And someplace in that period, my husband managed to tell me. My husband very seldom complains about anything. He said, you know, I really hate the smell of incense. Anyway, what I'd like to talk about today is how practice in our daily life and practice in the Zen dome sometimes inform each other or else at least inform each other for me and some of my experience and some of the things I've heard from other people. And this seems to be one of the things I noticed that's going on around here because about three or four weeks ago Yvonne Rand was here and spoke about her practice and the practice of clear intention and how she tries to work carefully through one thing and develop it little by little.

[01:07]

Now she and her husband have been practicing a practice of generosity. And then, the next weekend was our three-day Sesshin. And one of the things Mel spoke about is how when we practice that Sesshin, What we practice is leaving things away and letting go of things. And how it can be very, very difficult and it can be very, very miserable. But then when you get up at the end of that session, you take less back with you. And then you have more. Because you have that clarity that comes from dropping some of those expectations. So that was another way And at that point, somehow I flashed on one of my favorite images.

[02:13]

There were many beautiful ones at the Tibetan show of Tara rising. And that's the moment when Tara gets up from the zazen position and one foot is done. And how she brings that practice of sitting zazen out into the world to do things. And then last week, when I was not here, Alma spoke on metta, or loving-kindness, and I still haven't heard the tape, so I'm looking forward to it. So we've had this sort of chain, the way we bring practice into our daily life, and the way they go back and forth And I don't know if the class on family practice has started yet.

[03:17]

Not yet, but there's going to be a class on family practice. And there's been a lot of talk in the Vindhya of people who are parents over the last year, people who are parents, and how they work with that, and how their parenthood and their practice can meet. And I think usually when we talk about family practice. We've talked about it in the Zendo at least in that way. But then during practice period, I had tea with a lot of people, and one thing that kept coming back was people who live in families where the other members of their family, they may be living individually, or a lot of people who live, have mates, who have no interest in Buddhism, or have a supportive, sort of gentle feeling about it, but they're not involved. And then way at the other end, we have couples or families that practice together, and people who live here and practice as couples or as families.

[04:25]

So I guess, and today is Workday, so I guess there are two main things I'd like to talk about, or sort of think about in this, and that is, family practice in terms of how you live with other people, and how we practice in our work lives, our daily work lives. This summer I got to go to Tassajara as a work student for just one week, and it had been many years since I went to Tassajara. And I worked in the kitchen most of the time, And one day what I did was to peel five and a half gallons of oranges. And not only did I peel five and a half gallons of oranges, but somebody gave me the knife, and the cutting board, and the bucket, and the compost bucket, and the oranges, and showed me exactly how I was to peel five and a half each orange.

[05:32]

And that's like a vacation compared to the way most of us have to make decisions in our daily work lives. There is a tremendous freedom in that, you know. Of course, it got to the point where I started to think about mountains, because I had this big bucket, and I noticed the level of the oranges was getting lower, because just in geology, as things get lower, you know, most of the mountains in a mountain range are the same height, and that's because the pressure changes the stuff underneath to something else, and they can't get any higher. Well, the same thing began to happen to the oranges. So there was a point when I did have to make a decision, am I going to speak to... I mean, it's not just that you're told what to do, but there's somebody who's telling you what to do, and then there's somebody who's telling that person what to do, and somebody else who's decided what everybody's going to do, and it all fits together. Anyway, that is vacation, and I think most of our daily lives, our work lives, our family lives,

[06:37]

are not that simple, and that wasification. Ever since I started coming back to the center, one of the things that I've tried to do to bring some practice into my daily life is to get up with just enough time to get to the center of the mind. And sometimes that sort of leads to difficulties because I'm late some mornings. I can't find the car or the car key. But for me, it's a way of bringing mindfulness into what I do in the home, in my home. I have to leave aside my addictions, which are eating, which are, and one of my main ones is reading. I just don't have time to do that. And there's no one else up. And I don't have time to talk. There's no one I can blame for anyone I've done wrong. anything I've done wrong, and I have to move through a household of sleeping people rather quietly and with care.

[07:45]

So that was just one thing that I started to do to bring it in my daily life. And then during practice period, we read Zenki and we read I read Being Time for myself, and I'm particularly fond of this translation, which is Thomas Cleary's, and this part of it. Because it is the principle of being such, there are myriad forms A hundred grasses on the whole earth. You should learn that each single blade of grass, each single form, is on the whole earth. And I realized that just in some moments of zazen, I felt like I was sitting on the whole earth.

