This is the fifth week, I believe, of our spring practice period. I can speak, but that needs to be louder. How's that? Better? Good enough? Okay. This is the fifth week of our practice period, spring practice period, and next week we'll have our sasheen, and then we'll have The Shuso ceremony, which culminates the practice period, is the head student question and answer debacle. Marie is our Shuso, our head student, and interesting that this particular practice period our head student is a young woman with two children and a husband and these children are quite young and boisterous and energetic and we asked her to be shuso to be the head

[01:28]

student. She was practicing here for a long time and then her husband was practicing here for a long time and then they both really loved Zazen and the practice for a long time and had a lot of freedom to do that practice because they were involved with each other. So they liked each other and then they got married. Sometimes when I marry students, I feel like I'm doing this out of my genuine compassion. But it's kind of like, goodbye. It's kind of like, at cross purposes in a sense. But I feel okay about that.

[02:30]

So sometimes when you marry somebody, they leave, and they raise a family, and that's kind of the end of their practice. But here, Marie and Greg, got married, had two boisterous children, and they continued to practice at a very low ebb. The actual involvement was way back. And there's the feeling that if you have these children, that you won't be able to practice in the same way you would like to for 20 years. 15, 20 years. And then what? You know, who are you then? So I rescued Marie.

[03:35]

And said, we would like you to be the head student for the practice period. And she's like, wow, you know, that's great. I mean, I never expected anything like that and so forth. And how am I going to do that? She has a job, she's a therapist, she has two children, husband, problems. But, her husband said, good, I'll take care of the kids. So, we said okay. The husband's taking great care of the kids. He has a bicycle built for three. He built this special bike so that the two kids and you could get around. It was wonderful. So Marie has been very faithfully practicing all for the practice, during this practice period.

[04:46]

And she talks a lot about her family as practice. She talks about the trials and tribulations and how difficult it is, as well as the satisfactions. And as we know, as a parent, if you've ever been one, you know there are trials, tribulations, and satisfactions, just like everybody else, according to our situation. We have two categories of people, of practitioners. One is family people, the other is single people. Sometimes married people or family people feel that single people have an advantage in practice because they don't have the burden of family.

[05:53]

and they have the opportunity to practice as much as they like, given their situation. And single people often feel, married people, family people, have all this advantage because of their situation. Yes, they do. If you're a single woman and you've never had a child, you kind of feel maybe some envy, or wish that you had, or this makes you feel maybe self-conscious. I remember when I was Abbot at San Francisco Sin Center, it was a problem because the single people felt that the married people, whether they had children or not, had advantage because they got special quarters, living quarters, and certain advantages that single people didn't have.

[07:06]

And the family people felt that the single people had various advantages because they didn't have the burden of family. So it's very interesting, this whole kind of dynamic. I don't think it's a big deal here, and I don't think it's a problem, but I think that there's something there that people experience. Whichever side we fall on, I think that it's really good to look at ourselves and appreciate what we have and what we don't have. To really appreciate our situation and sometimes

[08:11]

We feel that when we don't have something, we're deprived. And sometimes we feel that if we do have something, we're deprived. But actually, none of us are deprived. We all have... We all can appreciate exactly where we are and exactly what our position is. Without... being too upset about it. There are women, I know, who wish that they had children, and they can't, or they haven't. It's too late. We have a lot of single women in our sangha. So, this is a difficult problem for many women. And I think we need to understand that and appreciate it. And I think that sometimes a woman will be over the edge in age and wonder, well, now that I can't do that anymore, how will I live my life?

[09:27]

How will I continue? So I think that needs to be understood. So this is the first time I think that, it's not the first time that we've had family, a shuso with family, but usually it's not this way. Lori had family when she was shuso, but she lived here. Not so hard. But the history of practice in America, is that the practice has been open to everyone, which is very different than in other... in the East.

[10:30]

Yeah, a little different than in the East. So, Suzuki Roshi was very open to everyone and inviting because Practice is not an adept practice, but a religious practice. I want to explain the difference between an adept practice and a religious practice. An adept practice is where one trains to be a virtuoso, to be a perfect Zen student, like a samurai. And the goal is Satori. That's more like Rinzai style in Japan. Soto Zen is more universal practice, to include everyone. And the goal is not to be an adept, but to be a Bodhisattva.

