Good morning. How's the sound? Audible? Is this thumbs up, yes? Ah, there we go. I appreciate that we chant together at the beginning. It's traditional to pay homage to the Buddha at the beginning of the Dharma talk, and I feel like that's us paying homage to the Buddha assembly together. That's pretty sweet. So, admittedly, I was much more nervous last night than I am right now. This feels quite comfortable. I'm sitting here with two dozen sincere practitioners and kind faces. It's very, very nice. Thank you for all your support. All your support already and all the support that will come. I really appreciate it. I'd first like to offer my gratitude to Hongo-san. Thank you for inviting me to do this training, to share the seat, to give this talk.

[01:07]

Thank you to Tonto Linda. The years just keep stacking up. I appreciate it so much. And to Greg who was Tonto when I was here before. I also want to give one more gratitude. As I've been getting into reading the Shuso Logs, which is kind of the first-person narrative of Shuso's Uptasahara past, I'm feeling a gratitude for that group of people. They're sort of jumping in with two feet into something they don't know very much about, saying yes, trying it out with their whole effort. And coming to find we have some similarities and experience. She's not here right now, but I want to thank my spouse, May, for all her support. So the prompt for this talk, as you well know, is how did I come to practice?

[02:13]

Or more specifically, how did I come to be sitting here? I've been thinking of this a little bit differently than a way-seeking mind talk or the way-seeking mind talks I've given in the past. And mainly I'm thinking of this talk as a way for us to connect with each other. That if I can provide one or two little points of access through which we can connect and grow in the Dharma together, then that's what I want to do today. So I'll share some points from my karmic life. I'll talk about my dharmic life, how I see the dharma, how I practice the dharma. And then at the end, we'll have some time for questions. And if I haven't, at that point, provided you with some way to get in and have a conversation with me, please bring something up, bring something forward from your own life so we can meet, because that's really what I want.

[03:21]

as is tradition, a Wayseeking Mind talk. I will talk about some episodes from my life, those that shaped me and my approach to Padharma. I want to emphasize some of the times after I started practicing. Very often I'll sort of front load the Wayseeking Mind talk and we'll get up to like age 15 and never really find out what happened once I started practice. A few days ago I started asking some of the Sangha members, if there was anything I should include. And someone gave a really good suggestion. What brings you joy? What brings you joy? So I thought I would start with a bullet point list of a few things that bring me joy, both to share something personal and to see if anything rings a bell for you. First was Ushi. Dogs and cats in general. I also love monastic life. Very, very well suited in my disposition to monastic life.

[04:29]

I also like to play like an animal. Anyone with a vagus nerve, which is all of us, sort of thrives on play. So, at home, I'm often crawling around on the floor. Interestingly, I love to play the drums, but I don't like to dance. I love language. and languages. I love to learn language, and I really love good writing. My favorite treat is probably vegan chocolate, if any of you are listening. I love music that is both technically challenging and emotionally evocative. So it can be like Rachmaninoff or it can be Mars Volta. My father was a craftsman, so I grew up with an appreciation for the combination of precision and technical skill that creates beauty.

[05:33]

He's a carpenter. In a little bit different vein, I love stories of the Buddha. I love the nikayas, I love the suttas, I love stories about the Buddha's life and about my monastic heroes. Stories about Dogen Zenji or Ajahn Man, Ajahn Mahabua, or this Zen master Jaakuen, not to be confused with Hakuen, though Hakuen is great also. In tactile detail, I love to be barefoot on soft grass. If any of you came to my wedding, you would have seen me in a gray suit with my rakasuan running around with bare feet in the herb garden at Green Gulch. That was a great day. I love to laugh and I love the joy of other people. And seeing people dedicated and growing in practice brings me so much joy. So a couple of notes about early life that you'll need to know for this whole thing to make sense.

[06:43]

First is, I was born on March 5th, which is exactly two months premature. So I was just over four pounds when I was born. My mom was very sick. I was very sick. Almost didn't make it into this life. I spent 20 days in an incubator. So not a lot of physical touch. Lots of tubes and needles and stuff. But I was scrappy. I was scrappy. Apparently, as soon as I was strong enough, I would start pulling them out, like pulling the things off, the sensors and whatever else. And the nurses and the doctors had a unique rationale that if I was strong enough to pull something out, they weren't going to put it back in. And that no one could feed me. I wouldn't eat. So they had to get... I would only eat for my mom. I wouldn't eat for any of the doctors and nurses. She got to go home and rest, and then they'd have to call her back.

