Good morning. I'd like to extend a warm welcome to longtime BBC member and benefactor, Susan Moon. She started practicing at BBC in 1975, I guess back in the old location. And she's done many things. She's a writer. She was the editor of Lucy's Fellowship Journeyman magazine for a long time. And she received lay entrustment from Norman Fisher in 2005. And she has an earlier book she wrote, a rare example of modern Zen humor, called The Life and Letters of Tokuroshi. And then she has a new book coming out, which I suspect is going to be talking more about. Good morning.

[01:01]

Well, my new book is called, This is Getting Old, and I'm going to be talking about that. And I'm going to be talking about getting old, which you kids might not be that interested in because you're not very old yet. But actually, you're getting older all the time. you know people, too, and it's so important, I think, for old people and young people and people of all different ages to be able to help each other and know each other. So it's really great that you're here with us this morning. And I was thinking about, you know, when I was a kid, the oldest person I knew was my grandmother. And she was, she was a great grandmother, but she was, she knew about things that I didn't know about because she came from a different time. And one of the things she made me do was she said I should brush my hair a hundred strokes a day.

[02:07]

One, two, three, four, five, which I hated and I cheated and I didn't really do that. But she wasn't mean at all. She just and she knew I wasn't really doing it. So she just thought it was probably a good idea. And she also had a little chicken, a glass chicken that you could lift up the top and it had lemon drops inside of it and she pretended that they were cough drops and whenever I wanted a lemon drop I would go... and she would say, oh my dear you must have a cough drop help yourself to a cough drop and she also used to take me on picnics and she would make this kind of sandwich that I thought was really good, which was white bread, and a lot of butter, and on top of the butter, a lot of brown sugar. Those were the contents of the sandwich, and then we would put those in the basket, and walk down a little path in the meadow where she lived, and sit on the blanket, and she would read aloud to me out of some old-fashioned book.

[03:19]

So, it was really important for me to have have this older person that I knew in my life and have a feeling that, you know, one of the things that was interesting about my grandmother was that she was the mother of my mother. So she was a witness to the fact that my mother had been a kid, which is kind of a strange thing to think about when you're a kid, that your parents were kids once. But that's the amazing thing. Every single person in this room was a kid. Not only that, every single person in this room with a baby in diapers, can you believe it? Oh my God, shocking thought. But it's true. And we just keep changing and getting older. And when I was a kid, I used to, when I was little, I wanted to be older. You know, a lot of times I think kids think, I want to hurry up and get into the next grade and I want to be able to ride my two-wheeler or whatever. You want to do the next thing and you want to be a little bit older than you are.

[04:21]

And then when you're a little kid, maybe you want to be a big kid. And when you're a big kid, you want to be a teenager. And when you're a teenager, you want to grow up and drive your car around and do big grown-up things. But then when you start to get old, like me, now I'm 67, I kind of want to be younger. I think, oh gosh, if only I had the knees I had 20 years ago. So, here's an interesting question. Is there ever a time in your life when you're exactly the age you want to be? You don't want to be any older and you don't want to be any younger? And, can you say fabulous? That's perfect! Yay! I was hoping you would say that. Because really, for all of us, that's exactly right, you know? The age we are right this second is the perfect age for us to be. We're a different age than we were when I just said that, you know? A few seconds later, we're all a different age. So, it keeps on being exactly the right age. So, I'm, but I'm curious, maybe, some of you kids, do any of you want to tell about an old person you know?

[05:28]

Like, a grandparent, do you want to tell us about an old person you know? Let's hear. My grandma, she's 53. And she has two dogs that are really cute. And she has a big garden. She plants a lot. Does she live near you? Not really. Well, she lives in Novato. But you get to go visit her quite a lot then. And there's a bunch of deer in there where she lives. And there's this rabbit that's always near her. It's just always like around somewhere.

[06:29]

And then once she saw a wolf. Wow. I mean a coyote. And she's just really nice. She probably loves you a lot, too, huh? That's one of the good things about grandparents. They can kind of love their grandchildren and give them a lot of lemon drops more than parents can do, in a way. Yes? My grandmother lives in Florida, and I'm not exactly sure how old she is. And she visited us over the summer. Uh-huh. And we made a really awesome coconut cake. Oh, great. And we hung out with her all afternoon. Uh-huh. And we Danished our homework. It was really fun. Wow. Did she teach you how to make those things? Yeah. Yeah? But it was really tricky, and we thought we were going to go to the library, and we ended up doing it for three hours. Oh, wow. You never got to the library because it took so long? Well, that's a great thing, though, because grandparents can help you learn how to do something that they know how to do that younger people don't know how to do.

