Wednesday Lecture

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intention
good evening everyone
thank you for coming
i think i know all of you and maybe not everyone but most everyone here
and you aren't i think know wendy johnson by now either from the pass through is anyone who doesn't know may give a little background
he was the head of our garden for
many many decades and raised her family here and is are near neighbour and mere beach where she continues to be one of our teachers and an inspiration from the garden and the farm and all the plants and animals
so
when lyndon i were thinking about this summer program and what might be on topics that would be relevant to our life together in community
one of them that seems so obvious was raising children and we raise vegetables as that's clear but we also raised children and we raised many children in this community over the years some of them are now having children you you will know mesa i think tears son
and it's not a straight line
probably not so different than vegetables either but raising children has some twists and turns and complications that make us into the grownups said we are so we wanted to talk about our experiences as mothers in this community and i thought windy know
contrast in that ah
my path at zen center has been to ordain and i had no plan particularly to have a child
my daughter's adopted and
i'm going to tell you a little bit of the story of how she came into my life
whereas wendy i've always thought it as a mom you know even i think i first met sure your mom already jesse who's now twenty country twenty three was a little kid running around here like lucas when i first came to design center so in my mind wendy
embodies family mother and saw him and and she's raised two children here so on
maybe our stories we haven't told their stories to each other yet so it's gonna be interesting to see her
what comes comes out here so i stopped by the office on the way over and i actually had this thought as it as i was checking my mail sometimes something really interesting happens just before you you've gotta give a talk or you know and i wonder if anything had happened there wasn't anything in my mail and i thought well you know doesn't always work until i got to newsweek
eek looking at america right
gives him
that
it's a baby with strings and manipulated its mother
hi
and while the puppet master
pastor i and that arrived the universe hasn't failed
so i brought some note some some my thoughts
i wanted to begin my part of the story by telling you a couple of sabrina stories
the one of them at sara sara you here
sarah reminded me of
say i don't know if i didn't mean to put her on the spot
anyway sarah reminded me this morning that
she'd heard of a story about sabrina actually and she told me the story and i remembered it i remembered the occasion of there's a game that we play driving the car called i spy with my little eye
and we try to figure out something and guess what it is something blue or something you know like the yellow line down the road is a good one something yellow and so one time we were plane and serena's at i spy with my little eye something clear
and i guess the sky and the windshield and she said no it's my mind
i'm pretty good
huh
and the other one that i got i remembered recently that really amazed me was when she was quite a bit littler maybe maybe three and a half
when there's a morning routine which we've still not mastered maybe you've mastered the morning routine but this crew getting the kid ready for whatever it is
and so grace and i were you know each one putting on one pant leg and then putting on the shirt and and constantly referencing the clock and comments when it you can gotta get going it's time to go and
and finally she's where are you going mom and i said i'm going to work and she said do you work in the clock
how about that about that
ha
yes indeed other hundred and that's she pointed to the schedule right there i made teacher at sense and the schedule so anyway
i also remembered another story which is one that gregory bateson who have some of you probably know particularly those of you study environment he was either really important thinker about environmental ecology of mind and minded nature in many other things and he actually died it's
and center years ago on a windy knew him to i had the norm so well but i heard him teach a few times and our guest houses a picture of gregory bateson the houses dedicated to them and then disarmed fellows of he was one of those
and he came to says sheen one time and
he said i want to tell you about a computer that they've created that thinks like a human
and to test this computer scientists have typed in ah simple question do you think like a human and computer after bit of time doing its thing printed out that reminds me of a story
on
so
i actually think that's a very important point that we we communicate and think and act from stories and the stories are
you know ah
not just significant i mean that's because entire basis of our life and every choice we we've ever made is out of some kind of personal mentor you know
some story that we have currently running her was running
so
this last practice period linda ruth was telling a story about bell to all of us that many of you've already read i hadn't so was it was a new story than me and what really struck me was how helpful that idea of
this monster that's you know kind of eating at you
i don't know some of you in the practice period the short form is that in bellwood there is a monster that comes into the palace every night grendel and eats the guests and the king is pretty distressed about this and so bell of comes the hero and slays the monster
