Good morning. Well, I'm coming to give the Bozeman Report. Should I be able to do that once a year, that would be just great. It's good to see everybody. So I'll tell you a little bit about my practice in Bozeman and leave some time so we can talk together if that happens. In where I live, I am exposed to a number of different influences that I get to study with. I have to get my notes in case I forget. Or what I would say is like a lot of different forms of the teaching and ways to practice come up living with all these people and being a mom.

[01:11]

Sorry about that. Mom, all right, being a mom. It'll do it to you. It'll just derail you every time. It's so loud up here. Is it loud out there? So I live on this ashram with this guru and one of his opinions, one of his very strong opinions, one of his many very strong opinions, is that spiritual shopping is just a terrible thing. So he has this view that people in California are flitting around from workshop to workshops, a sheen to encounter group, you know, a peace march here and a women's group there and like that.

[02:18]

And he finds this really diluting of one's practice as well as diluting probably. And I find it ironic that this lineage that I'm living in up in Montana is actually a very eclectic mix of influences. You know, it has some of the Hindu yogi devotion to the guru. That's a big part of it. But there's influences from the Gurdjieff work and some of the Advaita Vedanta, which I'm going to talk about in a little bit. However, what I've discovered through living in this one situation is that even though there are a lot of influences, it's one practice. It's just this living with this teacher and other people and serving in this one particular way. So even though there are many streams flowing into it, it's just this one practice.

[03:21]

Now for me in my situation, practice being vigilant about maintaining my vows and doing my practice. And I don't see it as separate, but I see it like I want very much to cultivate my practice in Zen without naming it as such, if that makes sense. I'm living in a situation where we're not bowing Well, actually we're pranaming, we're throwing ourselves on the floor every time, you know, it's great. And so my life doesn't have a lot of the outer forms of Zen. I don't wear my robes except when I go to the Zen group on Monday nights, and I just wear this, I don't wear my long robes. But I am practicing keeping the inner forms the forms of the precepts and wisdom and mindfulness, you know, keeping the spirit of Zazen as the way I practice without creating disharmony or looking like I stick out.

[04:42]

So I really, you know, I've been there six years, if y'all can believe that, six years, blending with this other way. and also committing to this way. So, one of the ways I'm remembering about that, or that's been very encouraging to me, is that we practice specifically, or it's helpful if we practice specifically, not if we practice in general, like to not, be nurturing a sort of general practice where we're generally mindful and we're sort of remembering and we have an altar and we just have this sort of general approach. And it would be easy for me to do that there because I don't have, for instance, this right here, this structure, this form, this, this,

[05:48]

sort of very strong reminder of what we're doing. So the way this shows up for me is, you know, I have my activity. I live on this ashram. I am a mom so that I have a built-in structure to pretty much everything I do because I bring this little person along with me. with all my activities. I do a little bookkeeping for Paul in his music business. I garden, but in Montana that means about three and a half months out of the year. The rest of the time we're moving snow around. I do lead some sittings. Porna has invited me to lead one day sittings, which is a great show of faith and support. knows I'm not, that's not my lineage and yet he puts me up in front of the room and allows me to guide people in meditation and sitting all day and encouraging them.

[06:54]

And I go to the Bozeman Zen group. So that's what my life looks like on the outside. And each one of those is a specific place to bring the teaching to bear in my life. We recently had a real gift brought to us on the ashram, and we had a French teacher visit us for a couple of weeks. His name is Arnaud Desjardins. He is what's called an Aveda Vedantist. He had a Swami in India, and he's in his 80s. He had been a filmmaker. done some of the early films of the Tibetans and the Hindus and some Zen monasteries. And he was very, very famous in France. And he gave that all up to follow the Swami and eventually became a teacher in his own right.

[08:01]

And he visited the ashram for two weeks and gave teachings twice a day. So this was a big gift. And he was a wonderful presence, and he's very lively, and he has this great French accent. So when he dramatizes something, it has this Charles Boyer flourish, and it's so classy, and it really brought us all up a notch. The word Advaita means not to. So what was interesting about this teaching, we often think of, well, anybody who thinks of Advaita or even ways we think about in Zen, that we think of oneness. And it's not that oneness is not true. Oneness is true, but the practice of Advaita is the practice of not to. So things are already one. Things are already beyond one in many. They're non-dual.

