Hi Michael, this is John Burney. John Burney, I just woke up. How are you doing? Okay, how are you? Wonderful to hear from you. Good. I tried calling you in Seattle, but I guess Charlie gave me your other number. I tried calling the other day, but there wasn't any answer. Yeah, we were all gone. Yeah. How are you doing? I'm doing well. I've been kind of sick, but I'm actually pretty good. I've had kind of a virus or something, but I was glad to hear you're moving back. In fact, the day before I got your letter, I decided I wasn't going to come to Hawaii. We had a really good time for vacation. Yeah. And our needs were going to be met there. Yeah. Right. We had a hell of a time. Huh? We got thrilled to be back. Yeah. We got all settled. Were you Donna's parents now? Yeah, we got all set up with Charlie. We just came over here for, you know, to re-say hello to everybody here. Yeah, you're going to be there for a week or something? Yeah. So I've stopped working a few weeks ago and I'm selling my van, which is a little bit difficult. Somebody hit me in it my last day of work. So that kind of set back the time for selling it, you know. Yeah, it's almost fixed now.

[01:21]

I'm going to be working for Zen Center next month, starting next month, working for Alaya. That sounds really neat. Oh yeah, it's going to be great. They're pretty excited about it. Much better for your head than what you're doing. Not only for my head, for my whole being. Plus I'll probably be moving in as soon as I got home. I'm a practicing student now, which means Roshi is accepting me as a student. Well, we're going to be coming down there quite often. Good! That's what I want to hear. A number of commitments there. Charlie and I are going to be starting a clinic in Seattle. Sharing some of our skills. And we both have an interest in the W.H.N. Institute. The what? The W.H.N. Institute. Oh, right. That's the... Yeah. And then I want to do a tutorial with Fung Lee. Who's that? He's the Chinese doctor we've been all going to. Oh, and he's in, where is he? San Francisco. Uh-huh. So, sometime in the next year we make a balance of stay for a month, you know. Oh, great. Well, I'm going to send all those things to Cooke. You know, of course, I want you to come up and visit us. Oh, I'd love to. As soon as, I wanted to come up, but, you know, with all this

[02:41]

sickness and van trip, it's been a bummer. I might come, no, I wouldn't come up soon. You see, I would be able to come up in a few weeks, but I think that'd be too soon for you. Might be nice to wait until even early spring, though. Yeah, probably be spring. Because the weather will be a lot nicer. Yeah, I think that, like, the practice period starts in, let's see, it starts in May, no, April or something, and then it goes through June, ends with a seven-day session, and after that, I probably should come up. Right. Because I'm going to be working for them, too, and so I probably won't have time for vacation till around late spring. I'm sure we'll be down there before the winter's over. Yeah. At least for a visit. It'd be nice to go up to Wilbur, too, maybe. Yeah. We'll do it for sure. We're going to drive down with Charlie. But be sure to let me know so I can arrange to go up with you. Oh, definitely. I'll let you know ahead of time. So I can go up with you. Yeah. Because I'd love to do that. It's just I have to get my arrangements together beforehand with Zen Center. They're pretty loose about that though, so no problem. The mountains around Seattle are so beautiful. Yeah. Cascades. Excuse me. Gotta try and do some cross-country skiing. Have you ever done that before? No, I did downhill, but I don't want to go back to downhill because it's too expensive. Yeah. $400 worth of equipment and a $10 lift ticket. Yeah. Oh, that's ridiculous. When I used to ski when I was a kid, it was really cheap. It was worth it, plus nobody was skiing then. Yeah. How's the weather down there?

[04:09]

Oh, it's been beautiful. Today, it's a little overcast, but it's been gorgeous. A little chilly. It's been kind of cold, but it's been really clear. Uh-huh. Sunny. Have you been out to Wilbur since then? Have I been out to Wilbur? I went out there for one day with some friends, and I had to come back the next morning or something. Oh, that was when you were still around. That was right before that. That was that weekend that you came back. Right. Yeah. No, I haven't been there since then. Sounds like your life is going to settle down a little bit. Oh, it's wonderful. I'm just healing myself now. It's good because I've needed the rest. It came on almost just a couple of days after I stopped working. I think I've been pretty much keeping it from happening by working so intensely. You know how you keep kind of sickness at bay and then you stop working and it hits you. Maybe you should go get your mother to give you a treatment. Oh, I did. Miriam gave me treatment. Oh, wonderful. Miriam was on KPFA last week, too. It was really fine. No kidding? Yeah. Well, I guess acupuncture's becoming the hot thing, though. It's gonna be the rage. Whatever. Still a lot of problems, legally, but... They passed the Primo Law. I know. That was the one my mother worked on. Well, they passed the Primo Law in Hawaii, though. Oh, in Hawaii. Oh, right. An incredible law. An incredible precedent for the whole country. Yeah.

