The Widow's Son

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good morning everyone and welcome to our saturday lecture i have the good fortune to introduced today speaker megan collins whose dharma name is she gets to me ocean translated as autumn moon wonderful thin
make it began sitting at birthdays etc it in nineteen seventy seven when it was located on white way after many years of soul searching and exploring different disciplines and it was while you with that tough a higher with her daughter who's a longtime practitioner and resident at san francisco zen center that make him realize
it's a right under your feet well as a place to begin practicing zen so as where it started at tassajara and she sat with married most sane at the
clearwater waters and and she with the first she so they're in two thousand and five and received lay interested or a great rock a suit and agreeing to which entitle empowers her to give teachings of this sort as well as early city grips she leave at dawn
group here at berkeley's answer and she's also a writer and editor and is published a few books
and with the absence of a script in front of her i think that she has many stories to share from her long long years of practice on this planet and she's a storyteller and she likes to say that she's older than the abbot which africa
maybe a story it may be it may be true i'm that shore
but in any case please refer to our granted i think of
i think it was the it's true
and then
i know you've had it happened to you that somebody says something or you read something in a book and it's just how that's just what i need to know and i are one such thing i think i mentioned the last time in the
ah for kerrigan a class of surgeons and he said you can't get it unless you pay it and you can't be it unless you derek and i thought ah that's all we need to know we can go
on now
so i haven't another such as
that little lightning both this year i went to a wonderful sway at aurora called weapon berg and the scene of it was that hamlet was going to college there at the time and martin luther and doctor faustus were fucked
hi for that being his mentor at some point dr faust said
legio and though some i chose therefore i am and it was another yes kind of with a moment for me because i'm
i chose therefore i am now i know that has not anything to do with the zen master whose name i can't remember who central begins the great way is not difficult if only you refrain from chimp same that's choosing in the realm
i want i want want want want as into this wonderful poem a by the way is the volume okay in the back you hearing me okay good
a so on
now this this is just the a
i like as it is now is the result of the choices that we have made to get up here and what happens from here on out is going to be the result of the choices that we make so i'm going to a
well let brass that said to you and the in my story teller hats a day i'm going to tell you a story that i think it's a dime story i hope you will too
and it's called the story of the widow with son by mary lavin who is a wonderful irish short story writer of i believe the twenties was her major period
so once there was a widow who live in a small neglected village at the foot of a very steep hill in one of the counties of ireland and she had but the one son
and he she he was the pearl of her life every day she met her back and made a thousand sacrifices to say that packing her son went to a good school in a town not far away instead of the
the
stupid schoolmaster in animal village where they lived
and a shame is she would walk miles grazing her cow on the side of the road to tips have used the grass there instead of the pitiful grass in her own stony fails and she would take a
the bad is of cabbages to the market town to sell to pay for package books on his clothes but as she had great plans for him but she never let him know that she was just always threatening him that he didn't do well she was put him to work on the roads or
or in the a quarry under the hill
but he didn't do well i didn't do well and by the time he was fourteen and then his last class at the school
the here
the a schoolmaster there was hoping for a scholarship for him to a big college in of the city and of
so at all the village by that time had come to respect him and he and because of from tall young boy coming to be a man under his mother's harsh
a treatment he had some character and so on but everyone knew that he was her darling and even he knew it she would wait for him everyday afternoon when he was going to appear on his
bicycle at the top of this hill and every morning she saw him off to go so one day it was a very hot day in june and the air was so heavy that that that cent of the grass was just rising in the air and it has been sunday
a since there's been a rain so all of the
all of the of
chickens were running around in the road petting him trying to find some stray something to eat and this old neighbor came walking by an old laboring man and he said waiting for puppy are you and she said yes and the old man
man said oh it's a hot day he'll have a time writing that four miles on his bicycle on this hot day and she said well tacky would go twice that far so good if they were a book at the end of the way and the old man
when said well
the heat's better than the rain maybe and and she said yes and he'll have a breeze coming down the hill on his bicycle in them man said yes yes he will he'll have a breeze there's not a hot day in the world where you wouldn't get a breeze coming down that hill that
that nearly as a worthy of being called a hill
and he picked the piece of grass out of the stones and put it in their mouth and he said it's my belief that downhill is marked with a name on the ordinance map
and the woman said well if it is patty will be able to tell you all about it because if it as in a book in his hand he has a map or that's a great thing a map as an ordinary thing it's not everybody who couldn't read a map but
