnerability of revealed and intimate meeting with another. So relationships are like kaleidoscopes. I'm sure you remember when you were a kid looking through a kaleidoscope and seeing all the pieces changing. We are all multifaceted beings. We're always co-shaping and co-creating one another. And I believe that the root of all connection is the willingness to choose vulnerability, which takes a great deal of courage. It's much easier to protect ourselves, to shut down and to withdraw. But that doesn't really get us any kind of connection that we want. So I truly believe that vulnerability leads to intimacy.

[10:53]

And it's a courageous act to step into vulnerability. Unfortunately, vulnerability is not a characteristic that holds much value in the West. I think our cultural mental health would be much more robust if as children we had been encouraged to be vulnerable. If we had learnt a language that enabled us to identify and talk about our feelings and needs. But that certainly didn't happen for me. There was never any kind of education around feelings or feelings, even the word feelings didn't really exist in our family. So as an adult I've had to teach myself this language I've had to kind of study language and study vulnerability and study how to connect so instead of being taught a way to relate to each other through feelings and vulnerability we're tested on our knowledge we're tested on our degrees we're tested on our schooling we're tested on how much we know rather than how fluent we are in the language of emotions

[12:04]

And this leads so quickly and easily to disconnection and misunderstanding. And the absence of understanding is the basis of disconnection. I love that sentence. The absence of understanding is the basis of disconnection. So often, disconnection happens as a result of a misunderstanding. and we don't pay attention to it at the time, and it just gets kind of deeper and thicker and tighter [...] until we just completely withdraw. So the minute, personally, the minute I notice myself starting to do that and withdraw, I try to move towards the person who I feel hurt by or misunderstood by. So understanding the people that we're in relationship to is central to the health of the connection and it's also really essential and central to the health of a community if you live with others and since right now we are all living in a community with others it's extremely important I think that we attend to the relationships that we have with each other and that we are gentle and careful and when we have a missing or a misunderstanding that we go

[13:33]

And we find the person and we have a conversation and we step into vulnerability. Because that's what it's going to take in order for reconnection to happen. So indulge me for a moment and just think about the different kinds of relationships in your life. So there's the parent-child relationship. There's the relationship that you have with your siblings, if you have siblings. There are friendships. There are co-worker relationships. And then there are intimate relationships. So I'm wondering if, just take a moment to think about these forms of relationship and see if one of them stands out for you. So just take a moment to reflect on those flavors of relationship.

[14:35]

So within those flavors of relationship, thinking about the one that stands out for you, Is there something about the relationship that you'd like to be different? And if there is something about the relationship that you'd like to be different, would you be willing to risk vulnerability in order to find a deeper understanding between you? So I want to tell you a story about my dad. So my dad, for most of my life, was not a good enough father. There's this adage of being a good enough parent or being in a good enough relationship, and I think there's a lot of value there. But my dad was not... He wasn't kind, and he wasn't loving, and he was really a bully, actually. He was very impatient with us. I have a younger brother and an older sister, so there were three of us.

[15:59]

And we were all... born quite close together. So my parents had three children very young. And my parents were young when they had us. They were in their 20s. And so, you know, they were probably struggling. Now I realize, you know, now I'm a grown up. I realize how hard it must have been to have three children when you're in your early 20s and you're trying to figure out who you are and how to make enough money to give these three children what they need. I mean, so stressful. However, as a result of those stresses on my parents. My father was very unkind to us. None of us experienced much kindness from my dad. He talked to us in a particular tone of voice that would make us all freeze. He would come home from work and he'd walk in the door. And before he came home, everything was kind of fun and lively because my mum provided a lot of the warmth in our family.

