Well, I was, during the last period of Zazen, sitting there crying a little bit, and thinking, oh well, Dean cried in her last talk, so I guess I can cry in my talk. And I think what it is, is I care so much about this material. where our Heart Sutra comes from. And it comes from a very, very long time ago. So I have been thinking this is my final talk on the Heart Sutra. It's the core of the belief system that underpins and sustains our practice, our practice of Zazen, our expressions in service, what we read and how we talk.

[01:03]

At every service, in every ceremony, we chant the Heart Sutra. Some of us have chanted it so many times that with no intention at memorizing it, it just simply entered our bodies and is always available to us. The Heart Sutra proclaims the boundlessness of all life not things separate and related, but all completely interrelated. The version we chant uses the word emptiness, meaning empty of own being or of separate being. A newer translation of the Heart Sutra by Kaz Tanahashi in Joan Halifax expresses this more clearly and I want to read it. I love it. It's titled The Sutra on the Heart of Realizing Wisdom Beyond Wisdom. Avalokiteshvara, who helps all to awaken, moves in the deep course of realizing wisdom beyond wisdom, sees that all five streams of body, heart, and mind are without boundary, and frees all from anguish.

[02:20]

O Shariputra, who listens to the teachings of the Buddha, Form is not separate from boundlessness. Boundlessness is not separate from form. Form is boundlessness. Boundlessness is form. Feelings, perceptions, inclinations, and discernment are also like this. O Shariputra, boundlessness is the nature of all things. It neither arises nor perishes, neither stains nor purifies. neither increases nor decreases. Boundlessness is not limited by form, nor by feelings, perceptions, inclinations, or discernment. It is free of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind, free of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and any object of the mind. It is free of ignorance and the end of ignorance,

[03:23]

Boundlessness is free of old age and death and free of the end of old age and death. It is free of suffering, arising, cessation and path, and free of wisdom and attainment. Being free of attainment, those who help all to awaken abide in the realization of wisdom beyond wisdom and live with an unhindered mind. Without hindrance, the mind has no fear. Free from confusion, those who lead all to liberation embody profound serenity. All those in the past, present, and future who realize wisdom beyond wisdom manifest unsurpassable and thorough awakening know that realizing wisdom beyond wisdom is no other than this wondrous mantra, luminous, unequaled, and supreme.

[04:24]

It relieves all suffering. It is genuine, not illusory. So set forth this mantra of realizing wisdom beyond wisdom. Set forth this mantra that says, Gathe, Gathe, Paragathe, Parasam Gathe, Bodhisvaha. Next thing is to memorize that one. My first talk was about how we came to have this Heart Sutra in our daily practice at Berkeley Zen Center and at all Zen Centers worldwide. This is the thrilling story of how a young Buddhist monk in China, Xuanzang, was shown a copy of the Heart Sutra by an old monk he befriended. And because of his keen interest in Buddhist scriptures, including those not yet available in China, He traveled to India and back in an epic 16-year journey, starting out in the year 629 and returning to China in 645 AD.

[05:35]

He walked and rode various means of transportation to India and then all the way down to the bottom of India and all the way back, searching for sutras and brought back 657 Sanskrit sutras and commentaries with the aim of translating them into Chinese and bringing the Buddhism they contained home to China. One sutra fell off when crossing a stream and got destroyed and he waited at that spot until its replacement could be brought to his and entourage coming back to China. He was permitted to settle down and work on his translations. And one of his assistants was a person who later became Emperor Tai.

[06:38]

And with the support of Emperor Tai, he was able to found and grow a sutra translation institute, translating primarily the Prajnaparamita sutras from Sanskrit into Chinese. And it was a big institute with a lot of translators. His stories of how the Heart Sutra's magical powers saved his life from the dangers of bandits and weather and wild animals on his journey led to its daily use in Chinese Zen centers. And from there, because he was the head of this highly esteemed Sutra translating institute, that carried on worldwide so that all Zen practice centers worldwide to this day chant this sutra. My second talk on the Heart Sutra was about the consonance between the Heart Sutra emptiness and the understanding of boundlessness and that of philosophers of science, particle physicists, ecologists.

[07:54]

And I think I was a little misleading in my great enthusiasm about that essential similarity in the idea of boundlessness of all life. And I find it very exciting to be part of a spiritual practice that is similar to these inspiring and enlightening scientific understandings. And Kaz Tanahashi in his wonderful book that I'm going to be talking about, the Heart Sutra, tells about some scientists who were inspired by the Heart Sutra to do their work and to find what they found. And yet this consonance is not what our emptiness is about. As Kaz Tanahashi has pointed out in this wonderful book, science studies changes in objects.

