Well, it is very nice to be all together, and there's a considerable number of new faces here. Is it the first time for anybody doing a one-day sitting at the Berkley Zen Center? Yeah. First time doing a one-day sitting, period? Yeah. Well, that's nice. It's a day of a lot of firsts. One of the nice things about having a women's sitting is that it's just a different constellation, and so people get to do different jobs, often for the first time. So we have a first-time session director, right, and a first-time bell ringer, and a first-time mercugio. Are you a mercugio? No mercugio today. Oh, no mercugio. Oh, so we know. Anyway, a first-time cook, I think. A first-time head server. First-time head

[01:08]

taster. So lots of firsts, and one feels it. It's a variation on the form. And part of the delight of being an all-women is that we can take it with some merriment. So I wanted to talk today about a case in the transmission of light. It isn't specifically a topic about women, and yet when I read it, it came to me in a very close, sort of intimate way, and so I wanted to talk about it, and to talk about it with you, and I'm sure that because

[02:15]

we're all women, we will talk about it in that way. The transmission of light is the transmission stories that go from Buddha up to one teacher beyond Dogen. I think there are 51 stories, and they've been translated for some time by Thomas Cleary, and they have recently been retranslated by Lex Hickson, and they're quite different translations, so that's nice. The Cleary translation sticks more to the old stories, and the form of the old stories, and Lex Hickson is just irrepressibly devotional, and he keeps returning to the

[03:20]

transmission, to the light aspect of the transmission, and his book is called Living Buddha Zen. So I've read the Cleary at least twice, and now I'm reading the Hickson for the first time, and it's great to put them together. There are so many sides to this teaching. And the particular case is, for me, about how we find our finite place in this infinite world. And it's what actually we're negotiating today in Zazen, that's what Zazen is about, how we find our place in this ever-shifting breath-to-breath period of different conditions.

[04:25]

How we find our place, whether the place is comfortable or uncomfortable, how we find our position in it. So this is a story about transmission of Ragaratha, we say these names in the morning, Kanadeva Dayasho, Ragaratha Dayasho, Sogyenandai Dayasho. Another reason I like these transmission stories is that they're very devotional. A couple of people recently have said to me, Zen is so cool, and I think I used to say that too. Well, these are books about hot Zen. You know, the story of transmission, of how the

[05:27]

teaching is passed, of how the heart's desire is discovered and transmitted, is a very passionate story. And that comes through in these stories. So, there's so many different ways of transmission. There is our lineage, which is these men who transmitted the light from one to another in past centuries. And I remember one of the first women sitting here, the speaker, Sonia Margolis, I think she may have been. Well, somewhere. I remember her chanting her own personal lineage. And I've heard several other women do that, too, that we realized

[06:29]

that we didn't just have to accept the lineage that comes down in our teaching as the only one. So we all have our personal lineage. And then we have the lineage that just is happening all the time, kind of horizontal lineage, the lineage, the transmission that's just coming from whatever is happening in the moment. So all these different kinds of transmissions. Well, so I'm going to read this little story about Rabirata. And Rabirata was from Kapilavastu. As for the past cause, after Kanadeva had been liberated, Kanadeva is the teacher that Rabirata is going to get his transmission from. As for the past cause, after Kanadeva had been liberated and was traveling around teaching, he came to Kapilavastu.

[07:34]

There was a rich man there named Brahma Sudaguna, in whose garden a fungus grew on a tree one day, a fungus like a mushroom with an exceedingly fine flavor. Only the elder and his second son, Rabirata, partook of it. After they ate it, it re-grew, and when it was gone, it sprouted again. Yet the other members of the family could not see it. And at that time, Kanadeva knew the past cause of this phenomena, and he went to that house. The elder asked him the reason, and Kanadeva said, in your house, once in the past, you gave offerings to a monk, and that monk's perception of the way was not yet clear. Because he was receiving alms in vain, he became a tree fungus to repay. Since only your son and you provide offerings with pure sincerity, you have been able to partake of it, not so the others. Well, now

[08:36]

this may be a little obscure, but imagine that we are in our family gardens, and each one of us has a particular place in our family, in the world, and a particular reason for being here, a particular path. And because of that unique situation that each of us is in, we make connections. We make connections with something like, say, a fungus. A certain thing, or certain constellations of things, is meaningful to us. And we have a particular taste for the Dharma, and we eat it, and are rewarded. This is perhaps after we've moved

