How's that? Okay. and listen to, to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the defy doves' words. Welcome everyone to Berkey Dent Center's weekly Saturday Dharma Talk. Today I have the good fortune to introduce our speaker, Mary Duryea. Mary is a retired mediator and psychologist, She grew up in the Northwest, came to the Bay Area to attend school in 1967, and has been here ever since.

[02:36]

She first walked through the gate at BCC in 1993, received lay ordination from Soji Roshi in 2004, was head student of Shuso in 2017, and given lay entrustment by Hozan in 2023. Okay, that's this year. She spends her time gardening, cooking, and whenever possible, being in the wilderness. Mary has served as Board President, Vice President, and is currently working on the Buildings and Grounds Committee, the Leadership Committee, and finally, the Many Communities One Sangha Program. Please welcome our speaker, Mary Jolie. Good morning. Good morning. Well, this is the week that we learned or were reminded of the fact that it's a fatal error to knock on the wrong door.

[03:53]

Or go jogging or be sleeping in your bed if you happen to be black. or otherwise maybe driving up the wrong driveway. Mary, could you turn your volume up just a little further? I can, I'll try to speak louder, but is this up to me to turn it closer if you'd like, yeah. Like that? How's that? Is that better? Yes, basically. Okay. So, that feels unfathomable and heartbreaking. And at the same time, this week has brought a turning, I don't know if you feel it, I do, in the air. It feels softer, that kind of winter edge is dissipating and the world feels riotous with life.

[04:54]

So my question is how to hold all of that. I've been studying with Karen Sondheim in a study group. We're reading Nagarjuna and it is the hardest thing I've ever tried to read outside of quantum physics. We've spent two years and we've gotten like three quarters of the way through. But I recently had a little bit of a turning. And I've got one of my favorite paragraphs in all of Zen Buddhist literature. This is from this book. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Nagarjuna and it's Jay Garfield translated. So he says, Discourse about the ultimate is perilous in a number of ways.

[06:02]

First and most obviously, there is the ever-present danger of talking sheer nonsense. The ultimate truth is ineffable in that all words are by definition conventional. The dualities generated by the use of the terms separate individuals from others. It's unavoidable in discourse and non-existent in the ultimate. So one must be very careful to kick away all the ladders promptly. Though, there are things that one can say without lapsing into nonsense by way of pointing even from the bottom rocks. Okay. Pretty good, I see. Another great danger that he, I mean, he's just sort of he's setting out guardrails about this. Another grave danger is elevating the ultimate as the truth and the relative as illusion.

[07:06]

Which we can do sometimes. Another of the guardrails, which is, actually feels like, maybe the most important one. is the tendency to want to reify or solidify our concept associated with the ultimate like. And this is the big one, he tackles Buddha nature and Buddha, and the degree to which we solidify that into a concept, which is the way our mind tends to work, actually. And he then says something that really was starting for me, which is how to connect the two truths of the relative and the ultimate and how we understand them simultaneously is the central problem of our Buddhism, our Mahayana Buddhism, that Nagarjuna is talking about.

[08:24]

and a satisfactory solution is essential for Buddhist practice and ethics as well. And when I read that, I went, why did somebody tell me this a long time ago? And then I thought, actually, probably they did, you know, a thousand times. It's just the thousand and first time it hits you in a different way, somehow you go, oh, let me take that in. And before I had often thought of the ultimate and the relative as kind of an oscillation. And I'm realizing that really there's a more radical notion. It's the interpenetration, the simultaneity of the two. It's hard to wrap our mind around, and hard for me to wrap my mind around. And so my mind goes to the kind of metaphors that would help me kind of feel my way, understanding that metaphors fail always at some point, but feel my way into what the experience is because ultimately I think this is a wordless experience rather than an analytic understanding.

[09:46]

And one of the metaphors that I've kind of been playing with is finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. And another one is learning to touch the sacred in every moment. And the last one is one that I want to spend time on today, which is how to hold everything. in a kind of spaciousness. That leads me to talk about the many communities once sangha programs that have also been participating over the last year. And I want to make clear that I'm not talking on behalf of the group. I'm talking about my own personal experience.

