Threads To The Absolute

Marcy gave this talk at the year-end retreat where she was Co-teacher with Shinzen Young from December 29, 2019 - January 12, 2020. The theme is the growing clarity of a dedicated practitioner regarding the interconnectedness of all things, the ways in which conditions are continually pointing us toward knowing the dharma directly, and the fact that we need not wait for full awakening to appreciate the benefits of changes and insights as they occur along the way.

Transcript

Well I guess we should start,

Huh?

Probably I'm the most ready in the room to get through the next whatever,

However amount of time.

So as I'm sure everyone has guessed by now,

It's going to be a pretty different talk tonight.

I speak one language,

Which you're hearing currently.

I don't have any advanced degrees,

And pretty much everything that I've learned about the history of contemplative traditions I've learned here and from a couple other teachers.

So my intention is to share about myself.

And hopefully,

Very much connected to the Dharma and sharing about myself.

And I know a lot of you a little bit,

And I know a few of you a lot.

And I know from some people who've come to see me,

There's a little bit of curiosity like,

Where did you come from,

What are you doing here?

So we'll just get into it.

A couple of themes have come up for me when I look back at the last several years in particular,

And one of them is the importance of the Sangha to me,

Noble company.

And the other is this notion of threads to the absolute,

Finding out more and more that anything I notice,

Any challenge,

Any gift is an opportunity to go towards all the way and find out what happens on my way there.

This has been a great relief to find out that there's lots of cool stuff on the way there.

Probably like many people at the beginning,

I thought it was pretty much a zero sum game,

Like,

You know,

Life sucks,

I get that first noble truth,

So I need to be over it,

And that's where I need to be.

And fortunately,

Now I am continually fascinated by what is on the way.

So an example of that,

To give you an idea of what I mean by threads to the absolute,

Is this very surreal experience that I am having at this moment.

You know,

I paused and looked at that,

In fact it reminds me of Shenzhen's CD on body sweeping this week,

It's so wonderful,

It's more than twenty years old,

And in it,

Like in other places,

But also in this recording,

He talks about the high resolution that you can develop through a practice like body sweeping and how that enables this kind of richness as though you've added countless pixels to your picture so that you can have something so much more vibrant and real and alive,

And so it seems kind of like that,

That I used to only see this very blocky picture of everything,

Like I have a feeling tangled up,

It must be fear,

Probably everybody hates me,

And that's the whole story.

And over time,

What's happened is I've noticed this tendency for you know,

Not just deeper messages to come through,

But the kind of meaning that is what I'm looking for,

The hints of what is beautiful in all of us,

And what is calling us.

So when I look at this example that I just gave you,

I consider,

You know,

Why is that really so important,

Why does it feel like so intense to just get up and talk to people,

I mean,

Obviously rationally it means,

I know that it means a lot more to me than it does to you.

But it's because I care so much.

And from my first retreat here,

I knew that this is the most important thing that I do.

And for a long time,

I was not even willing to say that out loud because I thought it might sound presumptuous.

But the people who know me know that now,

They know that I say that,

That this is the most important thing I do.

So rightly so that I should care so much and long for the most skillful balance I can rise to of effort and surrender.

And so there's another thread,

Does that remind anyone of our posture?

You know,

Can you straighten up and relax?

A thread to how do we communicate with each other,

How do we share the dharma,

Can we prepare,

Can we gather knowledge,

And then can we let it all go and just show up for another person?

So that's going to be my attempt and you know,

If you feel later on that that worked,

Feel good,

Let me know,

And if not,

You can just pretend you didn't come.

That would be fine.

So I have a very dear friend at home,

Brandi,

I was telling her a couple weeks ago,

Like man,

I'm doing this gnarly job,

It's going to be so intense,

And telling her that,

You know,

About this dilemma,

Like I know that,

Well for one thing I can't prepare like I used to for things,

It's one of these things that's kind of fallen away for me that I'm not totally used to,

So it's a little stressful.