[05:36]

But the way they set it up was that there was no admission or referral required at all. Huh. That sounds far out. And that even they allowed all the Chinese doctors that were practicing to be licensed without any requirement at all. Yeah, I think my mother was thinking of going to Hawaii and setting up a place there quite a while ago. But I think that might be changing. I don't know about that ordinance. Well, it was a new law that cut to the day we were leaving. Really? Far out. You know, it wasn't a local ordinance, it was a state law. So anyway, and then also like, to learn acupuncture, you could study, you could do a tutorial for two or three years with a Chinese doctor. So it's one of the most liberal things. Yeah, really. Sounds like it. So how do you feel? We've been going to lots of places. We really changed our diet when we were there. Good eating now, hamburger? We stayed with some people at a farm over there and they were very much strict vegetarians. No milk, no egg? Nothing.

[06:52]

And they also were food combiners. I did that for a while. I did that for a couple of years. The whole bit. That's a real paranoid trip. I did that for a week and I got really sick. Tim Tallent says that trip completely. Food combining and the whole thing. And I did it for a week and I got the worst flu I've had personally. So I'll tell you, I went with it. The first four days I had a flu I completely fasted. And I really, I don't like mucus. I didn't think it was possible to contain that much mucus from the human body. And then finally I came out of that after about two or three days. And I fasted half days after that. I did orange juice, you know, and then had a regular meal in the evening. And for the rest of the month I was there, I stayed with their diet, you know. How was it? It really, really cleaned me out. Like, it had a good sense of it. But it was a little too strict for me. Yeah, it's heavy. It's difficult. Like, psychologically, it was just too strict for me. Like, they were almost militant about it, you know? Yeah, right. I know. And so when I got back, I was pretty happy to get back to McDonald's. Well, my dad was a little looser, you know? But I've strongly never been in my whole life. So that's why you left. Why? I wondered.

[08:19]

No, that's good to do that for a while. I did it for too long, and it really, I learned a lot about my body, but it took me too long to get back into a normal functioning body. I think the amount of protein that you consume with that will sensitize you too much too quickly. Oh, I was so sensitive. You know, like these herbal treatments? Yeah. They're like heavy drugs. Right. Yeah, drink peppermint tea, you know, and it's like speed. So one of the things I've been doing is to, you know, up my protein consumption. Like in order to even function in the city, I just had to eat milk. Oh yeah, you get too vulnerable. Yeah, I was feeling too frightened too. Yeah, you get extremely vulnerable. Yeah, so like, you know, tofu, I've been really digging tofu. Yeah. And soy protein and stuff like that. Yeah, I rarely eat milk. I eat just cheese and yogurt. I eat a lot of yogurt. I feel you, a touch of milk. I don't drink cold milk. I don't either. Or ice cream. What? I don't eat meat or I don't eat fish. Yeah. Eggs are, I find eggs to be really good. I never ate eggs much, but I find them to be really super good protein. Yeah, they are. So how's Donna? She's fine. She's still sound asleep. Oh, that's all right. I didn't expect her to be up.

[09:36]

But, so I'll probably be living here, excuse me, I'll probably be living here through December. I'm not positive, it depends on how things open up at Zen Center in terms of living space. I might move in there next month or it might not be until February, so I don't really know. And it doesn't really matter. Have you ever been cold yet? Yeah, it's very cold. Cold weather? Yeah, it's colder than normal. Colder than usual. It's kind of nice. It is nice, yeah. It's very refreshing. The air is clean. I would have written, by the way, I would have written to you in Hawaii, but I couldn't read your return addresses. It wasn't legible. Then I didn't call anybody about it, so I just decided to wait. But it was kind of funny, because I really, I went through a big thing about wanting to go to Hawaii or not, and then I decided I wasn't gonna go, because I was too involved here. And I really didn't want to go anywhere. I was digging it so much, you know. I just didn't want to leave, just because I was setting up my vibes pretty much, and I hadn't been accepted as a practicing student yet also. So I said, well, I'm not going to Hawaii, that's all. And then the next day, he even cut the letter. Well, I forgot to tell you the other reason you get down to San Francisco periodically was that when you get home,

