It was a great treat to walk across the bridge past all the jack-o'-lanterns this morning. And it's also amazing to see Iris on the altar on November 1st. So this morning is the first of the month, and a friend once told me that if you jump out of bed backwards on the first day of the month, you'll have good luck for the whole month. So, I did it, and we'll see. So what I'd like to talk about today is sharing the road, and that's kind of the title of my talk, and I'd like to start with a couple of stories. The first one, this past summer, Leanne and I were driving to Green Gulch for a meeting of the Diversity and Multiculturalism Committee of the Board. The committee meets every month, alternating between Green Gulch and City Center, and that

[01:07]

month it was at Green Gulch, so it was a long trip. And we talked and talked, and then Leanne suggested listening to a tape she had brought with her, a couple of tapes from a conference that had been held a few months before at Spirit Rock, and it was the first Asian-American and Pacific Islander Dharma retreat that ever had been held in the United States. So we listened to a talk by Reverend Ryo Imamura. Reverend Imamura, he's a Jodo Shinshu minister, and he's the 18th generation of ministers in his family. This is a very long lineage, starting in the 14th century in Japan. And he himself is a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He teaches Buddhist psychology and counsels students there.

[02:10]

And I found the whole talk very interesting, and I'm going to come back to more of it, but one story really caught my attention. He was talking about some of the basic ideas of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism, and saying that we live on a continuum of opposites. On the one hand, we kind of have a very self-centered life, thinking that I'm the most important person in the world, kind of like everything revolves around me. And thinking that way, he might think, I'm the most important driver on Highway 101. And that kind of attitude leads to honking, people cutting each other off, trying to get in the fast lane, being really aggravated when someone's going at 55 miles an hour in the fast lane, and you want to go faster. And he said, on the other hand, if you live with a sense of interdependence, the idea

[03:18]

is because of other people's efforts, I can accomplish something. Whatever I accomplish isn't just because of my own striving or what I put into it, but it rests on the efforts of many other people, as well as my own. And if I'm thinking that way, driving along 101, we're all going in the same direction and we all want to get where we're going safely, then, he said, we start rooting for each other. We're one big team going up Highway 101. And I just found that an amazing way to think about driving, and it comes to mind frequently now when I'm driving on the road. And just the idea that we're all going there together and the trip can be a lot more enjoyable

[04:20]

if we're not, if we have that cooperative kind of mind instead of the competitive one. So soon after that trip, I was driving again, I was driving to the city for a meeting of the personnel committee, and I left Tassajara really early in the morning, the meeting was at 10 o'clock, and I was driving on 101 in Salinas when the car in front of me swerved to the left. I didn't know why, and I slowed down, and then I saw this huge piece of metal in the lane right in front of me. And I slowed down, but I couldn't avoid it, so I hit it and pulled off the road and got out of the car, put on my blinkers, my emergency lights, and I looked to see what had happened, and this piece of metal was impaled under the front of my car.

[05:20]

And the car wouldn't move. So I stood there, it was still just dawn, and wondering what to do, and I could see on the other side of the road, kind of in the distance, there was a gas station, and I thought about crossing the two lanes of highway to get to it, and it didn't seem like a very safe thing to do. And I kept hoping somebody would come and help me out, I didn't have a cell phone. And within five or ten minutes, a tow truck pulled up right behind me, and the driver got out and he handed me this flyer, which I've saved. It says, Tow Trucks to the Rescue, and it's the Monterey County Area Freeway Service Patrol, and they go around looking for stranded drivers on 101 and other highways in Monterey County. And he jacked up my car and got the metal out, and we could see there was some fluid

