Thank you for the introduction. And thank you for coming to the Kids Zendo. And I wonder if you can tell me something about who you are, just like this, really quick. Your name, how old you are, what your favorite things are, and what are the things you don't like? I'm Alex. I'm 11. I like acting. I don't like You're pretty safe if that's all you don't like. What's your favorite thing? Do you like school?

[01:20]

Yeah? There you go. Maybe you don't like loud noises. Maybe you don't like scary movies. What do you think? Maybe you don't like bullies? What do you think? Some kids are too easy. Their parents haven't noticed. You don't like what? It's a hard question for you. And we have? I'll tell you, I like horses a lot too.

[02:27]

And I don't like falling off horses. And I don't like it when I don't get to see my horses. Three and a half the same as Leo. I love it. I don't like scallions. I don't either. I'm Alice. I'm 11. I like pandas, but I don't like calzones. Calzones? What are they? I like... Oh, calzone. I thought you said hell zone. Which is a really good answer.

[03:30]

Calzone is too. They're kind of gooey. Yeah. Well somebody can speak for you if it's too hard. It's a conference here. They don't like Brussels sprouts and that's it. Brussels sprouts and that's it. So far so good. I don't see any coming your way right now. You know, I think that you notice that everybody likes and dislikes kind of different things.

[04:36]

And for as many people as there are, there are things that people like and there are things that they don't like. And one of the things you might notice if you really like something is that you can never get enough of it. And if you really don't like something, when it happens, you don't know what to do. So can you figure out what we might be doing here from the clues I've given you about likes and dislikes? You have any ideas? One thing is, how do you have fun when something you don't like is happening? I don't have fun. Yeah. Most of us don't have fun when something we don't like is happening. But sometimes we have to do something about that. For example, if you don't like bullies and a bully shows up, what do you do?

[05:39]

You run. And if the bully can run really fast, then you have a big problem. You can line a match. I don't know if your parents want you to be carrying around matches. The thing is, there was a movie, it may be too old for you guys to have seen, called Ghostbusters. Did you see it? Good. And in that movie, they had something like a fancy vacuum cleaner. And it would vacuum up these scary things and keep them in a box. And the theme song of Ghostbusters was, Who are you going to call? Who are you going to call when things get scary? Right? You remember that song? It's a pretty good song. And I think one of the reasons we come here to sit and do the meditation is that we call on something while we're doing the meditation, while we're doing this practice.

[06:43]

We call on something to help us. What do you think we call on? In a certain way we call on Buddha and even more so than just the statue of the Buddha. We call on the mind that the Buddha found when he sat down very quietly for a while. He found a mind that was inside himself that wasn't upset no matter what happened. And that was great, because wherever he went, even though difficult things would happen, or scary things would happen, he would always find a way to calm down, and to teach people around him to calm down, and to be happy, and not to be scared. You know, I have a granddaughter who's three now, and she has a ducky, and whenever she's sad,

[07:48]

she looks for her ducky. It's a little scary to us because we wonder, what's going to happen if anything happens to that ducky? What if that ducky gets lost? Then how will she be happy? And actually, the ducky has a little tag, you know, how things have a tag on them. Little stuffed animals have a little tag that say where it was made. And she likes to take that little tag and rub her nose with it. And if you're very nice, She'll take the ducky over to your face and let you rub your nose on that tag because she thinks the things that make her happy will make you happy. But what we need to understand is that everybody's different and yet there's a way that when you get upset and you don't like something, you can find a place in yourself that's quiet and sweet and we'll help you. Right now you have your parents to call. Some of us, our parents are not so close for us to call when we have troubles.

[08:53]

So we've had to come here to find a way. Some people think that toys or movies or candy will make them happy or not tofu ice cream will make them happy. But what we found is when we don't have regular dairy ice cream, and when we don't have our horses, and we don't have science, and we don't have some of the other things that make us happy, there's something inside of us that we can find that makes us happy. So that's why we sit quietly, so that we can find that something that makes us happy. I think sometimes they teach you that some of the superheroes like Superman or Batman or Green Lantern will come to save you if there's a problem. But why we come here is to find something within ourselves.

