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

Please visit our website at audiodderma.org.

So, hello, and we're here for the fifth talk about my story and kind of encountering Buddhism and the plan has to take it up until I guess started teaching at here for IMC and then I'll make an announcement to end of this talk about what the plan is for next week that's related.

So, um, so I was ordained in 1982 as a priest as a monk at the San Francisco's

Center and I felt very comfortable, happy to be a monk. The monastic lifestyle worked really well for me and I was happy in it.

And the simplicity of that life, dedication to practice,

and the idea of being of service to this world.

And not service in general, but I really wanted to address the suffering of the world as deeply as I could.

It was a bit of a shock a few months later when the Abbot gathered together all the people who had had

monk ordination at the San Francisco Center and had decided that he was going

to change the name to no longer being monks but now being priests.

And I was stunned.

Like I didn't want it.

I didn't have no interest in being a priest.

I thought I was going to be a monk. Over time I've come to really

appreciate this idea of being a priest because it's much more clearly involves being in the world serving people, being involved in lives of people and

monk isn't so obviously that.

And so, you know, now in my...

As a Zen priest, I'm happy enough with it.

But that was ordained then in 1982.

And oddly enough... but that was ordained then in 1982.

And oddly enough, within a year, by the April or so,

...