Good morning. Good morning. Please join me in welcoming our dark sister, Geri Oliva. She has been practicing for over 20 years. And she was a head student at Berkley Dent Center in 2008. And a head student or she's so. She and her, she's a mother to five young men. She's been taking care of her mother quite a bit. This is her daughter. She's a mother of a daughter. And for her work, she's a doctor and she's on the faculty of UC SF Medical School. And she's involved in health policy. So she has a lot of irons in the fire. I look forward to hearing what she has to say. Thank you.

[01:02]

It's on. Without any ado. That's a first success. So I'm going to talk today about authenticity. About a year ago, sometime around my last birthday, which was in November, I began to have a nagging sense that I had somehow lost myself or lost part of myself. I had allowed myself to be tossed about by circumstances, and that I hadn't even recognized that it was happening, that I was responding to the circumstances of my life without really paying as much attention, without really, really being fully present, and that somehow that meant that some of me wasn't really there. And so I kind of was sitting with that and I kind of developed an aspiration.

[02:03]

It's interesting because this is a time in my life when I'm wanting to retire, I'm wanting to do other things. I'm kind of contemplating these life changes. Started a then teacher training program last year. So there were all sorts of things coming up for me. And an aspiration arose to live the rest of my life as authentically as I could. to be true to who I really am. The only problem was I didn't seem to really know what that meant. So this talk is actually a progress report after a year of staying with the question, how do I live authentically? What does that mean to me, to live authentically? So Webster's Dictionary, always a good source of information, defines authenticity as worthy of acceptance or belief, as conforming to or based on fact.

[03:06]

That didn't bring true to me, wasn't what I was looking for. Another definition was conforming to an original, so as to reproduce the essential features. Well, I guess I could turn that into Zen training in terms of, well, if we're looking for our original face, If we're looking for Buddha nature, we live according to that nature. But that really isn't a fact, so that didn't feel right either. Not false. Another definition was not false or imitation. Real, actual, and honest. That's a little closer, maybe, for me. Honest. Honest has a lot to do with being authentic to me. So I looked at the derivation of the word authenticity, and it comes from the Greek word authenticos. which again says original, genuine, or principle, but it derives itself, it derives from a word, it derives from two words, autos, or self, and hentes, or doer, or being, so doing the self, or being the self.

[04:19]

Now that, that feels like what I'm looking for. So that being, so authenticity is is being truly the self, whatever that is. So I remember when I started to work with this, I remember that years ago, I had spent a couple of years with the phrase, just this one is. I'd sat with it, sat with it and sat with it. And then, and so I thought, well, somehow I felt that I'd gotten some understanding of that back then. But I couldn't seem to remember what that understanding was. So I actually went looking through my journals, you know, as we keep these journals of different parts of our lives, and I found a poem that I'd written in 2002. When I was in a retreat house in Scotland on the island of Iona, a very remote island where people go for spiritual retreats, and somehow I managed to find myself a book

[05:26]

I always wanted to go there, so I went to the retreat house, and I was sitting in the beautiful meditation room at the top of the house, surrounded by windows, and you can hear the ocean, and you can see the ocean and the light, and the light shines in, and I would sit there for hours in this meditation room. And so what I found was this poem. It said, sitting in a sanctuary on the island of Iona, I'm close to this understanding. It feels that I am on a stronger foundation. There is a place inside me that is whole, complete as it is. This is all there is. This is not just enough, but everything. What more can there be, dwelling in this place of no place, in this body of nobody, drinking this light, this air, this earth, this green grass, this sea, all living creatures? So somehow my understanding of just this one is was understanding the universal self, the self that's not separate, the self, what I interpreted as the self or Buddha nature or self where I was just part of this environment and that

[06:52]

that seemed to satisfy me at the time. It apparently satisfied me so well that I didn't really bother to study anymore and didn't recognize that this was just the beginning, not the end. So I realized that I hadn't really gone deep enough at that time and that didn't really help me with what I seemed to be struggling with, how to be authentic. you might say a funny thing happened on the way to studying Zen, but one day I was sitting doing Zazen, and the thought of authenticity came up, and I let it go, you know, let it go, right? I was doing Zazen. So I didn't think about it. But then what arose were vivid memories and Walt Disney-type visions, along with musical accompaniment of Alice in Wonderland.

