The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So hello and as I begin this fourth talk about my own story, my own life story with

Buddhism with Buddhist practice And so when I was about 22 then, is that right? No, I was 24.

I came to live first near the San Francisco's Inn Center

and then after some months I moved to the Green Gulch farm to live in Zen Center.

And there might be interesting for some of you to hear my experience of the first seven-day silent retreat I signed up for.

It was when I was still at... silent retreat I signed up for.

It was when I was still at the University of Davis studying

and between my junior and senior year, I signed up for a seven-day sashine at the Zen Center.

And a week or two before the retreat was supposed to start I called up the center and explained to them

that something important had come up and I wouldn't be able to attend the retreat and they said okay and that was it.

What I didn't tell them that the important thing that had come up was fear.

So I chickened out of going to my first silent retreat.

So some of you maybe have had been nervous coming to your first retreat. Some of you haven't been on a retreat

and feel nervous about doing it. If that's the case you're in good company and that

I did not only was nervous going, I didn't go.

But then I did sit in a seven day retreat at Green Gulch in the spring of 89 and that's when I decided to go live at the

Green Gulch farm.

I was still thinking about going to graduate school,

and expect I have been accepted to a soil science program

at UC Berkeley.

After studying agronomy, I was aware of the tremendous challenge of soil

...