Is it on now? Oh, it's on too much. There are some, what I started says there may be people who have never been here before, so I would like to take a few minutes just to let you know what is happening if you haven't been here before. Our dear friend and teacher, Maile Scott, died at four o'clock Thursday afternoon. We rang the 108 bills for her and offered incense. We did that again Friday morning and then Friday afternoon there was an opportunity for everyone who hadn't offered incense here to offer incense and after the regular program today we will do that again if you and we're asking only the people who haven't had a chance to do that to line up and have a chance to do that.

[01:14]

This is going to be sort of a mixed talk. It's going to be about living and dying, but I think today mostly about living in Meili's life. And it's going to be mixed a little with what I had originally been asked to do at this time, which was about a month ago, to give a talk about being in Israel, and a little sort of about being a Buddhist Jew or a Jewish Buddhist or something. So that'll be mixed in a little about the trip I've recently taken with... And I think it makes sense to mix them. So... First I'm going to start by talking a little about Meili. And Mei Li's favorite thing in practicing with other people, the favorite thing was the way-seeking mind talks.

[02:36]

She just loved it. Those Monday morning or Friday afternoon talks when people told about their life and how they came to Buddhism or what they were thinking about and it just made her very very happy and I think all of us and it helped us get to build sangha because we got to know each other by all these little pieces of talk because sometimes we never get a chance to talk to each other we're so busy rushing off to work or whatever else we're doing and sitting zazen and being silent in between When I returned from my trip to Israel to see my family there, after the trip to Israel and before coming home, I had an orgy of visiting museums in New York.

[03:48]

And I came back with my head swimming with the great beauty of Vermeer and de Roch paintings. and I've always thought of Vermeer and also some of the people of his generation as great Buddhist painters because there's a space, an endless space, an openness in some of those paintings and a silence in them at the same time and a life in them that to me is very close to my idea of what Buddhism is about. And then after I got back from New York, first thing I last, you know, suffering from jet lag and sort of added up jet lag because of going to Israel, coming back, then New York,

[04:58]

and all of these things all piled up and then coming back to the United States was a multiple case of jet lag. And after I did all the things you do, you know, like take a hot bath and empty all your dirty clothes into the laundry, and just before I went to bed, I decided to check my email. And I could not make any sense of the one thing that was top of the list. It made no sense to me. It had Meili's name in it, and it had something about cancer. And I just could not understand what it was saying. I just... And all I could do was think, I'm going to turn this off now, and maybe in the morning I'll be able to deal with it. and the morning came and we're still dealing with it.

[06:02]

But we've had a lot of talk about and feeling about the loss of Meili and a lot of what I'd like to do is talk about some of the things that some of us remember and maybe at the end of this talk we'll have a chance to do that and there will certainly be a lot of time to talk outside to each other. Alan will be here and some other people who have information that you may want. So One of the things that I remember is May Lee talking about playing in the attic at her house, and she's the older sister. I'm still in the present tense, and I guess it'll be that way for a while. She's the older sister by four and a half years, and there's a younger sister, and what they used to do in the attic is play altars.

[07:22]

Both of her parents were really active politically and had very important jobs and really had nothing to do with religion except, yeah, sort of, you know, we don't need that stuff. Anyway, they played altars. and they made little offerings and they wrote things out on notes and burnt them afterwards to make wishes about what they wanted there to be, but they had a little made-up religious life for themselves and it was very important to them. These were when they were quite young. And you know what happened to these two children when they grew up? One became a Buddhist priest, and the other became an abbess of an English... I'm losing the word for the right.

[08:42]

Yes, an Anglican Carmelite and the abbess of her temple and she's been here luckily with Meili now taking care of her and things that's happening. So one of the things that I remember doing and really enjoying with Meili was on Monday mornings, after the usual Monday morning thing of practice discussion and things like that, there'd be a small group of women, Meili, myself, Mary Mosene, who some of you know, who would go off and talk, girl talk, to each other. There'd be about four or five, maybe at the most six people. And, I don't know, it was a very open and honest discussion.

[09:49]

and very important in a way. And that was a time also when what was going on was there were big discussions about whether it was all right to have these revolutionary things where women sat together without having men there. You know, we felt like we were really breaking into something important with, of course, the understanding that men could do their thing too, but it took a long time and many, many lengthy discussions on whether that was going to be all right or not, and I guess I was Shuso at that time, and My sort of stand was, you know, I don't really care about this very much, who does it or who doesn't, but I'd like everybody to be able to do what they want to do, so I sort of kept my mouth shut and watched things work out.