[10:50]

There are 34 people participating and there are 34 points of view about what it is meaning and doing and so forth. And there's going to be a discussion, I hope, and May 1st, our open discussion, where people are invited to talk about their experiences so you'll hear other people's views about this. But let me just describe the process if you aren't familiar with it. It's a curriculum that was developed by East Bay Meditation Center and then maybe in coordination or some coordination with the Soda Zen Buddhist Association. And it was a class given in the fall of 2021 over a five-week period. There are five modules. And then the Soda Zen Buddhist Association packaged it for other sanghas to use, and that's what we're doing. But we're doing it over the course of 10 months. And so we've devised something a little different.

[11:53]

The 34 people are divided into four study groups, and they meet every other month, and they read beforehand the materials associated with the module, and see the videotape of the class, and then get together and talk about it. And in the alternate months, we meet with Rhonda McGee, who is one of the designers of the course, Rhonda McGee, Mushi Makeda, and Crystal Johnson are the three people who put it together. And the topics are pretty juicy, and I would say that from my own experience, going through it just once is like grazing the surface. These are conversations that really, really they're lifelong conversations, but I'll give you the flavor of the modules. The first was exploring tensions, between stated values of the community and actually how they're expressed. You can tell that, that's a rich one.

[12:58]

The second one is, what do we personally and jointly need to feel safety, dignity and belonging in Sangha? The third one is, how do we handle power and hierarchy? And how do we share leadership in a way that creates equity? The fourth one is visioning, actively imagining a deeply equitable and inclusive sangha. And the last one is moving forward together, and we haven't actually done that. Our last meeting with Rhonda will be in June. So, for me, the trajectory we've met four times with her and four times in our study groups, has been a very visceral feeling in my body of increased comfort in a discussion about race and in a discussion about race in a large group of people who are all doing it together.

[14:12]

And there's something about the way that Rhonda facilitates that is a masterclass in facilitation, in that there is this sense of spaciousness and ability to hold everything that has been a profound experience for me to watch and to be part of. It wasn't what I expected. I think many of us, I expected a toolbox. Things to do when, you know, ways to meet situations. But actually this feels more foundational. Like with this spaciousness and with this different kind of comfort in this conversation, it feels like that informs

[15:16]

how one would use the tools that you would use. It's almost like the foundation. I guess that's my feeling anyway. So last time we met was April 1st. And I came away from that class kind of settled and open and vulnerable, kind of open-hearted, as has been the case before. Even though I was setting up the tech and I made several tech errors that I then had to be busy with while the session was going on. But I went home and Had a lovely afternoon with Libby, my wife, and a lovely evening, and we, you know, folded our tents about when we do, you know, so we ended up kind of falling asleep about 10.

[16:32]

And we had been, we had fallen asleep when there was an abrupt noise that woke us up suddenly Because we were aware that somebody was trying to... It sounded like somebody was breaking into the house. So we go to the front door and the... Note to self, the peephole is useless in the dark. But you could see that there was someone on the front porch. Which was alarming. And... and the someone kind of wandered down the walkway and leaned against the car and kind of just was there. So we are 70-something women in this house and we weren't prepared to deal with this on our own, so we called 911.

[17:38]

And we were put on hold. which was a kind of shocking realization. I'd heard rumors that 9-1-1 was problematic in Oakland, but here it was. We were on hold for more than five minutes, listening to a recording. Hang on, hang on. So, you know, don't have a heart attack in Oakland on Saturday night. That's the message there. So we get someone who takes the information and tells us she says she's going to send somebody. And then we sit and wait and wait. And then finally we decide we're gonna wait lying down. And we go to sleep. And then the same thing happens at 5 a.m. It's still dark, but somebody's, I don't know, we're knocking, something is happening at the front door. And so we go back out and there's this man again.

[18:43]

And we do the same thing, Libby calls 911, and this time the wait is two minutes instead of, because it's Sunday morning. I guess that's what the reason is. And so by then, now we're up. And we get our morning beverages, coffee and tea, and wait. An hour later, I check. through the people, because now I can actually see something, because it's in that, not sunrise yet, but dawn, slight, and the person is gone. So I hesitantly open the door, I look around, like he's not anywhere on the walkway, and I go out to the sidewalk and I see him, like a quarter of a down the road. So I come back inside, And I think he's been out there all night.

