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Some practice with the Satipatthana Sutra
The talk presents zazen as repeated, embodied return to posture and breath, cultivating concentration without self-criticism or attachment to thoughts and sensations. It guides a practice based on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta’s sixteen contemplations of body, feelings, mind, and dharmas, while emphasizing that these phrases are invitations rather than demands to manufacture calm or happiness.
- Transformation and Healing: The Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness — Thich Nhat Hanh. Provides the sixteen breathing-based contemplations used in the guided practice and frames mindfulness as insight into suffering and release.
- The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching — Thich Nhat Hanh. Cited for the four establishments of mindfulness and the practice phrase “Breathing in, I calm my body.”
- “My Zazen” — Hōsan Roshi. Describes zazen as fluid alertness and offers the aspiration “May I be awake that others may awaken.”
- Turning Suffering Inside Out — Darlene Cohen. Connects sitting practice with building the capacity to return to attention patiently and kindly.
- What Is Zen? — Norman Fischer and Susan Moon. Cited for the view that practice addresses suffering by returning to body and breath and releasing fixation.
- “Trust in Mind” — author not specified. Invoked in relation to dissatisfaction arising from craving and the wish to arrange experience according to preference.
- Teaching attributed to Suzuki Roshi — specific work not identified. Supports the claim that each part of the body participates independently in zazen.
- Teaching attributed to Sojun Roshi — specific work not identified. Supports returning to posture, breath, and body awareness during sitting.
AI Suggested Title: Returning to Breath With Kindness
Okay, welcome to everyone. My name is Sue Osher. I've been a student since 1990, when I walked in the gate. Two years ago, I was the head student for the practice period in the spring practice period for Hozong. Our dear Abbott, whom we miss. Gimpo's dad. Lori's husband. Got to bring that into the room. So grateful for this practice. So let's see what my notes say. I was rewriting them at 2 a.m. I mean, why not? The fireworks are there, so...
[01:01]
I really welcome everyone. And are there people who are new here? Hands. Great, I love it. Thank you for coming. Thank you for your beginner's mind, if that's what we can call it. We all need it. Carol Paul, who I hope is at home, sent me a phrase for the day you know how some people have the phrase for the day Rondi and Charlie used to have the little zen calendar with really cute sayings but this one was pretty impactful um perhaps the most radical act of resistance is fully so maybe there'll be a connection to this talk for you we'll see I'd like to call this talk playing with Zazen.
[02:10]
I was a preschool teacher, and so play is really important, really powerful experience, I think, for everybody. We're in our bodies. We can play. We can discover. So I hope this is that kind of experience for you today. We'll see. Also, somebody likes to go work out at the health club, so we could also call this the awakening gym. Zen teachers Norman Fisher and Susan Moon's book, What is Zen? It's a good book. Say we all come to practice to relieve suffering. Our practice is to return to body and breath and let go of cravings and fixations on fears, stories, I'm paraphrasing for myself here, memories and opinions, all of which Zen teacher Darlene Cohen in her book, Turning Suffering Inside Out, called sitting practice, building our coming back muscle.
[03:23]
That is to come back to body and breath and concentration. Zazen are reminders and muscle builders. Some people here have set the last day of the five-day sashin, or set all the five days, excuse me, let me get back to what I actually wanted to say. So, five days of the five-day sashin, which ended our June practice period and ended June 15th with our head student ceremony. Due to an aging body, I sat three of the days online at home. At time, it was the same, I'm sure, for those in the session here in person. I felt stuck in physical, emotional, and mental suffering. No why perspective, no possibilities.
[04:25]
A week later, I identified that as craving, comfort. I didn't like how I felt. I really didn't like how I felt. I still didn't like it. That only takes you so far. It's called a temper tantrum. As in trust in mind, dukkha or dissatisfaction arises with the craving to fix the world according to one's preferences. Sometimes I find myself accepting and have a clear view. I get outside of that and drop the craving and I'm just in my body. It's probably why I like exercise. People do that. Or yoga. People do that. Our practice is to pay attention to posture and breath and allow body and mind.
