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Family Sangha Practice

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BZ-03192
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The talk examines family as an initial sangha whose relational patterns persist in practice, and presents zazen, compassion, sympathetic joy, and right intention as ways to recognize and work with those patterns. Experiences of jealousy, exclusion, and impatience become opportunities to lessen separation and respond to others in accordance with the precepts.

Texts and works referenced
- Genjōkōan — Dōgen. Cited in discussion of how the myriad dharmas and self arise relationally, informing conscious, compassionate conduct.
- Cultivating the Empty Field — Taigen Dan Leighton. Referenced for a teaching attributed to Hongzhi on grinding down habitual tendencies to abide in clarity.
- “Thanks” — W. S. Merwin. Read as a poem of gratitude, echoing the talk’s emphasis on appreciation.

Teachers and other figures referred to
- Dōgen — His teaching on studying and forgetting the self frames practice as a path toward realizing unity with others.
- Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche — His description of meditators as “warriors” emphasizes the courage required for self-study.
- Darlene Cohen — Recalled as a teacher who advises learning to move around persistent difficulties rather than expecting them to disappear, and who models humor and enjoyment in practice.
- The Buddha — The two-arrows parable distinguishes unavoidable pain from the suffering added through one’s response.
- Hongzhi — His teaching, cited through Cultivating the Empty Field, describes practice as clearing fabricated habits.

AI Suggested Title: Family as Our First Sangha

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Transcript:

Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Do we have anyone new today? My name is Carol, Carol Paul, and just a little background. I received my precepts in 1996 from Darlene Cohen with us. And then I joined Berkley Zen Center in 2001. And then in 2017, no, yes, 2017, it took me a little while, I was ordained by Sojin Mel Weizmann as priest. Then in 2023, Hosang gave me Dharma Transmission. And my name is Shiken Seiketsu. Clear intention, serene moon.

[01:06]

And I'd like to acknowledge that it is a completion of 49 days. I think tomorrow. Is today the 49th day? Strictly speaking, it's tomorrow, but yes, this was the final ceremony. So we have been chanting for our 29 days, Hozan Alan Sanaki. And so we've been chanting for him and it's a way that we support him into the unknown, into the light through our love and best wishes. Thank you, Hozan. So today I want to talk about family Sangha practice and how my family, my root family, provided really the roots of my particular issues that I have worked with really over the last 50 years and will continue to work with and to continue to understand myself.

[02:27]

and others. And in some ways, my family practices, Sangha is very much like my Berkeley Sin Center Sangha. And the three most important things, these aren't the only things I'm working with, but the prominent ones for me are feeling left out, getting in, separate. The second one, envy and jealousy, and the third, impatience. So they've been with me all my life. So just stepping back and looking at the last 50 years, you know, I've tried many things. Religions, different. You know, in that period when there was lots of new age programs, I did them all. Did therapy. You know, I was always seeking something to relieve my, you know, dis-ease or my suffering.

[03:28]

All those things helped somewhat. But it really wasn't until I entered this path, the Buddhist path, which was really late, in my mid-fifties, that I found a path that I could really see things more clearly. It provided the medicine. We call it the medicine, which is the Dharma teachings, to help understand myself and life. It just makes sense. It's logical. It's scientific. And I think we're all here. Because as Dogen says, we want to study. We want to study this path so that we can understand this self. So we can finally forget the self and that we can be, feel our oneness and unity with everyone. There's another teacher, Trungpa Rinpoche.

[04:37]

He's no longer with us. He was a Tibetan Buddhist. But he would say, anyone who is interested in practicing meditation is basically a warrior. That word, warrior, is translated in Tibetan as Pao. And it means a person who is brave. So all of us are here, brave warriors, that really study ourselves, really study ourselves. And you know, that's why we, again, in that transitional period, you know, that's why, that's why we spent because we're just really looking deeply at the good, the bad, and the ugly.

[05:39]

We're facing it all. So as I say, my family was my first sangha. This, to this day, requires continuous attention and practice because I can so easily be pulled back into old patterns and reactivations. Fortunately, I've learned different things to help through these challenges. Before I tell you about my family dynamics, I just want to say that I want to thank my parents for everything and I didn't always feel that way about them but through life really I see them in a different light and I had much more everything that they had to go through in raising their family so my background with my family is they're

[07:00]

This was a complex. There were 13 people, which included my mother and father, and I had seven. And there were four girls, so I had three sisters. And the age, when we were all born, when everyone was born, about 17 years or so. And at that time, I was 14 years old when the last baby was born. Many of them were just one year apart. Sometimes even less. And we would talk about them as three... Actually, when we were growing up, we talked about them as two families. We had the big kids and the little kids. But later on, one of my sisters said, no, that's not right. Now, he says, the big kids, the middle kids, and the little kids. Okay, and it made sense, because... You know, they're like different clusters depending upon the ages and also what my parents were going through and what was going on in society.

