An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with even a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to. as well as online. It gives me great pleasure to introduce our speaker today, Ellen Webb. Ellen has been a dancer and teacher for most of her life and run the dance studio in West Oakland. She and her artist husband, Sandy, have two children and one grandchild. Joko Beck was her first teacher. This year marks the 20th anniversary of practicing at BCC, though her first appearance

[01:01]

Appearance was at Dwight Way in the 70s with her then-boyfriend, Ron Nestor. She received the precept from Sojin Roshi in 2010 and Washuso in 2018. Her dharma name is Maiko Taishin, which means dancing light, open heart. Please give a warm welcome to dancing heart. Open light. Thank you, Russ. And good morning. Everybody can hear me. And welcome to all of you in the Zendo. It's really so nice to see you in person. It just seems like it's been so long. And on Zoom. Thank you for joining on Zoom as well. This is the first talk I've given in the Zendo since the pandemic started.

[02:02]

And I was Shuso in 2018. And I probably gave a talk or two after that. But this is really bringing back my time as Shuso. And I was a little unsteady and insane at that time. And this is reinforced because Randi, who is the Jisha today, was my Benji. And considerably more sane and steady than I was. So I really appreciated her. So I don't give many Saturday lectures and for some reason they seem to often be scheduled soon after I've come back from being in the mountains. And so I often tell stories, and I will today, probably, about the mountains. And the place that I go is the place that my family has had a cabin since, I don't know, I was five years old.

[03:10]

And it's quite remote. It's in Washington State, and it's in the North Cascades National Park. And there's no... available TV or radio or phone service in this valley. And you also can't drive there, so you kind of go and stay. You have to take a long boat ride up a lake. It's inland, but it's quite cut off in that way. And when I'm there, because it's a long way away and it's hard to get to, we usually stay for quite a long time. And because I'm not so busy in my life, I have time to read and study and sit a little bit more than usual, which I really value and appreciate. But sometimes I feel like I get a little far out on a limb with my practice in some way.

[04:13]

And it's always nice to come back and sort of be with people and hear other people's ideas and thoughts about the Dharma in these lectures and the Monday morning talks and also in my Dharma groups, which I really enjoy, and just my talks with friends. So the last several Saturday lectures have either directly or maybe indirectly addressed the fact that this is a kind of tumultuous and difficult time. And I would agree with that. And Carol in her lecture talked about finding joy in difficult times and Hozan also talked about sort of

[05:15]

being with these times. And so I've been thinking about it as well. And thinking about joy really makes me think about the most kind of basic Buddhist questions of like, what is suffering? And why do I suffer? And, you know, the teachings of you know, clinging and attachment that we're kind of always revisiting. So quite a few, many, many years ago, and I don't remember quite how this came into my life, but I sort of crashed into a poem that was written in the sixth century called the Xin Xin Ming. or trust or faith in mind, which probably many of you are familiar with.

[06:21]

It was attributed or written by a 6th century Chinese monk named, this is the best pronunciation I can do, Song Sun. And I'm just going to divert here for a minute because when people in these lectures would mention teachers from the past, I was confused often because many of them were referred to by their Chinese names and other times they were referred to by their Japanese translation names. And, you know, I was kind of always trying to place them. So Sun Sun is the third patriarch when we chant On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, a long list of sort of Buddhists and ancestors, we chant Bodhidharma's name, Bodhidaruma.

[07:28]

That's the first Chinese, you know, he came from India to China in the, you know, early sixth century. And then there's, you know, transmitted to a second patriarch. And then the third one is Sun San. So in our lineage, which is translated into Japanese, his name is Kanchi Sosan. He's not often referred by that name, I don't think. So I think this poem is thought of as sort of a coming together of the Taoism that had flourished in China before Bodhidharma arrived and the sort of more hierarchical and ritualized Buddhism that Bodhidharma brought with him to China.

