With Guest Steve Silberman

[Music] may all beings be happy may all beings be healthy may all beings be free from harm may all beings love life may all beings awaken welcome to another C Audio podcast I'm DC Pua audio and cuk archives doing our bit to help preserve the legacy of shunu Suzuki and those whose paths cross his and anything else that comes to mind I pray that you and yours are safe and comfortable free from economic difficulty and able to get out and do whatever it is you want within the limitations of the universal precept of do as little harm as possible so today we have a guest Steve Silberman um and uh I think I first met Steve when he worked at Green Restaurant when I was the maty or host there in 1979 uh I think that because of what he said in the podcast i' you know it's been a while so I'm going to read you what it says in Wikipedia about him Steve Silverman is an American writer for Wired Magazine that has been an editor and contributor there for 14 years in 2010 Silverman was awarded the aaas cavy science journalism award for magazine writing now aaas is the American Association for the advancement of science that's very very prestigious his feature article known as the placebo problem discuss the impact of placebos on the pharmaceutical IND industry silberman's 2015 book neurotribes which discusses the autism rights and neurodiversity movements was award Ed the Samuel Johnson prize additionally Silverman's wired article the Greek the the pardon me the geek syndrome was focused on autism in Silicon Valley and has been referenced by many sources and has been described as a culturally significant article for the autism Community Silverman's Twitter account made Time magazine's Li list of the best Twitter feeds for the year 2011 in 2016 he gave the keynote address at the United Nations on world Autism Awareness Day good Lord that guy was just a waiter at greens wow man he's something and he's not a he doesn't have autism in his own life he's a real researcher but there's more uh and I'm going to read you the rest because he didn't talk about this stuff he's sort of modest Silverman was born to a Jewish Family he has described his parents as Communists he studied psychology at Oberlin College in Oberlin Ohio then received a master's degree in English literature literature from Berkeley where his thesis advisor was Tom gun t h mgu NN soberman moved to San Francisco in 1979 drawn by three factors so that he could live a gay life without fear because of the music of Crosby Stills and Nash and the Grateful Dead and others and so he could be near the San Francisco Zen Center he was friends with the musician David Crosby with whom he hosted a podcast Silverman studied with Alan Ginsburg at naropa University in 1977 after Silberman interviewed Ginsburg for the whole earth review in 1987 the two became friends and Ginsburg invited Silberman to be his teaching assistant the next term at naropa University the Beat Generation is a regular subject in Silverman's writings Silverman lives with his husband Keith a high school science teacher to whom he has been married since 2003 uh then there's a long thing on neurotribes uh he talks about it again there's a list of awards books uh his first book was skeleton key a dictionary for dead heads and Steve like to some people that's who Steve is he's one of the ultimate dead heads and S of a an archist for the dead and the second one oh it's only written two books neurotribes the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity and that's the one that he talks about the most in this podcast and he gets to the Grateful Dead stuff at the end uh anyway uh impressive guy really sweet guy I really like him I remember when um skeleton keys came out I went to some event uh I don't know how I ended up doing that I think because he was following c.com and wrote me and told me about it anyway that's enough um and um look we're going to give him a call as soon as we've add our BS to meditate so when you hear the Bell if you're a such your mind hit pause and meditate or whatever for as long as you wish and when you're ready to come back hit use and we'll be here to hit the bell and end the meditation or whatever and we'll give Steve Silberman a call hello David hi Steve how you doing oh I'm in uh deep morning actually oh um yeah CU my mom died oh my goodness but yeah yeah but uh but I'm okay I mean it's a you know it's an interesting dhic moment in my life you know um but yeah she died last week oh well U my condolences goodness um you've been spending time with her recently I know and she's been in hospice right yeah yeah she um yeah I mean her um her last years really uh were terrible because she had dementia and oh she was a she was very she was a very smart funny witty Pretty Woman uh but she lost almost everything towards the end and um you know it was it was terrible we had to you know never mind but but uh yeah it was horrible I mean it was the worst thing I've ever been through in my life by far uh particularly the last month but um you know her suffering is over and different layers of my relationship with her are revealing themselves to me now um and so you know it's interesting for sure goodness well it's very sad how how old was she 87 um yeah so it's not like she oh she died too young she didn't what's right what you know but what's sad is that she was just not happy at all for the last few years of her life and she had been a pretty uh cheerful woman so um yeah it was just terrible I mean any number of horrific hell realm type thing things happened to her um towards the end so you know I can't make light of it but uh you know it's it's interesting for me I was her main person sort of because she only had two kids and uh my sister tended to not get along with her so uh you know I mean she was calling me 10 times a day by by uh uh last year uh and always you know suicidal actually so um you know it was