[06:33]

on the highway, and I didn't know what it was, and so he suggested I try starting the car, and it went forward, and I could brake it, and he then said I could drive it to the nearest exit, and there was a Firestone tire place nearby, and they would check it out for me, and he would follow me there to make sure I got there safely. So I got in the car, and I got to the Firestone place, and they were just opening, it was seven o'clock, and the proprietor looked at the car, and he said, well, your front tire is a little low, so he filled it with air, and it looked like the fluid was just from the windshield wiper fluid, so it wasn't anything serious, and there was some rubber dragging on the highway, but that also was just a tire guard. So I got in the car and went back onto 101, and just as I got to San Jose, the car started rocking and making some horrible sound, and I had just been thinking about where I was

[07:38]

going to stop for breakfast, and I pulled off the road, and as I pulled off, I saw a car following me off the highway, it was right near an exit, so I stopped and got out, and the tire, my front right tire was totally flat and shredded, and then a man got out of the car behind my car and said, I saw your tire getting flat, and I thought you were going to have some trouble, and I wonder if I can help you, and this man was dressed for work, he had a white shirt and a tie and nice trousers, and he helped me get the jack out of my car, which I hadn't used in a long time, managed to put it together and got out my spare tire, and I asked if there was anything I could do to help him, he said, can you tell me a joke, and I have a terrible memory for jokes, the only joke

[08:45]

I could remember was about the Buddhist who goes to the hot dog vendor and says, make me one with everything, and he thought it was funny, he hadn't heard it before, so he changed the tire, he did it, I just told him the joke, and then when he was done, I asked if, he didn't want money, I offered money, and I had a loaf of bread in the back seat of my car because I was going to stay with a friend after the meeting, and he wouldn't even accept the loaf of bread, he just offered his, it seemed to me like he was a Bodhisattva on the highway, and I asked him what he did for work, and he said he was a traveling salesman for a pharmaceutical company and that he spent a lot of time on the road, so he was always very vigilant about what was going on on the highway, and that he found his job pretty

[09:50]

meaningless, and I said, well, you did something very meaningful today, and I really, I was very grateful, and I got to the meeting at Zen Center ten minutes before it started, amazingly. So, thinking about the image of sharing the road, and from Reverend Imamura's talk, I was thinking about how that relates to our life here at Tassajara, and how, you know, the opposite of that, the kind of road rage, when there are times when I know we experience, I experience that kind of intense irritation, so I was thinking about a few examples of sharing the road, and one thing that we do that always impresses me and makes me feel so,

[10:59]

I don't know, what is it, joyous, maybe, is when the produce comes, and it's time to unload it, and everyone picks up a box and goes down to the kitchen or the upper shack or the lower shack, and within five minutes, the whole truck is unloaded, and in the summer, often, excuse me, that was a fly, in the summer, the town trip often arrives on Tuesday or Friday nights, just as we're having supper, we've sat down in the student eating area, we're eating, and then the bell rings, the town trip is there, and everyone goes out and unloads the town trip truck, and, you know, if one person were to do that, it would be very hard, but when all of us just take a box or two, it just happens so easily,

[12:01]

and I can also remember when I was Phuketan in the kitchen, there were some evenings in the the garbage, we'd be finished in no time at all, I never had to say anything to anybody about what to do, because there were some times when the crew just knew, people would see what needed to be done and do it, and it would get done, and we'd bow out, and there was a wonderful feeling those nights, it wasn't always like that, and in contrast, I'm thinking of other times when, and maybe you've had these moments of irritation, when, for example, there was a practice period when you could pass the gamassio either after the second pot or the third pot, and there were some people who really wanted to pass it after

[13:05]

the second pot was served, and some who really wanted to wait till after the third pot was served, and so I was one of those people who liked to wait until the third bowl was served, but the person sitting next to me who received the gamassio and passed it to me liked to pass it after the second bowl, and I was feeling, well, will I take it, even though I don't want it now, or what do I do with the gamassio, and just feeling the irritation, wanting to do it my way, and it's such a little thing, but it can seem so big in that moment. So one of the things about living here at Tassajara is that I think we have a chance to look at these moments when irritation arises and see what is actually going on, and from this

[14:11]

