Full Trancript

Tim, this recording is probably not for publication on the website or for the public. I'm recording it so that a couple of people who are not present tonight in Los Olivos might have access to it. If our practitioner here is willing to later on decide that this reflection on practice can be put on the web, then I'll let you know. Okay, so that's why we're recording. Thank you, Tim. He's not here. No. And I want to say, Tim, just in case it does end up on the web, this is one of our practitioners who's been with us almost since the beginning. Oh, yeah. Patricia Lamb is her name, and she's going to give a reflection on practice. Okay, here we go. Thank you.

No. Instruments often are out of tune when they get moved from one place to another. We are recording. Would you like to say anything before we begin? Okay. I hear you. I guess you did. You know what? Let's do the Dharma, the Gathamayin Sutra. I know that's not as hard to talk about. It is kind of hard. I think about more on it. I wouldn't mind a little bit more on it. Okay. But this is something to consider and talk about. Thank you. Is that what you want? That's good. That's very nice. Let's do this.

Perfect Dharma, He's very desperate

A hundred thousand twenty million copies

Having it to see and listen to, that memory being accepted,

I am allowed to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words.

I almost always start a session playing the ukulele with Amazing Grace, because very much like taking deep breaths at the beginning of sitting meditation, it clears away the distractions and helps me focus and calms my nerves. I take deep breaths and that helps me settle down into my body and throw away distractions and start to focus. The main thing is focusing.

I want to make sure that you know about John Newton, who wrote the hymn, Amazing Grace. Do you know about him? Well, he wrote this hymn in 1772. He was a seafaring person, and he was involved in the Atlantic slave trade. And when he stopped being a seafaring person, he started studying Christian theology and became an abolitionist. So Amazing Grace is really his spiritual autobiography. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see. And of course, there are many more verses.

He did not always write the music. The music was written in 1835. I think the hymn was sung to several different tunes, but the familiar tune that we hear it mostly to today, I just played, was written in 1835 by an American composer named William Walker.

So the reason I'm up here in front of you is because last week, after Pamela's talk, we had a wonderful conversation about death. And during that conversation, a song came to my mind. And I commented that I wish I had my ukulele with me because I would play that song for you right now. And Pamela said, well, would you bring it next week and play it for us? Yes. And then this morning, it was suggested that I give the talk tonight. So I'm very happy to do that. Let's see. Make sure I don't forget to tell you anything I wanted to tell you. A reflection on practice. So here I am. Surprise!

Furthermore, I told Pamela there was one other song that I would like to play for you as well. And then she said it would be okay if it fits with my theme. Oh, I have a theme. Okay. Okay. And I have a theme. I have one. So it just so happens that my Tuesday night sangha that I zoom in on has been reading this book by Thich Nhat Hanh. And Tuesday night, we read this passage on the four nutriments. It says in Buddhism, we speak of four kinds of nutriments, edible foods, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness.

So my theme is sense impressions. Let me read to you a little bit more about sense impressions. Everything we consume through our senses in terms of images, sounds, music, movies, websites, and so on. So specifically on the nutriments of sense impressions in music with songs that have the themes of life and death. Just probably a little stoss, isn't it?

Let's see. First, I have a confession to make and I hope this doesn't shock you. I don't sit every day on my own at home. I sit with you on Thursday nights. I sit with my Plum Village tradition, my Thich Nhat Hanh group on Tuesday nights. I occasionally have the opportunity to sit with my Texas Narmada Foundation Tibetan friends. But I seem to be a crisis meditator. I meditate in doctor's offices, waiting for procedures. I meditate in animal hospitals. I meditate in nerve-wracking traffic holdups. I meditate when I can't sleep. And it helps me a lot. It's very much a stress reliever. Maybe someday I'll develop a habit of meditating every day at home. But currently that's true confessions. I don't do that.

The Texas Sangha is where I started meditating in October of 2021. So it hasn't been all that terribly long and also I have been playing the ukulele for not quite a year, having started just last August. So like meditation, playing the uke is also a practice. And I guess you could say I am a lifelong learner. Still seeking meaning and enjoyment in my life.

The song our conversation last Thursday brought to mind is called Let the Mystery Be. It is written by Iris Dement, who is a 62-year-old songwriter. She was born in Arkansas, the youngest of 14 children in a Pentecostal home. And that really shows up in her music. She's very well known in the folk music genre. And she has been nominated for two Grammys. Her songs are just beautiful and really, really come from the heart.

