I was sitting in the downstairs dining room of the Dallas Zen Center, looking toward the kitchen. Three people, including Lamborghini (a member of the Zen Center), were in the kitchen. One was a woman and the other two were men. They had a bag from which one of them extracted a gob of marijuana.

I recalled that the four of us had bought the marijuana together. The bag of marijuana had been lying around the house and I had recently smoked some of it without telling the others. I hoped no one mentioned that there seemed to be less marijuana in the bag now, because I really didn't want to admit to having smoked some of it.

One of them put some of the marijuana into a pan on the stove, apparently planning to somehow cook it. I thought they might be going to make some brownies. The woman began pulling handfuls of the marijuana out of the bag and holding it up in the air. That alarmed me some, because the back kitchen windows didn't have any curtains. It was night and anyone could clearly see inside. I stood up and walked into the kitchen.

I pointed out that they weren't acting very prudently and that a policeman could easily see in the back window and have everyone arrested for possession of marijuana. They realized what I was saying was true and they held the marijuana down to where it couldn't be seen. Someone worked on pulling down the blinds.

In the meantime, Lamborghini  handed me a small pipe with some marijuana in it and I stuck the pipe in my mouth. I was a bit suspicious why Lamborghini  had handed the pipe to me first, and I thought it might be because the person who lit the pipe had to inhale some of the noxious fumes from the match when it was lit. Lamborghini  was just about to light the pipe, when I noticed a red glow already in the pipe. Apparently the pipe already was lit and more marijuana had been placed on top of the flame. I took a hit.

Someone turned off the lights. I liked the lights being off. There was still enough light coming through the windows from outside so we could clearly see each other. Referring to the lights being out, I said, "That's a zeny thing to do."

Someone asked me to clarify what I had meant by that. I explained that in practicing Zen, people needed to sometimes do things which were out of the ordinary. In fact the practice of Zen seemed to involve doing unordinary things. I added, "We can do whatever we want, as long as we're not hurting anyone."

It occurred to me that the idea of not hurting anyone else by my actions was also important in the practice of Zen. But it also seemed as if that concept might also apply to not hurting myself. And was I not hurting my lungs by smoking this marijuana? The thought made me uncomfortable.

It suddenly occurred to me that it would be nice if the four of us did a little folk dance together there in the kitchen. There was enough room. I had folk-danced before and Lamborghini  knew some folk dances. It would be fun to try.