[09:55]

Do you understand? Do you have any question? Do you think that's enough for today? What's missing for you? Hmm. Well, if you'd like to put the piece of paper down and put your hands together like this, you can try breathing a few times. And when you breathe in, breathe in happiness. And when you breathe out, Let go of anything that makes you scared. And you can close your eyes for a minute and try that. So that way you can actually try what I'm trying to describe to you. And you don't need to worry about what anybody else does.

[11:06]

Just do what you need to do to take care of yourself. Now, I think that's enough. probably the rest of what I have to say is totally boring. The children are so fresh and it's true that their preferences and aversions have not developed in a way that they, that ours have.

[12:08]

And their cravings and addictions don't cover them up in the same way. And today I'm here to talk about the Dharma transmission process that I experienced in May at Tassajara with Sojin Roshi and with Mary Mosin and Alan Sanaki and Vicky Austin and the Buddhas and Ancestors. So I wanted to say a little bit about what brought me to that situation. It wasn't not liking Brussels sprouts. but there were some very similar aversions and preferences that made me feel like my life was not working the way I wanted it to. So I came to practice. And when I came to practice, I started to notice some of the things that I did. And automatically, the things I did automatically. And when I noticed the things that I did automatically,

[13:13]

I said, well, this is interesting. For example, I remember very early in my practice, someone was very nasty to me, someone I wasn't afraid of, someone I worked with. And immediately the reaction came up, who does she think she is? I didn't think, who do I think I am? I was, who does she think she is? And not only that, I could have been and might have been a very formidable enemy at certain times. I'm working on it. And I could have squashed her like a bug, in other words. I don't mean physically. And I remember thinking as all of that reaction came up so automatically, well, what would happen if I trusted my practice and just dropped all that? What would happen? I think this is a very important moment for all of us. You know, we practice letting go of our thoughts on the cushion, but when we get into life situations that call up these habits of mind, we have a much harder time.

[14:19]

We believe, you know, in the non-tofu ice cream to satisfy us, or the anger, or whatever it is that we've been using to satisfy us. And we can feel it in our bodies. And to actually let go and trust the practice with our lives It's a really big deal. And I think it's those moments that actually deepen the practice for everybody, where you really enter another dimension when you say, okay, this is for real. I don't know how many of you saw The Matrix. I think it's a fabulous metaphor. There's one moment in there where one of the men says, I know this steak that I'm eating is made up. You know, everybody was programmed to have certain experiences. but I don't care. It just tastes so good and the memory of it is so good that I don't care that it's made up. And this is the same with the habits of mind that we have. They are so familiar, familiarly good to us in our bodies that we don't want to give them up and to trust the practice and say, what will happen?

[15:28]

What will happen if I trust the practice? is a big leap of faith. So our practice is about noticing what we do automatically and seeing what happens when we put our faith somewhere else, somewhere deep in the practice. So I started doing that and my life changed quite a bit. although I might have still seemed mean, grumpy, and a formidable enemy, still things were changing in other ways. And in any case, as I entered the practice more deeply in my life, you know, sort of trying as an adventure, well what would happen if I trusted the practice with this? What would happen? Really it's a question. I realized that I was being totally transformed and that this was very meaningful to me.

[16:30]

And so I decided that I wanted to become a priest. Part of that was I could have just practiced, but it seemed like a really rare opportunity to me to become a priest, particularly as a woman, because there were so many times in history when women didn't have that opportunity. So I felt that this was responsibility and a great opportunity for me as a woman to become a priest and to take 10 or 12 years to convince Sojin Roshi that this might be a good idea. But some people are more difficult than others, and I'm referring to myself. So it could take a long time to see that this person could actually become a priest. And so this is what led me in a certain way to the Dharma transmission process.

