Good morning everyone. Hi. How we doing? Good. Thank you so much for coming out. It's really loud up here. Okay. Like that? You know I never use a microphone and you'll soon find out that I don't need one. But it probably does the recording, too. Yeah, so you'll want to keep this, I'm sure. So when Lori said she would introduce me, I said, oh, good, you've taken the first part of my talk. I don't have to do that timeline. But I do want to tell you a little bit. It's lovely to be here. a little more daunting than I thought. I speak a lot in Bozeman, but never to groups this size, and never to such an interesting combination of

[01:06]

familiar faces and unfamiliar faces, but intimate with both. So I'm happy to be here and give this a shot. So I have functioned as a teacher for some years now, but now I'm functioning as a priest slash teacher, and it's new. It's like I came here three years ago at the invitation of Sojin, And my sangha in Bozeman, from two directions, they said, we think you should ordain so that you can then get transmission, so you can be independent. And basically, so Sojin doesn't have to help me do things anymore, so I can do them myself. And then I went off, you know, like basically here's how you fold your old queso. You know, Alan gave me great instruction and then I was off on my own.

[02:09]

So I haven't really had much training, although I thought I was going to be so good at it because I watched priests for so long. It's what I always wanted to do. And now that I do it, it's just like swimming in fabric all the time. It's, and we have a lay sangha in Bozeman, so I'm sort of like, I'm like a cultural appropriation, you know, like, what are you doing? But they also appreciate the fact that someone is there holding a certain kind of form. What I do in Bozeman. First, I'll tell you that I'm the mother of a wonderful son. His name is Eugene. He's 15. Right now he's sleeping. I texted to find out what was going on. His grandma said he's sleeping. 11 o'clock in Bozeman.

[03:09]

That's good. We have a new dog and he is very much into computers, building them, gaming, all of that. And he is just one of the places I find myself the most alive and the most committed and the most happy and the most frustrated and the most in not knowing and the most of failure. But I'll talk about that in a minute. I work for a nonprofit. I work for a regional United Way. I'm a program director for after-school programs, so I help many teachers run after-school programs, and I do the sort of work of training them, doing some of their finances, helping the parents like that. It's an office job that has some good travel time in there. It allows me to both have quiet time to work, learn how to write grants, and also go be with kids and teachers sometimes.

[04:17]

One of the things that our United Way does is United Ways used to just sort of be a clearinghouse. Those of you that grew up with United Ways know they were like the Red Cross. We raise the money, we give it to people who need it. We raise more money, we give it to people who need it. We still do that, but now we have some impact areas, what's called impact areas, that we commit to. So youth development is one of them, and basic needs, helping organizations have what they need to supply food, housing, like that for people. One of them is behavioral health, or that's what we're trying to call it now, behavioral health, mental well-being. In Montana, we have a very high suicide rate, especially among young people. They've linked it to a number of things, but one of it is the altitude.

[05:22]

They think that in the Rocky Mountain region, the lack of oxygen is contributing to a level of depression that is probably not causal, but it doesn't help. And so there's a lot of work in the Valley where I live to de-stigmatize mental illness. And I find this to be very consonant with Buddhist practice because we're all mentally ill and it's just a matter of what flavor is yours. And you'll hear a little bit about what flavor is mine today. So that's the day job that pays the bills and gets health insurance and takes up an enormous amount of time and mental energy. Where I practice is at a place called the Bozeman Dharma Center. So the Zen group there has been around for a while.

[06:26]

Wendy Roberts, who practiced here for about a year or two in the mid-90s, started it. She was a student of Reb's, and Reb started going there every year. So when I moved to Bozeman, what are the odds that Reb Anderson, those of you who know who that is, would come every year and lead a weekend retreat. So I got to know Reb almost better through those retreats than I ever did when I lived at Green Gulch. He stopped coming after a while. Sojin has come. Lori has come to teach. Alan has come to teach. Other people have come to visit, which I always appreciate. And then a few years ago, a woman who has some resource put together the Vipassana group in town, a Tibetan group that's led by He's a teacher here, Anam Tutim. He's in Point, Richmond. He has a foundation called Dharmada. I forget which Tibetan lineage he's in, but he has a foundation and he has like franchises basically.

