This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I'd like to introduce tonight's speaker, Wendy Johnson. Wendy was head gardener at Green Gulch for many years, and she was ordained in the Thich Nhat Hanh Board of Education a long time ago, and then was given lay interest at Zen Center. So she's been a lay teacher for many years and has done a lot of work with gardening and the edible schoolyard, project and lots of interesting things tonight that she will tell us more about. So Wendy's here as part of the series that we're having on lay practice.

[01:01]

And she is a lay householder. She has a husband and two children and lives as a lay teacher. So please welcome Wendy. Thank you very much. I have a husband and he has me. And he's in this room, which is a miracle. Thank you for making that possible by this invitation. Huge gratitude to the entire beautiful practicing sangha here at Beginner's Mind Temple for making this practice period possible and also raising up the opportunity to speak together about our different ways of practice, how we fully align our heart with the Buddha way in whatever way we can. What a beautiful opportunity to speak together about how we manifest and offer our practice in dangerous and necessary times.

[02:08]

So I'm very happy to be here tonight. And what I'd like to do is to just talk a little bit about my path of practice or the path of practice I've been walking on and some of the decisions and issues that have come up. The enjoyment, mostly, though, of practicing as a lay person in the Buddhist tradition for 41 years. 41 years I'm... I began practicing when I was 24 years old, and I just celebrated my 65th birthday. So it's wonderful to be here and to be able to reflect and to just remember. So we'll do that and then have an opportunity for dialogue, for talking together, bringing up what you're interested in, and then just being in conversation. Does that sound good? Great. It does to me too. Now, this is not, let me begin by saying, not a way-seeking mind talk, although every talk is really a way-seeking mind talk.

[03:14]

Instead, I want to just, but in order to know each other, it is necessary to talk about the causes and conditions that have influenced our lives. So this is an opportunity to do that tonight. In particular, I'm very happy to be in this place of practice because I know very little about the city center. I'm an unusual person who practiced for more than 25 years, intensively practiced at San Francisco Zen Center and never lived in the city center. Although I did first come to San Francisco Zen Center and to this beautiful building, 300-page street, in the autumn of 1972, a cold autumn, and I didn't quite know where to, I'd driven across the country determined to practice here. I actually began practice, was it 1972, Peter? 73, thank you. Let's go ahead a year, jump ahead a year. I began practicing in 1971 in Jerusalem, Israel.

[04:19]

I began my training in a surprising way with Zen master Soen Nakagawa Roshi. I was a graduate student in comparative religion in Jerusalem, Israel, wanted to practice yoga, met a wonderful woman who was a milliner and quite a character, a German woman, Hannah Seidner. On our first interview, she only taught women. On our first interview, she said, I will teach you yoga, but I can see it's not your path. I thought, well, thanks a lot, lady. Thank you. I can see making hats and teaching yoga is probably not your path either. And I was right. She said, a few days after meeting, she said, meet me at 5.30 in the morning and I'll introduce you to my Zen teacher. And I thought, oh, spare me. I can't believe it. Sitting still, I want to do yoga. But I did show up. And she took me to the Harazitim, or the Mount of Olives,

[05:25]

and introduced me to her teacher, Dokyu Nakagawa Roshi. He was a wonderful disciple of Soa and Nakagawa Roshis. And he had a small, very small and simple zendo on the Mount of Olives, in the Arab section of Old Jerusalem, above Old Jerusalem. And we went in and sat down, and I never stopped going. So my practice really began on that day. And in that particular setting, there were no priests or lay people at all. In fact, when you came in, you stepped up to a coat rack and put on a loose kind of soft wheat-colored robe over your clothes and went and sat down. And at the end of intense sitting, you came back out into the entryway and pulled the robe off and went home. So I have, for the first two years of my practice life in Israel, I practiced with this sangha.

