Transcript
[0:01] So.
[0:05] Yeah.
[0:07] I want to welcome you wel- welcome you
[0:09] all here.
[0:10] I feel particularly uh
[0:13] kind of inspired in the welcome and that
[0:15] I've been gone for a week and before
[0:17] that for a month.
[0:20] And uh
[0:21] I just delight in being able to be here
[0:24] and
[0:25] and before all that no sound
[0:28] um
[0:31] chats, which I appreciate that being
[0:33] told. Uh
[0:35] I appreciate it all the good mornings
[0:37] and uh
[0:40] and the um
[0:42] the friendliness with it all. So, thank
[0:44] you.
[0:46] It's common for me to give a lot of give
[0:49] guided meditation
[0:51] on the 7:00 a.m.
[0:53] and
[0:56] there's something very profound about
[0:57] not giving any.
[0:59] I
[1:02] was taught meditation without any guided
[1:04] meditation at all.
[1:07] And
[1:09] that was actually the beginning
[1:11] meditation
[1:12] um
[1:13] that wasn't taught much at all except to
[1:15] be present.
[1:17] To be present with the breathing and
[1:19] then finding my way with that for years.
[1:23] It's been a wonderful adventure.
[1:26] And as we go start this meditation, you
[1:28] might want to consider
[1:31] what it's like to sit
[1:33] as some of you probably are
[1:36] with the notion that this is
[1:40] a
[1:41] an ongoing journey.
[1:44] An ongoing
[1:47] exploration, discovery
[1:50] ongoing
[1:52] attunement
[1:54] to yourself and all the life changes,
[1:57] all the life experiences, everything
[2:00] that goes on in your life.
[2:02] Meditation can be the thread that runs
[2:05] through all the
[2:06] ways, all the
[2:08] unfoldings of a life, the difficult, the
[2:11] wonderful,
[2:12] the painful, the joyous.
[2:16] And through it all, there's a thread
[2:18] of meditation, staying present, staying
[2:20] here, staying true to ourselves,
[2:24] staying present for it all.
[2:27] No matter what it is,
[2:29] and if if this thread going through all
[2:32] the different changes of our life
[2:35] can produce a tremendous stability and
[2:38] tremendous resource
[2:41] like connecting us to something that's
[2:44] always here, something deeper,
[2:47] some capacity to process and work
[2:49] through and make space for
[2:52] our lives
[2:54] and the depths of who we are as well.
[2:58] So, to assume a meditation posture,
[3:09] a posture of presence, whatever way that
[3:12] means for you.
[3:17] And perhaps to gently close your eyes.
[3:23] And before meditating,
[3:26] just checking in with yourself.
[3:30] An honest check-in, how are you right
[3:32] now?
[3:46] And if
[3:49] meditation is the thread that runs
[3:51] through your life, the through line
[3:54] through all the ups and downs of how you
[3:56] are.
[3:59] How does that understanding shift
[4:02] how you might be present for yourself in
[4:05] the way you are now.
[4:37] And part of that through line is
[4:43] that comes with meditation
[4:46] is can be breathing.
[4:50] Breathing is the
[4:54] Maybe that's the
[4:59] thread that we're following.
[5:04] Maybe that's where the thread unrolls as
[5:06] we move through our life.
[5:10] And for this meditation
[5:13] gently stay close to breathing.
[5:20] As if it's a through line
[5:25] that keeps us present.
[5:28] Keeps us here.
[5:32] With all that we are.
[5:37] But always staying with the breathing.
[5:41] That keeps us
[5:43] steady, balanced through it all.
[5:51] >> Next standing
[5:57] on a mountain in a strong gust of wind
[6:01] and holding a railing
[6:06] to walk along
[6:09] to see it all, the great view from
[6:12] mountains.
[6:15] The through line being the hand on the
[6:16] railing
[6:19] the attention
[6:22] on the breathing.
[7:48] >> [snorts]
[9:40] >> Mhm.
[11:35] >> Mhm.
[17:20] >> Mhm.
[19:15] >> Mhm.
[21:10] >> Mhm.
[23:05] >> Mhm.
