Transcript/History

History (continue)

I want what Darshan had, I want what I wanted, what these people had. And and so my clients, I think, feel that. And I think there’s a quality that goes beyond the tools and the tricks of the trade and the things that you do as a psychotherapist, that the practice of loving kindness, the practice of loving acceptance of what’s here now. I mean, my I know, I know my clients walk in the room and they do not feel judged by me. And and if judgment comes up because I think of the way in which I live, they’re able to say to me, I felt a little judged there and I’m able to say, you know what, I think you’re right. Thank you for pointing that out. The humility that I that has come with my spiritual path, the openness, the longing for me to not suffer anymore, and there and also for not anybody else to suffer is so strong in me that it overrides any part of me that wants to defend against something when I do something wrong or out of unconsciousness, ignorance, you know, that kind of thing. My, my longing for the for no suffering, my longing for no suffering for anybody overrides all of that. And I think that that I would say my clients, my kids for sure feel that for me, probably friends do. But but that has been my journey. And so I guess the other thing that has come up for me along this journey is family and friends who are not on this path have said to me, well, it’s fine for you. You know, you’re you’re you’re doing this path. You know, you could do this path. And I’ve got kids or I’ve got problems with work or I’ve got this or I’ve got that. No. Has it been easy? Absolutely not. You know, I’m I’m living my life and my life means I’ve got bills to pay. Life means that I have relationship disruptions. I have kids that are struggling, you know, at times, you know, because our kids struggle. I have my parents, my dad died. My mother my mother got ill and died, repaired those relationships thanks to Buddhism. Actually, I have a sister who has some challenges that I, I care about. So I, no, I have a normal life with ups and downs and difficulties, but I don’t feel like it’s up and down. I think I think because I was so committed to my path and, and and committed to what I would say. And in the 12 steps we call it emotional balance. But that’s what Buddhism giving me is, is emotional balance. It’s not it’s not being swung in the and the lows. You know, it’s it’s being able to meet life on life’s terms, you know, and and look at it and see the teaching in it and in in Vajrayana path we talk about seeing the guru are everywhere. You know, you start to see the guru everywhere. I see the guru everywhere. So how can I not balanced anymore? Because the teaching is in front of me in every moment of my life. Now, I don’t I don’t even have to. I mean, I’ve got Buddhist bookseller course, you know, which I’m reading. But the thing is, I don’t even need them as much as I did before because the teachings are alive and everything. You know, the the leaves fall off the trees. That’s impermanence. That reminds me of impermanence, you know, it’s just. I just. Just like I. I’m so grateful for that. 

So in, in in studying and practicing and incorporating the teachings and living from that place has allowed me to meet all of the, all of the challenges that we meet as householders or lay people, whatever we would call ourselves. What I like to do more, what I like to go off and do long retreats and stuff like that. Yeah. And, and I try and build it in like a during the pandemic was great because the pandemic I made a decision because it was exhausting working on the computer all the time. I got more exhausted than when I was doing it face to face. I made a decision to take a week off every two months and I went up north somewhere and I took all my books and my practice stuff and I just did that for a week. Every, every two months. And I never would have done that before. You know, I would have been doing, you know, how can I get busy, you know, busyness or doing all this, that that became important to me to do that, you know, my my spiritual path now. You know, I’m I’m a Buddhist practitioner. I’m a forgery and a practitioner. I am in our path. And the land, the body Rinpoche laid out a really beautiful path for us. And we have a process where people who are farther ahead on the practice path support the people who are coming up behind them. We call or we’re called practice instructors, but I hold that term loosely. Okay, I’m just a little farther along, you know, been there, so maybe I can answer some questions. I started to look at it like sponsoring an AA is like that. You know, you’re a sponsor for somebody who’s coming in and you’re just sharing your own wisdom and your experience. And I mean, that’s really so I’m a practice instructor and I facilitate classes and we call them facilitator. We call ourselves facilitators because we’re not the teacher. We’re facilitating religious teachings and Buddhist teachings, they’re the teachers. And so we have all of them laid out. She’s laid it out. We come together as a group and we will read and discuss. And and I would be a leader basically for the group. And so that’s how we structure our our study. And and then we have another path called the path of mindful activities. So the path of study in the path of practice and the path of mindful activity. And my path of mindful activity has being involved in the administrative side of the Sangha. So what that looks like is at this moment is I’m director of the Land about Toronto and there’s an admin team which will pay bills and had, you know, make sure their study classes, make sure stuff’s happening with practice, make sure that stuff’s happening with new members, new members or a membership person. That communication person, you know, and I’m the director and we we consider those positions the path of mindful activity. It’s a practice. So we get to practice us in everything we do. So I just feel like, you know, as a as a householder because of the the Buddhist training that I’m getting, I just carry that over into everything that I do. So, you know, my into my relationships with my kids, my relationships in my work, my relationship with everything is my path of mindful activity. And, and so it’s, it’s really been amazing how it’s unfolded, actually, for me. And I, I don’t I don’t really know what else to say it. I don’t know if I gave you what you deserve. It’s amazing for our guest. I think, you know, share some of this before I you know in the energy and know how you can get people so I think you could be the poster child for the project, you know, sort of, you know, which is ironic and it’s typical, not typical, but I think in Western culture and and for me to just grow up in the American dream. Yeah. And check the boxes. Yep. And, you know, even though you.

