Good morning. Good morning. My name is Mary and I want to thank Linda Roshi for inviting me to talk this morning and Colleen for being our shuso newly entered. We've had our first week of our practice period and we have a head student, a shuso, and we're studying the Genjo Koan. The Shisou is a wonderful opportunity, but it comes with many responsibilities. One of the primary responsibilities is that calling is expected to show up. twice a day and all day Saturday for the next six weeks and to the various classes and, you know, events.

[01:10]

And in order to do that, she had to clear the decks of her life and be a continuing presence. And the simple benefits from people who are continuing presences, there's a sort of underlying continuity created by people showing up. Our responsibility in this practice period is to show up the best way we know how and also to provide loving support for the shuso because it's actually a bit daunting to be a shuso. one way we can be supportive I mean you each will find your own way of being supportive and one way we can be supportive is to help Colleen see what we can see in her that she cannot and there is something awkward about the position about our singling out one person

[02:30]

in this way, and sort of can or could set up some set of comparisons, like who does and who doesn't get to be so, and what does that mean, and all that. And this position is being done on our behalf. So part of our support is to not fall. for that separateness, to not fall for the comparison, and to understand that, but for circumstances and causes and conditions, each one of us could, will, be in that position. When I was preparing this talk, I was talking to one of my teachers, Catherine Cascade, and I was remembering a talk that Laurie had given decades ago that has stayed with me and she remembered it too.

[03:34]

She remembered the exact metaphor that I did. And it was the metaphor of we are like a flock of geese and we elect someone to be the person who takes the front position, which is the person who's taken all the wind and creating a draft for the rest of us to follow along. Eventually, that goose will get tired and fall back and someone else will. And that's how we are in this mandala of sangha. We have various positions, they change, but we're in this, if you think of it as two-dimensional, if you think of it as three-dimensional spherical mandala, if there's such a thing, we're all equidistant from the Buddha. We are just changing positions and functions periodically.

[04:36]

So I want to talk a little bit about the ceremony last week. I don't know how many here were there, but this ceremony was part of the day long and it's a Juso entering ceremony in which Colleen is asked to be the chuseau and there are various parts of it. It's also the practice period opening but really the core of it is this chuseau entering. And I've been to quite a few chuseau ceremonies. I've never been to one like this one. It hit me somewhere different than others have. So I want to talk about that. There's power in ritual and ritual is almost by definition a repeated activity.

[05:40]

It's scripted. It's the same thing we do over and over again. And then what we add to it is our unique embodiment in the middle of ritual. To make it, to bring it into meaning. to go beyond script. So for me, it started right sort of at the beginning, and in the beginning, the chouseau is standing at the back facing the back tongue, and in front of her are, I don't remember how many, six or eight, representatives of the Sangha. They are the officers and position holders, and they represent all of us. And one of them says, we have decided we want you to be Arshiso. And she's standing there saying nothing in gasho. And then, this is what, I don't know why this, it hit me, I think, because it was so embodied.

[06:43]

All of them, the priests put down their zaghus, their bowing mats, And everyone does, all of them do a full-on bow three times while she stands there and takes it. And can't bow back. She's just got to take it. And I was standing behind her, I was standing behind her back, and this, I mean, I... I love Colleen and the love is always there, but it welled up in me in this kind of sympathetic joy that just tears came to my eyes. It might have been enhanced by the fact that I was sitting next to her husband, John. So we had a little cohort with this feeling happening. And then there are varieties of other things happening, but there is a kind of skit that happens that we all wait for.

[07:44]

And the skit is often humorous, but it's always the same thing. It's always the Chousseau saying, this is too much for me. I can't do it. And turns to go, heads for the door. And the abbot stops them. And it's often done with some humor. And, you know, that's not what happened this time. So we get to this part. I can't see Colleen. I can see... Linda Roshi and Colleen says in her strong voice this responsibility is too great for me I cannot do it and she starts to turn and Habit says it's not up to you and I felt like a wave I went whoa that's different

[08:45]

And I wondered what Colleen was going to do to that. And she fortunately had time to a little bit regroup because she was going to do a bow, I think, next. And then she comes up and her voice cracks. And we're all going, is she going to make it through the next? This is too much because she's got to say this three times. And she does, but her voice is wavering the whole way. And then... The abbot says, Buddhas don't often know that they are Buddhas. And then I feel like we are swept into some embodiment that catches us all and Colleen does her bow and gets up and her voice is still that shaky, And is she going to make it? And then she does. She sticks the landing. And the abbot says, this long, very wonderful discourse of all these threads are the things that brought you to this moment.

