And then he goes on to use some metaphor for practice. And they're just I mean, I just get really excited when I come to that. It's such a beautiful thing. It's so hard to understand Buddhist teaching cognitively, I think. So the literature literature just has these mini metaphors. Those are like the fingers pointing at the moon. And they there's so much in many ways, they're much more accessible. So lately I've kind of become a collector and even inventor of new and updated Buddhist metaphors. So like a year ago or so, I gave a talk about how race and white supremacy are examples of something empty of inherent existence. And I'm not sure there's a better metaphor for our times. I quoted this amazing sentence. very Buddhist to me, very Buddhist by the scholar and historian Ibram Kendi.

[01:01]

And he wrote, race is a mirage, but one that society has organized itself around in important ways. Excuse me, I'm going to close my door. And we could say the same about the self. The self is a mirage, but one that humanity has organized itself around in very consequential ways. In fact, karma is a word for what we do and what happens when we organize ourselves around the mirage of self. So we can use the way we think and feel about the race construct as a metaphor for how we think and feel about the self and vice versa. During the first year of COVID, Hozan, trying to learn how to call him Hozan.

[02:02]

It's only been 32 years we've been married. We did something we always wanted to do, but we never set aside the time, which is we read a sutra out loud from beginning to end. And we chose the Lankavatara Sutra, which is supposedly a very Zen, a sutra that our Zen ancestors really liked. And somewhere in the middle of that, I forget when, we came across another one of these lists of metaphors. They often come in lists too, you know. And in this one, one of them was the self, you know, and these were metaphors for the self or also all conditioned things, everything, pretty much. So one of them was a Gondarvan city. And I had no idea what that was. I could not relate to that at all. So I Googled it, of course, and there wasn't a lot about it.

[03:06]

It seemed to be basically something that everybody knew about and knew was a story, knew was imaginary. So I was trying to think, what's comparable in this day and age? And what popped into my mind was Santa Claus. I said to Hozon, oh yeah, it's like you can't kill Santa Claus, right? And because the sutra was saying something about how we're not trying to get rid of the self. We're just trying to see that there's nothing there or see into the way it doesn't exist the way we think it does, at least. And so, you know, Santa Claus, the one at the North Pole does not appear or disappear, is not tainted nor pure, does not increase or decrease because there's no one there. So as long as we fixate, you know, as long as we strongly adhere, as long as we try to find or depend upon an inherent self, or the other way to put it more positively is until we study and see deeply into the emptiness of our self-construct, we're basically like children who believe in Santa Claus.

[04:25]

Hang on a second. I'm having some technical difficulties here. So one of the classic, you know, confounding senses in the Lankavatara Sutra is, you know, it doesn't exist and yet it doesn't not exist. They say that over and over. It's like, what the heck does that mean? But that's like Santa Claus, right? I mean, there is no little old man at the North Pole making toys with a team of elves who gets into a magic sleigh on Christmas Eve and flies around the world with presents for all the children. But on the other hand, you can't say around this time of year, around Christmas time, you can't say he does not exist because he's on street corners and in department stores and at Christmas parties. Even our Abbot Hozon once played Santa Claus at a wilderness travel Christmas party, I think it was in 1990.

[05:35]

But no matter how many Santas there are embodied or depicted in advertising, we're never going to get any closer to having an old man at the North Pole. And the way we come up with a self, is we take all our thoughts and feelings and experiences and we say, there must be someone who is having these things. There's some central figure fixed who is me, who's having these experiences and thoughts and memories. And that's actually kind of like seeing all these Santas on the street corners and in the department stores and at the Christmas parties and thinking, then there must be a Santa Claus at the North Pole. Because these are all here. But it's really not true. It's just a very compelling story. So Buddha is saying our self doesn't exist inherently. And I think most importantly, it just doesn't exist the way it seems to us.