Jodo Shinshu perspective, which isn't so different from any other Buddhist perspective, I think, and at those moments we're just focusing on ourselves rather than on our interconnectedness. So I wanted to say a little bit more about Reverend Imamura, and in his talk he spoke about his life, and I found him a very inspiring person. He was born in 1944, and he was born at an internment camp in Hilo, Arizona. During, well, right after Pearl Harbor, there were over a hundred thousand Japanese and Japanese Americans living in the U.S. who were interned at these camps all over the country,

[15:13]

and among the first to be interned were the leaders in the Japanese American community, including all the ministers. So Reverend Imamura's father was a Jodo Shin minister in Berkeley, actually, in Berkeley, and so he was interned, and so Ryo Imamura was born in the camp, and then when the war was over, his family returned to Berkeley, and there was still quite a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment in probably all of California, probably all of the country, but in Berkeley, where he grew up, and it made him very sensitive to racism for his whole life. He said during that time, most Japanese families interacted with other

[16:15]

families within the Japanese community because it was safe there and the world outside was very hostile. He went to a public school in Berkeley, and he said luckily he was small. His sister was bigger and protected him because kids would beat him up, and he noticed as a boy that many people came to talk with his father, and they would come to the temple very upset, and then he noticed that they would leave calmer and having been comforted. And so later in his life, he tried to find out how Buddhism was relevant and helpful to people who were suffering, and eventually he trained to be a Jodo Shin minister himself and then got his doctorate in psychology, and at Evergreen, he does a lot of counseling with students as well as teaching classes on Buddhism and psychology and

[17:24]

east-west psychology. I haven't met him, but I hope someday that I will. And his talk also made me realize how little I know about Jodo Shin, Shinshu Buddhism. And, you know, Keith mentioned in his way-seeking mind talk that he had been very welcomed at a Jodo Shin temple. I forget where it was. And I wonder how many, whether anybody else here has been to a Jodo Shin temple. I never have. You have? And they're all over California. There's, I know, there's one in Berkeley, there's in San Francisco, and Los Angeles has a large, large temple. It's actually the largest Buddhist sect in Japan and in the United States. And the name has changed to the Buddhist Churches of America. There are currently 60 temples in the U.S., 38 in Hawaii

[18:30]

and 13 in Canada. And it's one of the first Japanese Buddhist groups that started in the States. There were Chinese Buddhists who came before. So I just wanted to talk a little bit more about some of the ideas that Reverend Imamura spoke about in his talk. His talk was called The Practice of Gratitude. And he said that pure land Buddhism is called the easy path. But for materialistic Americans, gratitude isn't easy. And it's very hard sometimes to, in our families, our work, and in our daily life, to realize

[19:38]

gratitude. Because we start from the idea that wondering what the universe can do for us. And we miss that sense of interdependence and the idea that because of other people's efforts, we're able to accomplish whatever we accomplish. And the phrase is, I am lived instead of I live. And he said, just as we do our meal chant before eating in Jodo-shin, they say, Itadakimasu. Thanks to the beings that nourished me so that I may benefit other people.

[20:39]

And that everything, even life itself, is a gift that we didn't really deserve. But we have it and we can repay with our loving kindness what others have given to us. And this is someone who went to visit a Jodo-shin temple on a Sunday and went to visit the Sunday school in the temple. And the youngest group of children, they were six and seven-year-olds, were making paper chains out of big pieces of yellow construction paper and putting the links together. And then they chanted, I am a link in Amida Buddha's golden chain of love that stretches around the world. I must keep my link bright and strong.