So I will play this song for you and then I'll tell you why I like this particular song so much and what it means to me and I hope you will share your impressions of this song to me too.

[The speaker then plays and sings "Let the Mystery Be" and "Imagine"]

Thank you. And thank you on reflection. How long have you been? How many hours have you practiced trying to be a person? Probably I think I've been practicing for a long time. I just love it so much. We went to the Omega Institute last summer for my husband to take a songwriting workshop. They were so welcoming and I felt so comfortable. I was so excited. I got the idea that if I sing one of your songs, you get two songs. I got a teacher and he has really brought me far.

I bought this for myself. It's a very tenor. There are soprano, concert, tenor and baritone. This one has a baritone body. But it has a tenor neck. The baritone has completely different tuning. I already learned the tenor neck. When I saw there was this hybrid, it has a low G. The size of the body gives me a little bit more resonance. I knew I wanted a low G.

It has a little high viscous right there. I really love it. I can finally join the rest of my family who are musicians. My husband and my son both play on my... I have a niece who is very accomplished. Randy is a folk singer. He's at a gig tonight. That's what kept him in high school. She was in an arching band, orchestra, jazz band, drum corps, everything. It just really appealed to him. He still is in a band that has taken him all over the world. They've traveled all over the world. They're in their late 30s, early 40s now. Many of them are married and have regular full-time jobs. They're still in college. Randy and I are starting to play songs together. That's really... It's just added this whole level of joy. I practice it a lot.

I really like it because I want to support my teacher. Is your teacher online? He's a musician. He's very accomplished. I tell him what I want to play. He'll tab it out for me. Send me a link to the songs and music. Then we'll work on it.

What do you think of Iris today? I'm really excited. I knew you were going to sing it. I really appreciate her. I really appreciate your expression. It's much more accessible to me the way you expressed it. I love the song, of course. I'm grateful to you for sharing your practice. I'm grateful to you for being able to share your practice. We're all different. You're practicing. It was my pleasure.

I have a good friend who is a singer-songwriter. He came to visit to make sure he's up to speed on my little dog's medications. We're going back to Omega. He played another Iris song called The Touch of a Friend's Hand. It is so beautiful. It's just a perfect song. I recommend you listen to more of her music. Of course, John Lennon and Beatles in general were genius. That's a very simple song. I'm going to play it for you. I wrote my dog a dog for Sunday. Which one? Are you going to be there? Hello, hello. Sunday is my anniversary song. I'm going to play it for you.

You obviously have a practice. Many practices of being aware. I'm wondering whether or not you're finding I'm assuming something that I guess you're connecting with us all the time. That's what it strikes me as. I certainly have to be very present when I'm playing. If I get the least bit distracted, things happen like you witnessed. If I... It's just like meditation. There's just lots of thoughts that float in and out. I have to just focus on what I'm doing in order to not make mistakes in playing, which aren't always bad. I would rather not. I would rather not goof up the words or feel like I have to go back and fix it. I'm an amateur. I haven't been playing for a whole year yet.

You have some music theory already. I studied music a little bit to get an elementary teaching credential. I studied a little bit of music. I learned a lot from my teacher. I went to a hotel. I had a lovely woman named Janet. She taught us basic chords and things like that. That was really fun.

To the music store and they didn't have a mandolin, but they had a yoke. And so he bought it. So it's been sitting there on the shelf and he gets it and he plays all kinds of things every once in a while. And so it just seems so obvious to me when we got home from our trip last summer, I just went, it's just there. And I did have a guitar when I was a young person when I was a teenager, but I didn't, I wasn't disciplined at all. I didn't have lessons, I didn't play the guitar.

You don't have performances, I. Oh yes I do. But this is very, very nice for me. This is nice, a nice safe place and it's getting better. I mean, what I've learned is I have to focus. I have to block out everything else and just concentrate and think ahead the words and think ahead the chord changes and practice a lot, practice a lot. So there's muscle memory and it doesn't feel good. It did not feel good. Oh, thank you so much. You're so kind. You're so kind.

