Good morning. I'd like to introduce Lori Sanaki, who will be giving a talk this morning. Most of you know Lori, because she's around a lot. How long have you lived here in Houston? About 12 years. 12 years? 11. I mean, sorry, 22. I shaved off 10. So Lori is with her husband, Alan, who is the vice abbot. at BCC for over 20 years, and she's held most of the major practice positions, and she's on the senior practice leader group. She also raised her family here, I think. Sylvia, her daughter, is in college now, and Alex is And when I think of Lori, I think of the word comes to mind in terms of Lori's relationship to DDC is pervasive.

[01:06]

She's just everywhere. And always finding a way to take care of things to be taken care of. Thank you. Thanks, Ron. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Here we are on a beautiful spring day. Today I want to talk about how our life is like playing in a bluegrass band. I thought it would be good to talk about this when Alan was away. Most of you know that I live with someone who knows a lot more about bluegrass music than I do. You could say he's forgotten more bluegrass music than I'll ever know. I don't know if everybody has listened to bluegrass music.

[02:13]

I certainly have listened to my share. And the way it works is, you know, there's these different instruments, very different instruments. And I think this, I think my metaphor also works for other kinds of improvisational music like jazz, which of course I know even less about. But so you have different instruments, they sound really different, and they're kind of playing the same song, but in a very different way. But somehow the beat gets carried by the way all the instruments are interplaying together. Like there isn't a drum, there's just different instruments keeping the beat together and sometimes one instrument is more in front and sometimes another one is and sometimes you're singing and sometimes it's a solo and sometimes it's singing in harmony and it can be all different ways. So the first thing we need to do in playing in this band called Life is to learn our instrument and of course our instrument is

[03:15]

this body and mind. But with a special point I want to make about that which is that you might think if you think it's this body and mind it would be easy to think like if you have a broken leg or if you hurt your knee or something you have damaged your instrument or you know if you have a mental illness or chronic illness you have like a defective instrument or something. But no, not so. Our instrument is this body and mind however it's appearing right now. And that way it's appearing right now has some relationship to other ways it's appeared or other bodies that have appeared. And we can learn about the patterns of that even though the instrument is always new and fresh and different moment by moment, but yet it has There's patterns we can learn about it.

[04:19]

And one, let me get my little notes out here, in case I just forget something. So, and of course, Zazen is one really good way to learn our instrument, which is just to observe and become aware, study, study ourselves, study our body minds and notice, you know, oh, when this happens, I tend to feel, when X happens, I tend to feel Y. Oh, when I tend to feel, when I feel Y, I tend to do Z. And then, so we get to know ourselves in that way. That helps us be able to play our instrument in harmony with everybody and with the song that we're all, the particular song that we're all playing and singing together at any given time.

[05:29]

And I also think that another way to get to know our instrument is, this is where I think various typologies come in. And I am like a total dilettante in about four different typologies, which it's probably better to pick one and really immerse yourself and understand it. I think that sometimes we can't know how we are until we find out that it's different from how other people are somehow. For example, when I feel threatened, I withdraw. I tend to withdraw. And I think that's very natural. That seems like a very natural response. And I assume that that's what everybody does. But actually, we don't all do that. Some people go forward when they're threatened, or lash out, or stand their ground, or step to one side or the other side. There's a variety of ways to respond to some stimulus, and we're different in the way that we do that.

[06:38]

It helps to understand our own instrument, I think, to understand the ways it's different from other people's. I know that some people don't like typology because there's this feeling about putting somebody in a box or something, putting yourself in a box. And I think that's a good caution. I think it's important not to use things like that. You're an introvert, you're an extrovert to sort of reduce somebody or to, so you don't even have to find out any more about them because you already know X, you know. So it's like, we don't want to use it in a reductionist way. I was thinking about this and I was remembering one time I was upset about something our dear Abbot Sojourn Roshi, some feedback I got from him and I was venting about it to Alan and he said, you know, he's not saying this is what you boil down to.

[07:42]

And I found that really helpful. And so I think that's really good. We don't boil, you know, we don't want to boil each other down. We don't want to boil ourselves down to one or two things or boil each other down. That's not the idea. That's not how we understand ourselves or each other. But I do think that seeing different patterns and seeing how different patterns play out for different people helps me understand my own self and my own tendencies more clearly. So I think it's good to learn different typologies, learn a typology or two in your lifetime. So learning our instrument. And it's important to realize that our instrument is unique. It's unique right now, unique this moment is unique, but our own instrument is also unique. You know, there's no one else who's Exactly like us, we're as different as snowflakes and so that's part of why it's important to step forward and play in the band and bring yourself forward as who you really are.

