(melodic instrumental music)
- All right, everybody.
Well, let's
now that we're sort of back a little bit,
let's just dive in
a little bit to this topic of finding your own voice.
Hmm.
And when I was very young,
I started practicing meditation,
who knows in my early twenties.
I went to
I was a part of Spirit Rock Meditation Center.
I found one of their retreats by accident
in my early twenties and I didn't even know
Somebody told me, you know there's food there.
They teach you how to meditate.
There's vegetarian food, I had just become vegetarian.
Vegetarian food there.
They tell you how to meditate, which was what I needed.
I was trying to practice on my own with books
and it was not helping.
I was just thinking all the time.
Not only thinking, obsessing.
So I got to Spirit Rock and I spent
many years practicing there and then
started doing training there and various programs,
community Dharma programs and then
a formal teacher training with Jack Kornfield
and Joseph Goldstein who's on the East coast.
These are insight teachers.
I also studied with Tibetan teachers as well.
And I saw a lot of different types of teachers teaching.
When I was, I would observe many
there was more of the I had that whole Indian community
I also used to do a lot of self-realization fellowship stuff
with Paramahansa Yogananda's community.
And then I would go but mostly Spirit Rock.
And I saw a lot of different Buddhist teachers
and a lot of styles.
And over the years, as I got older and more mature
it became apparent that I had I was different.
I wanted to express what was coming through me
because with any group what happens is the group
all begins to gel together and imitate one another
and especially if you're being trained, right?
Because idea is the unconscious assumption
is you'll be just like me, right?
This is what the Dharma is.
This is how we act.
This is how we sit.
This is what we say.
Don't say that, say this, right?
And it starts to become very formulaic,
right?
And I would sit and I do years of training
and I would listen to Dharma talks
Many were the same one again and again and again,
the formula, right?
And I remember getting this idea that like
I was already living in Oakland
which is a very colorful community in Oakland, California.
And I was like, this doesn't really fit with my community,
the style, so how can I adapt?
Right?
Because the truth is the truth and it's so great.
And I knew my Oakland community
the moment they would hear this,
they would know it, right?
It was because that's how the truth is
it hits you in the heart
and when you hear something like the four noble truths,
there's suffering, it just wham, you get it.
Like they knew suffering.
So I knew that I could translate.
I could translate and I needed to translate because
a lot of what we get also has a lot of cultural baggage.
North American cultural baggage,
also Asian baggage or wherever we're
we got baggage with everything we're humans.
Our baggage mix with that baggage, makes with the
(giggles)
And so but the truth is still the bones under it.
That doesn't ever seem to change, the core.
But how we influence that,
how we adapt that,
how we translate that can have great impact
on our work in the world.
So early on, I saw a lot of teachers
that would just imitate other teachers.
They would even use the same way of sitting
and influx the way their voice
or the exact same instruction, which is okay
but as time goes on, you're gonna get tired of that box
because I really feel like it's like
an explosion of new voices coming in
and their experiences shape how they express
these truths that we're all pointing to
awareness, suffering and the end of suffering.
And when I was very young, I used to be
on these really long retreats, like three month retreats.
I used to go on the East Coast and all of the teachers
because they came from a certain upper class,
white demographic, all the stories, all the analysis,
everything was filtered heavily through that lens.
And I remember feeling like, this doesn't really relate.
And yeah
but the teaching related. (giggles)
But that was just it was just like
a huge disconnect there and I realized over time
that they kind of wanted me to join the club.
I kind of had to join that.
I had to act like that.
So in the early days when I was being training
when I was in training, I used to wear these Indian shawls
of course 'cause that was the dress code.
I would wear these skirts, I kid you not, which is so funny.
It was like giant wool skirts.
I basically dressed like a nun for years.
I did, I would also wear this color,
it's funny I'm wearing this color today,
but I'm much more festive now.
I could think living in South America,
It's just
it's a Fiesta of colors and expression there
Brazil, Peru, it's just different, right?
It's not the North.
The North has a ...
You know what I mean.
And so, I remember at a certain point
I was wearing this dress and I had these black shoes on
and I just caught a glimpse of myself
while I was walking by a mirror
and I was teaching in New England.
I was in the middle of winter and I just was like
Somehow this is not fully who I am.
And I remember like, yeah, I gotta go.
I gotta go back to Oakland.
I gotta reevaluate some things here.
And this is when our community,
we started our community in Downtown Oakland
and so there was this burst of spirit and energy
and people and multicultural, multi gender,
gender expression of all kinds, he, she, they.
Everything was exploding years ago.
Like 15 years ago, Oakland was already at that place so,
diversity just expression, it's just the city itself.
And so, that really was helpful for me
to find this other channel.
And so, I learned a lot during that time about authenticity.
There was a part I loved and I needed
to do that as a teacher in training.
But I remember at one point I quit every
all the retreats I did and just spend time in Oakland.
It was almost like the influence I needed
to have my own voice come out a little bit more.
Because at that time I didn't have teachers
that look like me or modeling or anything.
