How's that? Okay. Imagine that. He forgot the intro. Because he doesn't know who you are. Right. He could make it up. My apologies. Accepted. Susan Ormond grew up in Vermont and moved to San Francisco in 1980. She began practice here at BCC with Sonja Roshi in 1991. She lives in Berkeley with her husband Victor and teaches English as a second language at Contra Costa College in San Pablo. Susan and Victor have one daughter, Lee Hong, who moved to New York City a year ago to launch a dance career.

[01:07]

Susan is genuinely interested in encouraging strong lay practice at BCC. Presently, she co-facilitates the Dharma group twice a month, serves on the residency committee, and practices in the position of co-tenso pre-pandemic. She is particularly fond of training sangha members who take up cooking practice and look forward to a time when we are able again to resume the age-old ritual of oryoki practice, which is ritual that has to eat with bowls. Outside the temple, Susan spends a lot of time outdoors. Notice that tan. During the pandemic lockdown, she took up the fiddle. which she quite enjoys practicing. She is also enjoying choral singing, again, as that opens up. Please give a warm welcome and all your attention to Susan Marvin. Thanks, Ross.

[02:11]

Hello, everyone. Everyone in the Zendo. This is the first time I've... given a talk since before the pandemic inside the Zendo. It's really nice to see so many here and welcome to all of you out there online, wherever you are. It's a beautiful day here and I hope it is there where you are. Every month I see a couple of new people either here in the Zendo or online. So I want to especially welcome you if you're new to In late March, my husband Victor and I spent a few days up in the town of Mendocino. We did a lot of walking. And on the final morning, we were out on the bluffs that skirt the town. And I noticed a group of seals swimming north.

[03:19]

They were in a group of maybe five, six or seven swimming tightly together, kind of rising up and going back down. And they were swimming north and I followed them as far as I could see them. And when I turned back, there was another group, same form, five or six or seven swimming together. And I watched them as they swam and turned back and there was another group. My husband came along then and sat down and I said, take a look. And over the next two hours, as we sat there, we counted 30 groups of seals in the same fashion, five or six or seven swimming together north. And it really had a huge impact on me. It really moved me, not just the thrill of seeing all those seals swimming, which I had never seen before.

[04:19]

But the words that popped into the head were continuous practice. And I guess maybe it's that. It just touched me deeply, touched my heart deeply to watch them and think this is their practice, swimming practice. This is what they've done for eons, right? And when we came home, that image was still really solidly fixed in the mind and kind of pushed me to start studying continuous practice. What is it? What is our continuous practice? How do we practice continuously in Zen practice? And so I did a lot of reading of the literature and just observing and considering and that led me to thinking about rhythm and rhythm in continuous practice and that's what I want to talk about today is rhythm in continuous practice.

[05:28]

So first a few words about just continuous practice. We might think of that as following a kind of road or a path. But Suzuki Roshi used the word constancy, which gives it less flavor towards following something. And Dogen described continuous practice as a circle. He said, the circle of the way, which is never cut off. So I think he experienced it as a circle because there's nowhere we're going. We're not trying to get anywhere. And so that image of the circle can really help us. We're going kind of round and round. And he says that we're going round and round with all of the ancestors of the past, the present and the future.

[06:39]

from beginningless time forward. He said, by our continuous practice, the continuous practice of all Buddhas is actualized. And this means that we're all connected through time, from the past to the present, to the future. There's no end. And that circle helps us see that. So the circle's kind of full of inspiration in all directions. I was thinking it's kind of like one of those echo-friendly water fountains that's recirculating the same water round and round to refresh the environment around it. We don't know where that water's coming from. Or it's like the seals migrating north and south in a big continuous circle. as they've done for eons.

[07:43]

And Dogen says, without our effort right now, then the ancestors are not actualized. They don't exist. Buddha would not exist without our attention to what we're doing right now. He says, All Buddhas are actualized and sustained by your continuous practice. So we bring them alive. They bring us alive. Norman Fisher rephrases it this way. Our activity of the present illuminates the past and creates the past. Another way of... Understanding this or saying this is that nothing stands alone. We hear this over and over in Zen practice. Everything's interconnected in some kind of mysterious way. And the Diamond Sutra says the existence of each depends on the existence of the other.

