44 BUDDHADHARMA: THE PRACTITIONER’S QUARTERLY
do in my life, but I didn’t know how to
pull it off. At a certain point, thirty-five-
some years ago, a senior teacher asked
me to assist on a retreat, and I found out
if I did that I could sit for free at IMS. So
I almost feel like I was bribed to teach.
Of course, I said yes. And when I taught
that retreat, I felt like I was home in a
way that was different from any other
time in my life. I felt like a fish in water,
like this is what I am meant to do. There
was a strong satisfaction and happiness
and joy. I was nervous, of course, and I
was shy, and I didn’t know how to talk.
But I felt like the environment I was
in was the right one. After that, I just
wanted to share the dharma in whatever
way I could.PEMA KHANDRO RINPOCHE: I love this
phrase, “a fish in water.” That’s how I
felt myself. I started teaching at a very
young age, and it was just natural. It was
the one thing I never questioned—it just
had its own factuality about it.REBECCA LI: I actually have not thought
about this question at all. I think for
me, it’s not one moment. It happened
gradually after I started practicing with
Master Sheng Yen, my teacher. I’d fly
from California to New York for retreatsPEMA KHANDRO RINPOCHE: One ques-
tion I’ve been excited to ask is this: what
was the moment when you knew it was
going to be your life’s work to be a Bud-
dhist teacher?MYOKEI CAINE-BARRETT: It was not that
I wanted to teach so much as I wanted
to be of service; my family has always
been service oriented. My dream was to
follow—and this sounds funny now—
but Audrey Hepburn in that movie, The
Nun’s Story, which I saw when I was
about eleven or twelve years old. But
when I became a Buddhist, also around
that age, I didn’t know about nuns in the
Buddhist tradition, especially the one I
was in. So I kind of put that dream aside.
I was part of Soka Gakkai, and when I
left and joined Nichiren Shu, I met my
teacher and found out I could become
a priest and a dharma teacher. That
brought back my original dream to be
of service to people in congregations, to
people in need of teaching. So, I became
a dharma teacher.NARAYAN HELEN LIEBENSON: I’d been
practicing, I don’t know, it feels like
my whole life, but I had no money, and
I wanted to sit. I wanted to do long
retreats—that’s really what I wanted toPANELISTS
MYOAN GRACE SCHIRESON
REBECCA LI
MYOKEI CAINE-BARRETT
NARAYAN HELEN LIEBENSONMODERATED BY
PEMA KHANDRO RINPOCHE