[07:38]

And she tells us stories. Yeah? Does she tell you stories about her life? Do you remember any? I probably could if I thought about it. Well, that's okay. You told us a good story about her already. Yes, what about you? My grandma has a really big garden and it's so big that she has a stream on the other side, there is a forest. Wow. And she has a lot, and she has a water, a tiny waterfall. A waterfall, and a stream, and a forest. And she has a really big garden. And a big garden. And a really big house. Wow, well that's really fun to visit. You get to go to a different kind of place from where you live. So, yeah, we can. Wow.

[08:40]

Well, those sound like pretty good grandmothers. And also grandfathers are a really great invention, too. I don't want to skip talking of honoring grandfathers. I know there's a lot of grandmothers and grandfathers in the room, but there are also grandchildren in the room. So that's really good. And not only can we learn things from our grandparents, our grandparents or old people can learn from young people. That's one reason it's good that you guys are here and you come in and talk to us because we can learn things. Older people can learn things from little kids and learn about really being curious about things and exploring things and get reminded of what things taste like and smell like and feel like that we might just sort of forget about. So I just want to thank you for coming being with us this morning and as part of our, we can all be in a project of old people and young people continuing to talk to each other and tell each other how we feel and pay attention to each other because we need all the different ages to be together.

[09:50]

So thank you for coming. I could also invite the grown-ups to tell stories about their grandchildren, but then we'd never get out of here. So I'm not going to open that one up right now. So I do want to read a little bit from this book. It's out. There are copies here if people are interested at the book table. It's a subject, getting older is a subject that I've been thinking about for a while and it's a subject I get to know more and more about with every passing day.

[10:57]

And I acknowledge that I'm not, I'm kind of a baby at getting old still. I'm healthy and haven't really faced a lot of losses or infirmities and I assume that there will be more challenging moments coming if I continue to live. But it does seem like a good time to start training myself for getting old, because it is a challenging thing. And, I mean, even Buddha, as we know, went out and was shocked to see old age sickness and death. So if he thought there was something distressing about old age, then we can admit that maybe it's not necessarily a bowl of cherries. Although he was young when he thought that and he got older and presumably he got more used to the idea and became one with it and so we can practice that ourselves. There are so many different aspects to getting old and there are changes in our minds and bodies, physiological changes, and then there are changes in the way we participate in our society and our families and how people see us and how our relationships change.

[12:13]

And then there are changes also in our inner lives, our spiritual lives, more opportunity for inward journeying. And those are the three sections. I have three sections in the book talking about those three aspects of aging as I've experienced them. So I'm going to just read, well, I'll start with one little piece to get us in the mood here called Senior Moment, Wonderful Moment. I called my friend Cornelia, a fellow grandmother, to ask if I could borrow a crib for my granddaughter's upcoming visit. When she answered the phone, I said, hi Cornelia, it's Sue. And then my mind went blank. I paused, hopefully, but no words came out of my mouth. Morning, she said, what's up? She was a good enough friend that I didn't have to fake it, but still, it was unsettling. I said, waiting for the old neurons to start firing up again.

[13:18]

I asked myself if it had to do with our weekly walking date. No. Was it about her son's article on stream conservation? No. Out the window, a squirrel was running along the porch railing with a walnut in his mouth. I'm having a senior moment, I said finally. Do you happen to know why I cough? She laughed. You must have known that I have some plums to give you from my tree. The squirrel was now sitting on the railing, peeling the outer shell off the walnut and spitting it on the ground. I'd never noticed before how the long fur of their tails waved back and forth like grass when they flicked them. By the time I went over to Cornelia's house to pick up the plums, I had remembered about the crib, and I got that too. The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh helps me appreciate my senior moments. In his book, Present Moment, Wonderful Moment, he writes, the real miracle is to be awake in the present moment. I'm confident he would agree that a senior moment, a moment of forgetting what day it is or where you are going, can be a moment of deep understanding.