How did you feel if we were really wanting to sing with you? That was lovely. As soon as I heard you start singing, I hope you noticed that I smiled. I couldn't look at you and say, yes, sing along because that just would have thrown everything out of the water. But Randy and I have learned a really beautiful song, Neil Young's song, Harvest Moon. And he learned the harmonica part so that he can play. There's a little harmonica part at the end. And I'm definitely going to ask them to sing the chorus with me when I get started, I'm gonna invite them. So you know this one, you know the chorus, and I'll just, because I'm still in love with you. I'll just play the chorus through one time and sing.

At Omega, we have a song circle every night outside of the class and everybody's invited. Anybody who's on campus that wants to can come. And if they have something to share, they sit in the circle. And when it comes to them, they're turned. So we're playing the two. So then there can be any audience, but you have a specific audience. Anybody who will be there. It's run by Jimmy Dale Gilmore, who is a Texas singer songwriter. And his wife, Janet is the leader of the Texas Dharamata Sangha. And invited me to meditate with them when I met her in October of 21 down in Texas at the Big Bang. We were on a river rafting trip. And she said, we're gonna meditate in the morning. You wanna come and meditate? I said, sure, I'd love to. And I was just hooked right away.

It's Tibetan style. They talk a lot, as you pointed out one time. And they chant at the beginning, which I really love. And her husband's also Buddhist. And we couldn't figure out. So we're going to Texas on this trip. We'll be back. I'm just texting. Hi. We just got a lot of things on the news about Texas and how's this gonna be for us? Not one person on that trip loved us the wrong way. And then I found out for all a bunch of Buddhists. No wonder. And river people and conservationists. It was just definitely our scene.

So you started out, you talked today, you said something. I guess I had the impression that you find yourself a little surprised with all of the ways in which your life is emerging from them. Well, you know, I'm 72. And you're still learning. And I'm still learning. And I'm still practicing my calling, which is teaching. I still have a student, one student, four days a week. I go and spend an hour or so with him. And that has been challenging and definitely outside of my comfort zone because he's very much a special needs child. And I had special needs children in my classroom who were mainstreamed, but I'm not a special education teacher. So, you know, there's been a learning curve to that, but his parents are so wonderful. And well, excuse me for saying this, but they love me. So it's just, and I love them. So it's just, you know, it's working out. So I have to get up every morning and get out of the house, which I think is very healthy for me to have that kind of a schedule.

But this music thing is this delightful new, new, I mean, I've done, I've dabbled in music here and there throughout my life. I used to sing a lot more, but never as steadily and with as much discipline and longevity as this came off. It is, and thank you for sharing with us. You're very good. Thank you so much for your courage and also your beautiful voice. Oh, thank you. And I feel your joy in your performance. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. Yeah, what a special treat.

Anything else for Lester's book? Her diary is going to be uki. I'll have to look up what it means in Japanese, uki. Uki. Yeah. Snow. Snow. Snow. Snow. Snow. That is y-y-y-y. Oh, I hope I know what uki is. Oh, I would just love to see us be able to do some of this again. We can sing together or... Oh, that would be really nice. Have more instruments. Have your instruments part of these instruments or, you know, somehow operate.

Well, I obviously tried to think of songs. I mean, I know a lot of songs, but I tried to think of songs that were relevant to this venue. And that's what I came up with. Well, we have other musical, you know, possibilities. Oh, yes. There may be other musicians. I don't know. Well, you know, my focus here is to think about the musical, but this is such a treat. Yeah. And I would love to have maybe once a month, we'll do something that is, you know, this kind of artistic expression. I don't know. We'll see. Could it be in the new year? It would be at the potluck maybe? We could do that too. Yeah.

I was watching, I kept thinking, I can't think of anything that's going to say anything about... Of course, you know, I'm a singer, songwriter, and I'm from the River County and I was working. So, singer, songwriter, and so anytime we go to any kind of target, I was bringing her a guitar and we can sing with you. Well, I really did imagine that we would have maybe a little bit of a signature with you singing. Imagine. At the end, maybe for special events in particular, when the greater song is here, we would love to see us have that. Something that is not just you, maybe, but of course, was smitten by that. Oh. But other people too. Offering something we could all join in like you suggested. Yeah. That's a really beautiful one. I could bring the words, you know, right now and we could all sing that song together. Keep practicing that song then. Please keep it handy for us.

Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.

Okay. Announcements. Announcements. I have a couple. Of course. Do you have that? Darla is always welcome. Mr. Donna. I mean, did I say Darla?