I'm trying to get it. I think it's going to be terrific. You're kidding. Okay. I've sent three people madly looking for it. Good evening. Hi, Steve. as I was coming down from 340, my apartment, number 202 and 340, to come and give the lecture tonight, the talk tonight, or the... Tonight I think it's kind of, I envision it as just a kind of, you know, getting together and sort of chomping on what it might be for the tanto to have a practice of some sort. Isn't that what the practice period is about? Your work is practice, your life is practice.

[01:04]

This is a way-seeking mind talk? How I got you? Oh, really? I had no idea. Really? Would you coach me then as I go if I'm going the wrong way? Just tell me what... Because the thing is, you know, I was... The practice period is a very short practice period. And I was sick. It's like after the first week of the practice period, I got sick right away with all of the colds that you could get over the year. I got that one week. They were all different. I got a sore throat, and then I got the throw-up one. Then I got the head cold, and then I got the chest bronchitis. Just boom, [...] boom. I was done. And then I went away for 10 days to Austin. And then when I got back, there was a catastrophe in my house.

[02:06]

It's better though now. I'm so naive. I never think there's going to be... I don't think that when I come back there's going to be a catastrophe. You know, but... So I haven't really participated, and I haven't listened to anybody's talks, although I have all the tapes, and I'm going to be listening to all the tapes. But I haven't had a chance yet, so I don't really know what it is that I'm supposed to be doing here, obviously. So, first of all, I'd like to say hello to Vicki, because, like I was going to say, on the way down the stairs, as I was coming over here, I met Vicki on the stairs and although I needed to be here somewhat on time because I was the person giving the talk tonight, I am the person giving the talk tonight.

[03:10]

My job is to stop and to be with the person. That's my job. It's not just my job, it's also my life and it's also my practice. So I don't really see any difference between my job, my life, my practice. I mean, to ask the tanto to figure out what the practice is of your job, I'll tell you now, I'll tell you a joke. A while ago when the Dalai Lama had gotten the Nobel Prize, some of you may know this joke, the Dalai Lama got the Nobel Prize. Did you know that? The Dalai Lama got the Nobel Prize a number of years ago for peace. And so the joke around, it was, I think I was at IMS. Anyway, that's where I heard the joke. The joke going around IMS was that giving the Dalai Lama the Nobel Prize for Peace is somewhat like giving Mother Nature a prize for beauty.

[04:22]

You don't think that's funny? You don't get the joke? Well, I kind of thought that in a sort of a lesser but similar way that the Tanto talking about how their job is practiced is kind of redundant, you know, because if the job... That is the definition of the job. And now I will tell you a secret. I will spell out the secret for you because if you don't get the joke, then you're not going to get the secret. Here's the secret. At Zen Center there are three secret gifts, three jobs that are gifts, gifts, that are blessings, actually. The first one is when you go to Tassajara for the first time, they always put you on general labor, always.

[05:39]

And the reason is, is because when you're on general labor, the only thing you're asked to do is just do your practice the best you can. You don't have any responsibility. You don't have to think about anything. Your food is made for you. You're just given the schedule. You just have to follow the schedule. You don't have to decide where to be. You don't have to decide when to talk with people except for 15 minutes during the day, which is always the most difficult part for everybody. Everything is scheduled. You don't have to think about anything. You're only asked to do your practice best you can. This is a gift. It's a real gift. The next time it happens is when you're shuso. When you're shuso,

[06:42]

You have no responsibility. The only thing you're asked to do, except a little bit more publicly, is to do your practice the best you can and be who you are completely. And everybody supports you to do that. Everybody supports you to do that. They tell you where to stand. They remind you things. They give you gifts. Everything, just because of the way they are, they're not doing anything special. Just because of the way they are, they thoroughly support you. And your heart just opens up at Tassajara. I don't know about... I'm talking about Tassajara. Your heart just opens up and you just try the best you can to be who you are in front of everybody and do your practice best you can. It's a gift, total gift. Very unusual in your life, such a situation.

[07:46]

Very unusual. And the next time it happens is when you're Tanto. Everybody who is kind of in the realm... Not everybody. No, I don't know. Well, I can't speak for everybody. But anyway, it's a wonderful, wonderful job. It's a gift. It's a complete gift. And it's a gift in every way. It's a gift because this time you do have a lot of responsibility, but the responsibility that you have is to do your practice the best you can. And people gift you with the opportunity to try to learn how to speak and be and teach the Dharma. you know, happiness, joy.