It was just me and like a handful.
And so
but I think that was the best kind of medicine though.
When something pushes you, the vision pulls, right?
You need to kinda you need,
suffering makes you grow, no matter where it is
if you're willing to live deeply, right?
That discomfort, something
It's like the rock in the shoe.
You're like, I'm here, but it's just not
(chuckles)
something's just not it's just not smooth, right?
I'm not in my groove here.
So finding my own voice really was a journey for me,
as a woman, as a black woman, as a black woman in Buddhism,
as a younger woman at that time.
I had a lot of restraints on me.
It was like a lot of I was being like monitored.
I was highly
I was in a teacher training
which there was constant analysis, like pruning.
Like "Oh, she shouldn't go there.
No, no, no, no, no, come back this way.
No, no, no, no, no.
That's was a little too much, come"
And so there was that sense of being like,
oh my God.
I think that's probably what everyone goes through.
I'm sure monastics go through that too .
You're like, oh!
The comfort wanting to breakout
and I think that's our nature.
It's like this underlying desire to be free
and how do we take the Dharma
and allow that people are looking for that freedom.
And so finding your voice with that
and being able to respond to what's authentic in you
is like a big part of your magic, your medicine.
Your Dharma is what is going to help people,
what's coming through you.
So I always encourage people to try to discover
more about what that is for themselves, right?
Because that's where you're gonna be happiest.
That's where you're gonna be authentic.
That's where teaching becomes not only fun for you,
it's healing you as you're delivering it,
it's waking you up.
If we're in someone else's voice, in someone else's lane,
the suffering happens even when we're on the teacher's seat.
We'll start to feel this pain and we stop growing.
We don't grow, but when we're sort of tapped into our flow
and trusting what's happening there's an engagement,
that's healing both people there.
By speaking your deepest truth it heals something in you.
It's waking you up basically.
So I have discovered that a lot like,
oh, my deepest truth gives me so much more strength
than imitating Jack Kornfield, which you can never do anyway
or imitating but we try.
Or Tara Brock
and do that.
We can't help but look at other people
and go, well, I should be like that.
They're famous so that must be the formula.
It's actually the opposite, that's their formula.
(chuckles)
And they followed it.
Jack is who he is, he's never changed that.
Tara's in her lane or whatever other teachers
that you really admire, that you look up to
they're doing them, that's why they have the success.
Tara's Tara, 100%, right?
She never tried to be anything but her.
And so, finding our voices is really, really key.
So, I want you to be thinking about this
in terms of I'll ask you a few questions.
When do you feel that you are tapping
into your deepest wisdom?
What are those times?
Where are you?
Where you feel like you're the most comfortable.
Because you could be comfortable even uncomfortable.
So we're not talking about nervousness.
(chuckles)
That kinda car murmur oh, I'm on, I have to say something.
But where is the flow for you?
When you think of like,
I wanna be a teacher
and I wanna share, where are you in your mind?
Are you in a church setting?
Are you with women?
Are you out with men?
Are you on the land?
Are you in a community hall?
Are you in a Dharma hall, a temple?
What have you and to start noticing
where your voice easily flows, right?
What is the set?
What is the setting?
And so many years for me, it was being in Downtown Oakland.
It really was, we were like right on the corner,
right Downtown, I used to lead every Thursday night
the people of color Sangha, which was about a hundred people
really rowdy activist types, I used to like that.
Very challenging and like,
"I don't understand the Dharmas.
This is capitalism, this is."
And I'd be like, yeah,
it was kinda like driving a ship that was really bumpy.
It was like a challenge
to kinda like read all the questions
and keep going forward.
Anyone could come in, it was all then generosity based,
the doors were open, right?
As long as you weren't drunk or high, you could come in.
If we saw somebody that was like kinda borderline,
we'd have a little security enforcement to be like,
"No, no, no, gotta come back some other time but"
So it was that for me was a lie.
I grew from that.
It was edgy
and beautiful, great heart.
Oh my God!
Real.
And so finding our voice also is a kind of realism.
You have to be vulnerable, connecting and this
I think with this new generation, generation Z,
X, Y, and Z's, I love it.
There's a kind of realness that is needed and authenticity.
If we are imitating and we're being phony
and just rehearsing, sending out, they'll smell it
a million miles away
and those teachers often
start to get the tomatoes thrown a lot more
like trollers
or mean notes.
Trolling has happened a long time at Dharma centers.
Let me tell you, it's called the note board.
And there'll be a lot of comments after every,
so you get used to that, that you could just roll with.
That's like a whole not a thing.
You just you just keep doing you.
But the authenticity has to be there.
A kind of vulnerability.
Are we really living this, right?
Are we just sharing?
There's times where I was kind of misaligned with my voice
was the time that I hadn't I wasn't practicing,
but I was sitting on the stage telling everyone else to.
There was like it was just like the talk,
the Dharma was over here and I was more over here.
It was like quite... (chuckles)
And so, finding our voice has to be really important for us.
And then trusting it.
There's finding it
and then there's fully trusting it and expressing it.