[07:51]

I think as with a lot of us the nervous system physiological deep bond with the mom strong right from the beginning and in my case evident I like to think of myself as having grown up as kind of a sweet and honest child there's this great photo of me still in diapers where I'm playing in a sandbox with my brother I've got blonde hair I have no shirt on and I'm sort of Scutting in the sandbox in the sun just like blissed out completely. And I think that characterizes me to some degree. I grew up in mostly rural Texas. College Station was the town where I mostly grew up. And my family usually had homes on the edges of towns. So I spent a lot of time in the country. And then holidays... My family would... There was some land in West Texas that we leased.

[08:59]

My extended family together pooled money and leased this place. So I spent my free time on 750 acres just getting dirty and playing with rocks and hanging out with my brother and sister. It was great. It was really great. What that meant is I had a lot of time with extended family growing up. especially my grandmother as a primary figure, and I want to introduce her because I think of her as my first meditation teacher. She was Christian, Protestant, as is my mom, and she taught me how to pray. She taught me how to pray when I was very, very small. So it was a basic instruction. It was pretty much two things. It was first, it's bedtime. She's tucking me in, tells me to say my prayers. I don't do gassho, I do this. And then she's like, first, tell God all the things you're thankful for today.

[10:05]

Step one. Step two was, then wish well to all the people. So I would start, dear God, thank you for this, that, this, that, this, that. And then I would call to mind each one of my family members and say, may my dad be happy. May my mom be happy. May my sister be happy. May my brother be happy. May all my grandparents be happy. Cousins. And very soon I realized I didn't know where to stop. I was like, oh, may my neighbors be happy. Oh, everyone in my city. Let them be happy too. Everyone in my state. So pretty much I'm doing that to practice for the entire world without... knowing that's what I was doing. So I started meditating young. Some of the other salient characteristics of the family. Both of my grandfathers were raised without fathers.

[11:09]

Both of their fathers died very, very young. And then one of them was abandoned by his mom in his early teens. So there's a lot of broken... family or partial family, which showed up in terms of alcoholism in my family. The men in my family, there's a lot of alcoholism. One of the things this trained me to do when I was young is I became very, very observant because my family was unpredictable. I learned to watch for cues. I learned to watch for cues of anger, especially, and to keep peace. That's how I thrive. That's how I stay alive in my child's mind. And then one more thing about my father, my dear dad.

[12:12]

Gosh, such skilled hands my dad has. He's been a cabinet maker most of his life, but he also gets into these hoppies and he goes big. So not long ago he started making guitars. It's a precision operation. Anyway, my dad being in the construction industry meant that it was sort of a boom and bust situation where at times my family would be pretty well-to-do and it would feel like we had more than plenty. And at more than a few times, it felt like we were just scraping by. And I could hear my dad on the telephone in the other room. Like, I could hear the stress. I'm like, not sure how he's going to pay the bills, doesn't know how he's going to feed us. You know, so it was like this, it was a real up and down, which shaped me in maybe sensitive,

[13:13]

Sensitive to the fact that I thought there was probably a better way that I wanted to live my life than one that was precarious. So let's switch gears a little bit. So it's late at night. I'm 20 years old. I get a phone call. And I hear my mom crying on the other end. And it's my dad on the telephone. They're driving in a car. She is losing it. Wailing in the passenger seat.

[14:15]

And my dad barely gets it out that my grandmother's died. She's in her early 60s. She's had lymphoma that she's been working with for 10, 12, 15 years. And my mom and her were best friends. So my mom was shattered. I'm sort of stunned. I can't really feel anything. But I get myself together and drive that morning to an hour away to where the... The hospital is, and my grandmother is in the hospital. She waits for all of us to arrive. She's unconscious. My grandmother is lying there in the hospital bed and waits for all of my uncles and aunts and all of my cousins and brothers and sisters. We all circle her bed, and then she passes away. It was remarkable that she waited, I thought.

