Good morning. Is it possible to open any more windows? It feels really warm. I guess they're all open. Okay. That's okay. Well, I wanted to open by reading something called the hymn. Well, it's not actually a hymn, a praise, the praise to perfect wisdom. The perfection of wisdom gives light, O Lord. The Lord, in this case, is the Buddha. The perfection of wisdom gives light, O Lord. I pay homage to the perfection of wisdom. She is worthy of homage.

[01:02]

She is unstained, and the entire world cannot stain her. She is a source of light, and from everyone in the triple world she removes darkness and leads them away from the blinding darkness caused by defilements and wrong views. In her we can find shelter. Most excellent are her works. She makes us seek the safety of the wings of enlightenment. She brings light to the blind so that all fear and distress may be forsaken. She has gained the five eyes, and she shows the path to all beings. She herself is an organ of vision. She disperses the gloom and darkness of delusion. She guides to the path those who have strayed onto a bad road. She is identical with all knowledge. She never produces any dharma because she has forsaken the residues

[02:08]

relating to both kinds of coverings, those produced by defilement and those produced by the cognizable. She does not stop any dharma. Herself, unstopped and unproduced, is the perfection of wisdom. She is the mother of the Bodhisattvas, on account of the emptiness of own marks. As the donor of the jewel of all the Buddha dharmas, she brings about the ten powers of a Tathagata. She cannot be crushed. She protects the unprotected with the help of the four grounds of self-confidence. She is the antidote to birth and death. She has a clear knowledge of the own being of all dharmas, for she does not stray away from it. The perfection of wisdom of the Buddhas, the Lords, sets in motion the wheel of dharma. So, it's the season of spring,

[03:27]

and just last week we celebrated the equinox, the spring equinox, the actual beginning of spring, and we had a beautiful morning ceremony. We sat outside and got to listen to all the dawn sounds and the birds, the frogs, and then we went out onto the lawn for a ceremony, and we chanted, offered incense, light, and various poems for springtime. And we were lucky enough to hear the opening of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, read by our head student and a student from Germany. So it was a very beautiful spring ceremony. And spring is the joyful time,

[04:29]

the light on the equinox is even, there's equal light and equal dark, and it's all the plants and animals, too, who have been asleep during the winter, have been in dormancy, are now waking up. It's a waking up time. And the garden is, you can feel it, everything is pushing up and out and into flower. Lots of energy. And this is the time of year when Persephone comes back from the underworld, and it's joyful. And her mother is very joyful, as all mothers of teenagers are joyful when their daughters come home. I was taking a walk in the garden,

[05:32]

and one of our farm crew members, Liz, was showing me these flats, and maybe if you take a walk down to the gardens, you'll see them, flats of little seedlings that were sitting out in the open. They weren't in the greenhouse anymore or in the plastic houses, they were out in the air. And she told me that this is the time that the seedlings that have been planted in the greenhouse are brought out and toughened up, or hardened off is another term, in the elements, in the sun and the wind, and their leaves get more strong. And unless they're toughened up or hardened off in this way, strengthened, when you transplant them out into the garden, out into the fields, they won't make it. They're not hardy enough to make it.

[06:35]

So this is an essential part of the caring for these plants, is that they go out under the wind and sun and moon for a while before they go into the ground. And our practice period, I feel, which is coming to a close, we just have a couple weeks left. Sashin starts tonight. I feel like it's the same with our rhythm of the year at Green Gulch. We have about 6 months of intensive practice periods, 3 practice periods. And then in the springtime, at the end of this practice period, we have the other half of the year, which is the growing season. And we concentrate on the fields and the gardens and going to market and this kind of activity. So I feel for the members of the practice period,

[07:42]

this going into Sashin is a kind of hardening off time or the toughening time or the strengthening time, where we've been in the greenhouse of the Green Gulch practice period, very beautifully cared for, lots of help, lots of wonderful teachings, lots of zazen and rest time and good food, the perfect conditions to practice hard together. And now we're going to be put out into this zendo, the open air zendo under the elements for strength, to strengthen. And this will be very helpful. And this is before the step of going out into the world or going back to one's life or work or job or family.

[08:44]

And Liz pulled out one of these little plants and showed me the roots. And the roots looked very healthy, and there was also this kind of almost like a mist or a nebula of fine, fine, fine hairs that were pointed out to me to be the most important part of the root system. Within those tiny little hairs is the contact with the water and the earth and where the nutrients come in, more so than the bigger roots. And they're very, very delicate and tender. They have to be taken care of very, very carefully, or also the plant won't make it. Now, if these plants are left in their little cells, they have, you know, the flats have these cells, if they're left there too long, what happens is they get root-bound

[09:53]

and then they really won't make it. They get all turned in on themselves, the roots, and they won't be able to make it out in the fields. So I think this is the same for our rhythm of the year. It doesn't, it's a rhythm of beneficial, it's a beneficial rhythm because if you're just in practice period or inside the greenhouse the whole year long, you might become root-bound and not be able to take in fresh, something fresh. So at Tassajara and here and the rhythm of all different monasteries, Zen monasteries, is to have some part of the year is intensive practice and then another part of the year you go out and then you come back. So there's a pulse to the year, a rhythm. This morning, and yesterday morning as well,

[11:03]

I walked down to the fields, just actually not too far, right down here to see if I could see the comet that is supposed to be visible, and it is visible from Green Gulch. You know, I heard on the radio, go to a rural area and be out of the light for at least 20 minutes and then look up. Well, you can see the comet, whose Japanese name I can't remember right now. And I think tomorrow night it's supposed to be the most strong. But there it is, you look up into a night sky that you feel familiar with, the Big Dipper and other constellations, and there's this, this misty nebula thing with a long tail. It's not really, really strong light, but you can see it. And it's coming across the dark sky.

