Well, welcome everyone. Thank you for being here with me. I know a fair amount of you, but a few of you I don't. So I'll give you a little introduction in just a moment. Let's just take a second to land together on Zoom. Find our bottoms, contacting cushions or chairs or benches, pouring our drinks. petting our cats, finding our breath, just relaxing into coming to story time, Zen story time. Wonderful. So for those of you who I don't know and do don't know me, my name is Karen Dakotas.

[01:08]

I practiced at Berkeley Zendo for a long time and was a resident there and then moved away and have been away for a long time, but I have kept in touch with several of my good Dharma siblings When I first moved away, I came back and did some practice periods in May and June. And I have kept in touch with Sojin. And in the meantime, since I've been gone, Sojin has been very generous with me. He gave me lay entrustment soon after I left. And then as he helped me navigate changes in my life, we finally decided I should ordain as a priest so he could give me Dharma transmission so I could be independent and he wouldn't have to worry about me anymore. I added that last part. And I think that's interesting given the story I will tell you today.

[02:17]

Anyway, in the sense of no lay transmission. I am wanna tell us the story of a woman, an adept that you may all know, but I just love her and I love her story. So that's why I wanted to bring it. And as a friend of mine has said, we can hear these stories over and over. They're just lovely stories to visit again and again. So I am introducing the great adept, Ling Jiao, the daughter of Laman Pong. She is one of our female ancestors and was a very, well, you'll hear, a very astute and accomplished woman. And I will start because some of you may know, who love The Hidden Lamp like I do, that she figures in here three times, and the three koans are wonderful markers of her life.

[03:28]

The first one I'll read is called Lingjiao's Shining Grasses. Laman Pong was sitting in his thatch cottage one day studying the sutras. Difficult, difficult, difficult, he suddenly exclaimed. Like trying to store 10 bushels of sesame seed in the top of a tree. Easy, easy, easy, his wife, lay woman, Pong answered. It's like touching your feet to the floor when you get out of bed. Neither difficult nor easy, said their daughter, Ling Zhao. It's like the teachings of the ancestors shining on the hundred grass tips. So the image of difficult, there's two different images that I read about. One is trying to haul all these sesame seeds up into a tree in a basket to get them there.

[04:30]

Another image was to actually attach the sesame seeds back to the tree from whence they came. I don't know if they grow on a tree or what, but it's something impossible, you know, and, And then the wife, the lay woman, Pong, has this easeful sense of, it's just as natural as getting out of bed, touching your feet to the floor. And then their daughter, Ling Zhao, basically cuts through and brings forth the, the everywhere-ness of the Dharma. So, I was thinking of this koan when I was working with someone, a student who was having a difficulty. So I function in the role of a teacher up here in Bozeman, and I've been part of the Bozeman Zen group for about 18 years. And I've done a lot of teaching there, but now some people come to me for practice discussion and like that.

[05:33]

And this one student was completely married to a feeling he was having. And it was a very tender feeling. and it was very vulnerable for him. It was what he called childish and adolescent, and he was convinced he should not have this feeling. I should not have this feeling. I'm grown up. Why am I feeling this feeling like a 15-year-old? Difficult, difficult, very difficult. So I could see very clearly, because you can always see someone else's mistakes more clearly than your own, The second arrow, he was shooting at himself. He was having a difficult feeling, and he made it so much more difficult, hauling these sesame seeds up a tree of, I shouldn't feel this way. I should be better than this. So I was pointing out, you know, the feeling I have no problem with, but you could go easy on yourself.

[06:37]

Go easy, easy. And as we spoke and I tried to help, he kind of broke down. We connected and he cried, which brought up more confusion and another new koan for him. So this is the ancestors teaching, not really a resolution, just the next koan. So as most of you probably know, even better than I. Layman Pong is a famous lay enlightened master. He lived in the Tang dynasty and his dates are 740 to 808 and 808 is important. So two different sources. One has him coming from a family of minor functionaries, Others say he was the son of a powerful and wealthy prefect in Hanyang City.