[19:45]

And he didn't actually break into the house. But I don't know what we're dealing with here. He's not going to come back. Maybe he's, that's probably a 50-50 proposition. He seems to be kind of fixated on our house. So I decide that I pick up a blanket and two pieces of fruit and I put it on the, there's a planter box and wall. And I put it there and I close the door. And I check back an hour later. And he's there. And now I can see who he is. He's younger. I had imagined an older person. He's got a short-sleeved t-shirt on. He's African-American. And he's got his arms inside his t-shirt because it's cold. And he's holding his head and rocking and you know, vibrating, verbalizing in ways that are not understandable.

[20:49]

So, I say to myself, okay, third time is the charm, and I go, now this is my turn to call 911. So I call 911, and I say, there is a person who is having a medical or a mental health distress issue on our front porch, and we need help. And she said, do you need an ambulance? I said, I don't know. And she said, well, could you go ask him? And I'm thinking about that, like, okay, how am I going to do this? I'm going to open the door. And then I remember that my office is right on the other side of the front door. And there's a window that opens right there. So I go and I open the window. And I say, sir. And it takes him a while to orient, like, where's this voice coming from? And he fixes on my face. And he says, thank you.

[21:57]

And then he says, are you Jessica Biel's mom? And I say, no. And I'm thinking, you know, I'm looking for his girlfriend. And maybe behind me is sort of the voiceover in this story, and she goes, Jessica Biel's an actress. What do I do? I said, oh. And so I've got 911 here, and she is saying, is he hurt? And I ask him, are you hurt? And he says something that is unintelligible to me, and I'm kind of imagining that it's a diagnosis or something. I ask him again, and I still can't understand. And finally he says, Mark Zuckerberg. And I say, Mark Zuckerberg to 911, and she goes, oh. And then she says, does he want an ambulance? And I asked him and he says, yes, and that was the key that unlocked the whole thing.

[23:07]

And she said, okay, I'm sending somebody. I said, okay, come on. So, I hang up and I stand there and I have this wash of fear and guilt about what have I done? I have just called the Oakland police. on a black man on my front porch. And I am terrified about what's going to happen. And I stood there sort of frozen, and I looked at the window, and then I looked down, and the window is right over my altar, which is right in front of my zafu, so I just sit down. And what comes to me is the metta prayer that Rhonda closed our session with the day before.

[24:12]

So I say it. I say it to him. May you be filled with love and kindness. May you be well in body and mind. May you be safe. from inner and outer harm. May you be at ease and at peace. And then, I figure I should probably say it for myself. So I do. And then it occurs to me that part of the feeling that I have is helplessness, like I don't know what to do and I've done everything that I could think of to do know that that's the right thing to do. And so I say it for the police officers who are gonna show up. May you be filled with loving kindness.

[25:16]

May you be well in body and mind. May you be safe when you're not at home. And may you be at ease and at peace. And I just keep doing that until they come. And I hear them come. And I go to the door and open it. And so now there's these two officers and him and me. And they are not exactly what I was worried about or feared. It's a woman who is more petite than I am. And a man, an Asian man, who is slightly built. And they proceed to treat him with respect and kindness. They say, you know, what's your name? Do you know where you are? Yes, he knows he's in Oakland. Do you know how you got here?

[26:18]

No, he doesn't. Are you feeling like you're going to hurt yourself? No, I'm not. Do you feel like you might hurt somebody else? No. Do you have any identification? May we see your wallet?" He said, Mark Zuckerberg stole it. And Libby, who is the narrator in the background goes, Speak in truth to power, brother. He stole all our wallets. And then they ask him, does he have a phone? He said, no, Mark Zuckerberg sold that to him. And then they ask him where he lives, and he says, down by Embarcadero now. Some of you know where I live. I live above the zoo off of 98th and Goughlin's, and Embarcadero is down by Jacksondon Square.

[27:20]

How did he get there? You know? It's a puzzle, and I said, we'll never know. Anyway, The long and the short of it is that he, they ask him, we're worried about you, and can we take you to a doctor? And then they notice, actually he's got a, they noticed before I did, he's got a hospital band on his wrist, and he doesn't want to go to a doctor. I don't know what happened, but I don't know if they ever convinced him to, but they took him home, they found, you know, a picture of Lacey said, that's where I live, they had a key for it. And when I Googled later, I discovered there's a place called Covenant House, just out of the Barker, which she probably was. So why am I telling you all this? Because it felt like the lesson of holding complexity.

