And good morning to you all, Berklee Sangha in person and Berklee Sangha online. As Linda said, my name is Eli. I'm coming from just over the bridge from the city center. And it's interesting coming here this morning. I realize that it is my first time here. And I've been practicing in this lineage for just under 15 years. Standing in the abbot's office, as I understand it, was warming in so many ways. I almost wanted to scrap this talk and just talk about warmth of lineage, looking at the pictures of Sojun Roshi, of Sanaki Roshi's beautiful mudra. And then on the altar, Reverend Curtis Fabens, who's... Zagu that actually is who taught me Zazen instruction. More context of maybe how I came to sit here.

[01:04]

My teacher, Ed Sarazan, was ordained by Lou Richman. This happens to be Lou's old black, Oakesa, who was ordained by Sojin Roshi. Greg and Linda, I have to give you a deep bow. As Linda said, they've been practicing with me from the start. Reverend Fain, the first tanto I ever had. I remember fondly, and not so fondly, of the first time I followed him around in the morning jindo to offer incense to all the altars. Ji Ko is how I was taught. And I was wearing, like, Thai fisherman pants. I don't know if you're familiar with those. And it was my first time putting on an actual robe. So somehow I got the Thais confused. And so we were standing at an altar. And gee, Cohen, my pants just fell down. Luckily, there was the robe there. But we managed to make it through.

[02:06]

The altars received their incense. And then Linda, over the years, I've worked with her in many capacities, practice and work practice, particularly when she was the president. And my experience of you is just incredibly and wholeheartedly turning towards what's in front of you. In the busyness of the multitude of things that you had to do as president, watch you so many times just turn and meet people in such a wholehearted way. Also want to thank you. My role at City Center, actually at all of Zen Center, would not exist if it were not for the diligent effort you contributed to that area of our work and growth. So thank you. All right. So there are many, many Zen teachings that I could express the way. I didn't get any assignments, so I don't know if you all are in the midst of any studies.

[03:11]

But rather than kind of trying to deliver something comprehensive or definitive, I wanted to just share a little bit about what I'm practicing with now and have been over the last few years. Coming into practice... a question that often came up when I'd go in for dokasan or practice discussion was, how is your zazen? I don't know if anybody ever has interfaced with that question. And for the last few years, I've really been trying to shift that question to how am I taking care of zazen? And what I've noticed is that... when I take care of the conditions of how I practice, what I feed, what I do and don't do to my nervous system, that when I tend to that, something else gets cared for too. I found that this is particularly important in these recent times with so many things that could activate or stir up one's nervous system.

[04:26]

Too many to name, perhaps. And so this practice to me has been more important. And in doing so, I believe beginner's mind is more available. Not because I'm trying to manufacture it, but because the grounds are more hospitable. So before saying too much more, I wanted to take a moment to actually engage in this practice. I don't know where you... arrived from this morning, but I arrived from getting my eight-and-a-half-year-old, who I have half-time, to a birthday party in Fed. And I also had a morning program at City Center. So I don't know where you're coming from, but I'd like to take a moment to just fully arrive here. So I'm going to take us through a somewhat typical meditation. So you can lower your gaze or even perhaps close your eyes if that's comfortable.

[05:30]

And the instructions that I will give are quite ordinary to meditation. However, I've noticed that they've became kind of just checkpoints rather than really just trying to deepen these invitations in the moment. So go ahead and just close your eyes for a moment. And we're just going to let the body arrive so that when we sit or are here this morning together, we're not carrying over the momentum from this morning or perhaps this week. We'll just go ahead and start to notice the points of connection to the chair or cushion where you are arriving. And really as a means to connect with that sensation fully, not just coming to sit or what we do before we sit.

[06:34]

Notice how the body meets the cushion, the weight of the pelvis. Really trying to feel into the steadiness of what is holding you. And bring your attention to your feet, whether they're flat on the floor or in a resting posture. Just really taking the time to notice the sensation. Without changing anything, feel the length of the spine. No need to correct it, just to sense it. Noticing the hands where they're resting.