[08:56]

And there's this wonderful Martha Graham quote I wanted to share. There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. So we're learning our instrument and we're always learning our instrument. We never finally, you know, master our instrument because we're always learning more about it and it's always changing. But yet we're always playing the music too.

[10:00]

We have to go on and play. We can't wait until we've learned it to play. And so there's various situations, like in the bluegrass music and in our lives, sometimes we're all playing kind of as equals. So that's one scenario, is we're playing in harmony as equals, and how can we learn how to play more joyously, more less anxiously, more beautifully, you could say. and that's just always a process and a practice that we're doing and so I've been learning some new things lately which is really, really fun learning, studying some new ideas and systems and one thing I've been reading this book about

[11:01]

family systems as it applies to congregations or communities. And before I drive all the therapists in the room crazy, I will say I do not know anything about family systems. I'm not saying that. But I just like to go through and I pick things, I read things and things that resonate for me with our practice I want to share with you. And so right off the bat, one of the first things I read in this one book I've been reading about, it's called Generation to Generation. In that system, a healthy family is one where the individuals are differentiated. So the healthier the family, the more differentiated the individuals. And they mean that, they talk about that differentiation in a couple different ways. One way is just that we can be ourselves. So we can be together and connected as ourselves, as our real selves.

[12:07]

We don't have to pretend to be somebody we're not in order to be part of the group. And this seems pretty basic and I think this is true for our practice too, but it would be easy to think that it wasn't. because we do all this, there's all this stuff about the forms and doing them the same and letting go of your ego, you know, getting rid of your ego. So how is it that we are differentiated? Let's see. And I think that it is that we have our different instrument. And our instrument sounds different. And it sounds the way it sounds. And we're not all trying to make it sound the same.

[13:09]

And in music, when you're playing, everybody's not playing the exact same notes all the time. But we are in harmony. And so it's actually our differentness that makes the music interesting. So it's important to not fall into the idea that we're trying to... that you have to somehow minimize or hide or leave part of it outside the door of who you really are. And that never works anyway because you're not really feeling... you don't end up feeling connected if you're not connecting as your real self. So... It's important, I think, for our Sangha that we understand that our healthy Sangha is a Sangha where individuals are differentiated and we feel free to be ourselves somehow.

[14:11]

But there's another way they talk about this differentiation which I think is really interesting and maybe even more important than this way which is in a family or in a community when one person reacts or has a reaction or gets their buttons pushed or gets stuck in some habitual pattern. The other people don't have to. We're differentiated in that sense that one person can have their buttons pushed and the best thing to do in that situation is to stay in the room as a non-anxious presence. And there's a strong tendency because when I get my buttons pushed, I know how in that state of mind how to push your buttons. You know, it's like, and so it starts here and it goes roaming around the whole place. And of course, we're all learning how to do this and we have some skills at it. And so, you know, for example, this morning we had orioke.

[15:22]

And actually, I don't think there were any mistakes that I noticed this morning. But the idea that we're, you know, as ceremonies happen, and then sometimes someone drops their chopsticks, or somebody, the co-choreographer gets a line or something, but then we just all go on. And we're pretty good at that in ceremonies, I think. We have many, many ceremonies, if you think about every day, or Zazen, and service, and oryoki, and this talk, and everything that we do here. mostly in silence or like ceremonies that we're enacting. And we do pretty well, I think, in ceremonies. We're comfortable with that. Just, we go on, we pick up and go on. So like in the music, if someone's string breaks or someone drops a note or loses their part or forgets the line to the song, you know, it's really important everybody doesn't, ah, you know, and freeze and then the music is gone if that happens. It's just done, you know. So, but, We get good at that. We just go on. We know how to take another step and go forward.

[16:26]

And we're learning how to do that in other situations, too. I found myself telling somebody, well, we get along really well until we start talking. So I think right now we're learning. One thing we're learning in our community is how to talk, how to talk to each other. If one of us strikes a wrong note, we don't all have to freeze up and tense up, you know, because it's okay. That's going to happen. It's very natural. It's very natural in the course of our human life for us to get our buttons pushed and, you know, to be caught in a habitual pattern. Very, very natural. What's really good is if other people can just stay with us and be a non-anxious presence with us when that happens. So then another kind of music that happens in Bluegrass Band or in our life is when one person steps forward.