[15:20]

My family was a wreck after that. My mom went into this deep depression. She describes it now as she was mostly absent for years. And just sort of vacant. She was physically there, but not well. This was November. And then by May of the next year, my family had moved. My mom and dad moved into the house where my grandparents had lived. My mom didn't want to let the house go. So my parents moved. That meant my little sister was alone in our hometown for her senior year of high school. I was still there for one semester, and then I also left. Tough times. Cut to... About a year later, I'm sitting in a friend's living room.

[16:30]

We're hanging out. He leaves the room for a minute and my eyes go to the bookshelf. Scanning the books, the habit of mine, really enjoying myself. He comes back into the room, follows my eyes. What are you looking at? He pulls out the little thin volume, the little blue book with white letters on the spine that says meditation. He says, oh, do you meditate in my nonchalant 20s way? I was like, nah, nah, I don't. I don't. He takes the book and he slams it into my chest and goes, do it. Yeah, the things I owe that person, you know? it was around this time that, um, I was recovering emotionally from the sort of the state of my family. Um, after my grandmother died, I didn't go back to college that semester and spent the rest of my college career sort of digging my way out of that hole before I graduated with honors some years later.

[17:44]

But it was like, it was really rough. I started meditating and around that time, um, met a, uh, romantic interest. Her name was Shaney. And started growing in my confidence again. You know, putting my life back together. Shaney and I moved to Austin. We get engaged. And another blue book becomes definitive in my life. I'm walking on 12th Street in Austin, Texas. I go into this rare book shop, which is now defunct. I love that place. The smells of old books and all the first editions. There are maps posted on the walls. Pristine stuff, if you're into this sort of thing.

[18:45]

I'm also quite broke at the time, so I can't buy anything. But I'm scanning the shelves, and I see this blue book, and I don't know why, but I'm like, oh, this one. It has a name I'm vaguely familiar with. I pull it off the shelf, and it has this cool symbol on the front. I open it up, and it's this mega meditation manual. And I'm like, I really want this book. $50. I can't afford this. So I put it back, and I'm like, okay, I'm not going to impulse buy this meditation manual, but if I go away, I come back next week and it's still here, I'm going to buy it. So I did. And I bought it. The author is kind of an infamous, now infamous esotericist named Alistair Crowley. I wrote a magic manual, a meditation manual, but the first section of it is these really, really good meditation instructions.

[19:46]

And that was how I I continued my sort of self-meditation study. Really useful. Also some kind of scary stuff in there. So one of these next pivotal moments was 2010. By now I'm 26. I'm married and I come home from a vacation with my wife and I find out that the giant oak tree in my backyard has fallen over on my neighbor's house. And I, in hindsight, I think I should have taken that as a sign that things weren't going so well. when uh when we were engaged though the meditation meant so much to me something about it kind of creeped my fiance out and i quit though i i was already getting in touch with something beautiful and wholesome in myself but um i had some i think unexamined ideas about what being a spouse was and thought my commitment was to like uh follow

[21:16]

follow the indications of her pleasure and satisfaction without regard you know it was sort of a naive idea and materially we were pretty well set like um had the pets had the car we bought a house we had two great jobs you know things things on paper looked really good but they were they were like dying from the inside out And I came home one Halloween and she said, I'm leaving. And by Christmas, that's what was happening. And this was a turning point in so many ways, but one of them was that... I don't know how many of you have been through a transition like that, but I can imagine. if not divorce, some other big change where it's like the tectonic plates of your life are really shifting.

[22:20]

And it led to a sort of re-examination of how I wanted to live my life. And really, I had nothing to hold on to. And I remember making a conscious decision, the only thing I know that I want to be at the center of my life is meditation. And I'm going to build everything else from there. And that's how the Dharma made its way in and became central. So how and when did I know Zen? How did I know this was it? Well, I'd been meditating alone for a while, got to this point where I realized I needed a teacher, started searching in Austin. A lot of good stuff in Austin. I remember going to the Austin Zen Center. and the person who did admin had an office across the street, let me in the front door, said the Eno will be with you shortly for meditation instruction.