[09:10]

It's already the case. So it's not like we have to create non-duality out of our dualistic lives. It's not like we have to put things back together because they're not broken. They're not separate. But we do have to see how we create that to be so. So we got this wonderful teaching from Arnaud about not to and how we make to. So some of the highlights of the way he speaks about his teaching or not to, someone asked him once, The first time I met him, I got to go to France to his ashram and meet him. And they asked about the prison they were in. This, you know, I find myself in a prison and I'm locked inside of my own sort of thoughts and feelings. And I feel like I've thrown away the key. And he said, well, my understanding of prison is that the prisoner never has the key.

[10:14]

And it's not up to the prisoner to throw away the key. You're in prison. And he really elaborated on, this is our condition, that we're in a situation where we feel trapped, where we are trapped, but we're actually not trapped. But it's as if we're trapped, so that's our situation. And what is the remedy for that? He talked about studying your prison. getting very familiar with your prison, because the only thing to do when you're in prison is escape or give up. That's the way he put it. So he talked about studying the prison, which was very, to me, aligning with the Zen, with the Buddhist practice of studying delusion. Instead of reaching for enlightenment or adding on all the teaching onto our deluded state to stop and study our delusion.

[11:18]

So studying our prison was another way he talked about not to, not making to. To be one with, and he had this, he called it the Arnaud Mudra. He was a filmmaker, so all his gestures were, film-related, you know, he constantly said, you should take your vision, which is out here, zeroing in on the one person making your life hell, and bringing it back, and seeing the big picture. Or his other good one was to be one with, and to be one, he would go like this, like this, like this, and tilt it, click, you know. So he had all these images of how we can join with what's already so. And to join with what's already so, we often can't do that directly, so we have to study how we are not doing that. And by study, this is where often I would get tripped up because I wanted to analyze and figure out the reasons, and it's not that that's not part of it, but

[12:24]

He was really pointing to completely joining with your experience as it is in the moment, not just thinking about it. In fact, he said there is thinking as opposed to seeing. And what we want to do is see. And that there was emotional reactivity and true feeling. And what we want to do is feel. We want to see and feel, not think and react. So when we talk about observing the no, this is another way he talked about it, studying the prison, studying untruth, observing the no, being with the no, the no being pushing away. And he talked about all the ways we push away. Now, I'm not talking about the kind of no where you stand up on your own two feet and draw a boundary and say, no, this is not right, or no, I don't, This isn't going, you know, that kind of no where you're setting a boundary or clarifying or being an adult, you know, just being an adult.

[13:34]

So I have a whole practice in that, but that's not what I'm talking about right now. I do have to learn more about saying no in an adult way, but this is the no that is refusing experience as it is, refusing what's coming up and all the ways through the day we're saying no. No, I don't like the temperature right now. No, I don't like this feeling of being a little nervous. No, I don't want this for breakfast. No, I don't want Eugene to be behaving. Just the constant stream of no. This is the second poison, the hate of greed, hate, and delusion for me. This is what I found, this stream of nos, of I don't want this, I don't like that, I don't want what I have. And that my focus has been there a lot this past year of not wanting what I have. And I haven't been grasping so much for what I don't have. It's more like, I just don't want what I have. And admitting that, admitting that that's kind of the soup I'm cooking in.

[14:41]

And the added quality to that that has been very challenging for me this year and that I think is very good for us to observe is that level of hostility that comes in with it. the sort of, the little bit of violence, the little bit of hostility or ill will, that kind of the pushing away like, like I'm above this and you are, you know, the sort of disgust and that those kinds of feelings that come up, watching the way through the day, that that is determining the mood of our existence and not allowing us to join with what is. Paul has been invited to start a little study group on the ashram and we're studying the teachings of Arnaud now that he has been there and we're kind of steeped in it. And I give Porna, the guru there, a lot of credit for being open to the influence of this teacher and sort of tightening up our practice there, sort of getting it a little more formal, a little more clarifying what internal practice is.