[07:31]

So we have a franchise in Bozeman. So we have a Dharma Center that has a Tibetan group, an insight group, a Zen group, and now a Thich Nhat Hanh group, a young people's group, Adyashanti's group, they're not exactly Buddhist, but they're non-dual, so they sort of got grandfathered in. They meet once a month. So it's a very lively center. There's other things going on. I think a mindful creativity group is starting. And as long as they read a little Buddhist scripture at the beginning, we're counting them as, okay, you can come in. So in that group, I'm the leader of the Zen group. Wendy, who is the founder, and Sojin got together and invited me to be the teacher, not just a teacher. But all along, I've been offering classes, offering instruction, being in a leadership role. I also serve on a program committee for this Dharma Center, which is, well, as you know, if you sit on any committee at the Zen Center here, how things quickly spiral into sort of a corporate vortex of, like, details.

[08:56]

procedures and all kinds of things. So I'm on the program committee and it's our job to vet guest teachers. Now, I didn't have to vet Alan when he came. I just said he can come because I knew him. There are many teachers like that, but we have Zen teachers who come. We have Vipassana teachers who come, Tibetan teachers. So one of the reasons I'm telling you that is the amount of teaching that's going on that I'm participating in and absorbing has activated something in me and my practice that has uncovered one of my deeper obstacles to calming down and being of benefit to all people, which is probably, if you have to title this talk, it will have to, the word choice will be in there somewhere. I recently led a two week, once a week, two session intro to Buddhism class.

[10:05]

We do lots of intro to meditation three times a year. We do intro to meditation. So people come, they learn how to meditate. When the Insight people lead that, they have all kinds of meditations, you know. And I do too. I mean, I know about them, but when I'm up in front of a group giving meditation instruction, really my impulse is like, well, sit up straight, lengthen the back of your neck, put the tongue in the roof of your mouth, find your breath and come see me in six months. You know, that's how I got taught. It was like face the wall and see what comes up. And, um, In the Insight Group, and this is not so much a comparison as like a friendly, how do we come together in this Dharma Center, there's a tremendous amount of guided meditation. And I have found that my tolerance for guided meditation is dwindling quickly.

[11:11]

It's like I can't hear myself be deluded. You know, you're so busy telling me how to be enlightened. I can't rest in my story. You're like really bugging me. So I did this two-week class and I thought, you know what I'm not going to do? I'm not going to start with the Four Noble Truths. How radical is that? I'm going to give people some instruction in Buddhism and I may not even mention them. I may not even talk about suffering. You know that handout that's here that has the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path and then the dependent origination and on the back there's all these lists? Well, I stole that from here and we have copies of it there. And I just took that in and I just sort of went like this and I thought, you can start anywhere when you want to talk about Buddhism. You don't have to start with the Buddha's life or, um, his enlightenment or anything.

[12:13]

You could start with right speech. You could start with, you know. So I did that and one of my friends who's in the insight group came up and said, you know, I get this feeling that in insight, we're very tidy. You know, we follow our breath or we count our breath or we name our emotions or we just keep it together. We're very cool. And I get the feeling in Zen you're just kind of wild. And then after she said that, she goes like emotionally, like inside, like all sorts of things are going on in there. After that, I happened to listen to a part of a talk of Kathy Fisher's. She and Norman were leading the practice period down in Tassajara. And I listened to the first part of it and she had this great description of that, which is, we have all these beautiful forms.

[13:15]

We have robes, we have mudras, we have bowls, we have bells, we have bowing, we have chanting, we have ways of walking, we have ways of turning. It is so neat and tidy. And then we put you down on the cushion and you're on your own. And that's where the wildness comes in, but it takes all of this form to hold that wildness. And it's in that wildness that we come to really know who we are or who we think we are. We come to hear our stories. We come to see where we've, we've landed with ourselves. So, um, So my roles or my journeys or my obstacles, I feel those are all the same thing. The roles I play are the same thing as the obstacles I face are the same thing as the journey I'm on as a Zen practitioner, as a person of the human race.

[14:20]

Um, so being a mom brings up a lot of not knowing, especially for boys who are teenagers, especially for very introverted boys who don't even know what they want for dinner. How can you not know that you have a craving for chicken tacos? How can you not know that? But he doesn't know. I don't know. And then if I'll put something, he'll just love it. And I make a note, he loves it. And then I try it again. That is come and gone. So there's a lot of not knowing, but there's a lot of curiosity and listening and watching. And he has this whole life. And it's just amazing. Those of you who are parents or aunts or uncles watching someone grow up. Well, it's as exciting as watching each other grow up. So part of what I'm talking about today is how I am growing up or attempting to.