[08:50]

So that means that what we do and how we do it really matters. It matters to those before us. It matters to those now. It matters to those following us. And really understanding this, taking this into our practice, it feeds our understanding that continuous practice is really all there is. That said, continuous practice as a concept may be difficult for us to grasp. And that's okay. I think it takes a long time for us to experience that over and over, to feel it in the body, maybe in the way that the seals demonstrate their confidence as they swim. Victor and I recently rode the bike trail across the Richmond Bridge and the trail is actually not quite finished.

[10:02]

So there are these little kind of connectors on either side, on the East Bay side and on the Larkspur side, little places you have to ride to connect to the next part to connect to the bridge or to get off the bridge. And I guess I could say that some of those little pieces, some of them are pleasant. and some of them are not really that pleasant at all. But the whole thing connects, right? Every little part, what we like and what we don't like is part of the whole thing. It all goes together. And I think that's kind of like our practice and kind of like our life. And as we sit longer and longer, we come to feel that, to see that everything is part of practice. It's just continuous. When I started out as a Zen student, I went to Sojin Roshi and I said something like, I really feel like sometimes I'm practicing and sometimes I'm not practicing.

[11:14]

How should I practice with the gaps? And he kind of laughed and he said, oh yeah, the gaps, don't worry about those, just practice. And then sometime in the months, right before Sojin Roshi died, I was sitting in the backyard, his backyard with him. And I don't remember what we were talking about, but I said to him, how are you practicing with the gaps? And he smiled and he said, there are no gaps. And I think his response, you know, like both responses decades apart were exactly the same. It's all continuous. Practice continuously. Don't worry. Just practice. We kind of discriminate between what we're doing and what we think we're not doing, or where the path on the bridge is and where it isn't, when in fact it's all part of, it's all included.

[12:33]

And I think we orient ourselves towards this realization more and more as we practice and we feel it in this body practice and it helps us to live the teachings. So what about rhythm? You know, there are natural rhythms, like the rhythms of the sun and the moon, the four seasons, rhythms of weather, the heartbeat, daily rhythms of eating and sleeping and walking. And then there are learned rhythms, like maybe learning a sport, the rhythm of swimming or the rhythm of riding a bike or any sport really, or an art or dance or music or of student life, family life, the rhythms of a Zen student.

[13:37]

And with learned rhythms, there's a kind of returning, coming back, repeating a pattern or doing something again. But in Zen practice, we learned that there's no such thing as repeating anything. Right? So I think the rhythm includes or maybe it even centers on our bodily experience. We locate or we bring forth an attitude of newness and freshness. This kind of way we can remind ourselves, I've never, ever done this before. It looks similar, but I've never done it before. It's all new. There's nothing to repeat. Maybe that's our life koan, right?

[14:40]

How to express the self that embodies that realization that nothing is repeated in a rhythm of practice. Most of us value the mind a lot. So we pay a lot of attention in our lives to the mind, but Zen practice is really a body practice. And we focus on the body. We observe what the mind does, but we focus on the body, train the body to return. Just like those seals, we are this body practice. And just like those seals, we are completely alone and we're part of a group. And we might think we can rely on the group. to carry us along, but if we don't do our part alone to our fullest extent, to our best, then we can lose the rhythm.

[15:46]

Sometimes we see that in chanting. Every single part is important. So in this way, the group offers us some support, some encouragement. maybe inspiration to keep going, some protection and safety. It's supportive in these various ways. We breathe together, we chant together, we walk in Kenyon together, always aware of what or who is around us so that we're working together. We follow the rhythm alone while watching or mindful of working together.

