Oh, look at all the treats. Did you realize that McCage treats under like that with marbles on her head? I did. I sat in the zendo at the San Francisco Zen Center with a bowl with marbles in it. Did you lose them? Hmm? You know, because if you move, you can hear them rolling around in there. Had you shown this trick to your granddaughter? No. And... You know, keeping the bowl on the head is one thing. To keep the marbles from rolling is another.

[01:04]

Because the bowl cannot fall off, but the marbles can be zipping around there quite a bit. Whereas these cakes are not rolling around. I used to do that in the pastry center before the other day. I didn't think of that myself. Some traditional story was about a certain practitioner who did that. And I copied. And so to do it and also relax the neck. After a while, if you hold your neck stiffly, it starts to get trouble, right? So to do it with your neck relaxed is, you know, it's a challenge. Did you have an idea it was fruitful, perhaps?

[02:07]

Well, everything's fruitful, but fruitful in the sense of positive fruit? Yes, I thought it was helpful. I learned some things about myself in the process. What did you learn? I learned how hard it is to relax the neck when you hold the head really still. I learned that I was a gung-ho Zen student. And I enjoyed that. It was fun. This is what fashion models do with high heels. Yeah. Yeah. Does this make my skin turn golden? Your hair is black. Yeah. And it's... Anyway, this is not so hard as the marble thing. The previous story before the story of Vasumitra was about this

[03:19]

And it's quite a long story, but I'll just tell you the name of her, her enlightening liberation, the name of it was Freedom from Vain Imaginations. That was what she, that's what her realization, Freedom from Vain Imaginations, and then she talks about the different types of vain imagination she became free from. She teaches him that. But it's a long story, so maybe some other time. If you want to hear more stories of women from the Avatamsaka Sutra, I'll be happy to share them. I'm studying them. And you've already heard the story of the old lady who had a young male student, and he said, well, what's the essence of your teaching? What's the essence of your wisdom?

[04:23]

And she said, no matter what happens, I say, what do I say? Somebody tell me. Thank you very much. I have no complaints whatsoever. And she said, now you try that. And so he did. And he came back after a few years. And she said, how did it go? And he said, I failed. And she said, thank you very much. And here's another story of a woman teacher. This young man found a great Buddhist master and he was studying with him.

[05:27]

And one day they were going to do a big ceremony on the other side of the Ganges River. on the river where they could cross. And this young disciple, he was the most junior of all the disciples, so all the other disciples went ahead of him. So the teacher went first, and all the other disciples went ahead of him. And they were carrying various equipment for the big ceremony. And when the teacher came to the edge of the river, there was a woman there who was, you know, very sick and, you know, suffering in many sores on her body and so on. And she said to the teacher, could you please carry me across?

[06:28]

And he said, I have a headache. Would you ask one of my disciples? And so the next disciple came and he said, Why are you doing so much stuff? Would you ask the next disciple? And they all kept passing the responsibility to the one behind them. None of them, you know, refused her flat out. They all just passed the responsibility to a junior practitioner. So finally they got to the last one. There was nobody behind him. He said, okay. And he picked her up and started walking towards the river. And he felt kind of funny. And he noticed his feet weren't touching the ground anymore. And then he realized he was getting really quite high in the air. And then he realized that he was riding, that this woman he was carrying great jeweled-covered bodhisattva, Vajrayogini. She taught him the power of generosity.

[07:38]

So may we practice generosity like that beginning student did, realizing not to pass it on to do our job. And then after we do our job, send the person to the next person who will do her job, and so on. It's the opposite, yeah. And Miriam told me that, Miriam, where's Miriam? I have trouble turning my head. Where are you, Miriam? Miriam's up in the sky. Some years ago when her daughter, who is not three anymore, was three, she made shadow puppets with her daughter and they made shadow puppets of the three billy goats and the troll.

[09:15]

Is there anything you'd like to bring up in the remaining time we have together here today? Tell us about your women teachers. My women teachers? Well, I could tell you about my wife, but I'm not allowed to. But I think I can tell you, I think I can tell you that there's a gag rule on me. She's put a gag on me because I tell too many stories. I go too far telling stories about her. And then after I tell them, then people, you know, she gets inundated with people's response to the stories I tell. So I have to clear any stories beforehand. But there's lots of teaching stories from her. some of which many of you know, right?

[10:29]

So two famous ones are. These are already, you know, on tape and everything. So I'm just repeating. One is, we're in a traffic jam on, I think it was Bay Street in San Francisco. and we're driving down Bay Street, and I see a traffic jam up ahead, so I turn left to avoid it and get into a worse traffic jam. And then I say, that was the stupidest thing I've ever done. And she said, even when you confess your shortcomings, you give yourself a compliment. Somebody said, you know, that humor holds up better than drama. Was that drama or humor in that moment?