she wasn't listening to it men because just at that moment she saw the flash of blue of package jersey and bicycle spokes glinting and started down the hill he was waving and
if he was coming fast fast as steeps stone and yelling show at all the chickens and a woman or the ellen show for them to get out of the road as well well later after the harm and happened she thought maybe it was her own flapping of
her apron that start of this old clocking ham and all the sudden as as packing was hurtling down his own clocking hand appeared on the garden wall and flu distractedly into the middle of the road
and pack he yelled and
a slant on his brakes and they all him scurrying into the ditch but patty was thrown over the handlebars know it looked like such a simple accident that the old man and the woman ran to him but but they just you know we're not expecting
in the worst but his head head was at the strange angle angolan when the neighbors came and helping to pick him up the boy was dead before they carried him into the house and the woman couldn't believe it not that he's just a way
weakness somebody that er doctors a doctor will bring him around but the neighbors coming in or dropping to their knees and crossing themselves one by one because they could see
amidst the dirt and sweat of life on this voice face that he was dead
and when the a widow when the widow realize this the women have to hold her down there she was screaming why didn't he do it why why that old hand she wasn't worth about a few shillings you would go in the or
we would either like for this all good lucky in and over and over and the neighbors didn't know what to say they were just paid around the sole shoulder and say they're now they're there now and they said it over and over there now
here now and in years to pass when one of the neighbors would come to drop in of an evening to sit by the fire and keep her company as they were rocking the a poor widow would say again every time why why did he do that
his life close fourth everything to me and that all to locking handle was worth nothing
well as they sat there
the neighbors might have been looking into the fire
you know these people in these little places they know everyone very well and they know what they might do in one circumstance and do something different in another circumstance and as they're sitting there thinking it might be
it easier to invent something then it is to remember accurately and if that word so there are two great arts that would die out with immediately the art of the story teller and the art of the gossip
so as they sat there they might think
what would happened if pack he had grown over the hand
so now i'm going to tell this story again from the same beginning we have the widow she's breaking her back carrying cabbages walking the towel on the road proud of patty
watching for him as he comes and goes again at the hot hot day in june the old neighbour comes along walking from his work and stuff and then he says the same thing
fading for puppy are you
oh yes yes the half day to day he'll have a hard ride home but he won't mind it and the old man said well maybe the heat's better than the rain and she said ah rain packing wouldn't mind the rain i've seen him come home with his clothes so stiff from
the rain that they stand up on the wall when he took them off
and
i've just at that moment she saw him coming at the top of the hair comes now comes down to so fast it looked at a man and the woman as if if his his bicycle were standing still and all the trees and shrubs or rushing by and
the chickens were running and squawking and
ah the the old clocking him lands in the middle of the road while pappy yells and there's a burst of feathers and blood and he swerves as bicycle he drags his treat on the ground to stop it he runs back of the hill to wear their hands body
the carcasses line and he's don't sell them as always expecting her blow and the woman's role for an incredible or his his kid
and go
yeah
she starts to run out of you go
and she as a boy is saying i couldn't help it mother i couldn't help it i didn't see it until it was too late and she picks up the body of this hand and look fat and the pace it by his feet and begins to beat the boy on the back way
with feathers fly him learn and he thinks that mother mother
i didn't i didn't see until that was too late and she's as the you're lying i saw you yell you could have stopped it's it's you're just getting to further yourself is it now here too important to stop for the hands and keep a close down your back and they said but mother if i and by this
the ring around the from the model is shouting and he said mother i if i jam on my breaks i'd have gone over the handlebars he served to her she said back wealth and what i would that have done yeah i've seen you take it haunts many a time when you wrestle with jimmy mac you come in with here
space like a gridiron and elbows and knees are bleeding and a you've fallen out of a tree and alarm don't see your but a few bruises no no you
you you're getting to do too big for your britches there and boy and you care enough about my my hands that and she said he said well but mother the reason i was coming down so fast didn't you see me waiting
i i got the scholarship
and she just stopped and the neighbors were all looking to see what would happen next and here was the moment she had a choice to take the boy into the house but with the neighbors looking and i ended the disa
pointman she felt that the that scholarship news would be spoiled by the a killing the hand and but this raged just rolls up into her and resentment of like screeching animals and
the anger and spite him she began to yell at him as fellowship hath father ship is it now you think you're independent now and are you think you can leave your own mother year old flame of a mother behind it was half killed herself to see that you've got where you'll
gotten that you're not as independent as she's think we're glad you still have your clothes in the fuck have on your back even though they may be given you your hoax and what pays for the growth it's my hands and the cabbages i take the town and who's gonna buy