[08:51]

It's amazing. The intention that I had a couple of practice periods ago when we went around the room and gave our intentions, I didn't have anything to say when we went around the room, but of course as soon as I stepped outside the door, my intention just smashed me in the face too late. And my intention then, I said to myself and to two other people who were right there, I said my intention was to be what I talk, to be what I say. I wanted to close the gap between how I am, how I behave and what I talk about. And, you know, it's a little bit difficult because it's true that as a person who is trying to understand how to speak the Dharma or how to get across or to communicate or to be with people in the Dharma or as the Dharma,

[10:10]

The position I'm in is a learning position, really. It takes years to be able to really go from a place of baby teacher to really being skillful. So my intention was to try to close that gap. And it's good that there's a gap. because it's in that gap that I practice. It's when people come toward me and tell me that I've missed them, that I practice. So, one could say, maybe, that the most important, that anyway, that... I would like to say tonight, anyway, that probably the most important thing that I've learned being Tanto is that the most important thing is to not see objects, to not have duality between self and other.

[11:27]

Then there's some chance of being able to be with people, just be with people. whether they're sad, whether they're happy, whether we are dancing, or whether we're cleaning up in the kitchen, or whatever it is. So that when people gift me with coming to see me in practice discussion, that I can actually be there. Completely. The only thinking I'm doing of myself is when I get stuck. I'm paying attention to myself only when myself comes up. Otherwise, it's just meet, just be there with the other person. No object, no self, no object. So this is not easy to do, for me, anyway.

[12:30]

Of course, I make a lot of mistakes. And when I first got here, I actually hurt some people. And then, you know, you pay. So another thing that you learn as Tanto is that you get a lot of projections. And I think a number of the jobs on staff get projections. And I get projections up and I get projections down. So the effort of the person who's receiving those kind of projections is to just try to stay still. So if people compliment... me, let's say, I thank you very much, you know, and I appreciate it and hopefully nothing sticks. That's the effort. And it's pretty, it's not, you know, you can do that after a while. If you don't feel like you have a difficulty with self-worth or anything like that, somebody can compliment you, you can say thank you and you appreciate it and it goes by.

[13:33]

And the same thing's true if people project in the opposite way. You're a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The same thing. You meet, try, just stay still. And listen. What information is there? And most of the time it doesn't get caught, up or down. Just stay still. So that's a little bit of what I was going to talk about. I have a paper and a book that I was going to... But I think what I'm going to do instead is, by the way, also for those of you... I guess nobody here cares about the NBA championship. Lakers by two at the half. Only by two.

[14:37]

Your team already lost. What's the spread? Just two, two points. Oh, the betting. I think it was like, you know, it was Lakers by far. Part of the job of the Tonto is to... How are we doing? Oh, let me see if I left out anything that I think is important, and then I'll tell you how I got here. Is this okay? Okay. No, I just, I said hello to her because she told me she wasn't coming. And then the point that I wanted to make was that is the life of the Tanto, whether it would be Vicki or anybody.

[15:40]

You know, if somebody comes toward you and they, you know, want to talk or something like that, then you stop. And then the next thing happens, I walked in and then I walked into the bookstore and then we had another stop. And then we walked up... Oh, and then I met Blanche, and then I tried to convince her not to come to this talk. Because Blanche... First of all, she's tired. She looked very tired. She looks really good with her hair right now, so a little bit long. But she looked a little bit tired, so I thought it would be good for her not to come to the talk. And also, she doesn't like it when I chit and chat. And I had a feeling it was going to be that kind of talk. The things I'm working on, I'm working on a very interesting thing now as Tanto.

[16:46]

I'll tell you, there's one other thing. Do you want to know what I do as Tanto? You do? You do? Well, I do. I'm lots of stuff. I'm really busy. Right? I'm busy. Yes. I talk to a lot of people, both inside and outside. And I go to meetings, three meetings. And I... I invent things like I do, like Saturday Sangha and the intensive thing. It came here. And I watch... I try to watch and be aware of the practice in the building. And I talk in different places around the city. And I just came back from Austin. And I... Is that all I do?

[17:47]

I talk to a lot of people and I'm in charge of the brochure and I sit and I... I don't know what else I do. I do a lot, every day, different. Oh, but right now what I'm doing that's really interesting is... is that I am interested in peer-to-peer relationships at Zen Center at every level, at all the different levels, and vis-a-vis authority at Zen Center and how that works with feedback and accountability. And I'm interested in promoting that at all levels of Zen Center. You're not interested in that? Well, anyway. Okay. How I got here?

[18:49]

Well... What do you practice now? My practice now? I do? What? My practice now... I told you already. My practice now is basically... I'm interested in something that's really interesting, I think. All the books I've been reading now about... I'm studying Vassubandha because we're gonna do the intensive and I really like it. I think it's such a fundamental teaching. Oh, that's another thing I get to do. I get to study as part of my job. So anyway, so I'm studying Vasubandhu and I've been reading about selflessness. What they say about selflessness is that you can come to selflessness from the point of view of deeply seeing dependent co-rising or you can be in a situation where you just drop the watcher. Don't worry about what I'm talking about. But I'm really interested in it and I'm... I don't want to talk about that.