[07:53]

And so I actually let myself be with that for a while because it was very entertaining. And so actually, when I thought about giving a talk on authenticity, I thought I was going to ask if I could do a talk at Kidzindo so that I could talk a little bit about Alice in Wonderland. But they needed a speaker at the last minute for this Saturday, and so I guess I'd like to invite all of you to bring your inner child, since I can't have the real kids. If you could have your kid come and listen to Alice in Wonderland. Because somehow for me, this story of Alice in Wonderland has something to do with authenticity or lack thereof. And more than that, but we'll see where we get.

[08:55]

So as we all know, Alice was a nice English girl with a good education and from a very good family. And she was expected to be refined and serious and to follow the rules of good English society. Alice had a hard time with this, and she had a hard time sitting still, and she was very creative and fun-loving. So while her sisters were reading and being polite and having tea, Alice would run around and investigate. So one day, she noticed a white rabbit with a basket and a pocket watch, as we all know, and she followed the rabbit down through the rabbit hole into another world. Alice really wanted to catch up with that rabbit. She wanted that rabbit. And to do this, she was willing to do some very risky things. She found herself in a dark room with a tiny door, and she peeked through the hole, keyhole, and she saw the loveliest garden she had ever seen.

[10:05]

How she longed to get out of the dark hall and wander among those beds of bright flowers and cool fountains where the rabbit had been running. She so wanted to fit in, to fit through that door and be part of all that beauty. And she was willing to... And then she came upon a bottle marked, Drink Me. And what did she do? She drank it. So unfortunately, the potion in the... The potion in the bottle made her get really tiny, and she was tiny enough to get through into that other place and to fit in. But unfortunately, there was a key on the top of the table that she had forgotten to take with her. So now she was looking up through the glass of the table and saw the little key that she needed to get in to the beautiful garden to realize her dreams. But then underneath the table, she noticed a little cookie.

[11:07]

And the cookie said, eat me. And Alice, she really wanted to get into that garden. She really wanted to have that beauty. And so she ate the cookie. But then she became huge. She grew really, really big. So she still didn't fit in. So she's very sad and she starts wandering around. So sad she can't have what she wants. She can't be, can't fit in. It's terrible before Alice. And she finds the white rabbit. And the white rabbit seems to think that she's Mabel, his attendant. And he starts ordering her around. And Alice laments, I wonder if I've changed in the night. Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning?

[12:09]

I almost think I can remember feeling a little different, but if I'm not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I? That's the great puzzle. So she contemplates going home, and she thinks, well, maybe her family will call her. But then she said, well, what if my family called me and said, come home to where things are nice and I can fit in very well? And she said, but if they said, come up, dear, I shall only look up and say, who am I then? Tell me that first. And if I like being that person, I'll come up. And if not, I'll stay down here until I'm somebody else. So she starts crying and her tears, she's suffering so much for this desire that she can't fulfill. She cries a river of tears and washes all the creatures in Wonderland and causes a great flood. And she tries to relate to these creatures that are coming by her and floating by her, but she really doesn't know how to relate to them.

[13:22]

She tries to talk to them about her cat Dinah, but it turns out that cats are considered predators for all these little creatures there. So she realizes that her usual way of charming her way through life doesn't work. She can't be the charming little English girl anymore. At this point, She's wandering through the forest, about six inches tall, and she comes up under a mushroom. And she looks on the side of the mushroom, and she encounters my favorite Alice in Wonderland character, who is a caterpillar smoking a hookah. The caterpillar is very self-important, and he asks, and similar to Emperor Wu voting Dharma, He asks in a very supercilious way, who are you? And Alice says, I hardly know. I knew who I was this morning, but I've changed several times since then. So then there ensues a dialogue, a dialogue with this caterpillar.