[16:49]

We hold both. So that's perhaps why those seals didn't bump into each other as they were swimming really tightly, closely in a group. They're one and yet they're two. Zen practice helps us to become one with the rhythms of the Sangha and the rhythms of our surroundings wherever we are, in our neighborhoods, in our places of work, out on the street, in our towns, our cities, our states, our countries, the world, and the universe itself. There's something going on that's so much bigger than just this me, right? It's like we're one note in a huge orchestra, a symphony maybe of changing rhythms.

[17:59]

And I think Zen shows us this over and over again. The rhythms of the chants, the makugyo, the bells, the sashin sets the schedule. of rhythms. Every sasheen is the same and yet completely different. And we can remind ourself, I've never ever done this before. Yesterday I fell down. Today here I am standing back up, all new. A couple of days ago, I was FaceTiming with our daughter and I asked her, how do you think about rhythm in dance? And she said, well, in the dance form, in the modern dance form that I practice, they say the body is an orchestra and each part

[19:08]

both internal and external plays an important part. This sounds a lot to me like zazen instruction. She said, you can exaggerate a rhythm or it can be nuanced. The arms can hold the melody in how they move and the legs can be the base or move in staccato. And the breath is always assisting the body. The breath has its rhythm, the lungs and the heart, too. It's all working together. I said, what about when you lose the rhythms? And she said, then you immediately adjust. You have to concentrate and adjust. And I told her, well, that sounds just like Zazen and Zen practice. So what do we need in order to follow a rhythm?

[20:14]

And how is rhythm integral to Zen practice? I think of rhythm as a kind of pattern in time. So in music, for example, it includes elements like tempo and content and quality. and they all work together. The rhythm is not just a beat or a repetition of a beat. It's not a separate thing. These elements work together in a kind of balance, and it flows from being present, from the musician being present, of being. And also of knowing how to fall if something goes wrong, how to fall and come back.

[21:21]

This develops with knowing the content inside and out and having that ability to relax when there's a fall out of the rhythm, right? being able to come back. When our daughter was in college, she was riding her bike one day and she was hit by a driver who had run a stop sign. The bike was damaged, but she was fine. She went flying off the bike. And when I called, when she called me, I was, of course, concerned about whether or not she was okay. And she said, oh, I'm fine. I'm a dancer. I know how to fall. They teach us how to fall from high places. So in the rhythm of that particular bike riding pattern, her dance training helped her, right?

[22:33]

fall out of the rhythm and come back. She could apply her training to a new situation. And I think we all do that, that we all learn to do that as a result of this practice. It's mysterious and we don't know when it will come up, but we see it, we all experience that. And we have so many opportunities to practice it in small ways. We just came back from two weeks in Vermont. And ordinarily, I don't have much trouble getting back on Western time, but this time I had a lot of trouble. My body just couldn't get back on Western time. I had several days where I kept waking up at 2, 2.30, 3, 3.30, because it was like 6 or 7 back there. And I just lost the rhythm of daily morning zazen.

[23:39]

I just couldn't kind of get into it. And I had to sleep in a few days. And then I was able to come back to remember the rhythm. and return to the rhythm, right? We know how to do that. So in music, there's energy in working with the rhythm. Pacing, resting, focus, being settled, but not lazy, being settled, but being alert. following the notes of the music. And in the score, the rhythm changes, right? It repeats or comes back to or improvises. Some of you know Joel, our Sangha member.

[24:45]

Joel is a musician, and Joel and I were talking recently about music and practice. And he said this, He said, to play truly in rhythm, it's important to give each sound each moment its full due, to let it be there. I want to read that again. To play truly in rhythm, it's important to give each sound each moment its full due, to let it be there. That sounds just like Zen practice, doesn't it? We really do want to give each moment its full due because, well, because it's our life and it's all that we have. Sojin Roshi used to say, we know we can't do it, but it's what we vow to do.