[06:44]

That's the important thing. How does it seem to exist to you? That's what you need to look at. And the way it feels like it does. And, you know, I've come to feel like any of our insights into this, any of our insights into emptiness or our insights into how the self does exist, it's not like the culmination of our practice. It's really the beginning of something. Because we have to, at that point, then study how does the self exist? If it doesn't exist, you know, the way we think it does, because... When we may see that, we may see even during the seshin, you might feel like some glimmer of that, some inkling, and it may give you some lightness or some relief. But we still have to figure out how to be with each other. And we still have to get into the details of how to bring forth an enlightened way of being with self and other.

[07:45]

to keep scrolling here. Sorry to be reading my talk, but that's the way it played out this time. So anyway, so far so good. And if I had just stopped there, that would have been a good place to stop. I think Santa Claus is a pretty good metaphor for something that does not exist and yet does not not exist. But then it's been about a year, you know, I've had a long time to mull this over and I haven't really had a chance to talk to you about it. And I sort of like things took a strange turn, I would say, in my mind and my heart. You know, I began to think, unlike the race construct, which is pretty much just a con and a... a marketing tool or a, you know, a racket or, you know, it's a way to keep people down, you know. Santa Claus and the self are things that have like a sort of problematic side and a beneficial side.

[08:59]

With Santa Claus, you could say it's like a symbol of commercialism or consumerism or even maybe patriarchy. But it's also just an archetypal figure of giving. And Similarly, we can see the self is having some problematic side and some beneficial side, you know, because our belief in ourself or, you know, maybe you could say our differences are what makes us attack and battle with each other. But it's also what makes us be able to dance. And, you know, we're able to ourself maybe makes us say terrible things to each other, but it also. is something that allows us to sing in harmony. It's related to creativity and, you know, individual creativity and to love because love connects us across our separateness but it doesn't obliterate the boundaries. You know, you could say it takes two to tango.

[10:02]

And two is, you know, the self is like two, self and other or, you know, you and me. So I took a little dive into the origins of Santa Claus, which surprised me actually. I mean, St. Nicholas was the original source of this story. He was a very early Christian mystic and miracle worker. He lived around 300 in the common era. So after Buddha and Jesus, but before even our Tang Dynasty Zen ancestors. And he was Greek. And he lived in what's now called Turkey, it's called Asia Minor at that time. And he was renowned for his generosity, and in particular, this secret giving. And I was telling my son, Genpo, another name I'm trying to learn. It's only been 27 years for him. The secret giving, he said, Genpo said,

[11:11]

You know, oh, they have that in Japan, secret giving, secret good deeds. And he showed me this picture in this book, Unsui, which maybe some of you have seen as these drawings of monks. And it shows the secret good deeds. It's very, very charming. And I was thinking that our bag lunch project is kind of a form of secret giving because we make these lunches and we pass them out, but we don't really know the people who are giving them to and they don't know us. The most famous or oft repeated in my research story about St. Nicholas's secret giving is he said to have left gold, a big bunch of gold coins for a farmer so that his daughters could have a dowry and wouldn't have to go into prostitution. And there are many, there's a few, not many, there's a handful of stories about his giving and his miracles. He himself was born to a wealthy family and was orphaned at a young age, and when he became an adult, he gave away all his possessions and became kind of what we think of now, I think, as a desert father, those early, early Christian people.

[12:29]

So then the story of St. Nicholas moved west and north through Europe, and it blended with a variety of other fables and legends that it seemed to align with. And one of them is the story of Frau Holda, who is in northern Europe, and she's kind of a mother goddess figure, sometimes translated as Mother Winter. And it's said that when the snow falls, it's Frau Holda shaking out her feather pillows. And Frau Holda also carries another quality that Santa Claus has, which is it has to do with our heart's desire, asking for our heart's desire. So children would ask Frau Holda for their heart's desire. And, you know, children line up in our culture to ask Santa Claus for their heart's desire. There's a wonderful Jataka tale about the heart's desire.