[12:08]

I really encourage you to go out to try and see it. I don't know, probably up on Mount Tam you could see it, and you're welcome to come to Muir Beach or Green Gulch to watch it. The name for comet, the word comet comes from the Greek, which means long-haired, long-haired star. So we have this long-haired star. The hair is 7 million miles long, streaking across the sky. The seeds that I was talking about, when they first go into the planting mixture, what they go into is just good soil. They're not given extra additives and fertilizers

[13:09]

because that would be too much for the seed. It would be like, as Wendy said, it would be like giving a baby a steak. They wouldn't be able to handle it. So the seeds go into just the right conditions. And this reminds me of practice period as well. And if we're given too much fertilizer, too much fertilizing words or too many teachings, we may feel we can't handle it, or we get overcome or overwhelmed by it. So to be put into the seed tray with other seeds with just the right conditions, and if you find something's too much, now the seed can't get away or move or decide to read something else maybe. But in the practice period, it's encouraged

[14:13]

if something's too much, if the teachings have gotten to be overwhelming, then it's okay to just sit quietly and take care of your posture and breath and not worry so much about whether or not you're understanding everything that's being offered. This way of toughening up the seedlings reminds me of the way the mother bear takes care of the bear cubs. The bear is thought to be a wonderful mother, and what she does is, when she's training the cubs, she kind of puts them up in a tree or tells them to go up in a tree, however she tells them,

[15:13]

and then she goes off and hunts for food, and she says, don't come down. She lets it be known that they should not come down until she gets back so they're safe up there. And then she hunts, and then she brings the food back, and then they can eat, and this goes on. But one day she chases them up into the tree and says, don't come down until I come back. And then she goes off, but she doesn't come back. And the little cubs are up there, and they're waiting, waiting for mother bear to come back, as usual, and they wait and they wait, and then they're starting to get pretty hungry up there, but they were told not to come down. So in order to move on to the next step, they actually have to break their promise, or they break this admonition and have to come down the tree eventually

[16:16]

and hunt for themselves. So on the one hand, this may feel, we may feel sad for the cubs, and on the other hand, this is their strengthening, this is their hardening off and their toughening up, because with mother bear around all the time, they'll never figure out, and she's not going to be there forever. So they have to learn this way, and we have to learn this way. We have to learn sometimes when we have to say no or perhaps go beyond what we were told to do and find our own way and express our own way, which may be different from our good friends

[17:17]

and our teachers and parents' way. So a friend of mine, maybe some of you know her, recently came back, well, she's gone many times to the former Yugoslavia, and she brought me these beautiful booties that were made in the refugee camp, in a refugee camp, and the name of the woman who knit these, her name is Milka Tejniak, and she's a refugee from Kakanya, and she's in the refugee camp Mikulia, and she's 64 years old, and she knitted these beautiful booties. Can you see them? They're really beautifully done,

[18:18]

and the design, I think, is a traditional Balkan design. I've seen these kinds of designs in embroidery. So we have a workshop this afternoon called Straw into Gold, making compost with children, with families, which is going on down in the garden, and straw into gold is a wonderful metaphor for our lives, where you take something that's, you know, a straw is thought of as an insignificant thing, although we know about straw that if you pile up enough, there's one straw that will break the camel's back, right? The last straw will. So changing straw into gold,

[19:21]

within the straw itself, the straw itself is precious, but there's a transformation there that occurs through understanding about straw. So I feel this is like straw into gold, being in a refugee camp, and I also heard that the refugees in Sarajevo, when they went into the bomb shelters, many of the women would bring their knitting needles and they would just work away while they're being bombarded from the outside, and this helped with their fear, they said. So the straw into gold image, you know, is from the story of Rumpelstiltskin. Do you all know that story? Does anyone not know the story of Rumpelstiltskin? One person does not. Two, three, more people. Some people don't know the story of Rumpelstiltskin. I'll tell you the story of Rumpelstiltskin briefly.

[20:24]

There was a miller, a miller who was very poor. Now, a miller is one of the peasants who is kind of an odd figure in that he or she doesn't work the same way as the other peasants, doesn't work the land. They just receive the grain and mill it with the help of this magic water wheel. So the miller is a character that sometimes can do good and sometimes can do evil. This particular miller went to the king and told the king to impress him that his daughter could spin straw into gold. And the king said, Well, sounds pretty interesting to me. Why don't you bring her to the palace? And so he brought his daughter to the palace and the king put her into a room filled with straw and said, please, he didn't say please, he said, you spin this straw into gold by tomorrow morning or forfeit your life.

[21:26]

So there she was in this room filled with straw, sort of like sashin where you're in this room and it's just filled with straw and there you are and you can't leave and you have to just face the straw. These supposedly insignificant things of your life and pain and emotional upsets and I should probably wait for the commentary until I'm done with the story. So she was in there crying and not knowing what to do and the door opened, even though it was locked, and this little man came in and he said, Why are you crying? And she said, I'm supposed to spin this straw into gold. And he said, Well, what will you give me if I do it for you? And she said, Well, my necklace here, take my necklace. So he took the necklace, sat down at the spinning wheel and began... And pretty soon the straw was filling the reels and he had spun all the straw into gold and then left.