[14:26]

For example, standing in the kitchen wondering why I have a pair of scissors in my hand, I notice the sunlight blending off its metal blades and dancing on the wall, and I repeat Nahan's sentence to myself, the real miracle is to be awake in the present moment. Younger people can also experience such transcendent moments of deep immersion in the infinite present, but they have to go to much greater lengths to do so, meditating for days at a time, for example, or hang gliding. I have only to carry a pair of scissors from one room to the other. It's not my fault when I have a senior moment, any more than it was my fault when my hair turned gray. I'm just a human being, after all. I've had a lifetime of junior moments, when one word follows another in logical and boring succession, when each action leads to the next appropriate action. For countless years, I've remembered to bring the pencil with me when I go downstairs to use the pencil sharpener. I think I've earned the right to break free from the imprisonment of sequential thinking.

[15:34]

A senior moment is a stop sign on the road of life. It could even be a leg up toward enlightenment. So I stay calm, let the engine idle, and enjoy the scenery. What happens next will be revealed in due course. That is one thing we can bring to our process of aging is some humor and forgiveness and compassion for ourselves. And to notice this attitude, which I refer to in that piece, that it's not my fault if I'm forgetting something. I think we have a lot of shame around it as if if we really exerted ourselves more, we would get it right. or we just wouldn't even get old. We would really be able to beat this game. We'd keep on having more birthdays, but we wouldn't actually get wrinkled and deaf if we tried hard enough. So we'd go to the gym, and we'd lift weights, and we'd do everything. But no, it doesn't seem to keep it at bay.

[16:40]

And sometimes as a young person, It's also hard. When I was young, I remember feeling really annoyed with my mother when she would tell the same story over again, or with my stepfather when he didn't, hadn't put his hearing in and couldn't hear what I was saying. I just felt annoyed, like, come on, get it together. I mean, I didn't say that, but I was, I had that feeling. And then, so we have to not have it about other people and not have it about ourselves, but just go with the flow. And this is, this is what happens next. It's not necessarily all bad. There are new openings and new opportunities and a different kind of feeling about time passing which I really have experienced this feeling that even as the time ahead shrinks that it's more possible for me to be in a kind of deep time of to be really present in the present moment in an infinite way, which is also what our Zen practice is about as well.

[17:48]

When we're in Zazen, we're trying to be in Dogen's time being that isn't measured by the clock. Also, the fact that there are challenges to aging is why it's a good idea to go ahead and look at them and investigate them. And our Zen practice teaches us that we should not turn away from what's difficult, but just try to approach it and be present with it and see what it actually is, what is actually going on here. And also as a writer, I've learned that what's difficult is the most interesting material to look at. It's not very interesting to write about how it is when everything's going perfectly smoothly. And it's not interesting to write about it or read about it. But to really investigate the challenges is interesting, and it also helps to make them more manageable.

[18:53]

So I will read from another piece. One of the things I've noticed is that there's a kind of return to a child mind as I get older. It's as if the years of, well, especially since I retired, I have more opportunity to kind of investigate what's interesting to me. I'm doing a lot of work just self-employed, but I'm not having a regular job, so I have a lot of choice in what I do. And I'm able to kind of return to a tomboy self that I had as a child and to just be curious about the world. And there's a freeing from some of the gender battles of, what does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be feminine? Or if I were a man, maybe it would be some of those questions I could release as well. And just go back to a state of more curiosity.

[20:02]

So anyway, I'll read a little part of this essay that has to do with this kind of return to some aspect of childhood longing. This one is really about a kind of longing that I also find myself returning to. When I was a child, I found... It's called The Secret Place. When I was a child, I found a secret place in the bayberry bushes. It was summer when my family floated free from the known world, the world that was measured by carpools and sidewalks, and went to the seashore. I was lonely there, alone in my separate self, in my bengali shorts, with dirty knees and poison ivy between my toes. I would put my jackknife in my pocket and wind my way through a scratchy gap in the bushes into a clearing the size of a small room, an almost flat place on the flank of a hill overlooking Menipsha Pond. The bayberry bushes were taller than I was, and my parents couldn't see me from the house. They didn't even know the secret place existed, but I could see far across the water to the shimmering dunes of Lobsterville.