[08:28]

And it sort of flowed into what is called Chan or our Zen Buddhism. And I think this poem is looked upon as sort of an expression of that. And so I'll just read you the first lines. You're probably familiar with them because they really show up almost verbatim throughout our Zen literature. And so this is the first four lines. The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent, everything is clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are infinitely set apart." So, you know, I'd heard some of these ideas before, but this was so stark and sort of radical that it just really woke me up and, you know,

[09:37]

I just ended up and I've continued to sort of, you know, talk about it and think about it and involve myself with it, you know, over the past many years. But before I really get going, I want to say two things that really come up every time almost that I talk with people about this. And the first one, it certainly came up for me. very little is known about him. And one of the reasons for that is because, you know, Buddhism was being repressed, I think, at the time. That's my understanding. And so he spent a lot of his life in kind of hiding, I think. And also a lot of the written records of that time were destroyed in this effort to suppress whatever was going on.

[10:49]

And so I don't want to like, I want to kind of give them the benefit of the doubt. This is partly because I spent a lot of time alone in the mountains. that, you know, maybe he did get to a place where he actually had no preferences, or even saw that for a moment. And, you know, I just want to say that I don't want to, I don't know, and I kind of like to entertain that idea a little bit. You know, kind of this was an enlightenment poem, that he really saw that possibility. But more contemporary writers, and that includes Dogen in the 13th century, allow that we all do have preferences, just as we have thoughts. And, you know, I'm not sure there's even a difference between thoughts and preferences.

[11:51]

And that having them is as human as having thoughts. And that is, you know, it's our attachment or maybe Some people use the word addiction to our preferences. That is the source of suffering. And Dogen says, this is a very familiar quote also, although everything has Buddha nature, we love flowers and we do not care for weeds. And then, but flowers fall though we love them. Weeds grow though we hate them. That is just how it is. And Suzuki Roshi commenting on that. We should accept weeds, despite how we feel about them. If you do not care for them, do not love them. If you love them, don't love them. So kind of, you know, life is going to go on to be what it is, regardless of what we like and what we dislike, what we want.

[12:57]

So maybe a more Another more contemporary translation might be, the great way has no difficulty, just avoid choice and attachment. So, you know, we have preferences. I like chocolate. I don't like vanilla. I like basketball. I don't like baseball. And the second thing that I'll say before I go on is that This does not mean we take no action. Again, it sounds a little bit like we just accept everything the way it is, but I think, you know, I'll talk a little bit more about this later, but it means for me not taking action that's driven by my desires and my clinging

[14:01]

And that it does involve accepting the world the way it is and taking action from there rather than, you know, from fear or self-righteousness or self-centered motivations. And I will talk a little bit more about that. So as I say, I've sort of thought about and played with these ideas for a long time, as I'm sure many of you have. And one of the words that comes to my mind that I like a lot is unsatisfactoriness. That we, you know, like our world to be just a little bit different a lot of the time. We like to adjust the universe to make us more comfortable rather than let it be the way it is. Suzuki Roshi said, let things be as they are or as they is or just this.

[15:13]

It sounds so simple. But I think to really understand what this means is really to understand why our practice is difficult. At least that's how I feel about it. When we pay attention, we can notice our constant effort to change just the littlest things about ourselves, to manipulate the world internally and externally. We don't want to be with our fear, our anger, our weakness, our sorrow. The list is endless. I have my list. You probably have yours. We'd like to adjust our partner a little. for health, for salary, for children. Dan Jackson gave a very wonderful Wayseeking Mind talk a few weeks ago, and he talked about having to let go of his fantasy children and relate to his real children.

[16:32]

And I really liked that image a lot. We do have our ideas about how people should be, and certainly our children. So you might be wondering where I think the happiness or the joy is in all of this. And I would say that for me, Those moments, and they're often very tiny moments of stepping back and just releasing a little bit the clinging. Really just for a moment, I can let go and I soften a little and open to what's actually so and to what life is. I relax. And I do let things be the way they are, and that includes myself.