[22:29]

And when the king came in the morning, he was very impressed and what he did was say, Here's another room over here that's bigger and filled with more straw and you need to go in there now and if you don't spin all that by morning, you will forfeit your life. So there she was again in an even bigger room filled with straw. And she was crying, it was the middle of the night and she didn't know what to do. She was at her wits' end and who should appear but this little man again, kind of a wrinkled little man, and he said, What will you give me if I spin the straw into gold? And she said, My ring, I have a ring here, please take my ring. So he took the ring and he began spinning and spinning until the whole room, all the straw was turned into gold. Well, the king was very impressed by this and he said,

[23:32]

Well, if you spin this last room of straw into gold, I will marry you and you will be queen of the land. And she was brought to even a bigger room, it was about this big, as big as the Zen Do, filled with straw. And the little man came in and said, What will you give me if I spin this into gold? And she said, I don't have anything else, I don't know. And he said, Well, if you are to be queen, I will spin this straw into gold if you give me your firstborn child. And she thought, Well, who knows if this is going to come to pass. All right, I'll just say yes. So she promised that she would. And he spun and spun and spun until the whole room was filled with gold. And when the king came in the morning, he was very pleased and they were married that very day. Well, within a year,

[24:34]

she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. And she had forgotten about this little man, how he had helped her, and she was so happy with her new baby. But one day, soon after the baby was born, in comes the little man and says, Give me what you promised. And she remembered all of a sudden and said, No, no, no, you can't, I'll do anything, I'll give you half my kingdom. And he said, You promised, give me that child. And she pleaded and cried, and the little man had pity on her. And he said, All right, I'll give you one chance. If you can guess my name in three days, the child is yours. So she said, All right. And she sent her messengers all throughout the land, gathering names all throughout the village and towns, getting all the strange names that she could gather. And he came back the next day and she said, Is it Balthazar? No.

[25:36]

Is it Trimple Cumplings? And he said, No. Is it, and she had names like Lambshanks and Lego Mutton, and no, no, no. So then she sent her servants further and to ask everybody in the land of strange names. And he came back the next day and she had all sorts of other names, which I can't even remember, that she tried to guess. And he said, No, no, no, to any of them. And he said, Give me the child now, you might as well. And she said, I have one more day. So off he went again, and her faithful servant, he had gone everywhere, and he was on his way through this dark forest, and he saw a firelight kind of through the trees, and he came closer and closer. This is in the night, and there was this little man dancing around the fire, and he was saying, Today I bake, tomorrow I brew. The next, the young queen's child

[26:39]

I have. How happy I am that no one knew that Rumpelstiltskin, I am styled. And the messenger heard this and went speeding back to the queen and told her what he had seen, and she knew his name was Rumpelstiltskin. So he comes back the next day, Give me that child. You don't know my name. Come on. And she said, Just wait a minute here. She said, Is it George? He said, No, no, no. Could it be Harold? And he said, No, no, no. And she said, Could it be Rumpelstiltskin? And he flew into a rage. How dare you, how dare you! He started stamping and stamping and stamping until he stamped through the earth one of his legs, and then he tried to get the other leg, and he tore himself in 2 and disappeared into the earth. laughter

[27:42]

And the king and queen and their many children, this one lived happily ever after, and here we are, listening to the story and thinking about straw into gold. So straw, you know, is that which is sort of, it's the threshed, it's the stalk of the threshed wheat, so it doesn't have anything left much. It's worthless stuff, straw supposedly, although, you know, beautiful things are made out of straw, straw hats and baskets. Straw hats couldn't be made out of anything else. They're light, they let in air, but they keep out the sun, and they're wonderful, useful things. So we have some ideas about straw or those things that are supposedly useless, and then the other things, the gold is what we want. So how do we transform

[28:47]

straw into gold? Well, Sashin is a, Sashin, for those of you who don't know, is a period of time, 5 days or 7 days or 1 day or 3 days where you focus your attention, do a lot of sitting still and gather your mind in. It's not dispersed all over. You just have a very simple schedule of sitting, walking meditation, resting, eating, and that's all. And that's coming up, starts tonight for 5 days. And our tendency, over and over again, that we all have is to think that the painful parts of our life, the emotionally painful, mentally painful, physically painful parts

[29:49]

are to be, if we could just get rid of those, then we could get the gold. So there's a kind of movement away from the straw as if that was to be gotten rid of, thrown to the wind, strewn away. But it's in taking care of the straw very carefully that it transforms by being very careful with whatever emotional state comes up, whatever fear or anxiety comes up, to admit that that's the straw you're in, that's the state you're in, and not turn away and stay very still with that. And what happens, what can happen is

[30:51]

a transformation and the straw becomes, the straw does not get, well, in the metaphor, the straw turns into gold, but the straw is the straw and the gold is the gold, which is the true transformation, that the straw, when we understand that the straw is just the straw, not something to be gotten rid of, there's transformation. So we have to be very gentle with ourselves and very precise about these, about the situation that we are in and not kid ourselves and ask for help if we need help. A, I heard on NPR about another, a refugee camp where a photographer was,

[31:53]

this is in Ethiopia, a photographer was taking photographs of the refugees and lots of people, he'd take a picture of a group and lots of people were looking and gathering around and he had a Polaroid camera and then he'd show the picture to the group or to this one person he was taking a picture of in the group and they were not able to find who they were. Their friends had to say, oh, that's you right there, right there, that's you. They had never seen their face and they couldn't recognize themselves in a photograph. So in some ways I think of Green Gulch as a refugee camp where we take the three refuges, refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and I know that many people come here and don't necessarily see themselves reflected. I've heard tell that

[32:56]

some women feel like there's nothing here necessarily for them, it's too masculine or too, you know, I was teaching a class on women in Buddhism and someone came to the class and was a bit upset that I was sitting there in black robes and I think there was some idea about what women are supposed to look like or something like that, some concept that was brought to bear and so then they didn't see themselves reflected. And I think also for people of color, sometimes they come to Green Gulch and don't see themselves reflected. Someone was recently talking with me about blue collar, they come from a blue collar, they said family, and they don't feel like there's much reflection of that here. Blue hair, we don't have that much blue hair here. So you may arrive to this refugee camp

