Before we start, I want to say just a few words so that John can adjust the volume of the microphone since I've never done this before. So good evening. This is a way-seeking mind talk or a talk about how I came to practice and way-seeking mind talks are one of my favorite parts of the practice period because they give us a chance to get to know each other in ways that probably don't happen at the dinner table. And for me, this is kind of a big experiment because I had no idea what it would feel like

[01:09]

to be up here. And I'll have to admit that it's more comfortable for me to listen to your talks than to give one of my own. But tonight it's my turn and tomorrow someone else will do it and I can relax. So in my mind, the story of how I came to practice begins with the story of my parents' parents. Are you all doing okay with the feedback from the mic? Sound okay? My mother was the middle child of three children. She had an older brother and a younger sister. Their father died when my mother was four years old. And their mother went to work as a seamstress, but she couldn't make enough money doing that

[02:17]

to support the family. So the children went to live with their grandparents. The story I have heard is that the older brother was the grandparents' favorite. The younger sister and my mother were best friends all their lives. And the sister was my favorite aunt all my life. I never heard either one of them talk about their biological mother, although I think they went to live with her when they were in high school and she had remarried. And I believe she died rather young. The grandmother who raised them, my great-grandmother, was someone we went to visit often when I was a child. And I attended her funeral at a fairly young age.

[03:17]

I remember it. I believe my aunt introduced my parents, and they used to double-date during their courtship. My father was the youngest of six children. There were three boys and three girls. And by his description, his mother was abusive to the girls. The boys did better, and my father always told how his older brothers had looked out for him. And he was very grateful to them. And the three brothers had good relationships all their lives. My father would occasionally take me to visit my grandmother, my paternal grandmother. And she and his sisters all lived together in an old, run-down house in an inner-city

[04:21]

neighborhood. And inside, this house was stacked from floor to ceiling with old newspapers and magazines. There was no place to sit down. It was a real fire trap, and my father used to worry about his mother and sisters being in that house. My father tried to help them in various ways, but he wasn't able to change their circumstances. And any financial help he gave them, my mother begrudged. My parents had their own problems and fought a lot. The main thing they fought over was money. My father worked in a factory all his life. Sometimes he worked two shifts. He got this job in 1929 when he was 20 years old.

[05:26]

And he worked for the same company all his life. When I was three years old, my mother went to work at General Electric in the factory. She worked at GE until she died when she was 65. Her oft-repeated story is that she went to work to buy me a snowsuit. She also liked material things. And one of the running arguments she had with my father was that since she worked voluntarily, she felt that all the money she earned should be hers. Our first car came when I was five years old. And after that, every summer, we would go on a long car trip somewhere in the United States or Canada,

[06:29]

eventually seeing a good part of the country. Some of you may remember the era. See the USA in your Chevrolet. My mother worked second shift, and so my father took on some of the household responsibilities. I can remember him doing up my hair on little pink rubber curlers at night. He cooked our dinners. On Thursday nights, he bowled, and so he would either take me with him to the bowling alley, or if my sister was available to babysit, we would sit together at the kitchen table, and I would listen to Ozzie and Harriet, or Father Knows Best, on the radio while she did her homework. When I was nine years old, our family moved to the suburbs.

[07:37]

My father helped build our new house, and the contractor was a family friend. So we ended up with a house and a big yard in a neighborhood that might otherwise have been beyond our means. One effect of this was that I went to school with kids whose parents had more money and education than mine. By this time, my mother worked in the office, not the factory, and she had more usual hours. Now she worked in the daytime, and my father worked at night. So sometimes my father would end up being the only father in the back of the classroom on Parents Visiting Day at my school. He went to my Girl Scout fly-out. I suppose it was partly because of this closeness that I had with my father in my mother's absence

[09:05]

that our family ended up being kind of divided down the middle. My sister was my mother's favorite, which came out in various ways, and I was usually more sympathetic to my father. I idolized my sister, who was six years older than I was, but she was mostly busy with her own life because she was so popular with her friends. I told the story about the snowsuit because it is emblematic of my relationship with my mother. She told the story of how she went to work to buy me a snowsuit, and the implication was that she loved me so much that she was willing to make this sacrifice.

[10:05]

But living with her and knowing her as I did, I had the feeling that she worked because she liked to have things for herself. So it was kind of a typical story in that there was some message about how much she loved me that didn't quite ring true, and in which I was actually being used as a pun in some disagreement between my parents. Some of the stories were more subtle and less clear, and therefore more confusing than the one about the snowsuit. So the upshot is that I grew up not quite trusting my mother from a fairly young age. I was without the tools and understanding to really see quite what was going on, so it was all on a feeling and intuition level.