and everyone has big party to celebrate
ah and then that night grendel's mother comes who's are very angry that her son has been killed and really wrecks havoc
so one of the is linda was helping us with this is tisch to tell us you know a lot of times whatever it is it's eating you
that's kind of bothering you and oftentimes is a pattern there seems kind of familiar the same sorts of things bug you
that's that's probably grendel
and
if you spend some time on your cushion or in your closet or somewhere quiet by yourself you'll begin to notice that grendel has a mom a great big mom that has been around a long time and that the roots of that thing that's eating at you goes away
lay down and deep in your memory and while we carry his memory
i've been working with a very kind man who's a trained therapists for long time now since actually i
became a mom thought it was a good idea to start and clear up some of my own family i holdings
psychological holdings and oftentimes he'll say to me one what does that remind you
and with almost out without fail i say bon not my mother again you know so over and over again i find that my emotional holdings the what's eating me is related to minor and the child and how i didn't know how to put two
together response to my mother or anyone else for that matter and i made some things up which i've not learned learned haven't yet learned how to undo or stopped doing even else they're not really so useful any
so i think along with our practice the practice of working with a therapist is to become conscious of these forces and the more you see them the more light there is on them you go down into the water after grendel's mother and a good shot at her you know
there's a lot of relief in them less less of the overpowering feeling of unconscious motives
so one of the stories that i feel as at the root of on a buddhism i'm just not my idea but actually is at the root of buddhism is the story of the young prince shocking money
and
i think one of the things that inspired me about his story was that he left home
and
you know he has a young man
had a pretty nice situation in his life he had loving parents
and lots of relatives and aunts and uncles and friends and he was the well liked and loved by his teachers
he had a nice horse and beautiful clothes and jewels and weapons and he had wife and a young baby child whose face was like the moon
for a hula
and probably get messieurs and and there's rahul is like the moving ah rahal that means little fatter
that which binds you
young man went to the gate of his much loved home and turned his back on his village and made what's called the lion's roar i will not return to this home until i have found cause and end of suffering
so this story which is really i think so core to our
present day practice our own personal practice her
on many levels at the level whoa where grendel is and were at level where rambles mom as living and and and how we form this community
and the idea of only been of renunciation of taking off your hair your status
letting go of your possessions your notions
your attachments
is critical to our practice and
but there are many i implications of that story for us personally and as a community
and i think for me a having come from the side of that story
as a young monk i was inspired to leave home and to not form long lasting relationships
and i actually had a a vow of my own you know a coin than whatever i read of the boot i wanted to do so
i am going to the monastery alone as my personal down and i did and
spent many years there are several years three years there
an ungrateful a deeply grateful for that time
and i was thinking that you know i'm not sure that all of the reasons i had for going there weren't a granddaughter
weren't kind of them ah
you know symptomatic of what was really ailing me but i thought the decision even though it might have been based on wrong thinking was a good decision i am very grateful that i did monastic practice and spent those years sitting in the in the zendo toss her
ah
so but the product of that those years but when i think back on myself was
slightly stiff i think i came out of monastic training on
i was killed two about i had decided my next step was to go to kyoto and study tea ceremony and zam and become more of whatever i was becoming as a sense to
kind of profession of my deep affection for the forms of practice and am
but at that point i was in a relationship with my friend grace and we both had discovered we were going in different or visions with different our stories predicted her motivating story was to go to nicaragua and help people in a little clinic gotten the countryside i was her vision and i had this one i'm going to kyoto
glow different adrift i've gotten older
for so it was kind of getting to be like well bless you and bless you and lick or what so
and it was about at that point in time was living here in the pond house when we got a call
it's a nice days i recall the phone rang case was on the phone for about five minutes an old friend
and and she said i'll have to call you back i need to talk to food and she hung up and then she said would you like to hear about a baby
i actually have my passport photos
and
you know i think this was vandals mom calling actually
when i reflect that happen in africa
and
i was really a stumper i didn't know what to say i'd never had a question like that asked me before
and i'm still stumped
which give up to hear about a baby i must have said yes and i heard about a baby a little little baby was born and she was pretty sick and she needed
the woman who'd called was a friend of grace's from college and she she was in a prayer circle with serena's a grandmother and grandmother was telling about the little baby who have been born and said