[33:59]

and feel like, well, this is the wrong camp for me, I can't take refuge here. I just wanted to say something about the spring equinox. You know, this comet that's been traveling, the last time it came around was 18,000 years ago, and our foremothers and fathers, 18,000 years ago, this was the upper paleo-Atlantic and they were making beautiful drawings in caves and also figures with like bird goddesses, columns with breasts and kind of bird heads and eggs that were supposedly in the buttocks area, but they were like egg shapes. These were some of the figures

[35:02]

that were being made at that time. So 18,000 years ago, if you can imagine, our foremothers and fathers looking up into this dark, dark night sky and seeing the long-haired star coming across. I just wonder what they would have said. Anyway, in the spring, the Vestal Virgins used to become a Vestal Virgin. Vesta, the word Vesta, this is the hearth goddess of the hearth. They would cut off their hair, their long tresses, and their hair would be hung on a lotus tree. I don't know actually what a lotus tree is, but their hair would be hung outside on a lotus tree and it was said that golden, kind of anointed, golden magical oil would come from this hair

[36:04]

outside that was like blessed. So to cut off your hair and go into the service of Vesta, who was the hearth and the center of the house, and she wasn't personified, she was just a flame. The word Vesta comes from the Sanskrit vas, which means shining, and gold also means to shine. So they would dedicate themselves, these women, the Vestal Virgins would dedicate themselves to this kind of worship of this shining flame within. And this dedication of cutting off the hair is enacted in the Buddhist world

[37:10]

on ordination, and also for some people before ordination, usually it's ordination when you have your head shaved and your teacher shaves it for you. You don't cut it off yourself really. You get help. And some people, in an expression of their commitment to practice and to turn the light inwards, may feel they want to cut their hair as an outward sign of that, an outward sign of some inward path. So one of my most favorite stories, Zen stories, is about Seppo, and he was the monk who was walking and saw that lettuce leaf coming down and said, Oh, let's not go to that monastery because they're not taking precise enough attention.

[38:12]

And then the monk was seen running down the creek chasing after the lettuce leaf. That was Seppo. And he had a monk who was in his community who left the community to go off by himself and build a thatched hut and practice. And the years went by and people forgot about him. He was just up in the mountains by himself. He would go down to the stream. He had made himself a wooden dipper and would drink out of the stream with his wooden dipper. Well, news never really filtered down from where he was, and then one monk who was still in Seppo's community went out to see if he could find him, and he did locate him. He had been in this thatched hut for years and years and years. And he asked him, What is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West? And the monk of the thatched hut

[39:15]

answered, This valley is wide, this dipper is long. And the monk who had come to speak with him didn't bow or ask for further teachings. He just turned and went back to the monastery, to Seppo, and told him what he had heard. And Seppo said, Oh, that's extraordinarily good, but still, I'll have to go and check him out for myself. So he brought with him an attendant, and he had the attendant carry a razor. And they went off into the mountains looking for this thatched hut, and they came upon it. And Seppo went up to this monk, and the first thing he said to him was, I won't shave your head if you are able to voice the way. I won't shave your head if you are able to voice the way. And the monk immediately turned and went down to the stream

[40:16]

and washed his hair in the stream and came back and faced Seppo ready to be shaved. And Seppo immediately shaved his head. Now, this story, I realize I have run out of time to talk about this story as much as I wanted to because when Seppo said, I won't shave your head if you are able to voice the way, it sounded like it sounds as if he's saying, you know, if you're able to voice the way and speak the Dharma, then I'll leave you alone. You can have your shoulder-length hair however long it was, probably not seven million miles long, but however long it is, I'll just leave you alone. I won't shave your head

[41:16]

if you are able to voice the way. But this monk and Seppo were completely, they completely understood each other. And the voicing of the way is also the non-voicing of the way. The voicing of the way includes also non-voicing of the way. And this monk, when he said, I won't shave your head if you are able to voice the way, Seppo was, Seppo understood that he by himself, as Seppo, could not shave this monk's head. I, Seppo, alone, by myself, won't shave your head.

[42:17]

He isn't able to. And the monk heard that and immediately prepared to be shaved. So this understanding that we're, that in the Buddhist ceremony of ordination, the teacher, before the last little bit of hair is shaved, they say, this last bit of hair is called the Shura. Only a Buddha can cut it off. Now I will cut it off. Do you allow me to cut it off? And the ordinee says, So who's cutting that off? Who's able to cut that off? And the monk coming with this hair dripping down to his shoulders up from the stream, ready to be shaved, is true voicing of the way, which is a non-voicing of the way. Because you can't voice

[43:19]

the way all by yourself, which is your voicing of the way. I want to close with this poem called Spring by Mary Oliver. Can you see this picture? It's a big mother bear. It's a grizzly. Spring. Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring down the mountain. All night, in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring, I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question how to love the world. I think of her rising

[44:19]

like a black and leafy ledge to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else, whatever else my life is with its poems and its music and its glass cities, it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain, breathing and tasting all day I think of her, her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love. Thank you very much. May... Tova? I was interested in the connection between the refugee and cooking refuge here, and I've been going over and I wondered if you could talk about it a little bit more.