[10:56]

And it didn't seem important to me until we had the first women sitting. And when you suddenly hear all those female voices together, chanting together without struggling to find a pitch, but just there with a lot of clarity, it really had a great deal of beauty. At least to me, it did. One of the things about May Lee that's really important to me is her political activity. And it's a very personal thing that happened to me. It happened in my family.

[12:00]

My son-in-law was killed in El Salvador. And he was killed without knowing that his wife was pregnant. And anyway, we had a fundraiser for people in El Salvador then at our house. And a lot of people came, a lot of people who came to cook, who were refugees from El Salvador, a lot of them who didn't speak English, but could make wonderful food that people in El Salvador liked to eat. And there were a lot of people who were politically active there from different groups. But the only person who came from the Zenda was May Lee. And when people had finished their talk and things, it was Meili who knew the question to ask.

[13:07]

And that was, what can we do for you? A question you'd think that everybody knows how to ask, but Meili was the one who could articulate it. Millie was very organized. She knew something that a lot of us don't know how to say, and that's no. She knew how to stop some time and save space to do the things that she needed to maintain her own well-being. And one of them was to have her day of gardening once a week when she could just really dig in there and take care of the garden. And also, she left regularly, on most days, an hour or an hour and a half for reading and time for writing.

[14:14]

It was really important. And of course, that's one of May Lee's great gifts to us, is she is a wonderful writer. And and has left a lot for us in that range of writing, both as a Buddhist Peace Fellowship activist, but also very personal things. And I guess She was a wonderful hostess, just an absolutely wonderful hostess. She knew how to make people comfortable in her home, in her heart somehow. And when I had the opportunity, a great opportunity, a gift of being able to teach the people in Arcata how to sew their rakkases, their Buddhist little robes that so many of you have on today.

[15:26]

And it was great to get to know that sangha up there and to travel back and forth. And what we would do, we'd have sort of these intensive weekends together sewing because we didn't have the kind of thing where, you know, everybody can come on Saturday and still survive all that driving back and forth, Saturday or Sunday. On the way up, we would stop and do wine tasting, Meili and I. She really enjoyed food. She loved to cook for herself and for others in a very down-home kind of way. And she even enjoyed shopping for food, which I have never mastered that art, you know. Especially when you have to figure out, you know, if you're cooking for 30 or 50 or 15 people, it never quite works out right. Not for me anyway.

[16:28]

But she fell in love, and she kept talking about this, with the health food store in Arcata. She just loved it. And the way she described it, I mean, my idea of a health food store is a place of last resort, you know. But she described it, it sounded like a great temple, you know, the Taj Mahal or something. And I finally did go with her and she was right. It was a great temple if you're at all interested in feeding yourself. One of the things that Mel said recently about Mei Li was that Mei Li was one of the few, the only person he knew could make a Sangha put together completely by a group of anarchists.

[17:30]

So that's quite a statement. Sorry, I have to take a lot of deep breaths with this. I'm going to skip back to the other side, to Israel, where there's a lot of death going on, a lot of destruction. If anyone has heard the news this morning, there was some yesterday. My family, my sister and brother-in-law and their six kids and their 11 grandchildren all live in Israel.

[18:42]

And the reason I decided to go to Israel at this time was because of the deep suffering of my sister. knowing what was happening by Israelis and to Israelis and to the Israelis who live in Israel, who are Palestinians, the deep suffering of the Palestinians. And it's the first time since She moved to Israel when she was in her early 20s with her husband. That I have ever heard her say, I want to leave this country. And if it weren't that my children lived here, my grandchildren, I would be gone from here. I cannot take being part of creating the suffering that is going on.

[19:46]

So I went to Israel. And for us, it was pretty safe. Do you know the right places not to go and the right places to go? But I never felt quite like I was there the way I had been there in the past, where I felt free to spend time in the shook and where my favorite place to eat was a family that was made up a marvelous restaurant outside of the old city. And it was run by a family Two families, one that was Jewish background and the other that was Palestinian and Muslim background. They ran this restaurant together and we got there the first time that I was there with

[21:09]

three little children to this restaurant, of my children and some of my sister and brother-in-law's children, and we went there. And it was extremely hot, it had been, and we got there and there was this magnificent Velveteen couches, you know, that you can sort of recline on. And if you know about Passover and you know about, you know, the special things you sit on to recline, it makes sense. But anyway, these beautiful couches. And the first thing that happened was my young daughter, who was about seven, puked all over the couch. And there was absolute calmness about it, just somebody ran for ice cubes, you know, and everybody was cleaning up and saying, don't worry, don't worry, you know, and these two families working together to take care of us.

