And the other reason is that this week I was listening to a tape of a talk that Screen Tribe once gave. And apparently, in taking the seat, she brought with her a rather large collection of books. And she commented that whenever you see anyone up here with a stack such as this, you know they haven't a clue. with that understanding. What Lois came to me and asked me if I would talk some about is practice in the context of my life and all of its various aspects of my struggles and efforts to somehow integrate parent of a nine-year-old son, Tito, with whom I share custody with my former partner and spouse of nine years, Linda.

[01:27]

As a working woman, in my case a lawyer, well post-menopausal baby boomer whose waist is noticeably thicker and hair is noticeably thinner, not to say much grayer than it was in my youth. As a sister, in my case of a 59 year old brother who is struggling himself with karmic illness and a quite marginal economic existence, as one in a community of abiding friends, none of whom practice, and as a resident here at Berkeley Zen Center.

[02:46]

And as I understood Lois' idea, it is that while our individual circumstances may differ, there's a way in which to give a personal talk such as this, is to talk about issues that women have confronted for eons. So, to do this, it feels like I need to tell you a little bit about my life before now, and about what it is that brought me to this practice, because it is that which, of course, informs what I brought to this practice and informs how I

[03:57]

I'll try and be short about it. I was born in 1946 in a small community in Western Virginia. I'm just going to hit the highlights of quite a thing. Places that have given me issues to struggle with in life. My father died in a construction accident when I was seven. And as a result of that, I pretty much lost my mom at the same time too. She disappeared into a depression from which she came out in many ways about a year later, but in some ways never. And that left a hole inside me that at 50 I still deal with. The issues around abandonment and feelings of insignificance.

[05:14]

And I grew up in a time, as you all know because you know your history of momentous change in this country and region, where that change and the struggles it brought were quite in one's face. And that was the Civil Rights Movement. The change was one that I began to see as a high school student. And with that change, I think it fed my early religious rebellion. I was raised as a Christian, a Southern Methodist. And in the

[06:18]

arrogance of my teenage years felt like mostly what I saw around me was mammoth hypocrisy. Spirituality and religion was something that people spoke words about on Sunday. But what I saw in the world around me certainly didn't seem to express those values. And my way of dealing with that at that time was to officially and formally, I resigned from the church, which I did at the age of 18, they made me wait till then. And I've become an adamant atheist for years, having nothing to do with this business called spirituality. And I went off to college, Somehow I knew always that I wanted out of the South.

[07:25]

And I think in a kind of nascent and very, very unformed and ununderstood way, I wanted away from what I saw as the life path that might otherwise result if I stayed there. And as many of us do, my way out was education. So I went off, quote, unquote, north to school, to Baltimore. Everyone else there thought they had gone south. And then there was Vietnam and the anti-war movement and the crumbling of the idealism that I had grown up with in a family basically of fairly simple and kind people who fought to believe that all the things that we learned about America and democracy and equal opportunity

[08:42]

And that was really a lot of what college was about. It was about the dismantling of whatever political, I guess, idealism I might have had. And a lot about confronting fear, which remains a constant theme. And somewhere in here, feminism hits. A glancing blow. I actually remember reading Betty Friedan's Feminist Mystique when I was in high school. I don't remember now when it came out, but it was pretty soon afterwards, probably 1963, 64, something. But notwithstanding all of that,

[09:46]

I found myself at 22 confronting life unsheltered by school, panicked, and hide myself off to graduate school for no good reason other than that I was scared to death of being on my own in the world. My first year in graduate school, mother that came in, as it turned out, with terminal cancer. She died shortly after my 23rd birthday. And I got married a month later. Surprise, surprise. It didn't take long to find out that I was woefully unprepared for that institution relationship.

[10:49]

It's most easily summed up, I think, in a story from that time, which can stand as a metaphor maybe for those times, adorning awarenesses on everybody's part and trying to find new ways of doing things. My husband and I moved to New York. And we were in a very small apartment in the city one day and I was cleaning the house and he was reading the newspaper. And I kind of stopped dead in my tracks and looked over at him and said, a little help here would be appreciated. Oh, well, what is there to do? Well, for a start, how about you go get the laundry? Oh, OK.

[11:52]

I thought that was just across the street. I went across and got it and came back and put it on the bed and sat back down in the chair and picked up the newspaper. And I said, well, you know, I have a little bit more in mind than this. Well, what else is there to do? get married to clean bathrooms. Well, neither did I. And marriage is about nothing, probably. It's not about who's going to clean the bathroom. So, we went our separate ways, not without a great deal of affection in some ways. the years for us both to see our hallowed youth and what we brought to that situation.

[12:57]

And I hide myself off to California and law school. And my life here, in the process of which household, and in the process of that, I must say with great gratitude to her for two things. One, I think it was she who broke through the shell that I had erected to give me the chance of a spiritual life. And two, it was she that wanted a child. I had exceeding great reservations about this. And so we set about trying to figure out how to do that, which was a little difficult under the circumstances.