[06:34]

Zohan Roshi jokingly called it Kibutsu Sangha, which I thought was a nice play on kibbutz. Kibutsu, Kibutsu. Namukiei, Namukibutsu. He called it Kibutsu. And he loved to say, Mount, oh, live this life. Oh, live. Deep life, true life, endless dimensions, universal life. So I have extraordinary training, and I really honor causes and conditions that brought me to that windy bluff above the old city of Jerusalem and gave me the courage as a 24-year-old practitioner to go every morning to the old city to get on a Jewish bus right up the Jewish... the edge of the Jewish city into the old city or the Arab part of the city, and that is how it was called, and to go up onto the Mount of Olives and to walk all by myself, 5.30 in the morning, never had a bit of fear.

[07:39]

I was that ignorant and free to be able to walk freely to the door, to go in, to put down my worldly material goods, put on that hemp-colored robe and sit. with all beings, in an undecorated room, a simple bowl, a blue bowl of water, some bent stalks of wheat, and a calligraphy by Soma Nakagawa Roshi of the Sumi Circle, the great mysterious circle on the altar, nothing more. I sat there for more than a month before receiving zazen instruction. And at the end of a month, I guess they figured I was dedicated enough that they'd show me... how to sit, which was a very wonderful experience. I participated with two nuns from Belgium who were wrapped up in lots of clothing, and we got down to business and learned how to sit. And I practiced there for two years. I met Song Nurushi once in my life for Sashin.

[08:40]

And it was an extraordinary, my first Sashin, with a great Zen teacher in the Rinzai tradition. And... Our sangha was very poor, very simple. We didn't have a formal place of practice. We had to borrow and rely on the kindness of other groups. So I grew up and in my training, cut my teeth, began to practice in non-residential, making the commitment to show up every day, every single day. And there were no residents. There was no place of residence. So we came from all different parts of the city, of the sacred ancient city of Jerusalem, to sit together. At the end of two years, I wanted to deepen and continue my training. And at that time, Soan Roshi said to me, deep in the mountains of California, there is a little tas of hara.

[09:44]

That's how he said it. There's a little tas of hara. Please investigate. And his primary teacher, Dokyu Nakagawa, said to me, the key to my door is not the key to your door. Please find the key that opens your door. And you are an American. Please return to America and investigate. Dharma there. And so without any introduction, to San Francisco Zen Center. So Anakagawa Roshi was kind enough to write a letter of introduction. It was sent to this place of practice. Zen Tatsu Richard Baker received the letter and said, well, if he says she should come and practice, I guess we'll have to take her, although we don't know what the heck or who the heck she is. Let's do it anyway, because she's got good references. I learned a lot. Pay attention, everyone who's

[10:45]

needs to know anyway. So I was very lucky. I came to San Francisco driving across the country. I made the... Some people just grimace with wonder. I stayed in the motel at the bottom of Page Street. I hear a very dangerous motel. There was a lot of screaming during the night, but I sat up and I was ready. And I came early in the morning and I met Fran, whose last name I don't remember. Beautiful Fran with... thank you, Fran Tribe, met me at the door. And she said, I looked like a bride. I was wearing a long white dress from Jerusalem. She shook her head and let me in. And I sat and practiced here and then was interviewed, a grueling interview by Dan Welch. And at the end, he let it be known that he had practiced at Ryotakuji Monastery with the very monk that I trained with in Jerusalem. So he asked me about whether he was still smoking and riding a bike. And then we really got... down to business, and very warm.

[11:48]

And then he said, and then tomorrow, he said, you'll be going to Tassajara. Congratulations. So that was a wonderful experience, unusual, in that I bypassed the usual two-year time here at the city center, which means I went to practice at Tassajara never having an experience of residential practice. I will say that when I was here at the city center, I did catch a glimpse of a very handsome young dude who's now my husband of 36 years. I did notice he was in the same building, although I didn't look around much, but I did notice that. I'm a hopelessly straight and boring person, but I hope that that's okay. Anyway, I noticed Peter, and I knew we were going to practice together, and we did. We went down to Tassajara. Twenty-six people in the practice period in Tungario, a very big Tungario. You know by the date, it was just after Susie Grosje's death. Ed Brown was chuseau.