[11:34]

include everyone without exception in the practice. So in the adept practice, only those who are really capable, most capable, can do this, and the rest fall away. There's no space for them. This is the catch-all practice. The safety net, maybe. and were caught by the practice. So, Soto Zen is like the farmer raising the crops, whereas Rinzai style is like the general moving his troops. So, this is unheard of, actually, to have a mother with two children

[12:48]

be the head monk for the practice period in the world. I did a practice period, shared a practice period with the abbot at Tassajara last year, and we decided that we would have a young mother with a one-year-and-a-half-old child be the shusa That was unheard of, too, in the history of practice. And it worked really well. It worked amazingly well. The father took care of the children and the child. The father is a priest, and he took care of the child the whole time. That was his practice. So adapting ourselves to practice without watering down the practice is difficult, but it works.

[13:51]

It can work. The more we are able to open our practice wider without compromising the practice, I think is what's actually happening in our Zen America. But there has to be accommodation. We have a schedule. We have a daily practice. And without compromising, when I say compromising, we have to be flexible to allow this to happen. to allow the practice to allow this to happen on both sides, we have to be flexible.

[15:03]

And with that flexibility, it works without compromising too much. But compromise, of course, is important. And to have the fathers taking care of the children, well, The mother is doing the practice. It's wonderful. It shows how our roles are becoming less fixed. And it's wonderful for fathers to take care of children. When I had my son, when we had our son, Liz and I, we were living here. for five years after that. And my wife was going to, well, she was going to nursing school. And in the middle, it was four years, she did a four-year nursing school.

[16:06]

In the middle of that, she got pregnant. And we had our son. So every morning, she would leave my son off in Zendo during service and go to school. And his first words were, ah, bolo de de. I have a wonderful picture of him with a beater on the bell, going like this. But I would just carry him around all day. I'd put him in the backpack and just carry him around all day long. And I just said to myself, This is not going to compromise my practice. What I do is what he'll do. I just decided that. And he went everywhere I went, he went.

[17:10]

And I'd have a meeting, five or six people, I'd put him in the middle of the floor with a bunch of containers. And he would just play with the containers, putting one into the other, like this, all day, the whole time. No problem. Until we moved into the wild world, we had big problems. But I think one of the... problems that we haven't dealt with a lot, because our practice is a quasi... it's always been historically quasi-monastic. We have a monastic sort of setup. Zen dealt with the questions and everyday Zazen and so forth, and it doesn't take into account families and children. Even though families and children participate, it's like

[18:13]

Laurie has a Sunday school, I mean Saturday school, which works really well, but for a long time it didn't. And so families are kind of left on their own to deal with their children and they're bringing them up. We never have emphasized Buddhist school for children. Because I remember we didn't want to make the mistakes of the Sunday schools that the kids hated when they were growing up. So, the children were kind of brought up just as catch can, can't just catch can. So this practice period has had some family influence.

[19:21]

Because the shuso is interested in family and wants to take other families to participate in some way together, that emphasis has been there. So I think it's a good emphasis. People, when they have families, go to church. have whatever they do, but they don't have Zazen. So I never wanted to have church practice in that sense. Zazen is the focus. And I don't want Zazen to get kind of sidetracked if there's a lot of family practice.

[20:24]

So it's always a dilemma. It's always, what is the edge here? I don't know what the solutions are, because we never come up with good solutions. But I think that we keep working at it. to find solutions that work. And I think this is a good, this particular practice period has been really encouraging in that way. Family picnic and so forth. I think that's really great. So I wonder if you have any questions about that? In the same vein, I just want to say we're trying for the first time in October to have a family Sashin.

[21:30]

So it'll be a one day Sashin where there will be things for children to do. And older children, there'll be an opportunity for them to sit. And younger children will have things to do. But we're going to try and have a work period together. And it will be a way to expose children to the serenity and the experience of a sashim. And in line with what you were saying, This is new. This has not been done before that I know of. It certainly hasn't been done here. And so we're exploring this idea. Mayuzumi Roshi, in Los Angeles when he was there, had family practices. I like the idea of what you're saying.

[22:41]

Also, from time to time, I used to have a child's children's service where they sit zazen for five minutes and then ring the bells. When we used to have incense, they would offer incense. And they liked that a lot. And now we have children sneaking into the zendo. Like yo-yo. So, little by little, you know, some children really like it, and like being with the adults, and not just siphoned off together, but actually being with the adults. And we can kind of nurture that. I want to say a little more about gender roles.

[23:47]

When was Greg Gisele? How many years ago? Did you have kids already then? We did not. I was pregnant, but we didn't have kids yet. So just a couple of things. You mentioned that some women feel regretful and self-conscious when they realize they're not going to be able to have children. I want to add what I'm sure you'd agree with, that some men also feel regretful and self-conscious and sad or have various feelings about not being able to have children, so we don't want to just think that that's a women's thing. No, that's true. Also on that same point, you mentioned it's wonderful that the men who were priests, like at Tassajara, the father and one lorry, which you so could take care of the children. But we tend to forget that the men's participation in practice through the children era is sort of taken for granted.