[13:33]

And it's a bit sexist, so I'm going to read it because I'm going to read what I had the way I wrote it out because I will mess up the pronouns, I'm pretty sure, if I try to tell it to you. So I'm just going to read it. It centers around a being, a royal being, who basically asks for the Buddha's heart on a platter, so to speak. They want to eat the Buddha's heart. And so their lover, who was committed to fulfilling their heart's desire, somewhat regretfully travels around the world and comes to where the Buddha is and says, I'm really sorry about this. I don't want to do it, but I need to kill you so I can bring your heart to my beloved to eat. And when the Buddha hears the full story, he says, okay, bring me to them and I'll let you take my heart. So they fly back to this royal being and the Buddha starts to preach the Dharma and the royal being wakes up and realizing realizes that the heart that they really longed for was the heart of the Dharma.

[14:41]

And, you know, I've been thinking we don't exactly have a Bodhisattva of giving, do we? And Bodhisattva of generosity, you know, and giving is a really important practice for us. It's the first of the six perfections. And giving is really love in action, or it's one way to have love in action, to express love in actions. So maybe there's room for a bodhisattva of giving. And the bodhisattva of giving would include this feeling of the secret giving, you know? And also this thing about our heart's desire, asking for our heart's desire, receiving our heart's desire. You know, Suzuki Roshi called it our inmost request. And when we, you know, we can ask for it. And maybe what we get is not what we thought it was going to be. But it's good to ask. So here we are in Sashin. The word Sashin means to touch the mind.

[15:50]

Or the Chinese word Shin, you know, really... Shin, sashin, sashin really means heart mind, to touch the heart mind. Or I would even like to say, touch the body, the heart, the mind, and the spirit. Or maybe it means to touch big mind. Big mind is what's holding everything. So we take these days of sashin to maybe touch in or touch down. to hold everything that's happening. I love this thing that Hozan talked about yesterday about the circle of practice. There's so many circles, so many ways to think about circles. And one thing that popped into my mind is the circle of our posture in a way. So, I mean, we're holding our mudra in a circle. That's one circle. But then for me, I feel like my arms are making a big circle.

[16:55]

And the feeling of it is holding, holding what's happening in this moment. Somewhere Suzuki Roshi says, with our full mind, we form the mudra with our hands. With our full heart mind, we form the mudra with our hands. You know, now holding sounds a lot different from letting go, the famous letting go. Yes, language. Aren't we really supposed to be letting go while not holding on? So maybe we let go of the wall that's built up between ourselves and big mind. And then we let big mind hold us, hold everything. So the letting go part is maybe to relax, relax the muscles that are holding us apart from big mind.

[18:00]

When I first start a period of Zazen, you know, I can, I maybe find it useful sometimes to focus on what's happening by naming, you know, breath, bird. feelings, you know, stomachache, whatever. But after a while, and I don't know if you notice this too or what you notice, if I settle in, the more I settle in, I notice that words seem to come between me and my experience. And It's almost like too much work. I become aware of all the work involved in naming everything and knowing what's happening and having a word for it and an understanding or a meaning to it. And I can settle into a place where it's just really hard to separate out the hearing, which

[19:18]

Cognitively is coming from outside usually. And then feeling of my knees, which is so-called inside. They're just one happening after another. And if I let go of the words, it's very peaceful and easeful. It's relaxing. You're not doing all that work. And, you know, there seems to be some musculature involved in this separating subject and object and just finding those muscles and letting them go. It's like, I'm not saying it's wrong to name, but just what about when, for Sashin, you know, especially after the first few minutes of a period, you know, what about just holding what's happening and touching what's happening and merging with what's happening? Our psychophysical system is so amazing, isn't it?

[20:23]

We have feelings and we have thoughts, but we also have feelings about feelings and thoughts about thoughts and thoughts about feelings and feelings about thoughts. There's just a lot going on in the world of experience, you know? So if my knee is hurting, maybe I can just be with it, hold it, focus on it, merge with it. touch it and that might seem like that's just me you know but then i could also not like it that it's hurting and i or i could be scared or i could be angry about it hurting and then it seems like this the fear anger is more like me and the knee is outside suddenly you know i'm angry at the knee but then I could try to turn towards that anger and anxiety and connect with it and merge with it and touch it. As what's happening, just another thing that's happening.