It's like I'm a planner by nature,

I like to have all my ducks in a row,

And now something has happened to where when the pieces are not in place,

It won't stay,

It won't present itself for me to work on,

So I have to wait until I have enough information,

Until I have the feel for where I am,

Or you know,

The right thought comes,

And you know,

And I told her I really don't like that part,

They're waiting for the right time to arise,

And knowing that there's only so much efforting you can do to try to communicate authentically,

And then you cross over into inauthentic.

And so she told me a sweet story about when she was younger,

And she was in a group piano class,

And they all started to play a piece together,

And after just a minute the teacher stopped them all,

And said no,

We're going to start completely over,

Because I can hear you thinking.

And that's not what we're trying to express here.

You've all practiced this,

You know the music,

Now start over,

And open to it.

Your only job is to the best of your ability to express what the composer is trying to convey.

And I just thought that was a beautiful way of describing what it was like,

Yeah,

Okay,

That's what you try to do when you're trying to meet people at this,

For me,

Most vital level of connection,

That's very much like art.

Very much like art.

So this Threads concept too,

It reminds me of something one of my favorite teachers says,

Jean Klein,

He was a French non-dualist,

And he said,

Let's see if I can get it right,

Go deeply into your urge to be silent,

Follow silence to its source,

And you will be taken in an instant.

And so silence doesn't surprise anyone that much,

Because we like silence,

We do lots of it,

But the idea is,

You know,

Whatever it is,

Follow nerves to their source.

I'm talking about a complete experience,

Right,

And you can be taken by it in an instant.

So the how I got here,

I in a very ordinary way,

Life was a struggle,

And at some point I was fortunate enough to be able to get sober when my oldest child,

My daughter,

Was four.

And that gave me enough stability to be able to start really doing self-improvement instead of only damage.

So I worked in a lot of different modalities,

Did a lot of therapy,

A lot of inner child work,

And all kinds of recovery in several different programs,

And the meditation thing was hard,

You know,

That's part of 12 step programs,

And I sat with many different teachers looking for something that would hit.

I knew that I kind of liked Vipassana from listening to Jack Kornfield and discovering that I could continue thinking and practice.

And then of course,

Like all of you,

Shenzhen was a big yes.

You know,

So clear.

It seemed so attainable,

It was like these are things I can actually do,

And I didn't realize at the time that anything really profound was possible.

I had given up on that a long time ago.

I really just,

You know,

I was looking to live for the sake of my children by then,

And suffer a little bit less.

And I thought,

Yeah,

The clarity and equanimity,

That's good,

But I need to concentrate better.

That was my misunderstanding when I started.

And so I,

You know,

I read his stuff and I listened to his talks,

And you know,

I went to stuff when he came out here at Against the Stream and did home practice program when that started.

And it's just incredible that I wound up at a retreat at all,

Because like most people I know,

Wherever I lived,

It did not seem like something that was for me.

That's like for monastics,

People who don't have a family and don't have a job and they can just go sit all the time.

But fortunately,

Now in recovery I learned a lot of really good habits.

I didn't have any before that.

I didn't even floss my teeth.

Like,

No good habits at all.

But I learned some good habits.

So my good habits were,

You know,

Tell somebody everything,

Take suggestions,

Get in the middle,

Volunteer,

Talk to everyone who's offering help,

You know,

These kinds of things.

So it was actually my sponsor at the time said,

You know,

You've got to get away.

Like you're a little bit losing it and you've just got to tell your husband,

Like,

I'm out of here for a week.

And it sounded really good when she said it.

So I go home and I was like,

Okay,

Not happening.

That's not happening.

And one of these miraculous things happened,

Just out of the blue,

Never happened before.

He said,

I'm thinking about taking a staycation over Christmas and I think you should go somewhere.

So then out came,

I want to go to this retreat because I knew about it.

I was following Shenzhen.