[07:45]

Any warmth, coolness or tingling. And then finally bringing attention to the breath, not to control it, just simply to notice where it's most obvious. And we're not necessarily trying to settle, but just simply starting to notice, I am here now. Thank you for joining me in that practice. As I said, I'm starting this way because beginner's mind is not something we create.

[08:52]

It shows up when the body is where it is and the mind is not ahead of itself. Beginner's mind is not a mental posture, but it's a state of availability. And availability depends on conditions. Our founder, Suzuki Roshi, said that the key point is this. You must have your mind and body. Everything should exist in the right place. So taking care of Zazen begins with taking care of how we arrive. There's a chapter that you may be familiar with in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, called Mind Weeds. And so I kind of, I couldn't take a direct quote, so I kind of clumped together a bunch of it. But Suzuki Roshi says that thoughts, habits, judgments, and preferences arise on their own just as weeds grow in a garden.

[10:00]

This is not a problem to fix. It's simply the nature of mind. Practice is not about eliminating these weeds or forcing the mind into a particular state. It's about tending the garden with care. When we sit zazen, we're not trying to make something special happen. We are learning how to notice what arises without being disturbed by it and how to take care of the conditions without aggression or self-judgment. When the weeds of the mind are cut, nourishment is available. And so this nourishment comes from not forcing, but just simply trusting the ground itself. So a little bit about how this question emerged for me. I don't know if any of you have this experience, but when I came to practice, it was...

[11:07]

relatively easy to, I think, engage with this thing we call beginner's mind. I didn't know what I was doing or what I was getting into. It was just me and the wall in 40 minutes. It was just simply how I arrived. I didn't know what zazen was supposed to be, so I didn't have many ideas of if I was doing it right or wrong. I did read Suzuki Roshi say, the most difficult thing to keep the most difficult thing is to keep our beginner's mind in our practice. And as the years went on, I started to get more of a flavor for dharma. I started to study precepts. I started to hold my life, my daily actions, through a different lens. And so, conceptually, I understood beginner's mind more, perhaps. But experientially, I more or less sometimes crowded it out by effort, by evaluation, by the desire to practice well, to understand, and even from time to time write talks.

[12:25]

I've been living monastically or modern monastic in community for about the last 15 years. And so also... Zazen just became a very regular part of my life. Over time, I felt that my sitting felt a little tight or effortful. And I realized it's not because I was failing, and it wasn't because something was wrong with my practice. It was often because I had not taken care of the conditions for sitting. So it's not about what am I doing right or wrong in my Zazen, but what does Zazen need right now? And this question somewhat softened things. So I often like to have what I call table talk politics at Zen Center and deep dive into certain discussions. And one thing that I've been aware of or I speak to is that

[13:30]

People have been practicing this tradition of just sitting for millennia. And one thing that I want to name is that our ancestors practiced without electricity, without screens, without infinite scroll, without constant interruption that many of us live inside now. They did not wake up carrying the emotional residue of dozens of or hundreds of people they encountered through media all before breakfast. And today many of us move through a kind of attentional fire hose. News, email, messages, images, opinions, opinions, more opinions, outrage, comparison, all arriving faster than our bodies and our systems have evolved to metabolize. So I think when we sit down to practice, we're nowhere near maybe neutral stance.

[14:38]

And I know Doug and fellow practitioners all suffered, all dealt with greed, hate, and delusion. But I am a little challenged to think that on a physiological level, as intensely. So I'm just trying to look at the conditions in that. And once I started to think about that, I started to shift a lot of my patterns. So a big question for me throughout the day is, what am I feeding? Not just physically, mentally, or emotionally. Knowing that some inputs feed separation, polarization, certainty, comparison. Definitely the... subtle or not so subtle sense that someone else is the problem. Other inputs, inputs in Sangha, might nourish connection, presence, complexity, embodied relationship, the capacity to stay with things when they are simply uncomfortable.