really rough on me but um so now I feel liberated in a sense yeah but you know and I'm very I'm very glad that I have you know have some kind of ramshackle Zen practice under me for all this time so it's not like oh my God people die like that's not a surprise you know but uh but you know yeah how are you doing oh I'm I'm fine uh you know um here in Bali we've been here we just passed the 10year Mark I I want to say something about um your uh mother's passing um uh I used to uh be close to a really really powerful psychic and um he would say he was no good at contacting people after they'd passed on but actually he was very good it was good enough I'll say and um uh uh in the experiences I've had it was always oh everything's fine now don't worry it's you know um um it just it it puts everything in another context um uh and and ALS so uh thank you they'll they'll say oh thank you for you know uh being so patient and helping me uh but um you know it was something I needed to go through that's the sort of thing I would hear but I would also get very specific uh you know comments uh that left no doubt that it was some sort of content anyway I just thought I'd mention that to it's always sort of um uh good to hear uh anyway yeah yeah yeah now I'm I'm sure you're involved with uh other things right now um you have this U book The Legacy of autism let's see um yeah neurotribes a neurotribes right future yeah yeah neurotribes the legacy of autism in the future of neurodiversity wow yeah and New York Times neurot times neurotribes is um it's it's uh covered up here ah I I can't read it oh no there we are uh neurotribes is beautifully told humanizing and important so you know I always like to start with anything the person might have for [Laughter] sale so uh tell me about that sure um well as you know there's been a lot of debate uh in public life for the last 20 years or so about why the number of uh autism diagnoses started Rising so precipitously in the in the 90s and what I noticed um I wrote an article uh called the geek syndrome about aspher syndrome in Silicon Valley for Wired in 2001 and what I noticed was that even 10 years after that we still hadn't answered that question so if you if you you know saw an article about autism in the New York Times They would say uh you know the number of diagnoses have been has been rising steeply for several years but no one knows why and I thought why don't we know why like after 10 years like why don't we know why and so they would you know find out that it wasn't the vaccines and that that was a complete lie and all that but they would never provide an answer so I started um because of the email that I got from my initial wired article the geek syndrome um I knew that families of people with Autism and people with Autism themselves were facing really uh difficult times getting jobs getting housing uh before Obamacare getting Health Care uh and um that seemed to be the real issue that people uh with autism and their families were not getting enough support meanwhile the entire world was becoming obsessed with autism but it was obsessed with this question do vaccines cause autism which didn't really uh address the real problems that autistic people in our families were facing so I went into history I was a science writer for Wired Magazine and I started exploring the history of autism and within the first year or so I figured out that the standard version of the history of autism as it was reiterated in thousands of textbooks and Wikipedia was incorrect and that it was incorrect in a way that rendered a couple of generations of autistic people invisible and then they sort of showed up again in the 90s when the diagnostic criteria were changed but I really wrote neurotribes Because I saw so much suffering and confusion and public you know ranker around autism and nobody seemed to be addressing the source of it and I thought that if I could figure out that question uh about why diagnosis started Rising so steeply in the 990s that I could help releas suffering around autism and so it took me about 10 years to write but I did it and much to my complete surprise and shock it became a bestseller um so yeah so that's why I did it really to to try to I felt that I knew enough uh particularly after I did my reporting to have some leverage to uh help relias suffering and so that's when I that's that's what I did so why is there so much more autism there isn't that's actually the wrong question yeah the question is why are there so many more diagnoses of autism yeah and the reason is you know to compress a 550 page book or 500 yeah 50 page book into two sentences it's because the diagnostic criteria for autism have radically changed I I'll give you just one example of the many examples of how they have radically changed um autism used to be just a diagnosis for young children uh and it was mistakenly believed by the guy who called himself the world's leading Authority on autism that autism was the childhood uh phase of adult schizophrenia and that turned out to be completely wrong uh but um so adults could not get an Autism diag nosis until really the late n uh late 80s early 90s so that's one thing another thing is that people of color were excluded from the diagnosis as well not only that people who appeared to be intellectually disabled were uh excluded from the diagnosis and that you know intellectual disability is common in autism so there basically the guy Leo Connor this child psychiatrist that John Hopkins hospital was sitting at the top of a pyramid of ways of excluding people from the diagnosis and he you know insisted that a it was very very rare when in fact it was it's very common actually it's a common disability and he also um vacillated between believing that it was caused by genetics or it was caused by bad parenting and unfortunately he emphas he emphasized the bad parenting oh God which which made families hide the