boy i don't know this child's gonna need a to mothers and my grace friend said i know too much
interested and they call from the meeting and was that very meeting where we've got the call from we happen to be home
and there they are the a
ah
and within a week we brought to print on
it was a very short gestation who he picked
and it was amazing it was kind of like the waters part and everything that shouldn't have stopped us from taking on this baby evaporated you know we had no license to have a foster child we had no
experience of raising children either way i say we had to the hospital to pick up this child have a picture of us in my red hundred proud of the penthouse waving goodbye to go get the baby and
we got to santa rosa where she was in the hospital there she was a month old and kind of guess grill good
re and
she'd never been out of an air conditioned nursery in her month of life
she was born with a lot of drugs in your blood which she was pretty drug addicted at birth and so they'd taken her from her mother
and so she was pretty uncomfortable and a very beautiful weighed about five pounds
a big
and they gave her to hit the hindered her to me
and sabrina advocating
and sheer ah so she was okay you know until we hit the automatic doors this was in june in santa rosa and we went outside and it was like walking into an oven was so hot and she started to scream
and she didn't stop of course we put a little hat on or bought her a fancy will have to learn outfit are going on right right
out and honest and
she was hot and screaming and i kept saying grace do something
why do you have to her because she says i don't know so we mean you don't know you're a doctor but i'm at my house
that purpose so that was the beginning of a lot of parenting relationship know
the
bob hope so anyway that's there's not much else to the story seven years of of parenting night i feel it's been now
ah you know the grendel's mom really young canada st you know she really had my interest at heart and knew that what i needed what i needed this is just for me i'm not talking about anyone else's path and the everyone has their own unique way of coming into life know but for me homely been
really was for me was leaving a her
the khazar was my home in it still is my home in a very deep and true way and to leave that place and where i was content and felt very whole and i like i knew what i was doing and i was on time for things
and to come to chaos where i don't know what i'm doing and i am really confused and on
leather some ministry should i guess she was about three or three now
and she was laying in bed with me and she reached her little arm over put it around my neck and she said come to me my child together it was well again come to me matter and i looked her
temperature
no stranger and stranger
so so i did and i have and i always went on and on
so i i i just wanted to end with perfect like and wendy have the restaurant and time that term might for me i think what's been true of having this child is it's almost like the reverse birth process she came inside of me and made me bigger know she forced me into getting bigger than i was gonna be
and or that i had any desire to be and and it's not over yet you know she's not a teenager yet and
and i just
for another in and for also reviewing my own childhood through experiencing my own child and
ah
it is sir
but anyway it's a deeply satisfying on
world to share to to be with children to note home to let them near you i recommended to all of you you know even if you that charlotte suburbs telling me today
domino are not so close i have never been good with children and but tell her hello
i said i said this mean charlotte said alerted to raise that why she sought hold
hello she was born in one hundred years ago
looks like that
confess so i went to meet you upon
to end of august she only had one minute
what would she put in it
she wouldn't put she thinks she would take suck it up like a deep lake cooking bloat indiscriminate on her last instant feast on everything she had released dismissed or pushed away she would make room and room as though her whole life of resistance
had been for this one purpose on the last minute of the last day she would drink and have it ballooning like a rabid salmon or the moment

open
oh tell me know you too
oh she said i had a profound insight ah
i don't know but anyway
about the buddha that his decision to leave home was he wasn't a good them
i just thought about that a few years ago he was the young prince when he left home wouldn't believe him
the buddha went back home after he was awakened he returned and on met his family again and actually his son became a disciple
i think that's a beautiful story beautiful home
perception strong i appreciate so much one of our dharma brothers on my port don't show my port who is the lead teacher and on
dharma
boy at clouds and water xango in no saint paul minnesota he does on a special ordination ceremony on i think the way it goes is that when you receive lay initiation it's called the homecoming ceremony you come home to your deepest contention and
i prefer national anthem home leaving but he plays a lot with that
notion of on what it means to come home and to and to leave home and a lot of that
conversation
comes up in a very strong way when you're practicing with children either having children who are inheriting children were being presented with the opportunity to practice next two children that my have to disclaim a little bit what food said we we have this joke with two of us are that on