[22:18]

I don't know, it just touched something right there that still every time I think about it, it's very deep to me. It was all kosher too. Anyway. I want to talk a little bit about a conversation that I had. Where my family in Israel lives is on a dairy farm in Moshav, which was a collective when they first lived there and now is sort of disbanded as a collective. It has grown a great deal. there are people in my family who are architects and there are people who are policemen and there are people who are Iraqi Jews and there are people like myself who come from... I have...

[23:30]

a mother who was a religious observant Jew, and a father who converted to Judaism when he married my mother, who grew up as a socialist. So, and my husband is, as many of you know, is from a Japanese-American background, so we have sort of a mixed pot, and when you're in Israel, it's sort of a mixed pot like that, too, within the family of different shades of brown and blonde of people. Anyway, One of the people I talked to was Neera, who is the fifth of the children in the family, my niece, and she works in a children's center, or she spends time volunteering in a children's center, and the people who run it are

[24:41]

are extreme Orthodox Jews and they believe that the only important thing is to save the world for the Jewish people. Nothing else counts. That's the form of their belief, but their actual practice, my sister says, of being the most wonderful and caring of children, of knowing exactly how to work with children, And my sister doesn't know how to deal with this, these two sides of this. We're different. We're the only holy ones. We're the only one that counts in what we do. And the other side of this absolute gift of love they give to the children.

[25:45]

I was there on true I think or so. I was deliberately went there on Passover and I had only in the last six months really become a vegetarian and so you know for Passover there was one other vegetarian and as far as I could figure out most of Israel and he happened to be a brother-in-law of mine and so we made vegetarian chicken soup. That means a lot of olive oil in it and matzo balls, vegetarian matzo balls. And I'd gone through this, you know, how am I going to deal with this, you know, and I thought way back to Asoka and, you know, the story of the little boys who had nothing to offer to Buddha and they put dirt in Buddha's

[26:55]

begging bowl and supposedly those children or that child grew up to be, you know, a couple of generations later, King Ashoka, the great developer of Buddhism at that time, who left all the pillars all over He became a vegetarian too. But anyway, back to dinner there. So I was going to be very good in the first course with these nice matzo balls. And then the next course, you know, I didn't know what was going to happen, but I figured, well, I can eat some bread, not bread, matzos and stuff and deal with it. And suddenly my niece appeared with this huge slab of salmon and plunked it down next to my plate.

[28:06]

Absolutely gorgeous looking salmon. And I thought, oh, they don't understand that I think of that as meat. So I thought, okay, I know about using the stuff that was just dirt in the begging bowl. I can eat a little of this and just do it. But before anything else happened, there was a huge ball. of liver, chopped liver going down on my plate. And we just did it. So anyway, throughout the whole thing, I ended up with double everything. And it seemed like the only thing to do without spoiling is Seder. One of the things about Israel is anyone who's been there for any time knows someone who has been killed.

[29:07]

And you know people on both sides of the border. I guess the first I knew of that was my first real boyfriend's had a daughter and she was killed at a time when there wasn't much going on there. And she died in her boyfriend's arms. And for six months he could not get the sounds of the guns out of his ears. Six months after she died, he was just there and he was having a very hard time. being able here to relate to anything except her dying in his arms. Anyway, that girl's name was Michale and

[30:24]

when she was alive, she was like the older sister to my kids who had gone to visit, and she sort of felled in that space of the big sister because of my five children, only the three youngest had come, and we were really close. One of the things that worries me most about what's going on politically is the population explosion. and especially the population explosion of the very orthodox Jews. The day before we left Israel to come home, it was a free day for children and the masses of people of two two adults with their big hats and their silk robes and things, you know, a couple, usually followed by, you know, from four to six children.

[31:36]

And you begin to wonder what is the next election in Israel going to be like when you see this many people I'd like to read something now, parts of an article that Mei-Li wrote that was recently in Inquiring Mind. There'll be a copy of it some place in the community room, I'm sure. And it's called Practice in Hearing the News with Bodhisattva Ears.