[14:30]

He asks her all the questions, what, where, who, and Alice is clueless. Her next encounter is with the smiling Cheshire Cat. This time she's asking the Cheshire Cat, which way do I go from here? She now knows that she needs help. And the cat said, that depends on where you want to go. And Alice, being a good Zen student, says, I don't much care. And the cat responds, well, then it doesn't matter which way you go. But if you walk long enough, surely you will get somewhere. So that actually reminded me of sitting along Sasheen. I don't really want to go, but maybe if I sit long enough, I'll get somewhere. So the cat sends her on to the Mad Hatter in the March Hare, after warning her that everyone in Wonderland is mad, and that even she is mad, because why would she be here if she weren't?

[15:31]

So she goes to the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. We're almost, this is almost over. She goes to the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, and as you recall, everything there is comical. Nothing is as it should be in Alice's life. Alice's look is used to formal English tea, and of course, at this tea party, the cuffs are flying around, the teapots pour themselves. No one really drinks any tea. They throw the stuff at each other and everything. And Alice, this is really a test. Alice is really beside herself here because she can't operate in this environment. She doesn't know how to be. So she stalks off and says, well, if this is the way it's going to be, I'm out of here. And there's one funny interaction where she's still trying to make sense out of it or trying to have this be something that she can have some control over in her life.

[16:45]

So the Mad Hatter says to her, take some more tea. And Alice says, how can I take more tea when I've had nothing yet? And the Mad Hatter says, you mean you can't take less? It's very easy to take more than nothing. So Alice completely gives up and leaves. So eventually Alice finds, gets back to the door to the garden and she's finally the right size to get into the wonderful garden. So she gets into this wonderful garden of her dreams and what does she find? The Queen of Heart and her croquet game. And as we all know, this is the place of violence, of madness, complete madness. So Alice has has found this wonderful place that she spent all of her time trying to get to, trying to be able to get to. And it's totally absurd. There's no logic to it at all. At one point, as she is lamenting with the Duchess who's attending the croquet game, that how can she operate here?

[17:56]

She doesn't even know who she is anymore. And so the Duchess tells Alice, be what you would seem to be. Or, if you'd like it put more simply, never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to be to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would you have appeared to them to be otherwise. Alice finally gives up, right? And she says, I think I should understand this better. Maybe if I'd written it down. So very shortly after that, at the end of the story, we're back in a real English garden and Alice is resting, has her head on her sister's lap and it turns out to be a dream.

[18:57]

So Alice wakes up and she tells her sister the wonderful dream she's had about this other world and what's been going on. So I actually shared this because I felt there was a lot in here. I think you could actually have a class on Zen and Alice in Wonderland. And it would be fun to read the chapters and go through all the characters. But this isn't that class. But I shared it with Sojin, and he and I kind of got off analyzing the characters and thinking about what they were. So he referred me, after that talk, to the story of Sejo and Her Soul, Separated from Her Soul. And it's interesting that he referred me to that because I had tried to read that in this, going through this idea of finding my authentic self. felt that there was something in this koan that actually was there for me.

[19:58]

But before reading Alice, I didn't seem to be able to access it very well. So I'll tell you what this story is. It's in the Mulan koan, case 35, Seijo's soul separated. Gozo said to his monks, Seijo's soul separated from her being. Which is the real Seijo? Which is the real Alice? Which is the real Jerry? This koan is related to a story that comes from an ancient Chinese book of ghost stories. Seijo, the daughter of Chokan, was raised expecting that one day she would marry her cousin Ucho, with whom she'd played since early childhood. So when Seijo's father announced that she was to marry another, both were brokenhearted. Ucho, unable to bear watching Seijo marry another, got a boat to leave the village. And as he was departing, he saw a shadowy figure running along the shore. He was delighted to see that it was Sejo, who had joined him on the boat.

[21:05]

The two journeyed far away, where they were wed and had two children. As time passed, Sejo longed to see her homeland and be forgiven by her parents. Uchu took her back to their native village and left her in the boat while he went to meet with her father to make amends. Chokhan, astonished, asked Uchu, which girl are you talking about? Your daughter Sejo, father, replied Uchu. Chokhan said, my daughter Sen. Since the time you left, she's been sick in bed and has been unable to speak. The story is resolved when Sejo leaves the boat and meets the Sejo that has been sick in bed. The two parts of the self meet. and become one person again. Mu Man's comment is, when you realize what the real is, you will see we pass from one husk to another, like travelers, stopping for a nice lodging.