[21:29]

Or if I don't do that, I might judge myself for being such a bad Zen student that I can't merge and touch my pain in my knee and then I'm having this anger and fear. So then. I've got the judging mind seems to be more like me and then the anger and fear seems to be more outside. And maybe it's not me in sex. I think sometimes the critical voice actually always seems like it's coming from outside no matter what. And then I have my feelings about being talked to that way. And so, These feelings and thoughts about, they seem to be about things, but really it's just happenstance, happenstance, happenstance, you know, experience, experience, experience. They're just successive happenings. So if we just keep making the effort to turn towards these successive happenings and sometimes getting caught and then sometimes remembering to turn towards, we make this sincere effort

[22:42]

to turn towards whatever's happening, likely you're going to get to some place sometime during Sashin where what's happening is a friendly appreciation for what's happening. You are in a feeling of friendliness and caring, you know, and appreciation for what's happening. And that's kind of the aligning with big mind. Big mind is this holding everything with a feeling of appreciation and friendliness and caring. And we just keep stepping back until you get there. And then you are the one holding, but you're also being held. You're being held by big mind, and you are in big mind doing the holding.

[23:43]

But we just keep getting sidetracked by caught by these things that seem so real, you know. And when we're caught by them, you know, we're back to we're back to believing in Santa Claus. Right. So. Last night I hopped on the Presidio Hills and group talk and. Steve was reading from this Suzuki Roshi lecture. I thought I might read you just a little bit of it. It's called The Teaching Just For You, and it's a very confounding talk. And he even admits, he even admits this part of it that he does not understand. You may say, my practice is not good enough to feel the goal or the full meaning right now. But even though you say your practice is not good enough, there is no other practice for you right now.

[24:53]

Good or bad, it is your practice. To approach perfect practice, there is no other way than to accept yourself. To say your practice is bad does not help your practice. To say your practice is excellent does not practice, does not help. Your practice is your practice. And then a little bit further on. This is not a practice that can be compared to other practices as a means of attaining something. From the experiences of many people, I would say down through history, instructions were accumulated for the forms we use and the way we breathe just as scientific knowledge is accumulated. But Buddhist wisdom puts emphasis on the subjective side of the truth. So, The word subjective. I feel like the word subjective is kind of an objective word. You know what I mean?

[25:55]

So if I say this morning, objectively, I knew it didn't make sense, but subjectively, I felt I had a feeling of anxiety about giving my talk. That's one way to say it. But if I say, This morning I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I feel like you're there with me then, right? You feel that. You get that. So I've just been noticing that there's words that are distancing. There's a way of talking that's distancing, and there's a way of talking that's close and connecting. And it might not be the same for all of us. But I've come to really appreciate the word feeling. It's a verb. It's a noun. It's an adjective. It's anything you want it to be. It's a very feeling word, I think. And it makes sense to me that feelings have their own skanda.

[26:58]

You know what I mean? Vedana, the second skanda, is sometimes translated as feelings. And that makes sense to me. Some Zen centers are now using the word sensation for Vedana instead of feeling. And to me, sensation is a very distancing word. So feelings. Depression, I have depression. To me, very distancing. I'm feeling really sad about my life right now. That's getting almost too close to the feeling, you know what I mean? We need to be in a safe place to hold a sad feeling. Or to feel that big mind is holding us in our sad feeling. And for me, at least, some sad feelings just want to be held. They don't want to be transformed. They just want to be held and not at a distance, but closely.

[27:59]

That's all they want. So sashin is an opportunity just to hold our feelings, which are a big part of what's happening, you know, at least one-fifth. Unless it's too much, unless our feelings are too much, in which case we may need to talk to someone and expand our circle of holding. Past trauma, we've been talking lately on Saturdays a little bit about trauma. Past trauma is hard to hold. Personal or intergenerational trauma is hard to hold. So we need to create conditions that support holding. I mean, there's a lot of effort in the Western mode being put into this right now, but it really aligns with ancient efforts from many cultures of how to hold pain and trauma.