[12:50]

It was an extraordinary practice, period. And for me, completely foreign experience coming to Zen Center because of the residential life and also because of the seriousness and because of the robes and because of the rocks. I hadn't seen any of this. And I didn't know from this. I didn't know what this was about. But I did know there was a fire in my heart And I was determined and really wanted to practice. So being at Tassajara was an extraordinary gift, probably two of the most important years of my life, 1973 to 1975. Rigorous practice with the newly installed abbot, Zentatsi Richard Baker, and getting to know this practice place. from Tassajara when I actually met and fell in love with Peter at Tassajara. We moved together to Green Gulch in 1975. Green Gulch was still very much a frontier and began practicing there and lived and practiced at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center for 25 years, pretty much without moving.

[14:02]

Now, during this time, there were not so many students who were choosing the path of ordination. It didn't really matter. We practiced together as the guidelines for practice at Tassajara said, like as intimately as milk and water running together. And then some of us began to choose the path of ordination. I remember watching that happen. I had the deep pleasure of sharing a cabin, first practice period, with wonderful lifelong friend, Lena Berman. Second practice period, one of the most important practices Parts of my training, I think, at Zen Center was being Catherine Thanis' roommate in cabin 15 at Tassajara. We hardly spoke during the entire practice period, but I will never forget that deep pleasure and intensity of practicing and living with Catherine. It helped to turn and open my life as a practitioner. Intimate...

[15:04]

more intimate than water and milk. Water and milk are two separated. And yet, very formal and quiet. So practicing intensively there. And from the very beginning, feeling the intense importance not only of meditation practice, but of work. Peter reminded me, driving into the city, of an old flyer that he saw in those years in the 70s that said, an unconditional response. Tassahara, an unconditional response to the world without conditions. And a picture of meditation students building the kitchen. So I think from the very beginning, it's important to say what animated my life in practice, commitment to meditation, curiosity, way-seeking mind, yes, we all have that deep charge, the depth-seeking charge, but also commitment to work and to physical work, to really physical work.

[16:12]

Thinking about the work at Tassajara, my hands get hot even this evening thinking, oh, there's so much to do at Tassajara. And it was a remedy and an enhancement and a tremendous... benefit to marry work with deep practice, with intense sitting. And in particular, the great joy of beginning in general labor. And I remember lifting, with many practitioners, lifting huge boulders out of the ground to build the cabins in the lower garden and also to clear the lower garden. And then for a full year, working with Michael Wenger, who was then head of the garden, learning about gardening. at Tassajara and taking on that practice. So I began my training as a meditation practitioner and frontline organic gardener at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, although it was very much part of my life from the time I was a younger woman and practicing in Jerusalem and on.

[17:16]

The urge to grow food, to feed a hungry world, to love people and feed them. and to make sure that all beings in the ten directions would come to the table and be fed. And feeling just a very strong uplift of intentionality. So it was great to train at Tassajara and to have that opportunity. And yes, during that time, people began to express their sincerity through choosing the path of ordination. I hardly noticed. I mean, I did notice. Of course, you had to notice. But it didn't... phase me because it was really clear what we were doing. We were building San Francisco Zen Center. And I think we are, Annie Somerville loves to say, remind me, we're so linked for life really. She says to me, we are lucky. We have real work. We protect it with our entire being and we are the working class of Zen Center. And I think that that's true. We were the pioneer and the working class.

[18:16]

When we first came in to practice at San Francisco Zen Center during those years. We came in as pioneers. The people that were ordained and training as priests had trained and ordained with Suzuki Roshi. Those were the students we met, primarily Suzuki Roshi students during that time. And then under the tenure and guidance and leadership of Zen Tatsu Richard Baker Roshi, we knew a whole new... field of practitioners began to choose the path of ordination while others of us continued practicing fully and wholeheartedly as lay people. So a little bit of an ethos there. What else is important to say? I think for me, during the time at Tassajara, probably one of the most challenging inquiries for me was, how does this practice relate to the life of the world? Am I hiding from the world, or am I meeting the world by being here?