[15:23]

So one of the ways I'm growing up is being a mom. Being a mom forces me to grow up because I can't sit there crying in my soup when someone needs a breakfast made or a paper looked at, or more importantly, which way does the CPU unit go in the computer he's building? Certainly mom should know that. No, he knows all that. I'm learning a lot. But if you need your rig overclocked, talk to me, I can hook you up. Some of you don't even know what those words mean, do you? Being a teacher, the obstacle that it brings up is not having enough time. I don't have enough time to be the teacher or be in the teacher function that I want to be. There is not enough time. And yet I can't let that stop me.

[16:24]

I have to show up. I want to show up. I want to be with people and I want to help them do what we're all doing right now, sitting together, bringing forth the Dharma. Even though I'm the one speaking, you're the ones doing really the hard work of listening to someone bringing forth the best she can her understanding. So I don't have enough time. I don't get to study enough. And books are coming out, you know, by the hour, wonderful books by our contemporaries. They're writing wonderful stuff. And then it doesn't even mean I'm even getting to the stuff we should be studying, like the sutras and Dogen and all of that. But I thought it wouldn't be very friendly of me to show up out of the blue. For those of you who know me well, you probably want to know how I'm doing and how I'm practicing. And for those of you who don't know me at all, you don't want to, you know, nobody wants to hear me come in and, you know, break down the Genjo Koan for the 45th time, you know, or give a talk on a topic.

[17:36]

I just thought I need to come here and be with you and see if I can be with you and have you be with me. So I'm taking the time to do that. And that's what I do a lot with the Zen group. Being an employee, working for a nonprofit, having a boss who's 20 years younger. God, I used to really compare ages. Someone who was a year younger than me, I used to think different. They're a year younger. What do they know? I mean, and that didn't stop until I was in my 50s and I realized we're all just in this soup together. But she is also a Dharma student, but she's also really fierce and she has that energy that 40-year-olds have, you know, like she's like a 40-year-old mixed with a college student. She can stay up all night and work. which alarms the rest of us because then we have 25 emails in our box in the morning because she's cleared off her desk.

[18:42]

What's happened for me this year is my program director, my immediate supervisor left right before the school year started and I was left with a job that she had been doing that I sort of knew about plus my own job plus learning new software. Yeah. And so what I have been dealing with the last six or eight months is a level of panic that I think has always been there in my life, but has really been brought forth by the circumstances of my job. And what I'm learning about panic is that it is a kind of vulnerability that I don't want to bear. because it is revealing incompetence after incompetence. I don't know how to do the software. I don't know how this program is supposed to work. I don't know how to write this grant. Every part of my job is something I don't know how to do.

[19:44]

That's not a really great way to wake up in the morning, to feel like you're going to face everything you're going to face you are not good at. But it's not an ability thing. It's a capacity thing. It's a, it's a circumstantial thing, but can I bear it? Can I be in that? So it brings forth the question, the basic question that I think is the basic question of Buddhist practice. What don't I want to feel? I think that's what we're all running around in our lives doing. What don't I want to feel? So I think my practice has taken on the quality or the question of embracing paradox. Really being open and I dare say at ease

[20:49]

with dis-ease, with paradox. In the behavioral health world, in the developmental world, in the therapeutic model, Where we're headed is growth and integration of all these parts of ourselves that we don't want to look at, that we don't want to feel, that we may not even know about. Bringing the unconscious to consciousness through the help of advisors, counselors, self-reflection, journaling, yoga workshops. And I saw something up there about hearing voices, and I really want to read that flyer. I don't hear voices, but I recently, except my own, right? There's a bunch of them. But I recently had someone in my house who does, and I told her about my creepy basement and she went down there and she said, oh no, there's, and she started telling me about who was down there.