[29:00]

We got lost, somehow we got lost in Western culture, those of us who identify with Western culture. We lost some of this. And we have this incredible distancing from pain and trauma, trying to push it away, build a wall against it. But now we're kind of circling back, getting back to ways to hold it, ways to expand the circle, ways to help each other and support each other in the holding of that. So, I wish for your sesheen, you know, just your sincere effort to hold what's happening. And then also at some point, pop in or lean back or rest in, best back into being held. Being held by big, big, big mind.

[30:03]

Just holding everything. Always and is always available. So that's my talk for this morning. And we do have some time for questions, and I'm interested in your questions and comments. We're a little bit working as a Sangha on how to streamline or be somewhat concise, make room for other people also who want to talk. So just keeping that in mind if you can. We're all eager to hear each other, so please. Hi, good morning. Please raise your digital hand in the participants box or send a message to me in the chat box if you'd like to ask a question. Sorry.

[31:06]

Ryushin? Laurie, thank you very much for an incredibly rich and deep talk. We don't often talk about the emptiness of feelings and it's such an important topic. I really appreciate the depth of which you've explored it. I'm feeling really nervous about asking my question in part because it's been hard to formulate it and because of flies in the face of what i think you're talking about to a certain extent but i'm going to try anyway and i hope that we can find our way with it um for people who have had trauma for people who live in trauma that's a part of the culture that we're a part of it's very hard to um i think i don't understand fully uh

[32:17]

how to be with the emptiness or the ever-changing nature of something that has continued over time immemorial. I was thinking as you were talking and using that wonderful quote from Abraham X. Kendi, I was thinking about my own trauma as a woman who's been raped and as a queer person that Those feelings, I can see the complexity and the emptiness of them, but I also realize that I still look over my shoulder when I walk on a twilight street because those causes and conditions continue. I know that there are other traumas and other

[33:17]

traumas in the room that are ongoing here in our Zoom room. I just wonder if this is a big topic and it's complicated, but I just wanted to put out those sets of feelings in that question that I grapple with and ask you how you grapple with. It's interesting that you heard the emptiness of feelings. I mean, I think maybe that was sort of in there and implied. I don't think I said the emptiness of feelings. No, I don't think you did either, but I think you were pointing towards the ever-changing nature of those that arise. At least that's my experience in Zazen, that it's been very freeing for me and very joyful for me. to be in that place and to recognize that what's happened to me personally in my life is something that's very fluid in a certain way, and yet it's not.

[34:20]

And I think some of the analogy that you used along that line comparing white supremacy and race also, I think I understand what you were referring to. But it's complicated, and I'm just not sure how to think about those things in the context of the talk. Yeah, so I think that I, kind of what you're talking about is what I was pointing to when I said that this isn't the end of something, but rather the beginning of something. The beginning of us understanding how the self is a thing, you know. Once we understand how it doesn't exist, then we can explore how it is. So, you know, where was I that someone said, I was somewhere, Alan, if you remember, someone said, no one knows, no one, oh, I went with my sister too, her knee surgeon.

[35:24]

And he said... It's really complicated with knee surgery because it has to do with which pains can be cured by surgery in which can. He says, no one knows how your pain is for you. No one knows the pain you're feeling. And I just was shocked and stuck by that, you know? And so there's something to me where like we need to tell each other how we're feeling because otherwise we don't know. Therefore, there's a kind of a self there in that moment. There's a self that I need to reveal or share or whatever. And I think because of karma and everything, it gets super complicated, super fast. Like it's true that I talked about intergenerational trauma, but if you're still in the conditions that are causing trauma, that's even an additional layer. So it's enough to have something happen to you as a child. And then you can maybe become adult and say, oh, that was just causes, my mom was just,

[36:27]