[23:27]

I'm gonna do one-on-one. I'm alone in the Austin Zen Center. I stepped through the threshold and the moment my toe touches the Zendo floor, it was like, yep, this is the place. This is where I'm gonna do this. It's like the smell of the incense, giant, beautiful Buddha over on the right. Yeah, it was right, right from the beginning. It was like a bell rang. I started regularly attending that sangha. Rohatsu Sesshin before long, during my first practice discussions. And then there was this other moment when everything changed at Austin Zen Center. I had this aspiration for more intensive meditation practice my body and mind respond to it so significantly that I was like this is the main thing for me I want to be able to do this full time so the logic at the time was oh if I want to do this full time I bet if I ordain then I'll be able to do this all the time and so

[24:47]

I remember going to practice discussion with the resident teacher there, Koshant, and telling him, am I going to ordain? And it's an excruciatingly long pause, just forever. I'm sitting there, I've given this vulnerable statement. If he says yes, things are going to be so good. If he says no, I'm going to just expire. So... pause then he smiles he leans back and he says oh that makes me very happy that makes me very happy I want you to do three things interesting he put his fingers up and then he reached up like this and he says wait till you're ready I want you to contemplate the Shin Shin Ming every day Trust in Mind Sutra, Faith in Mind.

[25:53]

A great way isn't difficult for those who are unattached to their preferences, that one. And I want you to go sit at Vipassana Retreat. Zen teacher asked me to go sit at Vipassana Retreat. I haven't, I could not have imagined how much that would have, that changed my life, that one conversation. It sets the trajectory for me to do Jukai, to ordain as a priest, to get involved with Vipassana. That everything, everything that's recognizable in my life now is a result of that moment. So based on that third admonition, I went to a Goenka center, January of 2013.

[26:57]

Is anyone familiar with Goenka practice? I see nods, this is good. Yeah, I think I'll have occasion to characterize it more fully later, but it's very intense, which was just right for me, yeah. So I went in January and did a 10-day Meditation retreat. Very, very clear and strict Shingi. Very clear and strict timeline. Tons of meditation. It was heaven. It was so hard. And I came back, had a conversation with Kosho. He said, do you want more? I said, I think I found my home. And what I meant was my heart had opened so much on that retreat that I wanted to do. I wanted more. I wanted to spend time there. So I took care of the logistics, rented my house, and I moved to a Goenka center and spent most of the rest of that year living, sitting, and serving.

[28:12]

And the setup there that you need to know is... Ideally, if you're there as a long-term server, and it's not all that common, but there were a few of us that stayed for a while. You sit a 10-day retreat, and then ideally you serve for two, which means you work in the kitchen, you do the transition, everything else. But while you're serving, you're still sitting three and a half or four hours of meditation a day. So you can really keep momentum. That's the point. The momentum of the training just keeps going, going, going, right? So sit one, serve two, sit one, serve two, sit one. That's kind of the pattern. So you get a lot of sitting in, right? And so much was changing. It's like clingings were just flying off the back of the airplane. It was pretty dramatic. And I wanted to characterize, to some extent, how much that year changed me.

[29:17]

That year of practice changed me, and I've been thinking of it in terms of... It was extremely faith-building. Every two weeks, a new batch of 100 people would show up to take part in this completely donation-based retreat. Day zero, they were all, you know... tentative and closed and sort of stressed and furrowed and all those sorts of things like having been working and been in the city right and then over the course of the 10 days it's like open open open so that by day 10 when they start socializing again like we give them a we give them a couple hours to like meet with each other they are sunbeams it is just like heart wide open And to see this over and over again, just like two weeks after two weeks, people come and they're closed and then just so beautiful, over and over.

[30:24]

It was... Yeah, thoroughly inspiring with my faith. And then... Internally, this growth of faith by... doing so much practice, memorizing the teachings, memorizing the suttas, like working them out in my meditation practice and seeing myself grow. Something else was really developing in me about my ethical training because of the move back and forth, just like we do. all day the move back and forth between stillness and action where the mind is attentive enough to sort of catch catch our habits and I could really start to see cause and effect between even even a sort of subtle mental action and how that would affect me for the rest of the day when I would go back into meditation

[31:31]

Maybe the most important thing to come out of that year of training was a sense of vocation. And the vocation has been the same for me since being able to articulate it that year. It's two-fold, and it still remains this, and I think we'll show up as we spend this practice period together. One, is to be as free as possible in this lifetime. And two, to support others to do that sounds simple enough I just keep coming back to that that's my cornerstone always to be free support others to be free that was fun thank you for going to go into with me a little time travel.