[21:57]

It didn't ease my mind. But she felt fine about it. It's a very creepy basement. And so I have Tibetan prayer flags that someone gave me, a big poster of the Dalai Lama, Christmas lights, but still it's a stark place. And that's where the laundry is. So in the developmental model, we're looking for growth, we're looking for healing, and we're looking for integration as a way to grow up. And I think this is very important that we remember that we're human beings with mental illnesses, with mental challenges, our hearts hurt, we're confused, and so To avoid spiritual bypassing, we must look at our craziness and be with it. And I'll talk about being with it in a minute.

[23:02]

I'm already feeling the being with it as a very uncomfortable situation. In practice, we're more headed towards a kind of comfort with not knowing or accepting and releasing our struggle, like really getting that we're already free, we're already Buddha, and we're human, so that we will suffer and there will be disturbance. Now some of this is coming from the most recent weekend workshop we had. I can't go to all of them because there's so many and I suffer when I can't go. And then there's a little bit of relief. Like I'm going to sleep on Saturday. I'm not going to go. I'm going to be with my son and the new dog." But this is from a teacher. His name is Bruce Tift. Some of you may have heard of him. He is in the Tibetan lineage. He was a student of Trungpa's. So he's in that sort of crazy wisdom, you know, everything's a disturbance, work with the energy, but he's also a therapist.

[24:09]

But he's not the kind of therapist you go and tell your story and get a lot of empathy. And he made that very clear by the end. He works with high functioning adults who want to break through and realize that they are already free and that they can live within disturbance. So disturbance is my new favorite translation of Dukkha. For a while it was stress. You know, we know it's suffering and that we are all suffering. We're all having some dis-ease. It's uncomfortable to be human. But I like this idea of disturbance because disturbance can be positive or negative. Disturbance is just what's in the field, you know? The wind blows, it disturbs the stillness. Stillness comes, it disturbs the movement. The dog barks, it disturbs, well that kind of dog disturbs my nervous system. Other dogs disturb my sense of safety.

[25:12]

There are these dogs at work that are in a car and they bark like they're going to rip your head off. That's a different kind of disturbance. But in practice, we want to head towards open awareness, completely open to whatever arises, despite the quality of the feeling. It can be comfortable. It can be uncomfortable. It can be pleasant. It can be unpleasant. We're avoiding all of it in some way. Intense joy and bliss can be just as uncomfortable as suffering. Um, so I recently was reminded of that phrase, you know, the eye cannot see itself. And I always thought, yeah, but I never got what it meant in terms of our practice.

[26:13]

And this is not fully formed, but I'm putting it out there as a way to help myself fully form it. And you may help me with this. It was likened to if the eye cannot see itself because it is the organ of seeing, the mind cannot know itself because it is the organ of knowing. So a lot of times I would hear People, I remember Peter Shearson saying this once, that when you see awareness turn on itself and become aware of awareness, and I thought, what does that mean? I don't know what that experience is. But right now you can be aware of where your attention is, but are we fooling ourselves? Do we really know where we are? Are we located here? Are you located over here with me because I'm the one speaking?

[27:14]

Am I located over there with you wondering how am I doing? So where are we located and can we really know ourselves? Maybe yes, maybe no. The point being, where are we in relation to that paradox? How do we hold that? Okay, so I have a little poem. I have two poems. They're both by the same person, it turns out. I found this one, I cheat a lot at the Dharma Center. I borrow things from other groups, even though Zen is the most prop-heavy lineage there. Like we have the bells, and we have the rakusus, and we have the incense, and we have all this stuff. And the other groups don't have all that. But I was borrowing an extra thing that I needed from another group and I found this poem. And so I violated the precept of not taking what is not offered.

[28:17]

But I figured it was offered. It was there in the drawer. And I needed this poem. I'm going to save that poem for the end. But I found this other poem by the same poet. It's Naomi Shihab Nye. And this one, I think it says what our practice is in the most pithy way I've ever, ever heard. Walking around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second. Then decide what to do with your time. Walking around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second. then decide what to do with your time. So because things are fundamentally hopeless in terms of us knowing who we are and what's useful, we do things anyway.

[29:19]

And how do we choose what to do? There's so many problems. There's the problem of our own mind and our own wellbeing. There's the problem of our friends, our family, our aging parents, our adolescent children who we don't understand. There's all this plastic in the world. There's all these refugees in the world. There's all this disease in the world. How do we know what to do? So I feel like what she's saying is, first, it's not linear, but first, we rest in the groundlessness of our life, that at any moment, anything could happen. We don't know. I got, when I came this weekend because I was going to go to the ceremony for Ross and Susan on Sunday, Monday morning, and I was so excited to be invited and to be hosted.

