There were only a few people and now there are a lot. So, this is part two of my Way Seeking Mind talk. I didn't mean to give two, but it worked out that there were things that I felt like I wanted to talk about that I didn't get a chance to the first time, so I promised a couple people that I would do a two-minute instant replay of what I talked about on Monday. That will almost be impossible because, anyway, the first part of my talk was a kind of funny thing on the way to giving my Dharma talk. And my discomfort about telling stories and the fact that so many of the stories I tell, are delusional and then I have to make up new stories and so I'm very hesitant to kind of come forth with how my life is or what happened in my life in a way that you might all think it was some permanent fixed thing in the world when it really changes a lot for me all the time.

[01:17]

And I use the metaphor of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose where a woman lived there and kept building extra rooms for 30 years, never stopped adding on to her house. And that that reminded me kind of of how I added on to my stories and also how I added on to who I was and that I have some tension that goes on about letting go of self and how I deal with that by adding on some more rooms or creating another picture of myself that I think will last longer than the previous story that I made up about myself. And then I really talked about karma, that I had been studying karma. And in studying karma, which was my own karma at first, looking at my life, I discovered some karmic hindrances that I had really felt that were significant in terms of my practice in my life and started to look for causes and conditions in my life that I found that

[02:33]

at least made sense to me. And the hindrances that I was talking about were kind of negative self-image, guilt, shame, kinds of feelings like that that I felt had come up for me in my life and in my practice and in sitting. And one thread of my life that I talked about was the Catholic Church. and my very, very intense Catholic practice throughout my childhood and adolescence and later on even. But what I said at the end was that I was going to talk about family. And part of the reason, talking about family, is just because that's one of the obviously big causes and conditions in my life. But also because when Mel introduced me to everyone at the Shuso ceremony, he kind of talked about the fact that, you know, I was in a family, I raised two kids, although I think the word raise is kind of... I did give birth to two children and they did grow up.

[03:45]

And he also talked about that, you know, that I had practiced very, I don't remember, Sojin, what word you used about it, but diligently with my family, with my issues, or with my life, or the stuff in my life. And I thought, well, family, that really, a big part of that is family and family practice. So for many of us, For many of us here, we are here for a long time and we go through the birth of our kids, the growing up of our kids, the leaving of our kids, the marriages and separations and remarriages and all of that. So we go through it all together as a sangha and as ourselves. And it's a big part of what we do. So I thought today I would I would talk about family, but I have to tell you, talk about one thread of family, because it's really quite complicated, but I thought I would, I thought I would kind of go back to the issue of karma, and study of karma, and talk about the fact that, now I'm gonna just talk.

[05:11]

Basically, you know, when I started to look at karma and my own karma and my own karmic hindrances, I started studying the role of causes and conditions in actions and began to see that the kinds of issues that were issues in my life were really issues that I had grown up with. And one major person in my life, of course, is my mother. And I had always known that my mother had a really difficult life. I mentioned last time that my parents were both immigrant families from Italy. My mother's father was an alcoholic who was abusive to her mother, and they were often poor. And my mother had talked about, you know, wearing hand-me-downs from her sisters and being ashamed of that.

[06:21]

But I never really paid a lot of attention to it, like kids don't. But what I looked at when I was looking at my own I began to look at my mother's behavior and my mother's issues. A lot of which, for me, the difficulties I had were her hypercritical nature. The kind of thing where no matter how you looked, she found something wrong with your appearance. No matter what you did for her, it was not enough. a kind of unhappiness. Instead of saying it was a nice day, it was more like, I don't think those clouds will cause rain today. And that was really her look.

[07:23]

I mean, sometimes she'll say things to me now. She'll say, well, that wasn't bad at all. You know, if you take her to a movie or take her to a show, she won't say, thank you, that was really wonderful. She'll say, that wasn't bad at all. And sometimes I turn to her and I say, can't you say it was good? But that was kind of the kind of conditioning that I had in my life, which was that it wasn't really good. And when I was thinking about this, I remembered an example for my sister rather than myself. My sister was four years younger and by the time she was 13, she was almost six feet tall and it was really hard for her. And one time when my sister and I came down for a family event, We were both at school in Boston and she was in college and I was in med school and we drove down to this event and we tried hard because we knew it was a family event and how my mother was. So we did try to be sure that our appearances would meet the requirements.

