Good evening. First, I would like to express some gratitude to Christina. Thank you for 16 years of practice and practice discussion in Dokusan. I've benefited immeasurably from practicing with you. Thank you. I want to also express gratitude for my wife, who's not here, Melinda. We've been married for 12 years. And... I could not be here without her support.

[01:07]

And so I am truly grateful for one of our vows has been to support each other to live our truth. And she knows that this is me living my truth. And so I'm grateful for her supporting this happening. And then I want to express gratitude for my son, Sharky. of 11 years, and just the deep joy that I experience with him, the practice that he brings for me in so many ways. And it's always real with him in a way that it is with children. So thank you to them. talking with Melinda, my wife, about this talk, and realized that it's been a lot longer since I left Zen Center, about 12 years ago, than it was when I first gave this talk at Tassajara, or not this talk, but a White Way Seeking Mind talk at Tassajara.

[02:27]

And so in some ways, I feel like it's... been at least one or maybe two lifetimes since the conditions that brought me to Zen Center occurred. So it's a little bit hard to kind of take myself back there. I'm going to do that, but it's kind of, it's been one of these things where there was the life before Zen Center, there was the life at Zen Center, and then there's the life, there's been the life since Zen Center. And so... They had very different qualities. I was born not far from here. I was born in San Jose, California. And two 20-year-old people who in themselves were still figuring out their lives, very much so. And so my mom and my dad, you know, it's...

[03:31]

it's kind of funny. When I was growing up, I was always told that my conception was kind of a mistake. It was not, they weren't intending for me to be here. And there's something about that, you know, like I'm a mistake, you know, uh, recently I've reframed that. Um, I'm a miracle actually. Um, my, my mom, my mom was on a birth control and, and I, yet I still came forward. So, um, So yeah, despite the odds, here I am. And I guess I should say my name. My name is Tim O'Connor Frazier. This is the name that was given to me. The second name that was given to me from Fu in about 2004 is Jade Lantern, Solemn Virtue. That was the Dharma name I was given by Fu. um but uh yeah so growing up i grew up in the south bay for the most you know through through uh my high school years my parents had a business that they ran um out of their uh first at first out of their home uh producing videos for uh primarily for silicon valley companies they were in the video production business and so early on i got to get a little taste of

[05:01]

the movie magic. They'd hire me to be a child actor in some video that they were doing. We rode the waves of uptimes and downtimes in the economy. I had a very strong sense of what it is to be able to be a creative person and a business person and try to figure out how to make that work. My father grew up in the circus. And so his father was a lion tamer, and his mom, my grandma, was an aerialist. And so there was always this aspect of showbiz in our family, and they always kind of aspired to make it in showbiz, producers or directors or writers, this kind of thing. But what actually paid the bills was the work that they did for Silicon Valley companies.

[06:02]

And so kind of grew up with this sense of possibility. You could run a business. You could provide for your family. And sometimes you were up, and sometimes you were down. And it was the down times that I kind of had a hard time with as a child. It was those times when what seemed like a really solid financial life or solid life was in question. My parents would work more. They spent a lot of time working. And so seeing that, we... We had a lot of time. I mean, the great thing about that for me was that I had a lot of independents. They were working until dinner time usually, so at that time after school, it's pretty much free to do as I pleased and very much appreciated that.

[07:10]

But then I always felt this pull towards their business, both because it seemed fun to produce videos and do that kind of thing, but also it seemed like the thing to do. That's where they were putting all of their energy. I have a sister who's five years younger than I am. And so the business kind of sits as the middle child. You know, I was born, they started the business, and then my sister was born. So while I was always kind of drawn towards the business, she was always kind of turning away from it. She saw us taking our family time away. So it wasn't probably, for me anyway, I was, by the age of 12, I started working for the business. And that would continue. I would still continue working through the business through high school. I joined the business. I was working there during college. So it was a big part of my life. And it was a way for me to be creative and to earn some money.

[08:17]

And so that was a big part. aspect of day-to-day. And it also gave me access to my parents. So that was probably not insignificant as I think about it. I'm wondering, I realize I'll have no idea what time it is, and I'm wondering if somebody could give me a sense of maybe when I have 20 minutes left or something, or 30 minutes left? Is that something you could do? Okay. That was the grandfather clock letting me know that. I also struggled quite a bit with feeling alone and looking for love and seeking that out and mostly failing quite a bit.