fact that their kids were autistic so that's another reason why you never heard about it when we were kids because um people wouldn't talk about it because they were implicated in bad parenting if they confessed having an autistic child so you know those are and those are just really just like a you know a small handful of like 20 reasons why the number of diagnoses started going up but it it it's not that there's you know now there's much more autism or that know was caused by pollution or no uh it's primarily caused by genetics not exclusively um it's a very common condition uh and in fact the guy who discovered it before Leo Connor who was the guy named Hans asger used to say once you learn to recognize the distinctive traits of autism you see them everywhere and that turned out to be true and uh the notion that it was this rare disease that Afflicted you know upper middle class Jews and and Anglo-Saxons like that turned out to be just wrong just bad science um so now we know that and so now we can see you know some people say ah autism is an epidemic yeah it's an epidemic of recognition you know we we can finally see how many uh people there are on the Spectrum in the world and it's a lot it's one of the largest minorities in the on Earth wow so yeah do you have a that's do you have a percentage uh well it depends uh I actually don't want to say that because it depends so much about uh how the diagnostic criteria are in a particular location but it's you know some thing like well let's put this way a friend of mine it's more than there are Jews for instance there are more artistic people on Earth than there are Jews there's not that many Jews in the world but uh there are some how how many Jews are there oh I don't know that sure have been a lot in my life I mean in my life would look like it was a third of the people in the world yeah even before that even before that um yeah because you know I was sitting on a on a beach in Kerala in India in Kerala people are very well educated it's very clean um and the guy sitting next to me was a like a driver of a little Tuk Tok or something and he asked me about gome Chomsky oh wow huh no chsky is very famous outside of America uh and yeah I know yeah then then he said well what about uh the people who say that the Jews control all the banks and I said well I said I don't think so but look I said in my experience everything I've been involved with in my life uh Jews have been prominent in it uh and they just tend to be good at everything and involved at very high levels with everything so being gangsters being Bankers being humanists uh Jesus I was a member of the American humanist Association of philanthropy musicals uh Buddhism my God I said so that's my experience uh he found that interesting anyway uh and and wives one one4 25% of my wives have been Jewish um oh wow and 50 well I'd say 25% of my sons because Kelly oh wow my older son then would be half and because his mother Jewish he Jewish um but um uh and uh gee they just had a Passover dinner we do that here we have Passover dinners here I Bali oh that's nice yeah I've done them in Japan uh oh wow yeah that's great yeah uh it was a where I've done it here it's a mixed Jewish Muslim wedding a marriage oh cool wow yeah all right so uh moving on that's so interesting Steve um did do you have any personal experience with autism that made you interested no I I don't have autism in my family um or anything like that but uh once I you know as asberg said learned to recognize the distinctive traits of autism I looked back and I realized that several of my uh close friends over the years were almost certainly on the Spectrum but because the diagnosis for adults hadn't been invented yet uh you know they were just thought of as weird or eccentric or standoffish or obsessed with you know thousands of Grateful Dead tapes or whatever so um I I look back and I realize that there were autistic people around me but they didn't have a name yet um and uh and I don't have any autism in my family yeah um but you know the interesting thing about it about writing a book about autism is that everyone asks like well do you have autism in your family and you know I was a science writer like it was a funny thing I think it was a remnant of autism being thought of as incredibly rare so it's like well why would you write a book about autism unless you know it was your daughter or your son or something yeah uh I was just interested in the scientific uh question but I ended up becoming very uh passionate about um autistic people as a you know as a neurotribe as like I invented that word for the title but that's a cool name thank you yeah you know there're a group of people with who I mean they're very different from each other some of them can't talk some of them are you know uh CEOs of Silicon Valley startups um but uh so there's a huge range of being and experience within autism yeah but they are a community and and uh so I I became passionate about um pushing for social justice for autistic people yeah yeah um I I think that the book has um uh to me it's uh it's a strength that you uh don't come from that experience sort of like remember when I studied anthropology they said that the best anthropology is not done by people who are in the culture uh but from those from the outside um well you you've that's just one of uh the many facets of your life so um uh I I'd like to get into the Grateful Dead But first um I I'd like to hear your way seeking mind story sure uh I haven't told it before actually or I mean I've told it in fragments but I've never like given a talk like that exactly but so I'll be making it up you know as I go along but that's best uh when I okay when I was very young like you know fourth or fifth grade really um I loved science fiction and uh the science fiction that was popular at the time this was the mid 60s uh the science fiction was popular at the time asked