[08:28]

And my sister was very insecure because of having that experience and of being tall and gawky and not having boyfriends and that kind of thing. And my mother We walked in and my mother said to my sister, you look really nice, but that skirt is way too short. And then she said quietly to me, you know, I really like your hair when it's shorter. And that was kind of like how it was. And so I, of course, had a lot of anger towards my mother and grew up being quite impatient with her. Because after a while, that was the only way I had to deal with it, was with anger. I didn't really have the tools. So, about four years ago or so, I had a major blow-up. This was kind of around the same time I was looking at my own karma.

[09:32]

Example of behavior that I wasn't very proud of. Because I really blew up. And I blew up and I said really unkind things. And I think if I look at my intention, study my intention, because that's what you have to do, and that's part of studying karma. Was it an accident? Did someone make me say it? Was it my mother's fault that I said it? And really, I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to... Wanted to, I really wanted to back or came up that really surprised me. And it took me a month to apologize many times before she would forgive me. But it made me realize that that was, that I needed to know more, that there was something missing.

[10:34]

understanding what was going on with her. Her granddaughter did an interview of her. And Paul always had negative attitudes towards his mother. And in the interview, there was this wonderful old lady giving a wonderful interview to her grandmother. And Paul was very shocked because he said, I never knew my mother. I never knew any of that. And that made a big impression. I started to interview my mother, not with a camera, but just really talk to her about her life. And that has made a big difference because she told me about really painful things in her life and the kind of embarrassment with the father, kind of father she had.

[11:51]

She was never able to have friends to her house because the one time she did it, he was so outraged. He shamed everyone in the family and she could never have She could never have anybody over, and she always felt this shame. She always felt a shame about wearing, about how she looked painfully when I talked to her. She's painful. It's painful. She can't go to her retirement home for lunch without painful, painful kind of inadequacy or whatever. So I started to... Excuse me, can you change the battery? Sure. Sorry to interrupt. Do I have to not talk? No.

[13:12]

Is it working? I don't know. Yes. OK. Thank you. So it just has been a kind of a study of my mother's karma. And along with mine, kind of thinking about how this, about this kind of the causes and conditions of karma kind of track themselves through the generations. And we carry these parts that we don't even know about. through behavior of, for example, her father and the kind of repercussions of events of his abusiveness and his alcoholism on her and her family and then that kind of transferring now and next generation to me and my older son will tell you that I'm very critical. So, kind of how that goes, how you see that, the causes and conditions kind of coming up, and then what happens with them.

[14:13]

So, I don't know. Ann Kennedy is here, but I know I talked to Ann about my mother, and one time she said, well, you know, maybe it would be good for your mother to come to church. why don't you, you know, occasionally Anne and I will go to a Catholic service on a, and we, and she asked me, you know, she said, why don't you bring your mother? So I did. I asked my mom if she would like to go on this last Easter, and we did go. And it was a, it was a quite very powerful experience, actually. Sitting in this church, sitting through the part of a Catholic service with the consecration of the Eucharist, the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and then the embodiment of people going and having communion and having release and forgiveness.

[15:22]

So I sat there, and I started to really get teary, and I looked at my mom, and my mom was crying. So the two of us kind of sat there during this service, both kind of getting handkerchiefs out, and then came going to communion. So I thought this would be really great to take my mom to communion so that she would have some kind of release or some kind of forgiveness. And she wouldn't go. I kind of, she has problem walking, so, but I said, Mom, come on, I'll take you, just come with me and we can do this. And she wouldn't come. After the service, I asked her about it, and she said, oh, I couldn't go. I said, were you embarrassed about not being able to walk OK and needing help? And she said, oh, no, it wasn't that. I can't go. I'm a fallen Catholic, and I've done bad things.

[16:24]

And this is a 91-year-old woman. You know, hearing her say that, it was like unbelievable. First of all, it was hearing what her pain is and what her karma is, but also, you know, feeling that I hadn't really been compassionate or patient in the way that I had been with her. And also this idea, you know, that this issue of right or wrong or whatever she's done or not done, you know, as long as I've known her, I haven't seen anything so awful that she couldn't go and confess at a Catholic church and have communion. So it was this really, really interesting experience of now, of kind of talking to her again afterwards more times to try to kind of understand

[17:28]

understand it in the sense that I'm kind of working with the same issues myself, you know, understanding these kind of deep-seated karmic hindrances of guilt or self-worth or insecurity that I walk around with and people have told me they walk around with. So it's been interesting and I had been reading Shantideva and I just kind of found some things there that have to do with patience but also had to do with patience in my mom and patience in anyone else and patience in family. A Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva. All offenses and vices of various kinds arise under the influence of conditions, and they do not arise independently. An assemblage of conditions does not have intention, I shall produce, nor does that which is produced have the intention, I shall be produced.