[08:12]

So there we were with these three different clusters. And that's a lot of people. That's a pretty good-sized song, though. Because you have 13 different personalities. Everyone had different needs. Some were extroverts. Some introverts. Some had different energy levels. And then each one brought their own karma. It's just like our santa here. So, you know, and then again, you know, I felt finicky for some of the siblings more than others. That just is a natural thing. But, you know, somewhere there was a bond that connected all of us. It's your family. It's the family. You stay together. You be together. You help each other.

[09:14]

And, you know, when you're together in a home, most of us maybe are at home. I was home probably 20 years before I went away. That's a long time to see the good, the bad, and the other. And just like here, we're together and we get along with some people or, you know, have affinity towards some, some, not so much. So anyway, we were back, or I guess that. We all went to Catholic school and we were raised in a small town. the city was small then. And everybody knew each other. Everybody knew us because, you know, it was a little wild and crazy. And my father was a doctor and my mother was a homemaker.

[10:14]

And, you know, there was, I like to think of it as there was kind of chaos within order. Or maybe I don't know if it was order within chaos. But, you know, there was just always so much action, so much noise. Everybody always brought in one or two of their friends. I mean, you know, on Thanksgiving, you have 11 kids. We would have a family that had 11 kids. And I used to think, over, that's who we had Thanksgiving with. And I used to think, it's probably because they were the only ones that would put up with us. It was wild. But anyway... And I felt my mother was moving and overwhelmed probably about 95% of the time. And yet, somehow, she managed. She managed to take care of the needs of the family. Well, pretty much all the time. And my father, he did get caught up in the web of alcoholism.

[11:19]

And that added to the chaos and uncertainty when he was drinking. But you know, most of us survive our childhood. Little battle scars, which need further healing. Life skills, really. that we bring out into the world and, you know, we bring to BCC. In my family, you know, we had to help each other. We had to help each other with our tasks and take care of each other. The big kids were always taking care of the little kids. We learned to play. We learned to fight together and share. You had to share your clothes and your bedroom and your food, you know, your stuff.

[12:23]

But through it all, we learn how to be harmonious too. Even among all squabbling, we learn how, what harmony is. So we learn how to live together and feel our connection, and that we really were one unit and not separate, just as we do in our own sangha here. I think a lot of us come to BCC or Asanga, a group, because we want to be part of the group and we want to connect with each other and really face our fears so that we can let them go. Basically, we want to be ourselves. We want to find a safe place where we can be ourselves and family. to provide that. I hope we have that.

[13:27]

Of course, growing up always for everyone. And I like to think that... I don't think this, I know this. The things I practice with today are things. that I practiced when I was a child. They're still with me. It's like that saying, wherever I go, I meet myself. It just reminds me, I just think it's so ironic. You think they're going to know. Linda quoted this a couple weeks ago. Homsher's saying, this is from Teigen Leighton's book, Cultivating the Empty Field, and I'm just going to paraphrase it. You must purify, grind down, brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits.

[14:38]

Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness. So here we are grinding down, brushing away. somehow or other foreign to habits. So I began to see in this practice how I overlay all my opinions and my stories and my narratives over the problems or in my life. And in addition, I've seen that my point of view you know, rather than the other person's point of view. When I see this in my family, so many times we'll be describing an event. Everyone will be saying, well, that's not what happened. No, this is what happened. And so I saw, well, first of all, I don't know really what happened, but everyone has their own point of view, depending upon where they are in their life.

[15:49]

And I also began to see, too, through this practice, that all these things, these stories, really illusions. Did they happen? Did they not? And yet, and yet, we have traumatic experiences as children. And we don't forget them. They get lodged. You know, I think they get lodged in that cellular level. We find some way that they can be healed. This is a small story, but it was a big story at the time. That should illustrate this, how things get locked in us. I was about... And my brother Cronin, there was about, I don't know, maybe five of us in the bedroom. We were just wrestling, playing around. He was a year younger, but of course, much stronger than me. And he started to choke me.