[16:02]

So Paul gave us a homework assignment of coming up with a specific example of how we study Arnaud, not Arnaud the teacher. This is our great joke on the ashram. Arnaud, Arnaud. Because Arnaud would do this thing when he would describe, when he would describe rejecting experience, he would go, Arnaud! Yes! You know, he would say, Arnaud! And we all thought he was saying, Arnaud! So he would, but you know, the French say, ah, no, and we say, oh, no. So it's a translation problem. But so we all say, ah, no. Then we say, yes, because he would do this, yes, like it is so, it is a fact, this is happening. So for my homework assignment, I brought in this example of trying to get Eugene dressed when I'm in a hurry. All the parents are chuckling and I don't even need to explain what I'm talking about, but it's that feeling of like trying to be calm and we're putting on our jacket and then you get to the shoes and socks and then you know you're about to either throw the shoes and the socks or the child out the window.

[17:17]

The frustration is so, it's like it's just not moving, like physics has stopped working. And so I would really just, you know, it would be a few minutes before I would catch this state and realize I am making life really difficult for this little boy who does not have the agenda I have. Like, because I have to get into Bozeman and it takes, well, it takes 10 minutes to get from my door to the front of the ashram, but really 30. You know, we think it's 10, but it's really 30 and then another 30. So like, you have to think hours ahead of time when you want to go somewhere. And he's just interested in the fact that he can now get his car up on the bench and balance it while I'm trying to get him dressed. It happens so quick. You're just getting dressed and all of a sudden, I'm saying you, but it's me, I'm in a rage. If I really key in, the way I am pushing away this experience, when I really key into it, it's quite juicy.

[18:21]

It's really happening. And it doesn't need to. It just doesn't need to. Yujin doesn't need this. I don't need it. And I started the practice of this sort of being one with. So in the moment, in that moment, studying the no looked like really, really feeling just how frustrated I got. I usually don't go, oh, I just sort of go, okay, I'm impatient, just slow down. But I would really feel it. And it was like this, like really adrenaline. So it's not just observing it and saying it. It's like the word boga is full experience, fully joining. And it would be so impressive to me what a state had happened so quickly with such a minor, or what should be a loving encounter, that I couldn't help but just even slow down more than I need to and just look at Eugene, embrace the situation, and just

[19:27]

slow it down. And it was an immediate antidote without doing something on top of what was happening, just recognizing how upsetting something so simple could make me. And I really appreciated that I was able to study it in the particular, in this moment of socks and shoes. This was, you know, this was my practice. This was being mindful. This was admitting my faults, all of that, and just right there. So when we were in the study group, you know, and people would be talking in general about studying the no, and we would force ourselves to get specific and expose, where am I getting caught? So again, watching how I would make two out of the situation, me and Yujin, or me and the socks.

[20:36]

So I did this, and I'll just tell this story because it's more impactful of how we live together. And what's really been my teaching for this year is my relationship with the cook on the ashram. We take turns cooking, but there's a main cook. I got into a situation where I just was so frustrated with the way she was running the kitchen. And it, and I got frustrated in general and pretty much everything she did was wrong. And, and of course I had great reasons and I had all this backup because other people were frustrated. And, um, there was, There was a couple of, when she first came in, it was like, great, because she was so much better than the cook we had before, and she did all this stuff that made us adore her. And then the honeymoon was over, and then the diet changed a little bit, and all these little things that I wouldn't do it that way started to arise.

[21:48]

And of course, I would try mindfulness practice and I would observe that I was being critical or observe that I was uncomfortable. But in general, the kitchen, I didn't like it and other people agreed with me. And so I was finding evidence for the state that was arising, but I wasn't studying the state in particular in my body when it was happening. I was just going, yes, I'm being reactive. I need to be more patient. but you know, so-and-so thinks she's doing a bad job. And, you know, and we even had a couple of groups with her where she got some feedback and some coaching and, and she was, you know, trying to work with it, but things didn't change. And now I have a son I'm trying to provide food for, and I have all these reasons why I'm justified in being just so upset with the situation in general. So I would, Well, you know, there's a lot of details on how I would think I was practicing with it.