Lineage

In that way. So anyway, that aside, I guess I want to preface this with Rinpoche. I apologize if I am not accurate in how I’m going to describe this or what I’m going to share. I apologize for any errors. They’re mine. They’re not yours. So I really want to put that out there. I feel very responsible right at the moment, you know, with this. So. So, yeah, in we’re Tibetan Buddhist. So that’s the other thing to remember. This is a Tibetan Buddhist path. Not every lineage practice is the same way. Not every Buddhist. You know, because you’ve got Vietnamese Buddhism, you’ve got Zen Buddhism, you’ve got, you know, all different kinds Burmese, Buddhist. So there there’s differences. So basically Buddha taught in three wheels, if you like, right? So the first wheel, the first turning of the wheel, the first turning of the teachings, second and then the third. So first is called the and sometimes referred to as the Theravada. And then you’ve got Mahayana. And actually out of Mahayana comes the Vajrayana. So the the yeni on a path as she’s laid it out is we have a hint and a path of study. So really it’s the, all the teachings on the first turning of the wheel of Buddha, you know, the four noble truths. And that those, those are all his initial teachings are given there. And, and then along with that, the practice path that goes with that is the, is the path of calm, abiding meditation or shaman stuff. We call it samata. So when we’re doing the Shama to practice at the beginning, you know, oftentimes a common way to to teach it is focusing on the breath. And so people think, well, I’m focusing on the breath. That’s that’s it. So but that’s just the beginning we have. So we have X number of hours. We do. Where we’re focusing on the breath. And I want to jump in here around this because this is my psychotherapy practice coming in here because my field is sort of jumping on the bandwagon with mindfulness, psychotherapy and all all that stuff and recommending everybody should go and learn to meditate. You know, if you’re highly anxious, it might be a difficult thing for you to go and do. I would say that right now, but unless you get proper instruction on that, you could get into trouble, particularly who are highly anxious. So when people say, okay, just focus on your breath so you know, what they do is they clamp down and they go like this on their breath. And I’m keeping my focus on my breath. Well, that’s not what it’s about. It’s actually about resting your awareness, your full awareness on the breath. And then when it wanders, you notice the wandering and bringing it back. If you go like this and try and hold on to it, you’re going to for anxious people, you’re going to get more anxious. So proper instruction is really important. Most most teachers, you know, authentic lineage teachers or, you know, where will teach it properly, you’ll get the proper teaching. So Rinpoche, she’s got a whole set and the teachings are called Know yourself. Because really what we’re doing is we’re getting to know ourself and what is what does that mean? We’re getting to know our mind, you know, how is this crazy mind working, you know? And one of the common themes I hear from somebody starting to meditate is they’ll say to me, Well, you know, when I’m giving up on meditating, this is crazy. My mind’s now worse. And I said, Actually, it’s not worse. You’re just noticing how bad you had noticed it before, and that means it’s working. Yeah, you’re doing that. And they go, What? You know. Yes, it’s counterintuitive, I know, but it’s actually working. So. So we go through a series and it’ll be focusing on the breath. Then we have the next stage would be focusing on an impure object, a rock, a plant, anything where we bring in. That’s the support. The support is the impure object to train our mind. We have our eyes open. Then the next one is the pure object. For us. It will be a picture of our teacher or a Buddha, a statue or whatever. And we use that. And so what we’re doing is we’re going gradually, going through schemata, using increasingly more activating objects as a support so that we can settle our mind with these more activating supports. So we look at an object. Well, we’ve got our eyes open, you know, and then now we’re looking at a picture of our teacher. Now, if we have loving oh, my teacher, oh, I love you know now your mind’s really going crazy, you know. And then we do sounds so then we will do some little with sounds because of course that’s going to make your mind move and we get to keep bring our mind back and stabilize it. We do it with smells. We do it with taste. We do it with touch, and then we end by doing some visualization. Samata So we’re really, really laying the groundwork for, for some stability in the mind, you know, and the resting mind being able to because for the rest of your life practicing Buddhism, you will be going back to Sharma to some version of Sharma to and because it’s needed, because that’s the place in which you settle. When you when something when you contemplate something and get a realization, then you rest in that, you know. And so then so so then we have the transition from the Hindu on a path which turns it’s transitions into the Mahayana in the transition point, we start to look at the progressive stages on meditation, analytical meditation. So there is in the practice path, there is going through the stages of analytical meditation, which is the dream getting you into vipassana, where you start to look at your mind and then and then we have for the Mahayana path, we have looking at the slogans, which is low practice. And then we also have the 37 practices of a bodhisattva and we have the four mindfulness is the four measurables and so all in the Mahayana, these are all teachings that came in the second turning of the wheel, because we’re now doing things for the benefit of all sentient beings, which is what gets introduced in that in the Hinata. If I look at the or in the Hindu, in the Mahayana and the Hindi Anna, we’re really looking at ourself, you know, it’s quite self-focused in the Mahayana. We’re now including all sentient beings, you know, we’ve now expanded out. So we’re doing the practices that open our heart, that expand us out, that are able to do things and benefits. So Tanglin breath is taught there, you know, all all of these are there. So there will be practices where we will contemplate combined with schemata. So beginning in the end, so that that takes us up to the so we have the Mahayana teachings in there and the Mahayana practices. And then that takes us to Vajrayana. And the entrance to Australiana is it means that you need to be accepted by a lineage teacher because you need to receive a empowerments, you know, and, and lungs. And you also the entrance into that is, are what we call the neutral path. And, and that’s the path of devotion on is the path of devotion. So all this work you’re doing here is getting you to the path of devotion. And what are we devoted to, you know, as representing these ordinances? You’re not worshiping me. Know, don’t put that on me, you know. You know, we’re devoted to the teacher, the Buddha and the and our current guru, because it’s only through our teacher that we can actually get the teachings. Like, you know, you put my Western mind on some of those teachings and I have a field day. I will interpret them in my distorted way. I need somebody who is going to cut through my distortions and teach the the lineage teachings in a way that is authentic and true to Buddha, true to the to the lineage masters. And so that’s my my devotion to him and my devotion to the Dharma as seeing the Dharma as the path for me in order to realize, love my loving kindness, joy, compassion, awakening. You know, maybe I’ll be enlightened in this lifetime. I have moments like this and and, you know, I have I have devotion to the to the sangha, but not only the sangha that’s gone past all the lineage masters of the past that have brought in their commentaries and their and their practices for us to use. But also my my current saga, which teaches me and supports me and is there for me, you know, and so, so all, all of that is laid out in a very beautiful path that’s very clear. And he’s translated it into the way in which we can understand it. And what I mean is he’ll use Western examples. Rinpoche, just as an aside, loves the Rolling Stones, so a lot of his examples will be references to the Rolling Stones. He will also use references to current movies and also to TV shows. And and he makes the Buddhism so living because he’s bringing in the he says, isn’t that beautiful? You know, and, you know, when he he sees something and he’ll and I’ll go, what? And you’ll go, well, that’s that’s this teaching. And I go, oh, my God, it is. You know, he so sees the guru everywhere and and through his eyes. He helps us see the teachings and the guru everywhere he sees. So we can see the Buddhist teachings everywhere. And he does that through his teachings because he makes them very real, you know. So he’ll use whatever’s happening in the world. Like, you know, when the pandemic started, he came on and we had we had a weekend with him and he came on, isn’t this wonderful? Isn’t the pandemic so beautiful? And you can sort of see some faces quite like, what the heck is this? We are now in retreat. The pandemic is a retreat for us. We don’t have to go anywhere. We’re just at home. We get to practice and study, you know. So we were all laughing, you know, and I thought, Oh, yeah, that’s true. It’s. And what has been true never have we been exposed to so many teachings through the pandemic. You know, on Zoom, never have I been able to do some of the practices that I can’t do because I’m not around senior students. But we’re doing them on, on, on Zoom. And it’s been such a gift for me to have that contact. So.

Refuge

It was pain and suffering that actually motivated me at the first half of my life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I didn’t want to live feeling the way I live. I didn’t want to live suicidal. I didn’t want to live drunk. I didn’t want to live feeling like crap all the time. I didn’t want to live that way. Yeah, I mean, that my, my, my suffering is actually what what my was my motivation to, to move forward. Yeah. Yeah. Which is what the Buddha taught. Definitely. That’s, that’s why we take refuge. Yeah. You know, I’m done. I’m done. Okay, you. I’ll take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha because I am done. Nothing else has worked. Okay? And that I mean, that’s really it, you know. And I mean, that’s actually the first step in the in the 12 steps. So I’ve sort of did it in layers. You know, 12 steps is, you know, like I’m done with drinking and I’m powerless over alcohol. My life’s become unmanageable. That’s it. I’m done. You don’t ever take the first step again unless you go out and drink again. You don’t take that first step again. Once you take refuge, you don’t take refuge again like it’s you. You’ve done. You’re you’re now on board. You’re now committed, you know. Yeah. There’s a sense of trust, you know, and and I don’t know about you, but I really didn’t trust a lot growing up. I didn’t come from an environment where you could trust the environment at all. And and I think, you know, not taking refuge with Gershon back in the late nineties when I had the opportunity was wise because there’s a certain amount of trust that I realized when I did it in 2005 with Rinpoche, I had I had a measure of trust I’d never had before. And I’m trying to articulate what that means, actually. You know, it’s sort of like I trust myself. Okay, so there was a sort of an idea that I trust myself. I have some kind of belief in myself or trust in myself that that’s happened through the process of of reading and having experiences and all the experiences I had, you know, that led to I have a trust in myself. And what does that mean? Well, it means that I know myself enough that I can now discern something that is good for me and not good for me. In simplest terms, I couldn’t do that first half my life. I really couldn’t. It was sort of like, Oh, you say it’s good, okay, I’m in Oak or everybody in the world says, That’s good, okay, I’m in, you know. And I didn’t have a sense of my own, my own sense of trusting myself, of what is right or for me, you know. And so I think going through our suffering and going through all of the city, searching, searching and seeking that we do, there is a place where and it’s even in the teaching. Buddha said that take your time, don’t pick a lineage, don’t pick a teacher, don’t jump in, take your time, be certain. No, discern. You know there’s a bunch of language that gets used, but I’ll put it down to trust. So. So I was learning to trust myself. And and then there was also the element of, of who can I trust as well, like out there, you know, like and so as I as I got familiar, as I had teachings from from Empeché and I read Pamela’s book and I like there was a sense of trust in the teachings that were coming true as being those feel true to me. They, they hit a mark and here I don’t I I’m pointing in my heart because it felt like that, you know, it’s sort of like they hit a mark of of some kind of truth, whatever truth is. I don’t even know what truth is. Tell you the truth, but. Oh, it hit something in there that was right, because I was trusting myself more. I was starting to notice these things that felt sort of right. They sort of went in and went, Oh, this feels sort of good. This feels sort of right. And so then I was building up a trust in teachers of what they were saying or what I was reading. And so that was a slow process, actually. It didn’t happen overnight. I mean, Garston was back in the nineties, I took refuge in 2005, you know, and plus all the other things I’ve been doing, reading the Bible and going to church. And also I had other spiritual paths which I haven’t talked about. I mean, I had the path work, which is also a spiritual path, which is channel material. I also am another teacher I work with and I’ve teaches his I use his stuff when I teach my healing school is h almost the diamond approach aligns totally with Buddhism, but I was introduced to that before I got into Buddhism. Even so, part work, all of that. So all of these teachings were lining up, you know. Do they go over it in the same way? Nope. Practices are all different, but there’s something about the message. The message hit a mark and I started to go, Oh, that’s I see the 12 steps in the path work. I see the I see the path work in the 12 steps. I see all this work over here. I see I started to cross reference is doing a cross referencing if you like and seeing oh these there’s there’s these things getting woven through. I can trust those things. So I trust myself. And now I’m trusting all of these things that are woven through all of these teachings. I’m attracted to that brought me to the place of finally taking refuge because it felt to me for my path that Buddhist teachings were just all of it. Like like it’s so inclusive, you know, you can just see everything in it that that I was willing to say, Yep, I’ll jump in all now take refuge, you know. But without going through all of that, I couldn’t have taken refuge. You know, and I didn’t take refuge with Ghassan because I don’t even know what the hell what the heck that was. But, you know, I realized that I was I had to do what Buddha says. Actually. Take your time, explore, see what works. You know, I work with a woman right now who’s a devout Catholic, and we’re always comparing notes, just going, Oh, my God, that sounds like Catholicism. I said, Oh, that sounds like Buddhism, you know? And it’s just sort of so what what I what I enjoy now is the dance with with all of these different people, Mennonites and all different people, Jewish people, everyone in my life where we have this commonality because I see that thread and when I see that thread and everything, my trust increases and it reinforces my refuge.

