I vow to taste the truth of the Tartar's words. Kathy Fisher began sitting with us on Dwight Way some time ago, and then married Norman, and proceeded to have two twin boys. and moved to Tassajara, and she's lived, I guess, at Pay Street in Tassajara, and presently she lives at Green Gulch. She's a wonderful example of a person who has managed a family practice as well as a priest practice. So I'm very glad to have her here. I've never given a Zen talk before, So I'm very interested to see how I'm going to manage myself through this next hour and I can only hope that the next hour will be as interesting for you.

[01:07]

Even though I've never given a Zen talk, I have attended many and from these experiences I do have something in mind that I would like to offer this morning. And that is, not so much my talk, but together, creating a Zen, a Dharma occasion. I hope that we can create a Dharma occasion together. By this, today, Dharma, I mean non-separation. The non-separation that we all know very well, and come to this endo to celebrate together.

[02:13]

We all know very well that we're not only made of the same stuff as the floors and the ceilings, probably have been in the past ourselves, been floors and ceilings, and will be again in the future. And as a matter of fact, these floors and ceilings have in the past been our friends. And likewise, our thoughts and feelings that we have, that we bring to this endo, we are probably not separate, are probably not so different from what we find in each other, in each other's thoughts and feelings. So from this time on, I hope that anyone who has anything to say will please say it. Don't wait till the end. I hope that we can all talk together. Don't feel that you're interrupting me.

[03:20]

It's not interrupting. It's an offering. This includes songs, if you'd like to teach us a song, if you have any jokes. One thing that I've noticed in the Zen Do is that in the Zen Do we are practicing openness, being open to all of our different experiences in whatever form they may take. But one of the experiences that I don't hear spoken about so often in this endo is fun. And I hope that today we can include the experience of fun in our time together. I actually was trying to think of a couple of jokes, but I seem to have an allergy for forgetting jokes. That is, I'm allergic to remembering jokes.

[04:20]

There's a wonderful man who comes to Green Gulch from time to time and he always brings one or two wonderful jokes and I can never remember what they are. And I was hoping that he would show up last week and tell me a joke or two, but he didn't. However, I did have a dream about him last night. And in my dream, he showed up at Green Gulch and I went up to him and I said, will you tell me a joke? And he did. And the joke is not very funny, it's one of the dumber jokes, but, you know, I don't think I've ever thought of a joke while dreaming before, so I'll tell it to you. The joke was this. He said, what does Fe, Zen, and Yahweh have in common? Well, the answer is, they're all birds. I hope that anyone who has a better joke, or another joke.

[05:33]

Yes? I have a funny experience. It's on the central porch and there's a cartoon of a dog getting squirted by a fire hydrant from across the street. There's a street, there's a disguised tree on the fire hydrant and there's a dog on right by the fire, and it says underneath it, uh, karma. I said, well, this is really stupid, and I think that's a really simplistic explanation of karma. And I was coming down the stairs, and Al saw me, and I tripped and stubbed my toe on the fridge. So when we talk together, also don't feel that you have to contribute something that's fun.

[06:39]

If you would like, if we are going to include fun, of course we're going to also include seriousness, our more usual experience in the Zen Dojo. So please don't feel intimidated by all our fun. And bring anything you want. If you, when you ask a question, one thing I've been thinking about in the context of the Zendo, I've been thinking about it for some time, the way we ask questions and what the Zendo can be for us. Oftentimes people ask questions, and I myself ask questions like, what is, you know, I'll ask somebody, what is Dharma? And I've been thinking about this in the context of separateness, that to me that question implies I am this thing and you are that thing, and you have some knowledge or some thought, anyway, about something that I don't have and I want, and I want you to give it to me.

[07:59]

And this reminds me very much of when I go to the store, and I have some money with me, and there's something in the store that I want, and I'm going to get it, and I'm going to, because I don't have it, and I'm going to pay money to get it, and I bring it home with me, which is something that, it can be very enjoyable. But today in the Zen Do, I wonder if we could try not to evoke this kind of separateness. Maybe we can remember that all of us are more the same than we are different. Not possess knowledge and not try to buy and sell knowledge. So if we have a question, please tell us where it came from. Tell us what you think. I would like.