[05:30]
In Sashim, each morning before the first period of Zazen ends, the director tells us to be still and silent. Drop body and mind. It's powerful. It does drop it. that phrase for me. How do we do that? I don't know. I think it's grace. We put ourselves out in the fog and we get wet. So in response to that question, which is sort of alive for me, I'd say, well, I want to talk about Zazen instruction, which some of you were here for, a wonderful job that Gimpo did today. Tidying up the altar a little one, so I got to hear part of it.
[06:35]
It was just wonderful. I really thank you for that. I'm going to go touch on some points on one of those Zazen instructors here. And every Saturday we offer, At 8.40 in the morning in the Zendo, mostly. And that's them then in the community room. So we greet newcomers at the stairs, in the bottom of the stairs of the Zendo or at the top. A little bit about our forms, how we enter the Zendo, find a seat, find our posture. We sit for five minutes together or so. noticing thoughts, returning to upright but not tense-sitting. Is that about right? Okay. We've mentioned, we're sending products, or step on the meal boards, which are those wooden.
[07:38]
And if that hasn't come through yet, then eventually it will. When you keep coming back, it's okay to make mistakes. So it's a spacious feeling to be or it can be. Sitting with people, just breathing, adjusting one's own posture, noticing thoughts. As part of entering playing with Zazen, imagine that you are standing, just standing inside the gate, you've just come in. Please take a breath in. and out. Relax your neck and your jaw. Let's just do that. Be in our body. Maybe we can roll our shoulders, and I'm hearing sort of creaky noises in my neck, which lately might go away after this talk.
[08:48]
So we're relaxing. Or we're being here. We may not label it relax, but it's like breathe in here. Breathe out now. And then if you don't have a lot of stuff you're carrying, or if you're doing outdoor kinhan or indoor meditation, some of you were taught shashu. Let's all do that. Most of us know it. It's the gentle fist of the left. and you can correct me, and the right hand over it. And it's about abdomen level. So that's what... And it's relaxed, you know, and I think you'd use the term an egg under the armpit. Yeah, well, something like that. And it just makes a circle. This is called a mudra, shashu. I won't give a test on Japanese terms, but shashu.
[09:52]
So we're standing inside the gate. We're in Shashu, feeling our feet. Feel your feet on the ground. Feel your feet on the ground. Rise up from that, out of your abdomen. Just down and back and open. Feel the breath in your chest and open to the flowers and the sounds of the birds and the traffic and just lightly hold that attention. Sometimes I'm just overwhelmed with, I'm so glad I'm walking in the gate. So let's journey in our minds into the zendo and we're stuck to the back of the room to enter and we're take a bow, and this is called gusho. I'm saying this for old timers as well, it's new timers.
[10:54]
That goes about nose height, some inches away from the nose. Let's do a bow from the waist. And we can find our scroll back to shashu. Seats, put our stuff under the tons. and we take our seats, we find our posture. If this is new for you, that's great. If it isn't new for you, and you know it, can you do something called your mind with it? This is your body right now, right? That's what's helpful with this. So we're sitting forward on this cushion, the first third of it, on your chair, if you can, or on your bench, if you're kneeling.
[11:57]
And let's just be aware of extending, extending up from our seated posture, cultivating relaxation but alertness. And then we take the cosmic mudra with your left hand, your palm up, and your right hand under it. Fingers, the right fingers under the left. We have this, as Ginpo said today, touching the fingers gently as if there's a piece of paper in there. Sojan Roshi. The first abbot here said, if he could do zazen concentrating on his mudra, the cosmic mudra. So whatever that means for you, give it a try.