[18:34]

These are kind of, I'm skipping a little. Thus everything is dependent on something else, and even that on which something is dependent is not autonomous. Hence, why would one get angry at things that are inactive? Therefore, upon seeing a friend or an enemy committing a wrong deed, one should reflect, such are his conditions, and be at ease. Harm is certainly inflicted on beings, either by sentient beings or non-sentient beings. This distress is felt in a sentient being, so endure the pain. Some do wrong out of delusion, while others, being deluded, become angry. Among them, who do we call innocent, and whom do we call guilty? So that's an interesting question. Who do we call innocent and who do we call guilty? So I'm still on the journey with my mother, very current. It seems part of a kind of, it seems an opportunity to kind of transform the karma if there can be,

[19:49]

somehow self-forgiveness and peace for her and for me. And it's something kind of that we can kind of support each other in, in a way that we really haven't supported each other before. But I know that I can't, it's not something I can kind of grasp at. My mother does everything very much at her own pace and her own way. So getting her, there's no way to say to her, well, you know, you're a good person and there's no reason why you can't. That's not the way it works. So all I can do with her is really companion her. At 91, as some of us know dealing with our aging parents, I guess the most I hope for is that as she gets older she can, you know, there's a companioning for some kind of peaceful end for her or peaceful beginning for her.

[21:06]

So that's one part of family. I think the other part of my family life that's been a major practice focus for me is death, old age, sickness, old age, and death. As many of you know, my husband has a heart condition which he developed a few years ago. So I have my husband who has a heart condition and my mother who is 91. And somewhere around the holidays, the winter holidays, there was a kind of time, I think, Paul had an episode of pain and ended up in the hospital for another cardiogram and maybe more stents.

[22:14]

And my mother ended up at the same time in the assisted living part of her facility with dehydration from gastroenteritis. At the same time, I had decided to downsize a project that was 15 years old and let a bunch of people go and move to a smaller office. And my son Dylan was playing basketball in Toro Ligament. And I was going to a BCC board meeting, board retreat. And I think one of the things Mel has always talked to me about is balance, but sometimes when something like that happens, it's hard to feel any balance.

[23:17]

It's hard to be with all of that stuff. There was one episode that this is not, when I write things like poetry, they're not artistic things. just expressions of what's going on. So at one point, this was a poem that I wrote sitting in a hospital. My mother, 91, finally showing her age, terrified so quickly, weakened by a stomach flu, confused by the simplest instructions, slowly letting go. My husband, heart spasmed from another blocked artery, lying on a metal platform surrounded by cameras and mirrors. and bustling green-clad figures awaiting a procedure that will determine his fate. Me sitting in a frigid, fluorescent-lit waiting room, sparsely furnished with mismatched metal chairs, one small table, shiny yellow linoleum smelling of disinfectant.

[24:20]

It's hard not to grasp, hard to stay in my own body, breathing with my own lungs, noting the beating of my own heart, I notice a design on the linoleum in the hallway, a yin-yang pattern of swirling green and yellow, and in the dark there is light, in the light there is darkness, not one, not two. At each threshold, circles within triangles within circles, ancient symbols of sacred geometry, four elements as one cosmic system. Christianity's trinity, three as one is three. Standing in the inner circle, I feel oneness and threeness. That experience was, for me, you know, we talk about not having anything to hold on to. We talk about impermanence, We talk about the emptiness of everything, the emptiness of everyone.

[25:26]

But this period of that particular experience and the period after that for me has been really it made it very real, very real. Sitting and having the sense of not recognizing, I think, kind of how I rely on family, how there is family to support me or how family is part of how I construct a reality that how I define my, I don't know, I can't really say, put it in words, but the sense of The sense I had afterwards sitting with this has been the sense of not having anything to hold on to, just not having anything to hold on to, nothing to grab on to, just there.

[26:31]

And when it first started happening it was really kind of terrifying. And now it's just how it is. And how it is to be there and kind of go on, anyway, and kind of live with that and knowing how fragile, you know, You always know how fragile, right? It can happen at any minute. We talk about it, but I really kind of... I mean, that experience was just like everything that I defined myself by or that was in my life was kind of on the hook. And so that... I am in the middle of that. That's really part of what I practice with. Practicing in family, practicing... in the world of that construction with the knowledge that it's completely empty.