[09:01]

Well, my boys are nine. They're almost ten. And I'm having a great time raising twin boys. That is off and on. And the main thing, of course, about twins is that when you have twins, you don't have a choice. You simply, there you are with your twins and you had better raise them because no one else is going to. After having had twins, I would happily have another set of twins. However, before having had twins, I would never have wanted to have twins. And I wouldn't have recommended it to anyone. But now that I see it's certainly within the realm of feminine possibility, I would happily recommended to anyone who happens to find themselves in that situation. My twins are fraternal, which means they're very, very different.

[10:32]

They have really the same genetic relationship as any siblings. So, you know, any siblings can be quite different and they are quite different. So it's always a challenge to, even though that they have such a strong relationship together to raise them as each their own person, which is extremely important. They have such a tendency to compare themselves with each other. And now they're old enough to realize that they are quite different from each other, and they know their own strengths. And now I notice that they have a tendency to not venture into each other's territory. They have a kind of fear of competing on each other's territory. So they're a little shy in certain areas of their life, each one of them. So that's something that I've noticed about them.

[11:35]

It's always fascinating to see what different stages they go through and what different kinds of thoughts they have about being twins. for your question, for your response. I'm an identical twin. And the question that started to come up was how to foster that separateness, yet, as we are taught, we are one. Because being identical twins is even, well, has been my experience, that we were always dressed the same and treated equally. know us because we are twins rather than as individuals. From high school or even grammar school, they'll recognize us, and I will recognize them, because we are twins. And I was trying to relate it to our Zen practice, and I sort of lost it as you were talking about, you know, not to be separate.

[12:47]

Our goal, it seems today, is not to be separate. to be their separate beings, yet not. I don't know how else to put it, but anyway, I don't know if it's a question, or a comment, or statement, but it's certainly not a statement. Thank you very much. I think it's always a puzzle with any brothers and sisters, and even more so with twins, and probably even more so with identical twins. That's nice that you, I hadn't quite thought, I mean, being an identical twin, that really, that brings it very sharply, that you have the twin identity and that you have your own identity. And thinking about myself and my sister, we're five years apart and very different, but all I felt growing up was our difference.

[13:57]

And it's only much more lately that I'm in fact quite preoccupied with our sameness. That whole question of boundaries is very interesting. And I guess Cathy's remarks have made me remember when I visited her and the twins were very newly born and you were in a tiny little space in an apartment next to Page Street. It was my father-in-law. I mean, but tiny! And there was a twin, more or less, all the time, either at each breast or in the toilet, because you were trying very hard to toiletry for about eight months before you went to Tassajara. And you were sewing a robe. And it seemed as if there were no boundaries. So somehow, out of that, the boundaries grew. So I found it necessary in my family life to create boundaries, to create some separateness.

[15:14]

But, of course, this is provisional, just like all of our feelings of separateness and all of the appearances of separateness are provisional. Feeling that I'm not sure I can find elsewhere at the point where other people have had the same feeling.

[16:27]

After a few days, it was a she. And then the silence gave everybody a lot of room. Thank you. Is that a familiar feeling to anyone else? kept coming up, is the rooster next door. And how it was been hard for me today, especially to expand myself to allow that rooster to ring. And in fact, I remarked very, at breakfast, that I was wondering if we were going to have, you know, a chicken soup for breakfast, because I was halfway. It's brilliant to go out here and just make a sacrifice. And it does, I guess, for me it does take a little time in the Saturday morning off when it isn't long enough to expand myself and accept all, accept myself too.

[17:40]

So the booster is less intrusive. The rooster being not just a rooster. The rooster is not just a rooster. I just found that out this morning. But actually, we asked the person, the owner of the yard next door, we asked him to promise he'd take away the rooster. He did take away the rooster. It turns out it's a hermaphroditic hen. And when there's no rooster around, a lot of times one of the hens will take on the personification of a rooster. It doesn't change much, but it's a really interesting thing. You know, I told this guy months ago, he promised me months ago he'd take the rooster away. He told me all the time. But we still have the same problem. It's an interesting trick. Yeah, you took away the rooster, but it's still the same sound.