[32:41]

So I'm really wanting to do monastic training at this point. I really want to come to Tassajara. I've been at Austin Zen Center residentially for some time. It's the week before my 30th birthday and I am really, really sick. No one knows what's going on. I'm about 40 pounds lighter than I am right now, which I'm Not a big guy, but I was pretty small. You should see the photos. My brother got married right around then. I'm like, skeleton. Joshin was there. It was rough. Whew. expect for that to be the thing to get me it's a good story yeah yeah I lost a ton of weight and the doctors couldn't really figure out what was going on I had this I had an infection so I went to I went to a doctor they decided to run labs and I hear from the other room I'm sitting in the I remember this so vividly I'm sitting on the

[34:19]

examination table with the butcher paper and I'm looking I'm looking on the wall with this um there's this unbelievable Van Gogh pencil drawing I'm sorry not Van Gogh I always do that it's Picasso I hear from the other room the the voice of a tech and he says to the doctor I have a surprise for you so they knew something before I did She comes back into the room. She is so nervous. And she's like, you're diabetic. You need to be in a hospital right now. And my blood sugar was so high and had been so high for so long that things were really dangerous for me. So I was in the ICU for four or five days. It was another close one. Oh. The implication for me in terms of practice is I instantly knew I would never be able to train at Tassara.

[35:29]

Crushed. That was so hard. And... Yeah... But isn't it amazing how those damning moments, they're going to last forever. Forever. I will never be able to train at Dasanara. And by summer, I was here for Sangha week. I was here for Sangha week. I'm still a new diabetic, so I'm kind of bashful, and I'm checking my blood sugar in the courtyard on a big rock. Got my little kit like this. And out of the dining room with a big, like, explosion of joy that I don't even see. First thing I hear is, you're on my team! I look, I see this woman with her hands in the air, this giant smile.

[36:33]

It's me. She's working the dining room. We became fast friends. That was so surprising. And instantly I thought, oh, this is possible. She had been spending the whole summer here. She is also type 1 diabetic. Clearly she is able to survive. If she can do it, I can do it. Thao Sahara was back on the table. I'm so glad. So we go back to Austin Zen Center, spend the rest of the year there. It was actually a very difficult time. For time's sake, I'm not going to go into too much detail about that, but something I've noticed since being here, having conversations with people, is how easy it is to idealize one's first teacher and the sort of trouble that can come out of that.

[37:35]

In my case, the student-teacher relationship became mutually harmful. And I think it's because of this, it's one of the reasons I am so inspired, motivated to be meticulous with my sila, with the ethics, and meticulous with the responsibilities that come with any sort of Dharma position, just utmost care is how I, how I feel. So it's actually, it's kind of something for me to, it's something of a necessary training for me to like loosen up a little bit, uh, because I can, I can come in, I can present as super formal, which is in contrast to what I feel inside, which is like this.

[38:45]

My heart is so open to all of you, but my, My outside might not communicate that. Toward the end of that year, it was time to come to Tassa Arma. Greg Fane was the Tonto. Linda Galliam was the director. I was a Tongariya monk. Oh, I was so happy. It was so cold. so cold. And I had one of these gauzy robes, one of those very thin outer robes. I didn't realize a thicker robe was an option. It was very cold. I want to tell you about one moment. May and I very quickly got on each other's team as we were both navigating how to be diabetic at Tassajara.

[39:47]

It's the big story. We met with the director, the then plant manager. I think there was one other person, and we had this discussion. How are we going to take care of it? So we were each other's advocate and teammate. Like when my blood sugar would go down and cognitive function would go away, she would do the talking. And when hers would do it, I would do the talking. You know, it was like we took care of each other and had this very close friendship. And... Yeah, we're very close for about a year. And then the last sefshin and the second practice period here, we have these back-to-back practice discussions with the consummate professional Linda Gallien. I don't remember if I went in first or May went in first. One of us went in. Stone room. Linda, huge problem.