[15:50]

And we know Zazen does not exist apart from this. It's not something that we do after consuming everything else. It's one of the few places in this planet, in this lifetime, where we stop feeding the machinery for a moment and let our systems reorient. And if we don't take care of this, Zazen can quietly become another self-project, a place to evaluate ourselves, optimize, or feel behind. So I thought it might be helpful to talk a little bit about motivation. And I know that Zen tells us not to engage with a gaining mind. However, at the same time, the world is asking something from us. I may have mentioned, I don't know if I mentioned, I have an eight and a half year old daughter

[16:57]

And part of the reason I ventured off on this Zen path a decade, more than a decade and a half ago, was because I read a book called Singularity and saw the kind of maybe writing of the wall of where we were headed and had not an existential crisis, but did really reassess what I was doing with my time, energy, and existence. So I'm still into that kind of thing. And obviously we're at somewhat of a crescendoing moment. But all that to say is that I wonder about the future of education, how antiquated it currently is. And so in my little studies and whatnot, I came across a panel and an educator, a very esteemed educator, from the Brookings Institute, which is a think tank if you're not familiar. was posed the question, given where we're at, like, what do kids need to know?

[18:00]

Where is the future of education? And she said that the core capacities that young folks would need moving forward are the ability to navigate their internal world. The second was the ability to be in meaningful relationships. And the third, the ability to adapt in an ever-changing world. So just those three things. Not a long curriculum, but not just those three things. And I'm not offering this as proof of anything, or these are goals to chase, but these are qualities that mature over time in practice. I mean, these are, I think, for me at least, the qualities that are actually being practiced. So in a practice that takes care of zazen, what does that actually look like? In one sense, it's less analyzing and more tending.

[19:02]

Sometimes as we started, it's being very intentional about a breathing process before you come into the zendo. As Suzuki Roshi said, our mind and our body have to be in the same place. Our body is never outside of the present, so I really feel it's up to us. to help bring the mind and our attention here. And now, it's been really helpful over the years to very intentionally stretch before I make it into the Zendo, a practice I picked up from Reverend Fain over there. It's been very transformative. Right now at City Center, some of you may know Christine Lanyer. who is a former abbot of City Center, is moved back into the building, I am so joyed, to lead a practice period. And her specific instructions to us is to spend the first half of our morning sitting together doing very intentional grounding practices.

[20:12]

Not to just do zazen, but to really actively try to settle ourselves collectively. And so letting the body arrive fully before asking the mind to settle. Off the cushion, she's given us a couple of practices. One is to just slow down a little bit in all of our activities. So I extend that to you. It doesn't have to be in a slow, dramatic way, but just... just in a micro sense, just a slowing of the mind, slowing of the actions. And for me, the slowing really has been more of a mental overlay and a kind of psychological steadying more so than the body. Another practice she invited us to do is before we talk, to ask ourselves, why am I speaking?

[21:16]

And this came up for me earlier this morning as I was driving here, and I had to use my horn. But I didn't use my finger. I didn't say anything out loud. For me, this is a big step. I've came a long ways. But I really do mean this with a level of seriousness. A secondary question that I'm adding on is, what am I feeding with this response? And if we can start to watch how we're engaging this way, it really... has a, it shapes how we sit. So I wanted to, some of you know, I'm a little fascinated with bubbles. And yeah, oh, by the way, when we get done here, there's a bag of them out on the key setup. A little Dharmon, you know, satchel, I call it, full of them. And I, yeah, invite you all to take some. And if you don't want to use it, you can pass it on. But I wanted to take a moment to talk about thoughts, because we have them when we sit in Zazen, and how we can take care of them.

[22:26]

And so I'm going to use bubbles as a visual metaphor, just to put some in the room. I've been using them for, wow, almost a decade to teach mindfulness to children, assisted living. In the more recent years, to teach Zazen instruction. So if you... want to come to a half-day sit or zazen instruction, you'll get the full bit, so to speak. But just to say, right now we're going to act as if bubbles are our thoughts. They all come from maybe the same source or solution. They arise through the accompaniment of our breath. And they vary in size. They drift different ways. Some linger. Some swing back around, hit you right in the face. Some disappear very subtly, sometimes before you notice them.