My mom didn't know about it. Our parents had no idea how to have children. So they made mistakes. That was their first time in a lot of cases. There's no class. There's no license. There's no driver's license. There's nothing. And a lot of parents really have no idea. So when you see that, maybe you realize, oh, yeah, they did that. They were harshly critical, and that was terrible. But also... that was just causes and conditions coming down the pike. That's one thing. But then, you know, if you had racism as a child and then you're still having racism, that's a completely other, that's a whole nother layer. I mean, that's, these things get layered, you know? So I'm not in any way trying to simplify or say that it's a simple thing, you know, what we're talking about, you know? You know, I think that, There's healing, there's wounding and there's healing and, you know, stopping the hurt, stopping anybody else from doing the hurt, you know, stepping in when it's happening.

[37:37]

There's so many different things that are coming from this. And it is about the self because it happened to me. And it was the way my mom talked to me. And you can't know that unless I explain it, you know. At the same time, I think my mom was God. I have to separate my mom from God, you know. Mom, she was just her own weird person under her own causes and conditions, you know. And, you know, I... I'm not saying to extrapolate that to white people, but except if it gives some relief, you know, like this is just a stupid thing I was taught to do. And I don't know how to, I don't always know how to stop. And it started a long time ago and I want to stop carrying it on, but I don't always know how to. And it, it wasn't, it's not truth. You know, there's no truth to it.

[38:38]

It's completely just a weird thing. It's a racket, you know, it's just a racket. So I think that's what I mean about how we have to start the conversation from the emptiness, not get to the emptiness as some kind of ultimate, then nothing matters or then there's no problem or it's all clear or something. Yeah, thank you so much. Okay, thanks. Kabir. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for this. Great talk. I'd like to share a couple things. One, emptiness. So when I first started Buddhism, I started in Tibetan tradition. And they're huge about emptiness, but they have this really cool meditation that we used to do where you take things apart. So you take your body and you say, well, what part of my body is the body?

[39:40]

Okay, so you start with your finger and you kind of, you can go all the way down to the bone marrow. What part of the body is the body? And then you start taking it apart. You kind of sort of like, you pile your body parts on the side, one by one. Well, then when you took all the parts, what happened to the body? And when you have a pile of body parts in a corner of the room, you know, imagine it. Are those the body? Well, if you pull one at a time, well, that's not the body. That's the hand. That's the finger. That's the foot. Well, what happens when you put them all back together? Well, there's the body. Let's go look for it again. Now, is the body part of the body? Is the body separate from the body? Is the body the collection of the parts? We don't know. So look at a gold coin in the coin. Right? Which part is the gold between the coin? Are they together?

[40:42]

Are they separate? What happens when you take them apart? What happened to it? So that's a really fun game to play. And I do that with trauma. And I go for that hurt. I go for that flashback. Or I go for that, ah, you know. And I go, so where is it? Without trying to get rid of it. Without trying to fix it. Without trying to blocking it. I just see how what it is. And then I sort of One time I was doing really deep work with a therapist. And I started to cough because it was like the allergy season. And it was sort of like at the peak of the therapy. And I turned around and looked at my therapist and said, during the season, I get like phlegm. And all of a sudden I was like, wait a minute. I don't have to get anything. I don't have to get rid of anything. It's just allergies. It happens, and then that's it. Well, it's a little different than trauma because trauma is sort of an allergy that you can never get rid of.

[41:47]

It's always sniffing and all that stuff in the background. But in this book, Radical Acceptance, Tara, she gives an example. She actually goes through this exercise where you actually can go ahead and hug yourself at the moment of trauma. And you can literally just... Give yourself a hug like giving a child, your only child, a hug and acceptance. Without trying to say what happened, without asking, don't get, you know, just, okay. And if we've done something that is not skillful or it wasn't right, it was completely, no, no, no. Then we can have compassion for that part of us and realize that that part of us didn't know any better. As well as the abuser, as well as the teacher, the parent, they had no excuses to do it, but they had reasons for it.