[30:25]

And when I found out in Seattle that it wasn't happening, this wave of disappointment came over. But then I realized I wasn't disappointed. I was guilty. I realized I felt guilty for leaving that I probably shouldn't have left because of the circumstances at home. And when I realized I was feeling guilty, I felt this great relief. And then I could just come and be with all of you because I wanted to be here too. But I didn't know I was feeling guilty until this circumstance came and woke me up. And the thing to constantly remember, I've heard this for years and years, and it feels like brand new. This is what I love about practice. You can hear to study Buddhism is to study the self a million times. And then some days you just go, ah, yes, of course. So it's not me plus you.

[31:29]

It's not me plus the universe. It's not me over here as a single entity figuring out what to do with all of you. It's all of us together all the time. At the same time, learning to be independent, functioning, grown up, practitioner, helpful, bodhisattva, person, ordinary ordinary girl whose hair is, what did you say? Perfectly out of place? I asked him before we came in, how's my hair? Cause I'm not supposed to have any, so I need to. So practice is basically A practice of recovery. Over and over, we're recovering ourselves.

[32:31]

We're recovering our sensations. We're recovering our intention. We're recovering our friendships. We're recovering. We're remembering. So we're coming back. So I want to name two qualities. I'm doing excellent on time, by the way. Just want to point that out. Just excellent. So some of you may have heard of Ben Connolly. He wrote a really beautiful commentary on Vasubandhu's 30 verses, and we studied them. Norman and Kathy Fisher visited Bozeman a year and a half ago, and they taught together and Norman barreled through all 30 verses in a weekend. Yeah, which is hilarious because when he came and did the Sandokai here about 25 years ago, we got through the first four lines in six weeks.

[33:46]

So I was really amazed. He's really grown. I think he's doing great. 30 verses in a weekend and having to share it with Kathy, who was doing koans. It was lovely. Now, why did I tell you that? Oh, because of Ben Connolly's wonderful commentary. It makes you feel like, hey, me and Vasubandhu, I get it. Projection only, you know? It's like all just projection. Forget about reality. Just get intimate with your relationship with reality. It's the best you can do. Well, it's the best I can do. And I'm still working on my relationship with reality. But he wrote a new book and Ben Connolly is coming through Bozeman. Bozeman's getting on the map. He called us. I'm just saying, you know. Let me see. Let me check the calendar. Dalai Lama. Let me see. I think we have room.

[34:47]

So I was trying to organize a weekend retreat, but he's on a book tour and he can come exactly Wednesday, May 22nd between seven and nine. It's like, okay, you're in. And I just thought his book was great. He's got a new book out. It turns out he's on a book tour and his book is called Mindfulness and Intimacy. And I thought you sell out. Really, mindfulness, everybody, everybody on the mindfulness train. I'm gonna tell you a little history of my journey with mindfulness and what's happened in the world of mindfulness. At first, I was like, at first meaning what, five or eight years ago, how long is it? You know, it's been really big for, I know, 2,500 years, but I just mean in the last little while. I know it's a big famous sutra, but I also think of it as the seventh of the eightfold path.

[35:52]

And I'm like, yes, it's important, but look at all this other stuff. Why mindfulness? You're disrupting the Buddhist way. And I was all huffy for a few years about it. Then, like a switch getting turned, I went, this is great. Mindfulness, any way you can get it, secular, in the prisons, in the schools, whatever it takes for people to sort of wake up and realize that stuff is going on, that their wishing wasn't going on, and so they're developing a neurotic reaction so they don't have to feel what they're feeling, and maybe we can have a new relationship with our neurosis. One that is seeing it as the best we could do at the time, hold it with some love, and realize it may never go away. But Ben added intimacy, which is a great Zen word.

[36:54]

So mindfulness and intimacy. Now, I recently learned that intimacy is not just our connectedness. It's also our relationship to being separate, that we're individuals, that you're over there and I don't know what's going on over there. I barely know what's going on over here. So the fact that we're all separate and we're all trying to do our lives and trying to remember that we really are all together is part of the intimacy. to really look at another person, whether you know them or not, and be in the place of not knowing with them in an open-hearted way, in a ready-to-learn kind of way. So the thing about neurosis that I've come to really appreciate is how much, and maybe this is just me, but I don't think so, that our neuroses are the ways we're trying to avoid feeling something else.