[11:34]

Well, it seems to be humor now. At the time, I think it was drama. It was like, hmm. Sometimes I tell that story, there's a little bit of a lag time. Then the other one was, we were having dinner with these people, a couple, a male-female couple. My wife said to the professor, where do you teach? He said, I teach at UC Irvine. And she said, what's Irvine like? And he said, it's beautiful. And his wife said, it's ugly. And he said, it's ugly. And my wife said to me, you should learn that. And Suzuki Roshi's wife

[12:42]

we called her Oksan, which is a polite way of saying wife. She was a teacher to many of us. And when we got married, When I got married, my mother-in-law said to, I don't know who, I don't know how many people this was addressed to, but my mother-in-law said, in Chinese, we have a term that for the wife of your teacher. So my teacher's wife, the Chinese term for that is shibo, which means teacher mother. So after that, I called her teacher mother. And she really liked that, you know, that she was my teacher mother, my mother teacher. And so I always called her that after that, which works well in both Chinese and Japanese.

[13:50]

So she was a teacher to me. She's still alive? Yeah, she's still alive. I think last year we had a party for her and she was 99, which in Japan is 100. So this spring, in, I guess, May, she will be 100 by our standards and 101 by Asian standards. And she's still very clear. Pardon? Well, when you're born they say you're one year old. When you're born you're one, so when you're one you're two and so on. So Dogen died when he was 54 they say, but we would say 53. So yeah, she taught me things like, she said,

[14:52]

When we take care of something for a long time we come to think we own it. And she was referring to some people at Zen Center, you know, who they've taken care of Zen Center a really long time, and they think they own it. It sort of happens to me. Most people, when they walk into the Zen Center the first day, they don't think they own it. Most adults don't think that. My little kids do. They walk in and say, this is my house. Most adults, when they walk into a Zen Center, they say, oh, this is a nice Zen Center. I'd like to practice here. But after they take care of it for many years, wholeheartedly, little by little, they start to think, it's my temple. But it is, it really is, but don't think that, and don't believe that thought. But we sometimes really believe it. She taught me that, and I'm always watching out for that.

[15:56]

It might not notice anybody else doing that. and also during really rough times at Zen Center, she said, Suzuki Roshi did not teach people that the Buddha people, which is kind of obvious, but she thought you should mention that. And at that time I didn't feel like I could say that to anybody because somebody might have thought I was, you know, telling them. something or other, and I didn't feel for me to say it, but now I can say it. And you don't feel like I'm talking down to you, do you? No. There's the teaching. But sometimes it's hard to remind people of it without talking down to them.

[16:56]

So there's the teaching, which is obvious, but just try to remember that. Yes. You did that very definitely with those eyes. The last student who didn't have anybody to pass the book to, we know for sure, or not sure, or whatever it is, that he wouldn't have passed it on. Can I see the watch in my hand, please? I don't know that he wouldn't pass the water. He might have. It's just that when you don't, suddenly the woman becomes your teacher. When you take care of the woman in front of you, when you listen to the woman in front of you, and don't get distracted, the ducks flew away.

[18:02]

then suddenly you see the Buddha. And it might be in the form of a woman, but if you don't get distracted, you see the Buddha. And it's not that the Buddha is this appearance, it's just that the way this person really is, you see, is the Buddha because you are not going someplace else to practice Buddhism. You're not going to practice on the other side of the river. But if he had missed his chance, then ride. But he might have missed his chance if there was somebody behind him. All the other people missed the ride. The point is, he didn't miss the ride, didn't get distracted. Everybody knew that the practice was to help this woman. Nobody thought, well, we don't help people. They all knew that. But they had important things to do, right? They did.

[19:09]

They're going to go do a ceremony for that woman on the other side of the river. That's going to be dedicated to her welfare, right? Skip over the person in front of us, even though we're going to do something really good for the person in front of us. We don't get distracted from this by that. And if we do, we do. And that's not the end of the road. We might grab our nose and twist it. Or might kiss our cheek. Depends on who is there. What if you get distracted with your beliefs about that you're limited, so you cannot face that, you cannot help that person? It's bigger than... Yeah, so the thought that it's bigger than you could distract you, or the thought that it's bigger than you could not distract you.

[20:13]

And it could not distract you, and you could still honor that thought and say, you know, and not get distracted. You can recognize your sense of limits. You can honor them and not be distracted by them. You can also not honor them, you know, and not be distracted by them. So when you feel a sense of limit, you can like not honor it and try to do it anyway. But be distracted. But you can also honor it and not do certain things that you feel you're not ready for, and not be distracted. In this particular case, it was not too advanced for him to help her. And he didn't think. He didn't think. I mean, it was not a real hard thing for him to pick this woman up. It didn't seem to be hard for any of the people ahead, or some of the people were already carrying something, and they probably thought, oh, I can't carry this trunk and you.