[21:41]

May every link in Amida Buddha's golden chain of love become bright and strong, and may we all attain perfect peace. I thought that was a wonderful thing for six and seven-year-olds to be learning. And then the next time, the older children, the second and third graders, were making, making, let's see, they were coloring a book called My Altar, My Obutsudan, because in Jodo-shin homes, there are family altars, and they were cutting out all the various things that would go on the altar, the Buddha statue, the incense, the incenser, the vase of flowers, kinds of things we have on our altar. And then chanting a prayer, Amida Buddha, I offer rice to say thank you. I burn incense to say thank you. I offer beautiful

[22:49]

flowers and say thank you. I light the candle and say thank you. Namu Amida Butsu, praise to Amida Buddha, as the teacher said, the Buddhist way to say thank you. So they were learning gratitude, the practice of gratitude at a very young age. So one reason why I wanted to talk a little about Jodo-shin Buddhism is that there are so many different Buddhist groups in the United States in all of our cities and towns. And I think it's very easy to just be focusing on our own practice, our own path, our own Soto Zen practice in school, and not be so aware of all the other

[23:53]

paths that there are in Buddhism and in certainly all the other religions in the United States. And we're very fortunate, I think, in this time, because in almost any community in the United States, you can find groups who are practicing all the different, do you want to call them branches of Buddhism? And partly this is the result of all the immigrant groups who have come to the United States since 1965 from the Asian countries, in addition to the Chinese and Japanese Buddhists who were here much earlier. And then

[24:58]

all of us might call, there are different words describing us convert Buddhists who were not born Buddhists but have chosen the Buddhist path and have chosen many different Buddhist paths, Theravadan, Tibetan, Zen. Many students who are students of Thich Nhat Hanh, and the richness of all the paths available to us is something quite new. And I've been reading a book that I found extremely inspiring. It's called A New Religious America, written by Diana Eck, who's a professor of religion at Harvard. In 1997, I think it was, my partner Fran got a fellowship at Harvard.

[26:08]

She was the Bunting Peace Fellow. There's an institute at Radcliffe for women scholars, and at the Bunting Institute, these scholars come for a year and they're supported to study whatever they are passionate about. And they had one seat for a peace activist each year. And so Fran was the Bunting Peace Fellow, and I went with her to Cambridge for the year. And I was able to audit a class that Diana Eck was teaching at Harvard on world religions. And it was maybe one of the most wonderful learning experiences I've ever had. She was working then on a project which has blossomed. It was called the Pluralism Project. And she was studying world religions in the United States. When she first became a professor of comparative religion, she went to India and spent a long time in Varanasi and wrote a book

[27:15]

called Benares, City of Light. She was very, Benares is a city which has, if you walk down the street, or Varanasi is the name most of us know the city by, you see monks in orange robes and processions carrying corpses to the Ganges to be cremated. And you'll hear chanting from little temples hidden in nooks and crannies. It's a city that's just alive with spirituality. And anyway, Diana Eck wrote that book and was teaching world religions from the perspective of world religions being everywhere in the world. And then gradually she realized that her student body was changing. And one time a student came to her class. It was a class on

[28:20]

Hindu religious practices. And he was a second generation Indian student who had gone to a Hindu summer camp in the Poconos. And Diana Eck was very surprised. She didn't know such a thing existed. And she realized that many of the students who were now coming to Harvard had grown up in the United States, but in families that were Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist, and that the face of the student body at Harvard was changing greatly. And partly this was due to the change in immigration laws in 1965. For a long period of time, the United States had a very restricted policy on immigrants, particularly from Asian countries, probably other countries as well. And that as this new immigration policy

[29:22]

opened up immigration to people from so many parts of the world, they were bringing with them their cultures and religions. And I just want to refer to a few things that she said. The religious landscape of America has changed radically in the past 30 years, but most of us have not yet begun to see the dimensions and scope of that change. So gradual has it been, and yet so colossal. And she describes the architecture, how the religious architecture of the United States is changing. Not all of us have seen the Toledo Mosque or the Nashville Temple, but we will see places like them if we keep our eyes open, even in our own communities. They are the architectural

[30:30]

signs of a new religious America. And I can recall a few years ago, when I was visiting New York, the upper east side around 98th Street, I was walking east of Lexington Avenue, and there was a huge mosque I had never seen before. You don't have to go far to find the mosques, the Hindu temples, the Sikh Gurdwaras. And along with the increase, and maybe not increase, the proliferation of temples and mosques and so on, the rich diversity of religions that are now in the United States. The United States originally