[09:01]

In our practice, we and subjects and objects are not separate. Now, science actually is discovering that the observer, the scientist, changes the objects that are observed, so they can come along more with our perspective on boundlessness than they yet do. In Tanahashi's words, the process of Buddhist understanding, including the understanding of the Heart Sutra, and the process of scientific research are completely different. And this is what I think I didn't say in that talk. In fact, the characteristics of their logic are completely opposite. The former is intuitive and self experiential, that's our practice, calling for faith and spiritual practice. The latter is intellectual, calling for doubt and physical proof.

[10:04]

I think we just know. Did you hear that bird singing while I was speaking the Tanahashi version of the Heart Sutra? Anyway, I think we know. The concept of emptiness arose in the first century BC and developed for hundreds of years after that and was expressed in some of the world's earliest written materials, chanted, written, interpreted, expanded. As the Oxford scholar Zacchetti wrote, it was a world in which there wasn't a concept of an original text, a key text, the source, the one, the idea that we carry now. Instead, there were what he called recensions, a word for me, a new word for me. As scholars copied and interpreted the text, those interpretations were added and the text expanded in size and complexity.

[11:05]

Thus we have the Prajnaparamita Sutras in 8,000 lines, in 18,000 lines, 25,000, 100,000. not mistaken inclusions of commentary, errors inserted in an original text, but a kind of texts that were considered legitimate, different from how we think about texts. So we're in debt not only to Swansong for his difficult journey, his never-ending determination to make Buddhist sutras available, but to all those who copied them, chanted them, buried them for safekeeping, found them, translated them, studied them over a period of over 1200 years. I have long been inspired by the young man who set off walking on a long and dangerous journey to bring sutras home and start the process of making them available beyond linguistic and political barriers.

[12:06]

In my recent quest to understand from what early sutras exactly our Heart Sutra arose, I've been deeply impressed by the exceptionally difficult work of the scholars who helped me understand the origin of this sutra. Suzuki Roshi sent his students to study with Cal professor Edward Kanze, who studied and translated all the Prajna Paramitra Sutras into English. There's a practice of putting the, not here, but in other lands, of putting Prajnaparamitra Sutras on an altar, because they're thousands of pages, and fanning them and bowing to them on the altar is a way of including them, respecting them, but as if they have been read, as we do everyday chant, that one short piece,

[13:07]

So here I think I would like to suggest a small practice. I considered bringing Kanze's books in here and having a little presentation like we do with the tray and putting them on the altar, and I was tempted all the way until a few minutes ago. But what I'd like to suggest is that we could at least have a small practice of going to the shelf in our Berkeley Zen Center Library where Edward Conze's books are kept. It's on that shelf that backs on the kitchen, kind of right there, and holding them in our hands and fanning the pages to appreciate the hard work, skill and knowledge and devotion involved in bringing them to us. At least touch them. We can also be inspired by the more contemporary scholars, Red Pine, Kaz Tanahashi, Jan Natier, Stefano Zacchetti, on whose work I have leaned.

[14:14]

Their work we can study and in doing so are aware of the long preparation and long scholarly devotion that yields their gifts. They are really akin to Juan's song, although they did not take his long physical journey they devoted comparable years to this work. I first read about the Heart Sutra in a book by Red Pine, so beautifully constructed, so clear. Little book, wonderful book. And then the intensely scholarly work of Indiana University professor Jan Nottier in 1992, where she published an article about the origins of the Heart Sutra. In my recent studies for these talks, I'm indebted to Kaz Ta-Nehisi's work in his book, and this time around, I've also been deeply moved by the scholarship of Stefano Zacchetti of Oxford University.

[15:16]

These are the modern-day explorers deep into the world of ancient texts. We have a copy of Kaz Ta-Nehisi's book in the library, but I think this isn't a book you simply borrowed to read. It's one that you live with, absorb, with effort, and continue to study. The same is true of Stefano Zacchetti's book, which can be downloaded, although I think that's not a nice way to have it, but you can have it on your computer. My big question this time around is where, really where, did the Buddhist conception of emptiness arise? How did early Buddhists come to this? Scholars have written beginning with Edward Kahnse that the Heart Sutra comes from the Paramita Sutras, chanted and then successively written down in southern India between 1000 BC and 1000 AD. Where I wanted to know in these sutras was the expression of emptiness, boundlessness that formed the Heart Sutra.