[19:17]

And I have been all my life a political person and an activist, so I did wonder at that. But I also knew I would be no good in the world if I didn't settle, settle myself. As Katagiri Roshi used to love to say to us, settle yourself on yourself. Let the flower of your life force bloom. So in those early years, we had... the immense pleasure of training and working with Diane and Katagiri Roshi, with many visiting teachers who came both to Tassajara, to San Francisco Zen Center, to Green Gulch Farm, and helped to open the way. So in 1975, Peter and I moved to Green Gulch when, as Kathy Fisher loves to say, it was still a third world country. That's being kind. very definitely rough. We lived together in the gaitan in the barn around the meditation hall in tiny little stalls.

[20:22]

I remember the walls were so thin that we could hear everything that was going on. The building reverberated. It was very alive. Beautiful to remember being there in the early years with Abbot Myogen, Steve Stuckey. training, working together. Peter went to work in the fields pretty early on. I worked in the kitchen with Vanya Palmers and other friends. Nearly died. I was so unhappy being in the kitchen, yearning for the land. I remember a box of tomatoes coming from Tassajara when I was in the kitchen and I opened it up and buried my overly emotional face in that box of tomatoes and bawled with sorrow, wanting to be in the outside growing food. And soon after, they picked me up by the scruff of the neck, took me out, dropped me in the fields, and I stayed there for most of my life and training at Zen Center. Incredible years. Sometimes we say in every place of practice, in every field of practice, there are always the pioneers, people that open the way, and then there are the guardians that make it safe

[21:34]

and alive and ready for others. So I think, and of course, guardians and pioneers always work together. So as a frontline engaged lay practitioner, I felt very much a pioneer spirit in those years at Green Gulch, pioneering the field of organic agriculture, learning from the land, learning from each other, working together, Abbott Steve was the head of the farm. We also practiced with a wonderful practitioner and friend, David Cohen, who was the second person that helped take care of the farm. And there were 15 of us working in the field then. That's without any people coming from the outside. So there were 75 people living at Green Gulch during those years, building Green Gulch. In the original years, we worked the fields with horses. We also had cows, chickens. We were really experimenting. And we thought we had a lot of idealism around that.

[22:35]

I don't want to talk too much about that. But it was extremely important. We had a green kind of gypsy wagon that we would haul out to Tam Junction with Darlene Cohen being the bait to get people to stop at the gypsy wagon. And then we opened up the side of the gypsy wagon and people came and bought vegetables. Darlene was undeniable. People came into her field of influence. They were magnetized, not only by the turnips and the rutabagas, but by this powerful woman who would offer our vegetables. Otherwise, we just were growing food to feed the community and to build the community. Carpentry Crew, evolving then, beginning to build the Wheelwright Center, the Linda's Arn... Linda's Barn Hall, Green's Restaurant. There was tremendous training and opportunity and a lot of physical work. Just plain, honest work. And every Sunday, public talk. Rigorous schedule. I remember practicing there with Layla, with Blanche and Lou, with so many people in this room and friends, wider friends and associates.

[23:40]

25 years. Beautiful years. And during those years, as a layperson and as, in 1977, our son... Jesse was born along with other children being born at the same time, Hannah Stuckey and Sarah Bockhorst, Elizabeth Baker, many, many, many children coming forth, Aaron and Noah Fisher. Lots of babies being born. In fact, in the early years, Blanche took care of our children so that we could work. And that was amazing to see her doing that, serving. to take care of the baby so that we could work. And then eventually it became clear if we're raising families and practicing, then a family program makes sense. So from the very early years, trying to figure out how to incorporate children into our practice, how to incorporate farming, how to incorporate guests, how to incorporate the political needs of the times, how to share the bounty of our practice with the hungry world, how to keep the gates open.