[17:43]

like in bluegrass it's called a break, an instrumental break. Like someone, the banjo player will step up to the microphone and start playing and everybody else will kind of play more quietly and step back a little. And that person is basically improvising. And They might be improvising based on things that they've been trying or practicing, you know. But the basic idea is they're improvising. And in fact, I think with bluegrass, almost all the instruments all the time, there's potential to be improvising. It's not like, you know, a symphony where you just, there's a note there and everybody plays the note every time the same way. There's room, like there is in our lives, there's room within the song for everybody to be improvising. So sometimes, like right now, I am doing my little instrumental break. And I'm improvising. Of course, my mind just went blank.

[18:48]

you know, I talked about Oryoki already, but in Oryoki, actually, suddenly there is this little bit of, you know, person, like, it kind of goes back, it starts with the Saturday director, but then it kind of goes to the chant leader and the head server, and it goes back and forth a little bit, that person, and you know, you have to, you learn how to do that, you learn how to step forward when it's time to step forward, and step back when it's time to step back, and it's really a wonderful, wonderful way to practice and to be together in that way. And I've been noticing something about the student talks here. This is totally subjective. I don't know if anybody else shares this perception or if it has any basis in anything, but it seems to me that over the 22 years I've been listening to student talks that they have gradually evolved to be more, well, generally better, which is not to say that the talks were bad before, but I think that when one of us comes forward

[20:20]

finds a way to be open and direct and revealing like then the people watching kind of see how they could do that and very slowly over you know 20 years I think that it's changed and for example it feels like you know there's less there's less difference between like like sort of like the shy people are less tongue-tied and extroverts are more thoughtful so there's less difference in those kind of overt ways and more just the unique person coming forward which I think is this really wonderful thing we see if we see someone do it we can sort of map onto that and do it ourselves and that way we slowly Evolve and I think this I feel similarly about like the shoe so questions and the shoe so ceremony that the people's questions have gotten more and more Deep and again, it's not like the questions were bad before but it's sort of mysterious the way You see someone do it and then you can sort of find a way to do that yourself and it makes you more different from them Not not more the same in a funny way.

[21:40]

You know what I mean? I So I think that's a way that we see each other improvise. And it's really, it's a very wonderful thing to be part of. I know that there's a lot of people here on Saturdays who never, you know, there's quite a few people who only come on Saturday, and I'm sorry that you don't get to come to the student talks, which are on Monday mornings and the first Friday afternoons. Okay, so then one more kind of music, which is really, so what are the other people doing when one person's taking their instrumental break? And this is, I actually, this is the one thing I know from a bluegrass musician, it's true. The rest of this is kind of my, I made it up, but. What are the other people doing when, so like you guys, what are you guys doing when I'm taking my instrumental break here?

[22:49]

Well, what you're doing is you're playing your music in such a way to make me sound really good. Whatever I'm doing, which I'm improvising and you don't know what it's going to be, but you are doing what you're doing in such a way that you make me sound really good. That's your job. The other musicians aren't sitting up there picking their noses or something. They're actively playing, even though they're in the background. And that's one of the things that can be most satisfying, is how we support each other when one of us is in front. And I was thinking about this in regard to, so we're about to start a practice period next Saturday. And practice period is sort of like, I was thinking, it's sort of like a bluegrass festival, right? You could pretend that you're coming to a festival.

[23:55]

You're sort of like, even though you're not spending the night here, most of you, you could pretend you're camping here, you know. coming and we have various songs and you know Bluegrass fans love to hear the same songs over and over. They're always asking for like to hear the same song because they want to hear how that different band or that different situation is going to play their favorite song differently. And then sometimes if someone did it so well, everybody else is afraid to play that song because the Osborne brothers did it so perfectly. But we like to do this practice period, which is sort of like we sort of do the same thing over and over. We have this set of things we do, but we're improvising too at the same time. By the way, I meant to say earlier, Our dear friend Karen Dakotis, she did improv, you know, kind of theater games and stuff, and she said the best example of improvisation is our everyday conversations.

[25:00]

You know? Like, you know, after this you're going to go to tea. You're not, like, you don't know what you're going to say. You're making it up as you go along. You're talking to the person and it's just coming out. You're improvising. and uh so and there and in the practice period there'll be a variety of you know times when we're all in harmony you know we're all sort of equally playing equally and then there's times when some people come forward and some people step back so and we'll have um we're going to have a head student as she is so Leslie Bartholow and um so and then Mel will be giving his talks and And other people probably giving talks. So I just want to encourage us all. How are you, you know, how you're questioning, how you're listening, how you're responding to the Shuso is to make them sound really good. Make them, you know, a successful Shuso. Make them do a really good job. Not make them so much, I shouldn't say, but support them.