[17:01]

So before my dad came home from work, we'd all be doing whatever, eating toast in the kitchen or chatting to my mum. And my dad would come home and we'd all freeze, including my mum. We'd all freeze. And then it would become really unfun really quickly. And we spent most of our childhoods trying not to get in trouble with my dad. But it was impossible because it didn't matter what we did. It wasn't about us. It wasn't about us not leaving our shoes on the stairs. It wasn't about us not leaving our coats over the stair thing, the stairway. But at the time, when you're little and you don't understand anything, you think that you just have to be better, that if you're better and if you behave better, in a more what if you behave in a more kind of acceptable manner maybe you'll get your parents approval and that never happened for us we never got my father's approval so this was the father I grew up with and have been kind of imprinted on and I think it goes a long way to explain why I decided that I wanted to be with women going back to my way seeking mind talk

[18:14]

why I decided that I wanted to be with women when I came to San Francisco, because my relationship with my father had had such a negative impact on me that I just couldn't trust men. I really liked them, but I couldn't possibly trust them. And so I was lucky enough to be able to make the choice to be with women. So anyway, the years go on, and I move here to San Francisco. You know, every time I go back to England, my dad's kind of busy and working. And, you know, I'm always quite happy when he's not around. I'm always still, you know, was always very happy to have my mom to myself. And so this relationship really didn't change much until one day. All it takes is one day. I've been talking to Christina, learned her a lot about my father. And she's a very wise woman. And she gave me a piece of advice and she said, You need to tell your father that he can't talk to you certain ways.

[19:14]

And if he does, then there'll be consequences. And so I kind of took this piece of advice and went home one summer, maybe about 12 years ago or something. And my father, we were eating dinner together, and my father said something, can't remember what, and I said to him, Dad, don't talk to me like that. And he said something again in that tone of voice, that kind of like really mean, nasty, trying to get at me tone of voice. And I said to him, if you say anything else to me in that tone, I'm going to leave. And he did. And I got up and I left. Right there. And then I got up from the dining room table and I said... I'm leaving. And my mum was like, no, you can't. I'm like, yeah, I'm leaving. And I literally walked out of the flat. I didn't even go and pick anything up. I just walked out of my parents' flat. And I didn't go back. I told my mum that I refused to talk to my father until he had done some work on himself and transformed his relationship with anger.

[20:24]

And I really stuck to that. I stayed in London a few more weeks. I stayed with friends. I wouldn't have any contact with my dad. My mom was just devastated because my mom was always the one holding the family together. And my mom was the one that used to say to us, oh, you know, oh, darlings, daddy does love you. Now I'm like, oh, my God, if my mom had to tell us that our dad loved us, clearly my mom could see what was going on and wasn't really kind of doing a lot of wasn't doing a lot of running interference interference. So. Anyway, I had no contact with my father, and then eventually I told my mom that if he wanted to have any contact with me, he could write me letters, and by that time I was back here. And he did. He wrote a book about anger, which I found a few years later, and almost every line was underlined in that bright red. He'd obviously gone through it. He could really relate to that whole anger book. And he wrote me a letter. He wrote me several letters about it, and then I think we talked on the phone or something.

[21:28]

And since then, my relationship with my father has completely transformed. And it's not just because of that. But he said to me after that episode, many years later, once we've become very close, he said to me that after I walked out of the flat, he went into the room that I'd been sleeping in and all my stuff was still there, but I was gone. And he said, and I felt like you'd died. And I think that was the moment when my father suddenly realized how deeply he loved his children. So since then, my father is now 83, just turned 83, and he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, very, very slow moving, and he has turned into the most loving, most gentle, sweetest, kindest old man.

[22:31]

He's a shadow of his former self. He was very big and tall and, you know, loud. And he's a little shrunken old man who just kind of, kind of like shuffles around and he just, he just loves us all. And I feel like what's happened is that he's gone from, because of his kind of cognitive, um, functioning because his cognitive functioning isn't the way it used to be like he can't trust his cognitive functioning he's dropped right down into his heart and for the first time in his life I think he's truly truly in his heart and he's truly feeling how much he loves his family And his life has become much smaller, and so it's very much, you know, him and my mom and my siblings and our partners, we're kind of very much the kind of center of everything. They still have friends, but for my dad, it's very much very, very small.