Professional Impact

Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, interestingly enough, it’s actually the energy healing that has supported the Vajrayana path. Because suppose you’re on a path, you’re dealing with energy. It’s a path of where you are dealing with stuff beyond the physical all the time. And so when I got to the Vajrayana path and I went, I just went, well, who? Okay, that’s what I’ve been waiting. I’ve been doing the training for the Olympics during the Olympics or otherwise. We’re on a path. And all my energy work and training, that’s where this has got me to. So, you know, I really it’s an amazing, you know, way that fits. But I, you know, if I look at doing, you know, energy work and healing first and foremost, it is if you think about it, it is it is built on the tenet of loving acceptance of what’s here now, of whatever is arising in the moment. So if I’m if I’ve got my hands on somebody and I’m and I’m, you know, allowing the energy to to go, I am not forcing I am not making something happening. I have to relax. That’s the most you’re on a path if you’re struggling, if you’re forcing, you’re not going to go anywhere in the vows. You’re on a path eventually. On a path is about relaxing and allowing and being with what’s everything, anything that’s arising, being with it. It is it is all an expression of ultimate reality. So you know that in order to be, you know, to do the healing work, it’s not about separating. It’s not about exclusivity. It’s not about I’m doing this to you and aren’t I one wonderful healer? It’s not about, you know, I’m the only one with wisdom here. It’s like, no, I’m working with you. And you have wisdom. You have Buddha nature. I didn’t know that at the time, but when I was starting was like, No, you have enormous wisdom. I have a wisdom. Our wisdom is coming together. Can I support that? When even though you’re not ready to support it yet, you’re not ready to see that? You’re not ready to be with it? Maybe. But I am. Can I do that? Can I be with you in that place so that you are so whatever wants to come to fruition can come to fruition. And so the healing journey is about that. And, and a lot of what happens in healing work is people get into playing doctor, well, I’m going to fix you, you know, or people will finish the healing with me and they’ll say, So what did you get? And I go, Well, what did you get? I’m always my journey with my healing clients is always about empowering them, always about getting them to trust themselves, to know what’s going on inside, to not hand their power over to me, to not look to me as the person who is fixing everything I am with you as represents with me on my journey. You know I am with you on this journey and I can hold the things that you can’t hold room for shaken hold the things that I can’t hold until I can hold them right. I So that that’s the parallel for me that I’ve learned. But you know, I, I can hold these things, I can wholly hold these things for you to the amount that I’ve done the work on myself. So I have to keep working with my observations, my habitual tendencies, my judgments, my criticisms and clearing that so that, so that I can be there for yours when they arrive and be with them so that they can move. Because it really is a letting go process all the time, as the boundary on a path is about. So, you know, it’s a letting go. It’s not about anything other than that. So in that in that way, it was something so foreign to me. I had never done anything like that before to be able to sink in and connect so intimately with another human being in a way, and also to not separate, to not say, Oh, this is your stuff, it’s not mine. But to say, you know, this is ours. We are one, we are all interdependent. I was I was learning all the Buddhist teachings in my healing work, but I didn’t know what that I was, you know, and so, you know, that. And then and then combined with my previous earlier training, you know, as a clinical criminologist, the psychotherapy part, then I started to work with people because a lot of what I started to realize then as I got more into Buddhism is it’s the mind. The mind is the issue here. You know, and the habitual tendencies that are there. And so as so then that allowed me to do some healing work and might bring things to the surface for people. Then they were would be clearer and they could look at something and then we would look at, well what, what’s, what’s the relationship with the mind. And then they’d start to make the connection with Oh, I think this and my body tightens up. I can’t breathe. I’m going to a panic attack. Oh, there’s a relationship between how I’m thinking and what’s going on. My body is not interesting that CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, all of the psychological world I think is hijacked Buddhism. So it’s like but it’s just so I’ll use the language of psychotherapy. If I have somebody there who’s who is Buddhist or who’s interested in Buddhism, I might I might translate that. I might translate things that they’re doing into the Buddhist language because they’re studying it now. I have people from different religions, so I have somebody who’s Seventh Day Adventist or Mennonite and and was afraid to come and see me because she heard I was Buddhist. And so what happened has happened there is our journey has been that that’s what our journey has been. She she’s got a very traumatic background, horrendous background and addictions and all kinds of stuff. But our way in was through finding the commonality between her path and my path and in finding the commonality of our paths she trusted and then let go. And then we’ve been doing all this beautiful work on her trauma and and helping that to transform. So we used our spiritual path to find a connection and a trust. And, and now she’s just so excited to see what would Buddhism think about this, you know? And so, like, that’s, you know, delightful. I have Jewish peoples the same way, you know. And so a lot of times what will come up is people people are dabbling everywhere, you know, and and and particularly people who are suffering. They’ve dabbled. So they bring their dabbling. Zen. And one of the things that I think that I do is I make sense of the dabbling. I’m able to give it a context and I don’t take them away from where they’re dabbled. If it’s a Catholic religion or or Muslim or it doesn’t matter to me or or indigenous cultures, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m able to to bring a context to it, you know. And so that has a container. And if they have a container for that that they can trust, have some sense of trust and an appreciation, then they can heal. Their wisdom comes forward because we all have wisdom. So as as a healer, psychotherapist, I believe 100% in the wisdom of the person who’s sitting in front of me, you know, what do I know? I’m playing detective with them, you know, trying to get at that. Where’s where’s that wisdom? Where is it going to come out? How are we going to get that going? I mean, that’s why I’m so lucky to be in the job I’m in. Really? Yeah.