[18:44]

Take away the sound. Take away the sound. I think that is true. You mean there hasn't been a rooster for months? Yeah, we all thought it was a rooster. That's great. It's all an illusion. Well, there's all this space in the sashim, but there's also frequently the very small annoyances. I mean, we have a lot of room, but there's also the rooster and the person next to us who's not doing something right, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a very kind of dramatic contrast between, for me anyway, between inclusive silence and then stubbing

[19:55]

falling out of it, being brought out for short. It seems like a good time to apologize for dropping all my implements this morning. Twice. Once at the end of the meal. You dropped them all? Well I dropped, first it was the spatula. The chopsticks happened at the end of the meal. The chopsticks, they didn't just land nicely together, they were kind of scattered like, you know, pickles. But mistakes kind of tend to do that, to follow each other. Yeah, I'm sure it was something up here that... So maybe they just wanted to break the boundaries.

[21:02]

I thought it might have been Suzuki. I was curious about the transitions you've gone through from, like I knew you before you were married and you were sitting at Broadway and then when you had kids and then And then how you're, you know, I noticed this about children, how they change. They're always changing. And how that was for you, like what was your practice like when you were in the midst of twins? Did you sit much at all or did you focus on other things? And how has it evolved for you? First of all, Mel, did you want to say something? You had your hand up at some point. You can wait. Okay. When the boys were born, well, when I was pregnant, we were at Tassajara for one practice period, and I followed the full schedule, which meant, which means getting up at 3.30 in the morning and sitting between six and seven hours a day in the zendo.

[22:19]

And I remember I was real sleepy. Of course, everybody is, but maybe I don't know if I was more asleep, maybe I was. And then the boys were born in San Francisco where we lived for eight months and during that time I didn't sit at all, I was just trying to keep it together. And so then we went back to Tassajara when they were seven or eight months old and lived there until they were four. And during that time at Tassajara, Norman and I pretty equally shared, taking care of the boys and going to the Zen Dojo, we found that we could usually go to Zazen in the morning because they were sleeping at four o'clock in the morning. And then during the day we would take turns, you know, during work time. And during the daytime periods of Zazen or meals in the Zen Dojo, we would take turns.

[23:21]

And then I was sitting Not the full schedule, but pretty close. After about a year, a lot of other families came, which meant that we could all sit more because by that time the kids were getting a little older and they could be taken care of by many different people. So we had maybe five or six families and we took turns. We had a whole lovely little system worked out. So during those four years, almost four years at Tassajara, we sat a lot. We pretty much followed the schedule. And we, the first year not, but the second and third year we each had regular Tassajara jobs. When we left Tassajara and went to, moved to Greencoach, Norman and I were ordained while we still lived at Tassajara, so during that time we were preparing for ordination as well as doing the practice period and taking care of the boys.

[24:37]

When we left Tassajara and moved to Green Gulch, The situation at Green Gulch is a little bit different. First of all, there isn't as much zazen scheduled in the day. There's two periods in the morning, and at that time there was, I believe, one or two periods at night. And meals were not in the zendo. And the emphasis at Green Gulch is more on family life and work, less on zendo schedule. And this suited us. The boys were then four and much more active. It seemed that a good time for us to change our focus to kind of making a home, which we'd never really had at Tassajara. Tassajara is a very, you know, everyone sort of camps out in cabins for six months at a time at the longest and then you move. We never did our own cooking or anything like that.

[25:45]

So Green Gulch for us has been an occasion for creating a home, a family life and a home. And as the children have gotten older, that's been more and more important for them to have their own territory at home and their own possessions and be able to invite their friends home and so on. So this has been one transition from Tassajara to Greenbelch. Another transition that I have felt myself, I don't know how much it has to do with the boys, but since my ordination in 1980, for the first maybe four years or so, I was I felt that the role of priest was something that I tried very hard to fulfill, my image of that role.