[23:09] >> And as we come to the end of this
[23:12] sitting,
[23:15] imagine
[23:17] that your breathing
[23:20] could accompany you through your life,
[23:23] through all the challenges and all the
[23:25] joys.
[23:28] A loving, friendly companion
[23:31] that wants the best for you.
[23:35] Accompanying you like a railing
[23:39] that keeps you always steady through all
[23:41] the ups and downs.
[23:44] Keeps you present.
[23:46] Keeps you free in the middle of whatever
[23:49] you're doing.
[23:52] Can you imagine
[23:55] a gentle presence, attention to
[23:57] breathing?
[24:00] Being accompanied by breathing
[24:04] in a way that
[24:06] would support your freedom,
[24:10] your care and love
[24:13] to be a through line through your life.
[24:35] And from time to time, your inhales
[24:39] allows your middle of your chest to
[24:41] expand and to open.
[24:49] Letting your heart,
[24:52] your sensitive heart,
[24:54] the emotional heart,
[24:58] to radiate, to feel, to sense more
[25:02] fully.
[25:07] And to walk through this world
[25:11] with a loving heart.
[25:15] A true line through all the ups and
[25:18] downs.
[25:21] Why not stay close to
[25:24] a kind heart, a warm heart?
[25:28] May it be that how we walk through this
[25:31] world
[25:33] leaves a wake of kindness, of
[25:37] friendship, of warmth, of respect,
[25:41] of care
[25:45] for our world.
[25:48] May we create a wake that spreads ever
[25:51] wider
[25:52] behind us like the wake of a boat.
[25:56] A wake of love, a wake of care.
[26:01] A wake of goodness.
[26:05] May all beings be happy.
[26:08] May all beings
[26:12] be safe.
[26:14] May all beings be peaceful.
[26:18] May all beings be free.
[26:28] >> [music]
[26:31] [bell]
[26:37] >> Thank you.
[27:16] >> Hello my friends and welcome
[27:19] [clears throat]
[27:20] to Monday, the beginning of a new
[27:23] series.
[27:25] And
[27:27] as some of you might know is that I've
[27:29] been teaching a lot the last couple of
[27:31] months.
[27:32] Um the month-long of September was
[27:35] teaching almost every day.
[27:38] And um
[27:42] And then this last week I was teaching
[27:45] at um
[27:47] up in the Sierras for Eco Chaplaincy
[27:50] retreat.
[27:52] So I feel like I've been teaching a lot
[27:54] so the idea of sitting here and teaching
[27:56] something Buddhist like I usually do
[27:59] >> [snorts]
[28:00] >> doesn't quite seem to be be in my heart.
[28:03] Not quite something that I can
[28:05] I like to live what I teach.
[28:08] And so I'm kind of full of doing
[28:10] teaching for the moment or empty of
[28:13] doing teachings.
[28:15] So hopefully with with the way it's okay
[28:17] for you all.
[28:19] Um I'd like to do something that's easy
[28:21] for me
[28:23] and that is to tell you some stories,
[28:25] some practice stories, my prac- some of
[28:27] that practice background.
[28:29] And I'll do a little bit chronologically
[28:31] over the week.
[28:32] Um and um
[28:35] So today I thought I would start with
[28:37] kind of how I kind of a little bit of
[28:40] the background
[28:41] that I think about when I think about
[28:44] coming to into Buddhist practice.
[28:47] And it won't be the full background,
[28:49] but what's kind of alive for me is not
[28:53] all the challenges that brought me,
[28:55] but rather all the goodness that brought
[28:57] me.
[28:58] The different ways which I tapped into
[29:01] something healthy and good and and
[29:03] supportive. Sometimes without knowing it
[29:05] even till later.
[29:07] That I don't know if it's set my course
[29:09] in the direction of Buddhist practice,
[29:11] but it was certainly by time I
[29:13] encountered Buddhism, uh this was part
[29:16] of the support system inside of me that
[29:19] um
[29:20] helped [clears throat] me with the
[29:21] struggles of the early years of
[29:22] practice, the suffering, the
[29:24] difficulties I had. There was also this
[29:26] amazing support within
[29:28] of maybe how I was prepared for it.