[19:54]

I don't have very much time, and what I want to do is I want to talk about a little bit of how I got to here, and I would like some questions and answers, and then we're going to go home. So the way I got here was that in... I've always been a religious person and the two things that were supportive to me in that way were music and nature. And I think that early on in my life I had good experience of stillness in both those ways. And I depended on both those things to make it through my childhood, my family. I was raised Jewish and I liked being Jewish. When I was about 23, I was in music school and I was in love with two people, a man and a woman.

[20:55]

And I was working in a place called the Head Start Program, where the Head Start Program first started. And I was working with four other people and we were all hippies and they called us the zoo. That was in 1966, 67. And this one person, John Books Blossom, always was looking for a place to be spiritual. And he would come back to the office and tell us that he had found such and such a place. And we would go and it would be a catastrophe. And one day he came back and he said, I really found such and such a place. And we said, sure, forget it. And he said, no, no, no, just this once, please come with me. And we did. And it was the Los Angeles Zen Center. And I sat down. And, um... I found... I found the same stillness, you know, that I knew about.

[22:14]

Sat down and, um... And then right after that I met Suzuki Roshi there. He came down for a lecture. And I continued to have meetings with him from Los Angeles. I used to fly up here to have dokasan with him. And then various things happened and I was interested in enlightenment. And I tried to do that for six years, and that was a big mistake, and so I suffered. And then I studied for a while with Trungpa Rinpoche, and my mother died. And then I was lost for a little bit. I was lost a lot, actually, in my life.

[23:16]

But I never stopped sitting. Once I started sitting, 1967, I never, ever stopped. And in fact, I was a really, really... My Izumi Roshi confirmed to me that I'm a really bad student. And the only thing that I was good at, it was that I was really, really stubborn. And I was just determined. And I never let go. Well, I guess that's a bad thing to say for... And the reason why was because I was suffering enormously. I was in enormous pain. My emotions were painful. I had emotions that were actually physically excruciatingly painful. The worst one for me was that when I was a child, this was the pivotal painful experience in my life. When I was 14 months old, my brother was born and I started having trouble going to sleep.

[24:22]

And my mother... My mother was told by the doctors at the time with nobody to blame. My mother was told by the doctors at the time that the best thing to do for a child to get them to go to sleep was to put them in their room by themselves and let them cry until they go to sleep, and then they would learn that nobody was going to come. So I was stubborn. I'm a stubborn person. So I cried for hours every night. for three months, and nobody came. Ever. And at the end of three months, I gave up on people. Right? And something broke in me, very deep.

[25:25]

And... So I had real trust issues and abandonment issues. And what happened, physically happened, was that what I think at the end of those three months, I shut my throat. I shut my heart and I shut my throat. And my throat literally contracted. so that when I was in pain I couldn't speak, I couldn't yell, I couldn't let it out, I couldn't let my pain out like that. And there was a real breakthrough for me when I finally was able to let this area relax. And then that pain of that time came pouring out and I cried for three months straight. I grieved for three months. And lots of things came from consequence of that experience.

[26:36]

So anyway, that's my story. So I kept going and I did all the various jobs at Zen Center that people asked me to do. And I kept sitting and I kept letting go and letting go and letting go. feeling, and letting it be, and letting it go, and so on and so forth, until my doubt left. That's my story. Do you have questions? What do you have to talk about? My doubt of two things. Doubt of the practice. I had insidious doubt was my hindrance. And I didn't trust life. That was my doubts.

[27:45]

Anything else? And how do we distinguish when people are telling us something because we have to hear it and criticize us constructively? How do we recognize that and recognize the projections? Well, my experience is that if I am caught on the other side of somebody else's projections, if I have a button for that projection, then I will be caught.

[28:52]

I will respond with some kind of energy. If I don't and it's just some information, then I can hear it pretty much as information. If it isn't information coming at me and I don't have a button that'll stick, that where it'll stick to, it's pretty, you can pretty, most of the time it's pretty clear. Do you have a better way of answering that? Yeah. And there's always something that a person says in the projection that usually is true. It's just that it comes with lots of other stuff. I think the most important thing is to really work on establishing whether or not actually we have self-worth first. Because it seems to me almost all the other tangles and confusions... Do you want some water?

[29:59]

Tangles and confusions come because we have need and we're leaking all the time, grasping or pushing away. And that comes from not being able to be just okay with who you are. So for me, whenever there's pain in a situation or anything like that, it's because your mind is caught somewhere. And it's usually caught because your self is working to establish some kind of security or feeling some kind of need or emotional need or something like that. So to me, it seems to me that that's where to work first. And then it'll clarify whether it's projection or how you're relating to somebody else's information. Do you have a better way, Diana, of talking about projections? Yeah. You're talking to me. Tell me about projections. Just knowing yourself. Yeah. I think knowing yourself is best. Yeah. What's the most important thing you learned from Suzuki Roshi and the most important thing you learned from Trungpa?