[42:50]

But at the same time, what happened in their side? What was going on there? What part of their body are you going to get mad at? But at the same time, we have to, I don't want to be more proactive, it's kind of genetic psychology, but to realize that everybody gets traumatized and abused in many different levels. And we're not trying to ignore it. We kind of realize that it did happen. At the same time, develop empathy that it didn't only happen to me, but what happened to me wasn't right. But at the same time, what happened to somebody else wasn't right either. And God knows what happened to that abuser that they get to the level of doing that. So I guess more like we'll go through the channel of empathy without excuses, but also trying to find a solution where maybe we can find ways that we become aware that we can start doing things that will prevent it, at least in our part, in our community.

[43:58]

So this is just a little thoughts from... what I gathered in the last couple of years. So I just want to say thank you. I know you as someone who's had some intergenerational trauma and I know you as someone who appears to have metabolized some of it. So it's good to know some of the story behind that. I appreciate, I think I understand how you've been working with what happened to you. And I think that that's the most helpful thing is people who've had something happen to them and how they work with it. talking to other people who've had something happen and how they work it out. It's the most meaningful. So thank you. Yes, thank you. Oh, you're welcome. And one more thing at the last... Whoa, whoa, whoa. You know what, come here. I might cut you off. Sorry. I'd love to hear. We continue. Let's talk later. All right. Just because... Yeah. No, I get carried away. Okay, thank you. Hiko or Joe? Hi, Laurie, thank you for your talk and thanks to everyone for their comments.

[45:01]

I actually had an interesting experience that seems to be right in tune kind of with everything that's kind of happening this morning in the Zoom. I went home last night and read Nothingness, Alan Watts, and I read letters from MPNist, Suzuki Roshi, and sat and contemplated my anger and sat and contemplated my being. I went into the Zendo this morning and I recognized because of Chinese medicine, the kidneys in my back have the adrenal gland attached. And I was recently speaking with someone about ancestral energy and intergenerational trauma and thinking, well, in the Chinese medicine, that's going to be in my kidney and my adrenal system. And so I Just took a moment and I leaned back and I let my kidneys hang on their ligaments rather than leaning forward and putting the pressure on them. Leaning back.

[46:04]

And as I was leaning back, I started to feel my father. And I recognized, yeah, okay, dad's in the kidneys. And then I said to myself, well, thanks, but I really don't want to express you anymore because everybody started me being angry. But then again, holding as you've been saying and and non-separating as everyone has been saying uh i started to say okay let's let them hang and let dad free bit by bit and for the last two 40 minutes since uh i i just been grinning and it doesn't mean i'm not going to have those things especially if i am still working with my father but my father and i through time, are now working on it. So any comments or whatever? This machine is so great. If you do touch something, you can actually take the time to investigate it and feel your way into it.

[47:09]

And you probably will, especially in a five-day, you'll touch something, you know, unbearable or impossible to deal with or totally confounding and then just sit. into, sit into it. And that's the beauty because we're taking this time to do this and we're not, you know, you can't do it when you're trying to accomplish things in the so-called outside world. So good job. And then Heather. Hi, Heather. Good morning. I'm going to go to the first part of your talk about Santa and say, I love Santa. I just think it's like the best thing ever invented or evolved. And I'm hoping to squeeze out one more year of Santa with my son before he moves on. I'm not sure if we're going to get it or not. My question for you is to me, there are many things I love about Santa, but just this idea of magic and surprise and delight.

[48:20]

is like the best part of being alive for me and i wonder if you see any sort of like in our spiritual development or spiritual evolution there's a way that like the magic gets stripped away over time pretty easily if you're not careful And I don't know if losing the magic is a necessary step in spiritual evolution. Or if it's just sort of the unfortunate side effect of society and being alive with many, many people and many demands on our existence. Do you have any thoughts? I mean, well, there's a way to turn that whole thing around. Like if we get back to... you know, as a parent putting on Christmas, you know, on the one hand, basically the magic is this is not your tired, cranky, overworked, underpaid parents pulling this thing off, but this is magic.

