dropping the great burden | Zen teacher, Valerie Forstman

Kevin Rose (0:00)

Today, Associate Zen Master and Musician, Valerie Forstman. For over 20 years, Valerie performed at an absolutely insane high level inside the precision of classical music. This is a world where even a single misplaced note could shatter the perfection of a performance. And one night in Dallas, after winning a coveted opera position, she found herself caught between old disappointments and future anxieties. She said, it felt like the past and future were sliding apart, tectonic plates splitting open. So on the advice of a friend, she walked into a Zen center. She told me I had no idea what I was doing, but it felt like I'd come home. That was nearly 30 years ago. Since then, Valerie has pursued Zen with the same intensity she once gave to music. From chasing flawless performances to discovering what Zen masters call empty hands. She became an assistant teacher, and today she's the guiding teacher at Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe. But what I really loved about this interview is it's not a story about leaving one life for another. It's about what happens when you stop holding it all together. When the perfectionist discovers that there's never anything to perfect, and when the performer realizes that there's no one performing. We get pretty deep and talk about what happens in those moments. A single step becomes the universe walking, the floor rising like breath in a distant mountain suddenly in your chest. And for Valerie, those moments opened in to something deeper. She shares a turning point in her practice, a retreat experience where standing in the shower, she vanished, no self, no separation, only the weight of all human suffering revealed at once. It wasn't a nightmare, she says, it was the greatest gift of my life. And what followed wasn't fear or detachment, but compassion, an unwavering desire to serve. This interview is kind of a front row seat into Valerie's journey of becoming a Zen teacher. It's a wild world of surrender, letting go. And for those that have these awakening moments, they see the world in a very different way, and you'll hear it in her voice. In Zen, they have this saying that it's the lifting of the veil.

I have no doubt, many of you listening to this are insanely high performers. And one of the questions I had in my early days of kind of a deeper practice was if I take this seriously, if I go deep here, am I going to lose my edge? Am I just going to stop caring? We dive into that, and you'll see that's certainly not the case. And if anything, one of the benefits is less burden. So this podcast is for the Zen curious. And really for anyone, and I certainly put myself in this camp that senses there's something just out of view. And I hope this conversation is a great signpost for you. A reminder that you have everything that you need. You just might not know it yet. And please know that I'm approaching this with as much humility as possible. I've had zero awakening moments, but I have had a couple little hits of a shift in perspective. And I like, I really like where it's going. So I'm spending more and more time these days on the cushion. If you'd like to learn more about Valerie's work or sit with her at Mountain Cloud, you'll find all the links in the show notes. And now, here's our conversation, Associate Zen Master, Musician, and Friend, Valerie Forstman.

Well, thank you for doing this.

Valerie Forstman (4:04)

Yeah, I'm curious. It's just nice to see you and, you know, be in conversation.

Kevin Rose (4:13)

Yeah, I'm excited to chat today. One of the things that I found really beautiful was when we did our last little mini-retreat, you kind of gave a little bit of your back story on how you came into this practice. And I was wondering if you could repeat that here for us today.

Valerie Forstman (4:31)

Thank you. So, I started life as a classical musician, fell in love with classical music, trained seriously to be a flutist, did that profession for more than 20 years. But along the way, I won an audition to play principal flute in the Dallas Opera for a season, a year. And that was just a joy. I was doing a lot of different kind of work, and that just complimented it so beautifully, all of it in music. And then at the end of that year, as was the regulation, they had a national, actually international audition. So, I had been the interim principal flutist, and I really wanted that job. So, I went into training, as one does, we had about three months to prepare, and every day, practicing these excerpts, practicing a bit of a concerto that was on the list, just in training. And as that audition was nearing, I realized that I was waking up in the night, sort of remembering past experiences, some of them disappointments. And during the day, I was practicing so that I could play a certain way at a future time. And it felt like the past and the future were just sliding apart like these tectonic plates. And where the present would be was just this chasm. And I felt like I was losing my love for playing. So the week before the audition, I played with the Dallas Symphony, which I often did, and a good friend said, hey, how are you? And I told him just a bit about this and said, you know, something needs to change. And he said, oh, I have just the thing. Come and sit. And it turned out he had discovered the Maria Canaan Zen Center in Dallas, where I was living, like about six months earlier. And so, you know, the audition happened on the weekend, and Monday night, there was an orientation at the Zen Center. So I went to that, and I had done a little bit of reading the Three Pillars of Zen, and Mind Beginner's Mind, but that was all. So really a true beginner at this practice. And still, just even hearing that first introduction, and then we went in and sat one round of 25 minutes, and I just felt like I had come home. There was something very recognizable about this practice, though for quite a while in the beginning, I had an experience like many people do of this what Zen calls monkey mind. The Buddha even described it, that our minds are like a monkey swinging from branch to branch, and we just get entangled in thinking. And yeah, that would happen. And nevertheless, I found myself leaving. A night at the Zen center would be three rounds of 25 minutes with five minutes of walking in between, and then maybe a short talk or a cup of tea together in a formal way. And I would leave and get in my car and start driving home. And though the sit might have been almost dizzying because of this monkey mind, somehow the streets and the road signs and the street lights just seemed brighter. There was a kind of clarity coming on about things, even a bit of luminosity that really intrigued me. And so I just kept going.