[38:09]

The thing is though, that neuroses, while it worked, you know, the developmental model where it worked while we were a kid and now we're hanging onto it because it's become a habit or we think it's the best way, or it's the only way we know, is that the more we do this neurotic behavior, the more it increases the suffering of avoiding what we're feeling. So a lot of times our suffering is not our actual suffering. It's the suffering that we have laid on top of our suffering to avoid the suffering. So talk about a second arrow, talk about a head on top of your own, talk about gasoline on the fire. Things are already bad. And then as humans, evolutionarily, we had to make them worse in order to survive.

[39:14]

Good strategy, no longer needed, but we can't just drop it, or we don't seem to be able to just drop it, or we drop it in moments. And in those moments we go, oh, Wow, that was liberating. And then it comes flooding back. But I have a great respect for neurosis now because I realize there's something I'm avoiding and my strategy to avoid it is something I can love and accept and stop harming myself because I'm doing it. Stop aggressing against myself because I'm neurotic. Just be neurotic. Like this is me, people. Those of you that have seen me for 30 years, it's not much different, but There's a few jawline things that are, there's a few wrinkles. There's a few, you know, it's like, it's not that we don't change.

[40:15]

It's that we don't change in the way we think we should be changing. It's more like we're opening and we're flowering and we're becoming more who we actually are, neuroses and all. So, um, so the neuroses, it's okay because we're human. That's not what we're trying to get rid of. I think what we're trying to ease up on is the aggressive self-attack we do to ourselves because we're suffering, because we're neurotic, because we did the best we could with a mom who invaded us or a dad who ignored us or something that happened 10 years ago or two weeks ago. So for me, I have this new love affair with my neuroses, plural. It's not that I want them, it's that I want them to know they're included, that it's not me having a neuroses, that it's one sort of thing going on and that I did the best I could.

[41:27]

Now, the other thing I learned that I've been really hiding from myself for a very long time some of you probably knew this all along, is how stubborn and resistant I am. It's like, No, I'm not that way. No, I don't need to change. No, I'm a loving, kind person, right? I didn't realize what was going on underneath. I didn't realize that my suffering was actually a choice and that my refusal to be happy was actually a choice. And when I heard that, I was like, oh no. Capital V victim over here, baby. There is no choice. This happened to me and I am owed something for how much I've suffered. It's like these attitudes came out that was like, wow, I don't want to see that.

[42:33]

I don't want to feel that. I'm a very accommodating, loving, saintly person. And it was really doing damage to that image. So a tremendous amount of willfulness and refusal. And instead of aggressing against myself about that, that's okay. That's what I do. I didn't know I was doing it, but now that I know, that's enlightenment. Knowing that you're doing what you think you're not doing. And the final one, it only gets better people, is terror. The terror that I actually have a choice, that happiness is a skill that you can learn and practice. You know, that whole Velcro Teflon thing, that negative stuff is like Velcro comes up and it just sticks and positive things happen and they slide off like Teflon.

[43:37]

I'm borrowing from Rick Hansen. There's just a lot of people out there. Most of them are here in the Bay Area, by the way. But it's true. It's like Teflon. A good thing happens, slides right off, and he's saying, let it sink in. Let it land. Let a good thing land the way you let a bad thing land. That's all he's saying. It's not like avoid your suffering and be happy because life is good. It's just give them equal time at least. And I didn't realize how terrified I was that I had personal agency, that I could make a choice given the fact that everything is out of control and that I don't know what's going to happen. So where's the balance? Where do I have comfort with the paradox of anything can happen at any moment and I have choice. And now it's time for the second poem and the strikers up.