[23:27]

And in Zazen, thoughts often become more clear, perhaps more articulate, more compelling. And that is when the temptation shows up. we blow bubbles and we start to get a little bit more, I think, in tuned and in sync with them. Sorry, I'm just trying to pick the, let me get more. I have to give it away here, relax. But what we do is we eventually get very used to them and then we want to pick one out of the air. Once we grab it, we hold it, we examine it, we might turn it around, we start to analyze our thoughts, we think about how it connects to another conversation, a teaching, or just in essence what we are feeling about it. And this is especially, I think, or happens to me more and more I practice, the more and more I sit with the teaching and the mind is more quiet.

[24:40]

more capable, and wants to do something useful. So we tend to dig into our thoughts. And what I want to say is when a bubble is floating around, it's transparent. Trying to get a big one here for you all, sorry. All right, we're just going to have to go with this, and you'll have to, trust me, I was trying to get a bigger one enough so that you can see that when you look through a bubble, you can see right through it, just as if it was glass. However, when you catch a bubble, just using this for a bigger size, I'm going to roll it to you here. What do you notice about, look through the bubble and tell people what you notice. Upside down.

[25:41]

Yes, yes, that is what I was looking for. So when the bubbles are by themselves, undisturbed, you can see right through them. And in a sense, I also, when you go outside, you'll recognize that the sun reflects on the outer layer and the inner layer of the bubble. And I look at this somewhat as like the relative and the absolute, the two truths. When we grab the bubble, however, it becomes kind of concretized and you see things upside down. It stops floating. It becomes an object. And our relationship shifts from awareness to management. So again, zazen is not the place where we come to solve problems. It's the place we learn how to not interrupt the flow of the mind. And it does not mean thinking is bad. I encourage you to have a practice of contemplation where you do grab bubbles. I really find purpose in that for reflection, analysis, and insight.

[26:45]

But Suzuki Roshi said, try not to attain something. When you do try to attain something, you have your body and your mind. Excuse me, when you do not try to attain something, you have your body and your mind. But when you pick up the habit of grabbing thoughts during Zazen, we train ourselves to keep intervening, even when nothing is wrong. So taking care of Zazen means learning when to let the bubble float, to see it clearly without grasping or grabbing it. Suzuki Roshi also said, when you try to attain something, your mind starts to wander somewhere else. So on this point, I'd like to share another practice, which I'll invite you to do. And it's a, I think, trauma-informed mindfulness exercise that I learned from, I think his name's David Trelevin, but he probably knows, you can correct me, which I just built off of.

[27:58]

So I'll have you try it in a moment, but want to explain it to you. So first, you're going to have a hand. We all have hands and different fingerprints. And in the palm of our hand, let's say we're born, we have our Buddha nature. We may be trying to offer our authentic self or a gift to the world. And what happens is our fingers, our conditions, our nervous system starts to close and makes that... What's in the palm of our hand sometimes feel inaccessible. So now I will speak to how my conditions were formed. We all have different conditions. But I'll say that this pinky was just learning at some point. I'm fearful. At a very young age, stuff scares me. The next finger is knowing that there's this thing called judgment in the world. The next one, comparing mind.

[29:01]

I don't know if it was looking over at someone else's stick figure and feeling a little some way, but that started to close. Uncertainty about love or belonging, that our sense of love or sense of belonging is not maybe up to us. It's contingent on some other external factor. So let's close, and then good old thumb, self-doubt, locks it in. So we have a fist. I don't know how your fist is created. It could be from abusive relationships. It could be from hard family life. It could be from divorce. Many different things. But when I was speaking to those, those are really what is at the basis of those other aspects. So I'll have you form your fist in a moment. The other hand we're going to call the hand of awareness. All right? Simply awareness. It's what we bring to our Zazen practice.

[30:03]

So go ahead and you can have your hand of awareness open and take a moment to identify that fist and how it closes. And then go ahead and make that fist and you can just lie it on... Each can be on one knee. You don't want to make it too tight, but... You do want to have somewhat of that closed sense. And so what you're going to do in a moment is what we tend to do. We tend to notice I have covered up my authentic self, my Buddha nature. And so we go to practice or a therapist or someone and we try to open up that hand. So you can take your hand of awareness and Feel what it's like to try to pry your hand open, pulling at the fingers. Of course, you are going to keep that hand closed, but just to feel the tension that is created.