[09:21]

seeking that out, seeking others to provide me with a value that I was seeking for who I was. And so as I went through the high school years, I came to my choice for college, and I kind of had this choice between turning towards a creative side, maybe studying film, and turning towards the business world. And I kind of struggled with this choice and ended up choosing the business world because it seemed to make the most practical sense. I'll do that. Plus, I was kind of doing a lot of creative work at the same time. So I kind of felt like I could have both. So I made that choice. I ended up going to Santa Clara University. So I stayed in the area and was not really interested in going too far from home. It also put me just down the road from where my family's company was so I could continue working there at night and get a college education.

[10:32]

So it was there that I met Father Tenney Wright. I don't know if you know, Santa Clara University is a Catholic school, and I was not at all religious. I was not interested in religion. And so part of being at that university, though, is that you had to have three religious studies courses, two lower level and one upper level. And I was bound and determined to stay out of the Christian-oriented classes, which was hard. They usually offered one per quarter, and that was the one I would choose. Yeah. And so the first class, though, that I took was this kind of world religions class, and it was taught by a Jesuit. So I had to figure that out. It's like, okay, how's that going to go? But it was an amazing choice, actually, because Father Wright was probably who I would consider to be my first teacher. I remember the first day of class, we walked in, and it was an 8 a.m.

[11:40]

class. And came in, and I sat down. I was probably two or three minutes early. And he said, thank you for being here. I'm glad you're here. And that just doesn't happen, first of all. Actual, you know, somebody looking at you in the eye and thanking you for being in a class that you had signed up for. I mean, this just didn't happen. What I noticed, though, is that as it got closer and closer to the time for class to start, and, you know, he was thanking each person. But the moment... the time the class started, something flipped. And the first person to walk in late, he said, you're late. Please take a seat. And so the rest of us are, what was that? And then students started coming in a little bit later and later. And as they came in later and later, he got more and more assertive towards them to a point where one came in and he said, you're late. I suggest you drop this class. that person looked at him and walked out.

[12:43]

And he said, don't be like that person. I have no power to make that person drop a class. Never be like that person. If you want to be here, tell me you want to be here. Express that this is where you want to be. They can go, but if they really want to do, they're not going to get anywhere in their life if they don't assert themselves. And my mind was just like blowing up right here. I was just, I could not believe I was, I mean, he was basically just teaching us in the moment. And so, you know, immediately like, who is this guy? I later come to find out. So he tells us in this class, he says, okay, yes, this class is an ADM class, but we actually start at 7.20 in the Mission Church for Zazen. And I'm going to teach you meditation. And that's where we'll start class, I think on Mondays or Wednesdays, whatever it was, and then we'll come to class. And so I was like, okay. And I don't know if you remember, but in college, 8 a.m. is already early.

[13:46]

And then being someplace by 7.20 is crazy. So I think half the class probably dropped at that point. But anyhow, I persisted. And so he was my first teacher of zazen, was in the mission church. He had zafus. He said you could choose a zafu. You could sit in a pew. It doesn't matter. Just sit, pay attention. And he gave us meditation instruction. I would take another class from him for my third option, and it was a Jesuit perspectives class. At that point, he'd turned me around as far as my views. particularly around Jesuits, and later kind of realizing how important of a teacher he was for me. I mean, he taught me meditation. It would become a bedrock for me. I later find out that he had actually studied in Japan and had met Kobanchino Roshi in Japan and had continued a relationship, a friendship with him in the years that followed.

[14:50]

And so it... And by this point, I actually knew who Kobanchino was, and so I had this kind of even deeper appreciation for the connections that were there. So I have great gratitude for Father Wright, for Tenny. His teaching of meditation for me was... So after college, This is the late 90s. We're having this boom in Silicon Valley in California, popularly known as the dot-com boom. And I had spent my time with computers, learning how to develop websites. I basically could go anywhere I wanted to at that point, but I was afraid. I was afraid to find out

[15:51]

what would happen if I just went out into the world, that I kind of went towards the thing that was most familiar, and that was my parents' company. And so after university, I was given an offer from my parents' company, and it was an awesome offer. I was like, I couldn't possibly make this kind of money anywhere else, even in that time. Yes, I will do that. But in fact, it was mostly me just kind of choosing not to find my way. So I did that. I also brought two of my classmates with me, and we started a group of internet web developers within that company. And so we ended up having a lot of fun doing that, but there was always something inside of me that felt like I didn't explore who I was. I didn't make the choice to see what was possible from my own side. And so that kind of nagged at me a bit.