[26:55]

And gradually I found that my image of the role of priest got smaller and smaller and smaller. And I found that I was putting more and more structure around my life through my ordination. And at some point, I suppose, through the changes that Tsen Tsen has gone through for the last three years since Bhikkhu Roshi's left, for me, this has been an occasion to reassess my ordination. to me, how it means to me, what it means to me. And I find that I'm constantly reassessing my ordination and each time I do it gets wider and more inclusive of parts of me and parts of the world that I had not formerly considered could be part of me.

[28:02]

So That's another transition that I've gone through lately. Could you be at all more specific about how the widening of your sense of ordination and what it includes that it didn't? Well, it started when I decided to wear earrings. I hadn't worn earrings for five years. I have pierced ears, and since I was, I think I pierced them myself when I was 14 or something, and I'd worn earrings for 10 years, and then I took off my earrings, and I hadn't worn earrings for five years, and at some point, about, oh, maybe three or, two or three years ago, I decided to wear earrings. And then I actually bought some lipstick,

[29:05]

And I can't ever wear it though, because nobody that knows me could take it seriously, so I'm having a little trouble with the lipstick. But I've also stopped wearing my hair very short. I used to wear my hair very short when I, for I think maybe three or something years, I can't really remember. After I left Tassajara, I felt that it was appropriate for a priest to have very short hair. So I stopped feeling that that was appropriate and grew it long. So these are the kinds of... Maybe it has a lot to do with my former image of a priest, as opposed to my image of... or the fact that I'm a female. Maybe that's a lot of it. I guess it's the same practice.

[30:28]

But it doesn't seem... Yeah, it looks a bit different. Well, do you... Let me ask you, do you... How do you feel when you see a priest who looks different? Or what does it evoke for you? Or, you know, is it important? Is it a strong experience? I think that there is value to priesthood. And I wouldn't want to suggest that the priesthood follow the route that I have. I mean, I wouldn't want to say that what I have done is right, you know, and what other people may feel is not right.

[31:30]

I have a lot of, I feel moved when I see monks, really of any religion, I feel moved. But for myself, that role and that image is, at least at this time in my life, I just felt that it wasn't true. So, do you feel that way when you see a monk? Yeah, when someone has sort of taken their commitment to the level of their personal appearance and they're sort of manifesting their attention to the very details of how they look It is inspiring. I also feel like there's a bit of a... the other side of coming to understand it is that I think it does... it has a lot of connotations which sort of set that person apart and I think so maybe they have to

[33:17]

Because... lay people like ourselves, perhaps, for me, when I see a priest. Yeah.

[34:45]

same question is raised, you know, so far it's just a Bible. Yeah, it's a puzzle. All the appearances of the different, you know, the shaved head and the robes and so on of a priest, at least in the Buddhist tradition, it goes way back. It's actually wonderful, in a way, to wear the clothing and to have the image that doesn't belong to this time and this place particularly. It belongs to a tradition. There's a feeling of timelessness about it, which can be very refreshing. The time I felt this most in intensely was at Tassajara. That was the whole context of the situation.

[36:26]

Tassajara sometimes during the practice period has a very timeless feeling, an ancient feeling, as though we're living among ourselves and among the Buddhas and patriarchs. The clothing is the same, and the schedule is the same, and the sun is the same, and the earth is the same. It's really wonderful. And people who can carry this into our modern world and everyday life, I have a great deal of regard and respect for. And like I said, I wouldn't suggest to anyone that they drop that image. But for me it continues to be a puzzle. I think it's fine as long as we remember that the form is not the essence.

[37:35]

The appearance is not reality. So that, you know, shaving your head is a symbol for not having attachments. You can have a shaved head and have attachments. And you can have hair and not have attachments. But you can have hair and have attachments. Yes, yes. And of course we all see many priests who we, you know, we wonder what on earth they're doing because they don't You know, the people that they are don't impress us as being aligned with the image that they're portraying. I'm sure that we experience that. All combinations. And the people that have nothing to do with the priesthood do manifest that. Yes, yes. That's some encouragement, I think.