[31:44]

was a Christian country, and some people still think of the United States as a Christian country, even though there are so many other religious groups in the United States. But with this diversity, Diana Ek feels it's important to not just recognize the diversity, but to really understand the different religions that are here without losing the perspective of our own religion, and that's what she calls pluralism. And she raises many questions. Whether we are able to work together across the lines of religious difference to create

[32:47]

a society in which we actually know one another remains to be seen. And she says, religions are not like stones passed from hand to hand through the ages. They are dynamic movements more like rivers, flowing, raging, creative, splitting, converging. The history of religions is unfolding before our eyes. Perhaps nowhere in the world is it more interesting to study the process of dynamic religious change in this new century than in America. Because all of the world's religions are represented in the United States today, and her point of view is the United States is changing because of that. Not only are the religions changing, but the United States is changing also. And so the question is, how do we

[33:51]

learn about one another's different religions? And how do we learn to ask the questions that will help us understand? We're all here at Tassajara to practice the same practice. So you may wonder why this is relevant to us. And how does it relate to our lives as we practice here together? And I think it's because we're not all the same. Even though we're all Zen students, there are many other ways in which

[34:54]

we bring very different life experiences with us to Tassajara. And so I want to say a little bit about some of the diversity and multiculturalism work that we've been doing here, especially for students who haven't been here last summer. And the two summers before, we had a number of workshops on diversity and multiculturalism. Three summers ago, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship chapter initiated it. And then the last two summers, Charlie Pocorni, the director, invited trainers to come and work with us once a month. Two years ago, it was Ilda Gutierrez Baldoquin, who's a priest at City Center. And this last summer, it was Rainbow Jane Markell,

[35:56]

who's a diversity trainer. I think she's living in, is it Arizona? Anyway, she's working with Native Americans right now. One of the things that Rainbow worked with us on last summer, which I found very powerful, was an exercise where we talked about ways in which as children we had felt different, or early in our lives, some way in which we had felt different. And what came up for me was, as a child, I was very chubby. And my grandmother took care of me and my sister quite often. And when she took us to the playground, I think because she was very fearful, she would tell us not to run, not to climb on the monkey bars, because we might fall.

[37:00]

And I got to be very, I didn't feel very confident about doing physical things. And because of that, and being chubby, when it came to games at school, I was the last one to be chosen on the softball team. And also, I was afraid of balls. So, if someone threw a ball at me, I would run the other way, instead of catching it or trying to catch it. So, anyway, I really felt different. I didn't like sports. I didn't like softball. I didn't even like volleyball. And when my father tried to teach me to ride a bike, I didn't want him to take the training wheels off it. I felt safe with the training wheels, but two wheels. I didn't learn

[38:01]

to ride a bicycle until I was in college. Anyway, when we got into small groups and talked about some of the ways we had felt different, all of us had chosen things that were painful in some way, and where we had felt not accepted by others. Sometimes you can think of differences being very positive, but for some reason, we all chose things that were painful. And yet, when we talked about these things with each other, it was something very helpful in knowing that I wasn't the only

[39:03]

one who had had an experience like that. And also, it enabled us to be more compassionate towards one another. And as we went on in that training to talk a little bit about our experience at Tassajara with people who were different from ourselves, and Rainbow encouraged us to ask kinds of questions of each other that might create more intimacy. And after that training, someone who I had been here at Tassajara with for several years, maybe I've said this before, but anyway, this person was a friend, asked me to talk with him about what it was like for me to be a lesbian at Tassajara. And it was something we had never

[40:06]

talked about. So my feeling about the work that Rainbow did was that it really opened up some avenues of conversation and ways of getting to know each other that seemed to me to be very healing, to recognize that we're not all the same and that some of the ways in which we're different can enrich each other's experience if we learn about them and hear about them. So I think that we actually are very fortunate to be practicing here with people who are different from ourselves in age. I mean, Linda Ruth pointed out the age range from about 24 to 82. This is quite wonderful. And one of the