So anyway,

I signed up,

I came and those of you who were here that year,

And I remember several of you being here,

Will know that that was like one of the craziest logistical things ever because Shenzhen was not here.

He was stuck in a snowstorm.

I was a commuter.

I was staying in a hotel down the hill.

And it was perfect.

It was perfect.

So Soryu,

Fortunately,

Was here and he gave a talk because Shenzhen wasn't here.

And things struck me during that week that I had never been struck like that before.

And I wonder if you guys remember this talk or I bet you will when I tell you this part,

When he told a classic story that I do not know the name of this woman because I'm not a HUH scholar.

But I remember the story of the woman who lost her whole family.

She lost her husband and her parents and her children.

One at a time,

Like this pounding,

Horrific grief.

And she made her way to the Buddha and was insane with grief.

You know,

Screaming and tearing her clothes and he admonished her coming from this place of a source and she was completely relieved of all suffering.

And said,

Truly that arrow lodged so deep in my heart has been removed.

And I believed him.

I believed Soryu.

Why did I believe him?

You know,

I think now it's because of where he was coming from.

I believed him because of where he was coming from.

So I had an online with Shenzhen in my hotel room from his phone.

He's in Vermont.

And for the first time in my life,

I got quiet in my mind.

You know,

Like the Buddha says,

Come and see for yourself,

Right?

And Shenzhen sat there on the phone and showed me how to watch what to do with external sound while I'm watching the internal space.

And I found out that there was quiet and we had and we had I'm a very diligent student too.

I'd read everything.

So,

You know,

I felt like I could follow along with his instructions,

But I had no real experience with the techniques and anything I couldn't understand I just didn't do.

So I was really just doing see,

Hear,

Feel and then going to technique instruction.

There was nothing for a newcomer so we all did all the same stuff.

So he did Gone one day.

He did Focus on Gone and I'm like I understand the instructions.

I read that.

So I'm like looking for something to disappear.

Gone,

Gone.

And I had like a twitch in my eye.

So I was like,

Oh cool,

That's constantly disappearing.

So I start watching this twitch in my eye and you know,

They call this beginner's luck and there's a lot to it because when you don't know much,

Like I didn't,

And you don't know what can happen,

Sometimes that sets you up very nicely to not have a plan sticking to you.

So that rapid Gone you know,

Took me in a way that I was just aware of my body,

Kind of paralyzed in the seat and it was terrifying because I had never been out of control and sober at the same time.

And there's nothing that I could do in that moment but be aware of this thing happening.

There was an awareness happening that had nothing to do with my own volition.

I certainly couldn't have said that back then.

I just knew like something is scary and I need out and I'm powerless and all I can do is sit here and wait for it to stop.

And that was several minutes.

Several minutes of that.

It just went on and then he stopped and I'm looking around at everybody else and they're like I have a question.

I have a report.

And I'm like I'm fried.

This is weird shit going on here.

And people were kind of reporting you know,

Noted Gone,

Noting Gone and I was like God that sounds like what happened to me but they're fine.

So I told him anyway.

I raised my hand and gave this report.

But he has all this experience of course right?

So he could see in my report that I'd been pounded.

And if you have a lot of experience with Shenzhen you know what he said next which is so touching to me that he said you don't ever have to practice that again.

And there was such kindness in that.

So much kindness.

And he called that the blow of the void.

And people here were kind.

And then two or three people came up to me and they were like hey are you okay?

And then about six hours later I was like I want to do that again.

And thus began a round of horrific craving that my facilitator knows well.

So for a couple of years I had a facilitator again.

I'm just so fortunate that I had the training that told me like you know if there's something that interests you or something that you need you have to ask for help.

You have to be talking to people.

So I did that pretty quickly after my second retreat.

I targeted the very most skilled person that I could find.

I ran it by one or another person and he said that's exactly who I had in mind for you.

And she agreed to that.

So I mean at the end of that retreat I came in here on Sunday morning and I just laid down on the floor and just wept.