[16:17]

How did Buddhists in southern India in that period come out of a very different practice to this new one? What was their practice? Was this new Buddhism a reaction against the extreme specificity of the Sivastabhadins as Red Pine suggested in his book? And I want to read you the beautiful way he tells us about this. The teaching of this sutra is known as Prajnaparamita, The word prajna in Sanskrit for wisdom is a combination of pra meaning before and jna meaning to know. From the same combination the Greeks got prognosis and while the Greeks referred to the knowledge of what lies before us, namely the future course of events, the Buddhists of ancient India referred to what comes before knowledge.

[17:21]

Junryo Suzuki, referred to this as beginner's mind. In the centuries after the Buddha's nirvana, however, the focus of cultivation was on knowledge, jhana, rather than prajna. The members of the earliest Buddhist sects held that reality was a complex system of dharmas that could be known and that liberation depended on such knowledge. One of the earliest and most important texts of the Sevastavadhan's was Abhidharma-jhana-prastana, the source of knowledge through the study of dharmas, which was compiled about 200 B.C., and which set forth a matrix of dharmas as the basis of all that we know or can know. It would appear, according to Red Pine, that it was in reaction to this emphasis on jhanas that the compilation of prajna texts occurred, finding focusing on wisdom as opposed to knowledge.

[18:23]

So that's what we've inherited, this very different way of practicing Buddhism. So reading the oldest part, I thought I'd go to the oldest Prajnaparamita Sutra, and that's in the Sutra in 8,000 Lines, the The first part that is written down there are from the chanting, the memorization of the sutra that people chanted and learned from each other. And so I went there thinking, surely, let's see, is there emptiness there? And there wasn't. It was beautiful stuff, but not emptiness. And it turns out that scholars have determined that the Heart Sutra came from a later version called the Maha Prajnaparamita Sutra, also called the, and maybe someone knows how to pronounce this, Dasidu Lun, I think that's a Chinese, there's Linda, do you know how to?

[19:38]

Nope. Darn it. Translated from the Sanskrit into Chinese by Kumrajiva, one of the great early translators. The scholarship on the origin of the Heart Sutra is complex, and for that I recommend Kazanahashi's book and also Stefano Zacchetti's. And in that Prajnaparamita Sutra, one does find much attention to emptiness and to other core topics of Indian Buddhism. The table of contents reads. what we have been taught from the past. Kaz Tanahashi wrote, We can now say that an unidentifiable person in China compiled the shorter text Heart Sutra.

[20:38]

This compilation was an assemblage of three parts, an introductory part starting at Avalokiteshvara, a core section from the Dasidu Loon that quotes Karmarajiva's Chinese version of the Mahaprajna Paramita Sutra and the mantra at the end. Swan Song had a key role in the formation of this Heart Sutra. He simplified the wording, making it chantable, making it the Heart Sutra that people worldwide chant daily. There have been theories that he wrote it, but remember the story that we've we've inherited, which is that he learned about it from an old monk and then went to find out more about that and other sutras. But he did have a key role in making it the Heart Sutra that we know now. The Heart Sutra we chant starts with Avalokiteshvara when practicing deeply the Prajnaparamita.

[21:41]

What is this Prajnaparamita? this term that titles all those ancient sutras. At base, Prajnaparamita means perfection of wisdom. And perfection of Buddhist wisdom is the wisdom that all, ourselves and all life, is boundless, inextricably interconnected. Prajnaparamita is a feminine word represented by a feminine figure. For those on Zoom, it's in the There's a picture in the chat for you and for everybody here. This is Prajnaparamita here on the altar right in front of Buddha. Our Prajnaparamita is a clay figure made by longtime member Rebecca Maeno, centered right under the Buddha. Rebecca Maeno's study of Buddhist imagery led her to begin sculpting images, especially jizos and Prajnaparamitas.

[22:43]

When sanghas, including Berkeley Zen Center, began discussing the importance of women's practice and their less-than-prominent position in the Buddhist liturgy, Rebecca began making jizos and prajnaparamitas for sanghas around the country. She created our own prajnaparamita. Karen Dakotas, who's a Buddhist teacher and former resident and dear friend of our sangha, and the faces of Rebecca's daughters were the models for this statue. And Karen told me that she took care to follow exactly Dogen's instructions in the fukan zazenge on how to sit in zazen posture. So as we're looking at her, those of you who are chitins and others who come up to the altar to have a good look at this, we can study exactly that position, except for the, of course, holding the things that Prajnaparamita holds, but this is, from Dogen, the way to sit.