[41:06]

things I've always appreciated about living at Tassajara is that it's possible to have friends who are different ages than me. They're much younger. I think I'm one of the oldest. But for me to have friends who are in their 20s is really a wonderful gift. And we also differ in sexual orientation, in class background, and to some extent in our racial and cultural backgrounds. And I wish there were more diversity at Tassajara. I think that is the reason why I've been working on the Diversity and Multiculturalism Committee. This is a committee of the board, and one of the ways in which

[42:13]

Zen Center... I'll just say just a couple of words about Zen Center's vision. A few years ago, we've started working on a vision for Zen Center for the next 10, 20 years and beyond. And many people were questioned about their sense of where Zen Center's strengths were, and where Zen Center could grow further. And seven goals were established for all of Zen Center that we're working towards now. And one of them has to do with increasing diversity and multiculturalism at Zen Center. So I want to kind of bring this to a close and say that as we

[43:21]

share the road of this practice, how can we get to know one another, understand and appreciate our differences. And I'd like to end with a poem by Robert Frost. For those of you, especially from other countries, you may not know who Robert Frost is. He's a poet from New England, from the northeast part of our country. He's no longer alive. He's a 20th century poet, though. And he lived in the country. And where he lived, the fields were very rocky. And so in the process of clearing the land, farmers would make stone fences. Instead of wooden fences, they'd build stone walls to keep the cows in or the horses in. And this is a poem called Mending

[44:24]

Wall. It's a long poem, so I've excerpted parts of it. So it's not the whole. It's not the entire poem. Something there is that doesn't love a wall that sends the frozen groundswell under it and spills the upper boulders in the sun and makes gaps even two can pass abreast. These gaps, no one has seen them made or heard them made, but at spring mending time, we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill, and on a day we meet to walk the line and set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go, to each the boulders that have fallen to each. We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outside game,

[45:25]

one on a side. It comes to little more. There where it is, we do not need the wall. He is all pine and I'm apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says good fences make good neighbors. Spring is the mischief in me and I want a notion in his head. Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall, I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out and to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down. So I think I have time for some questions. So questions or comments if anything, if anybody would like to

[46:30]

to raise anything. What was your state of mind like when you had those encounters on the road? Well, much to my surprise, I was calm. You know, initially when I wondered, no, it was interesting as Leslie was going to the same meeting that I was, but she took a Tassajara vehicle and I took my car because I wanted to get new tires. And I was standing there thinking, maybe Leslie will drive by and see me and somehow I thought you would save me from, but you didn't. But I felt calm. And then, you know, when I got back in the car and I was driving and thinking

[47:34]

everything was okay, and then the car started shaking, that made me nervous, you know, because I didn't know how serious it was. But then again, when I got out and there was the flat tire, I don't know, I wasn't very worried. And when the man got out of his car and came over to help me, I wasn't afraid. I've read so many stories about terrible things that happen to people on highways, but I really can't explain it. Yes, Valerie. Do you have it with you or can you say the words? Your poem is almost starting to get to you.

[48:35]

Oh, I can't say it and I don't have it with me. I thought about it. It's interesting. I wrote a poem a couple of summers ago about the 14-mile dirt road that we all have to come down to get to Tassajara, and how the monastery needs the road. The road helps us because by the time we actually get to Tassajara, we've already been on a journey. Sometimes you think the journey begins when you get to Tassajara, but it happens before. So, I don't have it memorized. Thank you for asking. Would you like me to post it? I mean, okay, I can do that. Kathy? Something does not like a wall. When people feel the need for walls, how do you respond to that?

[49:54]

When they feel boundaries. I mean, say, how do you feel about boundaries? Do you think we ought to have boundaries? I think we need boundaries. I think boundaries are really important. I think there are times when boundaries are useful and times when they get in the way. So, it's kind of knowing when to take refuge in a boundary and when to let it go. Is this something that you're working with? I don't think of it that way.