she's dressed in known her robes with a shaved head ah a walking around with a long sigh as the grim reaper taking down everything's lovely and i'm following along behind her wearing pink overall with never care a bag of athletes and and one breath our
ready for whatever data
hi
and aids but you know when you peel back
the layers we can change places
the can we can change plan you know and be be a very big surprise each other
like i remember being feeling when sabrina came home to helping you and grace getting not get the bed ready and they were really funny they didn't have how to and
as a base to go out on the port of what is now lucas room through a fool
a better
they were hovering about that baby the vultures and had macquarie a bit of it
i am ashamed with an option running clear but i'm fairly remarkable
on what an incredible story what an incredible practices has been on welcoming children into our lives you know and and to really so nice to be able to sit in this room and and turned the mystery together and really look at what it is we we think we're doing how do we actually
do this practice of being on
cloud and water want cloud and water wanderers willing to live and die together and include noisy little people
when jesse was born twenty three years ago he was born in medium in what was the field trailer were nancy and daniel and olivia were living until it was taken down recently and that beautiful crab apple tree right outside the door was planted on his placenta
they can imagine that mom if we think when we build a healthcare that would that tree is gonna go i'll be chained to three read the
i am africa
on
it seems like a dream but it also seems like it was really just yesterday
i was thirty years old and
full of this extraordinary and vivid life living in that trailer and there were a number of us having children at that time i remember 'em
they kind of the people that have been involved in a primary way in creating them center over the years is quite a quite a class
i'm kathy and norman fischer m layla ba course through and rab violin jimbo course juice and reb cashew else was born in anyone leslie was pregnant shortly after less the jane from key ah muslim women
once in baker to virginia and the richard baker years the are they were earlier got him that if a kennel of the sawyer oh dan welsh and louise welsh many many people who are produced darlene and n toni
cancel me they to making up making simply making you make an anna and can paula
we were doing it i'm trying to figure out how to practice on the front line wholeheartedly and also raise children
i remember washing dishes with kathy fisher when one day she was so furiously scrubbing the dishes and i there was something different about it and he said how are you and she turned around she said pregnant just like that i'll never forget it has been ah
can she looked terrified and she had good reason to with tara jessica
said it's interesting very different story i remember christina saying christina learn her saying years ago that them for with special that sabrina coming into the community is a whole community had to them consider whether she could be here be with us and we were asked and this baby cow
com
whereas if you breed and spawn and create offspring a few more a nettleton like kathy fisher announce to make them you don't exactly plan there's not real planned parenthood going on here and then center so i think for those with the and but obama
oof
it did the deed and produced the offspring on
we were astonished and them unprepared as well as the sanga for what that meant and dung and yet there was a kind of eagerness and willingness to rule
to jump into it on the fray
i'm in those children who have grown up at zen center are extraordinary beings i ever saying to food we could do this tonight but it would be so wonderful to have a few sessions during the summer where we welcome a sawyer who's now a father father of two and a
ibm i don't know ethan will a financial or
joanna well shooting and tear jesse
have sarah weintraub common talk a little bit about what and either i'm i'm in richmond i was really interested in his have them come and sit up here and and though many of them are your age
and haven't talk about what it's been like to grow up in this community where they've both been welcome but also not very well
that's one of i think or
harm caused worth exam and public case we want to be able to examine and talk about is it's been incredible to have the opportunity to raise children here are child forever son jesse lived his whole life here and was born in the trailer and raised here and raised lotta hell here he look an edge of the we're at center down below where it
the as yes it was the beginning of tia sounding your full name and she got caught i haven't checked on to bigger here
i don't know about that would never been able to wait it out i have been flips and out there forever after the video was launched i think so and i think jesse wrote hands me right on there that's even better you know that's where she wrote his name know
sounds like one of their lines
to him from anyway on
it's been such an extraordinary experience raising children here and then having them on go out into the world with this experience i remember on when jesse was in third grade and a wonderful teacher named katie evenness of marvelous strong teacher on she was a very fierce
some very determined to to raise strong kids she is she did drawing this was long before this i think many teachers have figured this out but i'm probably kate even as was one of the first people she said if i see one more child boy child drawing a spaceship and girl child drawing a happy smiling face i'm going to scream and not mushy machine she would