[23:53]

Prajnaparamita is one of the six paramitas, the six perfections that guide our practice, giving ethical conduct, patience, effort, concentration, wisdom, Wisdom is Prajnaparamita, the practice of wisdom, the wisdom of emptiness, the wisdom that guides our compassion for all life. All that I breathe, say, do is not contained within me. It is interconnected with all else. When we practice this, this is the perfection of wisdom. When this is what you believe, You stop, sit down, and breathe. That's what we do. Well, I don't know how long it's been, but I'm awfully tired of talking. What time is it? I don't know.

[24:58]

It's 10 to 11. 10 to 11. Well, so we have plenty of time to hear what other people are thinking about Prajnaparamita. Ellen. So I was taking care of my granddaughter, who's a little baby in Seattle, and she would only go to sleep if you sang little bites to her, which I ran out of my mouth for very quickly, and I started chanting the Prashna Paravita, and I probably chanted it 300 or 400 times over the course of a month. But the word that I ended up sort of stumbling on was, and it's different, You know, cause uses the word manifest, prasna-baromita, but the way we do it, we say, depends on. And those seem really different to me. And I wouldn't say for me, manifest solves that question. So I just wondered if you had a thought back. Did people get to hear what Ellen said?

[25:59]

Yeah. So Ellen has been... having the great joy of taking care of a tiny granddaughter in Seattle, and some of us have been treated to a video of that granddaughter which endears her to my heart. And singing her lullabies to go to sleep, Ellen also hit on chanting the Heart Sutra to her, And I love that because what I did, like a dirge, was to sing the folk song, Barges, to my granddaughter. Do you know that? Oh, well, I'll sing it for you sometime in that now. But I did it like a dirge, and Heart Sutra, much better choice, went into her. Went into her, how precious. And Ellen asks about the meaning of

[27:03]

manifests the... Yeah, it depends on Prajnaparamita or manifests Prajnaparamita. So in... Those are different words, manifest and depends on. I'm so used to depends on and feeling that meaning. Well, tell them about that then. Okay. That's really why I was questioning. When we are our practice, well, it's both, isn't it? When we are our practice, we lean on, we lean into, we depend on our understanding of prajnaparamita, emptiness. That is our

[28:04]

center of our compass. In doing our practice, we manifest it. So how do you choose? We can't have two words. So, I think we need both. But, what do you think? Well, I think it's as you say, actually, depending on the circumstance, sometimes we manifest and sometimes we depend. For me, I would probably want to go back to the Sanskrit and look at the glosses of the word that's being translated, which we don't know how to do right now. But we can do it. Yeah, you can do that. then you look at, it's like the original construction of the Constitution.

[29:12]

You look at what the original wording is, and then you also have to understand what is it in our lives. And so in our lives, I think it's both. It's like we take the three refuges, which means we have a place to find refuge, but also we are the refuge. I'm interested in the words, so I would go back, but then I'm interested in the practice. That flows from the words. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ross. Whoops. Better Late Than Never, Edward Konza's translation of the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra, which is contained within the Prajnaparamita Sutra.

[30:13]

So I wanted to... Well, you could hold it up and I would bow. You would hold it up. I wonder what you were leaving the room about, Ross. I was driving my car about 2.5. Can I say something else about it? Yes. What I was describing at the beginning about the fanning, this is part of the daily liturgy. at training monasteries. During service, you're brought a big stack of the Prajna Paramita literature in these, the Japanese binding books is fan-like.

[31:14]

And so, you know, the simulation of reading is, you fan the whole book, and you fan it back, you put it down, you pick up the next volume, and this is part of the service. like every day. It's a big stack of books. It takes about 10 minutes to do it. And God forbid you don't do it. And you know, those books can go ka-floo. It comes all over the place. You mean if you don't do it correctly? Yeah, if you don't have the grace, it's like really finding the rhythm of it. But that's part of the everyday liturgy. Another thing people get trained to do. Yes, trained to do it. Peter had his hand up. Anybody online? Raise your digital hands so I can for sure see you. Okay. But so far, no. Yes? I recall from my early years of practice, specifically at San Francisco's End Center, we studied the Abhidharma Kosha for a couple, three years.