[21:11]

In this bushy room, I practiced cartwheels and handstands, turning the world upside down. I sat on the grass and whittled sticks. I could see time passing by watching the sails move across the pond. Back in the house, my father was depressed, shut up in his study, writing something all the time. My mother tied her hair up in a bandana and tried to keep us kids from bothering him. My little sisters chased each other around the house, screeching. I felt the tension of our family life, a sadness I couldn't name, couldn't even name, couldn't cure, couldn't even name as sadness. I lay on my back on the ground that was crunchy with lichen while the sky did cartwheels around me. As the day came to an end, the sun's light turned a thicker and thicker yellow and clouds rushed away from me into the void on the other side of the horizon and disappeared. This daily ending, staged with the smell of the bayberry and the crying of the gulls, gave me a lump in my throat, a shout I couldn't shout out.

[22:15]

I had no playmates my own age, and we had no near neighbors. My schoolteacher father liked to get away from people in the summer. My sisters were considerably younger than me, and they were occupied with each other. But it wasn't just someone to play with that I wanted. It was being part of something bigger than me. I wondered about God. I wondered who I was and what I was doing there. Why was there only my one small self inside my head, serving a life sentence in the solitary confinement of my skull, looking out of my eye sockets? It didn't make sense. And I'm skipping towards the end. As I get older, I find myself coming back to childhood's yearning. I both seek solitude and fear it, just as I did at 10. Upstairs in my study, in the quiet house, I'm drinking my green tea and sitting sideways in my favorite armchair, with my feet hanging over one arm like a teenager, looking out the window at the redwood tree.

[23:18]

I'm wondering who I am and what I'm doing here in this bag of skin, as the old Chinese Zen masters called it. Why am I still the only one inside? Twice I wasn't alone in my body. I could feel the company inside as I watched the bulge of a foot move across my belly. I liked having someone else with me for a change in the small apartment of my body, though of course I liked it even more when each of the babies came out to meet me. If I had a partner, I expect it would take the sharp edge off the longing, but I'm talking about something other than being single here, a more essential separation. I'm not talking about being alone in my bed, that's another conversation, but about being alone in my head. I sit in meditation at home, and I go out to sit with others in Buddhist practice places. Sometimes I sit in the teacher's seat, sometimes I sit in the seat of a student, and always I sit in longing. In that slow turn between the out-breath and the in-breath, the question sometimes arises, how do I get out of this separate self?

[24:20]

In the Zen tradition, we usually face the wall, and so can't see each other. When I went to a retreat recently with people from the Theravadan tradition, we sat in a circle facing each other with our eyes closed. I snuck a peek at the others, all of them seeming to sit so peacefully, and I thought, what are they all doing, and how do they know how to do it? A wave of longing vibrated in my blood like a shot of brandy, and I felt hot prickles all over my skin. I said to myself, hello longing, I know you. And in that moment, I suddenly felt happy. I liked the prickles. And for the hundred thousandth time, I returned to my breathing, letting the air in the room come into my lungs like the tide, the same air that was flowing in and out of all the other bodies in the room, joining us together. Longing is its own satisfaction. It's already complete. All my life, I have felt this longing. I guess it's how I travel in the world. It's what takes me where I'm going. The longing for connection calls forth a life of connection.

[25:23]

The longing that took me to the secret place in the bayberry bushes is the same longing that has taken me as an adult to spending months in a monastery, joining a voter registration drive, and setting the table for family and friends. My small self continues to reach for something beyond myself. The girl practicing handstands in that secret place is still with me, keeping me company. If that little kid can bear the longing, I can bear it. I remember that this is who I am, the one who wonders. So that one is not so specifically about aging, but it is about something that has come forward more in my life as I've gotten older. That sense of the continuity and who I was as a child, and the feeling that I carry my child self along with me as I get older, and that we all do that. with us all the ages we've been and at the same time we're letting go of them and moving through the next gate and dropping roles.

[26:24]

So what comes along with us and what do we leave behind is kind of an interesting question. Also the appreciation for ancestors, like our grandparents, as I was talking with the kids. That's helpful for me, and that's one of the things I like about Zen practice, too, that there's a lot of honoring of the ancestors, of the lineage, of the teachers who have come before, and to feel oneself as part of just this long thread of life or practice or family is comforting. And I've been paying attention to the I don't think we do it much here, but Ehekoso Hatsuganmon, which they do at Green Gulshan City Center, I know some. Maybe they do it here when I'm not here, but anyway, it's all about honoring.