[17:37]

For an instant, sometimes longer, feeling like I'm part of some flow. And then, quick. Something catches me. Someone criticizes me. The Supreme Court does something I don't like. Someone I love is hurt. Sojan talked often, very often, about letting go and becoming one with our circumstances. And he talked about one koan really frequently, and one that I'm sure most of you are very familiar with. And this is our kind of short version with a little commentary by a Rinzai teacher named Maureen Stewart. A monk asked Tozan, That's in our lineage, Tozan Ryokai. In Chinese, his name is Dongshan, and he's later, sort of maybe 11 people later than Bodhidharma in the ninth century.

[18:52]

So this is the Koan. Where is the place where there is not heat or cold? Tozan replied, when it is cold, Let it be so cold that it kills you. When it is hot, let it be so hot that it kills you. Don't resist. This is Maureen Stewart. When it is hot, become one with the heat. When it is cold, become one with the coldness. Don't resist whatever it is. When cold, shiver. When hot, sweat. And I think the line from the poem, or it gets restated over the years in different forms, just a hair's breadth of difference and heaven and earth are infinitely set apart, is the thought or the preference or the commentary. I wish it were warmer.

[19:55]

This is wrong. I can't stand this pain. We step outside and we comment. We separate. And I just want to tell you that when I was thinking about this talk and writing some of it, I happened to talk to Alex Sanaki about, because I was spending time in Washington State about possibly going to the Dahoma Monastery on Whidbey Island and sitting a session with Harada Roshi. And I... I sort of asked Alex about it, and he said, well, Harada Roshi was coming in September, but probably that session was full, but maybe I could go to the one in February. And then he said, but be sure to bring a lot of warm socks. And I thought, oh my God, it's going to be freezing. I can't do that.

[20:55]

That was right when I was thinking about this particular koan. It was a little ironic. So I want to talk about sort of my experience with this a little bit more. I've talked a lot in the past about the fact that I have migraine headaches and I've had them pretty severely from about the time I was 20 to maybe when I was 60. Now I get considerably fewer, but I still get them occasionally. Often during those years, I had a lot of balls in the air. I had a family and a dance company and a partner.

[22:03]

My parents were aging. you know, I was kind of trying to keep everything going a lot. And so when I felt like I was going to get a headache, and I didn't ever get the kind of flashing lights kind of migraines. I just got the pain. And but I would know when it was coming a little bit. And I would, you know, sort of try to finish things and get things in order. But at a certain point, I would just have to give up. And, you know, I would let my kids have Cheerios for dinner and watch television and, you know, wouldn't finish my grant application. And I would just lie down. And, you know, even though I was in sort of serious pain,

[23:04]

there was sort of a joy in that of just putting my burden down. And it was almost every time I was just like, I just gave up. And so it was a funny kind of combination of things. And I never really accepted the pain. I can't say I ever said, oh, you know, I'm one with the pain. I really didn't. And I never have, and I probably never will. But still, there was a moment of just giving up. And there was a real, there was a joy in that, I will say. So now I'm gonna get back to a little bit about taking action. And there's a lot that could be said about this and I'm just gonna tell a little story from the mountains.

[24:09]

So we have this cabin and my father bought it 55 years ago and we love it. And You know, I go there a lot. My children go there now. My grandson goes there. And there's a big river behind the house. The river is really beautiful. It's glacial, so it's got silt in it and it turns this beautiful turquoise color. And in the summer, it's a wild river. You know, it has rocks and trees and stumps and roots in it. And, you know, it hits those things and goes around them. But basically it's just a lovely flow.

[25:12]

But in the spring and in the fall, depending on the year, but more frequently now due to climate change, the river you know, when it's raining a lot or when there's a fast melt off, when it gets hot very quickly, the river gets larger and fuller. And the whole place is, the whole place of Staheek in Washington is really a valley, which is a floodplain. And over, you know, the last hundred years, the river has moved back and forth across the floodplain. And when my father bought the cabin right away, he said, Someday this camp will flood. And he kept saying it, really, until he died. So he was sort of at peace with that. But as I say, we love it. And so about quite a long time ago now, the house actually did flood.