[11:09]

My mother told me that if anything happened to her, this sister who was my favorite aunt would be our mother. And I liked that idea a lot, and of course I felt really bad and guilty about it. My mother told me what a cold child I was, and she wondered why I didn't love her as much as she loved me. So all of this felt really yucky to me, and I naturally drew away from her. When I was older, my mother was always talking about putting away money for me to go to college, and this was offered as a reason for not contributing to the household expenses. I went to college for two years while living at home.

[12:17]

I had a job, but it didn't pay very much. The details are vague to me now, but somehow when I was a junior in college and might have thought of going away, there didn't seem to be any money available. But also by that time, I was really ready to get away. Oh dear, you were doing so well. Can you help me? Thank you very much. Can you hear now? Okay. So at the age of 20 in 1966, I came to San Francisco.

[13:22]

My mother invited our church pastor to come to our house and pray for me the night before I left. I'm glad you laughed at that. My parents paid several visits to me in San Francisco over the years, and I would go to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where I grew up, to visit them every year or so. My father told me that I ripped a hole in the family by leaving, and for the first few years that I was away, my parents both tried hard to get me to come back. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, I was not doing so well. I had a low-paying job in the insurance business,

[14:24]

and I would go to work and then come home and almost immediately go to bed and sleep until morning. I was late to work almost every day because when morning came, even after some 12 hours of sleep, I didn't feel like getting up. I was living on Pepsi-Cola, which my mother was also addicted to, and which I started drinking at an early age. So malnutrition was likely one of my problems. Depression was not really in my vocabulary, and therapy was out of the question financially, even if I had thought of it, which I didn't. I just sort of wondered why I was so lazy and worthless and couldn't get done the things I needed to get done. I was pretty isolated.

[15:27]

There was really no one close enough to me to see what was going on, and I didn't want anyone to see. I had developed the habit early on with my parents of hiding any difficulty I might be having. I spent the decade of my 20s chasing after a man that I was in love with who didn't love me at all and never would. I kept waiting for the relationship to improve. Finally, I came to my senses about the relationship, and once I was done with that, things got better in general. By that time, I had a better job and more money and a car, which broadened my horizons. I had more friends and did things with people.

[16:28]

I went camping with friends regularly, and so my life was not so abnormal. Then in 1979, when I was 33, my mother died. As you might be able to imagine, her death left me feeling very confused. To this day, I have not been able to cry over the deaths of either of my parents. I knew that something was wrong, that I was unable to grieve my mother's death. It was just sort of a dull ache that wouldn't go away. So it was not so long after that, in October of 1981,

[17:35]

that I was camping alone in Yosemite. I had never been camping alone before. or in the winter. The first snow of the year had fallen after I arrived, and it was quite cold. There was a cute guy at the campsite next to mine, and he was alone too. Another camper built a big fire every night and invited both of us to join her. So we got to know each other, and I learned that this man was a school teacher who spent his school breaks in San Francisco being a guest student at Zen Center. He told me all about it, and it sounded very appealing. By this time, I also found him very appealing. So over his Christmas break,

[18:43]

he stayed at Zen Center, and he invited me to the Saturday lecture. So my first experience of Zen Center was the Saturday lecture on January 2nd, 1982. Sojin Mel Weitzman gave the lecture that day. And the main thing I remember about his talk was that he talked about how before he came to Zen Center, he had always been late to work every day. He said that his employer would tell him that if he could get to work five minutes late every day, he could get to work on time. And of course, this stood out for me from his talk because I was still battling my own habit of being late every day. Over the years, my employers, some of my employers tolerated this habit better than others,

[19:48]

but I didn't feel good about it, and it wasn't helping my career. So I felt like Mel was speaking just to me and saying things I needed to hear. I continued to come for Saturday lectures, and I continued to feel that at Zen Center, real things were spoken of in an honest way. And I was still interested in the person who invited me. So you might say that I came to Zen Center through the cute guy Dharmagate. I don't know. I continued to be motivated by my acquaintance with this person, but by the time that faded, I had become impressed with other people at Zen Center

[20:52]

who also looked very good and had been practicing for a long time. I thought, if Zen practice will make me look like that, I will do it. So you can see that I stayed near the cute guy Dharmagate or something like it for a little while. I think that my life experience and who I was and the confusion I experienced at my mother's death all contributed to my being ripe to find something like Zen Center. In our house, my mother was the model of Christianity, and I had found it unconvincing. My father was not a churchgoer, but I always had the feeling that he would have a deathbed conversion, and indeed he did. I myself was a sort of disbeliever

[21:58]

without the courage of my convictions. I was not ready to turn either away from or towards any religion that I knew. Zen has a big advantage for such people because it hardly seems like a religion at all. It is more like a self-help technique or an exercise regimen for body and mind. I also appreciated Zen Center on an aesthetic level. The bells and incense and chanting and talks and tea drinking all appealed to me tremendously.