[17:33]

Because once you become a priest, then your life is transformed from the inside to be a life of service. You know, a very simple example is I used to exercise a lot, more than I do now, and I used to do it to be attractive. And when I began practicing, I started doing it for a different reason, which is those periods of zazen are long and hard, and I need very many, and this body needs to stay together. So even though some of the things that I did stayed the same, The center of it was that I need to practice as a way to open up this Dharma vessel. This is a rare opportunity in a lifetime to do this. So then once I started doing that, I really, I mean, living my life from that perspective, it's pretty hard not to have anybody to practice with.

[18:36]

So then I had to have people to practice with. So then I had to start a saga because I wanted to live up in the mountains with my horses and on this ranch land. It seemed to me to be a terrible waste to have these many acres that are in my husband's family and not enjoy them. So I started to sit down and many nights I just sat with the Buddhas and ancestors and eventually people showed up and so on so that now I have a Sangha. And then it became important to me that my Sangha feel that their practice was not missing anything. And so if they had a teacher who was not quite a kosher teacher, not quite a brown rope teacher, that might be difficult for them. So then it became a little more about the Sangha than about myself. So then I'll tell you a little bit about the process itself, about the Dharma transmission process.

[19:42]

You know, I guess it was I'm trying to think now, 2002. So several years ago, my mother died. And she was sick with pancreatic cancer and actually was diagnosed a few months after Meili. And she had a tumor in her liver. It was a really difficult eight months in which I made a commitment to be there for her during this time. Even though our relationship had been extremely difficult and she had been physically abusive and extremely difficult, she's actually the only mother-in-law that I've ever met that a husband could talk about and be telling the truth about how difficult his mother-in-law was. Fortunately, I realized this about my mother and cautioned my husband sufficiently so that when she came to visit, he would leave town. But in any case, I was the only middle daughter she had.

[20:51]

And at a time when you're leaving, you can't do it yourself. You can die yourself, but you can't really do it yourself. And I think the Dharma transmission process is a little bit like that. You can't be born by yourself and you can't die by yourself. You know, you're totally dependent on being born of the soil your teacher has been cultivating, the Sangha that you belong to, and to your teacher's heart. You're totally dependent. And I remember the moment when my mother, who chose to be buried rather than cremated, when she was being buried and the rabbi said, you can't do this yourself. This is what you need other people for, to put the dirt on your casket to cover you up. And the Dharma transmission process is very much like that. You're very dependent on everyone to bring you through the process.

[21:55]

You can't do it yourself. And through that experience, you have some maybe new understanding of what the Dharma is and what this practice is and how you belong to it. How you belong to it. So I can't say that doing the process itself was all peaches and cream and non-tofu ice cream. When I first got there, of course, at Tassajara, you know, you can't sleep. I couldn't eat much of the food, and you can't poop, you know, you're in a new location, you know, the whole thing, your whole body is totally turned around. And everybody else is in the same situation who just arrived, and they're all grumping at each other. So this was the beginning of, it's like when you go into labor, the labor pains are all crisscrossed, you know, you don't have a smooth situation going on.

[23:01]

And a day or two of grumpiness occurred. And then my husband showed up and he looked at me, he said, God, what are you doing? Here you are after this long life of practice for this week of intense transmission and you should be having fun. So I thought, sort of shook my head and said, well, so what is it? And I had learned something from doing very, very intense practice in Japan. which is that the practice is something like climbing a mountain and you're carrying a backpack and the backpack consists of all your hang-ups. And you better start throwing them out as you climb up this steep mountain because you can't get up the mountain and carry all your crap with you. So you got to start throwing out all of your attachments, all of your negative thoughts, all of the things that you think should be so that you can just be there for the process. So that in itself is very, very powerful. And the process, as I said, was one of really realizing the loving relationship among the Sangha members, particularly the ones who were there most evident with us, as well as the larger community of Tassajara.

[24:21]

But also, another part of it was realizing the relationship to all of the teachers who had spent their lives letting go of their attachments and aversions so that they could make space for bringing forth the Dharma. And I must say that by the end, you know, by the last ceremonies that we came to, there was so much loving care that went into preparing the space for the ceremony and the actual ceremony and so much deep intention that for a moment or even longer everything fell away and I really experienced the timeless quality of ceremony which I don't think I had experienced in that same way before. That I was in fact like Dogen in my master's cabin, like Dogen, that it could have been then, and that the experience was one and the same, and they had even created the space where the ceremony took place to be like that, so that one could have that experience.