[32:23]

And every study session would open with a a recitation of all 75 dharmas. So we were memorizing the dharmas either in English or sometimes the class wouldn't start for a little while because nobody was quite prepared to recite, but it always took place. But further I want to say that my experience of doing that, I'm looking very closely at each dharma. seemed like there was just a thin veil between that approach and emptiness. And so it was almost sort of my experience of that was that it was the next step from studying all the Dharmas in their particular heritage and looking closely at them. Then I'd be slid into, oh, this is all related to each other.

[33:26]

It must not be separate. that kind of understanding, which is what our practice is based on. Peter Overton is saying that long ago, when he was practicing at San Francisco Zen Center, it would have been about when, Peter? Oh, gosh, I can't remember. I think it would have happened in my head. Eighties. Early eighties. Early 1980s. that before every class and lecture or class? Just class. Classes. They would recite all of the dharmas. That's right. Which is a lot. Seventy-five. Seventy-five dharmas. And if people weren't quite ready to do that, they'd have to pause till people got ready to do it, either from their notes or from memorizing it. But after a while, it got into their bodies, Peter's and others, and Peter feels that that was, in a way, a prelude, an entree into emptiness.

[34:40]

You know, there's almost a study of the study of the Abhidharma culture in five, the study of emptiness. It was like the next thing. Where do you go from here? It's a particular text. After studying the Abhidharma kosha, he felt that it led into emptiness. Yeah, experience of emptiness. Is that saying it well enough, do you think? Yeah. Thank you. I wonder if the Sevastavadins with all those words had the same experience. I'm doubting it, but I'm highly influenced by Red Pine's lovely way talking about it. Yes, you had, did you have a question or a comment? Yeah. My question, I think my general question is, I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about the kind of what, how can we balance dharma study and the practice of direct experience?

[35:52]

I think For me, when I first started, it was so essential for me to let go of the intellect that I hadn't really considered studying the Dharma in an intellectual way. And I'm just curious if you could talk about that. Remind me your name because I... Margo. Margo. Margo is saying, how do we balance or how do we see the relative effort or merit of studying the Dharma intellectually and practicing. I think in the early years I concentrated on practice. I didn't get into this stuff

[36:55]

at all. I mean, I read what we were assigned to read for classes and was interested in people's lectures, but I was working on my zazen. Yeah, I'm pretty challenged by my zazen. But I am a person who questions You know, and you can't tell me this heart surgery we say every day comes from some place and I don't go looking for it, you know. And I used to be more of an intellectual person before I went to Buddhist practice, so it kind of comes around again. And these scholars, you know, They're kind of deeply practicing in their work.

[37:58]

Imagine it, how hard it is to be reading Sanskrit and Zakati talking about these little fragments of Prajnaparamija sutras that have been found buried in southern India and trying to make sense of the writing. I mean, it's its own kind of deep practice. So, no answer to your question. Both and all, and good luck with it. Ask your teacher. Susan. Thank you, Hannah. Back to Ellen's question about depending on. Could it be also, could we think of uncovering or surrendering too? I remember when Doug Griner was Chuso, we talked a lot about surrender to the moment and continue to do that and watch what arises.

[39:01]

And then at the beginning of your talk, you were reviewing your interest in science and how they were not so dissimilar. And I was thinking, You know, often a scientist makes a discovery comes at a point when the scientist isn't looking for something. It's a surprise. And maybe wisdom is a bit like that. It's something that arises before thinking. I don't know. I wonder what you think about that. Well, when we're... You all heard that, I think, because Susan's pretty close to the mic. Did you hear it? Yeah, good. I love hearing what you said. We do sit

[40:13]

We do read and things come to us. If we're lucky. I guess that's all I have to say. Kabir. Hi. Hi. Thank you for this wonderful talk. When I was about four years old, I wanted to know what Allah was in Afghanistan and my friends and my family would tell me what it has no form does not have a gender it does not have a color the closest thing they were trying to tell me so I would be quiet would be it's like a light but I kept asking and In 1996, when I met my friend Scott and he started telling me about emptiness, my question was answered.

[41:24]

That emptiness, boundlessness, emptiness, it is Allah. And a couple of years later, I went to Toronto in a Tibetan... I think it was in one of the retreats in Wajrayogini. I don't remember, but there was a gal from Pakistan. She was sitting behind me, and her name was Khadija. And she told me, Kabir, emptiness is Allah. And she was also a Muslim girl. And when we talk about boundlessness, when we talk about unborn, for me, that is... And I think I'm violating the law of emptiness if I'm giving it a name, which is Allah or the beloved. For me, emptiness or boundlessness or Allah is the collection of all living things that makes up that boundlessness, that emptiness.