really big questions about you know the nature of Consciousness and and uh you know what did it what did it mean to be an alien stuff like that so I started thinking about really big questions uh from Reading science fiction um in elementary school and then I came across uh the Poetry of Valen Ginsburg probably in a class in junior high school or so I instantly related to it uh very deeply um and he you know figures later you know a minute from now in my story um but so I was sort of just you know I guess seeking a way uh uh from a very young age and uh then I went to see Alan Ginsburg give a poetry queen and I had a an experience that was like being struck by lightning in tibetan uh Buddhism they would call it like recognition of the guru or whatever and you know Ginsburg never liked to be called a guru and you know hated it it was a cliche uh yeah but um it was an it was an experience like that when I saw him I said wherever that guy's going to be the following year I have got to be there and you know and then I found out he taught at this place called neuropa Institute at the time now neuropa University and I stole everything I had and went to Boulder uh to go to naropa and this was early days of neuropa so um it was really happening it was amazing you know it's like at times for meditation you'd see you know like a hundred people like walking with their gens or zafus um to the meditation Hall and there were all kinds of people around and one of the people who was around was uh taon myumi roshi and uh Allan shamed his Pat generation history class into learning how to meditate because he he said you know Allan by then was a quite serious student of Cham churas and um so I remember Alan saying uh how many of you how many of you have taken meditation instruction and just like a few hands went up and he said ah you're all amateurs in a professional Universe like wow that's quite a comment so uh I I signed up for a meditation instruction and and be my Zumi's class on genjo Coan and so I'd never seen you know a Dharma talk before really uh truna wasn't even there that summer he was um away in Vermont I believe inventing Shambala training um but uh his um his Dharma Heir ursul tenzen was there and I saw him lecture a couple of times but I didn't like the vibe of the Tibetan Buddhists at Europa they were all wearing suits I mean my judgment was very superficial and now I know a lot more about it but um at the time they just seemed like uh pompous uh you know kind of guys in suits and they were there was a weird energy around tra's Inner Circle um and uh you know now I come to understand you know now I understand he was a very powerful teacher particularly in the early days before he was drinking so much but um wait you can't say before he was drinking too much oh yeah maybe that's true that's true so before it took before the the copious amounts of sake you know really took effect but in any case so I just I didn't dig the vibe and if you got meditation instruction through the trumpa lineage you would sign up and you know a student would would teach you how to meditate yeah um you didn't you know you didn't ursal or whatever so um but I heard that my zoomi would actually be there if you signed up for meditation instruction and show you himself so I went to meditation instruction my zoomi was there I still remember the feeling of his hand on the back of my spine you know gently straightening it and he had a very humble Vibe and I I really liked that and so I started sitting and you know I would sit in Zen style rather than Tibetan style and um then I took the course on genjo Cohan and it completely blew my mind because I didn't understand what was being talked about but I knew it was really important somehow like myoui would have these exchanges with his students that seemed so profound but I couldn't put my finger on rationally why they were profound and I I'll give you specific example um uh there was a phrase you know basically he would Riff on phrases in the gjo Kanan and uh that night the phrase he was riffing on was intimate practice and so he asked there were like you know 120 people in the room or something and he asked them what is intimate practice and then he started taking answers from from people and uh there were interesting people there like I believe Bernie glasman was there actually um and so everybody from beginning students to senior monks would try to answer that question what is intimate practice and roshi kept making this sound like a displeased cat like somebody would give an answer and he would say you know like that and he just kept going and he kept going for like half an hour and the tension in the room was unbelievable and there were tensions in the room that I didn't even understand at the time for instance um when he kept rejecting answers uh I believe it was Bernie Glassman said uh roshi you are drunk and it makes me very angry when you are drunk and uh you know roshi kind of gave a h to that and then finally somebody in the back who was literally in tears said Rosie my mother has cancer she has to have surgery tomorrow morning she might die uh she's very very sick what should I do and roshi said I am very sick will you operate on me and it's like I didn't know what the hell was going on you know like I didn't know what was going on but I knew it was really important it just felt really important so that was really the the moment that I sort of decided to to practice um because it seemed because you know I had been told my whole life that I was like pretty smart you know for a little kid I didn't I couldn't W my mind around it myal mind and I couldn't wrap my mind around that exchange I didn't know what was going on and um but I wanted to find out so I started sitting and I still did I you know I sit every day I mean it's you know very modest practice at home but I still do it um and uh I actually now think that Allan shaming us into