[38:37]

Bye. phosphate ourselves. Kathy, this question is a little bit of a supermarket question, but it's been on my mind a lot and I wanted to ask Greg when he lectured last week and I couldn't bring myself to part it because he didn't take any questions.

[40:09]

But what is your sense of the Zen transmission? I feel very committed to Buddhism, but the transmission is something I don't get. When you become a priest, even when you receive Jukai, you receive transmission. And I mean, so, you know, you have this or a row. But I don't feel that. You know, some people say, oh, I want to be a priest. I am a priest because I had a clear sense of transmission. And I always think, what? Well, let me think. You mean transmission like, you mean any of those transmissions?

[41:10]

You don't just mean when someone becomes a teacher? No, no, I mean official transmission. Like ordination? Yes. Yes, let me think. I haven't thought about this, but I'm sure that I have in the past. Yes, I remember now, when I've thought about this. When I was ordained, let's go back to that, I don't know why I wanted to be ordained, but I wanted to very, very much. And I was in a very unlikely situation for a person to become ordained. I had two small children, toddlers, you know. And I remember that I went into doka-san with Bekaroshi and I said, I would like to be ordained, and he burst out laughing. because it was such an unusual request for a mother of small children.

[42:12]

And we'd only been married for a short time. It seemed like I had enough on my hands already. But I wanted to very much, and I pursued it, and I didn't ever change my mind, although I had many, many misgivings. along the way like what on earth am I doing and things like that. But I never really changed my mind. So I just did it. I went through it. And I was floored by my ordination. And I can only say that it reminded me a lot of the kind of transformation that one experiences through marriage, through childbirth, those kinds of experiences which actually change the person that you are into the person that you are with a little twist, you know, something different about you.

[43:16]

Many people are, I think it's common for people to be kind of surprised by that when they get married, that if you live with someone for a long time and then you get married, something changes, it really does. For me, and certainly when you have children, it's a physical, emotional and mental transformation of the person that you are. For me, ordination was in the same ballpark, you know, It was a transformation. And even though my understanding of ordination is constantly changing and I'm playing around with it a lot, I feel that it's something I can never go back on. It's like having a sex change operation or something. There's no going back. And it's something that will be with me for my whole life, whether I like it or not. And whether I can make it something that can nourish me or something that can hurt me is really up to me.

[44:26]

But I feel that my feeling about my ordination is it's a fact. It's a hard cold fact about me. In the same sense that I'm a mother. Even if I'm a bad mother, I'm still a mother. So, I don't know what... I don't know if other people would describe that kind of feeling, but that was very strongly my feeling. Caught me by surprise. Doesn't have to be hard to hold back. A simple fact. Does that answer your question? There it is and you realize it more and more.

[46:05]

And then you might go through a ceremony which makes it obvious. It's not clear. The whole supermarket question of ordination is interesting because one always We always have to remember that each moment of our life is a transformation in each moment. Each person we meet provides us with transmission. Each color and each sound is a transmission. These ways that we have in our human world of marking times in our life, or marking certain feelings that we have with transmission or marriage or whatever is we can do that on account of the world that we live in as moment after moment transmission, transformation.

[47:16]

It's on account of this deep wide world which changes every moment and we change every moment. This can be so. It's always a challenge to keep these priorities straight. In the beginning, I was tempted to say a song in the send-off. And if I had never done that, I really would be chanting.

[48:18]

And I know this Japanese, recent Japanese novel, Ya [...] Yes, let's try that. You make yourself loud because in case we lose it, we get to listen to you.

[49:26]

Yai [...] Yai, yai, [...] yai. Yai, yai, [...] yai. Yai, yai, [...] yai. Thank you. Mal has had his hand up several times in the last hour.

[50:50]

Please. I'm going to have to pronounce the word.

[53:12]

I still have a fear that I have more of a sense of time. A sense of freedom. Maybe that's about an hour now. Thank you very much.

[54:02]

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