[31:09]

And then you can go back to a resting posture. Leave your fists closed, but your hand of awareness can return to the opposite side. And just for a moment, sense into the body how that felt. The somatic experience of trying to force your hand open. And now go ahead and take the hand of awareness and put it on your chest or your hara. And for a moment, breathe in awareness of compassion. Or if you have a metta practice, but just starting to bring a sense of warmth and care to the hand of awareness. Perhaps you might notice your heartbeat. And now when you're ready, go ahead and just place the hand of awareness underneath the fist, just letting the fist rest in that hand.

[32:18]

And however it works for you, linguistically, communicate the hand of awareness to the fist. I see you. I'm here with you. You have every right to feel how you feel and to be how you are. I'm just going to sit here with you. And we're going to breathe. So when you're done with that moment, you can go ahead and return to whatever posture you'd like. Exercise brought up for me is how often in Zazen I am pulling. I am trying to get at something or catch the bubble. When we sit with things like fear, judgment, uncertainty, the comparing mind, and bring apart

[33:29]

about love, a sense of being with, something loosens. Something becomes more possible. So this exercise helped me with a perhaps stronger conviction, a felt sense of the possibility of sitting with these things as we experience as hindrances. And the same thing applies to five hindrances. Doubt caps it up, for those of you who are familiar with them. When the hand is closed, our Buddha nature, that offering to the world, or our authentic self can get harder to access. When the hand softens or opens again, nothing actually had to be eliminated. So it's not getting rid of your fingers, but being able to use them more appropriately. Because you do have to form a fist sometimes. And I always, again... reference Greg in a Dharma talk that he gave at Tassajara when we were studying the Heart Sutra.

[34:35]

No hindrance, no fear was his favorite line. And so I keep that in the back of my mind. Also, a talk you gave, Linda, at City Center, I think in like the 18s or something, where you're referencing Amida Buddha behind you, the one that's right there. And I think this was the sign for fearlessness, was it? Yes, and so I'm often reminded about that with this open hand. This bodhisattva path is one of fearlessness. And not that we cut off fear, but we become intimately close to it without fleeting. And so taking care of zazen means learning how to make room for what arises without collapsing into self-judgment. I'm going to wrap up here because I want to give some time for comments or questions. So I guess move back to where I began.

[35:38]

Some of us come to practice hoping that Zazen will take care of us. And over time, something else becomes possible. We take care of how we arrive, what we feed, what we relate to when it comes to thoughts. and how we treat ourselves when things get messy. When we do that, a beginner's mind appears, not as a performance, but as a response to care. So you may or may not have identified with anything that I touched into today. Often we say that we offer talks to encourage your practice. I'm simply encouraging you to take care of your practice in whatever way is useful. So if anything today touched you with curiosity, resistance, recognition, I invite you to carry that into your next sit.

[36:41]

Let your own experience finish the teaching. And in the world we're in right now... Remember that you can touch into that moment with a sense of open-heartedness, care, and your whole heart. So I think we do questions now. Eli, I'm so excited to hear you this morning. I just enjoyed what you said and would love to catch bubbles from you any old time. I'm actually going to ask two questions, and if that's too greedy, just choose one or the other.

[37:47]

The first one is you cited weeds from, you know, Tsukiroshi. And I was thinking of my son who recently started to... And he's also a professional gardener, landscaper. I thought, oh, this would be a good metaphor for him. But the thing is that I imagined he'd say, but you have to dig up the weeds and get rid of them, which isn't quite how I think of dealing with problematic thoughts and zazen. So what would you tell him? That's question number one. Question number two. LAUGHTER Can we do question number one before we do question number two? Just because I have a hard time. Let's just go with that. Thank you for the question. What's your name? What? Can I have your name? Linda is my name, Linda. I'm the other Linda. Okay, nice to meet you. I've seen you in various configurations on the path. There's a great book in Becoming Yourself that I'll reference where he talks about gardening.