[25:42]

So now I would like to talk a little bit about how things have gone since then, I think the strongest feeling I had after the Dharma Transmission Ceremony was one of responsibility. Over and over again during the ceremonial days and all of the activity, one repeats this phrase of something to the effect of not letting it die out even in your entire lifetime. which means this Dharma that you hold, that you embody, that you care for, is to be given so that it re-seeds. I don't mean like hair re-seeding. I mean that it sprouts again elsewhere. And that this experience of what I was receiving and what I had turned out to devote my life to,

[26:45]

was something that I now was holding in a way so that some of my usual problems and characteristics I'd have to work even harder on so that they didn't get in the way of my being able to give this practice to other people and to inspire them to trust and turn their life over to their faith and practice. So I think that was the thing that I felt the most strongly. It creates a little bit of disciple lust. In other words, where are these people that I'm going to pass this Dharma on to? And I also felt this familial bond with my teacher, Sojin Roshi, I surprisingly would sort of check in with myself during these ceremonies and say, do I feel any different? And I would say, yes, I do. I do.

[27:48]

I feel different. Also afterwards, you know, there's some painstaking copying of ancestors' names with brush and ink on white silk. And surprising to me and to my husband, I became a more tidy person after doing this work. And he said I even have become nicer, but you'll have to judge it yourselves. So I think that today when I was doing the bodhisattva ceremony, I recognized so many of the things that we usually put our trust in. I think I snuck one over here. The things that we have the precepts to help us with. Selling the wine of the delusion, slandering others to elevate the self, praising self at the expense of others, being stingy or being grumpy. All of these things are the things we trust or turn to when things go wrong.

[28:55]

when things go wrong we turn to these habits. And so for me the Dharma transmission process was yet another deeper experience of what happens when I really let go of these habits and give my life, give my life to the practice to this Dharma. So I'm very grateful to my teacher and Sojin Roshi and will continue to be so for the rest of my days, I would expect, because he also gave his life to hold this practice so it wouldn't die out. So maybe you have some questions. Yes. Thank you, Grace. When you were talking about the, I guess it's the guy in the Matrix eating meat, and maybe it's not, it's in his mind that it feels so good anyway.

[30:08]

Why not just keep the habits that, why not keep the habits that make us feel good and let go of the ones that make us feel bad? I wish it worked. I wish it worked because, as you know, Anything that feels good ends fairly quickly and then you just want more. So that's one reason. It's because it creates an addiction. Another reason is if you understand the laws of physics, energy is neither created nor destroyed. There's only so much energy. So the psychic energy that you put into habits stays locked up in habits unless you dissolve them and allow awareness to blossom and illuminate you So that's an entirely different situation than being caught in the habits over and over again. It's my understanding and experience that allowing the habits to dissolve into awareness itself and identifying with awareness and allowing it to illuminate my body is actually the real purpose of being human.

[31:17]

So in order to fulfill our human purpose we need to find the way to become illuminated by this energy and awareness. I don't know if you're convinced, but you might give it a try. What will happen if you try it? Well, I'm thinking of things like a cup of green tea in the morning, which is definitely a habit for me, which gives me great pleasure, or your granddaughter's ducky. No, we don't. We don't not do something We don't always choose to not do something because it will make us feel bad when it stops. You can't not love somebody because you'll feel sad when it stops. I understand. We're using a different vocabulary. Let me explain what I mean when I talk about this habit energy. I mean the habits that make you feel like you're okay. If you love having a cup of tea and you have a cup of tea, that's fine. If you think

[32:17]

that having a cup of tea makes you okay, that's a big problem. So it's the things that you feel your life depends on, and that if you don't have those things, your life is no good, and if you have them, you're okay. That's the vocabulary I'm using, so thanks for that clarification. Yes? journey for you? Because listening to you talk, it seems apparent to me that there are aspects of how you intrinsically are or have approached the world as a human being that have been difficult for you. Like you alluded to your kindness and meanness and places you started from that And so it just seems to me that some process of trying to forgive yourself for where you are must have also been involved.