getting meditation instruction was the best gift that anyone ever gave me did you ever have any contact with the San Francisco Zen Center yes I uh moved out here uh in 79 specifically to study at Z Center and I um got a super cheap apartment at p Ag and Central in the upper eight Ash Bary it was $180 a month split between two of us and uh so every morning you know before Dawn I would get up and walk down was about 10 blocks I guess walk down to Zen Center and sit and I considered uh Richard Baker roshi my teacher and I loved his Dharma talks I must say and I know there's you know really a lot of complicated stuff around him but uh he he was a teacher for me we never had do son um but he was a good teacher for me he had a way of um and you know now I understand that he was all involved with people like Ginsburg and Philip whan even before he became a roosan but um oh yeah he was able to come up with metaphors that were very effective for me uh and he actually just came up with another one like not that long ago I happened to be sort of browsing around YouTube and I saw a uh an interview with Richard Baker and a yoga teacher in Germany and um he talked about when you walk around don't think of yourself as a who think of yourself as a what what you know ask yourself what are you not who are you what are you yeah that's I've heard him say that I was in Germany with him actually the only time I left Asia in the last 10 years and he talked about that I thought that was very interesting because uh I've I've done a lot of who am I and I I think who am I or what am I or interchangeable but go on go on that's interesting yeah so it it was it was a distinction that made sense to my mind and also pointed Beyond you know rational thoughts and so I um I still you know so anyway um so I was sitting every morning at 10 Center um working at greens I got a job at greens and uh you know working like 50 hours a week or something that's where I met you what year oh 1979 that's right and I was the host yep you were the host you were also uh a a thorn in Deborah Madison's side were you in the kitchen I still REM oh yeah well no I was a waiter but right I also worked in the kitchen I still remember the moment when she opened the walk-in and found you eating the ice cream that she had spent all afternoon making or whatever and uh so it was a great group of people I mean I I basically loved everybody who worked there practically was prickly and uptight you know but but she you know she was a brilliant brilliant brilliant Chef yeah um and uh I loved everybody I mean you know Richard and Elaine were there yeah um Jean hersfeld was there uh Dan Harvey was there like it was a pretty interesting group of young people you know and I was I was one of the one of the younger people actually I was a teenager like 19 or something yeah so um I loved working at greens love it was one you know it was one of the best jobs I ever had and I believe I was making minimum wage oh no you weren't making minimum wage you weren't you weren't no you were making less than minimum wage we were right right it was 79 that's the first year it was still in the slave labor era of Zen Center which I loved it was terribly a great amount of fun uh right and I I'm I I was charged with making tea treat in the morning uh and I still bow I still bow in every day uh after bowing I bow in in my house ah um after Bowing in at greens and I ended up getting married at greens um uh because I had worked there and because I had such pleasant memories of it wow and so we got married we got married Under the Redwoods uh the Redwood thing um and you know I had already decided to leave Zen Center for a different set of reasons when the Richard Baker stuff hit the fan um so and I was never in the Inner Circle of Zen Center or the upper echelons or whatever so you know I barely you know understood exactly what was going on you know now I've you know read a bunch of books I still think shoes outside the door is not a good book uh it was like seeing family home movies where the camera was always in the wrong room but a very interesting book is Philip whan's bow bow some chanted a little which just came out have you seen that book yeah yeah I haven't read it it's a wonderful book and and Brian hunger was there too yeah that's right when I was there y yeah yeah so so you know it's funny to read back through Phillip's notebooks because he was so you know sort of caught up in the pous intrigues of Richard Baker you know yeah I've gotta read that thing my God man I gotta catch up uh yeah you do I mean I think you're in it probably but um you know so so I I have nothing but great memories of Zen Center and when the hit the fan I you know I wasn't really part of it I left because of an interesting thing I left s Center because I was you know 21 or something and uh I never lived in the building I just sat in the morning and went to Dhat talks at both uh City Center and and green Gul I never went to tasara um wait a minute you've never been to tasahara no I've never been to tasahara far sorry far yeah I didn't but as I say I have nothing but pleasant memories of Zen Center and I left because I was a 21 or something by then uh young gay man in the middle of you know the summer of lust in San Francisco or whatever and and I wasn't getting laid I was you know I or you know to put it more truthfully I wasn't I had no chance of falling in love because the only person who seemed to be gay around Zen Center was isan who who you know I knew there were more but there were more yeah right but isan you know was a doll to me and took me under his wing like a grandmother and you know would kiss me on the lips and was just a wonderful person to me yeah um but in the mean in the meantime I remember uh I got you I got driven home by a senior priest whose name I won't mention uh every night and we drove past a billboard for like the club baths or whatever you know