[28:24]

that we have been talking about was that whole journey, the complexity of the fear that I had for myself and for Libby, the fear that I had for him, the helplessness, the guilt, all of that, the compassion and the worry about him. how to hold all of that without settling, without creating a narrative that is the final answer. This is who I am, this is who he is. But letting it all be there was a new, I don't know if it was exactly a new experience, but it was a really different way of holding and going through that experience that I, I trace a direct thread to the many communities with Saga experience.

[29:28]

This is what Rhonda says. When we allow ourselves to feel the full measure of what we feel, we are not merely deepening emotional intelligence, but we are also increasing our capacity for deciding how to engage with the world in a way that keeps us in touch with our humanity and our ability for good. You know, the Xin Xin Ming, the faith in mind, opens with, one way it opens in the Tome translation is, the way is easy for those who have no preferences, or the way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose. And I've often tangled my feet in this, you know, couplet. But the contrast between, and I often thought that what that means, that no preference, means a kind of bland equanimity where everything kind of settles into the, you know, not picking, you don't want one thing more than another.

[30:36]

But then I realized, no, this is an alive field where there are these extreme emotions, and it isn't a flattening of those emotions. It's a not settling, not solidifying, on any one of them, but allowing all of it in its full complexity. So, here's Rhonda again. Moving between racial awareness and awareness of our common humanity does not come easily. We have been trained to think in binary either this or that terms. the notion that some aspect of our experience may be both this and that is something that we often find difficult to deal with. And yet, mindfulness practice at its root is about relating with reality in ways that support being in paradox.

[31:37]

And the cognitive understanding and the lived experience of both this and that I call this flow of awareness. And you know, what is the most fixed thing that we can have, what is the most reified thing in our experience, but the experience of the self? And Garfield, again, had some turning words about this. He said, all phenomena, meaning everything, including ourselves, when analyzed closely, resolve into ephemeral moments, into temporary moments, constantly disappearing to be succeeded by later stages of what are conventionally identified as the same object.

[32:44]

So... relying on metaphor again. You won't be surprised I'm going to use a river metaphor. We are like rivers. Rivers have names. They have characteristics. They have geographical locations. They have lots of things like that that appear. Thinginess. But, everything about them is constantly changing. There is constant water flowing through. There is never the same water from one second to the next. It is constantly changing the relationship with the shore and its own path. And it's changing the geography around it. In fact, if you give water and rock enough geologic time, water

[33:49]

always wins. Flow always wins. And I think that we are evidence of that. We are flow. Literally, biologically, we are flow. But I think in all other ways, we are flow. Dan Siegel, who's a mindfulness practitioner and a researcher and psychiatrist in LA, has worked with a team of people and they tried to come up with a definition of mind. And the definition that they came up with is the flow of energy and information. That's pretty interesting, isn't it?

[34:55]

Because that takes you right out of your skull. The mind is not just here. I think I'm going to stop there and see. Oh, one thing I would like to say is that we have good news, which is that Rhonda is coming back. And I'm going to run this program again next year. And as far as we can tell, I think we won't have any limit on how many people can participate in it. And if people want to do it again, which I'm kind of inclined to do, I think they can. I'm making that promise without talking to the committee. Anyway, let me stop there. Hear what you have to say. Yes, please.

[36:22]

I'm wondering whether you could, by being in the class, either change how you responded to the situation, or how you experienced it, or something else? Yeah, good question. I don't know about the first question. The question is, did being in the class change how I responded, or how I experienced? And I don't know the first, I don't know if it changed, because I can't run that experiment the other way. But I really do think it changed how I experienced it. I think I was available for all of the shifts of emotion that happened. And then, since then, You know, there are a number of places one could get stuck in that narrative, I think.

[37:24]

One is, was my Aboriginal fear a racialized fear? Well, no doubt I was raised in this country. Was it other kind of fear? Did it have other roots? Absolutely. I think being two women who live in a house and having a man, theoretically anyway, break in or wanting to come in, it has... a lot of resonance and experience in the world. So not getting stuck on one way of analyzing it is really helpful. It also helps with the judging the judginess, you know, about things. Like, your question reminds me of something that I wanted to say, which is that that whole business about holding the complexity and the paradox we have often described as the messiness of life.