[17:06]

And I actually couldn't breathe. So, you know, I was telling him this, you know. And it hurt. It was painful. And so he, you know, stopped choking me and then just started making fun of me. So that really hurt. And I felt invalidated. That turned to suffering. That was my suffering I needed. And for many years, even though I no longer had the physical pain, I carried that with me. That hurt. The Buddha, just to tell you, illustrates that the Buddha used a parable of the two arrows to help people understand the difference between pain and suffering. So when you have that first arrow, you know, just that goes in you and that was that arrow of pain.

[18:11]

I couldn't, I actually could not breathe. And then the second arrow was the arrow I caused of suffering. So I just carried that suffering and that emotion in my body, you know, until I really start to understand myself and could heal that. So as an adult, I realized it didn't really harm me. He didn't do it to harm me. And so I could see his point of view as well, defending himself, doing what he needed to do so he was able to let it go. So going back to the things that I work with, the first one is envy and jealousy. You know, I have a comparative mind, comparative mind.

[19:12]

And, you know, with so many siblings, you know, I was always comparing myself. And I noticed other of my siblings do the same thing. You know, just everybody was trying to get some attention. So, of course, this stirred up all my feelings of competitiveness. So I wanted to turn away and withdraw, cut off feelings. That's how I would handle it. Others would act it out differently. That was my way of dealing with it. But those feelings and thoughts were always in me, that jealousy, that envy. They're going to get more, whatever. So it's sort of that subtle grasping, always there. So, in this practice, I saw that what I could use would be one of the Brahma Vaharas, which we studied recently, that of cultivating sympathetic joy.

[20:23]

So, you know, I saw, you know, you see, well, there's, you know, hypocrisy. Which is pretending to be happy for them, right? Oh, I'm so happy for you. But down in my mind, thinking, you don't really deserve that, or being jealous about it. I don't really care about that anyway. So always in this comparative mind about myself. So that's not real sympathetic joy. stepping back as I could see and watch that mind. I could say, well, that doesn't have anything to do with me, their good fortune. Let them have their good fortune. Why am I attaching it to myself like it makes a difference for me?

[21:25]

So just being honest and seeing it more clearly. It's not taking anything away from me. That has nothing to do with me. So opening up these tendencies that I had to separate and to see the, recognize the joy, the joy in feeling joy for someone else. So the second thing I work with is like being left out. Two was an easy thing to happen with such a large family. It didn't feel like there was enough attention for anyone. So for me, I was an introvert.

[22:31]

and a child that was much more quiet and shy, you know, kind of didn't feel like I really fit in with the family, and so I would withdraw. And as I say, amidst all that noise and chaos, it was easy to withdraw. But then, of course, I always felt left out. And this is common in my family, too. So that, of course, that feeling of separation. A lot of us carry that feeling. So, you know, I just, that was my mode of operation. Be a good girl, be quiet, and then you'll be noticed. So, It's just a way of making, you know, making myself numb so I wouldn't have to feel it.

[23:39]

So these are all things, as I'm describing this, these are all the things I'm looking at, not necessarily during Zazen, but through the practice of Zazen, I started to see all these things in a different light. And the antidote for these really is compassion and starting to love myself. Loving kindness for self and compassion. And something else that I did this summer using one of the Eightfold Path practices of right intention. been a great practice for me. And that is, we had a, sorry about this, we had a reunion, a family reunion, there were about 50 people, you know, all the siblings and nieces and nephews and that sort of thing.

[24:49]

Before I went, and I like, I love all these people, but I never feel very close again, you know, that thing playing out. a little severed them, not really like them. And so I just put the right intention here. So I said to myself, I love each and every one of these people. And each and every one of these people loved me. And I just held that. And I got to the reunion and everybody was so happy. They want to talk to me, they want to talk about Buddhism, and of course I don't really ever talk about any of that. And it was just, you know, I just saw my intention manifest, so I really practice that a lot now, whenever I go, I'm going to see a sibling or something. Putting my mind straight, I love this person and they love me.

[25:54]

We are family. Just as we're family here. So the third thing I've been working with is impatience. And I think this is partly my name. Maybe I was just kind of born impatient. But it also was easy to be impatient in my family because, again, my parents really didn't have the time to give us, any of us, too much attention. And when you think about it, We have so little control over ourselves as children. And so that made me impatient too. Why couldn't I have my mother's attention? One little memory is after dinner, my mother would rest on the couch and she would be going through the paper to get her coupons.