[31:10]

Trungpa is easy. The most important thing I learned from Trungpa I didn't exactly learn this from Trungpa. Trungpa was the most compassionate person I've ever met in my life. And he would, when my heart was open, he would frame it some way. So what I learned from him is what the possibility of compassion feels like. That's what I learned from him. And I learned from Suzuki Roshi two things. One was the depth of being known and the depth of being accepted. I felt deeply known by him, thoroughly known and matched by the acceptability of it, which was new to me. And that was one thing. And then the other thing is the emptiness there. I mean, I didn't... No matter how it is that I related to him, there didn't seem to be anything that was sticking much. There wasn't anybody... There's a personality there, right?

[32:13]

Personality there, but not a... nothing else. It was very clean, enormously clean and funny, and funny. Trungpa was not, Suzuki Roshi was funny in this kind of bubbly, joyous, childlike, very available approach. There's nothing frightening, for me anyway, about Suzuki Roshi. Trungpa had a humor that was cutting in a certain way. He was always taking away your ground. So he was a little scarier than Trungpa, than Siddharasi. But with me, he was always very kind, because I couldn't have taken it. He was always very kind to me. What did I learn from Katagiri? I loved Katagiri. He was my... a kind of root teacher in a way.

[33:20]

It was really, by the time I got to Category, I could actually have a teacher. Before, there were teachers there, but I couldn't really relate in a way that was equal in a certain kind of way. Like when you have a teacher, it's not that one doesn't have a role and the other one doesn't have a different role. You do, but you're equal still, you know, different and equal, that kind of thing. So by the time I got to category, which was some years later, I was finally able to do that. So for me, category was my root teacher, and I loved him deeply. Me? Oh, yeah, I loved him a lot. I think what I learned from Kat Aguirre was daily life.

[34:22]

Like he says in his book, to live is just to live. That's what it was like being with him. I was his jisha for a while. And that's all we did. We just, you know, I got up and I was there and I turned his shoes and I gave him a sweater and I brought his karaoke and I carried his incense and I cleaned up after him and it was complete. There was nothing lacking. It was just this, then this, then this. He taught me how to live. Okay, here it is. You said something about the practice of enunciation. Yeah. The practice of renunciation is fundamentally renouncing self whenever it arises and whatever form it arises. So for me, mostly, self is an idea.

[35:26]

The small self, the separate self is an idea. And so whenever it comes up at this point, just I, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, there's no putting, no reifying it, no solidifying it, no nothing. So... That's at my best, of course. But that's, for me, renunciation. That's what being a priest is about, renouncing self and being available for other people. So your job is to practice the best you can and to try to meet people when they ask you to meet them. So it seems like your life and your job are just kind of the same thing. Yeah. There's no boundaries at this point. Do you ever feel overwhelmed or like you can't do it? I felt that way twice. Once when I was having enormous difficulty and I didn't feel understood.

[36:35]

I felt really alone, and it was becoming too much for me. That was too much for me. It was over the line, and I couldn't. I retreated, and I didn't teach the intensive that summer, and I didn't teach in the fall. I was too exposed and too pained. And the other time was recently. I was in charge of trying to run one of these meetings that I'm talking about. And it's a very, very important, I feel anyway, important meeting. And I think that what we're trying to talk about is really, really important for Zen Center. And it has to do with taking risk with each other. And that's not my training, and I have no idea what to do. But it is my run that I'm the chairperson of that meeting. So it's my kind of job to bring it up and try to put it out there and get it taken care of in some way. So before that meeting happened, for the first time in a very long time, I felt stress in my body, which is very unusual for me.

[37:40]

And then one other time, sometimes when, no, that's it. That's pretty much it. And one has taken a tremendous amount of energy, which usually I would put here. And that's the only thing I feel badly about, about having a foster son. That's the only thing. Everything else is fine. But when it takes away from this situation where I really want to be because I receive so much, you know, as well as giving, then I feel a little badly about that. That's the only thing. Let's have, we should stop pretty soon. It's a very, very central part of this session.

[38:43]

Would you kind of share with us how you self-realize? You know, What came up for me right then is I really love myself now. But it took a very, very long time. And it was really hard. I think the way I did it would take longer to really talk about than the time we have. But I can say that if a person... My experience is if you're really sincere and if you're tired of suffering, if you're tired of the pain and you stick with it, like Suzuki Roshi said, if you just keep going,

[40:03]

you can heal the deepest wounds. So, let's keep practicing together. We'll say it once short, okay? What? If you renounce yourself, the way you renounce yourself, how do you take care of yourself? what you renounce is the self that is in pain. You really do take care of very deeply your true self. Not like that.

[40:54]

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