[38:34]

And in the middle of the night, last night, it occurred to me, you know, I kind of object to the word messiness, because it kind of has a a judgy kind of feeling to it and it evokes my Marie Kondo, tidy it up, you know, impulse. But if I think about that tension of holding it as energy and generativity that allows for a choice of response, that actually feels like freedom. That feels like a big relief. I guess that's why I forgot to say that. That's what I'm feeling in this process. I feel this big relief. Even though I went into it feeling all the fraught things that one feels, you know, about having this conversation.

[39:39]

No, thank you. Yes, please. You mentioned that search for the final answer, and I think what came up for me is closure. Sometimes there's a time when you've kind of flown through some territory, and then when you're out of it, there's maybe a need for a closure of acknowledging that things have already changed. Yeah, I'm just curious if that brings anything up for you. Yeah. I couldn't hear his question. The question is how... Let me see if I got it right. How does holding the spaciousness relate to closure, and there's a sense of closure coming to a final something, or a resting place, maybe? I'd say just kind of recognizing that things have already changed. Things have already changed.

[40:40]

For me, I really like that closure is kind of like carrying the guardliness towards something that's already done, or in a new direction. Right. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Well, and that really is about, what you're talking about is staying with the moment you're in, right? Letting go. There is a letting, you're talking about letting go of whatever, the fear or the, this or that, and being in this moment now. Is that what you mean? Yeah. I mean, that's what Garfield is talking about, too, right? He's talking about everything looks like it might be the same, but it's changing every minute and not hanging on to what it was a minute before, or understanding that it's different is part of being in the flow.

[41:45]

It can be unsettling. I mean, there is a way in which our minds are kind of like octavuses, you know, these eight arms with all of these suckers wanting to hang onto stuff and latch onto it and make it so, or make it understandable and nail it down. And I think that's different from closure. if I want to say, I mean, I'm sort of feeling my way here, but closure is there's a kind of, it's a kind of, I've moved on, you know. Now I'm here, as opposed to, I've settled this once and for all. Yes, please. I was interested in the element of, Jerry, can you please speak up? I was interested in the element of, curiosity of having enough spaciousness in your mind to not have put him in a box and actually that made a difference between if you have a fixed idea about this sort of person or that sort of person it's dangerous without wondering what's going on here and that that's part of what you did

[43:13]

which, to me, is really an important element. So what Jared said was that part of the spaciousness was not having a fixed idea about who this person was and having a curiosity instead, that the spaciousness permitted curiosity. Yeah. Awesome. It occurs to me that one thing Rhonda is trying to help us with is training in that spaciousness. Is modeling spaciousness so that we can see that there's a potential of that spaciousness. And you got to, the story is wonderful because you got to live through the complexities of that.

[44:20]

Whereas, well, I just think we're going to do what we're trained to do. And if you're trained, if you have a gun and you're trained to use the gun, then that's going to be one of the things that you gravitate to us. And we're being trained in in a kind of radical mental disarmament so that we can disarm ourselves and be effective with others in that mode and bring about at least a tentative conclusion that is not disruptive. Yeah, yeah.

[45:22]

I think it seems like that's what you did. I guess I have to try to repeat that now. Let's see, that Hosanna's, he's telling me if I got it, that we are training in that spaciousness, that Ronda's modeling how to hold that spaciousness and that that translated into how I went through that experience and that there is a kind of radical, did you say radical disarmament? Yeah, radical mental disarmament. Mental disarmament. If you're trained to use a gun, you use a gun, but if you're trained otherwise, you use what you have been trained for. We see as far as our eye of practice can reach.

[46:26]

We see as far as our eye of practice can reach. Rhonda? Yes, thank you, Mary, for sharing this event. I'm wondering if the officers who came were the crisis team of the Oakland Police Department. Do you know? I don't. The question was, were these officers part of the crisis team of Oakland, which I didn't actually know that they had. Yeah, they have a crisis team. And so I'm I'm interested because it sounds like these we you were fortunate, like these people were skilled and they took the time to to treat the gentleman with respect. And so and so the episode could come to a what a reasonable conclusion.