[42:37]

We're all part of it, but we're not. And yeah, it's beautiful. So this talk really, really helped even answer more of my questions that I had. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's really beautiful. Come here. Thank you. Thank you. I haven't been much of a studier in answer to your question, but have found that that's more important to me these days. And one book in the Heart Sutra, since we say it every day, has been something that I really wanted to understand the meaning of it. And I'd like to recommend The Other Shore by Jik Nhat Hanh. I found that very accessible, not academic.

[43:43]

very practice-oriented. And what came out for me is what he was saying in, I don't know, 200 or so pages, was that the Heart Sutra's all about his favorite word, interbeing. So that was the main summary of the book, the Heart Sutra's Interbeing. Yeah. She's recommending Thich Nhat Hanh's book The Other Shore. He felt that it was very important that he wrote that. That was a very recent book before he died. Maybe his last book. And he felt that there had been so much misunderstanding for Westerners in the Heart Sutra because of the translations and interpretations that he was trying to make it clearer to us what it was really about. To help us understand and His concept of interbeing, being what the heart sutra is talking about.

[44:51]

Oh, wow. Everybody wants to talk. Shall we ask Gary? Yeah. I just wonder if you could express how you experience emptiness in your practice and maybe in your studies of the heart sutra. Well, I don't think that you... Gary is asking how I experience emptiness in my practice and my study. What a question. I don't think that the experience of emptiness is a word thing. I mean, you can, like, experience and then search for a word. How do you experience it?

[45:57]

I think Susan was speaking of it. You know, it's not... When you have nothing there, and then everything fills you. I was, you know, when I was reading Kaz Tanahashi and John Halifax's version, that bird was singing almost all the way through. And that, whoa, taking that in. But taking it in, right? There were no words about that bird and that song until later there had to be. Again. I've got your response. Sorry, yes. That's my response. I don't think it's fair that you ask me. Oh, Gary. Gary doesn't think it's fair.

[47:01]

You're so present for me in our practice. I lean on you. Preston. When I hear the word emptiness or boundlessness, it usually brings me to a heavy philosophical, metaphysical, eternal place. And then when I hear the word heart, that brings me to a more embodied, visceral, fragile place, and so I'm thinking about how the Heart Sutra is about boundlessness, and wondering if you could say something about the relationship between our hearts and boundlessness, or why it's even called the Heart Sutra.

[48:12]

Preston is talking about the concept of boundlessness feeling like an idea, a head thing, and the title of the Sutra, the Heart Sutra, feeling like a body thing, a real vulnerable organ we have. I feel pretty vulnerable, present, sitting in the middle of all of life. My heart, my whole body, my distractible presence.

[49:20]

I like that boundlessness. We're boundless. You don't know how you're affected by everybody you're sitting with and everybody you're moving with. I mean, we know we can catch a virus from someone we don't know. We catch so much from people we're with and the experiences we're with. May it go well. Oh, darn it. Can't do one more quickie? We've got a couple questions online too. Yeah, I know. Linda, please. brave girl that I am calling on you.

[50:23]

Oh, Karen was ahead of me and I just want Karen to come back and Paolo is after me and I'd rather listen to Paolo than even talk. Am I really the last one? Yeah, you are. And Karen will tell me later what she wanted to say. She took her hand down. Yeah. And that person, Paolo, I've heard him talk before and I love listening to him. But anyway, here I am and it's my turn. So I'll try to remember what I was going to say. Yeah, I want to thank Kabir for what you said. And sometime we could talk about that because I share that feeling that you're talking about. I mean, the thing that I was going to say, and I'm holding Kazza book, you know, right? I have immediate access to all things Kaz Tanahashi here. And looking at... starting with the question of depend on that Ellen asked. You know, it's a funny word we don't like to think of depend on, you know, in our practice. It sort of sounds a little too gross.

[51:27]

And then I thought some translations have rely on. And then I looked up the etymology of rely, and it has a more rich meaning than depend. And like that, and this gets me just to the thing I was going to say. As a lot of you know, I'm a... I'm also a translator of texts from India. And it's just amazing how different a translation can be from another one. And neither one of them be accused of being inaccurate. They're just like many ways to bring forth that thing. So I was going to suggest the idea of a class, of a Heart Sutra class. in which we bring together different translations and everybody does their own translation using the words, using the resources. Like, what do we know about the original Sanskrit and Chinese? And then everybody does their own Heart Sutra, experience the richness and mystery of the process of translation.

[52:32]

That's all. Thank you. And thank you. It was a good talk.

[52:50]

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