[07:40]

The thing to know is that it was a time in China, it seems, that Confucianism was still very strong. So there was this moral imperative, this ethical way of living, family values. You know, Confucius was the one who says, when there's harmony with the individual, there's harmony in the family, harmony in the family, harmony in the community, society, nation, like that. So, very family and society oriented. Taoism was flourishing, as was Buddhism was starting, you know, Zen was happening, Chan was happening. And Laman Pong, even as a young man, was quite versed in all three traditions, apparently. And he was very sharp. He was verbal. He loved to debate. He loved to talk about the teaching. I don't know at what point he married laywoman Pong.

[08:47]

She's not given, we don't know, I don't know her name. But when he was 22, Ling Zhao was born. And soon after that, I think you say it, Gung Ho, I think, is the brother. So they had this family, and this family loved to be together, to talk about the Dharma, to sort of compete like in that first one. They just were very, seemed to be loving and playful. I'm sure they had hard days, but I didn't find any evidence of that. But it's nice to think of this family having so much interaction and devotion to the Dharma. When Lingjiao was 18, her dad went off to a hermitage and practice. I don't know what he was doing there, where he went. But when he came home, he announced that he had given the home, their house, to a temple

[09:52]

and he had sunk all of his belongings and his wealth into a mountain lake. I love this. So I, and then the family is standing there looking at him and I'm imagining this scene and I'm wondering how far the jaws are dropping or if there's like this, you know, Buddhist equanimity flowing through all of them. All I, the only source that I had said, they turned around and they started packing. So they accepted this and they went off and stayed with relatives, I think. And one of the things, Lehman Pong, who did refuse ordination, he was not going to be ordained. And he was sort of bucking the Confucius, values by, this poem sort of explains it.

[10:54]

His poem says, my boy has no bride, my girl has no groom. Forming a healthy circle, we speak about the birthless. So it's just like my family, that's just how my family was. So they just loved, exploring the Dharma together, getting each other, waking each other up. And here he was going off constantly. He went off again later. I do want a disclaimer. I did not get the book, The Sayings of Laman Pong, where there's probably way more about Ling Zhao. And at first, after I was reading about this, I thought, I don't want to read his stuff. this arrogant debater who always has to win or something, but I've come to sort of love him. I mean, he's dad after all, right? But there is this great treatise called the Recorded Sayings of Laman Pong.

[12:01]

I did look on my shelf, I didn't have it. I have many books that I don't know I have. So I did look in case I did have it, but I didn't. So he went away again and this time, He really hit the jackpot. He studied with Shido, our Sekito Kisen, Shido and Matsu. So these were two giants in the Zen world. And with each of them, he had many memorable encounters and debates and enlightenment experiences. It was very verbal. Shido confirmed him as a Dharma successor. So here is Layman Pong, a layman. His friend, I think, dubbed him Layman Pong. They came home from this hermitage and they were being all like practically drunk. They were so happy to be there. And Ling Zhao, I think this is what really piqued her interest in wanting to do what her dad did.

[13:04]

But Shido confirmed him as a Dharma successor, as a layperson. And after this, and after this, he, Le Man Pong wrote a poem. I'm not going to read the whole thing because this is about Ling Zhao, but the final, the final words of this poem go, the wondrous action of supernatural forces I find in hauling water and cutting wood. So this is where we get Chuck Wood and Carrie Water. So our layman was very much, you know, when you think about it, he's out there wandering. He's probably very good at taking care of himself and the environment and figuring out how to live, walking around China. So, but let's return to our heroine, Ling Zhao, whose name means spirit shining.

[14:05]

She's our bright sun. And she has this wonderful relationship with her father. And he's home again for a while and announced yet again that he's leaving. According to my research, this is the third time. Who knows? Ling Zhao decided she's going with him. And he was like, I don't think so. And to him, she quoted the Vimalakirti Sutra. Wherein the Buddha states, or according to the Buddha, no one is really a man or a woman. They don't exist or do not not exist. I'm coming with you. So, in the Zen group I was in before this, which is why this class starts at 7.30, my colleague Wendy talked about Song Tzu, who was Bodhidharma's

[15:06]

one of Bodhidharma's four Dharma heirs. And again, Bodhidharma let this woman travel around with him and three other men. So the convention of women and men traveling together was again, unconventional. So, sorry, my setup here is kind of squashed. So from Women of the Way, there's some lovely narrative. And last week when Susan said, I want to read it because everybody likes to be read to, to hear a story, I do have some passages to read. So this was unexpected for Pong. And so he decided to test her again. What does this old saying mean? Bright, bright are the grasses in the meadow. Bright, bright is the ancient teaching. Such a wise man and you talk like that, she answered.