[13:04]
And what we do in zazen is go back to posture and breath. over and over and over. I like to introduce, while we're doing Zazen, that we can count our breaths. My phone is to breathe out and count one, so people say breathe in and count one, but silently. So breathe out, it's one, breathe in, two, three, and so on to ten. And you can drop the counting if you like, or it might be a way to rein in a distracted mind.
[14:09]
It's one technique. What do I do with my mind? Hassan Roshi wrote an article called My Zazen. Once he had settled in upright posture and taken his mudra, he wrote, May I be awake that others may awaken. It feels as if I'm lightly dropping these words into the quieting pool of zazen, letting the ripples spread as they will. Honestly, I cannot say what happens for the remainder of the Zazen period. I make no effort to remember, and I don't remember. That's fine, because there's nothing I'm trying to accomplish. The effort is to be awake and receptive to the flow of sensations, perceptions and thoughts that arise and fall away, as they will. But this is not drifting and dreaming.
[15:14]
Rather, it is a kind of fluid alertness capable of including each thing without being caught in it. In the 1990s, I joined a small city group in the Adirondacks, and that was led by my friend Nancy Kimball, who may be on this Zoom, but I don't know. There she is. Nancy, hi. Thank you. I don't know if you remember the woman's name. I don't. This woman joined us, and I think from a Vipassana or Theravadi tradition, and she led us in, I don't know if it was a silent chant, and we read a piece of paper together, or if she guided us and we just sat Sazam. But in any case, although... Annoying, I kept the piece of paper, and I do have some copies.
[16:15]
It'll be put in the chat by Gensan, our tech host, I hope, for those online. And I have some copies which will be available after we have the experience. Through this guided process, what I found out later when I told Hosan about this, these 16 phrases, he said, oh yeah, the Satipathana Sutta, and I nodded as if I knew what that was. And I never, because I didn't remember the name, but anyway. So it turns out, my friend Carol gave me her extra copy of a book with it in there, and I have another book by the same author discussing the Satipathana Sutta. so there is called transformation and healing sutra on the four establishments of mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh so i'm coming to study this very late in my practice and some people really have an early practice it's a complicated and helpful
[17:38]
and I want to get out of the words and into the experience of it with people, because sitting in this room or wherever you are together, silently, except for that I will be guiding this, can be powerful. So let me go with this. A few words, more words, sorry, more words, then we'll have... some time to sit with it. I don't know what time it is, do we? 10.40. Oh, okay, great. So, you can also find this practice in the book, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, which I happen to have. So Thich Nhat Hanh speaks about body and mind becoming one.
[18:43]
We are able to restore the wholeness of ourselves. And he offers this gata or phrase that might be aspiration. Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment. But when we are divided, distressed, then what? So there are different techniques, including counting the breath, places to go with this Hosan suggested, breathe in, just out, this, just this. Sojun Roshi, all the teachers encourage us to, when we're sitting sasana, go back to a body scan.
[19:44]
That's what we do. This is a body and breath practice. And he says in meditation, we can look deeply into things in order to see the essence. Due to our insight and understanding, we can realize liberation peace, and joy. He says we can observe the nature of anger, anxiety, and fear. So, to go back to my experience, difficulties in Sashin, I wasn't observing them. I was just, I was in aversion to them. That's a great way to suffer. And I could, sometimes I can. So, he says we can observe the nature of anger, anxiety, and fear, which are the ropes which are binding us to suffering, and oh boy, does that come clear.
[20:47]
If we want liberation, we need to observe their nature, which is ignorance, the lack of clear understanding. When we misunderstand a friend, he says, we may become angry at him, And because of that, we may suffer. But when we look deeply into what is happening and the misunderstanding, our suffering will disappear. When we are aware of the object, we look deeply into the object to shed light on it. Therefore, mindfulness means awareness, and it also goes deeply. The boundary between subject and object can disappear. He calls this the essence of meditation. And as I said, it's grace. It arises. You can't make it.