[09:45]

somewhat onto our path, after we've realized that we are not just little isolated units, but part of a whole Dharma system. Ah, that we're not separate from the world. And this realization that we're not separate takes particular shapes and forms. And in this case, it's a fungus, a tree mushroom. And so only the people who the son, the father and the son, Raghurata, who's about to get the transmission, see this fungus and eat it, and it's invisible to everybody else. And they take pleasure in it, and enjoy it. And then the teacher comes, our teacher comes, and sees the situation from a wider angle, and notices something

[10:49]

about our Dharma appetite, and appreciates it. And says, oh, you eat this fungus, and nobody else sees it. And the reason this fungus is there, is that in past causes and conditions, there was a monk, there was another person, who was making an offering, and it was not quite a complete offering, there was some residue. And you are making a particular contact with that offering residue. And when this was pointed out, Raghurata, the disciple, became enlightened, or came into the line of transmission. He understood something larger about what his place was. He understood in a deeper way, the meaning of what his life

[11:55]

was about, and the connection that his life had with past lives, and the efforts of others. So, it's a story that we are living out all the time. You know, as we come to sit here, we're always hoping that the whole story will be clarified, and that somebody will come and say, oh, yes, here you are, and this is what you're doing. And, we have to listen. How does that happen? Does it happen? When does it happen? So, I'd like to read a, now part of the chapter that Les Hickson writes about this story.

[13:32]

And it's sort of about what the fungus is about. Now, on one hand, if we make an incomplete offering, if we set our intention to doing something well, say to sitting a period of Zazen well, or doing something for somebody else well, and we resolve, we're just going to do our best, we're going to try our best, and the outcome is, it's sort of mixed, usually, because who knows, who knows what sitting a period of Zazen well is, and who knows really what doing something for somebody else well is. There's some kind of, we have our aspiration, and we have what happens,

[14:44]

and that what happens may have whatever effect it has in this world. So, these monks came to the garden and offered alms, but maybe they were hoping that something would come of their offering. There was some impurity in it, and so the monk became a mushroom for life after life. So, our karma is sort of what sticks to us, what doesn't quite go away, what we're always working with year after year, maybe lifetime after lifetime, what sticks us, so we have to come back to it again and again. You certainly get this in Zazen, in the issue of comfort and discomfort, that we're used to not liking discomfort,

[15:50]

and so when you sit in a long day like this, there's bound to be some discomfort, and it's the place of the day that we put ourselves in. So, what are we going to do with the discomfort? How are we going to find our place and keep in it, in some balanced way, through the discomfort? Putting attention on the posture and breath, and not dwelling so much on what's comfortable and what's uncomfortable, or going into the discomfort. What really is it? If I move my arm to scratch my ear, is that really going to make a difference? That kind of exploration. So, the circumstances in our lives have brought us to this day, to this moment,

[16:59]

and what do we do with it? And to the degree that we don't get unstuck, there's some kind of... we're caught. We have to repeat and repeat and repeat, and often we get a sort of a stuck, almost dead, mushroom-like feeling from being stuck. And, on the other hand, there's something also sweet about our karma. Generations ago, this wandering monk received alms from the family ancestors in this very garden. The monk had not yet attained awakening, and so received the alms as if they actually belonged to him. Neither a drop of water, nor a blade of wheat, nor a grain of rice belongs to anyone, but only to Mother Wisdom, the infinite womb of brilliant blackness.

[18:01]

After becoming a genuine bodhisattva, inseparably joining wisdom and compassion, and inviting all beings to awaken into non-duality, the wandering monk, as a gesture of gratitude to his early benefactors, mentally manifested this peculiar fungus. Its distinct ear-shape is karmically designed. Kanedaibha now reveals as a message to the boy, Ragaratha, listen, listen carefully to the words of the living Buddha, who is destined to visit you here. Far-fetched as it appears to conventional thinking, our world is entirely composed of such subtle karmic signs, karmic events and links, karmic attractions and confirmations, clearly recognizable by awakened persons, almost unnoticed by others. The sound of a car starting up in the early morning when the engine is cold.

[19:05]

A dog barking in the pre-dawn darkness. A cat walking unexpectedly into the zendo during quiet meditation and leaping to a high windowsill. A local convent, gradually emptied of sisters after 70 years of ceaseless vigil, becomes available as a sanctuary for all religions and for persons dying of incurable illness. The mysterious fungus in Ragaratha's family garden happens to be delicious. The boy somehow discovered this and has been amazed to observe the portions that he eats grow back again. We are inexorably attracted to the taste of our karma, whether bitter or sweet, but it can never be consumed without playing out its drama, without delivering its message. This fungus, points out Master Kaizan, remains invisible to the other members of the extended family, except for the boy's father. Not everyone can see the karma that plainly unfolds before our eyes.