Because I was like this is not what I signed up for.

I was like this is a one off.

I'm going to go relax and I'm going to be back and I'm going to be refreshed and calm.

And instead I found out well now I'm screwed.

Now I have to do this and I cannot.

I don't have the time.

I don't have the money.

I don't have the space in my schedule at all.

Plus it's weird.

Who does that besides you guys?

No?

So this is a really bad dilemma.

And yet I found myself going home and telling my family this is the most important thing I do.

And they were a little surprised because I'm a really kind of understated person by nature.

So that got their attention and I started looking for babysitters in January so I could come in May and just started saving my money and any money I got for anything I put away.

And I did take financial assistance several times from BSI for which I'm so thankful.

Because I just knew that I had to be here.

I mean how,

It was so miraculous for me that I could even do that.

I can't tell you but if you're one of those people who identifies with putting everyone else first it was really something.

But something was so important to me that I said actually this time me first.

So that's what I've been doing.

So that has made many many retreats now because it's remained the most important thing that I do is this practice.

Not even close.

There's nothing else.

So next couple of years you know thank God for Juliana because I just didn't see any progress.

And now and then I might have a little transcendent experience and that would not have kept me going without a facilitator because for one thing it helped me to be accountable because I didn't want to tell her I wasn't meditating.

So I would try and then I always just thought I sucked and I was doing it wrong and the stuff was not happening that was supposed to happen.

So a lot of it was just pointing out when things were actually going well that I did not notice.

I only noticed bad things.

And that motivation I almost always felt inspired when I got off the phone.

And like a practice suggestion too like excited to try the next thing that she told me about.

So that got me through those couple of years.

And explaining things you know I'd have an experience and I would know like whoa that was like one of those things that's different than the other things.

That was one of those like not normal things and I have no idea what it is.

I mean I don't know how people get by without someone to talk to because then she'd explain it to me and I had read everything but I still didn't recognize anything when it happened.

I bet a lot of you have had that experience.

You know you get a little fooled because Shenzhen is so clear and he like defines everything you're like I've totally got it.

And then you know something happens and you're like what the hell?

And then you know somebody with experience or Shenzhen will be like that's concentration you're like what?

I thought it was just the ability to attend to where I choose to place my focus.

But it feels different than words can convey.

So here's a thread to the absolute right?

Like so common for people to misunderstand each other.

You know not only are we all using words in different ways but we have different felt experiences and then we're using the same words to convey things that are completely different to each other.

How much more so you know this ultimate reality that we try to talk about with words it's starting to seem kind of ridiculous right?

So after a couple of years something significant did finally shift.

I think it only took so long because I had so much recovery and I had really worked hard on getting my act together so by all appearances on the surface I was a very high functioning individual but I knew that that was not the whole story right?

I knew that I was not okay and I was tired of it you know?

I wanted to feel as peaceful as people told me I seemed and I was not ever.

So that did change and that too when that changed I didn't know what it was.

I didn't like it.

It felt like I was walking through glue and since I didn't know what it was I was just seeing kind of like the tendrils of the impact so I would notice some cool things like you know I was telling somebody this the other day I'd go back to my community and here comes somebody that I had had a conflict with before and it was like oh I hate these situations now it's time to be intimidated and act weird so then it was like I'd go in my stuff and look for my intimidated and act weird and it wasn't there and I was just left all the time with like where's my stuff?

But it wasn't what I expected.

I expected,

I know now that what I expected well for one thing I didn't think I could be free of that because I'd been trying to work for a really long time but if I could have been free of that I'm sure I would have thought it would be instant you know just lightness and love and like I thought equanimity meant what the words say they mean.

I thought it meant I see that you're aggressive and out to hurt me and I'm being with that experience and with love making a skillful decision on how to respond to you.

And how that felt was vacant.

I was just where's my stuff?

And that's all.