[25:53]

It's what we practice. So what gets in the way of setting and following a rhythm in our practice? How is it that we lose the rhythm and we have difficulty restoring it? Well, the musician can feel nervous or maybe worried. maybe anxious, performance anxiety, maybe uncertain or just be distracted. And similarly, in our practice, it's easy to lose focus. It's easy to become distracted. It happens to all of us. And the most important thing is not that we were distracted but how to come back how to return to the rhythm that's what we focus on that's why the training we receive is to drop what's going on in the mind drop the distraction and return to notice when we've strayed and to return

[27:19]

So we're training ourselves to stay in rhythm, just like the musician. And this takes practice. And we also learn to make friends with how often we fall off the rhythm, because we all do that, right? We don't berate ourselves. No commentary. We don't berate ourselves. We just return. It's a waste of energy to berate ourselves, and we need energy to practice. I think that over time, what this practice does is it closes the gap between what goes on in the mind, how the mind goes awry, and our response, a useful response.

[28:25]

And this can really help us in every aspect of our lives. So back to the musician in performance. No commentary. There's no time for that. I've lost the rhythm. I missed a note. I got distracted, come back to what I was doing, return to what I was doing so I can again harmonize with the musicians I'm playing with, or harmonize with all of you, our Dharma friends. We learn that content so well that we don't have to deliberate or hesitate or grip or grasp. It's soft. When we drop the commentary, when we stop berating ourselves, it's soft.

[29:31]

No tension there. And when we don't do that, when we're not able to do that, When we do berate ourselves, we just notice that and return. We learn from what we notice. I think the musician practices this constantly, and we do too in our practice. Sojin Roshi says, establishing a rhythm for our sitting practice, keeping our daily practice fresh and vital is essential. So I want to read to you just a little bit from a lecture he gave. The lecture is called The Rhythm of Practice, How to Keep Our Daily Practice Fresh and Vital.

[30:36]

Sometimes I think of a simile to practice as the difference between the sprinter and the long distance runner. When I was in high school, I ran the hundred yard dash with a burst of speed as fast as I could. While some ran the mile and others even did the marathon, I couldn't understand how they had the patience, much less the stamina to run that far. In the Buddha Dharma, there is the example of the three animals, the rabbit, the horse, and the elephant. The rabbit is like the sprinter hopping all over the place as fast as it can. The horse is running around too, but it's more settled. The wise elephant is very careful, taking slow and deliberate steps without being scattered or hasty, and if careful, will live a long, wise and useful life.

[31:43]

The elephant represents the Buddha Dharma. So this is also kind of like the seals, right? Pacing oneself for the long haul. Not too fast, not too slow. He goes on. Establishing a rhythm for our sitting practice is essential. If the runner goes too fast, the runner gets tired too soon. If the runner doesn't have enough momentum, then energy leaks out and is not renewed. When the runner maintains upright posture and the breath is deeply centered and in harmony with the movement of the limbs, it's no longer a race. This is true winning. Body and mind drop away. And it's just here and now, just this. I guess just is is what I felt watching those seals.

[32:50]

Same thing, just this, right? Just swimming. They're not trying to do something else. So it's a vital process and it has energy and there's no end. For daily practice, it's necessary to practice the rhythm of our sitting with the other activities and responsibilities that form our lives. Unless we can simplify our lives, knowing what is important and letting go of what is not, we will wear ourselves out, dragging around useless physical, emotional and mental baggage. So this can be challenging. How to pare it down, right? And each person kind of has to experiment, go at it with curiosity.

[33:51]

What works? What's the rhythm of personal life that fits with practice life, formal practice life? I think two things are really important, and that's never to compare ourselves with someone else, and also never to think we're missing something if we've chosen this activity over another activity. Those can really lead us astray, away from the rhythm where taking up as Zen students. So what does it mean to have a practice? Simply speaking, Zazen is the touchstone, the center. It's not just another activity like running or studying.

[34:52]

It's not just another add-on to our agenda of activities. Complete practice is total integration. Unlike many similar ways that depend on periodic concentrated events, we've been given the problems of the long-distance runner. Daily practice plus the periodic concentrated events called sashines require a certain amount of dedication, intention, and time. So in thinking about him talking about total integration, I thought, you know, there can be stronger distractions as we find this way of integrating practice into our lives.