[10:03]

And here are the causes and conditions. And you've thought about this. And she just laid that all out in a way that there was nothing else to say. And we were all carried along in this embodiment of ritual, in which the ritual is not a skit, it's an enactment of something. In the text that we're reading, Shinshu Roberts, I don't know if she's the only one that's done this, first time I've seen it, She turns the genjo koan into a verb, to genjo koan. And she would call this genjo koaning, that enactment, that being fully in the moment, fully just here. To the extent that we can bring our whole human self here.

[11:13]

So, if you want to say this along with me, go ahead. This is the Okamura translation. This is probably the most quoted and heard paragraph of the Genjo Koan. To study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all beings. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of the self and the body and mind of others drop off. There is a trace of realization that cannot be grasped. We endlessly keep expressing the ungraspable trace of realization. It's a great translation. So when I... I have long thought in my younger years that this sounded like a progression.

[12:23]

It sounded like first you're on the way and then you study the self and then you forget the self and then you're verified by and so forth. And that, there's no part of Dogen that is a stepladder. And a little bit in the way that the grammar is structured in this, It's revealed because to study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. They're all happening at once. Almost in a flickering way or in a way that goes round and round or even backwards. They're all part of the whole. And that was what was happening in the ceremony. It's not up to you. the mystery flow that cannot be grasped, the causes and conditions beyond which we can figure out, the immeasurable that Colleen and Linda came into together and we all joined.

[13:34]

Sometimes Buddhas don't know they are Buddhas, forgetting the self, being verified by all things. Linda can see what Colleen cannot. Remember the threads that came together in your particular unique life that brought you here. And so the next moment we are in the nitty-gritty of life, the study of the self. Linda said to me at some point, the Ginjo Kahn just says the same thing over and over again. And there is a way in which he sets out the premise and then there's metaphor after metaphor. And you know, metaphors are very good at pointing at something and then at some point they fail, which is why you need the next metaphor and the next metaphor to kind of come at it from another angle.

[14:38]

And when she said that, I realized that that felt to me like exactly how the Sandokai is constructed. It sets out and then it's metaphor after metaphor after metaphor. And that they are in a way talking about the same thing and they use some of the same metaphors. And one of the metaphors that really has caught me and that I have been really working with is the metaphor of finding one's place. And the concept of place is pointed to in both the Genjo Koan and the Sandokai. In the Genjo Koan, it's actually talked about whether it starts with talking about fish in water and birds in air. And then it comes to this. When we make this very place our own, our practice becomes manifestation of reality.

[15:44]

Parentheses, Genjo Koan. When we make this path our own, our activity naturally becomes actualized reality. The Genjo Goa. In the Sandokai, it is, each of the myriad things has its merit expressed according to function and place. That's one translation, the Sotoshu. A Cleary translation is, all things have their function. It is a matter. of the use in the appropriate situation, and appropriate situation is a way a Japanese referred to place. I really have appreciated Okamura's commentary on the Sandokai, so here he is talking about this. Each one of us has to find the best place to use this unique body and mind. This unique body and mind exists as an intersection of the difference and unity.

[16:53]

That is the place where we can create our own unique way of life. Our practice doesn't mean we have to make ourselves into a particular shape. We have the responsibility to accept this unique body and mind and put it to use to fulfill the potential of this body and mind We have to find an appropriate situation and embrace it as our own life, as our own work. This has very deep resonance for me. The intersection of finding place, function and place. And it is a matter of going even more deeply into one's uniqueness, which also means not comparing and not ranking, even though we are so, we swim in such an ocean of ranking and comparing.

[18:06]

But it is, you know, what we say, when you are you, Zen is Zen. thinking of Ron Nestor's Be Yourself exhortation, although I admit that when he would exhort, I have a part in me that is a defiant person, and when someone exhorts, I have a reaction. And it's like that old joke where the... The parent says to the adolescent, have a good day. And the adolescent says, don't tell me what to do. A year ago, Tova asked me to give a wayseeking mind talk to the queer Dharma group at San Francisco.