So there were several ways that I was seeing that and I feel really fortunate actually that I did have a packed schedule because it allowed me to see how all my interactions were changing.

Otherwise I probably would have just stayed home because stuff was getting weird.

And you know it took me months to put that together.

I had a hard time describing it to Shenzhen because I didn't know how to talk about my own experience like that.

Coming back to retreat helped I had a good habit of meeting with every facilitator at my first few retreats and getting different input and so you guys who know all the Buddhist stuff taught me about craving an inversion.

I was like oh my gosh that's totally changed.

And I started to feel really lucky that I didn't know a lot you know going into it about what could happen because you know I wasn't looking.

I wasn't thinking.

That wasn't getting in my way.

I think that might have helped.

You know I don't know.

Different for everybody.

But that is what Shenzhen finally told me.

There were so many cool things around that.

I was on a school board for several years and the outgoing president you know she really didn't like me.

She didn't want me to do that.

She made up a new rule that if you weren't there for a certain meeting you couldn't run and I was going to be here and she knew that so we arranged a phone call so I was going to have a phone call with her and I remember you know lying on my bed there in the residence and feeling the intensity of you know what you would call fear in the body and just watching it move and suddenly realizing it was like I could feel that being transformed into something useful and skillful and like without ever getting up off my bed I thought you know in her aim to do me harm she's just given me a huge gift with all of this energy and being able to let that transform instead of letting it not that I had any choice but in the past it would have I would have just suffered and then had a bad phone call and that would have been the whole thing.

So it was like you know that was around the two year mark was this big jump in equanimity it was you know it was very confusing it took me months to start to get a handle on what that was and start to really realize these profound limitations of language so this is easier than I thought like when you say in the program I better get sober so that means you're not far enough in your story so other things that went by you know almost everything that's changed I couldn't have written any of it I couldn't have anticipated any of that you know it's so clear to me how maps can be really confusing because each person's lived experience is going to have some quality in it that is not expressible by those words or the words don't mean what the experience of that situation means so something very unexpected was just other seemingly random things dropping away starting to lose the ability to attend to things that were irrelevant and these things might sound good but I found that for me almost everything is really uncomfortable and it's because I'm so used to the way I've been so it's like there's a lot of social pressures and relationships built around attending to things in a certain way and then suddenly I'm unable to well now I have problems I have problems in my relationships and you know with a big drop in craving and aversion comes an almost complete disappearance of codependent tendencies in my case and it's like uh oh our whole relationship is built on codependency you know you know so now what I mean it's like you're a nice guy and all but it you know can be really weird so again you know without the support of other people,