[40:50]

I have feelings for May. Oh, tell me about that. May goes in immediately after me, or I go in immediately after her. Linda, I have a huge problem. Feelings for Kodo. No hint. We've conferred, we've checked notes. Consummate professional. No, like... No hint at all. I think you told me later that there was a little piece of you, a little glee inside that was like going, eee! Oh, wow. That was fantastic. So, me and May and Linda... It was within a couple weeks after that that I ordained as a priest. I went back to Austin.

[41:53]

I somehow still really wanted that teacher-student relationship to work. So I sort of willed it, you know? Really, really wanted it to work. Our good friend Susan O'Connell did my pre-shave. It was very sweet. Then I came back to Tassajara for a practice period with Fu. and the next moment when I knew everything was changing August of 16 we get word the fire's coming in Norman has a retreat going on they decide they're going to evacuate in the morning May's head of the dining room I'm a guest cook she finishes a shift does a goodbye because we're closing guest season July 31st does a goodbye with her crew she comes to the gatehouse where we're living it must be 9.30 or 10 o'clock and we decide before going to sleep that we need to go we need to evacuate because if the fire comes and blocks the road we don't have insulin so within a couple hours we made a decision to leave

[43:20]

And in the morning we were gone. And when I knew that something was afoot and we may or may not be coming back, we're crossing the road and it's like a dragon in the sky. It's like smoke and cloud move in this horizontal, you know, something is a little weird. It even had a hook. at the front where the head was, and the rising sun was this big, smoke-red sun. And I thought, oh, something is happening. Something's changing. We were in the city for a short time and then spent a month living at Green Gulch. Did Sashin sort of finish out the summer? Yeah. We'll talk more about that. But before we run out of kitchen time, I want to talk about just a couple of other things.

[44:23]

2017, doing a two-month retreat at Spirit Rock. I sent in a long shot application while we were at Green Belch. Long shot because I didn't have constant experience at Spirit Rock. It was on Goenka. They accepted me. And I went. This was another one of those occasions where it's like, there's before this retreat and there's after. It's like so, it shifted me so much. The first month I spent with Guy and Sally Armstrong as my primary teachers. And just based on something in my karma and my makeup, the concentration was really strong. So Guy offered to do concentration training with me for that month. And that's what we did. We did for that month. And there was just... There was something... There's a sort of intimacy with the mind that became available that changed me.

[45:41]

And then the second month, Gil was my primary teacher. So from that very concentrated place, doing... Vipassana practice. And I want to note, I want to put a little star by the Gil piece there because he becomes so important later in my practice life. And I realize now that part of what is going on there, and I had a connection with him for a couple years before then, but it didn't matter how It didn't matter how deep I went. Bill could always meet me. It was like no matter what the meditation was, he was always right there, right there with me. So it was like a certain kind of bond got formed in the depth of meditation. That's important to me. I've already talked to you about running around in the grass, Green Gulch, in my suit.

[46:48]

I think I just want to say three more things. It started being the Eno. Sesshin, 2020 City Center. Working with Hojo-san. My back goes out. I made it all the way through the Sesshin. I reach up to grab one of those City Center doors, or the City Center locks on the windows. I hear a pop and I collapse. And I've been recovering from that since. I had a disc thing going on, I had a joint thing going on in this hip and then while recovering developed a hip thing over here. And significant for me in terms of practice because I, you know, while I grew up in the incubator, right, over time I was used to being healthy and strong and sharp.

[47:57]

And with diabetes, the blood sugar goes down, cognitive function goes away. With diabetes, I can't be healthy in the same kind of way anymore. I'm always dependent on something, on medical device. And with this injury, it's like my body as a strong body is just not so. I sometimes joke with my wife that we're prematurely 80 or 85 years old. So I want to say something about asking some other Sangha mates, you know, what's the detail I should include. I wanted you to address something about Zen Vipassana. How do you do these things? How do you do these things together? And I can now put this really concisely. I've sort of been with it for years.