[16:52]

And within, I would say, three or four years of that time, I had reached this point where I was like, yeah, I got to go. I can't actually continue to do this. In the meantime, I was having this sense of still profound loneliness, and depression was kind of just starting to set in through that time. And it was right around that time that my mom, who was the president and CEO at the time, decided that she needed to step back. And so she stepped back, and this created a new opening. And the question was, Tim, do you want to run this company? Actually, this is happening. I mean, the universe is kind of amazing, right? I'm thinking of turning away. I'm thinking of going on my own. take off, and then here again is this opportunity to stay in the family business and yet to also not explore the self, as it were.

[18:02]

I said, yes, I'll take over the company. And so that became yet another nagging question, yet another investment in that process. And honestly, it was... It was about 20 years before I expected it to happen. I expected that eventually I would get there, but it was going to be years and years and years, not at the age of 24. I wasn't going to be running a company of 40 people, which would become 50 people, with that responsibility at that point. I had no idea how to do that, and my intuition was basically just take care of the people and they'll take care of the company. And so that's what I started to do. But the pressures, the loneliness, the questions of who I am persisted. And looking back, I see that actually what I was missing was a sense of connection to myself and to what I would consider right livelihood.

[19:11]

At the time, it was... depression. And so what I started doing was I started, every time I was feeling bad about myself, I would sit down. I would follow the instructions that Tenny gave. And I would sit down and then go about my life, come back to the cushion, and then started to recognize this cycle of depression and change. And I was like, there's something to this. There's a pattern here. And I had come across this book, Siddhartha, and it talked about a cycle. And I was like, there's something to this. And so that started the path of trying to go deeper into understanding Zen. That started me towards looking for sangha. And so while I was running this business... I started to sit, I found Kanando, I walked into Kanando in Mountain View, and I immediately felt this being home.

[20:18]

It was hard for me to understand it at the time, but it was just this sense of belonging, like this is where I belong. And so that became my sangha, The people in that place was a place that I just felt home in. And so Les K. became my first true Zen teacher, I suppose. And I brought forward the challenges that I was experiencing to him. And he provided me with guidance. And he provided me with... a way of framing my problems as koans. In fact, the koan that came up for me for the most part is even though my mom chose to step back, she decided to remain in the company.

[21:28]

My parents both owned the company and they were running in the company and I was here in the middle. I don't know if if you can understand this in the way it would be, but it's like, I'm supposed to run this company, but you guys own it, and you're running the groups below me, so what exactly am I doing? Still this question of, who am I here? And so my first solution to try to get out of this dilemma was to try to offer to buy the company. Even though I didn't have money to buy a company, I said, I'll buy this company. And they said, no, how about we split it three ways? And I thought about that for about two seconds. And I said, there's no way I'm putting myself here with the two of you as partners to where we might end up in a power struggle between two versus one. No way. It's not going to work. And so I bowed out.

[22:32]

I just said, thank you. I need to go. And I gave them a year's notice, and then I started looking for somewhere else to go. That is eventually what led me to Green Gulch, Green Gulch Farm. It was there that I just basically decided to go ahead and kind of pack up my life, as it were, It wasn't very much to do. I was pretty free to go. There was quite a bit of backlash from my parents for the choice, but it was understandably so. Disappointment. And yet, it was for me to choose. So that is, of course, the... the machinations of how I ended up at Zen. Underneath that still was this sense of sadness, of loneliness, of not belonging, something that I kept putting on, particularly romantic relationships.

[23:43]

I kept putting that towards expecting to be fulfilled through partnership. It took me a while to see that that was a bad idea. And in fact, it wasn't until I got to Tassajara in 2005 that I really studied that and tried to understand that karma. And so I don't know that that would have been possible in any other way. But it was how things worked, and it was through that... time that i started to feel like i could uh just be me so um may ask how we're doing on time anything okay um thank you

[24:48]

Meanwhile, I would say that I started to understand, too, that a lot of my problems couldn't be solved through Zen practice, and so seeking therapy became helpful, and I could work out some things there, but the connection, the sense of... The way Paul put it one time, when I was at Tassajara, he said, you know, practice is a mandala, and we have all of these aspects, practice that work together as a whole. So the work and how we receive food, how we express gratitude, all of these things working together met me in a way that I, before that point, had no sense and no basis for in day-to-day life.