[23:32]

And being with them is, it's just the most beautiful thing. And when I talk to him on the phone now, he's always like, I love you, God bless. It's just amazing how people change. And I believe that the moment of change was the moment when I stepped into kind of a fierce worry of vulnerability, when I said, no, you cannot treat me like that anymore. I will not be treated that way. And so it was a stepping into a different form of vulnerability. I think so often when we... think about vulnerability it has more of a kind of softness like a softer tenderer kind of almost slightly protective essence to it but then there's the kind of worry of vulnerability like no you know you don't push me around and so that was where everything changed with my father and so as a I feel beyond fortunate actually because it could have gone the other way

[24:42]

I could have had a really lovely, loving, gentle, wonderful father who suddenly turned into a very angry, unavailable man. And actually, the complete opposite has happened. So at the end of my father's life, all of us are having this just beautiful relationship with him. And I just, he's one of my favorite people. Sometimes he phones me up and he'll leave me a message and he'll say, my family calls me Vawny, it's my nickname. And he'll phone me up and he'll say, hello, Bonnie, it's your daddy here. I'm just like, it's just so, it's just such an extraordinary, it's so sweet when he does it, but it's just like, who are you? So, yeah, so this is the story of how, for me, stepping into vulnerability really transformed and changed. one of the main relationships in my life.

[25:43]

And so emotional intelligence, I suppose like this language of connecting through emotions, it's called emotional intelligence these days. It's a way of processing life by connecting with your feelings and mastering a way to communicate your needs. And I really feel like it's a study that we have to do. I talked about this before. Communication is not something that comes naturally to us. Intimacy is not something that comes naturally to us. Vulnerability, not something that comes naturally to us. We're all having to learn it. Meditation is a big, helpful kind of gateway to becoming intimate with ourselves because as we sit quietly for long enough, and we turn the light inwards, then we become intimate with ourselves. And I think becoming intimate with ourselves is the first step towards being able to be intimate with other people, but it's a life's work. And relationships are the root of all life.

[26:45]

Everything happens in relationship. Nothing happens on its own. It's all dependently coerisen. As it says in the Genjo Koan, the whole world comes forth and manifests itself without ceasing for a moment. This is the essence of interdependence. So in this room we are all connected. So this nexus or this web of life, it's the complex pattern of relating, which we're all experiencing all the time, whether we're comfortable with it or not. So it's really important to take good care of the people in your life, the people you care about and the people that you don't care so much about. It's equally important to really pay close attention. So my challenge to you on this day of international women is would you be willing to risk vulnerability in order to find a deeper understanding between you and somebody else?

[27:53]

And as Chris Fortin wrote, we embrace the truth of our interconnection through the poignant beauty and vulnerability of revealed and intimate meeting with another. And because last time I spoke I didn't leave any time for any questions, I'm now going to leave time for questions. Does anyone have a question or a statement? Or a wondering? So I asked him to go to therapy and he made an effort to go to therapy.

[28:55]

He went down the road and to a counseling center in London and got an appointment and then they said they couldn't help him. So he said to me, well, I tried, but they said they couldn't help me. And I'm like, dad, that's worrying. They said they couldn't help you. But I was here and he was there. And so it was kind of like the distance. There was too much distance for me to follow up. And at that point, I kind of felt like he was kind of Whatever work he was doing, he was kind of doing it himself. I think he was beginning to reflect. And my father also didn't have a father. You know, it all trickles down, right? Everything, it's all the trickle-down interconnection of life. So my father's father, like something, it's a mystery. We don't know what happened. I think he had an affair. My father's father, my grandfather.

[29:56]

I think he had an affair and my grandmother threw him out. And so my father never had any contact with his father. And so my father was raised by a very hurt single mother at a very difficult time for a woman to be single in the world. And she was an independent woman, my grandmother. She went and made a very good living for herself and she... She decided that my father was going to have a good education by hook or by crook. My dad was going to have a good education. So she got a job and she put him into boarding school where he got a very good education. And my father kind of, what do they say? Self-made man. I'm quite sure what that means. He ended up becoming a politician, my father. He was a career politician until he retired just fairly recently, actually. I think he was going to Brussels with Alzheimer's and giving... meetings or holding meetings with people with a bit of Alzheimer's because we're all like how the hell is he still doing that but he was still doing that so yeah so whatever anger was burning him up it seems to have burned itself out at this point I also think it's probably something to do with testosterone but what do I know about testosterone but I do think that that fire in him I think when I think when that fire in him was kind of snuffed out because of his age

[31:18]

then he was able to get a little more tender and way more vulnerable. Thanks, Peter. Hi. Big rebuttal. I think it's good that you realize that.