[22:07]

But if you do not realize it yet, I earnestly advise you not to rush about wisely. When earth, wind, water, fire, and air suddenly you will be like a crab struggling in boiling water. When that happens, don't say I didn't warn you. Raman's verse is, the moon above the clouds is ever the same. Valleys and mountains are separate from each other. All are blessed. All are blessed. Are they one or are they two? So even after Sojin pointed me towards this, I still had a resistance to getting it. It seems so obvious, but I couldn't open to it. I couldn't get it. I felt like I was very close to where I was stuck, where I was stuck on this being authentic thing. Something about my being unable to actually be with this in a way that was open or alive had something to do with what was going on.

[23:16]

And so a couple of interesting things happened to me that I find as I practice longer, my aha moments come at very strange times. They no longer come in the context of sitting necessarily. So I was doing my morning routine, drinking my coffee and reading the New York Times one morning. And there was an op-ed in the New York Times by David Brooks, who's a conservative columnist, but it was on Rahm Emanuel leaving the White House, leaving as chief of staff. And he said, I'm writing this appreciation of Rahm because success has a way of depersonalizing its beneficiaries. From the moment kids are asked to subdue their passions, in order to get straight A's to the time they arrive at a company and are asked to work 70 hours a week climbing the ladder.

[24:20]

People have an incentive to suppress their passions and prune their souls." And I started to cry. And then he said, this is especially true in Washington, a town where with more than its fair share of formal hall monitors, a place where politicians engage in these pantomime gestures of faux friendship and become promotable, hollowed out caricatures of themselves. But Rahm Emanuel somehow managed to remain true to his whole and floored self. So when I started to cry, I realized that I had there was something about this remaining true to the whole and flooring self, regardless of what the conditions of life were, that somehow broke through, broke through for me.

[25:23]

And so that after that, I had a number of other experiences, like some people were here for my Wayseeking Mind talk not a long time ago, where I watched a movie about basically coffining in Japan called Departures and found myself crying for two hours. So obviously, this was the real person crying and hurting and feeling the sadness and the grief and the difficulties. That sometimes the life that we choose to lead, the place the compromises we make to lead our lives, to be fitting into a profession, to be being what we need to be, to be a mother or a daughter or a wife or whatever, that in order to do that, we sometimes have to start finding ourselves suppressing parts of ourselves that don't seem to fit in.

[26:27]

We want to fit in to be able to do the role. We want to fit into... I, to be in my medical profession, that takes a lot of fitting in. That takes a lot of eating cookies, drinking potions. It takes a lot to kind of be whatever it is you're supposed to be to turn, it seems like that. And it's very easy. You have to be very vigilant. to keep your heart open. You have to be very vigilant to make sure that your whole self is there, that you're not just becoming that role, whatever that role is. So, going back to the koan, I now could read the koan. So, going back to Moomin's comment, when you realize what the real is,

[27:35]

You'll see that we pass from one husk to another like travelers stopping for a nice lodging. So, the real is this conditioned self living its life. That is all we have, is our self. Hopefully, we have our wisdom of the reality of the universal, but we live in the conditioned world as ourself. We have our emotions, we have our values, we have our bodies, we have our opinions, we have our knowledge, we have all of ourselves, all the many complexities of ourselves that arise, that are arising all the time. And if we are not there with that, if we're not there with what's happening, we're not with our real selves, we're not authentic.

[28:42]

If we're not living out, if we're suppressing or not wanting to look at or wanting to be some ideal and not who's really there, then we're running around, we're not practicing and looking at ourselves. Instead of sitting and practicing with shining light, we are running around trying to be something, trying to find something, fit in, trying to do something, but not being ourselves, not doing ourselves. We're doing some role or some part of ourselves. And part of ourselves then, for me, the part of myself that was sad about sickness in my family, sad about the aging of my mother, not satisfied with some of what was happening with my career, that created a dead part. It created a dead part that wasn't accessible.

[29:46]

And it was only by kind of staying with this looking what is authenticity. So it's very, it was very interesting to, where are we time-wise, by the way? Okay. So there's something about authenticity then that is the roles we take. So when he says husks pass through one husk on another. That's kind of funny because it's a funny term. I wonder what it would be if you translated it another way. One huts to another like a traveler stopping for a night's lodging, like going from place to place, changing roles, changing personalities, changing times.