[29:33] So, uh
[29:35] >> [clears throat]
[29:35] >> when I think back about that support
[29:37] system,
[29:38] I uh
[29:39] I think about how
[29:41] I was born into a
[29:44] in in Norway and
[29:46] Norwegian parents.
[29:48] And um Norwegians well are known for
[29:52] being seafaring folks.
[29:54] Um so the Vikings are maybe some kind of
[29:58] representation of that.
[30:00] So, I spent a lot of time growing up in
[30:04] early early in life on the water.
[30:07] In the fjords of Norway and
[30:09] different places in the world on water.
[30:12] And there was something about being on
[30:14] the water,
[30:15] uh especially early in the morning when
[30:18] before the wind started up, when the
[30:20] water was completely still and quiet,
[30:23] and being up on the deck of a boat and
[30:26] sitting there quietly and just feeling
[30:28] the stillness and the peace, then
[30:30] everything was good in the world.
[30:33] That somehow
[30:35] I I so I kind of like ingested, took in
[30:39] uh some of that peace and stillness.
[30:42] And I think it uh shaped me in some
[30:43] degrees or became a reference for me.
[30:48] The
[30:49] >> [clears throat]
[30:51] >> the um
[30:53] another person that a very different
[30:55] kind of reference for peace happened
[30:57] when I was 18 and I was uh driving alone
[31:02] around uh Europe
[31:04] and um
[31:06] meeting people, picking people up, and
[31:08] sleeping in hostels, sleeping in parks,
[31:11] sleeping in the woods, sleeping here and
[31:13] there.
[31:14] Didn't have much money.
[31:15] And uh I came to Mont Saint Saint
[31:18] Michel. It's a kind of a big Catholic
[31:21] monastery cathedral
[31:23] on this um little island off the coast
[31:26] of
[31:27] Normandy,
[31:28] uh northwest France,
[31:30] where there's a big tide difference.
[31:33] And so when the high tide is in, uh
[31:36] except for a bridge kind of going into
[31:38] the island,
[31:39] it's um
[31:40] uh
[31:41] it's an island. And when the tide goes
[31:43] out, you could there's a you know it's
[31:44] it's uh
[31:46] kind of
[31:47] mud all the way out to the island.
[31:51] And um and it looks a little bit like a
[31:53] Disney uh castle that's you're driving
[31:57] along and suddenly appears up in this
[31:59] sort of kind of high mound island little
[32:02] island and then this cathedral like
[32:05] spire comes up out the middle.
[32:08] And I went there and I looked for a
[32:10] place to stay and
[32:12] in this town back then, they had a small
[32:15] little hole in the wall hostel, a
[32:17] Catholic hostel by Pax,
[32:20] some kind of organization called Pax
[32:22] Pax,
[32:23] um for peace.
[32:27] And there was a single priest in there
[32:29] kind of took care of it and I don't know
[32:30] how many people that could stay there,
[32:32] six, eight, or something.
[32:34] And we'd have meals around this big
[32:35] wooden table and with the priest and
[32:38] at some point he took me for a walk and
[32:40] we had a wonderful talk.
[32:42] First time I talked in my life with a
[32:43] priest.
[32:45] And
[32:46] and then
[32:47] we I want walked by myself to have a
[32:49] tour of the whole monastery with a group
[32:52] of other people.
[32:54] And they took us into the on top of the
[32:57] hill around which this huge cathedral
[33:00] was built or chapel or monastery.
[33:03] There was the original one-room stone
[33:06] chapel
[33:07] that had been built maybe a thousand
[33:09] years before or more.
[33:11] And as we walked into that chapel
[33:13] something
[33:15] inside of me just went
[33:17] got settled and peaceful. It was almost
[33:19] like I stepped into a presence of peace
[33:22] that I'd never experienced before.
[33:25] And I tried to linger in that room as
[33:26] long as I could in that chapel.
[33:29] With [clears throat] the eyes of the
[33:30] group was leaving just again to take in
[33:33] this phenomenal capacity for peace and
[33:35] well-being.