[21:49]
You get. And there's help. Sangha, study, taking care of ourselves. So here is Thich Nhat Khan called Transformation and Healing Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness. Here's a little of what he said. The four methods of mindfulness described in the sutra are mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of the feelings, mindfulness of the mind, and mindfulness of the objects of mind. which in Sanskrit is called dharmas. And I'm not going to define those terms today. Maybe never. In the establishment known as objects of mind, the practitioner is fully aware of the five aggregates which comprise a person.
[22:58]
Form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. the sense organs and their objects, the factors which can obstruct understanding and liberation, which can lead to awakening, and the four noble truths concerning suffering and the release from suffering. And we study this. This is what we study, this very broad, lifelong So, as I said, I am a former preschool teacher with a tendency to prefer hands-on experience. And I invite you to sit and breathe in and out while you gently into 16 phrases. The first four relate to the body, the second four to feelings, the third to the mind, and the last four to objects.
[24:03]
You don't need to remember that. You don't have to figure it out. You don't even have, please don't try and I say breathing in or breathing out. Just do your own thing and let the idea of this float without grasping under it. And I do have copies available and if there's not enough, let me know and I'll email you. You might notice arising thoughts around preferences. physical sensations, opinions, and cravings. Return to posture and breath in the mudra, your cosmic mudra. And notice, I hope, refresh these together. So if we're ready, if we can take our mudra, maybe just put our papers down, except for me. So...
[25:06]
Let's do this. Breathing in. I know I breathe in long. Even if you're not breathing in long. Breathing in. I know I breathe in long. Breathing out. I breathe out long. Breathing in. I know I breathe in short. Breathing in. I know I breathe out short. Breathing in. I breathe into my whole body. Breathing out. I breathe out from my whole body. Breathing in. I calm my body.
[26:09]
I calm my body. Breathing in, I feel joyful. Breathing out, I feel joyful. Breathing in, I feel happy. Breathing out, I feel happy. Breathing in. I'm aware of mental formations. Breathing out. I'm aware of mental formations. Breathing in. I calm mental formations. Breathing out. I calm mental formations. Breathing in. I'm aware of my mind. Breathing out. I'm aware of my mind. Breathing in.
[27:12]
I make my mind happy. Breathing out. I make my mind happy. Breathing in. I concentrate the mind. Breathing out. Concentrate the mind. Breathing in. I liberate the mind. Breathing out, I liberate the mind. Breathing in, I observe nature of all dharmas. Breathing out, I observe the impermanent nature of all dharmas. Breathing in, I observe the disappearance of desire. Breathing out, I observe the disappearance of desire. Breathing in, I observe cessation.
[28:19]
Breathing out, I observe cessation. Breathing in, I observe letting go. Breathing out, I observe letting go. Our dear teacher Maylee Scott said, when thoughts are embodied, experience and attention is settled, deepened.
[29:27]
We have a different experience. She asked, how do you think in your belly? She says, the experience of ourselves is much more whole. No one asks about the question, am I doing it right? Pulling from Suzuki Roshi, each part of your body should participate in zazen independently. We are not doing self-centered zazen. The mudra is important and should be placed in its own legs doing zazen in pain. You are not practicing zazen. The rest of the body should help part of the body, but right now I'm having a leg cramp, so I'm going to help by moving, having difficulty. And then in her book, Turning Suffering Inside Out, she writes about concentration practice or developing the coming back muscle.
[30:42]
She says it doesn't matter how many times our mind wanders, just notice and then patiently and kindly. She compares this to puppy training. She said that counting breaths helps us to notice our mind wandering and we may notice obsessive thoughts or habits of mind. We get to know ourselves and treat ourselves gently without comparison and criticism. Her advice to notice and perhaps I call this the no-criticism muscle. I imagine that Zen students have their own ways, we all do, own ways to work with this. I found it in working with my difficult thoughts and body sensations, helpful at times to turn to the Satipasana Sutta, the 16 phrases, or some version of them.
