Now we have a lot more opportunities. I couldn't have gone to Pasajara a while ago. Oh, I mean, I could have gone. As soon as Pasajara existed, I could have gone there, but there wasn't such a place, well, that women or men could go to, I guess, in this country. The difficulty that I find in having thoughtfully practiced and experiencing constantly that push-pull between what seems like a push-pull between practice outside of family and practice within family.

[01:12]

I find that very, very difficult to get together. I think the problem, for me at least, is the seduction of of the family in the sense that you have real security and real control out there. And the beauty and the value of extracting myself from that is to try to cut through that illusion, to separate myself from the presumed security of the beautiful little lollipop that's sitting on the table. the warm down pillow at night. So I think the separation of family and home has a lot to do with that.

[02:20]

Learning not to need that kind of security. And it's very difficult with the kind of practice that most of us have to move That, I think, is difficult for others as it sometimes feels to me to move back and forth between those two places. Yes, I think that's a really good point that we have to shift gears in our lives really quickly and function in different modes without much transition time at all. That's a real challenge. I'd like to make the comment that I really enjoyed the lecture and I was horrified in the last two minutes to realize that being caught up in all of the details of this machine that I had not pushed the button to record the lecture. And I'd like to apologize to everyone and to try to make some effort to at least make some translate

[03:31]

writing of today so that we won't lose some of the oxygen. Well, after the exam you have to write it all down. Okay. It's penitence or whatever, so I'll try and make amends. Okay. I wanted to thank you for your lecture, which I enjoyed very much. It seems when we have male teachers, they're always talking about being connected with all beings, which I think is a good idea. But it seems to me family is the most basic. And yet we talk about it in a large sense, but family is right here and now.

[04:35]

That's where it has to start. If we can't connect with the people in our immediate area, then going out and connecting to all beings is kind of, it's mental rather than coming from the heart. But I've never experienced family as a safe and nurturing place. And I'm sure that's true for a lot of people. And I think the idea that one's families were different and nurturing, like in Ozzie and Harriet, may be a fantasy. Because if you read somebody like Dickens, it certainly was never, for many people, a nurturing place. I don't know. I've sat here for nine years, and I have a lot of ambivalence about even being here today. So I need to sit with that.

[05:43]

And I think it is a koan. My Name's Family is really a big koan, and maybe the most central koan of our lives, because it's pretty hard to get the rest of the practice of intergetting that. It's pretty hard to understand very basic Zen, but we don't understand our connection to ourselves and other people. So, I really appreciate your lecture very much. Thank you. Well, thank you. I think your comment also brings out the way in which the saga recreates for us all the situations that we have in our own families, too, and all the ambivalences We bring that with us, all of us. And it's all here in our relationships with each other and with our teachers. So we get to keep on working on it. We get to keep on working on it.

[06:46]

And when I feel separate because I feel critical, I keep remembering something that somebody said to me. They said, we're more alike than we are different. So that way, You know, it gives me perspective. Memes are numbers.

[07:17]

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