[45:20]

Well, the um... It's funny, when I prepare these talks, things just sort of speak to me, you know, like listening to the NPR show about that Ethiopian and those booties. Tova, by the way, was the one who sent me those booties. Like they introduced Tova Green. And just the word refuge and refugee, you know, it's the same thing. And in those cases, they're running, well, they're trying to get to a safe place. Refugees are running from danger, right, or displacement. And I do feel like people come to Zen Center or Green Gulch often to seek refuge and also, and some people are very, I mean, really unhappy and similar to a refugee camper. I used to always call it the French Foreign Legion because there would be stories. Each person would have

[46:22]

their own story, very vivid, sad, suffering story. That's the common denominator as far as I could tell. So in that way, I think each refugee in a refugee camp must have a suffering, difficult story to tell or they wouldn't be there. So there's those kind of analogies. And I think here, to actually come to a place that's dedicated to well, what did you say? Dedicated to awareness of what's happening and creating a common environment in order to do that becomes a safe refuge. And I think what Mother Tao and most people

[47:23]

who go to a refugee camp see it as a temporary place. They know that. But while they're there, they're community formed. And the way that happens here too, most people who come come for a little bit of time to their lives. But while they're here, they're here with us. Yes. Yeah, for the most part, people come for a period of time and sometimes that time may last for many years, but often... I mean, there are a handful of people who've been here for 20 or more years. But most people come for a time and go back to their... to the marketplace. But you're right. While they're here, these... the community forms and these strong Dharma buddies... I mean, the three refuges are Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Sangha is the community

[48:24]

that practices together and it really... it does form. And those people you connect with, even though you don't live in that practice community anymore, there's something that's timeless about your connection with them. Do you find that after being in practice period and seeing those people again? Yes. Practice with. Yes. Yes. I think that's similar. Well, so they don't choose. They can't choose who they're with or who they're rooming with.

[49:24]

Right? And similarly here, you don't necessarily... you wouldn't choose this group of people as friends. The people who show up in a practice period. You might. You might. But in many cases you wouldn't necessarily be drawn to that person socially. You know? But you... Right? But then you... you connect in another way that's not based on a lot of your ideas about who's... who you want to... who you're attracted to. It's... it's difficult. Which is very broadening. You know? Because one's image and ideas about oneself kind of... they don't hold up. You know? They begin to kind of drop off like roof tiles or something. Yes?

[50:26]

No, no. That was the first thing about refugee camps. Well, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what you said about... the pornograph. People who didn't recognize themselves in the pornograph because they'd never seen their own reflection. And then the analogy you made here of the people who didn't recognize they don't see their reflection here. And I just didn't feel like that quite... quite heard what you were fully saying there. And I wanted to hear more about that. Okay. Well, one person in particular whom I greatly admired was saying to me that she knew a number of women, this is about women in particular, who didn't feel like they wanted to get involved with Greenbelt or Zen Center because of a kind of masculine way here or something like that. And... I kind of know what she's talking about and I also feel like there is

[51:31]

a kind of deeper... there's more to it than that. There's more happening here than that. And you actually can find ones express your way and if you're a woman express it as a woman. If you're a man express it as a man. I think there's possibility if I would be here if there was a possibility for that. And probably a lot of you all would be here. So I think it's there but when someone comes and looks around, you know, black robes, face the wall, you know, the service in the morning doesn't have female imagery or we don't mention female teachers, women teachers. There's just certain things you can really point to that is enough for people to say not for me. So it's not that I want to change the whole liturgical way that Zen Center operates or anything. But I do feel that

[52:34]

I do want to make some changes but I also don't want to sort of turn it into what someone's idea of the perfect place for them would be. And also with women and men of color, people of color and also people who are gay will often say at Zen Center they feel that there isn't a big enough gay community to feel comfortable where they can express themselves. And I think those things are true. I don't think Zen Center is everything for every person it can't be. And I think that there is something here for everyone as well. Zazen, basically. But one may have to go out to connect up with a certain community that really feeds you in a certain way. Zen Center maybe can't do that. But to reject it out of hand is too bad as well. Is that? Yeah. It also kind of brings up the question of what does it mean

[53:35]

to see yourself reflected here and are you coming into identity politics that you need to complete here. I mean not putting that down but there's a way that maybe that isn't even a realm that we can be here. As you said we can't have each kind of person represented in the right proportion. We can't deny the fact that there are certain kinds of people who are represented here and that does get some sort of a backlash. Yes. Yes. And it's pragmatic I think a little bit. There are other people who come and say I'm home. It's like for whatever reason either it has to do with you can't point to a reason it's the causes and conditions

[54:35]

they're right. Some people come they hear the sound of the bell and the sitting still and it's like this is it you know I that happened maybe it happened to you you know when you arrive and feel you're being met in some way you haven't been met before and it's all very foreign and it doesn't quite fit into anything that you thought you were going to be interested in. It's a little mysterious where you connect in that way. So you're right if you're looking if you're looking for a certain if you're looking in the photograph for yourself and you don't see it if you're looking around but if you're not looking maybe then maybe you're more open to connect with what's there. Yes? Among those lines I was struck that you talk about Vesta soon after talking about finding

[55:35]

women who were here or not here and that reminded me that something that I thought and wondered if you did was the same that one of these archetypes of women or gods that's more strong than men.

[57:20]

I don't know what to say about that. I got I sort of stopped. Anyway, I feel like Zazen you know the posture itself you know to sort of like you can just picture a little flame right here you know there is a kind of turning in and kindling one's flame. So all that imagery is very I see it enacted really in the practice here although I'm not I don't really know about the Vestalion maybe you do Michelle more about what the actual practice is somebody else does these spring like

[58:32]

you know she is you know indestructible she cannot be crushed she leaves you out of blindness she's you know as the perfection of wisdom personified as female the iconography of the perfection of wisdom is this woman with a lotus and on top of the lotus is a book which is the perfection of wisdom literature so there is that side as well I think you know maybe the zendo is devoted to um unconstructed ness and stillness sitting and but then expressing yourself in other ways you know all the ways that we do might be this other aspect but it's true like people don't see that right away they see the black

[59:34]

zafu side which which to people might mean oh there's no garlands whatsoever you know there's no jubilation see we talked about this in the class called the perfection of wisdom in eight thousand lines which I just finished teaching and we had a guest speaker come and he was saying this perfection of wisdom text is really about worshipping and jubilation and it's not about emptiness and you know this kind of analyzing reality it's more this worshipping this perfection of wisdom and David isn't here is he we had someone who had written a song which is about straw into gold it's called turn a rut into a groove and it's the kind of rock song you know let's turn the rut into a groove it's all about realization jubilation so he's saying