[32:39]

And this is by Maile Scott. We were eating dinner and chatting, not paying attention to the TV, when I glanced over and noticed on the screen a burial service for bodies exhumed after a massacre in Guatemala. My family and I looked at one another and put down our forks. After a minute or so, we began eating again. This is a particularly modern version of suffering, for better or worse. We now know more about the world's suffering than ever. While we know that the news we get is determined by the diverse interests of those in the media, we also know that what we get, particularly on the television screen, hits home intimately. We suffer. But what does all this knowledge say about how we respond and conduct our lives? There is a temptation to think, and who doesn't, that this suffering is other, that I can push the off button or not read the paper with the dismissive idea that it's just too depressing.

[33:52]

However, this attitude does not honor the basic teaching of the Four Noble Truths. Turning away from the cries of the world, our minds and hearts stiffen in defense. We are more susceptible to separative and self-concerned attitudes and the various addictive and acquisitive behaviors that our consuming society encourages. The Dharma always advises us to take the opposite turn, to be quieter, to look deeply into suffering, into its causes, into its release, and finally to steady ourselves on the path. The first most important practice step is to acknowledge the feeling that arises as not other. Breathing the grief in and out repeatedly, establishing one's balanced place in their midst. We are fortunate to have a lot of teaching about how to be attentive and non-judging, focusing on the breath.

[35:01]

Practice of breathing in and the pain and breathing out clarity. At this point, it does not matter that we don't know what to do. Not knowing is an authentic response. It is enough to be connected and present. Next, the process of responding. Our actions, large or small, is essential to our and the world's recovery. One response is to talk. Talking to like-minded people, I take comfort in discovering a broader perspective, often making useful corrections to my assumptions and learning more about the people with whom I speak. It is an opportunity to exercise the right speech, expressing the pain but not indulging in unprotective unproductive laments.

[36:06]

Often together we find some healing humor. Most important, there is a we, now in the picture, a sense of common activity. I'm going to skip to the end of this article. The Buddha taught that the willing movement into suffering brings release. This release has different qualities, large or small, joyful or quiet, but it waits for us. The space we find toiling in a homeless shelter or visiting a high security prison is not different from the space we find even in the fatigue and achiness of Dharma retreats. When we join with others in tackling the impossible issues of structural violence, such as racism, the weapons industry, or environmental destruction, there need not be consolation in results.

[37:09]

And yet, sitting in such places as San Quentin Penitentiary on execution nights, there is some release of positive energy that signals the third noble truth, that there is an end to suffering, and confirms for us that the path under our feet is right for us and right for the world. The end of this article has a little poem that's by Suzanne, I don't even know how to pronounce her name, whether it's Malad or Malay.

[38:15]

She's a member of the Arcada Zen community. And the article is named Bodhisattva Reads the Headlines. No cultivating ignorance, no inviting numbness, no self-reproach or ever self-abnegation. Only the suffering of the world, the live root, the white deer scrambling up the bank. We have time for some questions or comments. I feel like when you're in Israel that the Palestinians and the Jews want to find peace with each other.

[39:30]

there are a great deal on both sides that want to find peace. And I hate to make... I feel like I should not make vast generalizations, but I think that fundamentalism is a plague of the world. I'm sitting here seeing her at the Berkeley Farmer's Market where I would see her frequently. And we both enjoyed the beauty of the food. One of the things I forgot to talk about, somehow skipped, was her love of nature.

[40:49]

It was, you know, being in Arcata was just a wonderful place to go for walks in that area. And we both took great joy in the way they had designed the recycling of of waste products. And I also took pleasure in knowing that the first model for that was actually in the Bolinas Lagoon in our sort of backyard here. Yes? Well, thank you for all of your memories and anecdotes and memories of Meili. a long time. I always enjoyed her writing from the point of clarity of which she lived her life.

[42:16]

That was very unusual. And it came through in her writing. One of the things that I had meant to talk about, which I forgot, and I'm glad you mentioned something that brought it up, was when You know, Shuso is the head student, and Mei-Li had been Shuso, and Fran Burgess had been Shuso, and I was going to be Shuso. And one of the things you do is have little talks, you know, you leave it open to have tea talks with either groups of people or individuals. And I was going to have to do this, and I really didn't know how to go about it.

[43:16]

And so I talked to May Lee about it, because I knew she had done it, and done very nicely. And Mel had made a statement at one point when she was Shuso that Meili sits like a rock, that no one can sit like Meili does. She sits like a rock. And Mel envied her stillness. And I said, well, you know, when it was my turn to get ready to give my thing, I said, Meili, help me out. I don't sit like a rock. I'm sort of more like a mushy lump of clay." And she said, we can learn from each other because I'm too much like a rock. I need to learn like a mushy lump of clay. And we really did learn from each other. I mean, I learned more from her than she learned from me.