[19:12]

And I blithely said, sure. And then after I said that, I realized that I had never talked about that particular thread of my life in a Dharma situation here, in a Dharma talk or in Always Seeking Mind talk. It's not like I'm hiding it exactly, but the way that I present it is that I have a wife. And that has sort of covered the explanation I've ever given for that. And I started to work on even why that was. Why have I... Why do I withhold that part of myself? Why have I? And I realized...

[20:16]

that it is a long-standing habit of compartmentalization that is my ego activity about keeping myself safe, where I keep parts of myself that might be problematic to somebody, you know, somewhere else. To the extent that I sometimes forget about it myself. I remember when I was... in a relationship with a man, he and I were out to dinner getting to know this other couple, and the dinner table conversation was all about everybody telling their kind of autobiography, and theirs was so interesting, and mine was so... ...goring. And I was really depressed on the way home in the car, and on... And then I realized I had left out an entire decade of my life. That's the extent of the compartmentalization.

[21:19]

And then when I was trying to construct this way-seeking mind talk, I found that I kept getting lost in the details of something, and I think I can't get into that source too much, and I would lose the thread. I also found that it's not just compartmentalization, it's also a feeling that I have had of not being at home anywhere or being alienated in a particular way, being on the wrong side of the glass. Everybody over there is together having dinner or something and I'm out here. This is not only about queer, there's certainly family origins to this as well. And another thread was that I have kind of had this intense, fierce refusal to be in a box or have a label.

[22:20]

I was, for a very brief time, engaged to be married to someone when I was in my 20s. And I ended up being just wrapped around the concept of being a wife that I could not stand. It was not helped. by the fact that his mother took me aside and said, here's how you handle a Hernandez man. You let him think he's in charge and then you control everything. And I thought to myself, I have no idea how to do that. This must be a feminine thing that I... I don't know how to do that. But then it also became, not even ten years later, five years later, I found myself living in the Castro and participating in the lesbian, feminist, separatist world.

[23:32]

And I ended up fleeing that, too. Being a lesbian separatist is really not that much fun, actually. And I ditched my fry boots and my outfit. It came with an outfit. It came with things you couldn't wear. But I have also not wanted to be a lesbian or a bisexual. I mean, I did take a class in meditation from the Berkeley Psychic Institute. I don't know if it's still there, but it was actually pretty good. And the one thing they offered me was a metaphor that I could really buy into. It said, sometimes you run masculine energy and sometimes you run feminine energy. And I thought, oh, yeah, I get that.

[24:35]

And we do this at home. One or the other of us in difficult circumstances will man up to whatever it is that has to be done. But the point is that I couldn't tell the story. I was really stuck on this wayseeking mind thing. And it reminded me of a piece of research that had been done in child development around attachment. This whole field of attachment which studies the nature, the quality of the attachment between a child and a parent. And they decided at some point to run a kind of multivariate analysis to try to figure out what were the factors or factor that most predicted the quality of attachment between a parent and a child. And... the one thing that kept floating up as the most important thing was, now gear yourself for this, the coherence of the parent's autobiographical narrative.

[25:54]

Also known as how well the parent understood themselves. How well the parent could tell a coherent story about themselves. without getting stuck or without compartmentalizing or denying. Making themselves understandable in relationship. The study of the self, right? So our individuality is needed, is required, is not lost in the oneness of it all. And the inquiry doesn't stop. You don't somehow arrive at understanding when it's an endless tilling of the soil, I think.

[27:03]

A lifetime is barely enough time. Um... Suzuki says, when we conclude that reality is in fact just oneness, the whole discussion will take place in the understanding of the unity of one and many. Another way to explain reality is differentiation. Individuality, in other words. Differentiation is equality. That's powerful. Is equality. And things have equal value because they are different. If you are unique, you are in, I don't know if you ever had new math and as an eighth grader, it was hard. But there were the set theory. Anybody know? And this is, you are a set of one. You cannot be compared to anyone. And that's, and we are all equal.