[27:02]

to go to the store. Do you remember those? Some of us probably wouldn't remember that. I think I must have been back from college or something. So I went over to talk to her. She said, first she called me Kathy. That's my sister. These are my sister's names. Kathy. I mean, Mari. I mean, Jan. I got so mad at her. I just felt so impatient. my little Mean Street came out. I said, Mothers, there's two things you need to remember. You need to remember your mothers, your children's name, and you need to remember their major. And, you know, I just, I mean, I regretted that. I'm saying that, but I was so mad and impatient with her. But, uh, so, I, um, It kind of stayed with me. I didn't feel good about it, of course, but I think I just kind of carried a little resentment towards my mother.

[28:08]

You know, why didn't she give me that sort of thing? And of course, I didn't want to feel that way about her. She's really a fine person. And so, whatever, some kind of therapy I was doing, I had this memory of her. Oh, I don't know, I don't know how old I was, but I saw her in the laundry room, you know, we had the washer and dryer, and she was just surrounded by so much laundry, just baskets of laundry that she had to do. She looked so worn out and tired. I just, my heart just opened up. And I realized, you know, I just got, I just, I put myself in her shoes and all that she had to endure was so many changes.

[29:11]

And it really shifted my relationship with her. I just really work a lot with kindness and compassion. So, first, and then to others, and compassion for myself, and then to others. So, what time is it? Oh, God, it's early. So, really, I want to thank, in closing, I do want to thank my family. my family of origin and my BCC family. They're giving the practices to support me in my life.

[30:18]

And we have time. I found this, since we have time, I found this poem that I want to read. It's not necessary. tied to my Sangha practice, but it's about thanks. And I think thanks is appropriate anytime, anywhere. And just remembering Sojin, during his last, probably his last year, he just talked, that's all he would talk about. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. That's what he would say. So I'm going to read this poem as I move along. It's by W.S. Merwin. You probably know him. It's called Thanks. Listen, with the night falling, we are saying thank you. We are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings. We are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you.

[31:29]

We're standing by the waters thanking it. Standing by the windows looking out in our directions. Back from a series of hospitals. Back from a mugging. After funerals, we are saying thank you. After the news of the dead, whether or not we are saying thank you. Over telephones, we are saying thank you. To doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators. Remembering wars and the police at the door and the beatings on stairs, we are saying thank you. In the banks, we are saying thank you. In the faces of the officials and the rich and of all who will never change, we go on saying thank you, thank you. With the animals dying around us, taking our feelings, we are saying thank you. forest falling faster than the minutes of our lives, we're saying thank you.

[32:35]

With the words going out like cells of a brain, with the cities growing over us, we are saying thank you faster and faster. We're saying thank you. Thank you, we are saying and waving dark through it. There it is. Thank you. Thank you. We have time for some questions. Great. Did I see you here, Mary? Let's do Mary and then Greg. Thank you, Carol. I want to also thank your family for giving us you.

[33:44]

And you brought forward one of my favorite lines from Hansher. The phrase in that line that always catches my attention is the word apparent, apparent habits. And that was It gave me a lot of consolation to think of a parent as opposed to real. But, and, this is the direction of my question, you also talked about how these habits have such long standing in our lives, you know, 70 years, 80 years, right? How do you bring together that apparent solidity of habits with that offering upon you that they're actually ephemeral?

[34:45]

Well, I think we just, we hear this all the time, but it is really through our sitting, our meditation, our zazen, when we settle, really settle, I think then things start to get clear. And is this really real? What really happened? It's like what the chanting this morning, we're just in this dream. Life is a dream. And that really, you know, you're telling a story and someone remembers something different. So it's just staying with it. There's no, there's no magic cure. It's just, just staying, just staying with yourself. I was telling you, our ancestors, Zazen, it's through the sitting where we can just get quiet so things can settle.

[36:03]

Our lives are so busy. It takes a lot to settle. Do you have anything to add? No, that you do. Great. Thank you very much for your talk. It was really great. Thank you. I really loved in speaking about your family and in speaking about your sangha. brought up these parallels, like, I would put it as, you don't get to choose your family, and you don't get to choose your sangha. You just get to love them, and practice loving. Without reservation. I got that you were 14 when the youngest was born, but it actually, such a big family, it did give me a sense of the birth order. Like, what order are you in?