[08:56]

I could really realize that I was sitting on the whole earth and not just on the zazen. And so, when we walk in the Zen dome, we walk with mindfulness. And we talked about that sometime, how your foot appreciates all the steps and all the wood of the floor, and the wood of the floor can appreciate your step. It goes back and forth. And so I try to bring that now into my life when I'm out in the Zen dome. And at least when I'm walking outside, to remember that each step I'm taking is on the whole earth. And that's been a very, very rich feeling for me. I can't always remember it, and I can't really feel it usually when I'm walking inside a building, but when I'm on the earth, or on the cement on the earth, or on the asphalt on the earth, at least then I'm close enough, and that seems to bring

[10:04]

these two things together for me in a very, very important way. One of the things we do at home, I guess, is to compost. And I guess we've done that for about 20, 21, 22 years. And I find it's very difficult. We've got a little bucket by the sink. So when you're clearing the dishes, you can put it in there. And then under the sink, we have a bigger bucket that we untie that bucket into. And then we take the big bucket out and do it in the compost pile. And it's a whole, what in my family tradition we would call, a gansa magilla, a big scroll. Anyway, one day, About two weeks ago, I emptied the compost bucket, and I suddenly felt and realized, whatever the word was, that I was making an offering to the whole earth.

[11:20]

And I don't know where that came from, whether it came from 22 years of the compost, or sitting on this pillow, but suddenly I felt like something had come together for me. And, you know, we read about in our literature of great enlightening experiences and that, but somehow I think looking into that compost and it being alright instead of trying not to smell it and not to look at it and not to think about, is this the time that I must clean out that bucket, was a very great gift for me. Many of you know, some of you intimately, that what I do for work is I teach.

[12:24]

I teach this year's second grade. And I think a lot about how I can blend my teaching with my practice. And it's a very conscious kind of thinking. It isn't meditative necessarily. Another thing that I find is some mornings when I sit down, all my children in my class sort of parade uninvited in front of me. And I asked Mel about this. I said, you know, is that all right? He said, of course it's all right. But I find when they do that parade, they parade as who they are in a great deal of beauty.

[13:28]

Not who we want them to be, or who I want them to be, or who their parents want them to be, or what roles the school or the society or anyone wants them to be. They just come as they are. And that's a great help to me in my work. Those are some of the good things. The other things... Sometimes I'm angry, and sometimes I'm impatient. I live in a world of bills that do not go ding, or a clock that goes... And somehow... I have children that work at different cases, Children whose sense of time is different.

[14:30]

And somehow we all have to work together. Just as in the Zen Dojo, even though the bell is nicer and the bell rings, we have to get up and do the next thing. But I think one of the great things that I've learned And the part I've learned it from Carolyn, who's sitting right there, is that we talk about teaching as one of the caring professions, one of the giving professions, and that this is where all those things about yes being no and death and life being the same, are able to come together for me in a really clear kind of way where giving and taking really are the same thing.

[15:35]

When I can appreciate and really enjoy how much a child is learning, or what a child is doing, or how a child appreciates another child, then I can take from their experience of taking or my experience of giving, it's then that the children seem to grow and to be who they are in the most wonderful way. I think as parents often we get that. It's very hard to let go sometimes when your children are the noisiest in the hall and when you have to walk past another room without disturbing the other teacher. or when all the rules are not made by you. And some of them are even made by the state of California and written down there about what you're supposed to do. But I think most of us have some of these same experiences in whatever work they do. I do have a little sheet here of particular things I was going to talk about.

[17:04]

I just have to find what page it's on. One of the things we talked about in the Zen Do on a Monday morning a little over a year ago, in a way that many of us found a very accessible way of bringing our practice into our daily life, was appreciating how things come to us. And when we say the meal chant, we say innumerable things. Labor's brought us this food. We should remember how it comes to us. And I know Alan and many other, and I remember Alan and Kathleen especially, mentioning, thinking about that and how people at Green Gulch often think about that as the labors of the earth and the sun and the water, as well as the humans that bring that food.

[18:16]

And I think about it, Alan said he thinks about it even in terms of MUSAC, I believe, when he hears music, you know, recorded, and it may be even not very nice music, but of all the things, the traditions, the people, the equipment, of the different thought and acts that went into making that music. And for me, a lot of what I think about when I work with children is all the labors and the traditions that maybe generations of people brought those children to us, generations and generations and generations of them. And love, and how they come, no matter who their parents are, with desire for them, or hopes and dreams for them.

[19:22]

and often how they come with great hardships and very different backgrounds. One of the things that that I tried to teach children that I didn't really think about until I was very, I don't know, a few years ago. And it sort of has to do with stepping on the whole Earth again. And that is that the water, which is on this Earth now, it's the same water, no more, no less, as far as we know, that came with the Big Bang, our initial creation of this planet. that it's changed over the years, that sometimes it's been in ice and sometimes a lot of it's been in clouds, and that it's changed a lot, but that we still have the same water.