by your boot sentence than the by your pants and ah she's looking around at it and he's beginning to wilt under it you know not not answering any more and ah than the m thing came to her she wandered to say
the most shaming hurtful thing she could say to him she said who's gonna buy your night shirts are are you going to sleep in your skin and the neighbors began to laugh at this and shave again to laugh and suddenly you know she felt all this tension go away and she is she
the looked at packing but the look he gave her made her cold in her heart and she said ah get yourself in size and what she was going to do she thought it was make him a nice bit of potato cake and and everything with me all right then because
he loved potato cake
canada so he sat down
and he will know that her and he wouldn't eat his dinner
and he
if he just she kept thanking him he's gonna wanna go outside i don't want them to the outside but he made no no moved to go outside and so after a while and then they went to bed
and when she woke up in the morning she went to wake him up with the the school and has been hasn't been slept in he wasn't anywhere in the house she ran from have little cottage the cottage in the village nobody had seen him she was frantic she went to the
a town can talk to the schoolmaster had he come there and that the schoolmaster said no he hasn't been here and and i think you should get the police to look for him is of that boy is most sensitive boy i've ever met in my life and he takes the
strange notion sometimes but of the police couldn't find him and in a few days there came a letter from patsies ah saying mother on i
not going to take the scholarship it can go to some other boy and when i get a hold of some money i'm going to send it to you to pay for the ham
and that was the and and then from time and time she would get a letter the first one said that he was on a trawler going to see and enclose some money from his first pay and every little while she would
get a letter from him and closing some money with a note saying this is to repay you for all the sacrifices you made for me and all that you did for me but none of the letters ever had a return address on it and he never
ever ever came back to the village
and so from this story with this two endings we can see that our lives have this double quality to them that there is always an alternative
and from
ah a week we need to be so attentive to see that space
when i can a tremendous call it a vardo a friend of mine and i were reading this that the best of the desert few years back together and we decided that a vaudeville was not only the space after you die but there is that the air space
choices in life that happen where you can make these choices one way or the other and it is only by seeing that little moment when you have the choice to say or do the hurts
whole thing or say or do the compassionate thing that we find a proper destiny because no matter how hard that is
it's not as hard as such calamities that we bring upon ourselves
thank you
so
that's my story and it's anyone have anything they'd like to yes it's a wonderful story and it's a lights right one for me to their if it's a wonderful story is exactly the right word for me to the oh well that's unfortunate
hi i'm gonna take with
hey
anyone else
already well
oh i'm so sorry okay the olympics skating again if i was wondering if there's a third ending where she made the compassionate choice
there is no there's enough in that story there's not for that's a good idea
question i founded our iceland and
what would you think that might be
to out because i can't i can't imagine that everything would be perfect you know how quite so disastrous well there was the moment in in the story where she she stopped since she it after he's told her that it's thought the scholarship when she could have taken in an end of the house right them
and that would have been a averted the the runaway because even though she would have been rough and lady not saying how wonderful he was he would have known that she was proud of him but but she shaved that oh
overwhelmed with her
feelings
she have little choice then the who she was worse her choice at that moment or was it earlier to do you make yourself harm yourself into what you are certain fear is no choice at some point
well i'm not sure i heard everything is that i shouldn't turn knees up olympic title that'll so are you saying that as why don't you say that again i could have a look at the beta death for yes she had that choice to make you who could she as she was
was at that moon you resolve it
that she was then could she in fact have made their choice or was it had she hardened yourself to rushed through the years to be able to make that choice well i believe sue that the that the intent of the writer is to say that she her
that's tough as an old thorn tree and and she had made herself that way and it was the this combination of of her always having been tough with him and seeing the neighbors and not wanting them to think she was soft and all those
as those were her hardening characteristics that brought her i think may or lavin intended to say brought her to be the way that she was because she says in the story the neighbor the neighbors who sit by the fire with her they know her and they know pat
key and they can guess what she would do in a certain circumstance
brass i thank you make it a lovely story
it reminds me of another story that is a tribute to such a rush his teacher where such you will she was selling the mercutio to me there was a spider going across and a
there was this momentum at the museo and the karma of the coming together and procedure where she can finish the story about because it seems like we make choices and we live through the results of that i can also speak to sooth question about
we do something is there any other way that we can be over there with when it comes to know the it's the three tie together or
we are not a fraps into your throat refer you will never sacrifice a horror before we had the fire single either qbo the sentence soldier