[16:08]

He grunted, so how would you say it? Bright, bright are the grasses in the meadow. Bright, bright is the ancient teaching. Pong had no answer then. She threw his teaching of formlessness at him and he caught it. She knew he would have to let her come along. So that's one for her, another one for her. So they traveled together for years and I wanna read the description of them coming to Chang'an. I think that's how you say it. They were selling baskets, they were living out in different places and Sally Tisdale writes these beautiful couple of paragraphs that sort of describe them coming to this marketplace. So this is the story part of you can listen to. They traveled together for many years beginning with a trip north across the Yangtze. They climbed slowly through towers and turrets of mountains, shadowed and difficult mountains, violet and gray in the twilight, and blurred with mists and snow until they reached a valley called the Land Within the Passes.

[17:24]

It was soft, wet, green, and almost 200 miles long. Guarded by mountains and rivers on every side, At its heart was the capital, Chang'an, the center of China, the end of the Silk Road. A great web work of roads, rivers, and canals led to Chang'an, a city ideally placed according to the geomancists. It was the greatest city in the world, a place to have one's fortune told, then to make that fortune, then to lose it again. Chang'an was square, the streets placed methodically in a pattern, of broad and narrow avenues, each smaller section walled and gated separately. The people kept a curfew and police directed traffic. It was a complicated, busy, and beautiful place. Even the wells had tiled pavilion roofs. Splendid parks filled with willows and persimmon and apricot trees were spread throughout the city.

[18:29]

And the willow catkins were so luxurious that the opening of their seed pods was known as the snowstorm. So I really like getting a sense of the environment where they found themselves. And this is where apparently the famous, well, to me it's famous because I read it so many times and I love it so much. Ling Zhao's helping happens. So one day, layman Pong and his daughter Lingjiao were out selling bamboo baskets. Coming down off a bridge, the layman stumbled and fell. When Lingjiao saw this, she ran to her father's side and threw herself to the ground. What are you doing? Cried the layman. I saw you fall, so I'm helping, said Lingjiao. Luckily, no one was looking, said the layman. Many of you know this koan, I'm sure, and it just has so many wonderful ways to go.

[19:38]

I really like Joan Sutherland's reflection on it. The non-dual nature of like, there's no helper and no one being helped. There's just what's happening. There's the sense of meeting someone where they've fallen. I don't know if any of you are Brene Brown fans, but she has this, This cartoon that talks about someone down in a well and how you be a help to them is, you know, the first animal comes down and says, are you all right? Do you need anything? I'm up here if you need me. And then there's a few others, but the one who really helps goes down into the well and just puts an arm around the shoulder and is just there in the problem with the person. But then you can imagine She probably hopped up and helped him up. Joan Sutherland also says, it's like the image of we're all falling together.

[20:39]

Here we are in our lives, in our practice, just falling together, falling side by side, helping each other up. But she's funny also, when you think about it happening, it's kind of slapstick and it's, I really enjoy it. My dad was quite a jokester. My dad loved puns and he loved to make songs up. And when I think of that, I get very tender about my dad. I mean, remember they're like teacher and student, but they're dad and daughter and they're traveling around and they're like enjoying the Dharma. I mean, I'm sure they had bad days, but that was then and this is now. So now after 15 years of homelessness, and this is so interesting to me, priests and monks leave home, lay people stay home, but these lay people left home, but they didn't get ordained, but they got, you know, he got transmission and she certainly was adept.