[26:17]

And there was about, I don't know, 18 inches of water flowing through it. you know, we cleaned it out and we sort of fixed it up and so it still stands. But we've also now done what they call mitigation, which is that we've actually wrapped the entire house in sort of a plastic, rubbery, special material. So it looks kind of like it has a diaper on it. But That material won't keep the water out, but it will keep the silt out so it won't fill up with mud. So we've done that and we've sandbagged certain parts of the property. So, you know, theoretically that will keep the water flowing if it comes over the bank back toward the river. And then we've felled some dead trees again for the same purpose. But when the water starts to rise, oh, one thing I want to say is that it's so powerful that it actually makes the boulders in the river start to roll so that there's this really ominous roaring and grinding all night long.

[27:35]

And that's when you know that it's time to leave. But we're actually not usually there. in the spring, that early in the fall. So we come back to California. And then everybody in the family, I think, has a little app on their email where we get notified when the river starts to rise. And here we are in California. And plus, you know, there's not anything we could do even if we were there. I mean, it's a national park. We can't dredge the river or anything. So, you know, it's just going to do what it does. But still, You know, when the river starts to rise and we get this little notification, we start looking at the graph and it's going up and up and up. We're like, you know, we cling. You know, it makes us nervous and we're all calling each other and, you know, did you see the river's gone over 12,000 cubic feet per second? And then, you know, we kind of look at each other and we take a step back and we say,

[28:41]

What's going to happen is going to happen. And again, just that moment, and it really could last just a moment, is kind of a, it's such a sort of wonderful moment, such a teaching moment for me. So, and then, you know, we're back into like emailing our neighbors and everything. So that's sort of a, a little metaphor for taking action. You do what you can, and then you let go. I want to say also a word about Zazen. You know, Dogen calls it the Dharma gate of ease and joy. And, you know, we are, by the way, it's really great do it with people. I do it a lot alone when I'm in Stahikin and it's always very much easier for me to do it when I'm with people.

[29:47]

But, you know, we have a safe space. I think we all create a safe space for ourselves. And then, you know, our practice is to really allow things to be the way they are. That's our practice. And so You know, we allow our breath to be the way it is. There are many practices. I've done a lot of yoga where, you know, you're, you know, doing like things to change the breath and really affect the breath. But that's not what we do. We let it be the way it is, whether we like it or we don't. And whether it's comfortable or uncomfortable. And, you know, we sit with the physical, sensations we have, um, you know, certainly pain in our knees, but, you know, sometimes I just feel restless or, you know, irritable or, you know, just some kind of physical thing that I just sit with.

[30:51]

Um, you know, certainly the sounds and sometimes this symbol can be full of lovely sounds like the morning doves or not so lovely sounds like the chainsaws or something. Um, And then our thoughts and our feelings. You know, our thoughts, our thoughts, our thoughts. I remember when I was, she's so, I was going to give a talk and I went to see Sojin and I said, you know, I've been sitting all morning, but I'm not really doing meditation. I'm just thinking about my talk nonstop. And he just looked at me and he said, of course. I've had to remember that. And that could be true with an emotion, too, for me, where, you know, if somebody's gotten angry at me or fear is another big one for me, you know, sometimes I'll just sit and actually turn toward it rather.

[31:58]

Mostly I want to kind of push it away, but when I'm sitting, I can turn toward it. And also, you know, my mind will be racing. You know, I just, there's nothing I can do about it. Sort of like the river, you know. I just have to sit with it. And then I also want to say a word about bowing. Again, this wasn't something I was totally familiar with when I started practicing and it seemed a little, I don't know what, odd to me. But maybe this is kind of my dancer perspective on it. But, you know, we talk in our practice a lot about being upright. But, you know, I kind of think of my rib cage and my spine sort of like, you know, as protective or sort of armor. And they actually are, you know, they protect our heart and our lungs, our really vital organs, even our kidneys.

[33:02]

And, but when we bow, you know, even a standing bow, you know, we soften that. We soften the sternum, the breastbone, and we fold. And when we do a full bow, you know, we really soften and we really fold and sort of surrender. You know, we bend. And then, you know, I feel like when I put my head down on the ground, I'm like putting all my preferences and my thoughts and my you know, ideas about myself down and really lifting life kind of up above for a moment. And so that's my little dance interpretation of bowing. And I'm going to end with a poem, and I've actually read this poem before, but it seems to fit in here well. So I'll just finish with this. This is by Ajahn Chan.