[38:48]

But to your question, I mean, I think that in landscape, yes, you have to dig up weeds. occasionally. In our Zen practice, we aren't supposed to grab the bubbles, rip the weeds out, or open the ham, but just be with them. And I think what I'm maybe suggesting, or in my experience, we have to do the tending off the cushion. We do have to, it's almost preventative, or after the fact, weed pulling. We have to recognize when we're overstimulated, overtaxed, past our limits, in taking something maybe that is not going to be able to metabolize in our subconscious. And so, you know, for me, I'm trying to do this as best as I can on the cushion. Off the cushion, my hands are an activity. And that's, everybody has their own bandwidth or their own flavor of garden that they want to have. Some weeds have flowers and are beautiful.

[39:50]

So we have to use discernment. to each his own, but I'm trying to just advocate that we give ourselves the gift of Zazen with a little bit more intention and fully. Part two? Go ahead. Okay. Online there's somebody. There's two folks online I'd like to... Because you all can talk to me and blow bubbles outside, but... Thank you so much for a rich and engaging talk. Very helpful. The kid in me needs to know what I need to know. I'll be re-listening to this talk. I'm so glad it's recorded. Could you tell us again the three things that kids need to know? Yes. Thank you for that, Libby. I'm sorry. I can't see. But one is learning how to navigate their internal world.

[40:54]

So just figuring out what's going on here. How to be in meaningful relationships, not just relationships, but meaningful relationships with other people. I would add in with all things. She didn't say that. I'm saying that. And then the last one is how to adapt in the ever-changing world. Thank you. Thank you for your question. There's another person on here. I don't know. Do you need to? Hi. Oh, I guess it's going. Thank you so much for this amazing talk. It kind of goes basically what I do every day in my practice because I don't have the time to sit Zazen every day. Also, Zazen sometimes is triggering for me because, you know, trauma survivor. So what I remember what Suzuki Roshi always said is continuous practice. So I try to check in with my breath. Last six months, I set a goal that I want to make my breath my dearest friend.

[42:02]

It's always with me. It's been there since I took the first one. And it's going to be with me until I die. It's always with me. It's right under my nose. And my breath goes to every single cell of my body. It can provide you feedback. So that's one. But I have a short story about weeds and Green Gulch a couple of years ago. It was my first time doing any kind of retreat and we're trying to get rid of all those weeds leading up to Suzuki Roshi's memorial on that pathway. And so the day first, I was fighting with those weeds. I was just pulling them out and somebody showed me to dig in. And when you look underneath ground, There's one root, the main root that goes on the ground, but the weed also has this little backup root and this little hard earth, like almost rock.

[43:06]

So that's survival. And so I started to dig deeper and I literally started talking to this weed and I said, you're not going, you're not going to be wasted. Nothing is wasted. So I think the weeds in our minds, what Suzuki Roshi is referring to is that we use a spiel. Because everything has a purpose. Nothing is ever wasted. So I stopped fighting with those weeds, and I literally just started telling them, you're going to go somewhere else. You're going to be composted. You're going to go to here and there. So I think the same thing with our problems is that oftentimes they're trying to get rid of it. But you can't really get rid of anything. So I'm so sorry for the long comments, but... I'm very excited to hear you, and I'm, of course, going to be listening to yours talk over and over again. So thank you so much. Thank you for that beautiful sentiment. I have nothing to add on that, but I'd like everybody online and in here, just, yeah, take a deep breath to that.

[44:07]

Take a deep breath. That thing that is with us from birth till death in each and every cell. And your comment inspired me too to remember that, you know, even though, you know, all these root causes right now may be showing up for me as like a divorce or, you know, this or that, that they're really tending to the root of these things and befriending them, that there's so much richness there. So thank you for your comment. You're welcome. Thank you so much. And relaxing your hands is the most powerful thing. Just... Right there. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your talk and for Bubbles. My name's Shory. I was really struck by how you kind of called our attention to the very reality of our world is very demanding as far as how pervasive tech is and screens and all those things.

[45:12]

And I'm very sensitive to tech. I get headaches very easily from blue light, things like that. My question is working with sort of that reality of this mind-body, and then it can be a thought that then gets very sticky, and then it's like there's a tension between this reality, a sensitive body in a demanding world, and I can have a thought that then... can really spin how any interaction with technology goes or doesn't go or what I do or don't do. And yeah, I'm curious how you sort of navigate those tensions or if you maybe don't even experience that tension. Thank you for your question. Meaning more like whether or not to be engaged or to take in things like media, the news, and so on and so forth? It can manifest as a lot of resistance.