[22:59]

I can remember when I was new here, walking past the Buddha Hall one evening when a full moon ceremony was going on, and hearing the kachis on the bell and the chanting, it was just the most exotic, mysterious thing I had ever heard, and I wanted to be part of it. So before long, I was driving from the marina where I lived to Zen Center twice a day for morning and evening zazen. Eventually, I spent a week here as a guest student, and then I moved into the neighborhood so that I could walk to zazen and classes and all the activities that now consumed me. I remember having a conversation with an older student at dinner around this time, and I told her that it didn't bother me

[24:02]

that Zen Center took all my free time because that was all I wanted to do anyway. And at that time, that is really how I felt. So in June 1984, I quit my job as an insurance underwriter, which I had had for 11 years, and I sold all my belongings and my car, and I went to Tassajara for the first time ever with the intention of staying indefinitely. I lived there for three and a half years until September 1987. I arrived in the middle of guest season. It was so different from anything I had ever imagined myself doing that I felt like I was on a wonderful summer vacation. I felt so free and lucky not to be downtown

[25:08]

in a suit and pantyhose doing insurance. I went swimming on my breaks and marveled at the starry nights. Then practice period began in the fall in Tangario. That was harder, but I could do it. It started getting colder. I went to the Zendo faithfully. I didn't think about it, I just went. I worked in the kitchen and loved it. Laurie Schley was the Tenzo, and she was a great teacher for me. I told my father that I thought that learning to cook at Tassajara was the opportunity of a lifetime. He was very mystified by this. But the part of Tassajara that I had the most trouble with

[26:08]

was the cold weather and the fact that most of the buildings are not heated. I was never one of those meditators who just loves it and wishes it would never end. To this day, I feel like pretty much of a failure at meditation. Eventually at Tassajara, I got involved in doing positions and lost the ability I had had to just head for the Zendo without thinking about it. I had more trouble casting aside all involvements and ceasing all affairs during meditation time. I got busy with tasks as a guest cook and Tenzo. I really lost track of the one who is not busy. And sooner or later, meditation can become boring.

[27:11]

And I began to miss my life in the city with its variety and stimulation and comforts. You know how it is, the grass is always greener. So at the end of my term as Tenzo in September 1987, I decided it was time to go. I came back to the city and lived in the 300-page street building, but I was making lots of excuses and having trouble following the schedule. I was trying to figure out what to do. I moved out of Zen Center and got a job at UCSF. I enrolled in the graphic design program at UC Extension

[28:13]

and started planning for a career in graphic design. I was very excited about the prospect of being a graphic designer and very engrossed in my classes. Still, a year later, Zen Center asked me to return to be Tenzo and I accepted. I continued my design studies and continued to think of that as my career direction. But in the meantime, I wanted to be at Zen Center. Then somewhat later, about a year later, I was asked to be corporate secretary and I enjoyed that role very much. I liked to write and put my best effort into accurately recording what happened in the various meetings I attended. I enjoyed knowing what was going on

[29:15]

behind the scenes at Zen Center and being involved in affairs in that way. Going back all the way to the 1960s, Zen Center publications had been designed by a man named Peter Bailey. He had a very free style that was quite appropriate for us, very Zen. You can see his work in the wind bells that were published prior to 1990. That was the year that Peter Bailey was diagnosed with liver cancer. And in the fall of 1990, Michael Wenger asked me to finish putting together a wind bell that Peter had begun and was too ill to complete. So I did.

[30:15]

My memory is that I stayed up all night and did it in one weekend, which is very fast for a project of that size. At any rate, I think I satisfied Michael that I was competent to do it. In April 1991, Peter died and I asked for his job. After lengthy discussion and debate by the officers and directors, I was given the job on a trial basis in February 1992. By this time, I had completed most of my design courses and I at least knew how to produce a printed piece. And thus began a rich and sometimes rewarding and almost always difficult period for me. I completely wanted to do this job.

[31:18]

I gave it more than my all and yet many aspects of the job were hard for me. For one thing, any talent I have is modest and tastes vary. There was considerable contradictory opinion at Zen Center about what our publications should look like. And I wanted to please everyone, which was quite impossible. It would have been much easier for me if I had had a lot of confidence in myself and my abilities. Meeting deadlines was always critical and the people who needed to provide me with information and materials for our publications were often overloaded themselves and very often late. So that put a lot of pressure on me. So I had a hard time with this position

[32:22]

that I wanted so much. And during this time, my Zendo participation fell to almost nothing. I felt bad about not following the schedule and sometimes I felt bad about my work, too. I believe that Zen Center's leaders and teachers gave me a lot of rope during this time because they were hoping I would sort things out and return to practice. And for that, I am deeply grateful. I spent a long time sitting on the fence. Was I going to be a graphic designer or a Zen student? To tell the truth, I wanted both. I had certainly realized by now that Zen Center had not made me look like those people who first impressed me when I came to Zen Center

[33:23]

and that it hadn't solved all my problems. I still didn't feel like I knew how to meditate. I considered how I came to Zen Center in the first place through the cute guy Dharmagate because of aesthetic preferences and I felt like an imposter. I thought that the real practitioners here were those people who read about Buddhism in college and came to San Francisco to practice at Suzuki Roshi's temple. And that was definitely not my story. Partly because of some of the pain of the difficulties I had in my job and the pain that brought me to Zen Center in the first place, I started doing formal therapy. The process was frustratingly slow.