[44:21]

But her voice softened over the years. It lost some of its shrillness and anxiety that was there. I'm planning not to cry. Why? Because I might not be able to stop. And we were on some panels together, exemplar panels. And I was very interested in her point of view and vice versa. And then later, when I came to the Zen Center, I met her here. And I don't think that I knew that she was a priest when we were doing the program together, because she didn't... I don't remember her really referring to that part of her life there. But later, she was involved with me.

[45:24]

When my daughter got married, Maile was the priest at the wedding and married my daughter. And that was a very wonderful experience. And then she did something really great years later. I'm a jazz singer, and I was singing at this club down in Oakland. It was kind of in a neighborhood here. Probably Maile wouldn't find herself. And it was in a blues club, and she came by herself. And it's the kind of place where they scan you for weapons when you come in. And I was really shocked to see her there. And I know that she was very uncomfortable, I could tell. But I really appreciated, you know, her sort of coming out of her context and into mine in a very brave way. And it really told me a lot about Meili. And I really appreciated that. I hope one of the wannabes I've always wanted was to hear you sing somehow.

[46:34]

I hope that's still to happen. I appreciated what you said about how Naomi made time to read and to write in her life. One of the things about her that She, one of my strongest images of her is stirring huge pots of food at the homeless shelter. And speaking of the news, she actually subscribed to both the New York Times and the Chronicle and read them quickly every day, both of them.

[47:39]

She was very well informed. And I remember one time telling her how I felt, felt really just so overwhelmed frantic and frenzied with my life. Too much, too much, too much, everything. And she said, I just don't let that happen. And the way that she did that is that she, no matter what else was going on, she sat She just got here and that is how she stayed centered and did so much. I think that's one of her great teachings. Yes.

[48:40]

When she was sick, somebody told me this story that when they asked what they could do for her, she said, just sit. Karen? Well, I remember when she broke her ankle a few years ago, and I asked her if there was anything I could do for her, knowing that there were all these people waiting So I knew she was about to say no, everything's taken care of. I could tell it was coming out. But then she stopped and changed her mind. She asked me to go and get her a very specific kind of tea, a Peet's coffee. And I got the feeling that a lot of people had called and wanted to help. And she had a lot of people going and picking up little things because You know, so I got to have my 45 minutes by bringing, you know, and it was really sweet.

[50:01]

I can't see who that is, but whoever you are with your hand raised at the very back. Oh, go ahead. And then whoever is in back there. I think it was last year's Rihatsu session. and sat like in that seat there. And I sat up on the upper top. And I remember looking and seeing her sitting there, you know. Anyway, I'm kind of getting off the subject. After sitting, usually you go out and you look for notes on the board. And one day there was this note and it said, usually they have a name written on it. Oh, it's two. And it said, me, myself, I, you, It had all these names on it, and I pointed to it, and then Lee was standing right next to me, and we both smiled, and she laid her head on my shoulder like that. It was just a moment that I thought was really touching to me.

[51:04]

Thank you. Yes? Is that Sammy? No. Okay. That was when I really got to know Mamie, and also going around to see her when her ankle was broken, and other visits. me that she saw and that she could she acted like she could Thank you.

[52:36]

I think she had the gift of seeing the Buddha in everyone. She just knew how to see it. Yes? This is my first experience here. Thank you for sharing. I can't tap dance, so... That's about me, not you. I just want to thank you because I really feel like I know her. Maybe I've seen her, but I don't know that. It really connects to two or three of your greetings.

[53:37]

So thanks for sharing that. Thank you. It's 11.15. There will be time with tea, and there will be people here to talk to, including Alan Snake, who will come down for that. And... I can't believe I was going to do this. I was going to say Anne May Lee. And Mary Lucene is what I meant to say. Anyway, they'll be here and I'm sure there'll be questions that people have to ask about that. Yeah, I'll set that up for people.

[54:38]

We'll set it up somehow. We'll get people to help set it up so that people who haven't had a chance to offer incense to Meili will be able to do that. And there will be a talk on Monday that will be more opportunity to talk about Meili Monday morning and then Friday evening also. So there's going to... But not... There's no date set yet. There's a date I can't... We should end. Yeah. I'm trying to. Okay. Things are numberless.

[55:33]

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