[11:01]

I've kind of really decided to make a commitment to Bubba Friedman's. Have you written to them or done anything? No, I'm going to do it this week actually. You're going to what? I'm going to do it this week. What does that mean? You're going to go down and see him? Well, what I'm going to do is become a correspondent first off. In order to become a student, I have to come down and be interviewed and spend a week in a prison. Yeah, right. Excuse me, God, I'm really... It's actually a year's student thing. Or, you know, I don't know how long the student thing is, so... Yeah, right. This sounds good. You know, we have at least a year commitment to Seattle, so that would be, you know, I'll be able to do the student thing and still be... And then you think you might move to Pursuitment? God, I have no idea what would happen. Yeah. I'm taking my life one year at a time, that's it. Making one-year commitments. Yeah. But I'll tell you, being involved now with Zinssiner for the last year, pretty... pretty regularly. It feels like I'm just beginning now. It's incredible. It feels like the whole place is just opening up like I never could imagine. It's really far out. Q. We got to see the Bubba Freetown film again. A. Oh yeah. Q. But they changed it. A. Oh there's a new one. I'm on their mailing list you know. And I just got the Laughing Man Institute trip and they've got the new

[12:16]

A new Bubba Freejohn movie called Sex, Laughter, and God Realization. And I'm absorbing a one hour film of Bubba's most recent talks. So I figured I was gonna go see that. It's playing with two other movies and all for $3. One with Ron Das, Journey to the Heart, and then Don Juan. That's a videotape of Costa Mida, I guess. Sounds interesting. Yeah. What we did was we saw The Difficult Man in Spokane and last weekend they had it for a film festival here. They just changed some scenes in which a woman came in in the background and explained a little bit about what was happening. What was happening? Because I guess they felt it was necessary in order to show the film outside of San Francisco. For what? They had to send somebody? Huh? What did you say? No, there was a woman that sort of came on in the background in the film itself. Oh. And explained a little bit more about what we were doing. Oh. And I guess they thought that was necessary to for its exposure in other cities, you know. He said it was a complete farce. In San Francisco they can do anything, you know. Well, they explain still in San Francisco a little bit. Listen, I should let you go so you don't have to pay $15. No, no, I've figured out how much it's going to cost. We've got some more time, it's all right. This is a cheap time to call. Right. It only costs about $4. Oh, that's good. Yeah, so I might as well enjoy it.

[13:42]

Well, that's great. Yeah, I was interested in that when you wrote me and it sounds like that's a good thing. I think that having a teacher is a real grounding point and it's not all the bullshit that people put into it. It doesn't have to be. It isn't. I mean, it's a very, when I think about when I've had a teacher playing the violin for 11 years, it was very necessary. I think all the sensationalism and all the, what's that word? sort of the magic fantasy number of a teacher and then the fear of that and the repression of all that. It's just this whole mind game. And it really has nothing to do at all with what a teacher is. I think a teacher's pretty important. I think so too. I mean, we're all teachers, it's true. Everything is a teacher, all our experiences and everybody in our lives and everything. But even so, somebody who plays more like, plays the role, so to speak, more of someone who is not in, who just, it's like, I guess what I came to kind of decide was that, well, maybe performing isn't where it's at, you know, for certain people. But I decided I've performed a lot of my life for people in a way. In order to make myself happy, I felt I had to make other people happy, kind of. But the people I was trying to make happy had certain value systems which led me towards greed, hate, and delusion. So I figured I might as well perform for people who lead me away from that.

[15:06]

At least it's a lesser of two evils, you know? So being a Zen center is kind of like, you know, it just keeps, as Barbara Freejohn might say, undermining that whole game. And it's important, living in that kind of community. It just constantly does it. And I'm sure- It's been quite an extreme for you this year, to swing from the community that you've been working with to, you know what I mean, like doing the drapes and all that stuff. I think I made the change right at the right point. I learned a lot. I learned a lot about money, too, and financing and all that crap. How did you come out of the thing? Did you lose anything? Well, I lost, but I actually gained. In four months, I made $6,000. But my expenses have been outrageous. So I actually only saved maybe $3,000. But I've got to sell the van because I'm losing money all the time on it. So actually, right now, I've got about $2,000.

