Giving a way-seeking mind talk, which is a talk about a kind of mysterious force that guides us to find our true selves and to really know it. It kind of reminds me of salmon when they need to spawn. And I don't suppose anyone really understands how they find their way in the ocean back to where they were born, where they come from truly. And each of us tells a story differently because, like the salmon, there's so many forces that are kind of whirling around us while we're trying to find ourselves. So, recently I was in Japan thinking about this talk and seeing things, and I was really struck with the flower viewing as one of the forces through which people find themselves.

[01:12]

I went to Japan in the midst of cherry blossom season, at really the peak of it, which I thought, oh, well, that's nice, you know, some flowers to see. But it's something quite other than that. In fact, we were in one of the parks which is considered to be one of the great parks of Japan and has thousands of cherry blossom trees. And there were several aspects of it that provide a wonderful backdrop for finding oneself. Each of the trees was pruned in such a way that you couldn't imagine it to be other than what it was. Each one was completely itself and expressing itself in the most graceful and beautiful way. And some of them, I mean, it wasn't uniform at all.

[02:19]

Some of them would come out over the walking paths just a little bit. And, of course, the blossoms were everywhere, just covering them opulently. And it was wasteful, in fact. They were so many and so beautiful. And the other thing about it was the reverence with which the flower viewers came. They came as families with young children. And they came as school children in bunches. And they came as teenagers. And then they came as young lovers. And they came as beginning families again. And then they came as old people. And they never touched a blossom. camp out under the blossoms and bring their box, dinners, the bentos and have sake and just be there with flowers.

[03:29]

And so this way of enjoying without harming or needing to own or grasp was very powerful. And the third part of it was how well the blossoms provided a model for the lives and the life phase of blossoming and falling, you know, just as the people were coming as babies and as elderlies, blossoming and falling. So that it's quite a theme for the Japanese family life. And I thought about what might be the theme for my own family life and It's a contrast. And I thought, well, I guess confrontation would be the theme for my family life, and that I would know that that was such a backdrop for everything, and that staying with the confrontation, in a sense, had been my way of knowing the truth.

[04:42]

Actually, I had worked out a very different talk, but I had a talk with my brother last week, and I'll start there with just a little bit about the background and the obstacles, or the climate for way-seeking mind. My brother just recently started therapy because of some really painful experiences with his own children, and he asked me if I remembered when my father had been strangling him until he passed out. And when he said it, I knew it was true, but I couldn't remember. And so I guess one of the struggles that I had with coming to awareness was how much I was blocking out because of the violence in the home.

[05:46]

And that was repeated in many ways throughout my family history. My brother was the earliest victim, but my father also died in a car accident when I was six. when that happened, I remember that awareness coming to the surface of, well, what does this mean? You know, where has it gone? And why is everyone so upset about it? Because I had a very powerful relationship with God in my own mind. I was very comfortable in conversation in an ongoing way. And even before my father died, I'd had an experience of almost of a revelation where my uncle, who was a jazz musician, had gone on a trip to Israel to do music and came back with a beautiful Bible from my sister, an Old Testament.

[06:54]

And she wasn't interested in it, but I remember taking it out of her drawer and holding it in my hands. I was four, it was before I could read. And having this hearing, a heavenly choir, and knowing that what I was holding was entirely different from the life that I was experiencing in that moment. So when my father died, I was very puzzled by why there was so much tragedy being played out. And another difficulty, I'm the middle child, my brother is fourteen months younger and I have a sister who is two and a half years older, was the difficulty between my mother and my sister. So, whereas my father was abusive with my brother, my mother was abusive mostly with my sister, but also with me.

[08:00]

When she was 18 and I was 15, she took a massive overdose of phenobarbital. And it wasn't actually a gesture. I mean, it's quite miraculous that she lived through it. I'm sure she took enough to kill herself, and I'm not quite sure why she made it. But anyway, she got in the bed next to me. We shared a bedroom. And I kept checking her during the night. and wondering what was going on. And in the days that followed when she was in a coma, there was this strange sense of this link between life and death and what an edge we hang over. I guess with all of this struggle, there was also something kind of wonderful about my mother, which was no matter how brutal she was, she was also brutally honest.

[09:22]

And at one incident, I think it was around the time of my sister's suicide attempt, because I was just beginning to dry, which made me about 16. She and I got into some altercation, and she picked up part of the vacuum cleaner to throw at my face, and my stance was this. I didn't put my hands up. It was this. It was just angry. So she hit me right below the eye, which was lucky, otherwise she might have put it out. And while I was calling out for some ice, my sister kind of pounced on her and they kind of got into it physically. So I went and got the ice. Afterwards, I said to her, and I cried, I said, I know you didn't mean to hurt me. And she said, yes, I did. And it was so shocking to me that someone

[10:27]

could want to hurt someone else. I mean, really want to hurt someone else. I was kind of taken aback. But years later I thought, what a gift that her dark impulses were there to be seen and that it wasn't covered over in some way. So, I think from the time I was about 14 until I was maybe 19 or 20, I was an alcoholic. I had blackouts and I didn't realize I was an alcoholic until I was in a master's program studying chemical dependency and said, wait a minute, how can you be defined as an alcoholic by having blackouts?