[26:02]

Your listening and your questioning and your responding is part, is an active part of what makes that music work. And some of us really love this time of year because we get to be together in a different kind of a way. So I encourage people who are wondering whether to do it or not to go ahead and step up. It's only six weeks. You can do it. So that's mostly the end. I mean, I feel, I kept thinking, well, how did I, how did I tie this into the practice so well? And I don't know. So what, but then what popped into my mind was that maybe, like maybe Zazen is when you just let the music play by itself. You sit down and you just let the music play by itself. You stop trying to play your instrument and you just listen to the sound of your instrument when it's playing by itself.

[27:05]

And then our practice would be to try to play the music the way it sounds when it's playing by itself. Like instead of having your idea of how you want it to sound or how it should sound or how you don't want it to sound or how it shouldn't sound, Just try to play it the way it sounds when it's playing by itself. And maybe enlightenment is when we realize that actually it is always just playing by itself. So thank you very much and I'd like to hear what your thoughts are. Yes, Steve? Thank you for the talk as a musician. I appreciate it and thought it sounded mostly right although I don't play bluegrass. Most people don't. Most people don't. I did have a suggestion for a title or a subtitle which could be Songa as Song.

[28:14]

I like your talk a lot, and I said two thoughts about what you were saying, and I was thinking about zazen as being a way of tuning my intention. You know how musicians always... I see that as a way of a tune-up. The other thing is that I've done acting, and sort of the founder of modern-day acting theory, Stanislavski, talked about the actor's body as his or her instrument. And it's an improv, I've done improv, that we support each other. I mean, when someone steps forward, you know, you react and stand with the person that's doing that until it's ready to, Mm-hmm.

[29:18]

And one of the things, one of the kind of rules for improv is you always accept the offer. Like, like whatever the other, if the other person starts, whatever they say, you take it and you go with it. You never say, you know, if they say, Oh, are you going to visit your family this weekend? You never say no. You know, you always say, Oh yes, but blah, blah, blah. And then you go off with your own fantasy and then they take that. And so, and that's a really good thing. You know, we always accept the offer. We do that in our practice, too. Nancy? Well, just to underline that, I do a lot of improv every weekend. And it is, it's simply, yes, and, yes, and, and listen. Be sure to listen. We have another one, play smarter than you are. That's what I do when I sit and talk about it. Channel someone who could actually say something about the program. If someone offers you, well, Dr. Brown, you know, you say, Yes, what can I do for you? There's a, just one more thing. There's a, I learned another thing, a little bit of another thing about this.

[30:21]

There's a way that, you know, like you can have a mask. There could be like a whole body thing that you put on and then no matter who puts it on, they kind of like channel the same, something the same, you know? Like there's something in there, there's some, I guess that's the collective unconscious or something. There's things that, so you know, the shuso is kind of like putting on a costume and then they step forward. Yes, who was that? Oh, Maria. With consciousness I began to practice here after a while that it was a great relief that not everybody has to be good at everything. There are so many talents here and there are people who are good at finance and there are people who are good at serving and each one, it's like fingers on the hand, has the contribution to make that makes the whole thing.

[31:31]

That's really right. That's really right. And even though we don't always do, we don't always work with that, we try to play our edge and we try to give people things to do. Because it's also okay to do something you're not good at. You don't have to do, you don't have to always do something you're good at. It's fine to do something you're not good at. And you may get better at it, you may never get fantastic at it, but that's fine. It's fun. It's fun and, you know, it's curiosity. Or you might find that's just the thing you can do and you didn't know. I mean, we might not put you in charge of the finances if you were rude. And that reminds me. Did you have anything you'd like to add? Thank you for your talk. You brought up a lot of things. But since you mentioned the practice period, we are going to start our practice period on the seventh week next Saturday. I think that all the things that Laurie was talking about are definitely aspects and foundation of our practice period.

[32:39]

So, you know, during the year our attention becomes diversified. doing this one thing together, this one unified thing called Zazen, mostly, and we all have our attention on the same practice. So that really unifies us and sets up our condition for the year, so that we bring ourselves As far as the song of Zazen, Hakuin also originally, or Hakuin called Zazen, Zazen wasan, the song of Zazen, which talks about ice is water and water is ice.

[33:45]

Mary? Thank you for your talk. There's something about it that just makes me happy. That's one of my goals in life, making you happy. It's a pleasurable idea, that sense of being able to step forward and be supported and support. I mean that sense of interweaving that happens. Particularly, one point that you mentioned but didn't dwell on was what happens when the instrument is out of tune or you lose your place and you act and everyone still carries on. That support to keep moving, to keep the stride going without dwelling on what you say or to judge the thing that one has brought forward and then to realize other people aren't and to kind of let that whole business go.