[48:59]

So at times it's been really stressful. And now it is not at all. I think the little thing I'm going to whisper to all of you is that when when Vipassana meditation is mature, like pretty mature stage of Vipassana meditation, it becomes awareness. So keep that in mind. There's a It was a huge light bulb when I saw that there was a place actually where the meditations come together. And then the other thing is like, people sometimes ask me, well, like, is Vipassana your practice or is Zen your practice? And I realized it's kind of like asking me if I have a mom or a dad. It's like they both raised me. They're both so in my blood and my bones. And then the further question people ask is like, well, are you going to be a priest or are you going to be a vipassana teacher?

[50:08]

And it's like, well, that's like asking me if I'm going to be a priest or I'm going to be a husband. It's like the vow is so deep in both cases. I think you get the sense. It's like they're so integrated in my life. Thank you for following along my story. I want to kind of close with saying just a few, like, pull out of the story mode a little bit and say something about just some characteristics of how I approach the Dharma and things you might notice as we're practicing together and turning things. For me, the body has been primary for so long in terms of practice, so I'll often think and talk about the Dharma in terms of body. I like to think about practice in terms of training, which I think for all of us in a monastic setting, it's like, of course, it's the water we swim in.

[51:13]

I consider the Nikayas, the Pali Canon, as our heritage. I don't see them in conflict with... but they're our lineage we pay homage to Shakyamuni every morning and so I actually draw on them quite a lot I practice with them a lot and I'll probably talk about them a fair amount and then close to my heart is that for me liberation I believe that liberation is possible It's desirable, it's specific, and it's available. And I'm going to keep living from that place. And then one last bit.

[52:18]

There's this collection of talks put together. It was Suzuki Roshi's talks, but they were drawn together. I think Gene Selkirk had something to do with it called Nothing Special. Has anyone seen these in the library? Yeah, it shapes this great little bit in the intro about there's two kinds of Dharma talks. There's Taisho and there's Kowa. Taisho apparently is... It's Gene paraphrasing Suzuki Roshi, me paraphrasing Gene. Straight from the heart. From the direct experience. Even if you memorize the words of Suzuki Roshi's talks and you gave them back, that wouldn't be Taisho. And then there's co-op, which I think we would think of as a class or a lecture where there's information that's given. And what I wanted to bring up is that it makes sense for me, it feels true to my heart to actually mix them. And that when I end up using terms, it's not something scholastic for me.

[53:22]

It's that they're so deep in there, it's like I'm inviting you into my heart language by giving you a list. by giving you a Dharma list. It's like, oh, now we can relate. So I hope you heard something that we can connect with, connect through. If that's true, wonderful. If not, please bring something forward. I looked at the list of all of us right before I came up here, just so that I could be sure that I was honest when I say what I'm about to say. I feel completely available to everyone in this valley. It's cold, so my door might not literally be open. Please consider me available for anything. I live here for you. That's enough. There's bound to be a minute or two for questions.

[54:24]

Or maybe more. I don't know. Thank you very much, kitchen. There's something about your dharma name. Oh, wow. When I received you, Kai, my dharma name was... Ancient way, original sound. And when I received the precepts from Linda, it was, and is, bright way, pure faith. The same Shin that happens to be in Shin Shin Ming. That is cool. First of all, thank you very much for your talk.

[55:42]

As long and as deeply as I've known you, I've learned so much about you, and the ways that we can connect are as innumerable as the sounds of the Ganges, so I look forward to continuing with that. And also to say, with regard to your name, I had just finished ichting your new rakasu when I came into your office over at 297, I think it was, Page Street. And I had been in your office. I'd seen you at the door. You sat right by the door. But I don't think I'd ever gone in and seen a bulletin board on the inside of the door and there was the kanji character for Shin. Right there. And I'm like, okay, that was a good intuition. Yeah. Yeah, truly. Thank you so much. I had come back from a a two or three week retreat and I had such strong the idea of faith had become so strong for me that I wanted the kanji in the office I'm glad that happened you said that one of the things that brings you joy is good writing and I just wondered if you have a

[57:02]

what you've enjoyed, whether you work on fiction, non-fiction, any particular genre. Sure. Thanks. Thanks very much. Yeah. I came to love language reading fiction thanks to an English teacher that was inspired when I was 16, actually. Before that, I had written and enjoyed it, but didn't quite understand how profound it could be. After that, I mostly read non-fiction. Some of the people that I think influenced how I appreciated beauty, while I can't vouch for the ideas, stylistically Nietzsche had a lot, opened up a lot for me, because it was an example of someone who could be both very strong and very beautiful, and very precise.