some gay bath house and I remember the priest saying yeah that's what it was like before Pompei blew up and I thought Jesus Christ why am I in this organization where there are not only no gay people but a senior priest of all things can assume that he's only talking to straight people or something you know and so I decid I decided to leave and um I actually asked katagiri about it uh before leaving I I said you know I'm thinking about leaving I I just feel like I you know I I want to have a relationship I I hadn't had like a major relationship really other than you know few months College thing so I really wanted to have a relationship and find a partner and category said your challenge will be to find something that means as much to you as in practice and I thought about that remark a lot over the years um and uh you know he was right that was a challenge um but you know I I ended up uh uh working in restaurants which were terrible after greed I mean you know greens was such a special place in so different ways you know that working in other restaurant I ended up getting a job at the hay tree grill that I for like 12 years is that right I did WOW y wow I did uh um but it was you know but it seemed compared to Greens like you know greens was so special because of the practice aspect yeah um and also just because the people were so cool you were cool it's like everybody was cool to work there Jordan you remember Jordan uh yes I do Jordan Thoren uh yes I do naughty Jordan uh yeah he was going I want to say one thing the biggest problem with Deborah and me we had to work you know I was I was the matri D and I I seated people too fast for her and she was always and she was always telling me don't seat them so fast because they couldn't handle that many orders coming in that fast so um right uh we had that sort of tension I don't remember the eating ice cream thing and it's sort of funny because generally I don't eat ice cream uh it it's too too cold for my uh teeth but uh whatever was forbidden I'm sure I was interested in um uh another thing I want to say is I've had you know we occasionally have a visitor from the uh Zen Center realm and I've had two visitors here in the last year who are gay men from that time who were not out of the closet then and I was surprised because I was so close with u with Tommy with Ean and Dell who were both sort of openly gay it hadn't occurred to me that I mean and and they felt very comfortable and Dell would say that he felt very comfortable being at zinsen because he wasn't uh you know his being gay wasn't a big deal but uh that's not what the two different people who were here said one of them uh uh who was here not that long ago he told me that he'd be with other guys who would who would make fun of or to make some sort of offhand you know remarks about guys or whatever um yeah and the other said he just didn't feel comfortable he didn't feel it was he wouldn't feel comfortable that way and I was surprised that uh both of them uh anyway I just want to tell you that so move on yeah it was a thing it was It was a heteronormative community at that point yeah and um uh one thing that's funny about reading Philip Wayland's journals is I mean people are getting laid like mad you know and he names names it's like he tells you who was sleeping with who and it was a lot and you know they weren't gay couples they were men and women yeah um yeah I had a crush on David Schneider who was straight of course yeah oh that's funny but but who was who was uh ravenously uh sexually involved with as many people as possible that's what I hear that's what I hear they were lucky I I remember his Mets tap in the Zeno which I thought was adorable um but uh yeah so you know I loved being in T Center and I felt like um you know somewhat that I had well I don't want to say it I mean I was going to say I had exiled myself uh I I sort of did you know at some point but eventually I did find uh you know I got a boyfriend uh not long after I left uh I mean I didn't stop practicing but I stopped uh having Zen Center be my whole life and I stopped working for Zen Center yeah and not long after that I met a boyfriend who I was with for like 10 years he's now a a famous food writer actually John Bird um but uh uh so yeah so you know I have nothing but good thoughts about Z Center including good thoughts about Richard Baker which you know I be you know can hardly say in public practically anymore but uh you know so I had a not only a great experience at at Zen Center but it set me up for I think a good life in a way like you know not always an easy life in any ways but um I I feel like it expressed my deepest values and still does and um you know now that I've had to deal with not just the death of my mother but the disintegration of her mind in the years before she died it was the heaviest thing I've ever been through but it was horrible we were super close she had had me when she was a teenager um and she was very sort of scintillatingly witty and beautiful woman and you know by the end she couldn't talk and it was it was just the most horrible thing but I but I do feel like Zen practice put under me a kind of seriousness and and willingness to deal with um whatever was happening yeah there's a passage in there's a passage in Philip's Journal where he's talking about getting transmission from Richard Baker and it's either Philip or Richard defines um Enlightenment as quote all at ease with the way things are and that is a really powerful phrase like it it sounds you know maybe superficial or something no it's actually like pretty it's deep yeah and it's fundamental that is right exactly so that is what I'm still aiming for to be all EAS with the way things are yeah yeah y y yeah yeah it's it's um a little bit like the you know the uh the AA thing U give me the strength [Music] to to accept things I cannot change and you know change the things I can and the