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

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Okay.

Sorry that I had to make that sound go away.

So this poem, some of you who have listened to some of the happy hour I've done or some of Dharma talks or path of fearlessness, know that I really enjoy poems that have a certain amount of whimsy to them and that are really a lot of imagery in them.

So I think that's part of the power of poems is right is there not being explicit, but they're pointing to something that we can feel or imagine or, you know, a different way of understanding something.

So this poem, Zazen by Virginia Hamilton Adair, is describing a meditation, you know, maybe it's a day long or retreat or something and it seems like there's so many wonderful and the poet is using like so many wonderful image images here.

And maybe I'll just begin by reading it again.

When I first floundered in no one knew me, not even myself, staggering under a Saratoga trunk, crammed with humiliations, bottled like urine samples, nail cakes of anger, carbons of abuse of letters, chemistry quizzes with ets, even the horse I never had.

And two casseroles left over from the dime a dip supper.

No one remarked that I had brought too much.

I was wearing three fur hats donated by opulent cousins, my feet encased in cement ever since the failure of the patio project and my mouth full of barbs as an old trout, no one praised my appearance.

The trunk fell off my back, discouraging its unusual contents at my stone feet, which also came off.

The fur hats tumbled like a moth in the avalanche bearing a small monk, no one noticed, no one.

I kind of like this unconventional, but I like evocative imagery that's used here.

And for example, like the poet, she uses the first line is like when I first floundered in this like floundered in this clumsily made with some confusion, like some staggering.

And so it reminds me of when I first came to a meditation hall, like I really didn't know what to expect, what was what was happening and kind of like you know what I was supposed to do.

I mean, maybe there's a way that we feel that way with our own meditation practice, or even if we go to meditation centers or the meditation retreats, we feel like, okay, so like a protocol here that I'm supposed to follow, I feel a bit awkward.

And then the poet, she also writes, no one knew me, not even myself.

I just love this line because such a big part of meditation practice is a self understanding.

For example, like I had no idea how much planning I did.

When I tell a certain meditation practice, I just saw what was going on in my mind.

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