[26:08]

And so that is probably the thing that I feel most grateful for, is to have something that has a wholeness to it that I could experience. And so that after that practice that I had here between the three practice centers, kind of basically experiencing that connection through sangha and seeing that it was really sangha that was missing through that time. I'm deeply grateful for that and for that aspect of this practice. So I think there's a little bit more time. I'm wondering if there are any questions. I'm happy to clarify or answer any questions that may come up. Yeah. Sorry, what was the last part?

[27:17]

Yeah. One of the things that I learned is that our bodies create connection without words. And a sense of... I think popularly we would expect that when we meet somebody, we get to know them by what they say and the words we share. What I started to realize is that sitting in the zendo or practicing in silence creates an amazing connection, an amazing sense of knowing. each other, where you can start to know people without, you can know them by their footsteps in the zendo. You know who's walking through the door based on the footfall. I think that level of intimacy was not possible for me before this practice.

[28:31]

And I think that is a depth of connection that I have only been able to experience through this practice. Yes. Yes. Yes, thank you. The question is, I had before Zen Center, I had during Zen Center, and how was it afterwards in the marketplace? Well, so Melinda and I met here in the dish, we were dish shift partners. And so my first experience of her was being introduced as, this is your partner. And so that was

[29:35]

So when we left, we had just gotten married and we were expecting our son. But we did not have the seniority to actually be here in a way that we felt we could be here with him. And so it was with reluctance that we left. We were trying to figure out a way to make it work. And so I think that aspect of it, that aspect of wanting to stay, my preference was to stay and to continue the practice as a family meant that we were taking the practice with us. We were going on the road. and we went on the road. I mean, we first went to Santa Cruz, and then we went to Walnut Creek, and then up to Napa Valley, and we went to Columbus for a little bit.

[30:40]

We went everywhere, but we brought the practice that we had cultivated from here. Prior to getting married, we had a class with Christina and Marcia about relationships and how to be in relationships. That was invaluable for us. It gave us a... a way of being together that supported each other to be ourselves in relationship. And so I returned to the web development skills that I'd had. I'd helped do some work here for that. And we went into the process of family practice in the marketplace. And fortunately, and by some miracle, Once again, that's worked for these 12 years. We're now in Ohio. That's where Melinda's family is.

[31:42]

And so the opportunity to come all the way to San Francisco from there was... I mean, when Christina invited me, I just couldn't say no. But for a while, it wasn't... Also, it wasn't a yes, because it was this... question of can we support this? I provide the income for our family. Leaving Melinda and Sharkey alone for this period of time is a big ask. Particularly at his age, he and I are buddies, so he's losing his friend for this period of time. It's a And yet in there is this, you know, these choices that have been made all along the way, not knowing where they're going to go, but knowing that they're right in the moment. And it kept being, yeah, I think this is going to work.

[32:45]

I think we can do it. I mean, even up to this morning, I mean, it was, Christina wasn't sure if it was a yes. I mean, you know, it's, yeah, I think it's just staying true to the moment in that, you know, and as much as we can. So, does that answer your question? Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yes. Thank you. The question is that the appearance is that I've lived a life of privilege, and whether that privilege has led to this feeling of isolation.

[33:50]

Is that a fair way of describing? How does it relate? Well, I agree. I have lived a life of privilege. I've had a lot of privilege in my life. And it's a privilege to be here. I've also known that being able to leave Zen Center and find work based on the skills that I had that were offered to me through the Basically, the company that my parents had started, that I just was able to inherit at that point, is an immense amount of privilege. I worked. It wasn't taken for granted.

[34:52]

And I know there's people who work a whole lot harder than I do for much less and don't have the opportunities that I have. And... It's hard to describe it over the swath of it, but yeah, I think there's an aspect of just everyday life where not having a basis or groundedness in the body, or not having a basis or groundedness in the food that we eat. I'm speaking... primarily of my everyday life prior to Zen Center. You know, it was just like going about and, you know, you're grabbing fast food or you're, you know, smoking, you know, weed on the weekends to, you know, make life better or drinking or whatever, you know, is going on. I mean, I do think that that was a way of medicating and trying to like cope with and have fun, but also not really dealing with some of the fundamental, I would say like,

[36:02]

most of the teaching that I had in my mind would probably come from popular music on the radio. This is how you find love. Or TV shows. This is what you're supposed to do. There was no sense of truth in that necessarily. So I do think there's a disconnection in that. I do think media plays a role in that. But it's also kind of a tonic. It's something to kind of smooth over life um and and but fundamentally not satisfying and and i think that fundamental lack of satisfaction uh pointed that something else like this isn't it there's something else that's deeper and more true and that's for me where uh zen started to come up as a as a as a practice that supported that and so um But yeah, it can't be separated from the privilege, for sure.