[31:44]
...it again of the director, the session director's advice, instruction, invitation, aspiration, which happens near the end of the first period of Zazen and Sashin or sitting days, many periods of Zazen to come. The director says, be silent, and still drop body and mind. How do you do that? Thank you very much. I think I am done with what I've brought to say. How much time do you take? About 15, 20 minutes. Okay, that's okay.
[32:46]
Yes, your hand please. Hi Sue, I just wanted to reflect back something very much along the lines of what you've been saying today. Back many, many years ago when I was trying to get this family program going and figure out what it meant and what to do. I was consulting with you, because you had the experience, and I had come up with this list of virtues, like Buddhist virtues, like giving, mindfulness. So I'm like 16, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna try to teach these through the course of the year or whatever. And there was a pause, and there was this pause where you were, in my mind, I think, trying to think about, how am I?
[33:50]
And it was, children go from the concrete to the abstract. And that became how we proceeded. Like, so what can we do? What can we actually do together that evokes friendliness? What can we actually do together is giving, you know. And I just want to reflect on that. That's always staying with me. And I want to thank you very much and appreciate you so much in your talk too. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Ellen? And then if there are people online, you'll need to do that little. So I can see that you want to talk or our tech host can help. Yes, Ellen. Hi Sue. Hi. Thank you for your talk. sort of an inspiration to me. And I'm thinking about how to say this because, you know, it feels a little critical or something, but it's not.
[34:55]
This is really a question for me. So I have read the sutra before and I'm fairly familiar with it. But when I breathe in and it says feel happiness, I think when I feel kind of a concrete wall when I don't, So that's kind of my question. How do you work with that? That's what was hitting me in Sachin. You know, I have found comfort with that. Like the possibility opens up of, you know, I actually, I'm not stuck here. I was stuck exactly what you're talking about. I'm not happy. Like breathing in, I feel joyful. Right now I'm going to go hit somebody. You know, I thought that's what comes up. You know, I completely understand. You know, I've used this to settle my mind so I can go to sleep. It didn't work lately. You know, it's a technique, I think. I don't think it's a have to.
[35:56]
I think what you said about opening up a space actually works for me. But I think, you know, there's a part of it that's imagination, which again, I think really works for people. resetting your neurological patterns kind of way, but I just have some trouble with it. Yes, I honor that and I'm with you on that. It doesn't always arise, but I know that letting go of it and just minor annoyances, you know, with this practice, sometimes I'm actually more sensitive to that and I can Drop it, it sure made a difference in my relationship with my family. Great, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Let's see, do we have anybody? Nobody online. Who wants to say something? No, not yet.
[36:57]
All right, not right now. Deborah, and let's do Mary first since the microphone is near her, then we'll go. And then we'll go back to Deborah to help you remember us. Thank you. Our officials as an instructor are coordinating. So I have an example of what Ellen is asking about in my own life. I was trucking. Early on in my practice took the present moment wonderful moment or perfect moment as my mantra, taking it step by step. And it was really wonderful while things were going well. And then things started sideways. The storm came and we didn't get to go where we wanted to go.
[37:57]
We had to turn back. And I was pretty much kicking cans all the way down the trail. and separating myself from people. I don't want to be around anybody. And it occurred to me that going up, it might have been good luck going down. So I sort of started a little resentfully doing it. Present moment, wonderful moment, present moment, wonderful moment. And after a while of that, it occurred to me... that in my mind I had it completely upside down. I had it in mind as an affirmation, like I was reading the garden of my mind and making it so. Isn't that annoying? And that it doesn't work that way. You know, you can't so mentally as an instruction. And that actually what it was instructional about was
[38:58]
that even when it's all going wrong, it's a wonderful mind. And because I realized I'll never be right here in a place like this. And it was raining, I was soaked to the skin, and I was in a rice field, and the whole rice field turned into this luminous green. It was like, oh, that's a different experience. I'm trying to make it so. Right. Already here. Already here. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. Let's see. Sharae and then Deborah, please. Thanks, Sue, for your talk. And thank you for the guided experience.