[27:53]

That's my life. So I think we have a few minutes if anybody wants to respond. I thought for a long time that I would have been able to do what you seem to have been doing if she had stuck around. I couldn't do it though. She died in 1978 when I was 36 and she was 67. Well, it's interesting that you say that because a couple of years ago I was doing this Metta practice reciting the Metta Sutta every day and people came up in my mind and I suddenly had compassion that I hadn't had before.

[29:39]

And in fact, I kind of saw another story. You know, so they didn't have to be there. I mean, it was like the relationship transformed just by opening up to the possibility that there were some causes and conditions with that other person and that there was another story I could actually tell that felt real about that other situation. You know, that person who was so bad to me and who I treated badly and, you know, whatever, I forgave. And in the forgiveness came this whole looking at another story. So it was a practice. I did a real, it was a practice of metapractice. And it felt to me like it trans, once you can see another story, it transforms something. At least that's true for me. Judy, and then Melanie, Melody.

[30:43]

talking also about wishing, perhaps, that you could convince her that she's good enough or something. Now, I'm a former Lutheran, but the theology is very similar, I think. And we were ingrained with the idea that we were not good. We were sinners. And we were forgiven through grace, not through any works of our own. And I'm just wondering if your mother might be interested in that. Because, I mean, that was certainly the pitch of the Christian, you know, fundamentalist Christian notion, was that you don't have to be good. As a matter of fact, if you are, you're deluded. You know, you are a sinner. There's a poem about not having to be good. What is it? Who is it? Mary Oliver, yeah. Yeah, right. I think, you know, Anne suggested I kind of get a priest to talk to my mother, you know, that maybe my mother needed some external, you know, person in a robe to do some kind of magic thing.

[32:03]

I could ask Sojin. Sojin can do a forgiveness ceremony. It doesn't have to be Catholic. I'm sure it'd be okay. Melody, when it was next. Well, thank you so much for your talk and sharing all this. As you were talking, I was thinking about how to work on burning away karma with people who are dead. Partly because I have a huge amount of karma, as we all do with parents. all of psychotherapy pretty much is that. And they've been dead since I was young, pretty young in my twenties. So I've worked and worked and worked a lot on my own. And Maylee helped me a lot with that. She said that when a baby is born, the intention of the mother is 100% loving toward the baby.

[33:14]

the mother wants nothing but good for the baby in that moment when she meets him or her. But then, she said, as life goes on, that relationship necessarily becomes polluted with all kinds of karma. And in the luckiest circumstance, it's possible to sort of burn it all away again. And by the time the mother is dying, it's all pure again and there's nothing left but love and good wishes, you know, a wish for nothing but good. And she thought that it's the duty of the living to keep on going with that. Yeah. No matter if the person isn't there or not. And so I think there are specific things you can do. Yeah. I've gone and interviewed a whole lot of people who knew me and my mother, you know, trying to check out what it was. So true, from their point of view, trying to understand more and more and more to help me to be more compassionate.

[34:22]

And then, yeah, I think I've made a lot of progress. You know, I feel like my mother's just kind of like a star in the sky now to me, not a big, you know, something I'm walking around yapping to in a huge way in my life. I feel grown up, you know? So I think it's really possible to do that. It's a lot of work, and I don't, I actually don't think there's hardly any difference whether somebody we have a lot of karma with is here or not. They're still doing their own thing. It's really our work. No matter what. Yeah. That feels real to me and certainly because I feel like I've experienced some of that with other people who've been in my life who aren't dead but are not in my life. but having to go through that work. I think it really is studying the karma and looking at it and looking at yourself.

[35:27]

I always have to say, though, you know, it's always funny that almost everyone has this experience. You have all this stuff with your mother and your friends say, I met your mother, what a lovely person. I wish my mother were like that. Anyway, so that's kind of the human condition, I guess. Nancy, and then we'll... How do you think that our particular, and thank you for the talk, how do you think our particular practice, would you be on the same path without this practice as far as your search, your pursuit of the facts and the processing that you have described? I guess I can't answer that because certainly I couldn't have if I stayed Catholic. I don't think I would have had the same approach.

[36:31]

I would have been bound by a lot of things that I'm not bound by. I think that the part of the practice that does look at causes and conditions, that does look at compassionate, you know, being compassionate, living in a compassionate way, and watching ourselves, yeah, I think that's very integral to certainly my process.

[36:57]

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