[28:07]

So this knowing ourselves is about diving into that uniqueness. And finding our place is finding the place where we can best function in our uniqueness. And it's not only an individual matter. It's a relational matter because people who are coherent and integrated are happy or comfortable in their own skins or easier to be around. and easier to be in relationship with and have better relationships. So then it turned out that actually I didn't have to give away Seeking Mind talk. I could give a Dharma talk. I was so relieved. Because I could talk about the Sandokai and not have to get into all of that. So that's what happened there. But... There's a queer Dharma group here, and it's been going for a year, a year and a half, if anybody, two years, something, something like that.

[29:25]

And my first response when I heard about it was, wow, I never thought that would happen here. Partly that was because of my experience with the women's machine. I mean, there's, and this is maybe, an old feeling that is not relevant anymore, but there was a feeling like, or maybe a slight discomfort, like, what does it mean for women to go off by themselves? Aren't they separating from us, or isn't this separateness? And there was kind of the same feeling about affinity groups in the same way. But I think I think, here's what I think about it. I think that a women's machine or a queer Dharma group is a safe haven in which to explore uniqueness without having to code switch. In finding coherence and in the service of finding coherence and in the service of finding voice.

[30:36]

Voice is... what I'm calling the ability to tell the story, the ability to account for oneself. And finding voice is healing in and of itself. It's also a concrete statement that this particular version of uniqueness, whatever the affinity group is, is welcome here. It's a public statement. And long ago, when I was in a relationship with somebody who was a Methodist, and I tried to join the Methodist Church, which I failed at doing, they were in the middle of the process of discernment of being a welcoming congregation, which meant they were doing a year-long process about whether they would be openly welcoming gay people. And there was not a small contingent of the congregation who said,

[31:40]

Why do we need that? We're welcoming and that should be enough. Why do we need to name things? Well, I'll tell you why I need to name things. Because I don't assume that I'm welcome just because it says I'm welcome. And I don't think I'm the only one that doesn't make that assumption, that keeps the question alive inside. Yeah, is it? Yeah, are you? until I can find my way. So saying it actually takes care of that, takes care of that whole question. It's not, this whole business is not, I mean, the way that I can come at it is by analogy is what it felt like in the 70s when I was fresh out of consciousness raising groups and living in the Castro, And it was Christmas time, and I was walking down the street singing Christmas carols to myself, and then I thought, what if I substituted she for he everywhere in the Christmas carol?

[32:56]

So I did that. And I was sort of stunned by the feeling of difference I had about that. relief and spaciousness and openness. I didn't know that I was doing this hidden work by understanding every time I heard he that was supposed to refer to all of humanity that it also included me. That hidden unseen piece of work is something that people do that I did when I wasn't reflected, when there wasn't women ancestors, when there wasn't a female on the altar. Okay, yes, I know I'm included, but I have to do that inner work. It's unseen and unrecognized, but it's there. I think it's true for any dimension.

[34:07]

It's true for neurodivergence, for race, for any ism that feels socially disconnected in some way or another, or potentially disconnected. So just, even though I don't often go to the queer group, just by its existence, it's doing work for me by existing. if that makes sense. So each one of us has a place and an appropriate function and place for us and all our job is to find out what that is. This is also from the Genja Kohan.

[35:07]

Here is the place, here the way unfolds. The boundary of realization is not distinct, for the realization comes forth simultaneously with the mastery of Buddha Dharma. I often want to say mystery of the Buddha Dharma. And that realization is happening all at once. It's happening at the same time as Studying the self, forgetting the self, tripping over one's uniqueness, trying to find coherence, it's all happening all at the same time. And do not suppose that you realize what you realize becomes your knowledge and is grasped by your consciousness. Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent.

[36:10]

There's always a mystery. There's always something else. So that's all I have today. I have no idea what time it is. Oh. Nailed it. Yeah. Do not suppose that what you realize becomes your knowledge and is grasped by your consciousness. Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent. Yes, you have a question. All right, I welcome your thoughts and comments and questions, so let me hear what you think. Deep gratitude, Mary. I was really, really touched by that talk. Something I heard in the self-study and how I relate to my queerness is not knowing is most intimate.