[40:02]
I thought, oh, Zen student, preschool student. Can you say if there's any difference between a preschool and a monastery or a place where we do some monastic practice? Yes. My preschool, Montessori preschool training and teaching coincided with my entering the gate very close. I started teaching, or I guess I was teaching in 1985 and opened my school in 1987 and 1990. And it was just like this, oh, same mindfulness practice, you know. I love the hands-on thing, you know, with Montessori, and I do this in restaurants, you get up and you push your chair in under the table.
[41:09]
And then I met Ross, who talked about, like, just, like, folding cloth or, you know, taking care of the toilet paper roll in the right place, you know, it's like, oh, I know how to act the wrong thing because there's a form for it, not like a moral issue, but it just like helps everybody move in harmony, you know, and it's really wonderful learning those forms. And there are forms in Montessori which are, I think, in good alignment with child development. It's not just child development, it's people, what our basic needs are, You know, I'm sorry, I'm going off on a tangent. Yes. You know, when, oh, God. There's this, you're cooking, you can be trained to be a cook for our Saturday program, our sessions.
[42:18]
How long do I have a better song? But in Montessori, one of the practices is, The teacher demonstrates these different things, and there's lots of children choose what they want to do, and then they put it back and clean it up. And it's really great because kids get to squeeze sponges and pour water. And they can also, you know those little knives that you get for pumpkins for Halloween? So they're orange-handled and sharp, but they have a serrated edge. And you can use them, you show the kids how to cut carrots. They can cut little rounds of carrots, wash your hands, get the carrot, place it out on the surface, cut the carrot, here's a little bowl, put the slice in. And then you take it, you say to a child, would you like a carrot? The children are serving. And it's like,
[43:21]
That's how we serve here. We don't say anything, but, you know, offer the bowl or the pot to the person and fill their... That's just my kind of thing. Thank you so much. Deborah, please. Do we need to turn up the volume on this? You're okay. Okay. Thank you, Ben. Thank you, Sue, for your talk. Thank you. I really appreciated you reminding us that you taught in a nursery school. And it brought up my mindfulness. And I always say children are naturally mindful. Naturally sort of you know, they don't have as many formations as an adult and that sort of thing. I was just curious if you could comment on that, if you thought that is true or what you observed or sensed.
[44:31]
You know, it depends on the child. I did not have training with children with controlled issues or difficulties, you know, physical disabilities either. my experiences. But what I found was that I was trained to, I learned what children, what attracts their attention. So like our concentration and ourselves, we provide and facilitate environments to promote concentration. And so it's sort of an exploration, but I had the training to be pretty good at it with a certain group of kids not always it was not always a good match um uh one time i brought his son in to observe the program it was just a morning program part-time very part-time i never had the energy to do full-time teaching and daycare i couldn't do that but um
[45:45]
so we were at circle and i was offering various don't talk you don't talk at children you don't talk too much it's physical and the child was just really interested and quiet and still and this was and um and then he went over to the easel painting and first of all his father said to me after the circle. How did you get him to do that? It was very aggressive. It was really aggressive. I was really on the kid's side and not on the father's side at that point. And I said, well, that's my training to present an environment that encourages their focus and concentration and physical manipulation and fun, you know, discovery. And then the child went over. Oh, God.
[46:47]
Okay. The child went over to the easel. And I asked the father to please sit and just observe and get a feel for it. And he couldn't do that. And he went over and started yapping at the kid over his shoulder. And this is not just Montessori education. You don't mess with somebody's work. You don't do that. And... I asked him several times, I said, why don't you sit here and just watch? And the kid turned around. It was one of the high points of my life. He had a brush full of red paint. His father had a . He just put the brush down. Am I a bad person?