[22:52]

When I would go into the kitchen, I would contain myself and be very polite. But she was getting the message of, I was just leaking this judgment and reactivity. I mean, she could feel it. And I could feel hers. I could feel her rigidity and her, it was like this whole world was going on. It was our world. It was not the world. That's another thing Arnaud says. We all live in our world. We don't live in the world. So I was living in my kitchen and she was not handling my kitchen right, as opposed to the kitchen and how it actually was. How this went, how that went. Oh, there's cheese going bad in the refrigerator and she's not using it. And you know someone's not paying attention when cheese is going bad because good cheese lasts a long time. Or, you know, this thing is messy. Or why does she overdress the salad like every night? That's my world.

[23:52]

So, But you know, it was sort of just part of my day. It was part of the way I was mindful in general. So, um, I eventually worked on it with her and with some other women. And what I, what I realized is there were layers of no happening that I wasn't paying attention to in particular. And and that in the moment dealing with her, I wasn't remembering to be here in my body and mind and relate as if the whole thing were one event. It was like the kitchen was over there, she was over there, and I was over here, and I had to get things back over here my way. I miss those opportunities to really sink into, thank you, I'm gonna stop in one minute. But when I worked on this with my own sitting practice and confessing it to some of my Dharma sisters, I had gotten myself to the place where I had put this cook completely outside of my heart.

[25:10]

I had completely separated us. I had stopped living for her benefit and I had stopped practicing for the benefit of this situation and her and the kitchen. And I was, it wasn't until my internal states got so painful that I realized it was about my not willing to be with my situation as it was. And it had escalated to the point where she was, had become this demon. So, When I realized I had put her outside of my heart and that I couldn't believe anybody else was loving her or accepting her, when the pain got that bad, I had to work on it in specific, specifically this terrible pain. And it was completely about me. And I had to join with my experience totally And it just started to ease.

[26:13]

It just, you know, I could forgive her. I could forgive myself, but it was because I had been looking at the situation in this general, it's not working kind of way. I lost all these opportunities to work on it really precisely and really be at one with it. So I guess the moral of the story is that actually the no, the no is not so painful. It's running from the no and spending like eight months avoiding the fact that I could be a mean person. I could be not so forgiving. I could leak energy. I could, you know, be lying to myself. Like running from all of that is way more painful than just saying, I don't like the way the kitchen is, period. I just, it's not, you know, joining with that, so.

[27:14]

That practice of studying the prison in particular and being willing to return to what's happening for me and owning it has been really this, as Sojin said to me this morning, a refuge, that I don't have to fix any of those situations. I just have to, you know, be with it this way. So we really only now have 30 seconds instead of the 10 minutes that went in. Would you have anything? Oh, what was it again? Oh, yes, I'm married. That was another talk. I even thought how I got to Bozeman. Well, that's a different talk. That's a talk about what it means to be married.

[28:21]

And we actually made the decision together. We were living in LA, and Paul was in the music business. He had lost his record deal, and this six-figure check that was going to come in and make our life wonderful didn't happen. And we wanted to be parents, and we just thought, what's a way we can do this and Paul can practice with his teacher? And his teacher is starting an ashram in Montana. So we thought, let's go there and try this. And we did it together, but I have been practicing with my no in general for six years, kind of vaguely not wanting to be there, but liking it and not liking it and wanting to be here. And so it also brought to a head, confronting my no about being there in particular, that It's been very beneficial. I feel very grateful to Pornhut and that sanga and all the exposure I've gotten to deepen my practice with these other influences.

[29:25]

And I've gotten, you know, I got to adopt Yujin and Paul got to create a new round of his career. So he's making a living at music. So instead of having a vague sense of, it's more like, what do I really want and what don't I want, and studying it in particular is what my practice is now. So the cook has been relieved of being the object of my internal state. And that's another good thing to watch in how we make too, is when we make objects out of things, like the cook. She became the cook and not this wonderful woman who I've known for eight years. I also have to be careful not to make the ashram this thing over there that I join with it and practice but also stand up in the middle of it and clarify what it is I want so that I've been through this journey of really pushing away what I don't want and now I have to be with what is there that I don't want and take the next step.

[30:35]

Yes? Good summary? Thank you. Nice to see everybody. Yeah.

[30:43]

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