[33:38] And that became a reference point for me
[33:40] and
[33:41] maybe part of the reason I started
[33:43] having thoughts about becoming a
[33:45] Catholic monk and I wondered if they'd
[33:47] take me as an atheist. There was
[33:49] something about just that life and that
[33:51] feeling in that life that
[33:53] became very attractive for me.
[33:58] And then
[33:59] in the over the next year back in
[34:01] college I
[34:03] got initiated into TM transcendental
[34:06] meditation.
[34:08] And I really liked it but mostly it made
[34:10] me calm and it wasn't like a profound
[34:12] thing to do but it was I loved the calm.
[34:15] And that was good for about two months
[34:17] and then there was summer vacation.
[34:19] And um
[34:21] and I just kind of forgot about it.
[34:24] But the summer vacation was back on a
[34:27] boat.
[34:28] And I sailed across the Atlantic on a a
[34:30] sailboat. I was a crew.
[34:33] And uh from I got on the boat in uh the
[34:37] island of Malta, in the middle of the
[34:39] Mediterranean,
[34:40] and sailed to Barbados in the Caribbean.
[34:44] And um
[34:45] it was a wonderful trip. Uh
[34:48] we made almost a record time because
[34:51] somehow we were delayed and we were
[34:54] sailing during the hurricane season.
[34:57] And uh we didn't encounter any
[34:58] hurricanes ourselves, but it meant the
[35:00] wind was actually quite good.
[35:02] And um and there was something about
[35:05] being on the boat hour after hours, say
[35:08] 6 hours a day on the helm, 2-hour
[35:11] shifts, staying being up in the middle
[35:14] of the night 2:00 to 4:00,
[35:17] the only person on deck, stars, amazing
[35:20] stars in the middle of the Atlantic,
[35:22] um
[35:23] amazing sense of harmony, amazing sense
[35:26] of peace.
[35:27] But the the thing that
[35:29] happened on that sailing trip that made
[35:32] a big difference when about a year later
[35:34] I started doing Zen practice
[35:37] is um
[35:39] >> [clears throat]
[35:39] >> I had decided at the beginning of the
[35:42] trip that it was fine to have a fantasy
[35:43] life, but I didn't have to censor it,
[35:45] whatever was going on in my mind.
[35:48] And um
[35:50] >> [clears throat]
[35:50] >> but um
[35:51] uh
[35:52] when I was standing there at the helm
[35:54] for 2 hours,
[35:55] uh
[35:57] that was a time to let my mind wander,
[35:59] but every half a second almost you had
[36:01] to be tending to the boat, adjusting the
[36:05] the [clears throat] the uh
[36:07] the the the rudder slightly,
[36:10] uh tracking the sails, looking at the
[36:12] compass,
[36:14] understanding the waves that were coming
[36:15] that were we had to kind of navigate.
[36:18] The waves were big waves, so you had to
[36:20] [clears throat] be aware of what was
[36:21] happening all the time.
[36:24] And um
[36:25] >> [clears throat]
[36:25] >> and this combination of staying,
[36:27] allowing yourself the freedom to
[36:29] fantasize and to think,
[36:32] but every half second or so, every
[36:34] second, being grounded in the present,
[36:37] uh I think it was really freeing for me
[36:40] and
[36:40] by the end of this trip across Atlantic,
[36:43] I was kind of living in a kind of
[36:44] ecstasy, kind of a joy.
[36:47] And um it was just like taught me about
[36:49] so much about how to be present.
[36:52] So, when I came to starting doing Zen
[36:54] meditation, I kind of had had the same
[36:56] idea to give give freedom to my mind,
[36:59] not to try to control my thoughts,
[37:02] but at the same time,
[37:04] just [clears throat] keep every half
[37:05] second, keep being here, keep being here
[37:07] with the breath.
[37:09] And that this then I wouldn't wander off
[37:11] in thoughts, but also didn't try to
[37:13] control my thoughts, didn't try to stop
[37:15] my thoughts.
[37:16] And that combination was very meaningful
[37:18] for me and gave me a sense of how to do
[37:20] Zen because there was so little
[37:22] They were told to be with the breath,
[37:24] but more than that, there was not much
[37:26] else being taught.