[21:51]

I just think it's a wonderful paradox in our lineage. Oh, and just for those of you who might not know, and I'm sure most of you do, when she quoted Vimalakirti, he was the other great lay adept or enlightened person. He lived at the time of the Buddha and there's a whole sutra on him. And it has a lot of great stories, especially when men and women switch genders and all that. So that's why she quoted him in particular. So after 15 years of wandering around and selling baskets and enjoying each other, and Lehman Ponds having debates, and they're having debates together, and she's winning a lot of them, and is it competition? Is it bringing forth the Dharma? Is it love between dad and daughter? You know, it's maybe all of these things. Now Ling Zhong is 43. And I'm thinking of the sacrifices they both have made for the Dharma, for each other, and for the people that they have met.

[22:59]

Laman Pong gave up so much comfort, so much convention, his family to some degree, for a life of the Dharma. He just let go of everything. They were home leavers. And Ling Zhao, was she the dutiful daughter that Confucian era would have her be? Or was she just a Zen renegade leading a, you know, a life out on the road with her dad? I mean, who was she? She's so interesting to me. She was very committed to her father, I imagine, committed to the Dharma. Somehow she just knew who she was and what she wanted to do. So with Laman Pong, I have this mixed view of him now, but he is endearing to me.

[24:04]

He could be arrogant, which is sort of heretical to say about an ancestor. I often don't get what's really going on. Many years ago, I once looked at Sojin and I was like, this Dogen, is he really that, is it really that big a deal? And his eyes just got really wide and his mouth open and he just went like, oh my God, I can't believe you said that. So then I started studying Dogen a lot more and I'm a believer. So I will become a Laman Pong believer as well. Any ancestor will do. You know how one practice, zazen, one ancestor. Just fall in love with one ancestor. Maybe Ling Zhao followed her own shining spirit to be with her dad. Maybe she was there to temper him or to be a foil for him or to help him.

[25:08]

Were they worthy competitors and adversaries? Were they father and daughter? I just imagine the love between them. She's really something. So after 15 years on the road, they go back to near where they were from. But I think it's a few years after that. Anyway, they returned to, let's see, the region where they were born. And they set up in a place called Deer Gate Mountain Cave. And I guess they were there for a while because I think she was, let's see, 762, she was 46. So for about three years, they, I guess, settled for a while. And then we get the final koan from the hidden lamp that ends her story, called Ling Jiao Goes First.

[26:15]

You know, Zen adepts like to call the time and place of their death, you know, like I'm going to, at noon at this day, I'm going to sit up and, or lie down or whatever. It was a big deal. So Laman Pong wanted to do that. When it was time for Laman Pong to die, he said to his daughter Ling Jiao, Go look at the sun and tell me when it's exactly noon." Ling Jiao went to the door and looked out saying, the sun has reached the zenith, but there's a total eclipse. And I love that image of the sun and the moon up in the sky. When Laman Pong stepped outside to see this remarkable event, Ling Jiao sat down in her father's seat, put her palms together, and she passed away. Lehman Pong looked in from the doorway and smiled saying, my daughter has gone ahead of me once more. He respected her so much.

[27:20]

I get from that line, the way that is translated. He waited seven days and then he died. So that is what I know of Ling Jiao at this point. And it's exactly nine o'clock, so we have some time together. And maybe some of you, when we say, we're now going to go into breakout rooms, shriek and either exit or go, dang. But then once you get there, you're like, it's so nice to talk to just a couple of people. Or maybe before we do that, someone has something to say or some correction to make, something to add. Ross, Ross, Ross. Thank you for your lovely presentation. I was thinking about hauling sesame seeds up a tree and chopping wood, carrying water and the easefulness of that and how those two kind of stories go together.

[28:26]

But I'm mostly interested in you as a priest and a lay person because you're still at home. and your child and how your practice with Yujin maybe echoes some of the stuff that you shared with us tonight with Lehman Pong and his daughter. If there's, I hate to put you on the spot, but- No, it's perfect. When I first adopted Yujin, Yujin is from China. He's from the area of Chengdu in Sichuan province near Tibet. I used to call him my little Jiaojiao because he taught me so much. Right now, he is struggling in school. He's dropped quite a few classes. He's in 11th grade. Half the time it's remote and half the time he gets to go, but now he's only in a few classes. He's a really, really smart kid who doesn't do school, you know, kind of maybe a future Elon Musk, who knows?