[24:41]

And more and more people choosing the path of ordination during that time. For me, it was always very clear to practice wholeheartedly as a layperson. It was great. One of the questions that was offered me before doing this Dharma talk was, please come and say something about why you've chosen not to be a priest. I've never chosen not to be a priest. I practice as a layperson, wholeheartedly with full spirit and intentionality. And there are some challenges around that, but I've never chosen not to be a priest. That's not in my world system. Or in my view, it's important to say that. My unconditional response is I've never chosen not to be a priest. Although I do remember practicing my only seshin here in the city, serving as Reb Tenshin Roshi's jisha, serving as his jisha, Baker Roshi was Abbot. I remember... standing on the fourth or fifth day, right on that landing, and looking at thunderous rain coming down and feeling, just looking at the rain and being so... It was such an unusual experience for me to be in this building.

[25:52]

I'd gotten away from Green Gulch to come here, especially to feel practice, not to be so routinized in the home terrain. You know what that means, just to change it up a little bit, watching the rain coming down and having a sense that the rain... was a cloud of beings entering into the world, kind of a reverse of the 25th chapter of the Lotus Sutra. Instead of beings coming up from the earth, rain going down, animating the earth, filling a hungry world, just a sense of that tremendous transmission into the ground. So I have a huge gratitude for this place. And I do remember during that session, Baker Roshi asking me, please come and talk to me about why you've chosen not to be a priest. I thought, good Lord, this is such a tedious question. I don't want that question. Just pushing back a little bit. So it's interesting. Of course, living at Green Gulch also means living in what were very difficult years in the early 1980s and the transitional time when Richard Baker moved on because for

[27:03]

Many of you know the story. I'm not about to go over that. But his pathway, taking him out from residential teaching at Zen Center, moving out, and then a whole new governance coming in. Very difficult years, challenging years. They caused me to investigate what the heart and mind and matter of my practice was. So I'm grateful for those years, but they were challenging. Where's Valerie? How much time do I have? Oh my God, let me keep going. So anyway, during that time in the early 1980s, I met and began practicing with Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen master. I met him at a peace march in New York City. My life turned... Baker Roshi was a primary teacher for me. He was no longer teaching at Zen Center. Zen Center was in a real point of change.

[28:06]

I continued living at Zen Center and practicing with Thich Nhat Hanh. In 1990, I was invited to join the Order of Inner Being as a layperson and to practice with the worldwide sangha of people all over the world. I did that in 1990. I wanted to do it in this country. I remember that... Norman and Reb and many, and I think Blanche came, and people came to that lay ordination for me, which was actually a lay ordination. Two years later, Thich Nhat Hanh asked me if I would be ready and willing and happy to receive what is actually called lay dharma transmission in his lineage. So I am a dual citizen. I have lay dharma transmission. And it's important with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and the Order of Inner Being. And then in 2006, all the time, Peter and I and our family continued living at Zen Center at Green Gulch and practicing with Thich Nhat Hanh, going out and doing.

[29:07]

It was very difficult. Not always popular, but necessary. So I had that late transmission with Thich Nhat Hanh. And in 2006, after... after serving as Chousseau with Norman Fisher in 2006, being the first person at Green Gulch to receive lay entrustment. Beautiful word, trust, from beautiful root of trust to rely on, to find your own integrity, ability, and character, and to recognize that in another. So lay entrustment in 2006, and... And then continuous practice. Boy, when you're old, there's so many years to talk about. It's amazing. So it's like, I'm sorry, I'm taking up so much time. It's frustrating. In the year 2000, our family moved off campus. Unless the founders and the working class move off campus, the next generation can't fully move in.

[30:08]

We moved to Muir Beach. We live in the community of Muir Beach. And... Continue in the world. My husband, Peter, working in the San Francisco County Jail. I work in the public schools, teaching organic gardening and then leading workshops in that topic all over the world. And also at that time, finishing Gardening at the Dragon's Gate, which was a book I was invited to write while living at Zen Center. Took me a long time. I'll always have to apologize for that, but hey, it takes as long as it takes. And... So we live in Muir Beach. We share our home with activist and artist Mayumi Oda, which is a great joy. And I think you know what I do. I teach organic gardening. I learn from the gardens. I work in local community college, the edible schoolyard. I'm just a fanatic organic gardener and ecologist and activist. And I have an active, deep lay practice.