[14:00]

There are many ways that people have come up with dealing with that, and the one that we were comfortable with was to adopt, and so that was a little tricky too, being gay. But fortunately we knew someone who was a social worker, at an international adoption agency who we felt we could go to and be honest about who we were, and maybe still be able to adopt a child. And not without some difficulty, we were in fact able to do that. And Tito, wonderful understanding of my life. And things went along for a while, and now we've come to the point And in a word, really, it's just that life brought me to my knees, and I had no choice.

[15:01]

My relationship with Linda was on the rocks. I found myself and my career faltering. onset of menopause and 35 hot flashes a day. And for whatever reason, I think sometimes life does this for us in the form of a gift, the onslaught becomes so steady and so strong that habitual ways of dealing so badly that in my case I felt like what happened was a door opened and I got to just see the inordinate harm that we do to self and others

[16:19]

So I wandered my way here, with some help from my friends. Like, I look in the phone book I receive for exam, maybe there's a practice place. And for a goodly while, the black cushion and the black mat was truly my refuge in the storm. And I guess I would say, too, that one of the things that helped bring me here was my son. Children are wonderful. They are mirrors of ourselves, like perhaps it is difficult for anyone else to be, because they are so open, and they see so clearly, and there is no artifice, no hiding from what they see.

[17:48]

A lot of hurt, of course. A lot of impatience. And that came out in my relationship with my son. I'm told by people in my family that I come from a long line of people. On my father's side, there was even this thing called a Kirk fit. And in my case, you know, that mostly expressed itself and I would feel pushed to the wall with some interaction with Tito and it would come out in a loud voice and the occasional slam to door and apparently I am big enough and fierce looking enough and had some Quite frightening, because what I got to see as I did that was the fear in my son's eyes.

[19:06]

And the knowledge that I was... Every time I did that, I was warping him. Sowing the seeds to cast this... violence that he does. So if you ask Tito why his mom started practicing, he will tell you it's because of this. This is what he does, literally. And if you ask him what's different now, he'll say, 50 years I've been on this planet. So I have a ways to go.

[20:06]

So, you know, I came here in an early encounter with some of my teachers. I found something that really for me expressed what was the the motivation, I think, inside, which still informs and fuels my ability, my desire to be here and to do this practice, as difficult as it can be.

[21:13]

It's a story that Aitman Roshi tells in his book, And the story is about a monk who was in a monastery, who was the cook on a particular day, and makes a soup and goes out in the garden to get some vegetables for the soup. And in a moment of unmindfulness, he chops off the head of a snake that was in the soup. The soup is served, and of course, And he looks down into his bowl and picks it up with his chopsticks. What's this? And the cook takes it, eats it, and says, oh, delicious. And Ethan Oshi's commentary on this is that life brings us a challenge.

[22:22]

We always have two choices. One is to defend and the other is to dance. And I came here to learn to dance. And what I feel like I've learned so far is it all comes back to this little black cushion because somehow it is It is here that we meet ourselves, both in the small sense of our own selves, stopping and seeing what comes up, and learning rather than to grasp it to our bosoms, to let it pass through. our larger selves, in the sense of some dawning awareness that... I guess even more, I lack words, that we're all in this together, that we are all part of one whole.

[23:48]

In a much more than a head kind of way, that you are no different than I, and I in you. Of learning to have compassion for oneself, I call zazen at this point exercising my present moment muscle, my capacity to just be with whatever life brings.

[25:08]

I don't even care much anymore. Just somehow I think it brings, or has brought me to a sense that, you know, this is it. This is just it. And there aren't too many choices. One can just plunge in. Try to be here for it. That if you can't be here for the pain, you can't be here for the joy. And just take each day as it comes, step at a time. So, and somehow, as you do that, or as I do that, it's not like it's not hit or miss, It almost feels like there's a way in which life starts to open up.

[26:43]

It comes out in small but treasured ways for me, usually in relationship. So, by and large I no longer see fear in my son's eyes. I find myself now sometimes, you know, feelings come up, feelings of rage, anger, paranoia. Small example, this last Friday, Linda called me and Tito's teacher wants to have a meeting with she and I and with Tito because with his homework folder. And, you know, I felt the hair on the back of my neck go up, and all my defenses went on red alert.

[27:51]

And I wasn't quite sure what that was about, but they were awful. I usually have a minimal 36 hour delay between the event and feeling. And in the middle of the night, I woke up and boy, my paranoia was up there, man. You know, I knew, I knew that teacher had said something to Linda. Linda was going to lay the blame at my door. She was afraid to deal with me directly. She had told the teacher to arrange this staged meeting. I knew it. So at 4.30 in the morning, I got up, went out, got a cup of coffee, juggled around for a while, for a while. Pretty soon, it started to dawn on me, well, probably this is not true.