[29:28]

But, um, I've been working with someone who, uh, knows a lot about adopt. She's a adoption consultant. And one of the things she said is don't push him. Don't pull him walk beside him. So I feel like I'm falling down with him. You know, it's like, I don't like school and I just get on the bed with the dog and him and say, I don't want to go to work. So in another note, it is weird to be an ordained priest and be a householder, but maybe someday there'll be a temple in Bozeman and there'll be enough resource that in December, January, and February, I can come live in California and one of you can take my place, one of you who likes to ski or something. Thank you, Ross, for the question. Anything else? Any comments or questions or reflections?

[30:33]

Lori? I don't think I've ever thought so much about why he didn't want to ordain until I heard your telling. And I know this is supposed to be about her, but, you know, the first thing he does when he comes back from the first time was get rid of all his possessions. So it wasn't that. But the things we know about him are that his family was really important. And also chopping wood, carrying water, like work or everyday activity. So I mean, I'm just thinking that that's so interesting that he it feels like to me that he didn't he didn't see the point in giving all that up. He gave up the money like you know that there's some point to that you know gave up his wealth but he didn't see the point which is um It's very much like those of us who are still, even though we ordained or we didn't, we still wanted to have families and work, you know?

[31:47]

So it's just really interesting to think about him. So thanks. I know I'm supposed to be thinking about her and I'm thinking about her too. You know, we really can't think about her separate from the family because it was a family situation, you know? And that's the embeddedness of her story is that she was in relationship And it is interesting, this question of lay and ordained, it's so mixed. For me, it was mixed for them. Maybe he was just like, you know, I don't, maybe he was a renegade like he was with the other things he studied. You know, he liked to, we don't really know the attitude, but maybe he didn't see the point. That the sacrifice was the actual point of it, not the fussy robes and, and the monastic practice. He liked to travel around too, though. I see a blue hand up. Thanks, Lori. Chris, Christian. Thank you. Ling Zhao is the daughter or the wife?

[32:49]

The daughter. She's the ancestor. That's what I thought. Now, do we know if Ling Zhao was given far more education for growth than in her time? Do we know much about her education or her Dharma training other than supporting her father? I don't know if we do, I don't, but I have a feeling maybe the collective we knows. Certainly she learned a lot in her family because her father and mother were very open and from an early age she was hearing the Dharma. and bringing home the Dharma and debating with her. Sure. But I was also wondering, was Ling Jiao taught to read, read the classics and read poetry and things like that? I don't know. Maybe someone knows. I don't know. Because he certainly was very educated.

[33:51]

Yeah. Thank you. Now I'll look for that. Linda, these blue hands come to the top of the screen. It's so fun. Linda, Hey, hi. I was wondering when, since you were talking about harmony and the family being a big part of the chain of values, do you think we should just not worry about the fact that they abandoned the wife and the brother? I mean, just treat it like a legend and it has legendary value and just not be raising these little nitpicky points like, What about the wife and the brother? Right. Well, it's interesting because I know for those of you who have read Pamela Weiss's book, A Bigger Sky, Awakening of Fierce Feminine Buddhism, this is not really a spoiler alert. It's just that later in the book, she gives voice to Yasodhara, Buddha's wife, who he left.

[34:56]

And it's interesting to give, you know, to imagine her as a character in the story as a, like, you know, equal to Buddha. And there's several myths that go along with it. What I read is that laywoman Pong had everything she needed. Like she was a completely self-reliant, strong, like she wasn't an abandoned woman. She was probably like, go, you know, go do what you're gonna do. And the son, Gang Ho, I think, got married eventually. So he did the right thing. Okay. So I think these things always have value as teachings and as myths. But we always worry about families breaking apart. You know, maybe we don't know. We don't know the attitudes or when things like this happen. what we go through, like my friend who didn't want to have the feeling he was having, and then came to tears, and then he was really distraught, you know?