[21:23]

But he wasn't carrying anything, so he actually couldn't do it. He didn't say, oh, this is too much. He had no problem with it. But sometimes we do think something. And we can honor that and not be distracted by it and not do it. And that's appropriate. Sometimes not doing something that's too advanced is just right and not a distraction. Now, the idea that it's too advanced isn't a distraction. In other words, we don't get distracted from it, therefore it's not a distraction. Things are not distracting, really. It's just that things are such that we lose our concentration. And also, almost all these examples I told you, women teachers, they were teaching different types of concentrations. So like I think, like one of them was, you know, when they see my face, they enter the concentration of tranquil countenance.

[22:37]

Each one of those concentrations, she gave something to them such that they were like one-pointed with her. When she touched them, they entered into a concentration of the touch. When they heard her, they entered into a concentration of hearing. Each thing she did in such a way that it was like she was twisting their nose and they were really present with her. Do you remember how the names of the concentrations were related to the contact they had? In other words, when they had this meeting with her, the meeting turned into a samadhi, into a concentration. Because she was there with them, so they could be there with her. She taught them that. So if we can be present, we can be present.

[23:41]

These bodhisattva teachings are all touching on the parameters, concentration, patience, generosity. They are, and also they teach us how to be. So it's possible to be generous, quite generous, some people are quite generous, but they're somewhat distracted while they're giving. like they give us money. They don't look in our eyes, maybe, when they give it to us. Or they give us money and they look away. So when you give money to somebody on the street, do you look them in the eye? You don't have to look them in the eye, but are you looking away at all when you give them the money? If you don't give them the money, are you looking away at all? You can also give them the gift of no money. You can give them a gift of, I'm here with you, and I have a meal for you instead, or whatever.

[24:54]

But are you there? One time I said to my daughter, you know, if you don't get a job in a week, I want you to move out of the house. And I talked to her mother about that before, you know, she spent months not getting a job. She wanted to get a job, but she hadn't got a job. And so our mother and I agreed that if she didn't, you know, that we wanted to say that to her. So I sat down with her and I said, your mother and I have come to a decision. And I changed my mind. I said, okay, your father has come to this. And the decision is what I want. And what I want is I want you to move out of the house if you don't get a job in a week. And I gave her that gift.

[25:58]

I didn't want that gift, but I gave it to her and I did not get distracted when I gave it to her. And she received it quite well. And when that was over, she went to her room and did not slam her door, which she usually did. The door to her room, I had to keep fixing because she would slam the door and knock the sides of the door off. She did not slam it. and the next morning she got up at noon. She'd stay up until quite late and then get up at noon, around noon, and then around four or five she'd start looking for jobs at places that closed at four or five. So anyway, after this conversation,

[27:02]

Actually, one more thing I want to tell you is she said, well, if I move out, what am I going to do? And I said, well, yeah, you'll be dealing with that. And I have confidence that you'll do just fine. I have great confidence in you. Now you're doing fine living here. And so anyway, next morning she got up at 7.30. I'd never seen her up at that time of day except when she was going to school. And she said, are you going to see me again? I said, yes, I am. She said, can I have a ride? I said, yes. And then she asked me something which she never asked me before or since. She says, which of these two sweaters do you think are better? And I said, I think that one's better. And she wore it. And she says, which of these shoes do you think? She didn't say looking for a job, but I kind of thought that's what she meant.

[28:05]

I said, I thought those shoes, and she wore them. So I took her in to San Francisco, and I went to this place where I go swimming. And I went swimming, and when I got out of swimming, she was there waiting for me, and she had gotten a job. And she was sitting with her legs crossed. You know how sometimes people sit with their legs crossed and they bounce one foot? You know that move? And I don't know if she said, guess what, but anyway. And then she said to me, do you think I got this job because of what you said yesterday? And I said, I don't know. And she was pleased with that answer. So this is her teaching me because I could face her. I was not distracted so she could teach me how to be her father.

[29:05]

And it's hard for me to look in that girl's face, that baby's face, this grown woman's face, it's hard for me to look in that face and say something which she doesn't like. I don't like to... I want to look someplace else if I'm saying something I don't think she likes. Like if she says, Daddy, can I have such and such? And I say, yes, I don't mind looking at her then. But even then it's hard to look. But if I say, I want you to move out in a week if you don't get it, I really paid attention because if you look and see the face, you might then change your mind by depending on what you see. The type of pain you see might make you feel like, oh, that was a mistake. Let me say it another way or whatever, but I looked at her. She did just fine, I felt. She listened to me, and she kind of liked what I said.

[30:09]

Even though it wasn't pleasant and she didn't want it, she also thought, anyway, this is some examples of women teaching me. him eat cake let him eat cake yeah so thank you very much for another wonderful day in the land of no abode happy holidays and yeah I was going to say you know now you can this year off and get ready for your commitments next year.

[31:01]

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