[24:58]

We don't say, oh, how wonderful that the wife was taking care of the children while Alan did his priest life and so on. So I just want to really raise our consciousness about that as well. Well, I think so that we do. I would thank the women for doing that when their husbands haven't. I think that's entirely so. Yeah. Zen has been going on long enough in the Bay Area. Do you have any idea of, are the children of the practitioners growing up to be Zen students? Some are. Some have. My experience was that growing up, the kids didn't like it mostly because when the parent goes away,

[26:06]

to the Zindo and faces the wall. It's like, where did they go? But that's always been a kind of problem, because it's not mainstream. And kids are, you know, they feel connected to the mainstream, usually. And then when the parent does something that's not mainstream, and so radical, as to just turn away from everything, that has an effect on the children. So, and then, when the children play with other children, it's hard for them to explain what their parents are doing. So, it's a kind of burden for children. But when children get old enough, and they're out of school, and they realize, oh, people are talking about Zen, and it has some substance in the community, even just as an idea, then they start to think about it.

[27:21]

And then they start to come back and start to put their toe in the water. And in practice, I've seen that happen over and over. When children get older, then they come back. And in practice, in some way, not everyone, but a lot of them do. And whether they last or not. But, you know, who does last? I wanted to thank Marie and Rory for, I think, actually spearheading a lot of the family practice that has developed over the years here. I remember when I was raising my daughter, and Bob Rosenbaum and I, you know, put our heads together and thought about how we could develop family practice.

[28:25]

And I don't think either one of us really had the time. to get that together. And I was pretty much on my own wanting to provide my own daughter with a sense of community, kind of a religious belonging, if you will. And I think it was hard for her going to school and having conversations with other people, other kids who went to religious school. And she said, Mom, you know, I don't really have that. or I would like to have that. So now that she's 31, she's kind of coming back to some of the roots that I planted for her. I think that we'll only know how valuable this family practice is when the kids really get older. So again, thank you for getting this together for everybody. In our practice, of course, the formal practice in the zendo, as in the zendo, is very important.

[29:37]

And it's wonderful to be integrating family life into that. But I also want to speak for the way in which practice as a parent gives an extraordinary opportunity discover the Dharma, receive the Dharma, particularly around no self, no separate self, not one, not two, generosity, in a way that is really quite profound and not, I think, at all secondary to the kind of formal practice that we do. And maybe Marie's been talking about this. I don't know. I haven't been here. But for me, that's been a very profound practice as well.

[30:43]

And a source of some insights that I might not have had facing the wall. Yes. Well, having Zazen is the basis of your practice. of your life permeates your family life. It should permeate your family life. Carl? Oh, I just want to say that my two daughters, when they were younger, it's been very difficult to explain to them. Not just coming here and not being available, not being available while I'm sitting at home. And as I grow older, they're still not interested, and I still can't communicate about what I'm doing here to my 15-year-old.

[31:48]

Just that I'm not available on Saturday mornings. But with her, she's kind of an amazing child. I was never able to explain what's going on here. But I found that she has real sense of dharma without me talking about it. She'll come up with saying things that are teaching to me. So she doesn't need to go to this endo. She has that gift. And yet I still haven't been able to explain what I'm doing to the kids or my parents or my brothers. It's almost like you're detached. And I think probably I worry about it more than the kids do. Well, you know, children learn by association.

[32:54]

You don't think you're teaching them anything, or you think they're not learning anything, or you think they don't get it or something. But they get you. So it doesn't matter so much what you say. It's like a dog gets you. So children are like that. It's not what you say, but it's just how they observe you in ways that you can't see yourself. So, that's how they learn. One good way, basically, how they learn. And sometimes, you know, they don't like what you do. But, nevertheless, you say, well, gee, how could she come up with something so profound, you know? But it's because, it can be because she's getting it through association and not through what you're trying to teach. My son does the same thing.

[33:58]

You know, my children are, have more of an inside view of this place than anyone else in my family or extended family on either side. And it's crossing kind of a boundary for them to show up here at all. And I have no idea how that's going to, I don't know, I have no idea what the implications of that will be for them as a What do you mean, the boundary? What? It's like some people, in my opinion, would actually not want it. Oh, I see. They don't want it. Oh, you know, this is like, this would be like not very good news to either side of the exhibit panel. But they're curious. It's our little secret. I try not to do that. I don't tell them it's a secret. But it's just some strange thing that I do, and they show up here sometimes. I have no idea what that's going to mean for those of you. They don't get to run around here the way they do at church, and so that's really great to have that as well.