[36:04]

We just don't know. Susan. Thank you, Karen. I was wondering if while you were living with her and preparing for tonight, if you had some thoughts about You know, this time we're living in, we're home with family. Some are home alone, but some are home with family, two or three or four or however many in her home. And the kind of sweetness of this story you told, how that relates to the time we're living in now. Did any of that come up for you? Well, I am one of those people who when I scroll through the newsfeed on my phone, I always look at those things about how to make this time, you know, whatever, other than it is.

[37:10]

And I was, and there was this one great one that talked about how fine it would be to be home alone for a holiday or be with just the people in your house. And I started thinking, of what a lovely skill to develop, being alone. I mean, we're all learning that, but what if we really actually enjoyed it and celebrated it? I mean, I, you know, some of you know, I had COVID and I survived except for the lingering effects of whatever, I'm not sure yet. And I, I thought about all the people that got sick. The thing that really touched me are the people that can't be together when it's needed, when someone's sick or dying. So there's a tenderness on many sides. And I think of this time as being so incredibly poignant and special because of all the pandemics we're living through, all the discord.

[38:18]

We could really use some of Confucius right now, you know, with creating harmony and starting with ourselves and helping our families and like that. I don't know if that answers your question, but we don't have, we don't get to really be pilgrims right now, that's for sure. Thank you. Yeah. Chris has his hand up again. Thank you, Karen. And thank you for mentioning Yasodhara. You said, fall in love with the ancestor. And, you know, I do have a male ancestor that I'm trying to, that I have notes about and is inspired by. But you mentioned Yasodhara, and that's someone that I'm trying to get more information about and be inspired from. I think I already have an idea, but I really am grateful that you've mentioned her name and a source for that. So thank you.

[39:21]

I can refer you to a work of literature from 10th or 12th century that really speaks quite passionately and imaginatively in Ishodra's voice. Oh, nice. Oh, nice. Thank you, Linda. Yeah, I'd like to hear that too. I'll send you. I know we might lose a couple of you if I say let's go into breakout rooms, but let's go into breakout rooms. I don't really have a guiding question, but one of the things you could if you don't know what to do is take one of the stories and talk about how it affected you or what you think about it or what the teaching is for that. And we can go for like maybe 10 minutes and groups of three. Does that sound good, Susan? Yeah. Groups of three for 10 or 12 minutes, and then we'll just come back and say good night. Oh, they're already dropping. Here we go. Let's see. There they go.

[40:37]

I won't join my breakout room. Okay. I'll switch somebody. What happened? There's Marie. There they go. Two, two, it's okay if there's a two. Yeah. Three, there we go. Well, that was fun. Yeah, how did it go? I think you went shopping. Did I talk too fast? No. Okay. You know, it's interesting. Whenever I read those stories about her, I always thought she was such a goody goody. Oh, that's great, yeah. Instead of hearing it tonight, I had a whole different kind of take on her. Just the way, I liked that story of the well. And then thinking of her that way, like she, you know, there's that story where she laced, you know, she jumps down on the ground.

[41:37]

It's just like, oh my God, who would do that? But it's so great. You know, hearing it again in the context, I guess that's what it is. heard her story in the context of the whole life. Yeah that's you know I read all those koans and I thought the koans are so cool and the commentaries are so pithy but reading the whole story and thinking about them traveling so much and being so just you know what a hard life you know we have it so easy so anyway. And I guess the other thing I thought about just because I'm so, I really want to connect them to what, you know, what we're living with. I, I thought, I didn't do a good job of that. Yeah. No, I think it's fine. I think, but what I want to say was, You know, the story was about how much she supported her parent, but him.

[42:39]

I mean, it's real, when I think of how rebellious I was as a young person. And she was just so kind and loving and. I think she was also really dynamic and was like challenged by her dad and wanted to get in on the goods. That's the spirit I get from her. Yeah. You know, I wonder if she regretted not marrying, you know, do you think there were days going on those mountains where she just, we know that. Yeah. But I mean, you know, it's all about the Dharma, but you can also connect it to just in everyday life, how we support one another in our families. How do we do that or not as children to our, our parents? Right. I mean, maybe because of the Dharma, She ridded that early on. She didn't have to go there. It's interesting to think they were really living from this place of investigating the truth of reality.