Sangha Development

Oh, boy. I mean, this is ongoing discussions, right? Ongoing at the directors level. We’re talking we’re sharing this, you know, directors of different our different songs. And and it’s voluntary, right? So you’re dealing with a voluntary organization and you’ve got limited time resources of people, you know. So, you know, this is I think this is just an ongoing piece here. So I can give I’ll give you an example. One of our Canadian songs are are three really active Canadian songs. There’s we have one in Halifax. I’m not sure how active it is with my we have Montreal. Toronto and Vancouver are very different. Okay. So out in out in Vancouver, you’ve got we all own our centers by the way, so we’re not renting. So that’s unique. Also, we, we actually own our centers, but in Vancouver the resident lama’s there. So Lama often lives there. So there is a lama that’s available all the time and he leads many teachings and practices and it that’s his full time job. Okay, so that makes a difference. They have a very large membership out there, very large community. Um, it’s also on the West Coast, which has a much larger percentage of Buddhists. It also ricochet is located in Seattle, which is right across the water. So it attracts a lot of people there, you know, the same as in Seattle. Big sangha. Okay. Because there’s lamas, resident lamas. We have a resident lama in Colorado as well, that sangha there, which is a very large sangha. So I think having a resident lama attracts because Westerners expect to see that when they walk into a center, whereas the lama, you know, and so that goes on in Vancouver now he visits us, you know, and teaches, but he’s not resident. We don’t have a resident lama in Toronto. So, um, now I look at Montreal, I’m just going to jump to Montreal. Montreal has a vibrant French community and, and people who are not all people but a good portion who are retired and they run lots of programs. So they’re doing a lot of they’ve they’ve translated the English into French. So they’ve had a whole group of people doing translations and very excited about that. So that I think it really engage the community and they offer lots of study and practices in French. So they’ve hit a niche I think, in Montreal. Okay. And plus the director there is great. Luis is fantastic. It’s been in as maybe a bit longer than I have in Toronto. But, you know, just really and her sister was director before that. So it’s a family affair, but so it’s there. So it’s really it’s really great now. Toronto, okay. We’re it’s it’s we have a unique situation in Toronto. And so that’s what I mean. Every song is going to be unique. We just a year before the pandemic, bought our center, so we moved from a place we were renting, which is in a different part of the city to another part of the city which has an impact. You’ll lose people that way because of convenience or, you know, whatever. And and so then we were, you know, really focused a lot on finances and making sure that we could manage it and carry it and, you know, and look after it and look after the center, because now we’ve got a physical center and now we we have things that we have to be responsible for. And we now we have to clean out our other place. They had cleaners, do you know what I mean? It was like, so now we have things that we never had to worry about. So now we’re we’re focused there. We did have a good what really brings people we notice to our center is offering classes. So offering introduction to Buddhism classes, which she’s got a really great package around that. And and then we also have our, our, our Saturday morning meditation practices which are open to the public. So we always offer those. They’re not closed at all. We do a variety of different ones that brings people in and that especially the study classes that has fed people into our organizations for us through study. We don’t have study classes going right now. First of all, we don’t have the manpower to do it. So you can facilitate a class when you’ve already gone through the class. So we’ve got lots of people have gone through the classes. We don’t have people who are comfortable doing it on Zoom. We don’t have people who are comfortable facilitating period. And and we have and so there’s it’s the same people who are facilitating this, the same with leading practices. It comes down to a small group of us. We’re doing the practices all the time because people are nervous, they’re scared, they’re uncomfortable, you know, for whatever their observations come off head on and stuff. So so we’re that’s affecting us right now, you know, that’s affecting us in terms of where is the energy of the song to go. Like, I always look at energy, you know, being a healer, you know. So I’m looking at where is our energy having to go right now? And our energy is having to go to maintain the physical structure through this, I set up the online for two and a half years now. I’ve been doing the online every Saturday morning, you know, and, and hooking up people who are coming in with ongoing study classes, which are being mostly run by out of Vancouver online because they’ve got the manpower. So now a lot of people from Toronto are actually hooked into into Vancouver for study. We don’t know how many people because they haven’t necessarily hooked in with us. So I don’t know what’s going to happen there. And so we are we are facing we’re facing a difficult situation right now because when in the fall we’re going back to in-person, we’ve got to set up for hybrid. I know people aren’t going to come in, they’re going to do the hybrid. And and that’s going to be challenging because it’s going to be a small group of us who are going to be doing the in-person all the time and then putting out the energy. Now, if I look at the people who are available to who are doing some of the work we’re working, we’ve got a couple who are retired. But if we don’t, you know, we’re we’re actively working. And the younger the younger group that’s coming up are working and they’re trying to pay their bills in Toronto. Toronto’s the most expensive city in Canada. It’s next to New York, actually. So for young people to live in Toronto is very difficult. You have to have a really good job or be working a couple of jobs, you know, so so time becomes challenging. I’m not trying to even make an excuse. We also have, you know, Poles with the universities. We’re down. We’re sort of in the East End downtown. But the universities all offer meditation and Buddhist courses. And so you find a lot of the young people are involved in it through that. So they can go from class and go to the meditation center and do a meditation like Easy Peasy. They don’t have to get on a bus so something can travel to the center. So if you don’t really have anything that would pull you in, you’re not you’re not going to do it. You’re going to go where it’s convenient, you know. And so that I think those are just common everyday problems for any organization today is people are looking for convenience. Zoom has been convenient. They’re looking for, you know, things that don’t require a lot, especially for younger people, a lot of commitment they can give a little bit and, you know, dabble. They’re dabbling a lot of dabbling going on. And and that’s okay because that’s part of the journey. So that takes me back to what I noticed within the song. What I notice over the course of working, being in my Sangha is that I wasn’t too interested in being involved in Sangha activities, in doing any administration stuff. I was just I was doing my practice, I was doing my study, I was doing my practice. I don’t want to I don’t want to help with anything. You know, I’m doing my practice in my study. Don’t you know that? That takes a lot of time, you know, and but there was a moment and I’m trying to think of when the moment was it’s probably devotion. When I entered the first year on the path, there was something about there was a a moment where no, it was probably towards the end of the Mahayana path. There was a moment when I know I need to step in here. I want to step in here. Now, this isn’t an obligation. No, I will make the time to do this. I want to do this. I don’t know how to capture that, because I’ve watched that with everybody in our nothing, nothing. And then all of a sudden there’s a moment and there they are. I don’t if I could bottle that, I’d make a gazillion dollars with all the other songs I’m sure. But it’s there’s a moment of readiness. It’s, there’s a preparation that’s going on here, and that also has to be respected. And that preparation takes you to the point where, yeah, you’ll jump in with your whole body instead of just two feet. Yeah. You know, I don’t know, even if I answered your question, but it’s a it’s quite a struggle going back. We’re planning a big opening at the beginning of September. Liam is flying in. He’s going to do a teaching that weekend. We’re going to do some vows. I’m hoping that’s going to generate an energy where people will be excited to come back to the center. And we’ll we’ll get engaged and then we’ll bring in some of the other teachers will bring them in to do some teachings, like some of the senior meters in an hour, an international sangha. And because that tends to draw, but, you know, it’s manpower, really. I think it’s really manpower and woman power. You know, I I’m busy. I work Monday to Thursday. I work off until 830 at night, you know, and Friday is my day off and I need it, you know. And then we have our practice. And then, I mean, last night we had our daily practice that went for 3 hours, which I love purification practice, but it goes from 830 to 1130 because it starts on the West Coast. So we have to you know, it’s not late for them. So, so and those pop up all over the place. So trying to I think I think the you know what? I’m coming back to something that that we I think we started with when we first met even is being a lay person, being a householder how to find balance with all of this, that is. But you know what? That’s not a Buddhist problem. That’s a human problem. And when people say to me, you know, I can’t balance the Buddhist stuff, there’s too much. No, no, this is a human being problem, you know, and and so it’s it’s not a problem of Buddhism. And I need to really I need to be working on balance all the time. That’s my path of mindful activity, is how can I balance this? So if I use today as an example, I was getting called on to do all kinds of help because we’re doing our 24 hour birthday celebration for his birthday today. And so we’re a 24 hour Olympic practice traveling the world, 24 hours going around the world. Each song is taking a doing an hour. So we did ours at noon, but people were getting sick or people couldn’t do it and they were reaching out. I could have probably been doing it all day long. No, you know, and it has nothing to do with do I want to do that when I like to. That’s not balance. I will I will be there later tonight for the end, you know, for the extended practice. But no, I have other things. After we meet, I’m going to meet with a sponsor of mine and we’re going to have coffee and talk. So I’m bringing in that part of my life this morning. I did some work around my with my daughter, like I was on the phone with my daughter, you know, her being her body sort of a self. I’m so excited about, you know, cutting through her observations around wanting revenge, you know, which is great, and getting to enjoy it, enjoy that and sure that, you know, and then and then meeting with you, you know, this was why this was important for me to meet with you is because this is important to me. This, this, this, this thing. What you’re doing is essential to me. It’s essential to who I am. I want people to be able to live the Buddhist path however way they’re going to do it. And that’s what I do in my psychotherapy practice. It’s what I do with my kids. That’s what I want them. I want them to be able to live it in whatever way they need to live it. And so this is important. And so it’s balance is important. I could be doing teachings every night of the week. I’m not doing those. I’m not going on the computer all weekend long. I’m on it all week. I need balance. I get out, I go for a walk, I go see friends, I go see my family. It’s about balance. What is important? How do you balance that in the 12 steps? The 10th step of the of the 12 steps is is about maintaining daily emotional balance. That’s what it’s about. And if you don’t maintain your daily emotional balance, you’ll go off the rails. In Buddhism, your observations and habitual tendencies will go crazy in in the addiction world. The addictions will start to come up, you know, whatever you want to call them. They’re just different words to describe the same thing, you know, so so as a householder, if something’s important to you, you find a way to do it, but you do it in balance. The Buddhist path is not about making you suffer more. It’s about relieving your suffering. So if you’re on the Buddhist path and you’re making yourself suffer more like, What are you doing? You know, there’s lots of examples of that. People spend their fortune following the Buddhist path and then they’re broke. Well, no, Buddha didn’t say do Buddhism, so you can be broke. You still have to pay your bills and eat and you know, then say don’t have a family and don’t spend some time with your family. You know, like, it’s it’s a it’s a human thing to find balance.

