Good morning, everybody. I guess you can hear me, huh? I can hear myself. Now I'm afraid to drink the water. Well, it's so nice of all of you to come. I think I know everybody here. I tried to prepare for this talk, but I got as far as Googling Ways Seeking Mind and came up with a 1966 lecture by Suzuki Roshi. He basically said that Way Seeking Mind is the mind of Buddha.

[01:08]

And we are all the mind of Buddha. And I have spent my life searching elsewhere for the mind of Buddha, which has propelled me in many different directions during my life. And even though I know that it's already here, that I am already here, I still am compelled to seek. And every now and then I stop, and I realize, and I'm happy. So I think this is supposed to be my story. So I was born in New York and under strange circumstances and I've never told this part of my story in my several Wayseeking Minds stories.

[02:29]

I apparently was placed on the black market with 600 other babies who were being put up for adoption by a woman who was trying to rescue children who were a product of the Second World War. My mother was born in Germany and my father was born in France. They came to the United States to basically avoid what was going on in Germany. And they could not adopt children because they were German. So they went to this woman who said she could give them two children. I was one of them. and my brother was the other one. And I found out in recent times when my mother, who was really big on secrecy, said that actually I was born on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation in Long Island, and then sent to a hospital in Queens, in Flushing, and then that I was

[04:03]

part Native American and German and French. So I went to the Shinnecock Reservation and said, do you happen to know my family? And they said they would do a search and I never heard back. So I abandoned the search for my other family and proceeded to pretty much abandon family entirely. My parents are now both dead. I have adopted parents. I had a wonderful upbringing in New York. My family loved children. I think the first time it occurred to me that there was something going on in the world of consciousness was when I was about four.

[05:14]

I had a recurrent dream of being on a grid in like a plane of squares that were all leading to a horizon and at the horizon the sky was black. and on the plane it was light and there were people walking towards the horizon and I was a child walking in the same direction and we assumed we were going to end our journey at the horizon except that we kept walking and eventually it seemed like we were not going to make it and I would wake up and I would feel disturbed and the goal was to actually get there but I never got there and the dream stopped when I was about eight or nine years old and it stayed with me as vividly

[06:31]

then as it is now. I don't dream it anymore, but the line between dark and light has become a theme in my spiritual practice and my search. So I decided when I was six or seven, must have been seven, to become a nun, a Catholic nun, that this would be the way to find what the Catholics promised, which was a God and a fulfillment that transcended the world. And I thought the world looked pretty good, but this looked even better. So I launched into a program of Catholic studies and worshipped nuns and went to church faithfully, went to Catholic school.

[07:47]

And then I started asking questions and the answers were, from my point of view, unsatisfactory. I abandoned the cause and I abandoned the church and I abandoned Catholic school. And then I left home at the age of 12 and told my parents I have seen what I need to see and I'm ready to go to work and take care of myself. So I left home. At which point my parents got very upset and started searching for me. They called the police. I don't know what it was, but I declared my independence and couldn't understand why they could not get on board with my program. So they tried to explain this to me and asked me to please stay home until I'm at least 18. So I did that with a few forays into the wilderness of my mental... I had a very vivid mind and could imagine a life that I believed could be manifested just because I could think of it.

[09:16]

And my parents found this kind of disturbing because I would take off and not come back for days on end. And consequently, I did not do very well in school. But I did... The high school that I went to told me that if I could pass the tests, I could get a high school diploma. So I studied for two days and went to school and passed all the tests and got a diploma. So that was my youth, my early youth and I had decided to move to California because it was 1970 or something and California was the land of

[10:20]

the flower children and I was going to become one of those. So that is where I took a sharp left turn and instead of going back to college I was going to get a science degree. I started meditation practice on my own. having read Autobiography of a Yogi and I was instantly attracted to India. So I'm going to take a pause. What time is it? It's 17 minutes. Oh, that's the same as the last time. So I was a pretty happy person for until then.

[11:56]

I came to California and I joined an ashram and began studying practice of yoga and in particular Kundalini yoga that was an energy practice and I got to be fairly good at it and spent about seven years doing meditation and a pretty strict practice. We got up at four o'clock in the morning and didn't finish our day until nine o'clock at night. I began a serious search because for the first time in my life started suffering in a big way and I had the good fortune to have some deep samadhi experiences and then the bad fortune to lose them permanently and I started searching

[13:19]

for those experiences again and could not acquire them. And it didn't occur to me that change was good. That a great deal of what was propelling me was trying to return to a place where I was once before. And I didn't quite understand what that place was, but it had something to do with coming home. And it looked a certain way in my mind. And it felt a certain way. And if it didn't look and feel that way, then I couldn't be there. So I started a a deep search internally and decided to leave yoga practice and meditation practice and go back into the world and take another look at it.

[14:36]

So in 1981 I spent five years trying to enjoy myself in the world. I went out on a lot of dates and tried to dance. I was never a good dancer and did a lot of hiking. Went to Colorado. Got a job in Denver. Worked in a law firm in Denver. for a person that struck me as being a very lazy man. He was a lawyer that had nothing for me to do and he would sit with his feet up on the desk and I would wonder, so this is life in the world.

[15:39]

I quit my job after three months. I just walked out the door. and went to Boulder and went to the Dharmadhatu and made friends with Chögyam Trungpa's group and decided I should go back to California and see what there is back in San Francisco I ended up sleeping in the laundry room of my friend Andrew's house. Andrew had married my girlfriend, Mariah. They said, well, you can stay with us and our two kids. Their kids were pretty small at the time. I spent three months in the laundry room with Nathan.