[31:11]

And I want to say one thing that is important for you to know. In my entrustment from Thich Nhat Hanh, I am entrusted to Mary practitioners and to do memorial services. I'm registered with the state of California through that lineage. I never do those ceremonies at San Francisco Zen Center because I respect my training and I know it's not a practice that lay people do. And yet, I'm so grateful that I have that entrustment with Thich Nhat Hanh. And tomorrow, my dearest friend, a lay and trusted friend, and Dharma sister Martha de Barros and I will, for a family in Muir Beach who just lost their 22-year-old daughter to suicide, violent suicide, we will be with the family at a crematorium outside of Novato celebrating the life of young, desperate, drug-addicted, beautiful people woman who is now dead.

[32:12]

As lay people, we're fully engaged in the community. So it's very natural that we would remember the life of Morgan Walker tomorrow morning. Two lay people, two lay women working together. Martha really wanted me to let you know that we're doing this. She called and said, please share what we're really doing. So we have a very active, engaged life in the community, a practice life, and a ritual life. And it's a joy to be here with you tonight. I've hardly nicked the surface, but I sure have talked a lot. So what comes up for you? There's a few minutes before. And I'll do fast bowing so that we have a little bit more time to talk. I can do some speed bowing here. What would you like to bring up? What comes up for you in the context of this? Practice period. Unconditional response. Yes? How did you know you were doing the right thing? I'm sure I'm not doing the right thing.

[33:16]

No, no. But let me draw you out. How did you know you were flying? How did you find out that you were flying your life to something worth it? How did you know that you were investing into... How did you know to go into the ground and get your hands dirty? Right. I think it's affinity. What Norman Fisher used to always say, you know, was karmic affinity. You just find that it's when your hands begin to sweat and you're doing the work. And I don't think, is this right or wrong? I just follow the... I'm well-trained and I'm blessedly well-trained. You know, I have incredible gardening teachers, Harry Kellett Roberts and Alan Chadwick and many others, and then hundreds of practitioners that I've worked shoulder to shoulder with. So I just am called to work. Plus, I'm married to an incredible organic farmer. It's just our calling. We're called to grow food. It's a calling. And you respond.

[34:18]

Call and response. So it's a calling. And because it's connected to meditation practice, it's been all the deeper and more dangerous for me. and alive, dangerous, and not so comfortable always. Not just growing food, but also sitting still and feeling the pain of the world. Letting that come in. And being out in the wider community in an unfiltered way. That's part of lay practice, is being in the world for me, and engagement and activity and presence in the wider community. Invisible. You know, a little bit of invisible. There. Yes. You said that you know that you have a calling because you get your cancer. Yeah. Yeah. No, just when I see, when I see earth, my hands begin to sweat. It's not the dirty. I'm not, I just, I trust the sweat.

[35:19]

When, when I, when Pearl... I think just, you know, to grow food and to be involved. Sometimes people say, are you an organic farmer, are you an organic gardener? And I feel like what I can say is I'm a practitioner and a grower. I have the privilege of growing food and offering that to a hungry world. That has always felt right. And not in a, oh, let me feed you poor hungry people, hear from my high dais. No, just here's food, let's share, let's eat, let's work. Let's make sure the world is fed. Let's care more than feeding the world. Let's care for this living world and do it wholeheartedly. And, of course, meditation practice makes it deeper and stronger and more true for me. Yes, Valerie. Oh, five minutes, okay. Hello. So it sounds like you're saying maybe...

[36:23]

I guess I'm hearing like maybe you don't have a choice in practice or that practice is just there for you? No, practice is an effort and it's a calling and you have to show up. So I guess my question... I'm not a limp little rabbit that's been drawn to the... No, I guess it's more like, you know, why bother to practice? Right, right. That's a great question. And I cannot imagine, and this is a surprise for me, because I was not put together to want to sit still and pay attention and investigate in that way. I wanted to serve, be out there, run. I mean, I came to Zen Center to go deeper. In fact, I went wider at Zen Center. And what I need to do is to go deeper. So meditation practice offers me that opportunity. And so then it is work. And not, there is a choice, as you know, to show up.