[34:03]

who was a Theravadan forest monk, quite contemporary, but he's not alive. Try to be mindful and let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool. All kinds of wonderful rare animals will come to drink at the pool. and you will clearly see the nature of all things. You will see many strange and wonderful things come and go, but you will be still. This is the happiness of the Buddha. So I'm going to stop there. And if anybody on Zoom or in the Zendo would like to make a comment or ask a question. Should I call on people?

[35:10]

So Preston, would you like to unmute? Good morning, Ellen. Good morning, Preston. You mentioned that you weren't sure you've ever been one with your own pain. And I was wondering what you think it means or what what you think it would feel like to be one with your own pain? Well, I didn't really say that I had never been one with my own pain. I just said with my migraines. So it's almost like I have a you know, I just have a position about it. You know, it's I can't I can't explain it. I just refuse, you know, to accept That's just all there is, and I suffer. But that's just that one thing. I do accept other pain past them, but just that one thing, it just makes me too mad, I think.

[36:13]

That's just how it is. I'm sorry. Really interesting comment just now. I had migraines when I was young, literally from about the age of nine or 10. And I never thought about it until this moment, but I think they were my first really in-depth teaching of impermanence. It's like, this is coming. This is arriving. I had to act. I used to take really hot showers. and then lie down in a completely dark room. But I was completely alone. You know, nobody was taking care of me in this. I had to figure out how to do it. And I knew that it was going to move. Right. That is the blessing of my dreams. But there was a further blessing that I experienced.

[37:17]

I don't know if you experienced it or other people did. When it was over. Yes. There was a period of absolute luminous clarity. Just like what Atan Chah was saying. That was It was almost worth the headache. That's saying a lot. But the two-ness was like, yes, I wanted this to end. Yeah, I think that's actually a medical thing. I think people talk about that. It's sort of like the podrome or something. There's a word for it. The post-migraine syndrome. And it is a wonderful thing. It was incredible. And again, it's like... That was something at the age of nine or ten I had to, I just discovered for myself nobody told me. But again, I feel like, you know, it's kind of like you did take action, you know. You did, you know, sort of like the serenity prayer. We do what we can do. But I also do, I also gave up to it too, I think, like you were talking.

[38:18]

Right. It's just very, I hadn't thought about it for years, but you just completely wrote that. Yeah. Ross? Thank you, Ellen. I too have heard the morning doves here in the zendo. It was a really pleasant ambiance to the zend. And this morning, Heiko and I, during work period, with a saw, were chopping up wood in the garage that we had found underneath the zendo to be disposed of. And it wasn't a pleasant sound per se compared to the morning dove, but the morning dove would not have cut up that wood that we needed to tend to. And I'm wondering if you could say a little bit about these things that arise that we experience as pleasant or unpleasant, and then the change that sometimes pleasant is unpleasant and sometimes unpleasant is pleasant or appropriate.

[39:33]

As a practice. Yeah. You know, I just think what comes to my mind is, you know, kind of holding it lightly, you know, that we sort of, you know, observe that pleasure with the morning doves, you know, and then we observe, you know, I mean, I observe. but I don't like the sound of chainsaws, you know, and, you know, I don't want to get into this because I don't feel at all, but it is, does seem karmic in a way to me, you know, like, you know, my sister, actually I'll just say about chainsaws. My sister, when I was literally slept in the same room and she told me that chainsaws were kidnappers coming to get us. And I don't know how much that really, you know, but I'm just saying that, you know we you know it is like why do we like morning devs and not chainsaws but also to just observe it because really it's just who we are yes um linda hess would you like to unmute hi good morning good morning

[41:02]

I was just, I was thinking that the question, do you have a preference for your cabin not to be flooded by the river? Just that's the start of like an opening. I'm thinking about a possible other alternative translations for the opening of the Xin Xin Ming. So it started with that question. Yes. You have a preference. I have a preference. Yeah. So having that preference isn't... You've said this today. Having that preference is not the problem. Like Sojin said, of course that's what you're doing. Of course you have that preference. So I was just trying to think of whether... I think I'm the master of translations, right? I can decide whether the translation is okay. The translation that the... Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences is very provocative.