[30:48]

I thought about Shakespeare's Seven Stages of Man. You know, we are all those things. When we are those things, we are those things. And that's what's authentic at that moment. And of course, a lot happens during all those life phases, not just, you know, it's ever-changing. this ever-changing self that's arising and ceasing. And then the verse, Mulan's verse says, the moon above the clouds is ever the same. The moon above the clouds is not the moon above the clouds, it's the new moon, the crescent moon, the full moon, but it is the moon's nature and it is kind of a universal for us.

[31:52]

But even the universal has its phases, has its nature, has the way the moon is, and we see it and it's there. And then he says, valleys and mountains are separate from each other. That sounds like Dogen's Mountains and River Sutra. Again, mountains and valleys are part of the earth, but they manifest in different ways. So there is, again, this idea of within the universal, there are these distinctions and there are these parts. And there are these mountains and rivers, and no mountains and rivers, and mountains and rivers, that we encounter in our lives. So, the Sejo who, there's the Sejo in us, who is very, perhaps, devoted to a family.

[33:06]

And then there's the Sejo in us, who's devoted to art, or the Sejo in us, who's devoted to a profession, or the Sejo in us, who's anything, who likes to sing. And they are distinct, but not separate, and cutting them off, and not practicing with them, practicing with all of it, that creates that separation of our soul, or that part of ourself so that we're no longer this whole, integrated, interactive, conditioned, constantly conditioned self because we're suppressing key parts of ourself and not living fully. So Thich Nhat Hanh, in his discussion of the second foundation of mindfulness, which is mindfulness of feelings, says, our feelings are not separate from us, or just caused by something outside of us.

[34:17]

Our feelings are us. And not for that moment. And for that moment, we are those feelings. The important thing is to feel them and not reject them through judging, judging them as unpleasant or harmful. It doesn't mean we let these feelings impact our behavior necessarily, but we need to acknowledge them and be skillful with them. As I was preparing this talk, I came upon a Zen calendar that I bought last year at Green Gulch and never opened, and I opened the first page just just randomly and what was on the first page. Suzuki Roshi quotes. Suzuki Roshi said, this happened like two days ago, when you are honest with yourself and brave enough, you can express yourself fully. Whatever people may think, it's all right.

[35:20]

Just be yourself. That is actual practice. That is your life. So, on that note, maybe we Yes. Thank you, Judy. From what little I know about your life, the sadness that you feel for your mother, and expressing that sadness and the lack of fulfillment at work, and making a change with your career, with your retirement, it seems like you are being authentic. So my question to you is, where is the doubt in your authenticity when What we see, or what I see anyway, looks and feels genuine when I'm in your presence, is it? Well, I've been making some progress this year. John Mogey could actually speak to this, because John and I did a role play in the spot training, in which we were supposed to speak about something really

[36:34]

meaningful for ourselves. Something that was hurtful primarily. I think it was a difficult situation. We were supposed to discuss the difficult situation and the other person was to look at our nonverbal communication and tell us what they saw. And I didn't talk, I chose not to talk about any of the real things that were going on in my life right now. So I do that. I talked about my father's death, which was, you know, 12 years ago. That was a lot safer. So John, in a nutshell, just tell him why I think part of me was dead. Because what was going on in your body had nothing to do with that. Yeah, John said, your voice, you're talking to me in a monotone. You're sitting really rigid. And it was really interesting because I love my father a lot.

[37:35]

I mean, he was really important to me. And I had a lot of grief, but I was, what he described was a person totally cut off from any emotion. And I was, and I recognized that I was. I recognized that I could actually talk about that situation, which was so full of stuff for me. And I left my emotional self, my open heart, somewhere else. It was shoved under the corner or something like that. I wasn't going to let John. And I know John, so I certainly don't have any personal, I would be happy to, you know, I didn't feel anything, it wasn't about a personal thing with John. I talked to John about personal things. So I found myself doing that a lot, yeah. And I think I found myself doing that a lot. So for me, it's my own personal journey. Yeah, I found myself doing that. Katie? Thanks for talking about authenticity. I'm struck by the conditioned self living the conditioned self.