Fruit of practice

The clarity and the change in my life and how I lived my life and how I view life and how I interact with people. That’s the proof that it’s working. It’s not checking off boxes. We have boxes to check. I gave up the room to say if he sees this. Oh, my God. I gave up the checked boxes because a while ago. But we do have checked boxes, you know, so we can monitor our path. But I found myself getting caught up in the check boxes, and I didn’t want that because really the proof for me is how am I living my life? And I think about I think about my mother, you know, for example, my mother, who, you know, was a very difficult, angry, bitter woman, alienated everybody. You know, it was very hard to love her. And as she was, she had a stroke deep in her head in the in 2014. And I would go to the hospital after work every day. And and spend time with her. And and she was in her habitual tendency during that time. That’s what the doctor said to me. So any any words or any movements were actually not conscious. They were just the had her habitual tendencies coming out. So I was reliving my childhood with her because she was yelling and screaming at me, calling me names, treating me awful. And and I the doctor didn’t say was habitual tendencies, but I realized, oh, this is just habitual tendencies. And that allowed me just that awareness and my practice and Buddhism allowed me to sit with her in no matter what state she was in, and to open my heart to her, even when she had means stuff coming out of her mouth. This just. It was just. It wasn’t anything. It wasn’t anything. I don’t know how else to describe it. It just sort of went out and poof, it didn’t land anywhere. There was nowhere for it to land because, you know, if it landed, I go back to the picture of Bhutan under the body tree with the the the marrow sending the the spirit is and they turn to flowers. I’m not saying it was I was like that. I don’t want to keep equating myself to Buddha, but those are my examples. Like I think I don’t know how else to describe it, you know, that would come at me and it would be like it would it would float away. It wouldn’t it wouldn’t it wouldn’t close my heart. And so when my mother eventually died, she died with me loving her. And I never thought I would ever get to that place. How is that going to be possible with this angry, bitter, difficult woman where I kept closing my heart up, where I kept protecting myself and I didn’t have to. There was no self to protect at that point. It was just there is just loving kindness there. And that would be an example, you know, of seeing, oh, this is working, you know, or I look at I look at my relationship with my, my husband, my ex, being able to have the aspiration to want to be in a loving, kind relationship with him. Because we have three children that we shared together, and I have that with him today from my side, I can’t speak for him, but he’s remarried his wife. I remember going to our daughter’s engagement party and I hadn’t seen his his half of the family, you know, since we’d separated. So it was quite some time and and they were all sort of slinking in, you know, and they’d go up to my kids and go, Is your mum here? Yeah. Is is your dad’s, you know, his wife here? Yeah. Is everything okay? Yeah. And they walked in and she and I are in the corner laughing and enjoying each other’s company. And I think that’s it. I know that that came from me. I know that I initiated a lot of it. I know I held that aspiration. I kept my heart open. I kept, you know, welcoming that and and doing that over and over again as a way of my own practice. That was my practice because I didn’t want to go through the rest of my life with with that kind of angst. And I want my kids to have it or anybody that would be around us to experience that. So that was the proof of of the change, you know, and and I’m so grateful for that. And I’m grateful because my kids, as my kids said to me, we never worry if we’re going to do something. We just invite everybody. And it’s no big deal. And that’s that’s my Buddhist path. That’s that’s the practice. That’s the path of mindful activity. That’s taking it off the cushion and seeing it working in my everyday life, you know, with, with other difficult situations, the same, the same thing, you know. So I that’s that’s what we have to be able to get to. We have to be able to get to not not looking for outside validation to tell us, oh, you’re doing a good job. We see inside being able to realize, oh, this is I’m changing. I handled that differently. I’m responding differently. I like who I am. I like how this feels, you know, I have I have people who in my my that I know who are anti-vaxxers and have been, you know, received a lot of hate towards them and and are very cautious and afraid. And and and I it’s wonderful being with them because I can I can include that. I don’t have to I don’t have to say you’re wrong. You’re right. Like, I don’t have to judge that. I don’t have to put concepts. It’s just and and one of the things is that I’ve feedback I’ve received is I feel so free. I’m free. Well, yeah, because there’s space here for everything. There can be space for you as an anti-vaxxer. You know, you can be here. That’s okay. You know, I think. I think that’s really where joy lies. You know, it’s just, um. I find joy in this path in so many different ways. Joy and being able to realize that I don’t have to defend against anything and. And I can relax into things and keep my heart open. Joy and knowing that I can be loving and accepting of what what is which is such a great gift and and joy. This is going to sound strange, maybe, but joy, when I catch my mind doing its thing and I have to I have to talk about this because this is this was one of the most joyful days of my I shouldn’t say the most joyful days, but it was a joyful day in my life. We had we were having the trees. We there’d been a big storm up at our log home. And so some of the trees were damaged. So we had guys coming in to remove the trees. And so I was coming home from work and I was driving down. We had a long, long driveway down and there was a clearing where you could see the log home, like as you’re driving along the driveway. So I came to that and the clearing was there and I watched my mind put the tree that had already been cut down, put it back there. I watched it. Put the tree there, and I started laughing my head off. I couldn’t stop laughing because I actually caught my mind projecting on to onto that spot and because there was no actual object there for it to cling to, it just dissolved away. And I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the property watching that happen. And it was hilarious. And I couldn’t stop laughing. And it was it was that kind of thing. Oh, I caught you. I like when I catch my my grandson doing something he’s not supposed to. And he says I didn’t do it. And meanwhile, he’s covered in whatever he was doing. Right. And, you know, you’re laughing. It’s sort of like I catch you, you know? I don’t know. It sounds weird, but that’s a pretty joy for I’m catching myself doing what my mind does, which gets us all into trouble. Projecting, you know, projecting, you know? Yeah, yeah. It’s the jester. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The joy of the party jester. Yeah. That’s a great way to put it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I really appreciate you. Sure. Sharing that aspect because I think.