[27:28]

Is that a part of our regular practice here? But it's a really great one because it's asking the ancestors to help us and I just wanted to read you a couple of lines from it. Buddhas and ancestors share with us their compassion, which fills the boundless universe with the virtue of their enlightenment and teachings. Buddhas and ancestors of old were as we. We in the future shall be Buddhas and ancestors. Revering Buddhas and ancestors, we are one Buddha and one ancestor. Awakening Bodhi mind, we are one Bodhi mind. Those who in past lives were not enlightened will now be enlightened. In this life, save the body, which is the fruit of many lives. Before Buddhists were enlightened, they were the same as we. Enlightened people of today are exactly as those of old."

[28:31]

So I love that sense of the leaves turning, the generations turning, and that before Buddhists were enlightened, they were exactly the same as we. And also that Save the body, which is the fruit of many lives. The idea that this body here is actually fruit. It's the fruition of previous lives, if you want to think of it that way, or of my own parents and grandparents and all the circumstances that made me get born. So it's just this container that is a fruit that I have the job of taking care of while I'm here. And taking care of ourselves is also a big part of getting older. I think we have a responsibility to take care of ourselves in order to show the possibility of that and to not, and we don't want to, if we become dependent, then we become dependent and we need to graciously be able to accept help from those who care for us also.

[29:35]

And I know some older people get really stubborn about not wanting anybody to help them and hating to be dependent. But at the same time, we can we can value ourselves and take care of ourselves as best we can and we can also I think it's important to sort of model some dignity and grace for younger people so that we aren't so that our grandchildren or the young people we know are not looking at us and thinking oh I hope this never happens to me but just to take what comes with grace you know like Ram Das, after his stroke, has been giving talks and things, and one time, you know, he was talking, he was giving a lecture, and he couldn't remember what he was going to say at all, and he said, well, he just was sitting there, I'm sorry, but I, no, I don't think he said I'm sorry, I haven't remembered what I'm going to say, so we'll just sit here together, I don't remember.

[30:37]

and then in a few minutes he did remember and then he started talking and everybody just sat there and he was completely dignified and in his doing what he was doing and it was a real gift from him to offer that openness about what was happening for him and the gift for everybody else to listen to him and so taking care of ourselves includes a kind of acceptance of what's going on I'm going to end with the last piece in the book called This Vast Life. Every morning I vow to be grateful for the precious gift of human birth. It's a big gift and it includes a lot of stuff I never particularly wanted for my birthday. Some of the things in the package I wish I could exchange for a different size or color. But I want to find out what it means to be a human being. My curiosity remains intense even as I get older.

[31:42]

So I say thanks for the whole thing. It's all of a piece. In 13th century Japan, Zen master Dogen wrote, the way is basically perfect and all pervading. So I'm already in it. We are all in it. We are made of it. When my granddaughter was just over two, I visited her and her parents in Texas. She doesn't have a lot of ideas yet about how things are supposed to be or what's supposed to happen next. She's glad to be alive. I was babysitting for her one afternoon and part of my job was to get her up from her nap. I was reading in the next room and I knew when she woke up because I heard her chatting away to her bear. I lifted her and her bear out of her crib and we went downstairs. While I fixed her a snack of crackers and cheese, I didn't make a brown sugar sandwich, I should have. She danced around a purple ball that was lying in the middle of the living room, singing an old nursery rhyme that she had learned in her preschool. Ring around the rosies, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

[32:45]

And then she sat down on the floor, kaplunk, laughing. She was fully present, fully joyful. Actually, the song she was singing is a very old chant about the plague, and the last line about the ashes refers to our mortality. But she wasn't worrying about that. In his essay, The Ginjo Koan, Master Dogen wrote, A fish swims in the ocean, and no matter how far it swims, there is no end to the water. A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how far it flies, there is no end to the air. When I get unhappy about something in my life, I think, wait, no, this isn't the right life. It isn't what I want. I need to find the edge of this life and loop over the fence into a different life. But that's not how it works. My life is vast. I can't find the edge of it, just like a fish in the ocean or a bird in the sky. There's no getting out of this life, this ocean, this sky, except by dying. If I try to change oceans, I'll never find my way or my place. There's no place else to be but here in the big mystery of it.