[38:40]

But I often have a little bit of a reaction in my head to authenticity. And it's in part related to a wonderful book I read about a Latin anthropologist about his experience of race. as a black man in New York City, and race and our culture more widely, and authenticity and being real as something that is judged. And I was wondering if that was related to this mix of definitions of authenticity and the paradox within authenticity in a way, and that it's being seen by others to be doing who you truly are. And so there's a sense of treating oneself or treating others as an object that is being authenticated. And there's that aspect of authenticity. And this anthropologist contrasted it with

[39:43]

I think that's right. I mean, in a way, that's another way that you could be separated from your soul if you cannot actually be truly your own culture, living out who you are. Because in order to fit in, in order to be part of the larger or succeed in a certain environment, you have to put on the mask of what's expected. You have to talk the language. You have to behave in a certain way. And it's a risk to be authentic. I think that's true in many professions. In medicine, it can be true. You know, if your authentic self is really hurting for somebody, you know, you're not expected to behave in that way. You're supposed to be somewhat dispassionate and professional. So you have to put a mask on of that. Oh, wait a minute, I've got a lot. Whoa. Were you next, Linda, or was Barry? First of all, thank you very much.

[40:56]

What I have found when trying to face my authentic self is facing also what I call the dark side of myself or the side of myself I'd rather not see. And it takes a damn lot of courage to Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I censor a lot. I was raised to censor those kinds of things. And so, yeah, I mean, I do now. I'm trying now to, it's something that I feel is part of the separation from yourself. Because you do have these feelings that you're not proud of. I do. Do you look at them and be with them? Obviously, you want to do that.

[41:58]

But that's a challenge, just accepting that that's part of the human condition. And it's very much part of what I felt was happening with me, that I was trying so hard to be something, that it wasn't something that I was always like that, you know, it comes and goes. And so my problem was I was doing this life change and all these things were happening and I felt like I had lost that, lost the ability to really do that. I was so busy trying to be the good daughter or be the whatever that I was losing my ability to be with the bad daughter. Who's alive and well? Linda. About Sejo, it seemed like she didn't have any choice. If she followed her passion and went with the man she loved, she would have to go to her parents.

[43:06]

And if she did that, there would be that sick part of herself. What could she have done? Family therapy. She could have worked with it. She could have worked with it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Authenticity is not only one's responsibility, but it's the responsibility of the person one encounters, or my responsibility when I test somebody. I find some people let me be authentic and others don't, and I'm very grateful when they do, and I try, if I can, to show that I can, to offer acceptance that allows people to be authentic. I feel very much deprived of the opportunity to be authentic, especially as a child, because I was an adopted child, and I had to please, it was very dangerous not to please, and I was just shut up.

[44:28]

I was a puppet, and it took many, many years to come out of it. So what can we do to allow people to be authentic? Well, it's interesting. You know, there's always skillful means, which is, you know, having an assessment of where it's safe and where it's not, and being able to provide that environment for people to be able to say whatever they want. I mean, we would sometimes, we do a council process here that Alan Hossain is very familiar with and guides us with when there's some conflictual situation, for example, where everyone has a lot of heated feelings about it, if you can get people together in a way that everyone agrees that they can express themselves without any feedback, so you pass the, you know, you pass the baton around and people can say what they want and it's not going anywhere, it's not hurting anybody, it's just everyone is, everyone is bought into this idea of being with whatever's there, being with

[45:40]

with whatever comes up. It's hard to find anybody, sometimes it's hard in your own personal life to find somebody who will react to what you're saying. They want to fix it or disagree with it or do something about it, but it's having the opportunity. I think when we have way-seeking mind talks here, I think people really have the opportunity to sit and give a way-seeking, which I kind of gave a way-seeking mind talk, give a way-seeking mind talk where people get to say who they are, right? And everyone agrees to be silent and listen with respect to whatever comes up. And so people really feel free to say who they are or to show up. So we need a lot of that, I think. And children need that. I don't know how we do that, but that would be a good thing. I think we're done unless there's an urgent question.

[46:30]

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