[32:44]

I think having that insight is very important. And in terms of forgiveness, I mean, for me, one of the things that's helped is understanding my father's story, understanding why he used the strategies that he used when he was raising us. But I've had to kind of, I could only understand that as an adult. And it's taken me years of therapy also to get to that point where I understood him. It wasn't like, oh, suddenly I get my dad. It was years of therapy. It was years of sitting. It was years of just feeling so shamed by him and so much shame in that relationship. And I got to a level of maturity and wisdom where I was just like, I'm not drinking that Kool-Aid anymore. And I started being able to kind of see his history. and see why he was the way he was. So with your dad, there's really good reasons why he is the way he is.

[33:48]

It doesn't make it okay. But maybe understanding helps a little bit. It helped me anyway. Thank you for your question. my siblings had very different experiences um well no they had no they had the same they had similar experiences they had different responses so my my siblings have their own particular karmic patterning with my father um which is a whole nother story but I would say in the in the bigger picture the sense of devotion and love and um acceptance um

[35:01]

that we all have for my father is absolutely the... It infuses every interaction that we all have with him. Like, we're all about my dad. Because he's getting older, and who knows how long he'll be around, etc. So everyone is all about my dad, and I think that we've all gotten to the age where we're able to just put aside the... Or live with the wounding. I don't think it's even putting aside. I think it becomes a tapestry of your life. That the wounding that we all get from our family, from our parents, it becomes part of the tapestry of who we are. So my tapestry is woven differently to my brothers and my sisters. But we are all completely devoted to my father. to a wonderful and horrible realization of, you know, what is this?

[36:56]

What is happening here? Because it sounds like your mom was, like, good parent, bad parent. Oh, yeah. And that had to be very challenging. I think each one of us experiences that in a very unique way, depending on what you were just talking about, the intergenerational... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there was not a lot of intimacy within our family structure, even though my, you know, I had a wonderful grandmother. Mum's mum. My matriarchal line is very strong. I very much feel like I'm very much who I am because of my matriarchal line. So that's why I was so happy to be talking on this day. So my grandmother provided an incredible, she was like an anchor in a rocky sea in our childhood.

[38:02]

So we'd all go to stay with my grandparents and we could drink Ribena. Anyone know what Ribena is? Yeah. It's like the squash. I know what you call it here. It's like a fruity drink that you put water in. Anyway, we were allowed to drink Ribena there. Not at our house. No Ribena at my parents' house. We were allowed to drink Ribena and we were allowed to put tomato ketchup on our food, which we were never allowed to do at our house at home. So we'd go to my grandparents and because my granny did the cooking and she'd say to my dad, Brian, this is my house. The children can do what they want. So we'd get the tomato ketchup and we'd go eat. Just because he couldn't say anything. So my granny and my mum, my mum is my granny's daughter, provided a tremendous amount of love and stability and they were fearless, wonderful, generous-hearted, loving, beautiful women.

[39:04]

And my mum is... My mum is the best. I'm completely in love with my mum. I just think she's the most wonderful woman. I feel very lucky with my parents. One last question and then all of you go to bed. Well, my mom has an extraordinary case of revisionist history. Because I would say to her, when I was spending God knows how much money on therapy, trying to figure out my relationship with my father so I could figure out my relationship with men. God, there's so much money went there. I would go home and say to my mom, but mom, what was it like for you? And she'd say to me, oh, but darling, it was fine.

[40:06]

it wasn't fine. It wasn't fine at all. It was so completely not fine. I can't believe that you're saying it was fine. And then I was like, oh my gosh, it's just like impenetrable. Like, what am I going to do? Rip down my mother's walls of denial? Like, mom, it was terrible. It was abusive. We were miserable. Like, how could you have let him? I was just like, okay, fine. She can live in her idea of this fine parenting role that she was implicit in, complicit in. And I have to say, I'm so glad that she had that lovely denial built up nice and strong because she didn't leave him. Because otherwise she would have left him. She would have been like, I'm leaving this bastard, this horrible, unkind, nasty man who's mean to my children, who I love very much. I'm out of here. But nope, she didn't. She was a good Catholic. And I think she really loved him. And I think she was afraid of her parents' disapproval because, you know, God forbid what they'd say in church on a Sunday if, you know... Jillian had left Brian with three small children, so she didn't.

[41:09]

And now everybody's happy. Thank you. May I...

[41:25]

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