do you live
and so i was doing that very serious and spiders whom because it will be the drum the vibrations the vortex of migrations of grew and spider flew to the beer
is he couldn't escape
he was driving the i'm doing well
i asked suzuki roshi about that
what to do in that case was patchwork of course with
his name but he said well
new case like that it's okay to stop even though you threw everything into confusion
but they have a lot of present session of angela merkel said to have to decide should i do decisions the the
just read the thing setting appropriate
yeah that that same kind of a moment
hey hey you have to x ray
so and he retired to story having i'm taking on they don't work after the widow when she was growing up
have you the out what broader to this
position of being so critical of a packing hockey at
the neighbors and off that
that'll be another store shopper some time everything from various sorts of
well let me guess
i did she would have been poor therefore girl girls not considered very much and not as days she would have a long from her childhood that you have to be tough to survive
i've
and she didn't want patty to be soft and not not survive not when threw in some success and has gone life century would married
let's say her husband drank a lot
that could have an iron
and sometimes than when somebody comes home drunk they might beat you up she might she might have had a very very very hard life
left a widow what's that no social security know that know anything but what he could do for yourself and i of course you can't remember every single thing in the words like one thing it said in the story that she she made for
i'm her thrift and industry that she did as well as some of the the more prosperous farmers will have better lamb and shape in that i think it's that at that high winds that blew on her all lights that made started like the tree
i'm guessing and then the other story for sure you'll tell all right she has some sort of ah realization what she's done it
isn't some miserable
let's hope
yeah i said that i can't see less pleasant i yeah i'm thinking about that question and and our our understanding that many people are traveling by the are hard lives and then when we concluded the story and spoke of the
martin said will happen soon as nice little opportunities to do something different
and then sue brought us to realize that sometimes there's options was i've in there i think of causes and conditions and office a kind of collective karma not a personal karma but if we are just carrying on how funny fellow human beings are so good
in that
the story all the as it is not really about the opportunities that we have as individuals but of down the with different carriage of the causes and conditions it's almost as stories and saw
and i love thinking about those of us you would find it in the human realm is that instead of really stuck in one hundred years graham that that we do have religious practice and he didn't have
so i can take it as a cautionary tale that we need to be looking for his is all our lives before it be blamed for being born infants opener so thank you catherine and i i i i agree with you and it causes and conditions is really them
thread of this story but but but then we all have choices as well that we can make so i do i see if christie you know there's a lovely story thank you and your piece i'm hearing about this bardo a moment i think is when
more and more in the realm of the mundane how could you tell my my clucking hand move up into space opens and we're kind of holding the elemental or aware of it there's more perspective and i think room to perhaps reorient to something more compassionate and i just wonder what your thoughts are about that of sure we've all been through
through it i shared some terrible death diagnosis near death thing and it opens a space for we're not just thinking that hand was worth a lot of money move-in day today how could you cut me off in traffic is a big deal and that seems like another challenge this is true and i answer to that is true
wacken
because after a while of practice you'll get to see what you're doing even for better i think and and and maybe have more space around yourself
okay all right well thank you very much always a building
is this similarly the since i can't see coffee hi i'm kelsey and i just you open the dagger story and talk with a quote from soja google which as if you can't get it must be it can't be it unless to do it yeah and i'm wondering where it
that for you connects with your story
it doesn't really
with this story because she didn't get it was in it she didn't do it
the i just i just want it can bring in as i started these moments when you have the this the saying i'm in hands me all the time of focal fall off the shelf and hit me on the head and open up them there there's a second side
or someone will say something some a wise friend will say something there are smart that i put in my hand for usefulness and and that what surgeon seven with was a major major major for me i think that's what we're doing
in a nutshell and the other one this thing that happened at the play when he said lsu you ever some that was just another moment when this i thought yes that is that something that i can see is a vital to
the
am i most want anybody suffer of kay ivey said said about height and have a has that thinking if she had done such a great job raising happy suits cup wouldn't he have had that choice to say to stand up for himself the guest his mother and the in front of the day
neighbors and said you're being completely unfair and here we have a perfect opportunity to make delicious chicken soup it by everybody
that's another ship and what's the matter with you in andhra and as as as this growing young man who's been we've been raised he was tough way you know choose to stand up for himself and and and another another way to story
we have a lot of creative writers
huh
the how to think that fair we will he can always talking