[46:13]

And I think sometimes there's wisdom in it. and then sometimes I'm not as sure. Thank you for your question. For me, and maybe my point of view, is really how individual we all are in terms of what our bandwidth is, how much something like blue light stimulates us, obviously how that engages with our history. It's kind of like sprinkling things into the cauldron and different spells may arise or it might just be sitting in the brew. For me, I am very susceptible to emotion. I mean, if any of you come in and emote me later, I will feel it. Very susceptible to the emotion-rich emotion and strong nature of, of how news and how things are, are pumped out to us.

[47:15]

So I stay, I try very hard, um, because I also am stimulated by it. Right. So it's this weird push and pull. Um, I try to be clear about what is relevant for me to know, um, what's an additive. Um, and then literally the physical nature of how things come. I have to be very careful about watching live news. Reading something is a little bit easier. My personal kind of go-to, if you're curious about the news realm, would be someone like Amy Goodman, if you know who she is. It's just very straight detail, even hard stuff. I know she feels certain ways, but it's not over the top and in my face. So, you know, it's... a lot of being honest with myself and checking into the body. So I don't know if that meets your question, but you have to trust what's real. And if someone else can do full blast scrolling, you know, good for them.

[48:18]

Be honest about what your body and mind are capable of facilitating. Thank you. I think we might have time for one or two more. Then I hear the dawns when I start looking at them. Can everyone hear me? Yeah. Okay. The online might not be. Oh, okay. So I had unexpected, I'm wrong, but backwards responses to the exercise. I can't use, could you hold this for a second? Like at this point, I'm trying to pull my hand apart, and my hand is resisting, but I'm feeling like someone's trying to rescue me. and I feel seen, and I experience hope. And then when I'm in my hands like this, with my hand under, I am clenched with anger, and it's not so much that the hand is bothering me, it's more like it's safe to feel angry. And I know this will remind me of someone with more trauma than me, so I'm wondering how that fits in with...

[49:28]

the way the exercise was intended, I guess. Thank you for sharing that. And yes, these exercises, especially when it comes to somatic things and when we bring forth our ancient twisted karma, our suffering, we'll have different responses. One thing I want to say is that this is, as I understand it, the posture for zazen. And what can I see? What's there? There's even depth in learning in that. This pulling thing, I do think is actually relevant. I don't want to say you shouldn't pull. I do this pulling in visits to my therapist or in Dokusan, practice discussion. You do some of this pulling. My work practice, I do some pulling as well. So I think that I'm just advocating, just as we're not grabbing the thoughts or bubbles in Zazen, that we're not trying to force something in Zazen. So I don't know if that made sense to you.

[50:30]

But yeah, thank you. Maybe we'll take one more. And then I hear that we have a pretty hard stop for tea and cookies. Thank you so much for your talk. I much appreciated it. And thanks for that exercise. I feel like I've used my hands in the same way to complain in Dokusan, being like, I'm holding on, and I keep trying to, like, drug it, you know? So it very much touched me. I guess my question is, sometimes I feel like... I find myself so caught, it's one level more where I can see myself holding on. And I go, oh no, how do I stop trying to shove my hand? And I wonder if you have any response to that. Yeah, for me, thank you.

[51:31]

Marley. Marley, thank you for the question. Yeah, it's how much awareness can I put towards this tendency to pull, the stuckness. And again, trying to understand who's doing the tugging when that happens. Often my tugging comes from external influences and not my own kind of centered nature. So I don't think, again, there's not a set art and we are going to have our fist and not even have the pulling, but maybe another additional capping And it's, you know, from my experience, just bearing witness to that with my breath and trusting that my body maybe will start to metabolize or find its way forth is when I tend to have some loosening. And there's many times where it just goes because another thought or another wave of emotion comes forth.

[52:38]

Your best effort. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Dear Doan, I think that's our cue.

[52:47]

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