Foundations on path

So in Buddhism, that’s that’s probably one of the hardest things, right, is maintaining motivation. Yeah, right. And, you know, I mean, that’s where you have the common preliminaries are are designed to keep our motivation upright, you know, the preciousness of human birth and impermanent, impermanence and karma and things, you know, those, but those that came later as a motivation. For me, that was not a motivation, didn’t keep the motivation going for me at the beginning. Clearly, what what I think, to be perfectly honest with you, when I was reading the teachings and of course I was reading Pema Chödrön too, in the late 90, the late nineties and and what what was happening there when I was reading the intellectual stuff is that, you know, the light bulbs were going off. Oh well. And what the light bulbs are for me as they, as I would say they are in my psychotherapy practice with my clients as well is it was a reframing of how I was looking at the world. So so the, the study or the reading was reframing. And I see that with my clients. I see that with a lot of people I know who love the Buddhist stuff. Oh, my God. I never thought of looking at it that way or considering that or seeing it through those eyes. And so I think reframing starts something, you know, so it starts us looking through different eyes. Our perceptions start to shift, you know, in, in, in the 12 step, I’m going to jump back and forth probably between 12 step and this. But in the 12 step we often talk about it as being a disease of perception. And when you’re going through the 12 step program, it’s changing your perceptions of your self and others and the world. Well, Buddhism is exactly like that. You start to read some of the wonderful books from now on. Pema Chödrön, your other, you know, North American books that we’ve received, you know, on the on the Buddhist teachings, it’s like they’re like, Oh, wow, this is amazing. So I think that’s important at the beginning, the reframing. But the danger with that is and, you know, I’m probably I’m going to sound arrogant here, I hope I don’t. But is that we think in in the Western world, we grew up with all the self-help books. So we believe because I know therefore I am. No, no, that doesn’t work that way, you know. And so I read all this stuff. So I get it. I get it. No, you only get it in one way. That’s not it. And and how, you know, you haven’t got it is because know it’s like I’m hope I’m not jumping here, but it’s like people where we talk about people go to church on Sunday and they get it and then the other six days of the week, they’re lying and cheating or doing whatever they do. It’s human beings, right? We do our human beingness and but on Sunday we’re good, you know, it’s sort of like that. We read we read the Buddhist stuff and we and we love the concepts and we love the teachings, and then we grow up. But we’re actually not living from that. We’re not acting from that place. And the place that’s missing here is the practice. Absolutely. You have to practice Buddha. His teaching was, you know, a bird does not fly with one wing. You need the two wings, practice and study to fly. And so I think what what gets missed and what is lacking for people that that I see is the lack of practice. For me that was the turning point for me is getting into a regular practice. You know, Rinpoche gave us very clear instructions. He never said we were leading up to an hour a day, but he never said, you have to do an hour a day. What he always said to us, get off the cushion while you’re still enjoying it. Don’t sit until you’re in pain and agony because you won’t go back the next day. You’ll only go back to something that you’re enjoying. So I remember that teaching from him, I thought that was brilliant. And so I always made a point of making sure that when I went to the cushion, I was enjoying it and I got off the cushion while I was enjoying it. So that that helped me to keep going back and back and back and then building it up and building up my ability to be on the cushion. And then when I also started to realize the connection between the mind and the body, much more so I mean, in my healing work and all the the work I do with the body, I knew it, but I knew it. I didn’t know it until I knew it, you know, not to say it, but as my mind relaxed, my body relaxed and I could sit longer. So as my mind let go through meditation practices, my body let go. And so it just naturally I could sit longer and and that became and so then the sitting practice along with the study really moved me and it was like and then what would happen is I started to notice that if I didn’t sit, my day was off. So it’s like we almost have to be be made to be able to make the connection. We have to be able to feel it. In other words, the direct experience needs to have an impact. If we don’t sit long enough so that we have the experience that it’s benefiting us, that’s that’s the that’s a problem. And and so we got to get to that point. You know, I often describe it as building up the critical mass. You know, I think it’s this office pushing the the rock up the mountain, right? Most people give up just before they get to the top of the mountain. If only you could tell them, no, keep going. You’re almost at the top. And then it’s going to be really easy because it’s going to go this. But it’s like, you know, it gets you know, we’ve got to keep building up that critical mass of that ability and ability. And then and then it just becomes part of your beingness, you know, if you like. It’s not it’s something that I would never not think to do when after my husband and I separated, I was with another person for 15 years who actually came into Buddhism but wasn’t a Buddhist, but was on a path for us, on a spiritual path. And I get up in the morning and head right into the meditation room, and he would never get up. He’d stay in bed, he’d never get up and go to the meditation room, because I often hear people say, Well, my partner isn’t doing it, you know, or nobody in my family is doing it. And, you know, so it’s hard to go. I don’t know, once the motivation is cultivated, once that the practice is cultivated there and you realize the benefit of it, you just get up and do it. It’s not an obligation. It’s not an effort there’s no effort in. It becomes effortless, you know, and so that I don’t know how to tell somebody to do that, because I think that’s our own individual journeys. But I would say that that’s what you want to work up to. And when I have my clients starting with meditation and stuff like that, I often they say, Oh, this is hard. I said, okay. So and I often talk to them just like when they talk to us, you know, if, if is there a point when it gets too uncomfortable? Yeah. Well, then please stop. Well, yeah, but I haven’t put in so many hours or so many minutes or whatever. I said, don’t worry about it. It’s not about that. You know, you’re not you won’t do something unless you get some kind of reap, some kind of benefit. You know, that’s to be a benefit. I do it. I mean, I think there’s a quote from from Buddha. I’ve got it up there on one of the cards somewhere on my desk that I read it every once in a while and it says, you know, you know, take these practices and go and work with them. You know, just go and practice. And if they don’t work, throw them in the garbage, you know, like Buddha never said, Well, you have to keep doing them, whether you like it or not. You know, he provided is somebody said 84,000 different practices. We got a lot of choice, you know, you know, we don’t have to stay stuck doing something that’s miserable and easy because look look what I’m doing when I say that I’m tightening up. Look, it’s not about tightening up. It’s by letting go. It’s about opening. And in the in the opening, one of the things I’ve started to realize, and this is where the motivation comes that you’re talking about as I’ve relaxed and as I’ve opened. Okay, then, then I’m, I’m more connected here. And naturally what arises is love. Naturally what arises is kindness and joy. It naturally arises in that relaxed, open place. And it’s not there when I’m like this. Does that look lovely? Very loving. But you know, when when you are in that relaxed, relaxed place, love and joy and compassion can arise. And and to move from that place is something like I’ve never experienced before. It’s quite inexpressible. It’s not the attached love. Like I’m falling in love with somebody and I want them. And then it, it, it I guess a moment I would describe a moment I had of thought it was the house I owned with the man that I lived with after my separation or my divorce from my husband. We had a log home in a forest and it was 160 year old log home that had been taken from Quebec and rebuilt on this property. We had seven acres surrounded by 50 other acres and a creek and everything. So we built, you know, hiking, passed through through the forest and stuff. And I remember walking through the forest, I finished meditating and I and I went out to walk on one of the paths. And I remember, I remember I was walking and everything was so vivid and so clear and I was filled with so much love. It was like it was like an experience I’ve never had, never experienced before in my life. And I thought, Oh, this is the natural state that we have. You know, the man that I loved is not in front of me right now. I wasn’t even thinking about him. My kids weren’t around too. I wasn’t even thinking about people or things that I love were not anywhere around me in that moment. They weren’t in my mind. I was just clear and peaceful and just walking and breathing and being. And I was in love or or loving or I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe it. And I thought, oh, this is this is it. There’s no effort in it. We don’t have to go figure out how to love somebody or or how to be loving kind. We don’t really have to. We are when all this other stuff drops away. And so when you practice and you start to have those experiences, those start to motivate you. Oh, okay. So I just keep doing these things and this will keep happening more and more frequently. And and it has it has absolutely just been more frequent and more frequent. And then and then, of course, with the the later practices in Vajrayana, there’s built in motivations for us. You know, we do certain certain practices that remind us of the precious human person and life is short and things like that. So that if our motivation starts to wane, you know, we get reminded before I go into that time, something else came up to me as you were talking. I was just thinking that in the beginning what really is helpful is to meditate in a group because you have the energy of the group that supports you so. So trying to do it on your own at the beginning is that’s hard to get the critical mass up. So I would I would emphasize that. So any opportunity you have to be able to meditate with a group of people, you know, whether it’s a sangha you join or whether you’re getting together with a group, it’s it’s essential because that really is helpful in terms of moving that along so that you can sit on your own. So it makes it easier. So I just want to, I just wanted to put that in. And Ricochet often stresses that as well, you know, and that’s why we have sagas. That’s why the community the community is the support for the practice primarily, you know, and so, you know. Yeah. So I would say that to people, you know, find people to meditate with and I will do that. Some of our newcomers, I will that are really struggling and can’t get into some of our group meditations, all you know. So there’s some of us in our sangha do who do that? Not just me, but we will meet individually like 730 in the morning. I got one guy, I’ll get up and before he goes to work, we’ll sit on zoom and meditate together, you know, just to try and give a boost of support.