[33:48]

It happened that a few days after visiting my granddaughter, I visited an old friend in his 80s who lives in an assisted living facility. He's a Catholic priest and monk who has dedicated his life to solitude and spiritual study. He's well-read in multiple spiritual traditions, including Zen, and he is an important mentor to me. He's not well physically. He's weak on oxygen and confined to a wheelchair, but his mind is fine. He told me, If I've died before, I don't remember it, but I recognize what's happening. That's where I'm going. Years ago, he had a coffin built for himself by a carpenter he knows. It stands upright in his little apartment like a roomie, a reminder, keeping him company. He sits at his table and looks out the window at a pear tree and watches its leaves turn and fall and bud again. He watches the seasons, the whole universe in that pear tree. He reads, he prays, he receives an occasional visitor. Like my granddaughter, he is completely present in his life.

[34:53]

Like Bogan's fish, he is swimming around in his ocean, and there is no end to the water, even in this tiny apartment. Moments after I entered his room, he was talking to me about Isaac of Nineveh, the 8th century Syrian hermit, whose writings he had been reading when I came in. Like my granddaughter, he too is singing his own version of Ring Around the Roses, dancing until he falls down and turns to ashes. In between that toddler and that old man is a span of over 80 years. And most of us, in those intervening decades, tangle ourselves up in knots over the things we don't have that we want and the things we have that we don't want. We run around trying to fix things in our personal lives and in the life of the planet. And it's a good thing we do, too, because it's actually our responsibility to fix things. We need to fix the plumbing, for example. The toddler and the old monk aren't fixing the plumbing. They need us to take care of them, but we need them, too, to remind us that everything is already taken care of.

[35:54]

I love the vow, Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. I keep giving myself away to the next moment, and the next moment receives me. I just have to step through." So I think I'll stop there. All the pieces I read were kind of about abstract things, but there's also things about having arthritis, and having detached retina, and falling down the steps, and more mundane things. But it's nice here with this Zen Sangha of mine to talk about some of the more spiritual things having to do with our sense of presence. So we have time for some comments and questions. Yes, Peter. I was realizing when you were talking that I hold a kind of image about what aging is based on my own very personal experience with my parents, and that's quite different from other people's.

[36:55]

I happen to feel really fortunate, but I also feel like I might be a little naive. Not necessarily the way everybody's life looks to them. Yeah, that's true. Their own sense of... depending on what their personal experience is and with people close to them. Well, I think that's really an important point because we can learn a lot about aging from our parents if they live long and get old. And we see them getting old. And I certainly learned a lot from my mother. And I learned a lot from your mother too. Peter's parents and my mother were good friends. But we also do have some genetic things that are part of how we're likely to age. But in spite of that, we also completely don't know. I mean, we might not age as our parents did at all. So I think it is helpful to have some views of older people who are aging in a way that we appreciate.

[37:59]

So Jin is certainly a wonderful example in that regard, and Zen and its honoring of age and the wisdom of age is very helpful too. Yes, Megan. I have a patagram, she said now, who wrote a book that I thought had a wonderful title, and the title says it all. You're not old till you're 90. Best to be prepared, however. Rebecca Latimer? Latimer. You're not old until you're 90. Best to be prepared, however. Other comments? Yes, Ross? You congratulated the young girl in front of me that her best age was being present now. And I'm wondering about, as a long-time practitioner, When you find yourself not being present and having some anxiety about getting old and all the rest of it, how do you balance the reality of your changing mind and body and not wanting it to be that way and accepting it for what it is and finding a place to go beyond those two points so you can continue practicing and not just lament your age and just not think about it?

[39:33]

How do I acknowledge what's difficult and still continue to try and be present? Right, because I think when people are really young, they don't quite have that skill set to kind of bring those two worlds together. As you get older, we cultivate this wisdom as you were saying a moment ago, and how you use that to bring your apprentice to the fore. Well, I think in a way it helps. I mean, getting older and the challenges of aging the practice because, well, in a conversation I had with a friend of my mother's, an old woman, and she was asking me about Zen, and I said something, well, you know, it has to do with letting go, and she said, well, I don't need Zen because old age is all about letting go. All you have to do is let go of one damn thing after another. So you can kind of think, okay, both aging and Zen are both getting me to let go.

[40:39]

And I do find that coming back to the body is helpful. And even with the infirmities, I mean, my biggest problem is my knees. I have pretty annoying arthritis in my knees. And there's something about that, you know, makes me aware of my body. I can't just forget about it and I'm aware, okay, here I am and this is what I'm feeling right now and these knees are here with me and they're my buddies. I'm going to take care of them. They've been doing a good job all this time. So here I am with my knees and there's something more physical and present about, I mean, it helps me to be physical and present as I get old instead of just going off on mind trips. Darlene Cohen says, live from the point of view of the body. And I like that. That's very helpful. It's a way to just, it's like bring your attention back to your breath or bring your attention back to your posture.