[20:14]

So, there's something about this taste of karma, which we come back to, bitter or sweet. This zazen that we return to, breath after breath, whether bitter or sweet. Long days sit. So, we're always figuring out what our position is, moment to moment, and what is our position in this life story. And we're put down somehow, we're dropped down into whatever families we've been dropped down to as babies. And the families may fit, or not fit. But that's our position. They bring us what we're going to work on.

[21:36]

And as women, historically, we have been asked to make do with what our particular situation is. Whereas men have been, by and large, more likely to go out and be in the world, to be ancestors in the lineage, while the women are at home, quiet. And so, we have both sides of this story. The one, the active side, and what we do with it, the quiet side. So, I'd like to have a discussion, and end with a personal story, about my karma with my mother.

[22:55]

And how that's been one of the wheels turning in my own life. Somebody recently said that there are two kinds of relationships, when you have, within the category of lifelong family, or lifelong relationships. There's one kind that's based on affinity, and there's another kind that's based on survival. And my relationship with my mother, I think, was a survival relationship. We never had really bad times together, but nor did we understand each other. As she says, she doesn't have a religious bone in her body. And, however, she's always given me encouragement in whatever I do.

[23:59]

And, well, for most of my life, there's been a continent between us, and that's suited the relationship pretty well. And five years ago, when her partner died, our karma manifested in such a way that she came to live with me. And instead of living a continent away, she lived across the hall. And so, this mysterious fungus really had to begin to investigate what this was. And I've always, in my life, had a lot of play between wanting to be independent and being in a very committed social situation. So, I just looked forward to having left my children having gone, and my husband having gone,

[25:11]

when my mother came. It was an adjustment. And she has, my experience of her is that she's been fairly intrusive. And as she gets older, people kind of, she's 92, there's a kind of distillation, and the qualities that were always there are heightened. So, she's more outrageous. And she comes, she sneaks into my room to see if I'm there, and she comes into everybody's room and empties their wastebaskets and goes through it, and so on, and so on. But it has this, a kind of quintessential quality about it, so that there's a funny aspect, and it's not as overwhelming. But still, it's there. Day after day, it's there.

[26:18]

And so, what is this that has been close to me all of my life? Inside and outside, what is this that I keep returning to? And for the last few months, she'd get depressed, and then write herself, and there was a fair amount of depression. It's not easy being a very old lady. As she says, every morning when she wakes up, she wonders if this is going to be the last day, and she hopes it will be. And each time there's a fly on the wall, she swats it dead and hopes that her death will be as quick. So, she lives with this sense of a sharp edge, and she listens to her music, and watches TV, and plays contests.

[27:23]

And so, I co-sign every check to watch the money, and after I co-sign the check, she corrects my signature. About a few months ago, she was really quite depressed. She needed stockings, a new pair of stockings, just the kind that come up here because she wears a girdle. And so, I went out and I bought four pairs of stockings, and she was overwhelmed when I brought them home with horror. She said, I just wanted one pair. I don't want to live to wear four pairs. And she was very upset about this. And I hadn't put this together, but at that moment, I went off to a reunion of a group of women who went to Japan together, three or four years ago or something. And one of the mothers in our group had died. And Mary, we were meeting at Page Street in Blanche's rooms.

[28:28]

And Mary organized a service for the woman whose mother had died. And then she also organized a well-being service for my mother. Because it had happened right, I was sort of shaken by this. And actually, since then, the mother has been very perky. And I have to say that she has this incredible spirit of gratitude and appreciation. That is there just about every day now. She comes down to the kitchen in the morning, and she's shaky and cold and disoriented. And then she has her breakfast, and little by little, she warms up. And by mid-morning, there's this wonderful spirit at work. So, I have to realize that I was fortunate with this difficult karma. I was fortunate to have her return to my life in this very close way,

[29:35]

in a way that I never would have chosen. And to be able to really come home in the sense of being able, for the first time in my life, to love her without all the obstructions and difficulties, even though they continue to some degree. So, I'd like to close by reading the closing poem that Lex Hickson gives to this little Dharma story. Cat enters Zen Hall. Every step, careful karma. Karma. Karma. Countless moral threads fuse in my fingertips. Universal I opens. I didn't get a grip on the schedule. When are we supposed to end?