Family

If I if I look at my oldest daughter, my oldest daughter who took refuge, she’s taken her bodhisattva vows. She muchachos her teacher lama did the blessings at her wedding. Our Canadian lama lama often she she came. She basically she you know, the books were around. I think I think part of it was, you know, they read they read books. One of them actually here. Now then what? I’m thinking about it. Do you know the book, the four agreements? Yeah, I don’t. Girl, go to us. Okay. My, my. Both my daughters loved that when they were teenagers, I was lying around. They started to read it and went, Oh, my God, Mom, this is a great book, you know? And they were practicing it with their friends, right? They can all, you know. So he came to town and they were young, like they were really little. They in fact, they were the only kids at this thing. And so I got them tickets so that they could hear him and everybody pushed them right up to the front. So they were basically sitting at the front with him. So they were getting a transmission from him. He was like they were getting hit. My my youngest daughter was sort of falling asleep. She couldn’t stay awake. I said, don’t worry about it. It’s going in, you know. So. So there was that peace and there was my healing journey. Now, in order to be a healer, you really have to be in loving acceptance of what’s here. Now, if I’m giving a healing and I’m saying, Oh, this is your stuff coming up, I’m automatically separating. There is no healing going on. I have to be able to be with you wherever you are in order for a healing to happen. And so my kids loved healing work. I did healing on them. They loved it. They felt calm afterwards and everything. So my my middle daughter, I’ll jump to my middle daughter. Actually, I’m just going to let this flow the way it comes out. Okay. She was in grade seven at a girls private school in Toronto. Both my girls were at the school and it was bring your parents school so they could talk about the work they do. I was at Barbara Brennan still. I maybe was in second or third year, but I was working on people. So I was doing healings and I wasn’t doing psychotherapy so much, but it was healing work anyway. Kim said, Mom, I signed you up. You got to come in and do healing work. And I said, Really? And she said, Yes. So I went in and I had I had the girls there and I was doing exercises so they could feel healing and so that they could, you know, work with energy work. And they were all like getting it. Like they were all so excited. Like it was really fun. And I was really talking about being in loving acceptance and I was just talking about basic principles, you know, and, and I started with a meditation, actually. We did a little meditation at the beginning and all of that. And so my, my daughters were, I think, got engaged because of my healing work. They were really excited about that. And then, of course, that, you know, the readings around that and they wanted to read books around it. So any books that were in the house and were around, they were just picking up and reading books. Okay. So I think with Kristen, my oldest, Kim, Kim was sold. Kim loved it. Kim talked about it all the time. She has me do healings on her all the time. She Kim is my middle one. She went to traveled around the world when she graduated from university and was going into temples and she was meeting monks and she was getting teaching. She was like, Whoa, mom, this is all the stuff that that you do, you know and and pretty turned on by it and and has incorporated a lot of that into her everyday life and how she works and how she how she is in her job. And when I when I am with her, she’ll say, you know, do you remember when you taught me this? You know, this is really helpful because with my stuff today and or she’ll say, Mom, you taught me this. Why are you doing that? I’ve loved it because they’re coming back and saying, Mom, that’s not what you taught us, you know? So I, I stand corrected by them a lives. You have to have a lot of humility when you have kids, I have to tell you. And so so that’s been a gift. So so she’s taken what she needed. She hasn’t entered a path or anything, which she calls herself a spiritual person. Absolutely. She would, you know, but, you know, so she just tries to be it. Her motto is, I want to be the kindest person I can be. I want to work with kind people. I want to be kind. That’s her motto. Like it’s kindness. When she goes for an interview, a job interview, that’s what she puts out. She says, If I want to work with people, that’s what I’m looking for. You’re interviewing me. But I’m I want to see people. That’s that’s what she’s always said. So in terms of my daughter, my one daughter, Kim, the one who went on to get into involved in the Buddhist path, you know, basically became very was on an on a seeking path. Like she had some some things come up in in high school. I’m not going to really talk about too much. The details are not fair. But, you know, that led her on a path, her own suffering. Her suffering led her on a path of seeking and so she was doing all kinds of seeking and reading. And then when Lama came to town, lama dropped a came to town. She came for a weekend of teaching with a couple of her girlfriends and connected immediately with him. And and then every time he came to town, he stayed with her and he would say to me, she’s my sister. And they were very close. And and then so she started, you know, meditating as part of of also dealing with her her stuff. She just the path was just she just moved into it, came to retreats, saw room to say, you know, just all all the stuff started the path, you know, just reemphasize path. It was just natural for her. She did her body stuff about, you know, it just before the pandemic, the last time lama often was here. And I think we’re where it works for the two of us is I’m point I often point out to her where she’s being a body surfer. She’s going through a thing right now. They sold their house and they’ve sold their house to a family who are difficult, I have to put it very lightly. And so she’s she’s it’s been a struggle. And she said, I just want to do this and this like she wants, you know, revenge. She wants to, you know, do something. And and she said, but I’m not going to do that because that will hurt me and it will cause them harm and I’m going to do it. So she’s done the opposite. Every every inclination she has is she’s doing the opposite. So where she doesn’t want to be kind to them, she just got them a card and a plant to leave for them. She’s left them some extra things. They they nickeled and dimed them. And so she’s not she’s being generous. She’s doing she’s doing all of the parametres, you know, and also being a body surfer, like not not not not letting she’s seeing the obstacles come up. She’s seeing her habitual tendencies want to come up and she’s not going there. And what what she told me this morning, I’ve never been so happy in my life. And I said, I know what you’re talking about. She said, I’m happy not because the circumstances inside me have changed, but I’ve changed how I’m relating to them. And that’s my Buddhist path. And, and so we we we are like that with each other, you know. And if she gets a little bit off, I say something. If I get a little off, she’ll say something. And so we sort of do the dance together. And now my son is a different thing. He’s my youngest. And I think I had told you this when we were talking before he I would describe him as sort of more more of an oppositional kind of stance. That’s that’s what he likes, you know, you say. BLOCK He’ll say why you say no and he’ll say yes. And, you know, like that’s sort of his personality in the way is so he started embarked on a journey of studying all the things that I studied so he could argue with me. And I want to tell you, you know, I haven’t said this to his face. So if he ever sees this, you know, I hope he’s not. But he’s he’s a wonderful Buddhist person, actually, because he he will quote things to me. He will say things to me. I don’t want to be like that. He says, I’m like this, but I don’t want to be like this. That’s not kind or that’s not that’s not a good way. And he’ll he’ll words will come out of his mouth. And it sounds like the Dharma like like something he’s read, you know, he’s, he’s made it his own. He’s he goes on social media sites and, and looks for things that support that. So I think maybe sometimes he’s he’s he struggles like, don’t get me wrong, he’s he struggles. But he he also in in the Dharma. Um, what I’ll do is I’ll sit with him. What I do is I just offer, I just make offerings and I put him in my practices, you know. So I include him in my practice, especially when he, if he’s struggling in any way and and I and I make offerings, you know, if there’s anything that might be a benefit to him, I just offer that to him, you know, and I lead with nonjudgmental with him and and loving kindness and look for the good in him. And he’s got lots of good and that’s been sort of my journey with him. And I don’t know where he’s going to end up on his path. You know, he’s making some kind of a path for himself right now. He meditates in the morning. Well, he told me that the other day. Okay. Oh, he does, you know, some journaling, does some other things. You know what? I’m going okay. I can’t get too excited because I, I too then, you know, run away from it’s that my temper, my, my wahoo that’s going off inside of me, you know? So you deal with your kids, you know, and they’re all different, right? And they’re going to go the path that they need to go with whatever you’ve offered and and lived. And I have never I will never jam any anything down someone’s throat. I, I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe in promoting things. I believe in attraction. I believe in being the change you want to see in the world. I really love that I that’s important to me. All my kids know that phrase. Some of them, two of them. I’ve got them written on sticky notes for themselves. Be the change you want to see in the world, you know. So if I want people to be kind to me, I need to be kind, you know?