[60:35]

it in the class and it was that side of buddhism that we don't really for whatever reason the Japanese you know style that we received our family style doesn't have a lot of that in it although there's some great drumming but so you know to connect that up with gospel singing and what who knows what that's going to happen in America after hundreds of years it's only been here buddhism has only been here for what I think the hundredth anniversary of that that kind of conference in Chicago in 1895 or something where they had not a lot of buddhist speakers so it's just been around for a hundred years here so who knows what's going to happen you know when it meets up with the western sort of mind no it's just off the top of my head I

[61:35]

was thinking part of that melding will take place if there's a comfort in coming into a space where you don't easily see yourself reflected again going back to what Sue said and what you brought up I mean if it's going to connect with gospel or blues or rock or soul or whatever it might be rhythm and blues people will have to feel like they can do that like there's an entry point so it might not be have an identical look but there will have to be some receptivity yes and I think the longer first of all I think what we're doing in this first hundred years or at least at zen center early 60s so these 30 some years that we've been doing it we've been paying attention to what was offered and get that down as thoroughly as possible and then out of that we can do improvisation which is

[62:35]

if for those of you who have done theater the best improvisation people are ones who really know their craft and then they can just take off but it's not sort of wildly based on who knows what it's based on you know many years of digesting you know the craft so I think also for us there's still a lot of digesting perhaps that needs to be done but we are kind of taking off I mean if you look at some of the things we're offering you know the Norman's doing this Buddhism and Jewish meditation thing that's kind of and we have fear and fearlessness I mean I don't think these kinds of workshops were offered in other Asian countries probably like that you know melding various strains and you know having a women's way workshop which is coming up in June that Fu and I lead weekend you know we are kind of taking off after but I think it's

[63:36]

after you know 20 some years of monastic life and really receiving the tradition and then taking it going somewhere I think if you just walk in the door and say hey let's all you know stand on our heads and weave garlands with our toes or something as an expression I mean it may be an expression but if you just arrived it may not be received so easily you know so I

[65:09]

think it's important to have that kind of experience and to have that experience and to have that of It is your make-up, my make-up, that extends your hair. Women get surgery so they can look like this as well. So when he met you, what came to me was not to not even know what you look like. To never have that concern or to think that you need to look different.

[66:12]

And you don't. And that his friends had to point out that to me. Right, isn't that great? Like a child. Yeah. I also thought that, I remember once I said to someone, when I first started practicing, I said, I just hate looking in the mirror. And they said, well, don't look. And I thought, well, isn't that a novel idea? Never occurred to me. I would look in the mirror. I was very unhappy when I came to Zen Center. You look in the mirror, comb your hair or do whatever, and I'd just hate myself. There was a lot of self-hate. And then it was getting worse. And they said, well, don't look. It's an interesting practice. You know, when people are in mourning, you know, you turn the mirrors to the wall. And you leave off, I mean, traditionally, I don't know how long, you know, you don't cut your nails or your hair.

[67:21]

You don't, you just focus on mourning and leave off the supposed petty concerns of day to day, keeping up the approval and image and just do what needs to be done and forget that. So, yeah, I think there is a kind of joy in letting go of that. Yeah. I just would like to thank you for your talk. You really are gifted. And I love so much about it, and especially when you were talking about 18,000 years ago, people are not thinking that they were actually drawing on walls of caves. You kind of think, like, it's just something, like, dry like in a science book, you know. Upper paleo, what did you say? Upper paleo. Yeah.

[68:22]

When I thought of 18,000 years ago, it's about 16,000 B.C., right? Because we're just around 2000. So I have these books. Are you familiar with Maria Gimbutas? She's written a number of books on the language of the goddess and old European civilizations and the goddess religions, basically. And she's done an enormous amount of research. She passed away recently. So there's these books. And I looked at, okay, well, what was going on then? And I kept finding things from before 16,000, like 20,000 years. And I said, oh, that was too early, these goddess figures and all that. I said, how about 16,000 B.C.? What can I find? And there were these pictures. One was this column carved out of, I think, horn or bone or something with breasts. It was just like this column with this bird's head and breasts and other beautiful kind of free, they weren't free form, but free feeling images of the bird goddesses that are part women, part birds.

[69:39]

And, you know, they were just busy creating all sorts of stuff, you know, as expressing, you know, their worship and devotion and jubilation, right? And then they look up and they, whoa. Have any of you seen it? Have some of you seen it? Yes, I saw it. It was the one on the... First it was too faulty. Yeah. Green Gulch? Yes. But not solely. I mean, it's mixed. It's men and women, but it's about 50-50. Is this your first time here? In here, yes. Uh-huh, yeah. It's not just for women, but a lot of women practice here. I have a comment.

[70:41]

Reading the book, A Beginner's Mind... Yes. What attracted me to coming to the Zen Center is the emphasis on being empty. And, for me, the reading that I have done before has gave me a gap. It gave me something that I needed. It's sort of like the circle. It does the ending of the circle and the beginning of the circle, but it has to be that gap of the emptiness. It has to be what? The gap between the beginning of the ending of the beginning. Uh-huh. And the emptiness, it makes sense to me. How does it help you when you read about emptiness? What did that mean for you? Well, it's sort of this attachment to anything. It's sort of like emphasizing the...