[34:24]

But over time, going on six years now, I have been able to put together some of the important pieces of how I came to be who I am. And that has been very helpful. I don't know if I would ever have considered therapy if I had not come to Zen Center, which has a culture that is favorable or accepting of the value of therapy. It has also been very helpful for me to watch parents here raise their children well. Between therapy and watching good parenting, I was able to understand more about how I ended up feeling the way I did about my family. It has been a deep lesson in karma that makes my own life understandable

[35:28]

and acceptable to me. In the year 2000, I ran for the Zen Center Board of Directors and was elected. One perk of being on the board is that you get to attend the annual board retreat at Tassajara. So in November 2001, I went to Tassajara for the board retreat. I had not spent much time there since the late 80s when I left, and Tassajara had changed a lot in that time. The biggest change from my point of view was that many of the buildings were now heated. When I lived there before,

[36:28]

even those of us who had wood stoves in our rooms didn't use them. It just wasn't part of the program at that time. And now, anyone over 50 was entitled to have heat in their rooms. So for me, that made a huge difference in how comfortable I could be at Tassajara. And that weekend that we were there with the board, although it was November and I had been, had a little trepidation about going there in November, it turned out to be a gorgeous Indian summer weekend that was hot and sunny, and the trees were in their fall colors, and everybody was really nice to us and very welcoming. So on the way home from the board retreat, I started thinking about how nice it would be to be at Tassajara. And I knew that Abbess Linda Cutts

[37:31]

was going to be leading the January practice period. So I decided I wanted to be there, and I made the plans and got permission and found someone to cover my job, and off I went to Tassajara for practice period. It was a wonderful time for me. I got to be a dowan, which has to be one of the best so-called jobs in the world. I lived in the courtyard complex, which has heat 24-7 that you can turn on or off yourself. The Abbess gave wonderful lectures and classes, and on the whole, I had a marvelous time, and it was a big relief for me and a real refreshment in my life. So when that was over in April,

[38:32]

I returned to my job and my board work and my usual doubts and struggles. As I have aged, which has happened in the context of being at Zen Center, my values have changed. Now I value community and friendship and spiritual practice more than I did when I was younger. I am more aware of my own needs and the passing of time. Zen Center has taken the place, for me, of the family that didn't quite work out. Certainly there are times when it is dysfunctional, but the dysfunction is more diffuse. There are more choices of people to spend your time with or teachers to put your trust in, so our roles don't get quite as frozen as they can in a real family.

[39:33]

And since new people are always arriving, we keep taking a fresh look at ourselves. So Zen Center isn't perfect, but I think it's a very good environment in which to live and practice. So it was in the context... Excuse me. So it is in the context of my feeling very good about being at Zen Center that Michael asked me to be head student for this practice period. I am frankly just thrilled that it happened now, and with Michael, who has been a trustworthy guide for me for many years.

[40:35]

The theme of the practice period, time and the one who is not busy, has been exactly the most compelling issue of my life. For me, the mystery of the universe manifests as the mystery of time. I'm extremely grateful to be head student now, but it will be a huge challenge for me. For one thing, I need to keep doing most of my regular job, and so just following the schedule will be a big effort for me, as I know it is for all of you. I'm not at all adept at giving talks, and even giving this talk, which was about me, something I supposedly know something about, was extremely difficult, and I can't even imagine

[41:37]

how I'm going to come up with the other two talks that I have to give during this practice period. I'm looking forward to having time to continue with each of you, which is one of the traditional privileges of the Shuso, and starting tomorrow, I'll be ringing the wake-up bell, so by the time I get to the Zendo for Zazen, I think I will be really wide awake. I hope I can encourage your practice, as I know that you will encourage mine. If there's anything you want to talk to me about, please let me know. Please also let me know if I do anything that is discouraging for you. I'm also interested, actually, I've never heard anyone say this, but if you have any feedback on my talks, any suggestions for what I can do better,

[42:38]

I'm really interested to hear about it, and I think this is going to be just a terrific practice period, and I'm really happy to be practicing with you. Thank you. Do we have time for any questions? It's 8.33. That was pretty definitive. Thank you.

[43:13]

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