[50:58]

How do you think about it? I guess I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, but in response to something coming up about walls, I felt drawn to inquire into what one's feeling about boundaries, what you're feeling about boundaries. I guess I have a great deal of sympathy for the neighbor who said, good fences make good neighbors. I felt that. I like Robert Frost's poetry very much, but still I felt great sympathy with his neighbor who said, good fences make good neighbors. Did everyone hear what Kathy said? Kathy said she felt a lot of sympathy for the neighbor who said,

[52:07]

good fences make good neighbors. I think that both are true, and especially we live very closely together at Tassajara. I think for each of us, there's a sense of some space that we need. The way we're able to live in community, I think, is that we do respect one another's boundaries. But I also think that it's good to know what we're walling in and walling out, and when we can let those boundaries down. I think because we're all working with the precepts, with right speech in particular, it seems to make it possible to

[53:17]

have both intimacy and respect for one another's boundaries or privacy. I think it's a dynamic relationship between boundaries and communicating and getting close and working out what that dynamic is in each relationship that we have here. So I think both are true. Good fences make good neighbors and something there is that doesn't love a wall that wants it down. Carolyn? I think this conversation reminds me of the formalization of having a formal relationship and how much intimacy that can bring.

[54:19]

And having a wall or a boundary constructed and talking about that construction is where the intimacy lies. And agreeing on that is what is helpful. Could people hear what Carolyn had to say? No. Can I try to rephrase? Carolyn was saying that within a formal relationship, or a formal practice relationship? I think every relationship is a formal practice relationship. So every relationship is a formal practice relationship. Constructing the agreement about the boundaries of the relationship can bring more intimacy. Is that how you would say it? Yeah. I would agree. Meg?

[55:23]

I think the poem is much more about figuring out where the appropriate place on a wall is. Because he acknowledges that you need it to keep the cows out of each other's fields, but that you don't need it where the trees aren't going to wander into each other. I don't feel like it's just saying you should take down all the walls. He does mend them where the cows are, but he wants to propose to his neighbor that maybe you don't need them. So it seems very much to me to be addressing that balance. Could you hear Meg? She said the poem seems to address the balance, that there are places where the walls are needed, like to keep the cows in, and other places where the walls aren't needed, like where it's just apple trees and pine trees. So, yeah.

[56:25]

Is that Everett? Yeah. I think one of the interesting parts about the poem is that there's a disagreement. One neighbor says, yeah, we need a fence here. The other neighbor says, no, we need to take that fence apart. What do you do with that disagreement? How do you work with that? That's a great question. Everett said a dynamic of the poem is the disagreement between the two neighbors. One who said, yes, we need a fence, and the other said, no, let's take it down. It reminds me of the book Difficult Conversations. Sometimes you get into a conversation with someone and you have really opposing perspectives. And what do you do? Well, this approach recommends that you try to have a learning conversation about it. So, you know, if Robert Frost and his neighbor could get together over a cup of tea

[57:32]

and say, well, tell me more about why you think good fences make good neighbors. What is your experience about that? Can you help? The neighbor doesn't particularly want to talk about it anymore. Well, then you can't have the conversation. But if they did, I mean, I think the idea is to try to approach it as a situation where you can learn more about each other's points of view. It's not like one is right and the other one is wrong. They have reasons for having these different perspectives. And if you and I disagree about something, we might want to try to understand where each of us was coming from rather than my saying, well, I know I'm right. You're wrong. And that doesn't really get you very far. But I think that does make the poem more interesting, right?

[58:37]

Walter? I think that each of us has a wall and no wall. We have a wall because we need our own space and privacy. Yet we live together. We want to be together. So there is a wall that keeps us private. And still there is no wall because we can't reach out. Yeah, Walter is saying there's both a wall because we want our privacy and no wall because we want to reach out. We're choosing to live in community. What we're doing right here, living in community, where there's no wall and yet there's a wall amongst all of us. We want that privacy for ourselves to be effective.