[49:32]

Santa came and he brought it down, you know, and you're the one who's sponsoring that magic because you know what I mean? So it's sort of like seeing through the self liberates us to to be the magic because, oh, there is no Santa. That's just magic. It's magic that that came up. And it's magic that this guy did a few things in 300 and then his story journeyed around the world. That's magic. And that we still do it. And even an old Jewish guy can be invited to be Santa at a Christmas party and did a damn good job, I would say. Though he had a fake beard then, but now he's got a real beard. But I think you're right. We don't want to lose the magic and the sense that, wow, this whole thing is just made up. Like there is no self. So everything that about myself is just something I'm making up or made up through trauma.

[50:33]

I mean, we're not trying to whitewash, if that's the right word. What's... the hard, the sad parts, you know, I think that's, it's important not to whitewash the sad parts, but also like you're saying, it's important not to lose the magic. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you, Lori. Lori, there's someone in the chat. And then Mauro, and then maybe we, oh, anyway, go ahead. Joel wrote, great talk, footnote about Santa Claus. There's a sweet video out there about Santa Claus causing a gay relationship. It celebrates a 50-year anniversary of a milestone of gay rights. I think Norway. That's all he says. Yeah. That's great. I'm going to look for that. And I also wanted to add, if I lost anybody using the Santa metaphor, please let me know later.

[51:34]

I would like to know. Or you can let me know now. But if you don't want to let me know now, let me know later. Because I was worried about that. I could imagine that, you know. But I'm so glad that some people just, you know. I love it that we, Alan and I, did it every, you know, we'd wrap those presents on Christmas Eve. And it was all, everybody knew it was made up. I never told my kid, you know, I never lied to them. It was sort of a don't ask, don't tell, you know, or something. But, you know, It's amazing what you can make up if you let yourself. And Mauro, is that how you say your name, Mauro? Yeah, Mauro is the best way to say it. Mauro, Mauro, thank you. Yeah, no, thank you. I had a question that is a little bit technical, and I'll try to make my preface for the question as brief as possible. So there are those of us who write professionally, creatively, And many of us who write, write to, you know, to describe pain, you know, socially, personally, intergenerationally.

[52:43]

You know, and in the docu-series, Pretend It's a City, Fran Lebowitz reminded me that, you know, a writer's job is to make distinctions. And I've noticed that as someone who writes, it's very hard to let go of words. in Zazen. And I would really like to practice that as someone who has a very intimate relationship with words. And so I was wondering if you had any advice for writers in letting words fall away. I don't know if I have the how, except just keep at it and let your mind settle. I think it's almost like a brainwave thing, like the alpha waves come in and it's harder and harder to think in words. But I would just... I have a lot of faith and I believe for myself and you that the words that will come out afterward will be even more amazing and more what you meant to say and more helpful to others and more, you know, more what you really want to say.

[53:50]

So go forth without fear. You have nothing to lose. It will all be there. You know, just like, you know, they'll still be Santa on the, even if you, realize there's no Santa Claus, there's still going to be that Santa on the street corner shaking, you know, don't worry. Don't worry for a moment. It will all be there. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the talk. Thank you. Hozan? Maybe we could have this be the last because, you know, we are in Sashin and all. Give Hozan the last word. It's okay. I'd just like to respond to Mauro's question with a suggestion. As somebody who really enjoys words and works with words, what I've been doing for quite a while in Zazen is listening and seeing if I can listen before the word gets attached to it.

[54:58]

And if the word gets attached to it, fine. But keep listening. This is going back to continuous practice, the continuity of listening because one sound arises after another. So that's something you can do. Redirect your awareness from the habitual awareness of our words to... what are the naturally arising sounds that surround us? It's a wonderful practice. Yeah, the thing about the habitual, you know, there's the freedom words underneath the habitual words. I like to read your words someday, Mauro. I think that's good. That feels complete to me. What do you think, Gary?

[55:59]

I think we're ready to stop. I'm going to stop recording first.

[56:04]

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