[35:55]

Distractions that are connected to perhaps personality are Our late Dharma sister, Maylee Scott, used to talk about the edges of a personality. She used to say that when we take up practice, we become intimately aware of an edge or perhaps more than one edge to this particular personality that functions as a, can be a distraction from practice. You could think about that kind of like the dark side of the personality, and everyone has some edge that we're all working with. And it can be a barrier to practice because it can distract us from the rhythm. You know, it could be something like a compulsion or a way of feeling about ourself.

[37:05]

It could be laziness. It could be moodiness. It could be fatigue. It could involve some kind of greed or anger or strong desire. Perfectionism, procrastination. You know, the list goes on and on, and each of us knows what it is that we work with. Restlessness is an edge that I became keenly aware of in my life when I came to Zen practice. As a younger adult, as a young woman, restlessness, I would say, had great power and control over decisions I made and decisions I didn't make. And I thought of it as just, that's who I am, right? kind of attachment.

[38:07]

And it wasn't really until I came to Zen practice and learned the value of intention, of setting intention and the value of vow, setting vow and following intention and vow that I understood it was just restlessness. It wasn't who I am. And kind of on its own over time, it moved to the back burner. That's what it did. It moved from the front and foreground to the back burner. And I don't think that our edges ever really go away. That's just my personal opinion. But, you know, they're a part of us, part of the history of a person, of a life. of our ancestors, perhaps, right?

[39:08]

All connected. And I had to learn to befriend the edge. Oh, there you are again, my dear old friend, restlessness. Why don't you come along with me? Let's do this together. You might really enjoy Zen practice, right? I'm making fun of it, but really that's what I did was befriend the edge, bring it along, include it, don't push it away. We've all tried that. It doesn't work. So include it. Never berate it, right? Never berate this self. It's a waste of time and energy, right? Well, when Sojin Roshi died, to my surprise, restlessness popped right up again to the front burner.

[40:20]

And the mind was full of kind of wild thoughts of, you know, I'm just going to leave this formal practice. It's time to leave Zen practice, right? There's no place for me here anymore. What to do, right? And it was a big distraction. And I talked to several people, actually. And the best advice that I got was from Ron. And I've known Ron for a long time. And he listened, and we laughed. And He said to me, don't change anything. And I thought, that's it. Don't change anything. So simple, right? It was immediate.

[41:25]

I was able to write myself and return to the rhythm of practice to watch the thoughts and return to practice. You know, I want to say that the other side of don't change anything is change something. And that might be just fine in a particular situation. It might be the appropriate thing to do. But in our practice, what we learn is not to change something from the place of a reactive mind, from the place of a busy mind, from the place of a judging or critical or whining or complaining mind. We make our decisions, we make our movements, we make our responses from a settled place.

[42:31]

And we all see that in our practice. It's not just somebody else that does that. We all do that. And we learn from that. You know, and there was a kind of familiar bodily experience with that restlessness popping back. And perhaps you know what I mean, as you work with your own edge, kind of like, come on back, right? Something familiar. And what I think about that is that there's just no end, really, to how the small self is kind of lurking on the sidelines ready to sabotage this great effort that we're all making, right?

[43:36]

And so we just watch that, right? And help it be contained by the greater mind. So kind of like very simply stated, no self, no problem, right? So when the rhythm of our continuous practice is renewed, we forget the small self and we learn to merge with the activity. That's what Zen practice teaches us, merge with the activity. Dogen says, when we practice continuously day after day, this is the most appropriate way of expressing our gratitude. When I read that, it made me think of Sojin Roshi because he often said, the way you can repay me is to practice continuously.

[44:48]

And that sounds pretty good to me. These times we're living through of utter division and unrest and violence. We're really lucky that we have this rhythm we can find in our continuous practice as a way to offer to the world around us in our activities out there on the street. in our workplaces, right here in the temple. This is our opportunity, and I don't think there's anything actually more fulfilling than to be able to do that, right? Just this, just this small response in my daily life continuously.