People who can help frame for you this is what's going on and this is the way through it I can't imagine and it got weirder from there you know in another year you know I have just a really for me I mean maybe I'm naturally mentally unstable I don't know but I had a really like shattering experience that lasted a long time in clock time like 20 hours of just incredibly intense pain that I was staying with with all the CC and me I had to bear and again when that started to ease off you know I knew immediately that you know something else had really changed and this time the best I can tell that the main area that changed seemed to be clarity where suddenly well I did get help from the Sangha though I noticed at first again symptoms like I went home and I'm looking at my kids and I'm like I can't remember their names so I'm like that's kind of weird there was like an equalizing effect between people where I do a lot of volunteering at schools and all the kids who kind of bugged me because they're not mine so they're you know a little more annoying when you don't have that special connection then that was gone now all of a sudden the teachers are sending the super troubled kids out to me to talk out you know let's see if we can do one more problem on the math test and just this deep connection this easy connection with every child you know that doesn't even sound like clarity does it but this was my experience of this shift was largely clarity and I think that's because of the input I got from the Sangha that energetically it was really hard so I you know was not able to sleep very much and my mind was racing all the time it reminded me of certain illicit substances actually weeks and weeks of that and so I thought alright I've got to join Facebook laughter so I joined Facebook I emailed Shinheads and said okay look guys like everything is dying and no matter what I do everything is dying and I don't know my children's names and you know gave them four or five sentence and was like what do you think and I gotta tell you with all the care that was put out in that thread none of that helped me and what helped me was someone I had met here saw my post and sent me a private message and said we should talk and so we had a phone call and then this person identified with my experience and and he said you know you're used to just throwing everything on the wall to see what sticks I don't think you have to do that anymore about who you know and what seems right to you I mean I wonder how long I could have gone on like that if he hadn't offered me a phone call and so he helped me see that this part of this sudden change was somehow nothing that was not going to deeply clearly lay that next railroad tie in front of me I couldn't even put my attention on it things were just it was all just falling away you know so we went through teachers and you know people that we know from the community and it was like you know not anything bad but just not a hit not a hit not a hit not a hit and it was like well you know what appeals to you and I thought of someone that I knew that I met here and I was like this person I think so he said yeah call him up see how it goes let me know and we have been very best Dharma friends ever since and we talk practice almost every day and it's been my greatest accelerator and my greatest stabilizer to have somebody to have that relationship with where we share is a passion for the practice more than anything and a lot of similarities in how we work and the kind of work we're drawn towards so at the same time that this whole thing was unfolding in my daily life there was a lot of what you might call drama like big challenges I now by now I was president of the school board and we had a really horrible ethics violation by a school director and I had to manage it and it was super intense and it was like you know getting threats and people taking sides and making all kinds of demands and at the same time my daughter this was like weeks after this thing started unfolding she was in Wisconsin I live here and she called me up and said I'm admitting myself for suicidal tendencies and and then you know I just kept going processing this enormous upheaval managing these things in the world that was in February and then in May I came back here on retreat and I got an email from her letting us know that she was transgender and then she came back here in the summer and I spent all summer trying to save her life which I did so I don't want to have like a cliffhanger I'm not saying I did either but she's alive anyway is the point so that was a tough year but what I got to see was thank God I had been doing so much work here because there was a lot of freak out all around me and I thought I was just doing what obviously needed to be done I wouldn't have known that anything was extraordinary but everybody at school started going how are you doing that?

How did you manage that meeting?

How did you walk that guy off the campus?

I'm like thank God they asked me too because I think I wouldn't have even known sometimes that I was actually implementing technique one of my friends was on the board with me and she asked when it was over she was like what the hell are you made of?

Did you even prepare?