[30:40]

I'll let you know if I get a grip on it. Ten past eleven. So, maybe we can have questions, responses. Maybe this is nitpicking, but it seems not so to me. And it's really interesting hearing you saying what happened after that ceremony, because it wasn't the usual, like a well-being ceremony that we do here. We specifically, we chanted the Shosai-myo Kichijo-garani for removing hindrance. That's right. And it was, even I thought she was saying that she wanted to die, and as I recall, it was some thought of, well, if that's where she is and what she wants, let's hope that her path is easy for her. That's right. You're definitely right, that's the spirit. I felt that she was trying to die, and that was the spirit that was in, yes. And I think hindrances were removed. Well, I have a little side comment,

[31:52]

which is all during your discussion of tree funguses, I was thinking about the tree fungus out on the tree, and if anybody wants to see one, it's on the plum tree. And it's kind of been removed, but it looks like it's growing back. And I don't know who ate it. I don't know. Agnes? I have two comments and questions. The first question is, why is it, I mean, we talk in our society about being miserable or being happy or being at peace, and it seems always contradictory, but to be miserable or to experience suffering sometimes seems to be, in my life, a necessary ingredient for further growth or awareness.

[32:59]

Yeah. Well, that's how I like this story with the fungus in it, the tree fungus, which at once is a fungus and a product of somebody's imperfect effort, and on the other hand is a cause for awakening. Yeah. And the other comment is that I, too, experienced a mother who constantly told me what to do. In my 50s, she told me how to prepare the beds and not to catch colds and things like that. And I realized, though, earlier, what difficulties she went through in raising eight children when I was having challenges with two. And so she did become my friend,

[34:07]

and it was interesting that she died at 97. But until 96, she was just a shining person and just very grateful, as you said, and just very cheerful and happy, but waiting, waiting for the time. She said she was ready about three or four years before she died. But it's a very nice place to go to at that point when one is very at peace. Yeah. Yeah. I was interested in the imperfect effort because it seems to me that we all have an imperfect effort. And the way the story was written implied that only one monk had an imperfect effort and there was one fungus on one tree.

[35:10]

And I think that for us, it just fell apart. I agree. I agree. Right. Yeah, yeah, we're all in the midst of it. Maybe eating each other's fungus. Or kind of clashing. Well, clashing and mixing and working themselves out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're giving each other problems and either holding them or releasing them. Yeah. Melody? I was wondering about your thoughts on the karma of being a mother at all. Being a person whose karma is to give birth to another person and try to take care of them. I've been thinking about it a lot, especially since I saw those pictures in the newspaper last week of these big gas clouds in outer space where stars are being incubated, stars are being born.

[36:14]

And I thought, well, that is sort of how it is. Most of the universe isn't giving birth to suns, S-U-N-S, but some of it is, you know, and some human beings give birth to other human beings. It just seems like a mystery completely. Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess all of us with children can tell different, go through different experiences of that is. I think for me the aspect that's most precious is keeping the mystery part of it, rather than the I need to tell you what to do part of it. I was reading a story in a book about healing,

[37:19]

and it was a story about a woman whose mother had been given a terminal diagnosis and was in the hospital, and the woman telling the story believed that her mother would not live past Christmas, but she was talking to her mother about how she would like to give her something, and I've forgotten now what it was for Christmas, and they were looking at a magazine or something, and the mother turned to the back and said, no, this is what I would really like, and she pointed to this beautiful spring purse, and her mother had always been an incredibly frugal person, and so the woman telling the story couldn't understand why her mother would want to buy a purse that she would never live long enough to use, but the woman went out and bought her mother the purse, and her mother was delighted, and her mother got better, and her mother left the hospital, and her mother lived for years and years after that,

[38:21]

and the woman interpreted the story as by giving her mother the purse, she was giving her mother permission to defy the doctor's terminal illness, perhaps by giving her mother four pairs of stockings, she was saying, I don't need for you to leave right now, maybe that's what perked her up. Well, it's huge and mysterious, they sat, it was like she couldn't touch them, and the bureau, just as she looked at them for about a week until I took pity on them and took three away, but who knows, but you know, the thing about families is that we all are so enormously important to one another, even if we don't get along well,

[39:23]

and no matter what our relations are, that this huge valence, that a small act like that carries such weight because of our relationship. I have to tell this story because I can't let go of it ever since you started the story. A friend of ours, his mother is 83, and she lives with her husband, well, lives Okamura, because some of us never, anyway, her mother is old, and every time we've seen her, she's said, I'm just tired, I just want to die, but I'm too healthy to die, and it's difficult because her English is very limited,