[42:04]

So maybe that's good. Like it makes you mad. It makes you say that's ridiculous. So maybe that's good. But I was trying to think of something a little more subtle in the direction of for those who are free from preferences or for those who aren't consumed by their preferences or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I do. You think we should change the translation? Yeah, I do. I definitely do. And it has been changed. It's been translated many times, and many people are a little less sort of hardball. Okay, but you still gave us the hardball version. I did, because that's the first version, and I also You know, want to be open to the possibility, the possibility that you could have a moment of no preferences. I just want to be open to that. Oh, yeah. We can have such a moment.

[43:05]

We've had such a moment. It lasted at least like one tenth of a second. We've definitely had such a moment. But just the question of which words are more helpful to people practicing. Well, I did read a second translation, which I think is more contemporary and probably, you know, people are less caught by. But I don't know. I guess for me, it was important to be caught by it. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Oh, Mary. Following along on that, thank you for your talk. But following along what Linda is talking about, I wonder if it isn't so much the problem of translation as the problem of words generally to describe. Because English presents some of the same difficulty, you know, when we talk about, I mean, I think, is it possible, this is my question, is it possible to not like something but not

[44:15]

tense up about it and resist it. It's not about the preference so much, it's about the clenching that happens. The attachment, the clinging. Absolutely. That's a subtle distinction that gets lost in preference. You imagine that you have to be so completely neutral about things rather than I was reading something from Kevin Carlson, who was the avid at Dharma Rain, and he used the word non-opposition, which actually spoke to me because it wasn't something I was doing, I wasn't surrendering, and I wasn't, you know, letting go, or these actions, it was a state of non-opposition. Yeah, I know.

[45:16]

For me, it's a little, I mean, I think actually the poem I read is sort of more like that. For me, that's a little bit passive, but that's just for me. You know, I think I am somebody who has a lot of sort of strong attachments and feelings. So for me, that sort of backwards step is, or maybe it's a dance thing, you know, maybe. It's alive for me, but I really hear what you're saying, that that's, you know, that's a better work for you. Yeah, for me, the edge that I'm working is to step back from doing into being. Yeah, no, it's good. And that's sort of what I mean about being with you all, you know, is that, you know, I can go way out in one direction and then, you know, somebody will. Give another facet. And it's really good. Bob.

[46:21]

Hi. Thank you so much for your share. You know what? What hit me was when you said that you were really. I don't know if that you're really thinking. not doing as I was saying, and you told, I believe it was Sojan, you told him that you weren't, you were just worried about your share. And he said to you, of course you are. And, you know, you've been talking about our change of consciousness in various ways. I really enjoyed your share. So how... How did that wake you up? In what way did you move towards the awareness that it's okay to be a little obsessed or whatever that's normal?

[47:26]

How was that for you? Just out of curiosity. That was a really nice question. I like it. I have a busy mind and, you know, not always, but often. And I, you know, have been I've judged myself for it and criticized myself for it and tried not to be quite so busy in my mind. And so, you know, his gift to me was really like, it's fine. And sometimes it's not busy. And sometimes it is busy. And, you know, I just, you know, stopped trying to control it, which I, you know, I did a little or judge it or whatever I was doing. But, you know, I really felt like, you know, this isn't Zazen. This is not Zazen what I'm doing.

[48:26]

It was really very helpful. And to this day, it's helpful. And it sounds like it's okay. It's okay. And I did a fair amount of it today too, just so you know. Me too, me too. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Hakel. Thank you, Ellen, for your talk. And this is really a lot of people have been saying or asking about this just the same way. But my question is about when you read that poem last, I got the idea that from it that the pond would calm down and things would come and go to the pond. So I would ask you what is it that is calmed that allows the pond to be still and then what is it that comes to the pond and what's the difference? I might have to ask you for a little clarification but

[49:35]

You know, I just feel like, for me, there are times when my zazen is very, very active. And there are times when it's not. And, you know, there's times when I'm open to the world and there's times when I'm kind of closed and resisting it. So sort of to make room for all of that is for me the still point, you know, to not push any of it away, which is really, you know, it's really a kind of weird concept almost to just, you know, let myself be. I mean, I can, you know, just say I was once in a Dharma group, actually, when somebody just got furious at me in the Dharma group.