[43:51]

Right. How would we have done that, you and I and our families? Well, I think you have to have some one who is leading you. And so now you're leading Lee Hong and I'm leading Yujin and maybe something. And look, Alex is in a monastery in Japan. And Sylvia is serving families in Chicago. Right. Just that idea of what it means to to serve your parents. I mean, that's so not American, really, isn't it? No, it's very Asian. I know in Japan, it's like when you're in your 40s, you're taking care of your parents and your kids, you know. That's good. This will be a good thing to bring up as closure. And to make your parents happy. I mean, you'll laugh at this story, but when I was growing up, my mother always wanted us to wear those schoolish mother-daughter dresses.

[44:58]

And I refused. I never wanted to do that. And then when I was older, like maybe in college or something, I said to her, you still want to do that? And she was like, oh, that was like, you know, the most disappointing. So I said, let's buy them. And we went out and bought these foolish mother daughter. They were just ridiculous dresses. And we wore them once. And my mother was so happy, Karen. And I thought, why did I wait so long to just make her happy? You know? That's a wonderful story. But you're right, it started with some seed. But I mean, in my home, my father tried, you know? We were Methodists. We were Catholic, and I realize now Catholics are known as the Christians who can drink. And my family drank, you know, everybody. And we were obnoxious and loud and Italian.

[46:00]

And, you know, it wasn't like we came home and were pious Christians. You know, it was more like it was more like what was the the show about the mafia, the TV show, The Sopranos, but without the mafia. But it was like that, the way people talk to each other and curse and drink. So no one was teaching me about Jesus and how to live or anything like that. I'm just checking to make sure nobody's left alone. Sometimes I go around the breakout rooms at school and it's just like here, a couple people will drop out. I'll tell them, don't drop out. If you haven't done the work, don't drop out. Use the time to get it. And then I'll go around and some of you alone, I'll say, what happened to so-and-so? Like, well, he left. Okay, no, they're okay.

[47:03]

Let's see, it's 8.20. So we could give them a couple more minutes. Ross texted me, I'm not used to all this greeting stuff. Definitely a woman's thing. Nice. I thought a lot of those people don't know me. I think it was good. You can place your website on chat. He wrote to me, he said, we could ask Karen if we can place her website on chat for people to check it out. hear her talks, et cetera. Sure, I can put, and the Dharma Center. I don't record my talks. Yeah. Well, I'll let you do that then if you want to put your site on there. All right. Then we can send that out before we end. What else? Any other thoughts I had about her? You know, I guess it would be like, there's this new, this guy that started sitting with us at BCC, David Gill, and he talked about, he's probably 50.

[48:28]

Anyhow, he talked about growing, he's an artist, and he grew up in here in Berkeley, and both his parents were artists, and he said he never knew it was any different anywhere else, but in his home, that's all they talked about was art. You know, it was just this richness of art culture growing up. And that's really what you're talking about. The richness of the dharma in that family. Right. It's pretty unique. And I think I'm really inspired by it. But it's a lot of it is the strength of layman Pong's personality and like almost obsession, you know? Right. Like dad's going off again, you know? And so how does Yujin deal with that? Well, I don't go off so much and I haven't sunk all treasures and, you know, but like right now he's in his room and he's, you know, he is respectful of what I do, but he's not yet interested. Part of it is Susan, he, there's a way, I'd love to talk with you about this woman I've worked with a little bit.

[49:37]

I'm gonna meet with her again. That he is, you know, somehow intellectually like an 18 or 20 year old, but maturity wise, he's more like 11 year old or something, you know, he's just not growing up in the same way his peers are. And some of that is the adoption and some of it is the Asperger, you know, that he's likely on the spectrum. And so, so I'm sort of accepting of that. Yeah, of course, you've always been great about all that. All right, I'm going to close it down. Okay. And then they'll just they've got 60 seconds, so that just gives another whole minute. There's Janae. Hi. Hi. I just tuned back in to say that I really loved hearing what you had to say and watching your animation. Is it Nancy?