[37:05]

Oh, I'm number four. Number four? Oh, so you're up there. Well, here's the thing, Mrs. Louis. I'm 4C2G. That's sort of a little joke we'd have. Hey, 4C2G. I'm fourth child, second girl. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. Jimmy, Jared, Carol Cota, Marty, Billy, Joe, John. That was a little game we played, who could say it faster? I'm five of six. Yeah, fifth child, third son. You are? Yeah. I thought you were the oldest. No, no, no, no. James, the abiding teacher at Tazahara, she is the oldest of six kids. I'm five of six kids. And that's everything you need to know about my relationship with a lesbian. That's my story. Did you get really good at dividing food into perfectly equal portions?

[38:07]

No, it was first come, first served. And my mother would ring a dinner bell, we had a big ring, and you ran, you ran when you heard that dinner bell, because you knew if you didn't get home, you were going to have eggs. Did you learn to use a fork as a defensive weapon? Give me a little glimpse of your family. We didn't have food fights. Okay, one last... I'm just talking about food fights. I'm just talking like, not on my plate. How many boys did you have? What's that? How many boys? Okay. Three boys, three girls. I have a younger sister. One last very random question. Are you an Est graduate? Yes, I am. That was one of my practices. A long time, too. And Werner Erhard, who's the founder, actually went to San Francisco Zen Center.

[39:16]

And he learned a lot of those things that he brought to me as training. I didn't know it at the time, but when I got into Buddhism, I could see, oh, that's where he got that. It's good practice. Carol, thank you for your talk. Thank you, Sue. I wonder after your three years as coordinator, how life is now, and what you're looking forward to now that the talk's over, almost. And did you ever think of your mother's laundry when you were coordinator? No. No, I didn't. Well, right now, yes, I've been coordinator, which is one of the positions here.

[40:22]

We make sure all the positions are filled. And the job of the coordinator is to harm Sojin Homi. We want to have the community be in harmony. So I hope I added to that and you have a great coordinator now, Joe. Actually, yeah, I started a dance class. I'm going to start a singing group, a gospel singing group, which is just fine with me because I have my Catholic roots that are still very well intact in me. And yeah. I'm actually having fun, but I'm going to have a lot more fun after this talk now. Thank you for asking. And you're part of it. Hiking, walking. I think we should all have fun. I really do.

[41:24]

I'm always advocating for fun. Ellen. Thank you. I always really admire you for your efforts to sort of face your demons. You know, I almost feel a little bad about that. Like, probably because of my family. And, you know, I wanted more attention. I became a performer and was a performer. That was a lot of opportunity to be jealous of people who got grants or people who couldn't leave views or whatever. It gave me quite a bit of pain, actually. But at this point, and I do feel jealousy still, I just don't do anything about it.

[42:27]

It's there and gone. I feel like maybe I should do more about it, but I also feel like it's just gone. It comes up and then it's over. But it does come up. It's not like it never does. I would just like to say it's always going to come up. Yeah. The issues we have, that we have, we will always have them. That's great that you're able to let them go. As my teacher, Darlene Cohen, I asked her about this because I said, will this ever be gone? She said, it never goes away, but you find a way to move around it. And I just had this vision. Oh, there it is. And I'm just kind of, you know, moving around it. So it's there, not disturbing it, but I'm not going into it.

[43:29]

So you have it. You're just letting it go. You know, when you're talking about it, I feel like you really work on it. I don't do that. Well, I'm working on it because if it's not going away. I have to work on it. But if it's sticking around, then I have to really look at it like, what is this? Why is it still here? It is still here for me. I mean, it does come up, but it just doesn't, yeah, it doesn't stick around. Will you be my teacher? No, thank you. There's a question from the community room, Carol. Okay. Hi, Carol. Oh, hi, Lori. Hi, Carol.

[44:32]

Thank you for a wonderful talk. I found myself wondering if you told your family that you were giving this talk. I told my sister and she goes, oh, that was it. I just want her to listen to it because I didn't say anything bad about it. I guess I just wonder how they if they know. You as I know you. You know what? Honestly, I don't think they'd be that interested. Uh-huh. Okay. Except for my sisters. Uh-huh. Yeah. They could relate there, you know, not. And do you see, I mean, it's more like not so much the Buddhism part, but just that you've attained a certain weightiness in the community. You know, like you're an important person. Do you guys know each other? Do your siblings and you know each other how you are in the world, you know, how you express yourself in the world?