[71:44]

I would say, again, it's attachment of anything. It's sort of like it's emphasizing a new beginning. Whatever it is, it just emphasizes a new beginning. It gives me focus. So some feeling of all your old ways and just kind of emptying yourself of those. I know there's that chapter about housecleaning of the mind. Right. And just take everything out and then clean things and then bring it back what's useful and simple and just right. That too. Yes. Sometimes what I do is I become fearful or angry. And as I concentrate on my breathing, everything goes. It's just my whole body just... I can sense my tightness in my body.

[72:54]

And it's just as I concentrate on my breathing, it's just like it's a release of everything. And it's just I can see the difference of being empty and being with my feelings and my thinking. Being caught up and kind of possessed by your thinking and feelings and then to just let that go and... Yes. It's just my whole body relaxes. I was very happy because of that. Well, thank you for coming. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it again. Once again being reminded of the natural birth process. And see each other in the moment. And the progression.

[73:56]

The progression from the struggle to the goal to the struggle period. And the fact that... You don't just bloom. And that's a wonderful bloom. I don't remember how we did that. But it has to happen again. And in each of us. I think some of us were older. And the sense that we bloomed in one stage and that this is no longer as meaningful a bloom as it was once. And it's easy to think, Gosh, I'm not... I'm nowhere. I'm not doing it. I'm not being it. It's easy to forget that it's natural to finish sometimes in one stage of development. And that you probably have to go through those same stages of coming up

[74:59]

in a little different orientation. You have to go through that entire process before you can bloom again. And it's very good to be reminded that this is a normal process. And also the bloom, when it fades, then it goes into the compost, which is what this workshop is about. Into the compost and then out. Then you use the compost to nurture the new flowers. So it goes around. I think while you were talking, something occurred to me. What's gone? Oh, I think it was this. Maybe not. I saw this book recently at the Book Depot in Mill Valley called Growing Old is Not for Sissies.

[76:00]

Have you seen that? There's volume one and volume two. And it's a book of photographs of senior citizens, whatever you want to call them. We're all future seniors. I had a friend who had a button, future senior citizen. Older people who were athletes. 87-year-old surfer. There he is with his board and his trunks on and just big smile. And the 94-year-old karate person dancing. Really, I'm not kidding. There were 88-year-old swimmers. That's what I think you were talking about, blooming another. You bloom in one phase. And what you were saying about you really have to push. They're made very tight so the wind won't blow them over. What you were saying about faceless and all. Have you seen this book about Growing Old is Not for Sissies?

[77:03]

You see these people who are, they're old. They haven't had faceless and all. They're lined and there's something sort of shining out because they're expressing themselves, really, is what it is. And they're very attractive people because they're, just like anybody who's completely expressing themselves, they're only expressing themselves as very attractive. There's nothing more attractive. So there they are with their surfboards. But their bodies are sagging, but they're alive. Really, I recommend taking a look at the book. It was very inspiring for me. I wanted to send it to my parents. My mother is barely walking around a grocery store now. She's turning 80, and it may, I don't know if, I mean, it may not be an inspiration to her. It may be hard for her to see those pictures. But anyway, I do recommend it.

[78:06]

Yeah. I like this idea of the straw and the gold. I've been working here in the garden a lot, and we're going down and getting hay from this little stables farm down the road, and it's very important. Kind of what's being thrown out from the stables has a lot of horse manure in it and everything, and it's brought back here. It's used all over the garden, the farm. It's used in the compost, and it's very important because it's sort of layered with all the refuse from the kitchen, all the old food and muck and junk. It's kind of gross, and then that makes really nice, rich soil that grows these beautiful flowers when you're sitting here. So it's kind of that cycle again. Yeah. You have this straw and gold sort of existing together, and dependent on each other in a way to exist.

[79:10]

Yes. It's sort of like facing all your problems or negativity. It's sort of right there with happiness. It's completely in there. It's like the energy around all these emotional difficulties and anger and all that stuff that's laced, like the straw is laced that you get it with all this muck and stuff. You cannot, if you try to get rid of that, there goes the energy and the life of the flowers. It's all bound up in there. It's all together, and if you think you can get rid of one and have the other, the kind of spiciness and aliveness and juiciness of people is all this energy. But we do over and over again, and I do, get fooled naively kind of into thinking, oh, if I only wasn't like that, then I'd be something else. But it's the fact that I am like that, and if I find out about that,

[80:15]

study that, allow that, admit that, there's all that life in there. Exactly like that straw. In thinking about straw quite a bit in the last couple of days, there's a set of points of reconciliation, I think ten or seven points, that Thich Nhat Hanh has, and one of the points is covering mud with straw. I think the first points are the two parties who are fighting have to agree to come together for reconciliation and that they will abide by whatever happens there, and they bring their friends to support them. That's one step, and another step is each tells their story. And one of the steps is covering mud with straw, and that's when the friends of the combatants or the people who are having trouble speak on behalf of their friend.

[81:18]

And I was picturing, now what would you say if you were covering mud with straw? You'd say, he was upset that day, his mother was sick and he was on the edge and just lost his job, and when he spoke to you in that way or, you know, and then the other one says, and my friend was, he just was in a car accident, so he was on the edge. So that's the friends covering mud with straw. They're giving this surround, so it wasn't just this blow up they had. You have to look wider than that. You need friends sometimes to help you. So straw is really important. It is, it's gold, right? Yes. I really appreciated the story of the bear, and particularly I think, I mean, I look at myself as coming out of a very long dependency on my family, or in the world, being a woman, I'm the first generation to work, and that struggle of supporting myself and still feeling like a woman,

[82:19]

it's really amazingly difficult. It surprises me. And to have a field that doesn't usually support me, which I also don't wish to abandon. So there's something in that. And the idea, I also, the idea of the conditions being just right for the mother bear to lead the cubs up the tree, so that they're big and strong enough, and hungry enough, when they come down, they can survive. And it just, I just feel very much in that point, in a way, and that there's a reward to it. I mean, it seems like terribly painful and terribly wounding to have your mother go, but there's some kind of rightness, then you become that, you become her, you become free, you become all those things. And there was something that tied into me about when the conditions are right