I'm like no way I'm not going to prepare I sat there and did see hear feel deconstructed my sensory experience because I knew that anything going in there was going to make it a lot worse but God the grace of connection with people I wouldn't have even known and my daughter got separated from all of her other family members and I was able to hold a level of grief that not many people have held and pain and at the same time love and I didn't need anything from her and I was able to keep that up when she stopped talking to me and just keep the door open so fortunate to have close friends who have seen me walk through this or I wouldn't know how profoundly kind this path is to have given me these opportunities because just like when I was working with you Juliana all I could see was the difficulties but my friends were there going this is fucking amazing like what the hell and I was like oh that's not normal is it you know this is practice that's pretty great I mean I can't say I feel great because things kind of suck but it's pretty great that they don't suck worse and after this time too I felt pulled to study some other traditions I got into non-dual and Ren'sai Zen ways of working and working with teachers in both of those traditions I know my friends here who practice Ren'sai were pretty surprised how much I loved it I was like this is awesome but you know for one thing it was awesome because I had already learned so much here so it's not so awesome I think for most people if you go there and you just feel like they're just being mean to you but I felt like you know when I was losing it waiting for a Dokusan one day and you know I was trying to like really like wipe my nose the sheikahs you know he snapped at me but all I heard was love he said try to be still and I heard like so I heard the kindness and that he was like sharing my pain while he was telling me don't move like he knew there is more in attending to that than in escaping it and I loved the imposition the structure that kind of does the meditation for you it's actually like you know in some ways it's a lot easier it's like you have to put in so much effort around here like you know I don't know a lot of patriarchs but I know the third patriarch one thing because he says the way is easy just give up picking and choosing and that's what I love about Zen it's like man this acts like I don't have to decide where to be I don't have to decide what to do I don't even have to give up a thought because if I have a thought I'm going to get yelled at it's like super easy and so they meditate for you you know if you're lucky if you know enough about CCNE maybe so you can surrender to that and just you know highest levels that I'm capable of which I don't carry around but under intense circumstances that can happen so I really liked that and have made so many discoveries there you know again like these threads finding out how it was so easy to get up at two forty five in the morning that really surprised me I thought it was going to be horrible but because everybody just gets up and does it and there's no choice you know by the time I was walking to the Sutra Hall one morning at three or whatever it was like I felt a joyfulness and then I was interested like what is this joyfulness and was noticing this you know there was this total freedom from picking and choosing in this schedule and it was like that's a really beautiful thing you know so many threads to pay attention to these little things that have these implications all the way down and so much wonderful to discover along the way so now recently this year I after the June retreat at some point not right away but sometime in the summer I went to the sweat lodge in Oxnard and I had some things on my mind it was like what should I sit with you know maybe the school situation or my relationship situation I didn't have a lot of conscious thought going on around my daughter because there was no input when we were talking I would reach out every several weeks to let her know I was still there and not hear from her but everything that came up that night it's like that was all there was and it was so beautiful it was like you know I got to find out that you know that that was still the that was the number one thing in my heart that I was able to go through my days and do whatever I needed to do that there was a deep longing there and really a really beautiful clean wish to just be available should she decide that she wanted to be in contact again it's really you know amazing how like sadness and grief and pain get more and more beautiful with less suffering it's been wonderful to not I don't have regret and I don't have guilt if you can believe that it was such a tough situation for my oldest child because of the practice so then you know later that summer and in the fall I just did my usual thing and in August I wrote her a letter and I sat through an inner arising with that noticing that this is kind of scary because it might get returned I don't know where she lives I don't know if she's alive I knew she was really unstable and in September I called her I was really surprised I got her voicemail because when people are avoiding you usually it's like my mailbox is full or their numbers changed but I left her a voicemail and then she reached out and so we've talked a couple times this fall and who knows what's going to happen but I know that there's a reason that I'm the only one she's in contact with in our family because she's just suffering so much she has so much pain and it takes a lot of spaciousness for somebody with that much pain to be able to tolerate themselves and another person's presence So what else about I had in mind a few other examples of this threads idea There's been so much there's been really nice kindness here a few of these things popped up for me today today at lunch Jessica took my plate for me I was so kind and sometimes the smallest things seem the most kind because it's something anybody could overlook and you know she just gave me time she gave me time by letting me not put my own plate away and I know that some of that too comes from because of where someone is coming from when they offer that expression that it has a different kind of an impact and the other day I was walking with Jocelyn who left unfortunately to the dining hall and she was so lovely I never sat with her before oh my gosh to spend time with Jocelyn was a highlight of my week and we were walking very close together like shoulder to shoulder and she said I can tell you feel your feet I just felt so honored you know I was like that woman is paying attention and I was like am I feeling my feet and you know again like you know you could feel in her words like where she's coming from when she says that another one that came to mind was you know when Alice and Rod got here I was like so happy to see them and I don't even know them very well but oh my gosh just the beautiful emanations from these people well I gotta tell you if she doesn't mind if you don't want to stand in line for Amma this summer you should go get a hug from Alice so I went and got a hug from Alice that was timeless that I felt absolutely melting because of where she comes from when she offers that hug so things like this you know that love what is that a reflection of and little transcendent experiences that we have sometimes early in meditation and then often have this pain of grasping at so this perspective has been really beautiful and helpful for me to see that so far without exception for me I've found that there's something beautiful and timeless in all of that so you know craving can be unpleasant right this longing for you know how can I get that experience back you know but what is that really a longing for and what is more beautiful than each of our longing to be home and to be in the source I feel like these are all just threads this kindness this unfathomable kindness of all of the everything that we can see and touch and experience is a little clue,

A little what's next that's there that if we follow that thread any way down a little bit down these you know there's these gifts available all the way and I think I just see them more and more as more and more gets removed that like someone asked Ramana Maharishi once about attainment you know how am I going to get there how can I get here there.