[47:52]
Okay. Anything else? Yeah, so I appreciate that, because I feel that with this eight-letter word, mindful, it just becomes an object to me at times, and by communicating this experienced expression of the child, it was really, to me, I could understand it in a different way. Thank you very much. Yes, Joe. Good morning, Joe. Thank you for being here. Thanks for the talk. I have a weird feedback question combo. As I listened to you in the Q&A, a lot of questions about your Montessori experience. And I just wanted to say when you Now when you're talking and from your own experience, I'm quite impressed or in touch with what you're saying.
[48:57]
And I confess that I didn't really get that from a lot of the quotes in the talk. So hearing you talk about your own experience hits me in a certain way. And something that I hear you talk about in meetings, in Q&A, Today you talked about a lot. Well, that was powerful. That was powerful. Powerful. That quote, that word, you mentioned powerful a lot. And so I'm wondering, what does that mean to you? What does that experience when something is powerful? What is important about that to you? Just because I think that I never experienced that. I never think like, oh wow, that was a powerful moment. And then I hear you say it, I'm like, oh, what's to experience? So, I'm curious. A little bit behind that word with your own experience, yeah. Thank you, Joe.
[49:58]
Wow. And may I say welcome in your robes, priest robes. Thank you. It's really beautiful. Feels awkward and confusing. Yeah. What does that take, about a year? Hopefully. So powerful. Yes, okay, what does that mean? Spacious, quiet, settled. Maybe those are better words. Thank you. That, what do you call it? Shades in a little bit. And I also appreciate the comments about, that the question and answer period is when it gets more interesting for you. That was true for me was when Sojin just went, well, come on, let's have some questions and answers because I'm not getting this. But I know there are enough people with academic intellectual bents that they need some of that.
[51:01]
You know, full disclosure, I'm looking for a couple things to throw in here. You're looking after everyone, thanks. Peter? Thank you. And Ben, thanks for running that mark. How many minutes? Okay, thank you. Thank you, sir. Welcome, Ben. You agreed to give this talk? Really? Oh, I'm so glad. Yes. I lived through it. Yes. So I taught preschool for three years, mostly as a substitute. And I did substitute in the Montessori school once for a very brief period. And what struck me, and that question about how our preschool and our temple similar, what struck me about Montessori was I'm pretty sure they were two years after nap time.
[52:13]
Each child folded up their mat and had a little cup that they put it in. I mean, I had substituted in preschools where the teachers did everything for the kids. And I used to think, these kids are capable. Why are you doing these things for them? It felt abusive. Agreed. And then I went to a lot of schools. I was like, that's it. When children, you know, on the authoritarian permissive, range of parenting or, I guess, anything. When we have, we can do this, we're taught the way to do it, and we can do it, and we understand it. It's very, and here's the word, empowering. It's like, it just, it's so sad to see parents hovering. Yes. Parents within my own family.
[53:14]
And to worry, like my kids had to move away across country or out of the area so I could quit hovering. It's like we don't generally get feedback early enough. They said, learn child development earlier. What was interesting for me was I didn't realize two-year-olds had their capability. until I saw it with my own eyes. Wow. So what I want to thank you for is bringing Beginner's Mind into this room this morning, because that's what I'm taking away from your talk on a really elemental, fundamental level. For me, your whole talk has been about Beginner's Mind, and that's our practice, no matter what, right? So I was in or not. Can I be there? Can I be curious? Can I be open?
[54:15]
Can I be aware? And can I take it as the only moment? Thank you. I'm very moved by that. I just want to say that what I'm also learning and still have more learning is not leaking. I'm pissed and somebody's going to get hurt. You know, taking those responsibility or having some awareness of how I interact with people. That's another part. Anyway, that's another topic. Thank you, Peter. Are we done? Okay. I appreciate you all being here. Thank you.
[54:55]
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