[58:05]

So that was one thing. More recently, I love it when Paul Haller gets going on David White. Seamus Heaney writes a beautiful poem. And then during a lot of solitary time, I came to very much enjoy David Foster Wallace. There was something beautiful about how he's always writing just a poem. just one, two, or 16 steps above what I can understand without a dictionary. But I never feel condescended to, you know? It's like, I like the difficulty because I don't feel like he's judging me about it. And then, I know I may have laid this on pretty thick, but I love reading the Pali Suttas. I don't know if that helps at all.

[59:08]

Great. Thanks. Okay. You've given me at least a depiction of the steady growing and developing of faith in practice in the Dharma. And one day, there have been a few times since you started practicing when your faith in the Dharma has been questioned. Yeah, thank you, Kate. Thanks for bringing in that layer. Because the answer is yes. What can I say? From the time of me being changed so much through that Goenka year, I had never once doubted the efficacy of the Dharma. Not possible, after having seen that.

[60:09]

The difficulty, the difficulty came in how that would be. There was a moment, there was a moment in 2014 where the relationship with my first teacher was falling apart, and I was also a resident. So that meant at the end of that phone call, I had lost my home, my job, my teacher, and my path to my vocation. That was wretched. So, I mean, that's not a loss of faith in the Dharma. But it was a serious challenge. I talked to Fu about it. Abbas Fu said, after everything happened with Baker Rose, she said it was like she had a hole in where her heart was.

[61:16]

And the advice she got was, don't put another person there, put the Dharma. That meant a lot to me. Two hands. Megan. that liberation is specific attainable to other words I've forgotten and I'd love to hear them more about my faith yeah about your yeah I guess a little bit more about maybe if you could say it again the words that you said before they were chosen thoughtfully so I want to be sure possible desirable specific, and then I ad-libbed something else.

[62:21]

Attainable. Attainable. Available. Available. Yeah. There's this sad idea that we can no longer be awakened. I don't have faith in that. Yeah, I through the course of practice have developed this confidence in first of all, degrees of non-clinging that are just exquisite. They're beautiful. And the mind free of clinging is convincing. And in my experience, those have gone to a level where my belief in a permanent, a permanent liberation where the mind is no longer under the influence of greed, hatred, and delusion.

[63:26]

It is available. That's my faith. And then Lorenzo. Thank you very much. I think you mentioned that because of the the beginning of your family, you learned to be watchful and to keep peace. Is that true? Is that true? I wonder if you still remember how you tried to keep peace and whether you still recognize those traits in yourself. Sure. Sure. Thanks. Yeah. In that very specific context, the men in my family could easily anger and I observed what the triggers were and avoided them.

[64:27]

I mean, pretty simple stuff, but take my grandfather, for example. The sound of a screen door making any noise when it closes, not just like... He would yell from the other room, you know? And then the dinner table. is another location for this sort of thing. It's like watching very closely the social dynamics and seeing when the tension is starting to build and being like, oh, look over here. Yeah. Yeah. Do I still see those kind of tendencies in myself? Yeah. Yeah. There's... Yeah. watching closely people's expression. Body language means a lot. I'm not scanning and watching all of you. That's not quite what I mean.

[65:28]

I don't know. It's like I have a sixth sense for social danger and do my best to work in the other direction. I don't know. I don't feel like that is a satisfying answer. Do you address it in any way? Now I do. I didn't when I was young. But now. Yeah, the strategy of avoiding the rapids really, it only worked for so long. But developing the social skills to be able to give actual feedback and let folks know how their behavior is impacting me and seeing if we together can address, we can come up with some other way to negotiate the relationship. That was a big step versus like seven-year-old me at the dinner table.

[66:31]

You may be getting a little long, Pojo-san. Well, thank you again. Thank you for your aching legs. And please take very good care of yourselves. I look forward to connecting with you.

[66:58]

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