post great art and then have the children close their eyes and have been open their eyes and produced with the great arm had he gotten them wonderful wonderful during she's a great teacher she loved to come here and i remember her asking after jesse graduated on
from third grade so who's next in the zen center line up and we said ah well there's nobody for a while and she said how could you do that to us she really enjoyed the present and her children because they were on complex she put it and it made them be better teachers and i think for the sense
and her children growing up here and being transported to mill valley and we had a i'm a van and yellow school bus which was the same kind of bus used to bring 'em
special needs children to school in the and comfortable beloved dog and for may i remember shaun grigg begging have to let him all but the quarterback
the about the fear but play some privacy i don't know we don't want you to know they play
toilet driver from the mindful of all person whether we would get out wearing his dress up and opened the door and bow goodbyes
the
while shot under an able to see it
up till till pharaohs it's the teachers constantly go back to the road and sean jumped up and throw up with the and any other different
it was really really hard for them the benefit of
sally baker telling us about her father richard baker on
written down richard baker in virginia baker m re sally in japan the early years of her life and she was being picked on by some of the children in her school in japan so baker she of being six foot four i went to a conference wearing a white stetson cowboy hat and his
some robes
piece so terrified the japanese children that they learn valley alone if i'm wrong a federer
so somehow on
there was another kind of for so many sure if if if you're thinking about just even opening the door a little craft would come out on
we're thinking about this question of home leaving and homecoming and how we
make home here without
bomb
capturing the place and angle
changing the quality of life so much
oh that it's not recognizable how do we do that when in the early years when we when we had our children we just knew many of us were in our twenties and and coming coming out a very ardent practice
oh and so on the first babies came we thought we'll we'll just continue practicing under all circumstances and don't we had in morning meditation everyone went to the zendo everyone whether or not you've had a baby didn't matter there was a child watch you went around them and looked in the windows to make sure the babies were asleep and i remember sitting in the
meditation hall thinking i was gonna die over you could sometimes you could hear the babies and you knew the child watch wasn't there and in any case what's the child watch gonna do it be like food and grace meeting sabrina and mean a child watch having put you in the window and and bourbon hannah sticky screaming her head off what do you do you don't want to pick her up you want to be we will hear them
running fixture that understand how to get us and then coming fly into a hall becoming a very lively but i think i'm not fully lactating mother lived the whole thing mammary gland and both west of the lump
ah florida
really something what gender each other
fell on
it's a practicing then with children on the frontier frontier
of life and you know in about nineteen eighty
three or nineteen eighty four said master chicken a home visit our green gulch and helium did a retreat here and said to us you have 'em the most wonderful opportunity for practicing walking meditation and living a joyful life and yet you're the grimmest people i've ever met
he said what is this what's going on
do your children are your children welcome to meditate and with that are you kidding her children meditate we'd know i've never taken jesse him and then i wouldn't dream of it you wouldn't behave and he would discredit me as it already well discredited parent he would make it worse so i never thought of doing that and know he encouraged us to try to experiment with bringing the children
and the meditation home and fact he offered to do it so am i still remember that experience of take no on coming and we're very kind of and
quiet measured pace with the children holding onto the hands of our children and bringing them in the zendo and i'm very moving and they were about seven or maybe seven or eight nine years old his little clutch t and jesse and hannan sarah elizabeth baker and other other children
one on air and know
ah and they sat beautifully for about know hundred ten or twelve minutes and when they were ready they had decided as a as a body that they would acknowledge that they were ready to move and they would get up and very slowly walk out of them zendo on every sunday for quite a while we had a meditation period where children are welcome and they sat
on the back tom with us and then when it was when they were ready course the twelve minutes got shorter and shorter i think finally was down to about three and a half minutes but on they did we didn't do it we had an f we made an effort every sunday afternoon to have full community southern if everybody come and it was on
he was a quite a quite a moving experience
but you know for me so much so much of those years on
was my involvement with them trying to balance following the meditation schedule working fully and raising in this whole secret life of raising a child are being raised boccia a whole secret life that you can even speak about and actually i've never really liked children that much
i am up i feel like on but i feel like i'm a very childish person of the but myself
but it's such a mistake to think of me his mother earth and a lot of people do it