[16:24]

And I might end up, if I'm lucky, if I sell the van with about $2,500. So it's not bad, considering I had $50. That's pretty good. And, well, I learned a lot from it. And now I'll be working for Zinsser and I'll make $2 an hour. Back to good old times. But you don't need that much money. It's like the more you make, the more you've got to spend. And it's this whole amazing network that you get tied up into, especially when you're buying stuff that you don't own, you know, and you have loans and you've got insurance and all that crap. And it's amazing. I mean, it's interesting, but it's really insane, especially when you want to get out of it. Yeah, that was smart. The Volvo. Yeah. How much does it cost? It would have been confusing if you didn't have a car. Yeah, yeah, it's good that I have it. What are you saying? I just wondered how much it costs to fly up to Seattle. About $110 round trip. That's not bad at all. No, it isn't cheap. That's what I thought it was. My father said it was much more. No, that's if you fly, you know, I guess after 5 and before 7, at 9 in the morning. That's good, because I think I'm going to fly up. Are you close to the airport? Can you pick me up? You pick me up, that's for sure.

[17:44]

It's 140 if you fly, you know, regular class. What's that? It's 140 regular class. 140? Yeah, 150 if you fly in the evening. Or the morning. That's no problem. Good, because if I do come up, well, it won't be till spring, but even so, I think I'll fly. Yeah. I like to fly. It's fun. Yeah. So anyway... I'm a little flied out right now. Yeah, I can imagine. Count the way you've been running around. It's good. I feel like this cycle that started about two years ago for me has stopped now. I'm a little experienced now, you know, in the sense that I need to really settle, take things a year at a time now instead of a month at a time. But it should be a very rich experience to be up here for a while. Yeah. There's a lot of things that are available to me that may be worth experiencing. Well, why don't you write me about it? I will. Let me in on what's happening, and we can exchange. I have Charlie's address, 99100 Matthews. That's where we'll be. Right. So, write me a little letter. I love your cards, by the way. I put them all up, almost. I love the ones with the mushrooms. I thought that was fantastic. Right. And some of the ones you sent have really been beautiful. We have a nice house. It's just almost...

[19:14]

Well, it's kind of just inside the Seattle city limit. It's an area that's kind of like Berkeley, you know. The university section. And it's on a... It's a clean city, too, I think. Isn't it? Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah. It's on a couple acres of land. Huh? And there's a brook that runs into the land. There's a what? A brook. Oh, how nice. And it's an old country... A strong place, huh? Cottage type of place. Charlie was the guy who went to the sauna with us. Right. Yeah, so I thought, I talked to him this morning. You did? Yeah, that's how I got your number. So, my friend, I'm going to get off. I'm really happy that you called. Yeah, I wanted to. I was going to send you a telegram. I was just saying, why the hell should I send you a telegram when I can call you? When are you going to spend Christmas? Probably working in July. Really? I don't know. I have some friends that I haven't seen in two years that are going to be appearing and I'm going to flip out. How's the appearance related to you leaving the job? Oh, fine. My father thought it was great. Yeah, I was surprised when he said that. He says, I think it's great that you quit that job or something like that. Yeah, I was really surprised.

[20:32]

So he probably does, now he thinks he can probably get me into his business now. That's what Ann Armstrong said. You've got to hear that tape sometime I imagine, that's kind of funny. Maybe you can get in on a one day a week basis and get to owning a telephone center. What? Maybe you can be a consultant for him one day a week or something, you know? Who? Your father. Oh no, no, no. No way. Kill... Kill all the wealth presenters. Well, that wouldn't be bad. Right. I would do that if I could do it. It's easier to make money and be spiritual, too, I guess. Yeah. It's not easy. It's called mindfuck. It really is. Anyway, I want to wish you guys good luck up there and have a nice time and I hope things work out. Yeah, I imagine. It'll get right, you know. I'm sure we'll be seeing you sometime in the next couple of months. Good. Good. And please let me know so that we can maybe arrange a surgery somewhere, like Wilbur in particular. Sounds good to us. And that way we can really mellow out and spend some good time in the paths. Right. Okay. Thanks for calling. Okay. Give my love to Donna. I love you. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye.

[21:57]

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