[45:56]

On Monday, the great songwriter and producer Lamont Dozier died. And, you know, he just had a wonderful career. He wrote so many Motown classics and he and his partners had 80 singles that were on the top 40 pop. and R&B charts. He was a prolific writer. And in the obituary in the New York Times, they quoted him from his memoir. And I'd just like to read you these few lines. These are his words. Always put the song ahead of your ego. Writer's block only exists in your mind. And if you let yourself have it, It will cripple your ability to function as a creative person.

[46:59]

The answer to so-called writer's block is doing the work. The answer to so-called writer's block is doing the work. You know, this is wise and insightful advice, and it's completely relevant to us as Zen students. Doing the work, finding the rhythm in doing the work is what our practice is all about. There's really nothing else. And Suzuki Roshi said, nothing special, right? So that's what I have to tell you today. And I think it looks like we have some time for questions or comments. How do we do that? Is there someone online that handles that? You can ask anyone in the Zendo who raises their hand.

[48:05]

Okay. And you can watch online to see if there's any raised hands as well. Okay, thank you. So if you have a question or a comment, Peter. Morning, Peter. I want to offer my appreciation for your covering so much ground speaking from one way to the next. Thank you. But my question has to do with rhythm as we experience it in our so-called less desirable provisional responses, the edges There's a rhythm embodied in that. But it's phenomenal for the experience. Yeah. What's your experience of that? I mean, I think when I said that I had a familiar bodily experience when restlessness popped back, that's a kind of rhythm, right?

[49:16]

Yes. How do you experience that? What I experience is the sort of contraction of the heart, at least in the particular case I'm talking about holding back in response to something. Yeah. And it does seem to follow on a pattern of behavior or a pattern of experience that I've done. So just to allow that to appreciate that. as well as returning to practice and not berating myself. Yeah. As though, yes, I had this response. Yes, I've learned this. Yes, I've been trying to do it many times. And it's no longer useful for me. Yeah. I like the way you said appreciate it. It serves some purpose.

[50:18]

It serves some purpose. Yeah. Thank you. Who is that? It's Jeff. Oh, hi. Yeah, it's a little fuzzy here. Good morning, Jeff. Good morning, Susan. Thanks so much for a great talk. One of the things that's true for me that echoes what you talked about. is this very very natural rhythm of drifting away and waking up and returning and doing that seamlessly i think is is so important and thank you for what you said about parading it is a waste of time i drift off i remember and i return i i spent a lot of time playing in musical groups particularly symphonies and and one of the attributes of of good orchestras is that everybody moves together It doesn't always mean they move at exactly the same time, but they move together.

[51:19]

And so I'm constantly following somebody. I'm matching somebody. I'm seeing somebody. I'm part of that group of seals. I'm part of the sangha as we kind of mimic and follow each other. And that's just so helpful. And it's why practicing together is so important for me. You raise so many nice things and thank you for that. And it's going to play for me for a long time. Thank you, Susan. Thank you, Jeff. And something you said connected to or may remind me of something you said, Peter, that made me think of the words habit energy. And I guess, you know, what I want to say about that is accepting habit energy and working with habit energy without berating that too is maybe part of connects to what you were saying about rhythm of habits. Mark, Mark Coppathorn.

[52:25]

Hi, Susan. You're in a monastery. We can schedule the rhythm down to the minute and we're in complete control. But in our life, my life, you know, I'm always interrupted as a parent. And I think we're all always interrupted. What could you say about continuous practice with being interrupted? Well, you know, my feeling about that has changed over time. I'm not sure it's interruption anymore if we look at it as continuous practice. Interruption to me has a feeling of something bad, you know, interrupting what I'm doing. Continuous practice has a different flavor. It's adjusting. It's taking in, you know, the bigger picture. It's I'm walking down the street and I have somewhere I'm going, but then I see something that happens on the street that's not appropriate.