[11:30]

I've had those. And my instructor says, hello, you're in second stages of alcoholism here. But I said, but I don't drink anymore. I don't understand. And we kind of puzzled over. you know, how it was that I had stopped being, already being an alcoholic, how I had stopped drinking. And the reason I stopped drinking was that I started meditating. And I guess there was a time when I became rather depressed by all of this. And at the same time, no, actually it was earlier than that, through my sister and one of her friends, Actually, Bob Halperin, I think you may know him. Bob Halperin was the boyfriend of one of my sister's girlfriends. He was involved fairly early on in Tassajara with Suzuki Roshi.

[12:39]

One day when I was in college, I was at Cal and my sister was at San Francisco State. She called me up and said, Well, you know, there's this way to get high without drugs. And so it was kind of this fun seeking trip that we had. And we got all ready in our hippie clothes to go over and meet this guy who she made an appointment with to give us meditation instruction. And it turned out to be Suzuki Roshi. And, I mean, he knew what we were there for. I mean, we walked in in this way. And he kind of just laughed when he saw us. But the place was kind of scary. And he sat down and taught us how to meditate. And, I mean, we both looked like something out of The Wizard of Oz. And then, it was a very quiet meditation. I'm sure our bells were going off all the time. This was 1965.

[13:40]

So, let me turn the clock around so I can see what time it is. It's twelve. Oh, okay. So, He said at that time to us, after he had sat with us for about 10 minutes, that the more that we sat, the more we would understand that life was suffering. And that wasn't what we'd come there for. And so it kind of scared us quite a bit. So we were like, get out of here. we rushed out, but it just sort of stuck with me. Well, how could this guy look so happy and say these things about suffering? And it just stuck in there. And maybe six months later, I was out with some friends, and this radar, this

[14:41]

a salmon finding its dream awareness came up. And I looked at the woman across the table, out of the blue, and I said, do you meditate? And she said, yes, I do. And she was a very serious student of Eknath Eshwarn's. And so she took me to his ashram. And I went a few times. And I think this was the time I was feeling rather depressed and ready to say, well, yeah, maybe that guy was right. Maybe life is suffering. Maybe I'll have to, you know, allow that into my picture here. So I started to sit with him from time to time, and then he opened up a sitting place right across the street from my house. So I said, well, that must mean something. So then I started going every day. Later, I went back to Suzuki Roshi and was going to lectures in the city and sittings in the city, and somebody mentioned that there was a Zen Center in Berkeley, which also somehow happened to be very close to where I was.

[16:07]

So I started going to that place. I remember the first morning I went, I'd been used to doing this Hindu or Indian style of meditation, I don't know what else to call it. And I don't know if my back was so straight, but we used to sit for a long time, maybe an hour or more. And I came to do the sitting and Mel straightened my posture. And after the first sitting, I was kind of surprised that I stayed for the second sitting. So this was my first time there. But I was just used to sitting for long periods of time. So, after being there for maybe six or eight months, I met my husband, which I thought about that time I was thinking, you know, you're pretty crazy and pretty unstable like this. You really ought to get married and that would be a good way for you to have a path with a partner.

[17:12]

Very stabilizing. And so I met Peter who has had also a long-term interest in Zen. And I think we met on something like, what's the first day of spring? April 21st or something? March 21st, well we were married June 1st of that year. And then we went to Canada and we lived in a spiritual commune for a while. So there was always this, you know, from the time I kind of allowed that awareness to start to find its way, there's always been this connection to spiritual practice. throughout the years that we were in Canada because of Vietnam and afterwards when we were sort of finding our way back in the United States I've had a practice of sitting or something and about ten years ago after we'd moved back into the area one night my elder son

[18:25]

I guess he would have been about 15 then, 14 or 15. I was up vomiting all night. I said, oh, this is a, since I'm already up, this is a good time to start going back to meditate. So I came back. And once I came back, I really did feel like, oh yes, that was a long trip up that stream. But I know where I am. So, maybe you have some questions. What about your early relationship with God? What happened to that through the years? Well, I think, I mean, it changed throughout the years. I've still felt it, and I feel it today, but there were times when it seemed like I was in a stupor. I think after my father died, I was very disassociated and depressed.

[19:30]

And that went on for about three or four years until we moved. And then during the teenage years, there was a lot of anger. So I really wasn't so much in contact with it, although occasionally it would come up. You know, one experience was with B'nai B'rith, which is a Jewish organization, social organization for teenage girls. And you join because you're going to go to parties. And one of the parts that surprised me was that we would also go to temple and I would have this wonderful experience of being in temple and hearing these people chant or just be there, calling his name in some way. It meant a lot to me, that environment. And now it's still there. Could you say a little about the confrontation in relation to your spiritual practice? Well, in one way, you could see it as a hindrance, if it's the only mode, you know, that one can use.