[47:35]

No, that's... Did you all hear that? Yes. Okay. It would be great to know that. They just looked dressed in, you know, Oakland garbs, and I confess I didn't ask. And I think it's interesting that one person was of... of Asian descent and the other person was a woman. And so I think that's encouraging. Like I'm an Oakland resident and we know there are a lot of issues with the Oakland Police Department in the city of Oakland. So this episode is encouraging to me. So thank you. Oh, you're welcome. It's true, the Oakland Police Department is not going through its best period right now, but it's... We have a new mayor, so we'll see how that goes.

[48:48]

Yes? I actually had a remarkably similar story recently. I came home and there was... a young kid sitting on my own porch. I live across the street from a high school, and so I thought I was a high school kid, and I kind of sort of gruffly asked him what he was doing on my porch. Went inside. This was during the rainstorms. It was really cold outside. And went inside, you know, was in my house. Went back out. He was gone. Mentioned it to my roommate, and she said that he had been there earlier in the day. I looked back out late at night, and he was out there at like 9.30 again. And so we talked to him, didn't speak any English, wasn't a high school kid, smelled like he'd been sprayed by a skunk. It was like this incredible situation. And we tried to talk to him. And long story short, we ended up taking him to the Berkeley Senior Center near Trader Joe's.

[49:57]

And they were really extraordinary. And I guess there's a longer story in all of this that, you know, he also had a wristband that indicated he had been in a medical center recently. But it's just now every time I drive by that senior center, it's like, you know, there's this story that goes through it. And it has really changed in a broad sense, just my relationship with that roommate, who's now gone. and my sort of awareness of that whole network of institutions that exist to help people in these situations. It's just a different sense of attention now, the way that I move through these spaces in that part of Berkeley. Yes. So, when he was saying that it had a similar experience, which had a positive resolution by bringing that person to the Seniors Center in Berkeley, And that changed awareness of the resources available.

[51:01]

And it is one of the takeaways that I have about, like, I should know more about what's available. And I don't know if there's another number to call, for example, than 911. I mean, it actually is time for me to find that out. For all of us. We had to call about 20. Wow. Yeah. Did you raise your hand? I did. I'm kind of having a hard time formulating my question because one of the first things you said was many communities on Sangha, one of the questions was how do our values, our stated values, align with our expression? And I feel like in the end of your story you still called the cops like three times. You know, I understand it's a complex situation. There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of, like, visceral immediacy of that fear.

[52:03]

But I wonder, what is our expression as a community going forward? Is it still to just call the cops? Or is it to, you know, make a list of these numbers that we know exist? Is it to form maybe a group of people we can call within our sangha who are trained to help us in these situations? so we don't have to call the people who are carrying guns around communities. And I just feel like there's a complacency around calling the cops that I just don't feel satisfied with, and I'm sorry, but I just feel like your story left me with, it's okay to call the cops. And that's just how I'm feeling right now. I feel bad because I don't want to be adversarial, but that's just where I'm at. Yeah, so... The expression is the discomfort with the ease with which I and others may call the cops without knowing what the other alternatives might be, which I completely agree with.

[53:12]

I don't think that I would use the word comfort to describe my you know, ease of calling the cops or even ease. I think the calculus was, am I prepared, am I personally prepared to deal with whatever was going on with this person if he's not in his right mind? And I wasn't prepared physically to do that myself. So then really is, what are the alternatives at that? I think that is my takeaway from the situation. Like, what would I do next time? How can I be prepared differently for this situation? It's not... Well, let me just say, I don't want to make excuses or defense or anything, because I think you're... I agree with you.

[54:20]

I agree with you. Completely good. Okay. May we do something before we stop? Would you be willing to do the metta prayer? Maybe. Yeah. And let's fill in the program, you know, if you want to do it for yourself or you want to do it. for this whole situation or for each other or for somebody in particular. I'm going to use the word we, I think, so use the word you want. May we be filled with loving-kindness. May we be well in body and mind. May we be safe from inner and outer home. May we be at ease and in peace.

[55:22]

Beings are numberless I vow to awaken with them Delusions are inexhaustible them. But now this way is unsurpassable. I

[56:04]

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