Devotion to teacher

Oh. How has my devotion expressed itself? Yeah. Yeah. No, really. You know, I have to tell you, like, I like the word devotion, but the heck out of me for a long, long time. Yeah, exactly. Oh, really, really. Bug me, you know? And then I would watch people and they would be. I’m this isn’t probably going to be kind, but it was really hard for me watching people go, oh, say, oh my God. Oh, you know, and sort of this worship kind of, um, do go gaga. I don’t know. I don’t know how else to describe it, but I never felt that I never felt that towards my teacher. I never felt that even towards Garcia. Garcia. All I knew was that he has this loving heart. And I want to. I want the loving heart, you know, that he has, you know, and and with with Paula. Sure. It’s been it’s been an interesting journey because for me, my devotion to him kept getting interrupted. And it got and this is my path. This is my stuff. I let people who I let people’s versions of of devotion be obstacles for me and in my development of my devotion to Rinpoche. And so when when things would arise in me naturally an impulse would arise naturally in me. Let’s say I’ll use I’ll use an example. Did I tell you about the banana bread example already? Oh, okay. Here’s my banana bread. So we can I was going to take refuge, so I was filled with joy. I was filled with anticipation. I knew I was taking refuge. I’d never met Rinpoche before. I was excited to meet him because I loved his his study classes. I loved everything I’ve been doing. And I want I want to meet this man, you know, and and I that the Friday night he had an opening teaching on the Friday night and it was great. And I rushed home and I said, I have to make organic banana bread for refreshing. And my my partner said, what? And I said, I ran out and got ingredients and I stayed up and made this beautiful loaf of banana bread. Now I make great banana bread. So I mean, my kids love my and most people love my banana bread. When I take it to the song, are they all did you bring your banana bread? So I mean, I do make good banana bread. I go nuts. But I, I was compelled like I had to make this. I don’t even know if he likes banana bread. I have not a clue. He might be allergic to it. For all I know, I had to make this so I wrap it up, I bring it and I go to somebody and I say, I made this for rent. Say, how do I get it to him? Why did you do that? I went, Oh, nuts. And then I went, Oh, I guess I’m too inside. I’m going, I guess I shouldn’t have done that. Well, I don’t know whether they’ll be time to give it to him, you know. Bah bah bah. And I got this sort of, like, weird looks from people, you know? And so then I’m. I’m being a bad girl. Oh, I’m not following the rules. I’m not supposed to do this. So I finally went to one last person, and I said, So what do you got there? And I said, Oh, I, I, you know, I didn’t want tellers and I made this for rent. And she said, Oh my God, go down the stairs, give it to him when he’s coming up the stairs. And he said, really? And she said, yeah. And so he’s coming up the stairs. Another teary moment. Here we go. And he’s coming up the stairs and he looks right at me and I say, I made this for you. And he took it out of my hands and he said, Thank you so much. And he just held my hands. And then he walked in and he gave it to his his assistant who took it and put it in his bag. I don’t know if he ate it. I don’t it doesn’t matter. I realized it didn’t matter. He received me. This was my offering. He received my offering and my offerings were getting tossed aside. If I listen to our ordinary human beings that we are with our judgments and our own stuff coming up and and I was able to take my offering. So that was my first taste, a little bit of that. And then and then I, you know, I wanted to go to Sangha Retreat and somebody said, oh, you don’t have the qualifications. You can’t go and da da da da da. Once again, it was an arising. I wanted to go and have a teaching with Rinpoche, so I didn’t go and I, I felt these obstacles there. My obstacles, my obstacles where I let other people interfere with my devotional impulses that are arising and I let them kill them. They’re not doing it on purpose. They’re there. They don’t know what they’re doing. This is my you know, and so I struggle with devotion. What is my relationship with pressure? You know, how how do I have a relationship with him? So what I started doing is I started my devotion, started getting directed more at his teachings through his study path and his practice path. And I started really appreciating the way he taught in his in his study classes, you know, in a way he instructions he gave for practice and I, I that became my devotion to him was through that not, not direct him but through him because I was afraid. And also, you have to remember that wherever we’re afraid of authority figures he would be classified as an authority figure in my ordinary mind. Then we’re going to have issues. You know, and I recognize that happening to me, that somehow he was being, you know, he was taking the place of my parents who were not great parents. You know, they did the best they could do, but it wasn’t what I needed, and I was afraid to take a chance on him. That was one of my big obstacles. So I’ll tell you what I discovered. So I did end up going to Sangha retreat the next year and and I had a lot of stuff come up for me as it does. It’s not a retreat. It’s like you got all this stuff’s coming up. And I went home and I thought, I’m really upset. I don’t know if I can stay here. I don’t know if I can stay in this saga. You know, I’m not sure because of some, you know, just regular sangha stuff. I realize now that it happened and all my stuff is coming up, but I don’t know. So I was sitting with it went on for months. Cassandra Retreat was in July by the time October hit, I thought, I’ve got to do something about this. Well, remember, she teaches in San Antonio every year where he did up until pandemic, the Treasury of Knowledge Retreat. So he he teaches that it’s a weekend in Texas San Antonio and and I was looking do or die here and I went okay I got a plane ticket. I can’t I still can’t believe I did this. I got a plane ticket and flew to San Antonio. Now I have a sister there. So I could you know, I flew in, she picked me up and I went. The retreat was outside of San Antonio. I went to the Treasury of Knowledge Retreat. I went to his assistant and I said, I have to see Rinpoche. And he said, We’re not doing interviews during this. This is just a short teaching. He’s not. He’s only here for two and a half days, not I said, I have to speak to Rinpoche. This is life and death. It’s actually what Rinpoche saw me at lunch and I went in. Oh, my God, I can’t even believe I did this. I took my chair. He was sitting in his chair. I took my chair and I went right up and I was touching his knees. That’s how close I was. I said, Rinpoche, this is serious. And he said, I know what’s what’s happening. So I told him about what I had experienced. And he looked at me. And for other people, this isn’t going to be a big deal for them. But he looked at me and he said, Thank you for bringing this to me. This is important. I’m going to go and reflect on this and contemplate. I want you to know that I’m so appreciative that you brought this to me. And then he said, Where did you come from? I said, Oh, I just flew down from Toronto because I wanted to tell you this. He said, You flew from Toronto to say this to me? And I said, Yeah, so why didn’t you just phone? He and I were laughing. We were laughing, right? So I went home and I was thinking about I went, that’s my devotion. That act was my act of devotion. Mine looks different. Mine is fighting fiercely for my Dharma practice. Mine is fighting fiercely for this path and he is my vehicle to be on this path. I need him for this path. And I went down there to fight for it. And he all I needed him to do was say to me, I, I get it. And you know what? That was it. How was it for me? He did make changes, but I don’t even know if they’re because of me. It doesn’t matter. Like, I don’t know what he did with the banana bread. I don’t know whether he made changes because of me. It doesn’t really it doesn’t matter because what he did was is he received me as a kind, loving person. And that’s what I never got. And that’s what helped me with my devotion. But I had to be devoted to get on that plane, to find his and tell me that that was it, because I didn’t recognize it as an expression of my devotion until I got home. And then I thought about I went, Oh, that’s what my devotion looks like. Mine isn’t the oh, mine is the fierceness. I’m I’m a fierce practitioner. I get that. Now, this is mine. One more story about devotion. I’m in Nepal for Temple Rinpoche, his 80th birthday. We were over there with Rinpoche and some Sangha members, and I went with my daughter, which was such a beautiful trip. She’s a student of his as well. And I got so sick, I was really, really sick. And it was the day of Temple’s birthday and we had all of these things we were doing and and I’m in bed and I said to my daughter, Let them know I can’t come. And I, oh, this terrible. There’s a knock on my door, another moment where I’m going to cry here. These are all really heartfelt moments for me and Rinpoche. She’s assistant is at the door and he comes in and he sits beside me and he says, Rinpoche is so sorry that he can’t be here with you right now. He heard that you were sick and he’s not able to come. But he sent you this this remedy, and he wants you to take this, and he hopes that you will be well. And then the assistant left and that’s my relationship with him. I don’t know what else to say. He’s kind, he’s loving. He’s what I never got in my life. He knows. He knows what I need. My parents, why that was so significant for me is growing up, I wasn’t allowed to be sick. And when I got sick, I was told I was lying. So you can see how significant that was that he did that that he was he that was the right medicine. The medicine. I took that. But the right medicine was actually the action. And now you know what? I don’t need to see if I need something from him. I just sit on my cushion and connect him, you know? But I have everything I need. I have I have total devotion to this path. And he’s my teacher. And if anything gets in the way of him being my teacher, I will go. I will be flying to wherever I need to fly to, to to make sure it’s right, you know, that’s what my devotion looks to.