[37:22]

It's a certain, like you're the resistance to use labels. When you use the label, it pins it down. It doesn't allow it to just exist as its own independent thing. And I'm holding that. I also, something I've been struggling with, and I think we as a song are struggling with, is, and it's been really fascinating for me to watch this, is the simple gesture, for me, simple gesture, of sharing pronouns at work circle. And Many people are really struggling to do that in a way that I feel myself. I'm not speaking for others, but that for me feels like the people in the Methodist church saying, why do we need to do this? They all know we're welcoming. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on that. Oh, boy.

[38:27]

That's a hornet's nest. I... I make mistakes often around pronouns and getting the pronouns wrong with people. And... Let me clarify. The specific thing I'm talking about is not people misusing pronouns. It's people not stating their own pronouns. No, I understand. And I'm coming at it from the other side. So I did hear that. And I don't know why people don't want to – I don't know what that's about. They'll need to say. I don't want to – it would be important for us to not make up a story about why people don't use – why they don't say that. and what that's about because I imagine there are probably more than one reason. But I will say in my own journey that I have my own trouble using the pronoun they when it's appropriate for the person because that's what they want.

[39:30]

And I make mistakes and at one point I was corrected and said, oh, thank you. And then I went away and thought, I really thought about why Why do I have this trouble? And then I remembered the story I told about walking down the street about how much it meant to me to get the pronoun her instead of he for the whole of humanity, right? And I'm still there. I'm a generation behind. So I'm catching up. So it's complex. It's a complex thing to see people the way they want to be seen. Please, Colleen. Colleen. Thank you, Dharma's sister.

[40:42]

That was so sweet. Thank you for reliving the ceremony for all of us. I just want to say those were my tears and those were not my tears. Those were everybody's cracking voices. I really felt that way. And was turned by the ritual in this lovely way. And... I just wanted to offer another metaphor because I can't resist. I love hearing them, thinking about them. This one, I didn't make it up. It came from my friend and also Dharma's sister and mentor, Jane Hirshfield. She gave me the image of the sled dog, the lead sled dog that's, you know, out in front. going off into the vast snowy emptiness with all the other dogs behind, never alone, always a team.

[41:43]

So I just wanted to share that image because I love snow, and I think geese in formation is beautiful, and so are sled dogs in formation. Thank you. And I'm wondering if I have a question. I just... I'm just so struck by everything you offered today, both from Genjo Kwan and the Sandokai and then your own experience with that Weisiki Mind talk. And I wonder if you could say a little bit more about that bristling against being put in a container. I have the same issue and try to slip around it and have my coping strategies. But when you feel that happening, what... What do you do when you feel someone's putting you in that vessel that is not you? What I used to do is flee.

[42:44]

I fled. It was a good thing I fled that engagement, by the way. I agree. You know, I think that's where the practice of yes and, both and, instead of yes but or yes and, that there's some way of trying to reopen the space to some operation around that. I will say that I love having a wife. And I like being a wife in the circumstance that I'm in now. I had no trouble with that word at all. And so I think that the trouble that I had was the... I felt I was conscripted into a role that I did not want and that it came with a lot of cultural baggage.

[43:59]

And I think that's part... of what happens with those labels is they come with so much baggage and they're limiting. They feel limiting. And the problem is the baggage, but not the role, really. I guess that's the best I can do. Thank you, Mary. You have a questioner online. Oh, thank you. Yes. Is that EJI? Looks like it. Hello? EJI, could you please show us your face? And unmute. EJI, could you please show us your face and unmute?

[45:04]

I've unmuted here. This particular screen, I believe, is cracked. And I'm not sure if I can actually have my actual face here other than the image on the screen. We can hear you, though. OK, well, great. OK, I will go ahead. First of all, thank you very much for this for this Dharma talk from the share. There's a couple of very profound elements here. We've had a couple of people talk about double consciousness by W.E.B. Du Bois. And I can't think of a clearer description than the one you gave. And there's a cultural transit, there's a cultural revolution that took place in the 60s and 70s and 80s and straight on through that embraced LGBTQ people. Now, as a teacher in the school district, Children have no problem with being LGBTQ in the classroom. And it's still somewhat of a challenge for me.