[35:08]

But, you know, there is an unknown to how this practice relates to family life and to one's own root tradition and things like that. I don't know what they're learning. I just don't know what they're learning. But it's soaking it up. through intuition, which means they're just open. And then the learning is not even learning. It's just being one with what they're experiencing. Back there is a hand. And I think it's Katie. Yes. I was just thinking of my experience doing a couple of retreats in Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition. week-long, intensive, but the schedule's not as intensive as ours. So it starts very early as well. And children are completely a part of it. And there are adjustments, and they have their own activities and that kind of thing.

[36:17]

But I just wanted to say that one of the nice things as someone who does not have children, it was just wonderful, the ease. that there was around all kinds of things because kids were running around. And there would be practice songs as well as chants to make it possible. And maybe that was inspired by the children, but it was great for the adults, too. Yeah. One thing is that you have a big enough place to do that. The limitations of place make a big difference. But that's it. Laurie? Well, I'm just wanting to appreciate, since the beginning of BCC, there have been so many parents who practiced here. And some people brought their kids. Some people tried to figure it out very quickly. Some people didn't. Some people left their kids. Sometimes it was the woman. Sometimes it was the man. And not just here. Since Suzuki Roshi's practice was established, there's been so many.

[37:17]

If you think about it, it's very hidden in a way. But there have been so many people who've raised children. Yes. Figuring out how to do it one way or the other was different. All the different personalities. So I just want to appreciate it. I just want to give a shout out of appreciation to all the different ways people have managed that over the years. That's right. Yep. Pulani? Yeah. I brought my own children here back in the 90s. And they said, one of them said, very still. But I had friends that their parents used to come here. And when they would be together, they would talk. They would talk about the practice. They would talk to other kids. And they would talk about practice. And I would just hear this. I never stepped in. And my son, he eventually became a Muslim. But when he worked at Berkeley Bowl, he said, no, no, those people don't know that I'm a Buddhist. I'm like, yes, I know this. And I was just amazed. I was like, how does he know this? Anyway, and one more thing I wanted to add.

[38:18]

When I worked at Oxford, a mother came up to me. She comes here. And her son goes to Oxford. She asked me, she said, do you mind if I tell, if I say to him that you're a physicist? And I said, no, I don't mind at all. Thank you. We have a few more minutes. Just one more thing. Sorry to speak again. You said there's a child sitting in the front, right? Yeah. I mean, there's been a kid sitting with us since early this morning. I hope you don't mind if I mention it, Mateo. But I just wanted to say, it's been so special the way you've been hanging out with us recently. It's really nice for me that you're in here with us. I'm not kidding. So thanks. Yeah. Yo-Yo does karaoke meal with us.

[39:19]

Yeah? And every time we see him, it just Wonderful. Barbara? I have one special story that I learned from a woman who practices a tea ceremony at Hakone Garden in Saratoga. She said that, she pointed to this scroll that was written by Suzuki Roshi and commented on it. And she said that when she was a child, she went to Sokoji and she was now a descendant And she said that the children were running around making noise. And Suzuki Roshi was there and some of the other women said, you've got to stop them. They can't be running around like that. Just make them sit down. And he looked at her and he said, according to this woman, you must let the children come in here. If you don't, there won't be any more Zen. Yes, I think it's really, softening is hard to explain.

[40:39]

And it is the basis of our practice here. And I've really appreciated, as a parent, how inclusive the community is. I mean, everybody who walks through the gate, if you want a job, you're given a job. And that's so precious, because not every Buddhist community is like that. Some of them have more emphasis on the monk aspect. You leave the ringing of the bells up to the monks, and there are certain lines you don't cross. But here, I think it's so inclusive, and that makes it a very easy entry point for children of all ages. Thank you, everybody. And they knew they could come in and sit with me or not.

[41:46]

And they knew that I wouldn't move, that I would continue my sitting. But they were free to come and go. So one of my daughters really liked to come and sit with me. She was kind of Daddy's girl. She'd come, and she'd sit, and she'd sit very still. And she'd, oh, I really like this, she'd say. And the other one would come in. And every once in a while, she'd try. As you might guess, the one who came and sat and liked it, her memories are not so good. And the one who just said, this is stupid and didn't do it, now she's kind of interested. Well, one of the problems is that this practice, you have to have an affinity for it. And not everybody has an affinity for it. So your child may or may not have an affinity.

[42:48]

So I would say promote your child to do whatever is their propensity and don't try to force them to do anything like this. It's all free will. Although... That really is stupid.

[43:03]

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