[29:02]

Probably for whatever reason, you just made this whole thing up. And even if it is true, probably where that would come from would be anxiety in Linda about dealing with me about this issue. And if she's feeling that anxious, I do what I want to do. I just go immediately to her house and metaphorically deck her. She's not going to feel a whole lot of room to talk to me about this. So I drove around some more. And finally, it got to be about 7 o'clock, and I know her well enough to know that this is not an absolutely ridiculous hour to show up on her doorstep. And I drove up to the house, and she'd come out to get the newspaper. And standing there, I wrote, what are you doing here? Why are you here? And so on the sidewalk in front of the house at 7 o'clock in the morning, I said, well, here's why I'm here.

[30:10]

And I told her the story that I just told you when I got to the end of it. And I said, you know, so I'm pretty sure I'm wrong, but I still need to ask the question. And while I'm here at 7 o'clock in the morning, let me tell you that one of the things I treasure about you is that deep down inside, I do know that. Even when it's hard going. And that's really what most of my life is like, and all those different guises. It's again, and again, and again. Coming back to this effort, Somebody asked me not too long ago to sort of sum up, you know, sort of what my goals in life were.

[31:17]

And I said, you know, it's two things. To see clearly and to live in timeliness. To live in timeliness. And that's a constant process of error. and correction. Once in a blue moon, I get it right out of the gate. And when it's right, I'm astonished to find that there's almost like an intuitive click inside. You just know. You just know. So I guess that's it. And so, I'd like to tie this up quickly before you guys draw me off this cushion.

[32:20]

There's something that, from the women's music that flowered in the 70s, that for me, I find because in many ways it's what I wish for myself and for each of us. Now I'm having enough fun now. So it goes like this. Can we be like drops of water falling on a stone? Splashing Bursting, dispersing in air Weaker than the stone by far But be aware that as time goes on

[33:29]

You said you came to Zen because your life was falling apart and somebody suggested looking in the book under Z. Why did you look under Z? That's a good question. I've for a long time been interested in Zen, which really doesn't answer the question why. It's still the same one. And I think it goes back, maybe centrally, to that time of religious rebellion. spirituality and life, I did not feel at home. And though for a long time as I read this and that and then I would not, I never put this together, I didn't in fact until I listened to the tapes of one of Mel's lectures, he did it for me, etc.

[35:02]

You know, what this practice is about is no division. That spirituality and life are one and the same. And, you know, at some point coming here in all these intricate forms we have, feeling like that really what they were in a way is just a crucible. but at least we're here for it. And if we're not mindful, certainly, you know, we've got courage on our side. And I think, truly, I want to do that. Well, thank you, Marjorie, for the wonderful talk.

[36:05]

You have... I mean, my experience of you is that kindness just emanates. You said very little about your work except referring that you were with some fumble, but is there a way in which your work brings you into the world of all beings and is fruitful in that way? Well, yes and no. Yes, in that You know, I'm by and large fortunate in that what I get to do as a lawyer, I do land use law with the state and so what that means is that I'm often defending agencies that are trying to defend the preservation of access to

[37:09]

There are times and ways in which it lets me try to express in my work the values that I hold. But that's an area of great personal struggle, too, for me, in that it's coming up against my aspirations and my choice to do this practice, and family commitments, and relationships. So I think I'm most aware of it in the sense of letting go, and trying to hold my own center and sense of self in an environment that, while not free of wanting the approval and blessing of my peers and the recognition of my peers.

[38:41]

I'm dying to know which books you brought. Category Rush's book, Returning to Silence, Meili caught me with this during my first long session. I didn't know you weren't supposed to read books. And I stumbled across this one in the library and I love it. It's called An Approach to Zen by Uchinomoroshi. I guess it's where I first learned about this notion that there's a self that's larger than me. And these are several of the This one I have on tape and walk around the lake with constantly.

[39:45]

Someday maybe I'll memorize the whole thing. And several of Thich Nhat Hanh's books because he talks about internal formations, the knots that we all acquire and light, and the importance behind those. You know, there's seeds of anger and hate, violence, all those things, and all of us, but there are seeds of joy and compassion too. And he is a master, it seems to me, at giving my guidance about how to work at transforming So, that's it.

[40:51]

Marjorie, thank you for your talk. And I, as Mary commented, I feel that I certainly have been recipient of your generosity and your kindness. trips, and also have seen your ability to hold the center under what ever-changing circumstances. My question to you is, I wondered what part the Jizo figure plays in your practice? You know, I sometimes go back and sit on the bench at the back, and I guess, you know, for me that's just a sense of Jizo as a guardian of children.

[42:09]

and those tender young shoots in all of us.

[42:19]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