[59:46]

Sometimes I think that really happens in the zendo. We have our privacy. We're sitting individually, but we're all sitting together as well and bowing to each other. And it's a very communal practice that gives us privacy and space at the same time. Keith? Was it Keith? For a couple of years, I owned a house in Cleveland. And there was a wall of property separating my property from the other person. And I really liked it because it was about 200 years old. And it was made of stones that were piled up about 2 feet, 2 1⁄2, 3 feet high. And it was very functional. And he could pull us to our apartments. I handed it to Dan. And he had a horse that he dumped across. And some dogs and stuff. And yet we could walk right up to the wall. We could walk over if we wanted to. Collaborate.

[60:54]

Thank you for that image. Yes? Is it Rick? I'm sorry, I'm nearsighted, so I can't really... I'll assume it is. I was just thinking in all of this discussion about your theme of diversity and how different cultures come together in a new country. And one model is some attempt at assimilation, which many people try. And it doesn't always seem to work out very well. The other extreme would be an isolation that also doesn't seem to work very well. And finding a way to honor diversity and maintain diversity is just like this, I think, this discussion of boundaries and whether they're appropriate or not. Thank you.

[62:00]

Diana talks about three ways of dealing with difference in our society. And the United States has used all three. One of them is excluding people. Another one is the melting pot image where you try to make everybody the same. And then the third is pluralism where you recognize the differences. Where the living in harmony comes because the differences are recognized, not trying to make everybody the same. I think that's what you're saying. Yeah. Maybe one last question.

[63:03]

Yeah, I can feel my emotions rising during this conversation about diversity. And I guess in the Vision Quest, there's eight other categories. I can't remember all the categories that are equally important issues. And as someone who came here really to study Buddhism and is very interested in the academic discourses, I understand diversity is an American and kind of a new world phenomenon we have to deal with. But I will admit that sometimes I feel like it's getting shoved down my throat a little bit. And I mean, I feel pretty diverse. I'm not, but I also feel kind of diverse. But I also just feel like there's so many important issues at Zen Center. I long for discussions on pedagogy.

[64:08]

Like, how are we being taught? Or just academically, how are we being taught? I don't know if it's a question or not, but how can you relate to this? Pru brought up her strong feeling that diversity is only one of a number of areas that the Zen Center is looking at. Can I just rephrase it? You feel it's being shoved down your throat. And that she'd like more discussion about pedagogy or how we're being taught or some of the other areas. And those are all being addressed in the vision plan. There's a whole area about priest and lay training, the path of the priest and the lay practitioner. I mean, all of these are being addressed. I think I chose to talk about diversity because it's something I feel very passionate about

[65:12]

and I'm working on within the structure of Zen Center. But I feel equally passionate about all of the others. I hope there'll be many dialogues about all of these things. How we learn, what we learn, how we're trained. I think that's a very rich area to study and talk about. So I don't think it's either or. Well, diversity, it's what we have to deal with. There's no escape from it, obviously, because it's our problem. Well, you could say it's our problem or it's our opportunity. But diversity, it is something that... I don't know if it's just American.

[66:18]

I think nowadays the whole world is getting all mixed up. But it is something that we... that is offered to us, in a way, to deal with. I see one more hand. Yes, okay, Judith. And this will be the last question. One of the things that I discovered this summer as we studied together about white racism is that, to put it in your terms, sharing the goad for a white person or an African American has a very different meaning from sharing the goad for a person of color. And I'd like to...

[67:20]

I don't quite know if I can articulate all that I... I don't know what I understand about that, but I guess I just want to encourage the white people in this room, European Americans, to look into that. Thank you. Judith said she understands that sharing the goad is a different experience for white people or Euro-Americans than it is for people of color. And she would like to encourage those of us who are Euro-Americans to explore that. So, thank you. So that seems like a good note to end on. May our intention...

[68:15]

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