[50:39]

And it was very, you know, I didn't feel like he had a good reason to do that. But for the next couple of days, I, my mind was just like defending myself, not I mean, it just, I mean, I'd go to sleep, I'd be defending myself, I'd get up in the morning, I'd be defending myself, you know, just like, and, you know, I just, I knew there was nothing I could do about it. I just knew that, you know, I just couldn't stop it. And, you know, then, and I also knew that slowly, slowly, slowly, it would stop. And, you know, two or three days later, it was over. But I, I just was like, okay, you know, this is crazy, but. This is what I'm doing. Is that an answer to your question? Well, yes it is. And then my question to follow up is after that defending is settled, is that a better state?

[51:41]

No. But it's more comfortable. Jerry? Hi, thank you for your provocative talk, Ellen. I wanted to take another word that Sojin and I talked about a fair amount, which is affinity for. And that has a different feel to me because it is personal. It has to do with my causes and conditions and how my causes and conditions make some things easier for me or more pleasant for me. And I don't use the word disaffinity, but that is a better word to me than hatred and rejection.

[52:41]

You know, it's like I just happen to have personal affinities. There are people I jail with more and there are people like, and there are movies I like and movies I don't. You know, it's an affinity. It's my own personal individual thing that we all have. That is, of course, like part of us. It's not a problem to have an affinity, but it is. But when you get into picking and choosing then and making judgments associated with that, where the problem starts. What do you think about that? I like that word a lot. And I also think, you know, there are things I love. You know, I don't just have an affinity for them. I love them. So I like the word, and I also, you know, just want to kind of keep every possibility open.

[53:42]

It's when the love goes into attachment. Right. Even that, you know, I mean... Suzuki Roshi talks about Buddha's attachment. I mean, of course we're going to attach to the people we love. Of course, you know. So it's a sticky wicket. Thank you. Maybe one more question? One more question? Perhaps not. We have one more question. Ed. Good to see you. Good to see you. I have a question. I'm curious about what you think our ancestors would say in terms of dealing with the idea of preferences.

[54:55]

Because I read an article today in the newspaper about sort of one person from a West Virginia state in the United States standing in the way of really doing something about what I feel is the survival of our planet and our species. you know, our ancestors didn't, I don't know if they lived through anything like that before. So I'm just curious about what you think they would say when faced with that very real possibility. Well, that's a big question. And, you know, of course, I can't really say what they would say. But, you know, what I would say to you, Ed, is that, you know, you do everything that you're doing to make our planet survive.

[56:11]

And then you realize that Joe Manchin is gonna do whatever he's gonna do. You know, the way I think about it for myself is, you know, I take action, hopefully out of, you know, a place of not too much self-centeredness. And there are things I care very, very deeply about, as I know there are things you care very, very deeply about. And I do what I do. And, you know, it might be less than what another person does. And it might change tomorrow. You know, it really could change tomorrow. go to Washington and hang out with Jane Fonda and, you know, put a, you know, tie myself to a fence. I really couldn't do that. But right now I'm just doing what I'm doing. And then, you know, it's sort of like my cabin. I have to allow what's gonna happen to happen, you know?

[57:14]

And, you know, if I spend all my time, you know, being unwilling to have things the way they are, I'm pretty unhappy. Yeah. Or feeling like I should be doing more. You know, that's another place I go. I'm just puzzled, you know, the idea of no preference. I'm struggling with that in terms of what I feel is a real existential question. So we can take it. Whoops, somebody didn't turn off there. Yes, well, when you solve it, you can tell me. And you too. Beings are numberless.

[58:16]

I bow to enter them. Dharma gates are boundless. I bow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable.

[58:44]

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