[33:26]

Well, that's an interesting conclusion, but it isn't quite my experience. My experience is, as a psychologist, I know the difference between psychological improvements and letting go of self-clinging. As a psychologist, one would perhaps work with the notion of forgiveness and improving aspects of self. However, in dharma, in my experience, the more energy we put in the self and the concept of self, which would mean there's a self to forgive, the stickier the tar baby becomes and the more energy it soaks up. So for me, actually being a mental child was kind of a blessing. I didn't have to be that great. You know, I didn't have to be that great. And so I've never worried that much about being awful, you know, at times that I've been awful or, you know, maybe that's also a little sociopathy, but. Anyway, I've never really struggled with needing to forgive myself.

[34:31]

But I do know that for me, I don't teach people to forgive themselves because that would assume that they could have been otherwise and all of the other things about this self that they've created. So for me just letting go really depending on letting go and letting go of letting go like we talk about in the Heart Sutra that's where I put my energy. Yes? You alluded to some level of deeper work that you felt that you needed to do after the transmission ceremony. I think I heard you say that. for this much of it. Anyway, so I was wondering how did you do that kind of work? What did you, how did you address that?

[35:35]

Well, I'm not quite sure about what I said in the talk, but, you know, about this needing to do deeper work. But the water becomes deeper on its own. The work becomes deeper on its own if you trust your life to it. So pretty soon you have to, you know, you feel like your life is on the line when you make some of these choices about practice. And if you, again, continue to trust the practice in a sensible way, very powerful things happen. As far as what I felt after the transmission, for me it's like continuing to not indulge, I think this is what I was alluding to, not indulge some of my habits of speech, which are familiar to me and sometimes clever, and might be off-putting. I think that even going deeper in understanding that everything I do and my entire presentation of Dharma is dependent on my doing the work of not clinging to self and habits.

[36:44]

So it's like, you know, when you have stains in your sink, you know, first you wash it with soap, then you might get a little scrubby thing to do it. You got to pour some bleach in there too to get down deep. And so, for me, the commitment is, again, finding practices and circumstances where I can continue seeing, is that necessary or is that habit? Am I building self or am I letting go, so that the Dharma has a chance to present itself? What is the relation of this letting go to discipline? Because when I try to be disciplined then I have two people in the other constantly fighting and fighting and fighting and losing usually is a part of astral discipline that I forget every morning at five and so I'm losers and then I feel guilty and it gets worse and worse. Yeah. There's no end to the trouble. As soon as we create

[37:49]

something to do, there's another voice in us that says, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. So, you know, we need enough discipline so that we show up and we need enough discipline to know not to listen to those voices fighting in our head. Sometime we made a commitment to turn towards practice. And there can be a lot of, boy, I'm really great when I turn towards practice, and boy, I don't really want to turn towards practice. But none of it matters. What matters is really finding that, staying with that commitment that you made, that intention you had, and listening for those voices and saying, isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting that you think you're going to tell me to go back to sleep? Rather than saying, I'm going to be strong, which feeds one's ego and oneself, then just isn't that interesting. I'm still going to Zazen no matter what you say and no matter what you say about how great it is. It's just I'm going because I need to go.

[38:53]

So really you need to find the connection you have, not at five in the morning, but at some time. What does the practice mean to you? What is your deepest aspiration? What is the meaning of your life? And when you connect to that, then you can view the voices and not be caught by either side. This is like being on a diet, you know, this whole thing about doing Zazen. You know, you make up your mind and you say, I need to lose weight. You look in the mirror and you say, I need to lose weight. Your friends, your partner, everybody tells you you need to lose weight. And you know you want to do this. But then somebody is eating a cookie near you. Or then you walk by some bakery.

[39:56]

I mean, something happens and your intention wavers. But if you've connected really deeply to what it is about losing weight that really matters to you to be healthy, for example, not some superficial thing, then you know all those impulses will come up. But you have a deeper place to act from. Are we complete? Beings are numberless.

[40:44]

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