[45:37]

Not too much, because I don't really... Tell them. No. Interesting. Okay, I was just curious. Thank you. No, no. I don't think really they're that interested. And, you know, they want to talk about themselves. He said, I'm lying. So I just let them talk about themselves. You know, Paul told me the same thing once I told him about that. He said, yeah, I know. People didn't, you know. Who said that? Who said that? Alan. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he said, yeah, funny. They don't ask, they didn't, he said, they don't ask about my Buddhist practice. And I thought, yeah. So that's kind of the way it is with my family. They're still, most of them are Catholic. So it's okay. It is what it is.

[46:43]

So, yeah. Question. There's one more question online. Miriam. Hi. Thank you for your talk. I had no idea you came from a family of 11. That just kind of most families I knew were two and three. But saying that, I also saw this huge similarity. Because even though I was one of three, I always felt left out. And I didn't belong. And I was separate. But all three of us were people. And we all probably felt like we didn't belong. So I was thinking that I think the reason so many of us are really attracted to practice is because we want to cure that we feel from other beings.

[47:53]

Because we carry that with us. I don't know how many of us do, but I would think most of us do. That we want to feel that interconnection with each other and oneness. And that's a lot of what I come for. And I still do carry in me also feeling separate from people in the Sangha. And do I really belong? Am I accepted? And yeah, we carry that with us. But philosophically, Buddhism really needs to know that there's no separateness and we're all one. So I appreciate your talk. And it's just mind-boggling to me to think of being raised with 11 siblings. So thanks to the Catholics. Thank you, Mira. I think you said that so well.

[48:54]

It is interesting. It doesn't matter whether there's two or 11. We just carry that. We all do. And that's why I think we're here in this practice, because we're looking for connection. Basically, wherever we go, I think we're looking for connection. Thank you, Mira. Hey, Carol. Thanks so much for your talk. Oh, hi, Tina. One of the things that I've brought out of my family of origin that informs my practice is the idea of how I carry it relationally in everything that I'm doing now. When we think about the Genjo Koan, we talk about myriad dharma rush forth and self arises. When I'm acting out of a place that doesn't have a lot of understanding, I act out things that came from my family of origin. But when I think about some of those dynamics, whether it's whatever the feelings are, whatever the violence was, whatever the things were that move me forward now, it helps me to think about how do I want to behave consciously in this moment.

[50:10]

Because at the end of the day, it could be your father, it's your mother, it's your brother. It's like, oh, no, I'm so wrong with your sister. But at the end of the day, I want to behave in a way that's consistent with the precepts. and consistent with my understanding of form and emptiness. How do I want to treat you? Not violently, but with compassion. How do I want to treat Sue? With understanding, with compassion. And so those are how it affects me today, is how do I carry my practice relationally and how is that informed by the damage that was done by family awards. Thanks so much for that orientation. It's really lovely. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you for that inspiration. Oh, okay. And then after that, no, that's fine. And then Patrick. Hi, Carol. Hi. Thank you so much.

[51:14]

One thing that I was thinking of, you know, you said, you were talking about how it's important to have fun. And I know you studied with Darlene, and I was curious, I know that, I remember reading once that like part of her, like her practice, pool parties, and people would have fun. And so I was curious, since you got to study with her, how you feel about fun and pleasure, working with these like hard edges that we carry within. We all have that burden of personal pain that you just Do you find that the fun and pleasure, that as a practice can help? Yes, thank you. Darlene was so much fun. Those of you who knew her, she had a great sense of humor. She could make light of things and she wore incredible earrings. She was a very beautiful woman and she wore really nice clothes.

[52:17]

She liked that. And it's like she gave permission to do that. I don't know how the city center felt about all that. But she was true to herself and she really knew the Dharma. She really practiced the Dharma through and through. So, yeah, she did give me permission to have fun. Because we can... austere in here. But we're really not. I think people come and think we're that way. We're in our black clothes, et cetera. And we don't talk because really we're trying to practice mindfulness. But I really want to have fun. And we need to give ourselves permission that, even in spite of everything that's going on in the world.

[53:20]

It's okay to have fun. You can hold both things. Fun and pleasure. The suffering and the pain that we see around us. They're always there together. Thank you. Thanks Renee. Patrick got a question? Patrick. Everybody's on the outside. Who's on the inside? What do you mean? I don't think... You feel on the outside. I feel on the outside. If you're right, probably most people in the room feel on the inside. Is there anybody here who feels... Having fun with this. It's fun. I guess we're all on the inside, really. Is there any difference between the inside and outside? I don't think there's one or the other.

[54:23]

There you have it. Go outside and go inside. Having fun. Good. I like this. We're all one. Oh, is it done? Yes. Oh, yes. Thank you again. May you enjoy your day.

[54:46]

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