[16:51]

Nathan was their oldest boy. We became pretty good friends. And I went to the San Francisco Zen Center one day and somebody named, I think Tygan opened the door and said, hello. And I said, what are you doing here? He said, this is a Zen center. I said, well, I'd like to look at your brochures. And I ran into Paul Haller, and we had a few conversations. And he said, why don't you come and move into the building? So I said, that would be great, because I've been staying in the laundry room for three months. And that was where my Zen practice started. And I took it on with great enthusiasm, and I didn't understand the goal.

[17:56]

He said, there is no goal. And I said, there has to be a goal, because you don't go forward without a goal, because you have to have direction. So we had many arguments. and I read Zen Mind Beginner's Mind and then I started to understand a little bit about what I was searching for why I was seeking and what Zen Mind really was so that is how I came to practice Zen And I'd like to read something that is in my beginner's mind. I'm going to take my glasses.

[19:05]

So... I'm going to have a hard time doing this. I want to try my glasses. Yeah, do you have reading glasses? The bottoms of them. Oh. I just take... Thanks. You can quit. Fine. Keep going. Wow. Wow. I feel Americans, especially young Americans, have a great opportunity to find out the true way of life for human beings.

[20:07]

You are quite free from material things and you begin Zen practice with a very pure mind, a beginner's mind. You can understand Buddha's teaching exactly as he meant it. But we must not be attached to America, or Buddhism, or even to our practice. We must have beginner's mind, free from possessing anything. A mind that knows everything is in flowing change. Nothing exists but momentarily in its present form and color. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped. Before the rain stops, we hear a bird. Even under the heavy snow, we see snowdrops and some new growth. In the east, I saw a rhubarb early. In Japan, in the spring, we eat cucumbers.

[21:09]

That was the last paragraph of Genline Beginner's Mind. and I like that because somewhere in the practice of over the years I stopped seeking the goal and way-seeking mind became something I did when I woke up And my return was not to something I had already known. It was a return to what was already new, what was new now. Coming back to the present started to be a good thing. And I've been practicing that for quite a while. I came here in 1997 and

[22:14]

I guess it's been 12 years, something like that. I've been practicing with a soldier and I've been very happy here and I'm very happy with the practice because it has released me from the struggle to find something else. So I highly recommend it. It doesn't look like much when you're doing it, but... It has a surprising effect. And things like finding a sunbeam on a chilly day have a lot more meaning than having to take a long journey to find something like a sunbeam on a chilly day.

[23:29]

So, that's all I have to say. There's five minutes left. And you can ask questions if you have any. Peter? Well, I would just say thank you for your talk, Alexandra. to learn so much about you. I was struck by your description of this 12-year-old leaving home. So was my mother. And my stepdaughter is kind of an acting out kid. And she was really difficult. I hear, I wasn't around them, but I hear she was really difficult at 12. and I had some sense of what was propelling her and I was wondering when you think about yourself in twelve what was going on that was leading you away from your home?

[24:41]

I was free I felt free I was happy I was enthused enthusiasm I had a lot of that and that could be a fault. Which I discovered it took me into a lot of directions. I would get all excited about an idea and that would launch into... I wanted to explore the world. It occurred to me that no one would hire a 12 year old. This was typical of me. I was very idealistic. and thought I could do anything. The police kind of lectured me and took me home and I was very selfish. That's kind of at the core of it.

[25:45]

Very self-centered and not appreciating my parents. I used to appreciate them. I don't know what happened at the age of 12, I think your hormones change and everything changes and you go through puberty and, you know, the world turns upside down. It's a difficult time for girls. It became difficult when I was sort of locked up by my parents. They didn't trust me after that. Yeah. Thank you, Alexandra. I was wondering, so you were at City Center for a while. What brought you to be here? I got married to someone at City Center. We were together for seven years. He did not like City Center.

[26:47]

I was actually headed towards Tassajara. That was one of the goals that I had. That had been a goal for a very long time. So I, because my husband was a writer, not making any money, he asked if I could make some and skip Tassajara. So I got a corporate job in a law firm. And we moved. We bought a house. in Berkeley. And he said Sojin was his teacher. And so I said, OK, I know Sojin. Every time he comes to the city center, I have, we have tea. We can set up tea out on the patio. Had a little conversation. And so I figured, well, I'll leave the city center and leave my plans and come here.

[27:55]

I didn't last long in the practice here. My first year was a disaster. I practiced intermittently. I became a very sloppy practitioner. I was trying to work a full-time job, do Zen practice, deal with a failing marriage. My marriage was failing from like three months into it, and I struggled for the whole seven years to keep patching together. I had a determination to make it work that was unbelievable. And it failed. And I got divorced. And I stayed at Berkeley Sun Center. And he left. He's now at City Center. Oh, boy. But I'm here. And I'm not going anywhere. At least not as far as I know. One thing is your son.

[29:01]

Oh, I forgot about him. And the other thing is about your Parkinson's. Oh yeah, I have that too. I've had Parkinson's for 10 years and I forget that I have it because I'm so used to it. It's normal. And it's changed my practice because I'm practicing with a major disability. I don't know. My body is out of control. I have learned to find my center in it and the consequence of that is that my body is now moving differently and the trajectory of this disease that I have is slowing down.

[30:14]

I'm actually better this year than I was last year, which is kind of phenomenal. There's no explanation for it. And I have a 45-year-old son who went off the deep end and became a raging alcoholic and left all his children. One of them is 20. He's my grandson and I take care of him. He's in college in Minnesota and I am his sole support. So I leave my son alone because that's his wish to be left alone. So that's my family. So I hate to end on a sad note.

[31:17]

I think we're done, yes? 7 o'clock? No, it's after 7. Not good. Okay. Thank you, everyone.

[31:33]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