re the difference right around a lot of that I uh but I forget um yeah that well that's very very interesting very good to hear too and and um I I hear you know uh U Richard Baker I'm I'm in touch with him and and um I uh uh you know uh I I agree with um Mike Dixon who say if it hadn't been for dick there wouldn't have been zenter wouldn't have survived uh right and um um it's like um I I gave a talk which was a terrible talk at greens oh I don't know when 20 about time after crooked cucumber came out around then I guess and uh uh you know to uh to Center people who signed up for it uh and um yeah uh I started off by by um uh talking just saying uh I wanted to uh acknowledge uh uh Richard Baker without whom none of us would be here now yeah yeah that's good I'm glad you said that I'm glad you said that yeah I mean I I saw Richard uh return turned to Zen Center to give a uh D you know I think Saturday morning or whatever Dharma talk um maybe it was about 12 years ago or something and I I went to that and it was beautiful so um yeah so uh it was wonderful to to hear uh Baker Roshi's Dharma talk at Zen Center and I realized how much I missed I had missed hearing it in the in the uh hearing from him in the intervening years yeah but you know I'm not a woman and I didn't go through all that and I also didn't I mean one of the things that struck me like in a funny way because I was slightly an outsider even when I was you know going to Z Center every day uh you know I I was never part of the you know as I say the Inner Circle or the upper echelons and so I didn't have all these agendas like to get mad at at bakosi you know when when like you know I remember like people people at greens like would talk you know I do remember like many conversations at greens where people were like you know can roshi make a mistake he mind of doen come on you know I thought that was ridiculous just Classics or cult-like behavior you yeah really really that that that we allowed that sort of thinking to continue to to exist um right is is U is whe it's um uh you know uh what what do you say when when a somebody is uh helping the alcoholic be an alcoholic uh enabling enabling uh and uh uh yeah uh we it's and it's sort of normal I think for you know groups that to get inbred and have ways of talking and thinking and come to uh you know self a congratulatory type thinking or whatever uh but um anyway I I I I also feel that that uh the the problems we had at that time were uh were like the healthy and uh you know uh uh Baker had created a community that was strong enough to um to deal with it and and organizations tend to get rid of their Founders after a while yeah uh you know um so uh anyway uh but um I i' stayed close with it but you know it wasn't like you said this thing about you you're not a woman so you wouldn't know now um when when uh it if there's a whole section on c.com about shoes outside the door and a really awful uh review of it in the New York Review of Books that I wrote a uh I wrote them and they should have printed what I wrote uh um and and you know saying women were coming to siner being assigned to be his concubine uh just complete you know uh so I I that was true that was true of Tru yeah no no it's true but very willingly that was totally out in the open it wasn't any but right so I did brief interviews with three uh very strong women my uh first wife dying gold schlog uh die in now uh Elizabeth Sawyer and Darlene Cohen and all three of them said he never treated him them with anything but respect they never had any problem like that he was he he he did not pray on women in sini or he had he had one relationship like that uh in since and I don't count the the one that was part of his Ivory Tower Group um and um you know um uh the but all three of them had complaints about him that were other stuff you know that we didn't get into there Dia or Diane back then she when when the three of us were together she'd take him on she'd attack him you know tell him he was he was arrogant and not her teacher and stuff and he did just rolled off him like you know water off the duck's back and he'd talk with her about it so it's complex yeah yeah yeah for sure well I I felt like you know part of what alienated me from the backlash against him was that it seemed like people had all these issue you know was it the car that he was driving was it the the fact that he was eating lunch with Jerry Brown and Linda Ron you know what I mean like there were like all these you know sort of classist uh dynamics that people were getting really mad about and plus you know we're all working for slave labor or whatever and so um I felt like a lot of things like he just became a lightning rod for a million uh Dynamics in the community yeah and um but he was you know the the community I feel like the community that he created was my teacher in a way in a way it was him but you know since I didn't do Doan with him like it wasn't him in you know intimately as it were but that the community really taught me and had a very decisive effect on my life that I'm still very grateful for now um and has helped me deal with the heaviest that comes down the pike like my mother dying of dementia like it has the meditation and and the um uh just the right questions to be asking and the right things to be aware of have really helped me through life and so I'm very grateful to you specifically for being part part of that community and you were definitely like one of the characters around greens who taught me what real Zen life was like so thank you I apologize no I I really appreciate it David I really do H yeah so well that is all great to hear um now you know I remember and you know I remember it's some point I thought you were you know I saw you or and and you were doing all this stuff with the grateful Dad and then you know you publish something I'm like wow where did all that come from oh yeah um well I can