[37:06]

Thank you for that question. Yes? Yeah. Okay. How the moment came to go to Tassajara? Yeah, I was very intimidated by the idea of going to Tassajara. It had always had this air of intensity. I mean, it is. It's an intense place. I mean, to enter Tassajara, there's a tangarigo. There's, I think maybe Fu put it, you have to sit... through five days, like a wall of five days to get to the other side to be admitted. That, to me, is an intimidating idea.

[38:10]

It was. I get that. I don't know that I could make it any less intimidating. It's definitely not for everyone, and a lot of people... can do it a lot of people are able to make it through that you know and um in the way in whatever way they can so um for me it represented kind of a a depth of practice that i wasn't able to kind of access anywhere else but it was accessible it was always right there actually to be honest the first time i tried to get it was too full i couldn't get in but by the time i was i felt ready for it it it was available um so the um Yeah, I don't know if that answers your question. I hear that this is intimidating. I think we wear these robes, and it's really kind of, it is maybe foreign in question.

[39:14]

I mean, it's not our normal way in America, and so that is intimidating, too. We're very quiet. We're kind of, you know... cast our eyes down, we don't necessarily talk to each other in everyday ways. That can all be very intimidating. And I remember my first time here at City Center, nobody talked to me, and I just kind of walked in and walked out, and I was like, I don't know if I belong here. And it took me years to come back, actually. And I think that's something that Since I was here, people started to recognize as something that maybe needed to be looked at. So hopefully you feel more welcome than I did and that you come back if you feel like it. I'm not speaking for the organization, but I think the organization would like to be welcoming to everybody. And so thank you for being here. And anybody else who's here for the first time, thank you.

[40:15]

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So Tenny told me after I'd been to Green Gulch, and I wanted to come back to him and thank him personally for being this, you know, for introducing me to this practice. He told me that he, by the way, he's no longer with us. He passed away several years ago. But he told me that when he was in Japan with Kobanchino, that he had this real question of whether to go down the path of Zen and become a Zen priest or to become a Jesuit. And his root was in Catholicism.

[41:18]

And so he decided to kind of do both, I would say. You know, he became the Jesuit. that was this root practice, this root tradition. His family was Catholic. And he taught Zen. So his world religions class, bringing us to study meditation in the church. I think the Jesuits in particular have that openness. And so, yeah, I think he... He made the choice that felt right for him, and he continued to do the thing that was interesting to him. Thank you. Any others? Yeah? Connection? It's felt. A connection is felt.

[42:20]

It is... It's open. It's honest. It's... It's reciprocal. It's... So, yeah, it's not necessarily eye to eye, but it is, it's this. So it's coming together in that way. they're still running this company.

[43:24]

So it's now 40 years old. And they live here. And so I come and I stay with them. And I enjoy talking with them. We still do business together. So I have my own business that sometimes works with their business. And when we're together, it's just primarily as family, although we can't help but talk business too. My sister now works at the company even though she turned away from it and didn't have anything to do with it. She's now in there. It's still a family business. My mom, I'm speaking up when I say she, wishes that we were here and not in Ohio. There's that. Thank you. Yeah. Well, I think, let me just say, what I appreciate about Zen is that it's about being here now.

[44:46]

There's a pond at Green Gulch Farm, and sometimes it gets overgrown with weeds. And the farmers, which I was a farmer when I was at Green Gulch, have to go in, at least when I was there, and rake out those weeds and throw them aside, get them out, because it suffocates the water. And so I was out there with another farmer, and he was telling me all of these things about the Arhats and the Bodhisattvas and all of these, like, the history of Buddhism. And I just, I didn't know any of that, and it didn't matter. to me at that point. That wasn't my practice. It wasn't not available to me in the practice, but it just wasn't in my practice. And so what my practice was was about being here now. And so what I appreciate about Zen is this sense of, it's a little bit, it's like the concept of don't know.

[45:49]

is celebrated in Zen. It's just, you don't have to know. And in fact, don't know, the saying is don't know is most intimate, is just being able to just be. So, you know, and then there's a whole history of it, how it came from India into China and merged with Taoism. And, you know, you have all of that too, which comes through. But for me anyway, it's about... You know, kind of like, it just distills everything down to how can we create a practice that's about this moment and keep coming to this moment and see what happens. Thank you. May our intention equally extend to every being and place

[46:47]

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