[20:30]

The kids say, You mean that rain that rained on me could have been the same rain that rained on the dinosaurs? Ooh, slimy! You never know as you're giving them this deep zen teaching what the response is going to be. You knock on a lot of doors and you never know what's behind. But that's been a really wonderful thing and you keep getting these different responses. To me, the big ideas and the big ideas that somehow no one ever taught me when I was little. Another thing that we talk about a lot in the zen book is the interrelation of life. And of course one of our basic hopes is realizing how we are not separate from all other things.

[21:39]

Sometimes it's easier and sometimes it's harder to remember that, and even harder to realize it completely. But one of the things that is an important thing for me that I do with children every year is we have a butterfly garden. Some of you know about that. But it gives everyone an opportunity to plug into it, all the children at different levels. Some of us enjoy the aesthetics of it and the flowers and being able to cut a bouquet, a little bouquet of flowers, and give it to another teacher or to the secretary. It's an opportunity for them to give. For some people, for some of the kids, it's a big thing just to be able to get out there and dig, or pull a weed, or to saw off a branch, to use those big muscles and to be able to give to a garden in that way. But they can begin to see very clearly the interrelationship of life and how

[22:46]

that insect, the larva that eats that leaf and may be destroying the flower, is the beginning of the stage, is one stage in that butterfly that someday again will come back and bring life by pollinating the flower. And so they begin to see that circle for themselves at a very simple level. and that interaction. One of the things, I keep thinking while I'm doing it, I don't know how many people here heard Yvonne speak a couple of weeks ago.

[23:58]

One of the questions that was asked then, when she spoke about clear intention and how she brings her practice into her daily life, and people said, well, where do you start? what's a good starting place and she said that any one of the precepts might be a good starting place and I thought about those and I went back and I read them and at that point I had wished she had gone over them just reading down a list and in coming back to them I thought about how they're different from the Ten Commandments And the Ten Commandments all start, Thou shalt not, or, you know, and at least the way we read them in the Zen Do is a disciple of the Buddha does or does not.

[24:59]

And also my understanding of them, and I have to say my understanding, because I find I rewrite almost everything that I hear to fit my own limited understanding, is that the ten grave precepts are there as support as the first three precepts for the main, the main shell. Anyway, the pure precepts are I vow to refrain from all evil, I vow to do all that is good, I vow to live and be lived for the benefit of all beings. And the grave precepts are a disciple of the Buddha does not willingly take life. A disciple of the Buddha does not take that which is not given. A disciple of the Buddha does not misuse sexuality. A disciple of the Buddha refrains from false speech.

[26:01]

A disciple of the Buddha does not sell the wine of delusion. A disciple of the Buddha does not slander. A disciple of the Buddha does not praise self at the expense of others. A disciple of the Buddha is not avaricious. A disciple of the Buddha does not harbor ill will. And a disciple of the Buddha does not abuse the three treasures. And one of the things I know, and I can't remember whether Yvonne spoke about it that day, book does is start from a point that can be easily handled and to try to do one of those things for a whole day. And sometimes those things that seem simple to me seem to be the hardest.

[27:05]

not to harbor ill will. Yesterday at my school, one of the teachers said she's taking a class and one of the big things they say that a successful school always has is collegiality. And I can imagine that any successful business or operation of any kind, that collegiality is a big thing. And one of the things she was doing for her practice was choosing the person at school least likes, that she has the hardest time getting along with and developing a collegial relationship with that person. And when she said that, I thought about something I had heard this summer in a lecture at Tassajara, and that was that, what we do in a sangha. is like a rock polisher.

[28:12]

That if you put one stone in the rock polisher, it isn't going to get polished. But if you put a lot of stones in that polisher, they start polishing each other. And that we, as we bump against each other, we wear off some of those sharp edges and become smoother. At least we hope we do. I think perhaps it's time for me to stop and make time for questions or comments or ideas. We've talked about this before.

[29:26]

I come from... My family is a very... I have this huge mixture within my family. That's my personal background. My mother came from... was born in this country and came from a religious background. Judaism. My father came from one of those early American families where his sisters belonged to the Daughters of the American Revolution. He converted to Buddhism. Oh, I'm sorry. He converted to Judaism. Wow! He converted to Judaism. That isn't as funny as it seems. He converted to Judaism when he married my mother. But before he married my mother, and that's where I met my mother, he was working with a group of doctors doing research. And these were the first real intellectuals he'd met coming from a very small Mississippi town.