[40:23]

and almost all of the people who she could speak Finnish with would either have moved away or died, and then she got very sick and went to the hospital, just sudden pain, and part of this whole background is Liz has always complained that her mother raised her to think that anything to do with sex was absolutely filthy, you know, just unbearable, and Liz's mother came back from the hospital and seemed to perk up, and they went out shopping at some kind of supermarket, and Liz's mother came out and said, I'm so unhappy, and said, why? So many beautiful young men and I can't get any of them, it just seems to have so many, so now we have something to talk about, every time she loves my husband,

[41:25]

I just say, and she just laughs and is very happy. The whole realm, it seems like there are just infinite numbers why a mother who is so interested still at 83, you know, would raise a daughter trying to convince her that this is filthy, this is tricky. It seems like there's another part of the mystery too, as you were talking, asking about what your mom notices about you that might be different over time. It's easy for us, if our moms drive us crazy as they get older, to think about that influence on us, but she may be noticing something about you that's different and that's more precious. Also, difficulties, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I feel as if

[42:27]

we've got a very good communication going under the surface, even if we scrap about something that there's a real understanding and our spirits are matched in some way. There's also something interesting that I'm noticing as my mother is aging, the relationships of the siblings. I have a sister who were continents apart, but yet because we're both attached from this particular mother as she's aging, I'm looking forward to, and my brother too, we're all very separate, but I'm looking forward to how this family now after all these adult years

[43:29]

is going to come together to reconstitute these kinds of family relationships to do what I know we'll all do in terms of the right thing of somehow collectively caring for her as the time approaches. And that's, you know, the mother coming back, but also the siblings coming back to re-work whatever it is that we didn't get to finish, that got started that still is not finished. But the aging and the death brings that together too. That's a piece of it. I don't know if you have any siblings, but you know. She's essentially forgotten my sister who lives in England. But that is true. Shannon?

[44:36]

I know that my relationship with my mother greatly and I just heard people are truthful about how I saw things and there was some reciprocity there. And at one point I was complaining to my mother about some aspect of herself and she said, you know, I really tried to accept you as you are your whole life and I would hope that you would accept it for me. And I went, whoa! And as I get older and my relationship with my mother gets warmer and deeper I come to see how much I am like her. I mean, I'm growing to look more like her and I have many of her qualities and characteristics and there are things about me that I really like, things that I like about her and things that I like about me and an inheritance that I feel glad for. And that certainly was not the case years ago. I wanted to be as different from my mother

[45:38]

as I could possibly be but there's this growing feeling of the legacy and the lineage I get from her is really precious and I'm very grateful to be having some experience of that while she's still alive and I have an opportunity to enjoy her. Yeah, it's true, we are like our mothers. It's always been a question to me if you have any insight I mean, I know there were stories about you and your sister playing in the attic or something, making altars but both of you now have a religious life. Your sister is an atheist? Yeah, well I mean, what in your parents is this karmic,

[46:38]

some karmic There is, there is, I've always had a very strong sense of that. My only younger sister went into an Anglican Benedictine contemplative enclosed convent just before she was 21 and has been there for more than 30 years and is now abdest there and my parents were not interested in religion and she used to play altar when she was five. So, I've just really felt this sense of some some karmic thread being worked out. And I think, I think that we I think that we all do gradually have a sense of lives working out. I remember when I was a lot younger somebody said to me

[47:40]

when people get older they get less interested in the personal drama and more interested in pattern. And I thought, hmm, that sounds good. And I think it's true that gradually you become more and more interested in the pattern and I don't know what else to say. I can't resist I remember having dinner with your mother and a group of people once, I think it was after a session or something at any rate someone asked her about that how she wound up with these two kids and was there a relationship she said, I don't know where I went wrong. Well the pattern I've been noticing is that somehow the most interesting thing

[48:44]

seems to be what was lacking in the family life. For example, I'm very interested in friendships and my mother had no friends growing up and she didn't know how to do it and I never had any patterns so I'm very interested in that. And another friend of mine had a mother who always lied to her and they always swept it under the rug and she never called her mother on any of this. So now that she's 57 she's fiercely interested in honesty in relationships and being able to say what she sees. So, I think that there's probably not it's not a coincidence. What we make of what is missing. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes in Zazen instruction it said that in day to day life

[49:45]

we're interested in the events and what we're thinking and in Zazen we pay more attention to the spaces and the gaps. Yeah. My older aunts and uncles and grandparents were sort of very bizarre family features or complicated were sort of like generations back and my parents were reacting to what they didn't have. We some in a way were acting on the the pattern of our great-grandparents sometimes and it's kind of it's a really a lineage just look at your mom you can only see one dimension

[50:45]

it was kind of like 2, 3, 4, 5 keep on that it becomes more and more complicated and more and more interesting. I think it's done. Things are

[51:06]

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