[37:29] And um
[37:31] So, but the one thing more that happened
[37:34] before then I came to Zen Center and
[37:36] started my Buddhist practice,
[37:38] that kind of also changed me quite a bit
[37:40] and
[37:41] as I said mentioned earlier, I was grew
[37:43] up an atheist and and even though I kind
[37:46] of was attracted to monastic life, I
[37:48] didn't like religion. I didn't trust
[37:50] them and
[37:51] certainly didn't want to consider myself
[37:53] religious. So, So, I don't know if I
[37:55] could could be a monk and not be a
[37:56] religious, but
[37:58] um the um
[38:01] uh let alone an atheist.
[38:04] But uh I um
[38:06] I um
[38:08] you know, didn't wasn't interested in
[38:09] spirituality. The word spiritual wasn't
[38:12] some a word I was going to utter.
[38:15] And um
[38:16] So, then
[38:18] I was here I was traveling across the
[38:20] United States. Well, I I had learned I
[38:24] I dropped out of college by then
[38:26] and I was traveling around the United
[38:28] States and I
[38:29] somehow ended up on a largest commune in
[38:33] the United States to play back then a
[38:35] place called The Farm and there were
[38:37] about 700 people there mostly hippies
[38:41] living there
[38:42] and um and before I got there they
[38:46] they had taken a lot of LSD so it was
[38:47] kind of the religious sacrament
[38:50] but uh they were
[38:52] in Tennessee in a farm they bought and
[38:54] Tennessee the leaders of the
[38:56] organization the commune had been
[38:58] arrested for marijuana use and they
[39:00] realized they couldn't be using
[39:03] drugs anymore in Tennessee.
[39:06] So they they decided to use this
[39:09] the next best thing
[39:11] uh the next best
[39:14] I don't want to call it a drug but the
[39:16] next best the sacrament
[39:18] to LSD
[39:20] and that was honesty
[39:23] and so when I got there I was blown away
[39:26] to be around people who had such
[39:29] expertise in being honest how quickly
[39:32] they talked about tension how how much
[39:35] they worked on trying to find a way
[39:37] through and resolve the conflicts the
[39:38] tensions that existed there and and the
[39:41] way that they all trying to be honest
[39:42] with what was going on
[39:44] and I was so inspired by this
[39:47] and the but they considered themselves
[39:49] spiritual
[39:51] and I said well if this is what
[39:53] spiritual is I'm into this uh I want to
[39:58] um
[39:59] um that's this this is really good
[40:03] and at the farm the Bible of the farm
[40:06] all just about everyone was reading it
[40:08] was the book Zen Mind Beginner's Mind by
[40:10] the founder of San Francisco Zen Center
[40:12] Shunryu Suzuki Roshi
[40:15] and that book spoke to me.
[40:17] I was so surprised to to be I you know,
[40:20] to read it and and feel and just get a
[40:24] sense that I understood what was being
[40:25] said. Not only did I understand it, but
[40:29] the book was
[40:31] mirroring back to me things that I
[40:33] already knew, but didn't know I knew.
[40:37] That was the feeling, well, I know this,
[40:38] but I didn't know.
[40:40] And I was so inspired by this
[40:44] and the book had a lot to do with
[40:46] somehow
[40:47] sitting Zen meditation was a part of the
[40:49] book.
[40:50] So, when I left the farm in Tennessee,
[40:54] one of the first places I then went to
[40:56] check out was the San Francisco Zen
[40:58] Center because of that book and how much
[41:01] it had moved me to be there.
[41:03] And um
[41:04] and that's when I kind of began my
[41:07] Buddhist practice. First haltingly and
[41:11] then some years later you know, um
[41:16] consistently
[41:18] until the present.
[41:20] So, hopefully that's nice for you to
[41:23] hear and um
[41:25] certainly
[41:26] and we'll continue this journey over
[41:29] this week and hopefully it's nice for
[41:31] you to hear this background around me
[41:33] and
[41:33] and it also gives me a little bit of a
[41:35] break from
[41:38] from the usual kind of teaching.
[41:41] Thank you.