How do I get it and he said no there's you know there's nothing to get all there is is to remove you need more spaciousness to see what is already there you don't get bring in space from somewhere else just remove remove remove and so now you know I look back and I hope it doesn't sound too confusing because it might sound like I had something figured out earlier that I'm saying today than have anything figured out but it's like you know you can look back and and go I was there all along.

All of this is there all along.

But I'm more likely to see it.

And I have a sense,

A great deal of the time that I'm just not struggling so much with the flow of things.

So I hope I don't regret too much later the things I forgot to say.

Because at this point,

I've done so well I am not picking up my cards.

You know,

Whatever didn't get said it's going to have to be that way.

So I'll just come back to the point about noble company because this is,

This is a huge honor for me,

And it's,

You know,

It's bigger than shins and for me it's like what is there of more value than sharing the Dharma.

I don't know anything.

So I never studied with Suzuki Roshi I met him one time before he died,

He was like 107 or something.

And of course at the time I thought well this sucks.

This is typical for me like here's the master in LA and I'm meeting him and then he's gonna die.

So,

You know,

I'm so thankful for that one meeting.

So I met him one time and it was a very small size and kind of it just,

You know,

A few people there.

And the Sheikha Murin asked everyone to stay because he was actually going to come outside and meet people even though it was very frail.

So I felt very excited and out of respect,

And also my old habit of thinking that I matter less than everyone else,

I stood way back and was like,

This is like a big deal to these people I'm just going to stand over here.

And I had some interactions I remember his interactions with Juliana around singing and he was pounding this one guy,

Who are you who are you.

The guy's like,

You know,

He's like in a wheelchair he's 107 and he's like going at it.

And he asked that group and he looked at me and said,

What's your name?

So Mjörn was translating for us.

I told him,

I see,

And he's like,

Seemed like a bad answer.

And he's like,

No,

Your Buddhist name.

I was like,

I don't have a Buddhist name.

And he just looked kind of like,

Like I knew it.

Yeah,

That was a bad answer.

And then he said,

Where have you been?

Which could be interpreted many ways,

Right?

How about that resolution,

That high resolution,

So many levels at the same time,

Speaking to me in a way that I could receive in the moment where I was.

So for me,

That meant,

Like I've been waiting for you and you're late.

So I told him wandering,

Because that was what I felt.

I had just been searching and searching,

Searching.

So I told him wandering.

And he said,

It's a sickness.

Yes,

Sickness,

The sickness that I wanted to be well from.

But it planted a seed too.

And so I,

Later that same year,

I came here and I asked Shinzen for a Dharma name.

So I went through the Dharma ceremony here that we do.

And recited the vows.

And I was just thinking of that tonight,

You know,

The Buddha,

The Dharma and the Sangha and how precious the Sangha is to me in particular.

That,

You know,

Along with the one I told you that Soryu said,

My other favorite Buddha story,

I do remember this name when Ananda,

You know,

Was feeling delighted and joyful one day and so inspired by the path.

And said to him,

My Lord,

You know,

The Sangha,

This noble company,

It's half of everything.

It's half of everything we do.

It's so valuable.

And he spoke to her very sharply,

Ananda,

Don't say that.

Don't ever say that.

This noble company is the entire path.

And that has been my experience.

I could not do this without you.

So nothing else is coming to me.

So I will just express my appreciation again.

And thank you for listening to my song.

Reviews

So authentic and personal and inspiring. I feel so lucky and grateful to know Marcy and to be able to learn from her. Thank you Marcy!