[83:20]

for the people who don't look like anybody else to show up, whether it's a woman, or a black, or a Jew, or whatever. And there's something in that, that there's a turning point, I think, where at first you might, it's just, this is too harsh a soil, I cannot bloom in it. But there is a point, I feel like in myself, where I say I'm willing to be the first. Because in my being there, that just makes it so much easier for a second person to come and go, oh, she's here, you know. So there's something in reaching that point in life where, I mean, I know I've looked at that, God, I wish I could believe that people could act like this, or that there would be someone to act like that. And the comfort to me has been, well, I'll act like that, then there will be somebody, you know. So that there's some, I think for me, I feel that's my beginning of my maturity. But it is so, I see it's so dependent on there still being support from the outside. There are soils that are too harsh. And that there is a turning point when, okay, this seed, this first seed can bloom.

[84:24]

Yeah. Yeah, I think baby bodhisattvas, just like seeds, need protection. You can't, if you overestimate, if the mother leaves them too soon, they'll perish, right? And if you underestimate it, they'll perish also, you know, right? So knowing what's too harsh for you, knowing yourself well enough to know this soil is, this isn't going to work, this is over my head, even though it's a challenge and all, but it's over my head. And knowing for yourself it's time to leave this situation. I've outgrown it, I can't bring them with me to where I'm going. I'm evolving, it's like that. To know that is to know a lot. You know this, have you ever heard of the phrase,

[85:26]

it's a Jungian term, the Logos Spermaticos, do you know that? It's the fertilizing word, Logos Spermaticos. And it's like hearing the teaching or hearing someone speak and feeling like the words come in and they're like, like there's some kind of fertilization that takes place, for men and women. But sometimes if it's so overwhelming or so charismatic or so fabulous, you may be eclipsed or kind of overwhelmed by it. It's like being in too rich soil and the seed can't, it doesn't actually grow, it's too much. So I think I mentioned that in the lecture, I didn't use the term Logos Spermaticos, which is such a great term, fertilizing word. So it comes back to this knowing yourself and studying yourself,

[86:32]

which is where we start. Yes? First off, thank you very much for the talk today. I was really struck by a couple of things. I heard a talk yesterday that really emerged all of a sudden when you opened the talk, talking about the thing about the mother bear. First idea is this notion that the cubs are conditioned and taught to stay in the tree until the mother returns, but ultimately she doesn't return and they have to make that risk or perish or whatever, but they're certainly not alone. And the person who was talking yesterday worked with people who have chronic pain and she herself has come from a place of chronic pain. And she was saying it's a scary thing because there's no guarantee

[87:33]

that if they get out of their beds and try and participate in this, you don't think that it's going to work. But they do it. Or some people have done it and she was able to do it. And it's just like that big mystery about things. There's no guarantee that those cubs are going to survive. But it happens and the bears continue to live. And something about that seems very powerful, that whole thing. I guess the thing you said, sometimes you have to contradict your teachings or your teacher or something. You have to be really willing to stand completely on your own and not care. And that's when I get this notion. And see it in analogy and nature. Really, it's everywhere, I guess. It's powerful. Thank you.

[88:34]

Yeah, thank you. Did Darlene, was it Darlene who spoke? Yeah. Yeah. That's right, there's no guarantee. You enter fully. But there's risk. And it's very alive right there. It's very alive. I mean, Darlene threw herself into her self-healing and was able to turn her disease around, rheumatoid arthritis. But she didn't know anything. I mean, she had no guarantee all along the way. It is helpful when you feel like there's no alternative. You can't fool around anymore. Same with the cubs. Okay, well, they can tell themselves, she'll come back, she'll come back. But at a certain point, let's hit the road.

[89:39]

We've got to do it now. And that is a very alive place. And there's a lot of anxiety there, too, fear. So you have to bring your knitting needles. Yes? I've been astounded. It was kind of a fair story, I guess, because I was one of these cubs and my mother went off one day and came back. And I said, you can talk about it. We put the pieces together, but I missed a lot of the story. And it wasn't coming in. And it's astounding to me. I've done a lot of work on it over the many, many years with many, many therapists in many, many groups and long meetings. And yet, the story I heard just about a few minutes ago missed huge parts of that story. And then I started thinking about my life

[90:41]

and how it had changed the day I was developing. My mother went off in an airplane. The latter was calm. She had come back. And it's like turning straw into gold because I'm a different person than I would have been, a very different person than I would have been. And because of my choice of profession, I can be able to help people deal with a lot of the same issues even though clearly I haven't totally dealt with all of mine. But it is like a turning straw into gold. The strengths that we don't know are there, that even the nurturing and the calming and the honoring can turn into a different kind of straw. To me, that's what turning straw into gold is. I was just looking at it. Yes, exactly, exactly. Thank you for telling us that. You know, our worst problems, the worst sufferings we've had,

[91:47]

alcoholism and eating disorders and being abandoned by our parents either through death or other situations or abandoning our own children through death. Those instances, those areas of our life are, if they are what turns into gold, just exactly what you said, the finding, working with that and finding one's way through that terrible suffering. And what happens is you develop and are able to help other people is what happens. So the not turning away from what we often think is, if only that didn't happen then, but this is what happened and study it.

[92:52]

As you said, you've been studying it for years, and it doesn't end. There was a woman friend I had who died at age 80 or so, and on her deathbed she lived a long life and had worked and had a career and so forth, but on her deathbed she talked about, almost the last thing she talked about was this baby that had died at childbirth, her daughter, was stillborn. There are certain things that never, the pain doesn't vanish, but we're able to use it as gold to help others. Thank you.

[93:38]

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