[20:38]

But in another way, there was something about following it to its end, in the way of my mother's honesty, I think there's something very true about that. So are you saying that even now you feel like you use that mode to relate to your spiritual needs? Well, I use that mode a lot, more than I need to, period. But there's something about following it completely that means something to me. that it's just a way of seeing things as they are. To not be afraid. What strikes me is it's energetic. Yes. In a certain way.

[21:39]

I mean, one can see things as they are without that kind of energy. Yes. Yes, it is. And it's interesting because Buddhism, on the surface anyway, It doesn't favor that way. Yeah, it's a way of knowing things really. And one of the things about the Blossom Viewing was it presented such a clear alternative model which may seem obvious to other people that there's other ways of being. But the experience of the people being with them without needing to touch them was very powerful. Can you say more about what the next step would be?

[23:39]

The next step would be looking at herself. Well... Looking at her own motivations. And it pains me. And that's where the deep source of pain is. That gets turned outwards. Yeah. And children have to survive that. Yeah. Well, I think in that moment when she said, but I did mean to hurt you, she was looking at herself. It was rare. It was rare. I can see how that maybe had helped you, and I may think that's what you're saying, but that at that moment, you knew where you stood. Exactly. And you could act. There's lots of families, lots of situations. You don't know where the hell you are. Yeah, that's... You're not aware that that answer's coming from. That's a benefit. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Thank you for your time. And to me, that's another part of the story.

[24:47]

And I was sort of moved and touched by that. It's not so often in my history of practice that I've seen, you know, sometimes people's children do come. and so I'm sort of curious about how that happened. Could you turn that back around so I can see the time? Thanks. I think it's one of the great miracles of actually the practice that I'm able to have such wonderful family life because anybody looking at my history from a psychodynamic or any other family therapy perspective, would say, well, this woman is not going to have a happy married life.

[25:50]

And I really owe all of it to my practice. Anyway, my younger son, Kern, who was here yesterday, had expressed interest in meditation a couple of years ago and I had given him instruction. He had tried it and I gave him a cushion and so on. Then last year we went to Japan together and he sat with me in a temple that we went to in Kyoto and he really took to Zazen. He's been doing Zazen on his own and in fact last summer he did come to BCC to sit. That's how, when I told him that this ceremony and this practice period was beginning and that I was going to possibly be Shuso if I wasn't totally unworthy, he said that he would like to join in some way.

[26:52]

And his brother as well, but there were other circumstances. And it really surprised me how close Both of my sons are to both my husband and myself because, you know, for me it was like a horse race. I had to shoot fleeing the family and having an ongoing relationship with my children is just, I don't quite know what to do because I didn't live it out in my own family. Anyway, I must say that the part that they love the best was actually the Shuso entering ceremony. And I asked them what they loved best about it and they said, everyone bowing to you. What part did you love the best? I loved best the part when Mel called me back.

[27:57]

Yes. Is your mother still alive? Yes, she is. Can you say something about your mother? Yes. Sometime when I was about 30, I heard this wonderful song by James Taylor about a mill worker and I started crying right away and I couldn't understand why. It wasn't a story about me, but then I realized it was a story about my mother. It was about this woman who had been widowed with three children and that a young girl should have had more of a chance. And so I forgave her, and I realized that the only way we would have a relationship was with me as the parent. And in fact, I came to that conclusion and began to act on it, and shortly afterwards she asked me, I never spoke to her about my decision, she asked me if Peter and I would adopt her. So I try to manage our relationship with a lot of structure. No, she actually came here once.

[29:08]

She was sitting in a chair and Mel tried to adjust her posture. She didn't know who he was dealing with. She kind of stiffened up. But she has no interest in it. But she's in a certain way very deeply spiritual. In a primitive kind of way. What is your recollection of Grace coming for the first time to the Pleasanton? it has the potential.

[30:19]

Well, when my brother told me this last week, I kind of cried for days still, because that part was forgotten, but I knew it was true. So, there isn't one way that it's like, I guess you're kind of looking at what it's like. One session that I did with Joko Beck, she had people tell their life story to each other. She does this thing called eye gazing. And you kept telling your story and then she would say time somewhere in the middle. And pretty soon it just becomes a story. You know, it's just events. So sometimes it's that. And sometimes there's still things that need healing. How do you experience the difference when we're telling our lives as if it's a story, and when we're doing it, if we do it authentically?

[32:19]

Well, I do that in my office, that's for sure. You know, when I do my work as a psychologist. But I think that's pretty complex. Maybe we should talk about that together sometime, because I think we're about out of time.

[32:34]

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