I can only talk for about five more minutes but um I saw the Grateful Dead for the first time in 1973 at the biggest Gathering of human beings ever in history on the North American continent which was a raw concert called the Watkins Glenn uh Summer Jam and there were I believe 750,000 people at that concert so wow it was you know like an echo of Woodstock in a sense um and the day the day before the concert uh was officially supposed to happen the grateful Dad came out uh to do a soundcheck and they ended up playing a piece of completely improvised music that was one of the most beautiful pieces of music that they ever played in their you know 40-year career or however long yeah it was 40-year career um I just really lucked out the first time I ever saw them was like a u you know Everest of their creative spontaneity um and so I was like wow that was really good I want to see them again and then I went to see them again about year later and again it was one of the best concerts they ever played I just it was just a matter of luck um and I mean you know you can hear them so I'm not just painting it Rosy In My Memory it's like those are classic considered classic performances by them and in fact I ended up releasing one of them uh through their record company the Watkins Glenn soundcheck um I ended up making sure that got released once I uh knew about the Grateful Dead and was uh um co-producing their career spanning box set so I got really into it and I got really into psychedelics and you know that was psychedelics was another expression of my way seeking mind I never took them just to party I took them as a you know form of spiritual experience yeah and um uh so that was you know and that was something that was running in parallel with my zen practice in a sense I knew that it was not not uh what you're supposed to do you know as a Buddhist um but it the experiences spoke to me in some deep way um and so you know I just kept both going both you know going to Dead shows and T psychedelics and also sitting all the time and they seem to even perhaps compliment each other yeah um and so you know I ended up seeing the Grateful Dead like I don't know 300 times something oh my gosh wow yeah and and the first book I ever wrote was called skeleton Kia dictionary for dead heads it came out in uh 93 right before Jerry Garcia died and and that was that was a big uh demonstration of U transience and ephemerality because Jerry died and like it wasn't just that Jerry died it was like this whole it was like a rainforest of culture that sort of died you know with him I mean there're still dead heads now and they're young dead heads whove never had the chance to see him which is wonderful but um something you know went away forever uh when when Jerry died and um you know by then I was uh working for them and writing about them and and all this so I ended up I have like this kind of you know h of being a dead head but it's also been kind of a not a job because it doesn't pay for my you know living or whatever but uh I've done a lot of writing about them and I there's a piece that I wrote um if anybody can find it out there you can Google it there's a piece that I wrote called the only song of God which I wrote uh it's an elogy for Jor Garcia that I wrote immediately after um he died because I was afraid that I would start forgetting things if I didn't write them down right away and what a Zen student would notice reading that piece it's it's one of my favorite things I ever wrote myself what a Zen student would notice is that the language is influenced by sutras so it's like a deadhead Sutra in a sense um and I can I can send you a link oh please please yeah I will um there's some typos like you know it got bootlegged and it's up on the web with some typos but um uh I'm pretty happy with it and it was the Confluence of my practice as a Zen student and my practice as a dead head um and uh yeah so yeah I'm happy about that um unfortunately David and I have to go wow this has been fascinating uh I'll probably I'll probably follow up with some uh uh email uh sure questions or something uh but uh but yeah really fascinating and um uh I um I'm I'm sorry about your mother again condolences and thanks for spending this time with me it's really really enjoyable and um uh you know stay in touch and uh uh if if there seem David I have so much respect I have so much respect for the work that you've done like on cute.com and everything thing I actually I I read it a lot you know I go back and read it or read you know you've done a wonderful job thank you well a lot of help a guy named Peter Ford works on it as much as I do uh oh cool yeah he he he sort of gives it uh better form uh it's amazing uh it how much there is to do with it how big it is um but um that's great I should let you go um thanks a lot uh and send me an email anything you think oh I I I could also have talked about this or anything you uh you want to add to it I can just read it okay thank you very much yeah and have a beautiful day and B yeah yeah okay yeah you too all right take care take care buddy bye byebye so thanks a lot Steve Silberman uh that was great you're a really interesting dude man uh uh I look forward to seeing what you do next you you're really focused um and U have done a lot of great things and um and you continue to practice um I don't know what to call it I mean I don't really think I practice Buddhism I don't even think I practice I just do uh mayi it's like roomy says come come on even if you've broken your vows a thousand times come again um okay this has been a Cuke audio podcast I'm DC POA of Cuke audio and Cuke archives coming to you from Sleepy Senor with dog bandita feline manise and dear lovely katrinka and katrinka's son Seth her daughter-in-law Dakota and our two grandchildren from them story Rose and coral May great names H uh and um we're all with wishing you and yours a grand Awakening