except if you really think think of mother earth has been fierce with long fangs and eating her children spitting them out and
the some of that is true because we've had some really
intense times
trying to figure out how to parent and how to practice and santa on with our children i remember from ribbons and in the dining room
with tia i had just finished nursing she was little and he was that thousand her up above do have smiling and if you will
of all over her father he didn't miss a beat he just russia pass them on a napkin just shaking your head and can have wiped off his silk roxanne
kepco at i remember them here so vividly i mean maybe i mean watching the babies in them dining room now i think i remember so much all these years of of i'm endeavoring to find out how to how we actually do this except i think in the early years we tried to really have them fit into our life but
now it seems like there's a little bit more looser grid but in the early years they were meant to sit through silent meals you know now be there was all i think they've grown up there their single deep a syllable is probably shouldn't have a photographer their home fillable and if they never show ever they would talk and be playful and and you know dual
the things the baby's due in the middle of our life and somehow on we kept going kept we all kept going a sense of humor probably helped and a sense of comradery the did come from sitting together and enjoying the beauty of the children
a real challenge
be interesting to
oh talk with you about it in a few minutes
they would just get together
oh
but it is real i'm real dharma practice to to work closely with our children and them and learn from each other not just on one way learning but on i think dogs says very beautifully the it's not just that the mother makes to baby the baby makes
the mother
and it's it's such a mutual process somehow doing this together it also respecting on respecting the practice and deep desire of have some practitioners not to breathe and create you'll not to produce children to live in harmony and endo
connection honoring com r different vowels
and it really comes up when they're little people running around
those differences
on
for those of us who parenthood in the early and late seventies and early eighties we collected a lot of stories in a lot of them
ah wonderful on experiences and dumb some of them are written written down on this book we have it in the office dharma family treasures and i wanted to read you to from on sense in her children commenting on their life and zen center
ah here's a delightful story from them
sarah nancy cuts weintraub
linda roof and steve's eldest child my parents say some unusual things for example a few days ago i pushed my little brother and pretended nothing happened my mom instead of saying don't push your brother or something like that said think about your state of mind when you push
you
the
no
mentioned that
another incident happened this morning i was about to eat my cornmeal and molasses when i notice to brown dots on the edge near the side of the bowl daddy i said one of those things they are the pre voice of the ten dollars of molasses
a to answered my father the of what free toy have asked my brother dave
so my dad explained there are ten thousand and sarah's and ten thousand daily of them if i'm ten thousand i don't have to ask to be excused from the table grey day of and
apparently he jumped off his stool and put his head to the arm of my dad's vest then he began dancing around and around the room due to fear
to remember to write this i wrote zen center story of my hand my brother dave told me to write davey is ten thousand monkeys hand handed a hit me so much for them teach it will burn
a beautiful story and janaka varga in san francisco bad feeling and tumkur bargain store called not chanting
during the meal champ before dinner at sense and are sometimes audrey and i would say the chant adding not
the
the above
but not start we'll do it together and go and i'll do together i'll poke you when you're supposed to really not are innumerable labour's was is did bring us this food we'll show
after the out do not we should love know how it comes to us are receiving this offering we should not consider whether or not
whether i'm not you and practices over and so i feel better her mother
i just listened to their stories
james asher tells leah the interests of an assurance to sticky some adopted son tells the story of the whole hierarchy within the community of children he says a you know there were the older children who picked on the middle aged children who eventually and and avidly
picked on the babies that there was this whole little hierarchy in pecking order going on amongst the children sanga james tells a story of a walking up the hill and i remember them going on the hillside to get the bus they would stream up the mountain we be so happy when they will have to think of streaming up the mountain to get the school bus when they finally convinced us that we shouldn't drive into school schoolroom
very strongly in favor of going up the hill and going with the other kids on the main bus and at the top the older kids said to james you know what we have a special chocolate chip cookie for you are really good one and they put it in his lunchbox and he said he knew it was one of these really good ones from the cookie jar is not from zen center not from the to
hanzo but from the cookie jars because it was they can flat he was so excited and eager to school in so excited he couldn't wake as it was a store-bought cookie and he opened up his lunch and open up the bag and there was a flat and cow poop
a lot of the bigger kids and a month upon but he said it kind of woke up in hamadeh similar desire to visit the same kind of on