[44:40]

I am telling you, I didn't even rehearse this, obviously. Okay, this poem is called Famous, and in my mind it means something else, but Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye. Do any of you know this poem? Yeah. Famous. The river is famous to the fish. The loud voice is famous to silence, which knew it would inherit the earth before anybody said so. The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds watching him from the birdhouse. The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek. The idea you carry close to your bosom is famous to your bosom. The boot is famous to the earth, more famous than the dress shoe, which is famous only to floors. The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

[45:46]

I want to be famous to shuffling men who smile while crossing streets, sticky children in grocery lines, famous as the one who smiled back. I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous or a buttonhole. Not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do. So thank you all for your kind attention. Any comments, criticisms, feedback? Oh yes, I used to live in a cult where it was all about feedback. Yes, ma'am. What's your name, Andrea? Well, it's not a point.

[46:54]

Well, it's like physics. It's a wave and a particle. You know, there are moments of it where it's like, I'm okay with it. And then there's riding the wave of like, I'm okay. I'm not okay. I don't, you know, so it's not an arrival. It's today. Well, in this moment, I can recognize that if I slow down, stop, take a breath, Whatever happened here happened and I have a choice whether to be okay with it as it is or not to. And that choice terrifies me because I was trained to not be okay with things. And to choose to be okay with it is terrifying. And to let the terror up on a sensation level with no story and just go, whoa, Just being with it on a sensation level, there's a moment of being okay with my neuroses without calling it anything.

[48:22]

Hi, Sue. Hi, Karen. You're still knocking him out of the park, aren't you? Um, I, I would, I am practicing changing the language. I didn't blow it. What was the second thing you said? It's my fault. I would say personal responsibility. So something happened. I got activated. I behaved and now I want to repair. Personal responsibility is I think the best we can do. There's nobody to blame because there's nobody there. And yet personal responsibility. Always stopping is always a good thing, especially for me.

[49:34]

Alan, hi. You spoke about the dynamic or the perhaps the scale of individual and of society is, what is us? We have an idealization of us. We have an idealization of all doing whatever it is Right.

[50:36]

I think that's true. One thing always brings up its opponent or its opposite. So if it's us, it's us and them, right? And then I guess, and this is going to sound intellectual and it is, and there are moments where I realize it and most moments I don't, us and them is held as one thing. I think that's what is sometimes meant by non-duality is that it can hold us together and it can hold us and them together. And having opposition is part of the terrain, but it doesn't mean we stay as the leaf being blown around. We realize it's us and them and it's a mess. And then we take a breath and we have to figure out the appropriate response.

[51:37]

And where I know where you fit in is very activist, which I admire greatly. And where I fit in is somewhere else. But it's irresolvable. Right in this, you know, with words. yeah because there's a there's a liminal space that we occupy there's a space that fuzzy line and i think that's what we're pointing to in terms of looking at yourself Well, that's a big topic.

[52:39]

So after this, Alan's going to get up here and we're going to go there. It really is. Okay, you guys send me notes on how you get there. It's very touching to bring up the deep suffering of this world and how it feels like the resolution is coming together. But I think wisdom is saying, maybe not. Linda, and then we'll stop, I think. Did you sing it in Bozeman? Yeah. Yes. I remember hearing Of all people, Reb saying at one point, you know, with his very intellectual, incredibly incisive, someone asked him a question.

[53:57]

He said, well, it's about love. That's all we're doing is love. And, and, and love your enemy. You know, Jesus is pretty, you know. We have one more. Do we have one more? Did you have a question? Hi. Hi, Penelope. Yeah.

[55:17]

I'm somebody who wants to know. I want to know what happened. I want to know why people do what they do. Like, I have a very grabbing nature around knowledge, especially of other people's interior life. So two things, one is it's good to keep the question open. If we can keep the questions open without any expectation of a response or an answer. Living in the question is what can keep our hearts soft and open to other people, even those, especially those with whom we disagree or who are harmful. How to stay open to that without harming ourselves or allowing harm to happen. How to keep loving. But the thing I really learned, and this has been another hard point of acceptance for me, is there's lots of things we're not going to know. Things are unconscious for a reason.

[56:19]

And we may not need to know everything in order to soften love and go forward. I heard in that last weekend that you don't have to heal your past. And this was like, Oh my God, I just got a big thing cut off my to-do list. I don't have to heal the past. Check. It's the past. And if it comes up in the present, then it's the present. Deal with it now how it is. And, um, I was given great permission by someone that I don't have to understand everything that happened in order to be free. Because the freedom can only be right now, moment by moment. Even when I'm reading these horrible stories and I can send what I can send and take in what I can take in and say the serenity prayer.

[57:26]

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