[35:17]

Right. The judging and the shame or guilt or whatever. That reminded me of something I wanted to say that I didn't say, which is, when is it your turn to step forward? And I was thinking, you know how one of my favorite historical people is Harriet Tubman, and I was thinking, well, she didn't wait for it to be offered. It doesn't always mean that you wait to be put forward by everybody. It doesn't always mean that everybody agrees that it's your time to come forward and be the one in front. you know, was a slave and she wanted to be free and she, no one else was, even her friends and her, you know, all the people in her life, her husband, no one was supporting her to do that. So I didn't want to leave the impression that we always, that our turn to come forward is always given by everybody. It's not necessarily true.

[36:18]

Sometimes you just know inside that you have to do something and you have to come forward and do it. So it's not like everybody's... we're always waiting for our turn to... I mean, it's important to know how to... I think it's important to be able to wait for your turn and know that your turn will come. But if, you know, it's not always on the other people to know that. You might be the only one that knows it's your turn. So she went ahead in spite of her fears and no support. Right. Totally. Well, very little support. I mean, she couldn't have done it. There was like the Underground Railroad. So if there was people, there was a support system of sorts. But actually, after, she supported way more people herself than the support she got. I mean, she was able to figure out how to support other people to escape in ways that no one else had done. And that, again, was also not something that anybody was telling her to do.

[37:18]

So how would she fit, that kind of character, fit in our saga? It'd be really interesting. I mean, who knows? I have no idea. We hopefully are not enslaving anybody. I mean, hopefully the stakes are not at the same level. You know, like sometimes in your life, there can be different times. It can be really, the stake can be really high. We can be in a dangerous situation or, you know. Hopefully we, our idea would be to create a situation where everybody could come forward and be themselves and be free. And that we're not living at the expense of anybody or that our life is not based on somebody else not being able to express themselves. I mean, that's what we would strive for, I think. Karen? I was thinking about for a band, to work, there has to be some agreement to begin with.

[38:22]

And also, the same style. You know, it's like you couldn't be in a bluegrass band and then switch to a jazz band. There's a culture and there's kind of things. Well, you might be able to, but yeah, it would be hard. And you can't, you wouldn't, you couldn't convert your bluegrass band to a jazz band if they didn't want to. Right. So, so there is something, I mean, there's, to me, there's a little bit of a tension into being your own instrument and then walking into, like a tuba, walking into the bluegrass band and figuring out how that was going to work. So... It can happen, like, you know, Alan's... Well, I am this, I'm this, but... You know, I don't look the same, or I don't act the same, or I don't speak the same language, or... And that's attention. Yeah. went to the orchestra. Right, yeah, it's important to know that every instrument has, you know, all God's children got a place in a choir or something.

[39:25]

Every instrument has a place. Yes, Catherine? I love your analogy and what comes up from what Jerry said was this lovely little poem by Rumi. He says, so much singing, so many religions, all one song. And I hear that now in their jazz bands, their bluegrass bands, their orchestras, their choruses. And clearly, in the relative plane, they're not singing one song. But when you think of all of these as ways of opening the heart to music, we're all touching the absolute in any way that we can and letting it manifest. Or we're all playing music even though it's all different kinds or something, yeah. Is that it?

[40:26]

Any final, any last words? Yes, Jake. Thank you, Laura. I just wanted to say that particularly for some people who are new to our practice, we do have some built-in avenues for expressing oneself, open discussion, first Mondays, the time when people bring up whatever topic might come to their mind. And then the other is practice committee. People think they have things that they don't have in mind. There are avenues for that. Although, early in the morning. It's just a tea, too. You can bring stuff up right now, if there's anything you're wondering about. If you want to know, really, is my instrument X really going to fit in here, you can ask. Yeah? Judy? This is just in my head, and so I'm going to say it. I don't quite know what the point of this is, but it's a true story.

[41:30]

I have a friend who plays the fiddle and violin. And I play the cello. Well, I suggested once that she and I play some music together, and it didn't work at all. And it turns out she is a country-western player, and she can't read music. You know, she can't play conventional chamber music. And she told me one time she was in an airport waiting for her plane, and she had her case there. And this guy came up and he said, Is that a fiddle or a violin? He said, it's a fiddle. And he said, oh, good. And he got out his instrument. It was for music in the airport. Anyway, that's a great one. It fits. It fits. OK, thanks, everybody.

[42:15]

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