[41:44]

Yes, Andrea. Thank you. It seems like a lot of these questions, a lot of what you're saying are different musical lines in the same piece. but from a little different perspective. I've seen some people, even as they face their death, having the world really close in around them, so they don't have a lot that they're able to do, still be able to be themselves, to be completely alive in who they've always been. And I wonder if you have any insight about what that process is about. Well, I'd be interested in what you think, because you have more experience with being with people as they're dying than I do. Do you have a sense of what enables them to be themselves in that moment? I think it's really related to the process that you've been talking about, about being willing to accept, to not hold on to an idea of who you've always been, but to be who you've always been in the way that you can be it now.

[42:51]

It certainly is challenging. So when you can't carry a backpack up to a mountain peak like you used to, but there's still a way that heart of the hiker that loves to be up there is still very much alive and present. Yeah, I think I don't know if I can really add to what you're saying. I think that's a good observation to try and be who we are in the present as fully as we can and that there is something, I mean, even though there's no fixed self, there's some sense of our, you know, our karmic stream that comes along and And we can try to just, okay, what does it mean to be a human being right now? I'm alive. I'm alive. My God, that's a miracle in itself. What does that mean? What is it? You know. And the doing can be more replaced by being as we get older.

[44:01]

Yes. I think the other thing is that happens, or I know this. I mean, I went through menopause at a very young age, so I sort of started a certain aging at a different time. my memory has started tanking in my 30s. But I think the other thing that I've noticed happening is that as I get older, the things that I've always, oh, it's Friday and Saturday, let's go do something. And it kind of forces us to be where we are now. Because I don't want to go out and stay out till 10 o'clock anymore. Oh, Friday and Saturday, I'm going to stay home all weekend. We sort of adjust what's important to us, and it seems like it fits our bodies and our age, or it starts doing that. You know, if we can do that. Yeah. Yeah, getting older is a great excuse for not doing the things you don't want to do. I mean, really, any time you should try that, but... It's like this process, you know, I really want to be going to this

[45:09]

luncheon or something, I don't know what it would be for you, but you know the things that you've done, and if you're old and you have a limited energy, just really treasure your time. Yes? I was thinking about, my mother died at a pretty old age of 102. Wow. A fundamentalist Christian, I never really saw it in it. I never could quite get with it. But I tried to, at that time, when she was alive, put myself in their mindset and what if... I mean they believed that we all see each other in heaven. So my question always was, and I can't imagine it wasn't their question too, which mother was going to be up there? It would be the mother who served us like a slave has cooked and cleaned and foiled us, devoted herself to us, or the woman who in around her early 90s was totally selfish for about 10 years, and it was all about her clothes, what she ate, and on and on about nothing other than herself, huge monologues, and then the last maybe three years,

[46:38]

a variable saint of gratitude, the most beautiful being, just ethereal, almost evaporating being, and it had something to do with the drugs she was taking. And maybe they have those flags in heaven. But it also does. You know, I go through stages too. And when I start thinking like that, I'm much more tolerant. Yeah. Of, you know, my judging. Yeah. Which, you know, I try to be more tolerant of myself too. Yeah. Because I go through phases. On the other hand, very generous. Yeah. That's a great story of a person changing the different stages of her life. And it's an interesting theological question about heaven, which I wouldn't be able to answer.

[47:43]

But I have noticed myself that, you know, when somebody you love dies in old age, like my parents or this man I read about that priest who has died, he died since I wrote that. That the person you knew is kind of returned to you at all their ages. I mean, before Father Dunstan died, he was this old man. He was very old. But after he died, he was all the ages that I had known him at again. You know, I got the other parts of him back too. And the same with my parents. But I don't know about the heaven part. But it's good to remember that there are these different stages. We just keep changing. We keep changing. And what's difficult now... I mean, a lot of people are dealing with older parents. And you're taking care of an older parent and it's very difficult. And in some sense you're thinking, well, they used to take care of me. Now it's my turn to take care of them. And things do sort of just switch around.

[48:43]

So I think it's time for us to stop and we can talk some more outside if people want to. So thank you.

[48:53]

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