[46:05]

But I do come out. I am out when I'm in the classroom. And so there's a cultural change that I can be out. Because you may remember, it wasn't that long ago, that if a teacher came out to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, they could be fired. That's right. And so I want to be very clear that the culture itself has changed. Yes. I know that when I was in college, and looking for an apartment with my partner. I mean, the other thing is, we don't, and one of the big challenges that I have as an African-American person, that there are many African-Americans today that as you were talking, they can talk about anything, but they avoid their African-American challenges. Whereas you were talking about It's just not something that you are so surprised when you realize, oh, my God, I've never really talked about being LGBTQ in a group. I agreed to do this. And it was a whole transformation to be able to open up and talk about this. And I'm finding it's challenging for me with African-Americans who hold so tightly.

[47:11]

I was born and raised Roman Catholic. And my parents, many, many black people become Catholic because they want to be in higher church. They want I mean, there's a part of. White people have the ability to validate black people so that we can be elevated and step to the next step. So I'm just acknowledging that it is I feel this profound connection with you because you're able to talk about this double consciousness and people can hear it. But if I talk about it, they're not going to hear it because there's such a such a cultural right now. We're in reverse here. We're just removed. the Voting Rights Act. This is the most devastating legislation that's ever happened in my life. In 1965, we passed the Voting Rights Act, but I don't know if people are going to stand up and say, hey, listen, we can't marginalize, alienate, and subjugate black people from participating, which is pushing us back into Jim Crow and pushing us back into the 1800s, preventing us from participating in the electoral process.

[48:12]

So I just want to embrace, most importantly, the issue of that challenge, that double consciousness. And One of the challenges I find with myself is you talked about the adolescent child saying, don't tell me what to do. This is hard to say, but you know what? I have to hold on. I'm EJI, Equal Justice Initiative. Us black people were being lynched, and I can't lose sight of that. And there's this sort of adolescence. I'm a therapist. I work with people. We do the inner child, the inner family. We do all this work. But I... I have to call myself EJI because I live in a culture that will not acknowledge the lynching and the abuse that happened to black people. It's something that the biggest problem we have in America is people are not educated. They do not know about black codes. They don't understand that the Supreme Court says a black man has no rights that a white man has to respect. Jim Crow, Plessy versus Ferguson, Dred Scott case, and issues related to convict leasing and sharecropping.

[49:14]

The average American knows nothing about black history. But anyway, I really want to connect and appreciate what you're saying in terms of that transformation that you shared. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. I want to follow up on EJI, and I don't want to lose track of Jeff's question and remark. And I want to say that for me, coming to offer my own pronouns and remember to use they is a great challenge, simply because I come from a position of privilege, and I want to simply own it. And I think that culture change comes when we recognize the privilege. And it's the same challenge as a white Southern woman that I face trying to remember my racial privilege.

[50:22]

It takes work. Thank you. Thank you. Full disclosure. Thank you. That's my wife. First of all, thank you so much for this talk. It has touched on so much in me and what I've been both thinking and feeling lately in my practice and this community and on so many levels. And I am clearly stalling because I'm not sure where I want to go with this.

[51:23]

But yeah, I want to resonate with that history, that streak of compartmentalization as somebody who really had to sort of turn my life inside out in order to find ways out of that. Well, what are you like? How's the weather? But maybe... I guess what I want to say is thank you for making it so concrete, the ways that... you know genjo koan talks about how how this this individual moment is expressing the whole thing and whatever individual moment you got is expressing the whole thing and you're you're talking about that so deeply that it is not just this abstract principle but it is the actual things we are living in our lives and how do we make sure that we are not cutting things out of our lives when we express them um so

[52:30]

Yeah, I don't know if I have a question, but if you can say anything more on that vast topic, here we are. I guess... I guess I think if I were to go back to something this... to say again, it is that this process that I'm talking about, EJ, I saw you're talking about, is not one and done. It's not something you come to and now you're done. It's something that is endless and continues. And it's not risking here. I don't think it has anything to do necessarily with enlightenment.

[53:37]

In other words, you can be enlightened and participate in spiritual bypass because you can be living in the oneness of all things. Maybe that's not enlightenment. Maybe enlightenment is better, in my mind, it's better defined as figuring out how to live in the muddy water with purity like a lotus. Muddy water never goes away.

[54:12]

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