[50:38]

Is that right? Karen. Karen, Karen, sorry. Yes, I haven't met you. So yes, I really, really enjoyed hearing the stories and very provocative. Well, good. We'll see what other people have to say, what they explored. I accidentally left my breakout room. I pushed the button accidentally. We were in the middle of a conversation. You broke out of the breakout. We only had like two people leave, so we must have liked it better than we came. That's good. I'm so sorry, Linda and Columbine. I accidentally popped out. I hope to see you again sometime. Welcome back, everyone. When I see how long it takes for people, oh, the dog.

[51:40]

When I see how long it takes to come back from the breakout room, I know that people are trying to finish up their thought. So I ended up getting to speak with Susan, and we had a lovely conversation about how this relates to us now when we talked a lot about family. and we talked a lot about how we are in relationship and how we are working together to wake each other up. I'm wondering what you discovered in your breakout rooms. Anything? Yes, somebody's hand is up and your name is Charlotte. Hi, Charlotte. Charlotte, unmute yourself. Sorry. One thing I really appreciated, I was with Marybeth and with Leslie. And we said things about the stories about Lehman Pong and about his daughter and son. But I just felt like we were just kind of being together with them in appreciation.

[52:45]

And that feeling underlay the different things we said to each other. And I really appreciated it. And it made me think of when she threw herself on the ground because he had fallen down. we were just there with each other. And more than that happened too, but. Oh, that's lovely. That's lovely. It's somehow, Susan had a different, like, got a feeling of a different sense of who Ling Jiao might've been. And we don't know, but, you know, I see her as this really smart and feisty, and I don't wanna do what everybody else is doing. I wanna, you know, get in there with dad and somehow their relationship is very inspiring to me because both of what they gave up and what they had to do to survive together and that they were so committed to each other, which is a way to be committed to all beings is to take care of the person next to you.

[53:50]

Yeah. Thanks, Charlotte. Someone else. Ben. Hi, Ben. Hi, Karen. Thanks so much for doing this class and this talk. So great to see you. I don't know if I have much to say, but something that stood out to me is just thinking about how different the flavor of this story is with what Susan shared last week about Patachara, especially around family. I had something else, but it's starting to fade here. Oh, um, that I remember. I don't really know this story well, but I, I believe with, um, Tozan, there's some aspect of a story about him sort of, um, keeping away from his mother. Right. And there is, there are stories in the practice where sort of like really maybe even abandoning, but at least sort of stepping away from in a very severe way from family is,

[54:58]

such a deep part of the practice. And it's so interesting to have these two in their family unit, although like Linda brought up, the mother and the brother are not with them. Right. So what's coming up for me is like, in some ways, maybe it's a mother-daughter story, but in some ways, maybe there was other There was other karma there that made them sort of more than just father-daughter, maybe. Like you were saying, almost like a teacher-disciple relationship. Because the brother doesn't, it's not the whole family's on the road. It's just those two that seem to have this, this resonance. I don't know if you have anything to say. That's interesting. I read a little passage about Deng Xian and not caring for his mother and not letting her come to the monastery. And she died and got enlightened and was happy with him. And I just didn't buy it. Like, I just, I'm not going there with that. I just, maybe I'm a Confucius person at heart, but this sense of when, one of the reasons I came to Montana is I was married at the time and we went to live in community with a guru.

[56:05]

And I was still practicing Zen, but I was in this sort of Hindu, Gurdjieff amalgamation. And one of the things was about breaking off family lineage. And that used to just break my heart because I was in the business of forgiving my parents, you know, and not blaming them for my suffering. And what they meant by it, I think what they ultimately mean by it is to non-attachment. right, to not be identified with the family at the expense of being identified with all beings. But it's still harsh. And as you know, in many cults, many people have suffered and lost loved ones, and it's kind of crazy. So, yeah. It looks like it's 9.30, people. Or 8.30. 9.30 for me. Thank you all for your kind attention. I really appreciate seeing you all and your support.

[57:07]

And Lori's going to chant the four vows for us.

[57:10]

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