[37:28]

There is a choice. Every time you can distract yourself and be out there wider and wider and wider in widening circles and never come back to the depth-seeking charge unless you allow yourself. And that's one of the difficulties as a layperson in the world. You're called out beyond what you can do and you can respond to. So it's very necessary also to come back. Yeah. And you can do that in many different ways. Yes, please. Compost. There's nothing to comment about. If you're wondering about it, then lay down on the pile and come apart. Let yourself come apart. Compost is about... breaking down and being broken open, being dissolved and recombined by what we're most afraid of, by the dark world under the world, by the decomposers without whom we would die in our own waste stream.

[38:39]

So compost is a great teaching. And it's at every level, not just outside where we stack up garbage and straw and hay and manure. In every aspect of our life, compost happens. And I'm not a metaphorical gardener or grower. I'm talking about really laying down everything that is, letting yourself come apart and be recombined. This is not a metaphor. It's what happens. And I wish we had more time to go over that. It's a great question. Yes? You mentioned early on something about doing real work. Yeah. Yeah. When I think of real work, I'm talking about physical work. I have the privilege. That's my training, to know. I look at a drawing that our son did when he was a little boy of this multi-segmented creature walking around with a practitioner sitting on its back, and underneath, in his little scrawly hand, he wrote, gets around by working, which I thought was... So I think that's... It's a wonderful call to love your work.

[39:50]

Annie's husband, Zach, says, protect your real work. There's precious little of it in the world. So the opportunity, the privilege of being able to work together shoulder to shoulder to do the physicality of actually working. Growing food, making compost, pushing a wheelbarrow, walking slowly to the Zendo. That is work, too, not just the obvious. There's a question. Yes? Yes. Yes, yes, at San Francisco's End Center. Right. Yeah. Yeah, some of my best friends made that path. No, really, they made that choice. It was intense. I thought, whoa. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[40:52]

Very, very definitely. It's very true. I had the great privilege of training. Peter and I had the great privilege of training in this extraordinary community for 27 years. Every day. Zazen kihin, Zazen, communal work, you know, bawling kids, brawling kids, you know, the public coming in. You can imagine just... enough to make your hair go white when you're 31 yeah so yes and that's unusual I understand that to be unusual I know it's a gift yeah it's a gift hi anything else yes and then I know I see Valerie's hand raising up so that means go ahead because you've got to get out of here and go to sleep Yes? Well, just, you know, again, the trust word is so strong.

[42:15]

Know your own integrity, your own... Truth is also cognitive trust is to be strong like a tree. So trust what you're doing and be trustworthy. And that means welcoming when the doubt comes, really investigate. Trust that you have the capacity and the intentionality to really investigate. And, you know, to train shoulder to shoulder, even for a brief intensive practice period like you're going through now, like you're engaging in right now, is strengthening, you know, strengthening your muscle and capacity to be trustworthy and also not to turn away from what you're looking at, from those questions. It would not be trustworthy if you stuffed those questions. And said, I'll put them behind my meditation cushion until after I fully practiced.

[43:17]

And then I'll look them up. After I've done my serious work of meditation, I'll take a look at those questions. They're part of everything you do. And you know that. Yeah, you know that. You get to know them. You get to watch them come apart and be recombined in a compost pile. Yeah. What a delight to be here. Thank you so much for making this evening possible. And for the... opportunity to be in conversation. Hardly touched the surface, but hopefully we'll find a way. I know we're going to have a panel, and some of us will come back and participate here at Beginner's Mind Temple later in February. Great gratitude to beloved Abbas. Thank you for making this possible, and for Marsha, and for coming together to have this dialogue. We just touched it, and we'll keep going. Thank you. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:35]

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