[30:29]

His family had migrated too. And with this group of doctors who were Jewish, he saw for the first time people with whom he recognized the meeting of an intellectual and a religious tradition were neither negated or came in conflict with the other. And so he developed a great deal of respect for these people and their tradition before he met my mother. So it wasn't like, you know, I'm giving up my past for this. And I think what I got from that is that I had the right to choose my path. My husband is a Japanese-American from a Japanese family with a Buddhist background. When they came to this country, they sent their children to traditional Japanese school after school and to Presbyterian Sunday school because they could not visualize a future for Buddhism in this country.

[31:35]

Several years after we were married, we both began to practice Buddhism. My husband considers himself a Buddhist, though he does not practice here, though he did for several years, and Tsitsasen at times. He's one of those people for whom, for me, he is a teacher in that he really brings his practice to his work and his family life. For the past two years, he's been building a house, designing it, and building it, and laying cement. That's a long answer. Recently, one of the great gifts that I had was to be able to go to Green Gulch to Norman Fisher and Kathy's boys, twin boys, Bar Mitzvah. and there saw, at an incredible level, a blending of two traditions where his boys had studied, did a wonderful thing, and there at Green Gulch with a congregation of several Zen teachers, all students, and a grandfather, and a yamaka, and a tali, those things came together.

[33:03]

with the background of the woods. I think, and I've said this before, I think in a way one of our richnesses here is that we come together because we want to come together. Not because we're going to be burned at a stake if we don't do it, not because we're going to be ostracized if we don't do it, but we come because we want to, And one of our richnesses and also one of our difficulties sometimes is we come with different expectations. And we have to rub those off. I remember once Bill Kwan saying, Baker Roshi just doesn't understand the Jewish-Chinese connection. And I think, you know, sometimes this is one of the ways as rocks could not get in. Another question?

[34:07]

You want an instant answer? Mel and Bill Kuang and I and Bill's wife used to go out and drink beer and Bill would wear a ruckus suit and listen to Liz Okamura Toomey play the harpsichord in a bar. I don't know. That's my answer. I should have a deeper one. One of the great pleasures for me is when different parts of my life begin to come together. For the past years, Mel's son has gone to the school that I teach at. And there are other people. Let's see, Gary does not... I don't see Gary's face. Gary's daughter goes to school there. And Diane Gray's daughter, Lizzie, is in my class this year.

[35:24]

And that's such a pleasure for me. Also, sometimes, you know, You gotta, you're out there, you know. When you sit here and talk about how you try to bring your practice into your class and then somebody's there watching. And another way is, Carolyn, with whom I've team taught for many years, and I've learned a lot from her over the years, and I think one of the things I've learned is that when she looks at a child and enjoys them, her love and her pleasure is visible in her face. And it seems to me that's always such a gift to the child who she's teaching. Where you see the giving and the taking. A while ago we had a class on the Flower Ornament Sutra, and Norman Fisher gave it, and he spoke about reading it, his practice of reading it, and, I mean, the level of enlightenment that they talk about in the Numbers, and sentient beings in many worlds, it's extremely poetic,

[37:07]

and he talked about just reading it and reading it over and over without trying to understand it but how it helped his practice and he began to feel it and I thought about some of this and this is from the section on purifying practice and how These are directions to enlightened beings, I believe, or descriptions of what they do and to continue that enlightenment process and purifying it. And I'm going to read just a few. Enlightened beings at home should wish that all beings realize the nature of home is empty and escape its pressures. While serving their parents, they should wish that all beings serve the Buddha, protecting and nourishing everyone.

[38:11]

While with their spouses and children, they should wish that all beings be impartial toward everyone and forever give up attachments. When attaining desires, they should wish that all beings pull off the arrow of lust and realize ultimate peace. When they give something, they should wish that all beings be able to relinquish all with hearts free of clinging. When in gatherings or crowds, they should wish that all beings let go of compounded things and attain to total knowledge. If in danger and difficulty, they should wish that all beings be free, unhindered wherever they go. Sitting up straight, they should wish that all beings sit on the seat of enlightenment, their minds without attachment.

[39:17]

Sitting cross-legged, they should wish that all beings have firm and strong roots of goodness and attain the state of immovability. Cultivating concentration, they should wish that all beings conquer their minds by concentration ultimately with no remainder. I'm skipping. When washing their hands with water, they should wish that all beings have pure, clean hands to receive and hold Buddha's teaching. When on the road, they should wish that all beings tread the realm of reality. their minds without obstruction.

[40:09]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