[53:37]

And what do I do? I respond. So it's all... I'm not trying to avoid your question. You're answering. I think of interruption too, but I think that my orientation toward it or our orientation toward it as Zen students changes over time. And that's what I would encourage us to look at. Does that make sense? Yes, Susan. Thank you. Thank you, and it occurs to me that maybe, Hosan, you have something to say about that. I apologize for not asking you earlier. I do. Well, first of all, to that point, there's a way of looking, nothing is an interruption. And this was part of Sojin's practice, was if somebody knocked on the door, to always answer yes and respond, turn your attention to that person.

[54:40]

What I work with internally is the peculiar impulses, which are perhaps desire driven in an uncomfortable moment. So I have to turn my attention from one thing to another without completing that activity. In other words, nothing is calling for that response. But, you know, all of us have, it's like, you're doing some tasks at your desk. desk, and all of a sudden, you put that aside, and you start doing some other tasks. You know, really weird when you really, when you think of it. That, to me, is interruption. So, it's like, you be the boss of you when you're doing an activity to just, to do it completely, and at the same time to allow that opening to, to respond to whatever is knocking at the door. So that's what I'd say.

[55:41]

The other thing, just briefly, I wanted to say, edge. I really recommend Roshi Joan Halifax's book about, it's called Standing at the Edge. And one thing she says is, we grow from our edge. An organism grows sort of like a tree. The rings are continuous and they grow from that edge. So it's like edges are... Those edge states are really creative places. And so, God, they may not be comfortable, but they're really creative. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for wonderful help. Thank you. Maria Teresa? Yes. I wanted to thank you for the talk because though you were talking about practice, it seemed to me that you're talking about life in general. You know, everything that you said, at least I could see the applicability to life, whether inside the temple or outside.

[56:44]

So thank you. That was comprehensive. Thank you. Well, that's what we're here to learn, right? That life is practice and practice is life, no separation. That was Sojin's really strong teaching, right? Yeah. Ross? Thank you, Susan. In your exchange with Joel about giving each note its due, I was thinking about people as notes. So how do you give each person their due, depending on whether their sound is sharp or flat, fast rhythm, slow, that sort of thing? How do you work with giving each person their due? Well, I think we learn to listen and to respect and not to compare.

[57:56]

And in doing that, we... we transmit an attitude, don't we? A friendliness? What do you think? Well, as we were talking, I was thinking about notes being separate, but actually they're on a, whatever they call it, a music with the lines. So they're actually all on, they're all related to that line that goes through the song or the piece. And they're positioned in different places. So we see them differently and hear them differently, but there's also this continuity. Right. So thank you for your talk and the rhythm of that. That's helpful. You're welcome. Looks like it's time. Thank you all very much.

[58:56]

Beings are numberless, I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. being new here.

[61:54]

These are the announcements for Saturday, August 13th. Tomorrow, BCC will offer a half-day sitting from 8 a.m. to noon. This coming Monday, Heather Serrantes will give away Sikki Mind Talk. Next Saturday, Hozan will deliver the lecture. Registration is now open for Aspects of Practice, which begins on September 10th. The theme will be The Eightfold Path. Please check the website for fees and registration details and direct questions to Karen Sundheim, ksundheim at gmail.com. Saigon members who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color are welcome to meetings held on Mondays, 6.30 to 7.30 p.m. via Zoom. For more information, contact BIPOC, B-I-P-O-C, at BrickleyZenCenter.org. For more information about our programs, please see the bulletin board outside or visit BrickleyZenCenter.org. For a list of links for current and recurring programs, please see the bulletin board or check the chat in Zoom. To make a donation to support BCC, please use the donations box in the courtyard outside or visit our website and go to the generosity tab.

[62:57]

If you've been attending for a while and are interested in learning about membership options, check the bulletin board or in the Zoom chat, the membership contact information under links for recurring activities. Those in the Zendo, please maintain silence until you're off the porch and feel free to socialize in the courtyard. Those online may now unmute and greet one another. Bye, everybody. Bye. Bye. Thank you.

[63:27]

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