revenge on the next generation so it's really amazing what what's happened
the
on how much how much the children know about us i remember one skip night
robin and jesse and tear and few other children here on imitated us dressed up as us okay i did it
incredible imitation of her dad
i'm robin imitated me i just all remember about that invitation besides the searing pain that actually optical
he will get a backpack on the front of the spade and green clogs in her hair was a great
and how does she was try to do twenty things that that upsets all she did she just made a cameo appearance ah
anyway
we have such an extraordinary opportunity to him
to investigate together what it means to leave home and come home on
and children bring these questions right up to different doesn't yeah doesn't have to be true but many different issues can bring
those questions forward for children are very effective
i'm doing it i have on
ah
a song that i wanted to play but we don't have a on a tape recorder here that place the to hit somebody have a boombox of close enough so that we could get it be a wonderful way to close this session i think it'll make you laugh mr one close enough a table cloth hall would you mind that's so sweet
leave lively and then run
than i'll ever a component of this group is the
there's a group in michigan
a group of fastenings and ne vom made this wonderful tape of on songs from their practice life and the center of their practice community including a songs that children had helped with ah so a few pm
pull on heard the song last sunday few people in the buddhism in county class but i thought it would be interesting to to play it because they've been one of the wonderful things about practicing with children are they're all these fresh expressions of 'em meditation and naughty meditation that come out on a lively
connection of working with kids
so i have
can you never quite know what you're going again one num one practitioner came to gringos many years ago and recorded in our meditation hall on the songs for family practice petty rules
i remember it was so
a kind of strange to be in them meditation hall with all these children children from here from many different dharma communities singing and chanting together but it was all when i listen to that tape i remember feeling a mixture of sadness and longing and also
happiness it came out i think it's because we're opening up new dharma doors together working and practicing with children they don't behave they don't listen
they don't know
pretend
and they happen to be on
pretty incredible on
teachers
that's been my experience so

i remember one of my clearest memories in some walking by the dining room when jesse was a baby and looking in the window and he had his own special high chair because we had to strap him and to hold them down when it was time to eat it was as a wooden
i'd share that was very banged up but he loved it and he made quite a mess on the niger and i remember it was a sunday afternoon and i looked in to the dining room and another baby with him this chair a visitor of baby and i remember feeling so indignant and righteous
and at the same time recognizing oh this is the way it's gonna go my baby
we'll move on and will not always be in her chair and can tell then i'd forgotten you know that three great marks of existence i forgotten
those primary teachings because of being so caught up in the life of this chance it took the jolting experience of seeing another child sitting in his chair to remember
those teachings and ionia that's a very vivid memory for me
i'm sure i promptly forgot it and for the kids will quietly left on
i do remember that
thank you
you just say
truth
yeah hopefully with time
beeping
food good
so this is dumb
upside down for it
that it
i've always had it a secret desire on you know the first sunday of the month when it's kids program to play this song and as and are so i promise we will we don't have to do that that let's listen to it here
good
my older sister thinks the longer
the is the
my younger brother thinks that i'm crazy my mother and father be they don't even bother to ask by i'm alone in my room and do and say meditation on sunday
the after
i'm learning like that
it wasn't all that high
the
at first i just down for around
hey i watched my breath going to and out of line know
when fine mine started one will
worried that you can depend arena
still the it
for
young die
the
the com and how the to last
the and i
the occasion
am i the all lot of
to get my so mad
peace and quiet improve my diet and soothes my stress
i can confess i worried he was less one less and less worrying less and less my
getting a alone
the man
the
the the the ah the doing
with the invitation sunday after
a tiny poodle be to win
the
a shiny instance bird with
the line little alter is by gibraltar went to a schedule
what's so tough
the you see enough breathing perfect that has enough my factor
the
my half now
easy
even have that you ask
in again
alexander meditation on sunday
by rooms be calm or regular
down
i might as well just sell my
the economic political players don't get it but i don't let it
my boy
girls
boys numbering from all that noise coming from all the noise break from all the know
the please
the
the them you ask
love
attention
the culture of the
attention i'm sound
the
hey look a of fun
isn't that cool it's them it's said it's a name's truck and sanga in michigan yeah came out of their practices are working with kids if to wonderful takes on which i'm very happy to leave here you can listen to the music's great
and unexpected
are playful
let me kiss so much
your friends let me find what's wrong with you
what about
you are they
and
the