Good morning everyone at Berkley Zen Center and out there in Zoom land. Today's speaker is She already grew up in New York and is a retired clinical pediatrician. After moving to Berkeley, she assumed various administrative roles in public health and later joined the faculty at UCSF Medical School. During her volunteer work at the Berkeley Free Clinic, she encountered and began to explore books and lectures on the topic, which led her to Green Gulch and study with tensioned Rev. Anderson in 1989. She arrived at BDC in 1996, later ordained as a priest, and received Dharma transmission from Soju Roshi in 2017.

[01:08]

She facilitates the Wednesday night drop-in group, is on the leadership committee of the MCOS group, the HERE committee, and currently is a Zendo manager for ARMS ceremonies. Good day to you, Jerry, and thank you for speaking with us today. Thank you for speaking. That's right, so accurately reading my script. So this is very interesting that the, well, just looking around and seeing a lot of people from years back and then new people. So welcome to the new people. I'm glad to see you. the people that I have known in the past that are showing up today. Thank you. So I was designated, we all were given without a discussion topics to actually speak about during practice period and it's interesting that the topic that I got, the two topics that I got were finding our balance and commitment because

[02:29]

Sojin used to say, there is no such thing as synchronicity, nothing happens by accident. But Sojin, with his very strong teaching that he gave me, said that my life koan was balanced. And if you had heard my personal history, you'd realize that I had a very active busy career in san francisco so and i was always a computer i had several children and i had who got old and disabled and needed my attention and so forth so i had uh i would always go with him and he would say um well you just have to be able to balance those things. That's what you have to do.

[03:31]

And so I fell in and out of balance many times. And so this is a very meaningful, you know, and this feels very real to me personally. And the part of commitment, of course, which was probably also what Sojun said. You know, if you really want to practice seriously, especially when we started talking about whether I would ordain. He said, you have, this is a big commitment. You know, you're, and you got it, and it's going to take a long time for you because you have so much going on in your life. But you have to make and set, make a vow, make a set of vows, and then live your life accordingly. And whenever I said, talk to him, he said the same thing, balance, balance, commit. So, It's funny that I'm talking about it. I hope you're listening. So he starts off in his chapter on finding our balance.

[04:38]

Making a distinction as we're trying to find our balance that naturally in our lives are naturally balancing ourselves all the time. Our muscles are balancing. You can see that as children develop, little children develop muscle balance. They sort of flail, they're born and they flail about. And little by little, they come into balance because their leg muscles get stronger and stronger, they can hold up their heads. And that set of balance is part of all of us. So actually we, We have that balance. It's inherent to us unless we have some illness or another that interfered with our normal development. So we have that balance. And he says we kind of know when we sit and when we are quiet, we actually can find that primal balance that we have.

[05:46]

So we can rely on it. It's not like We have to, when we're thinking about zazen, when we're thinking about walking, when we're thinking about moving around, we always have that balance. It's not a foreign thing. It's not a new thing. There are ways that we have to develop ways to balance our minds, but in terms of our bodies, our bodies are inherently constructed for us to remain upright. through evolution. So, when he talks about it, he says, well, we know our natural balance and our challenge is if we're familiar with how it feels, how our body feels when we're at ease and in a position.

[06:51]

When we sit down, we actually can notice. He says we should notice. At the same time he says we have a natural balance and we have muscles that keep us up, he says we also can fall out of balance because of our situations. So he encourages us to actually notice our muscles and the tensions and where the tension is. So he's saying we need to be mindful and look at where we're holding our tensions in our knots. And there's a lot of work going on right now about somatic studies with Buddhism, about where we hold our tensions in our body and how we learn to identify when this knot in our chest happens, what that's about. our muscles and our solar plexus tense up.

[07:55]

That may mean something else. So that being aware first that we have an inherent balance, then we can look and see what's out of balance. What feels different? Am I back to that baseline state where I can just live the equilibrium that was given to me? So he moves on from there to talk about zazen in particular. So he said in zazen and walking meditation, we concentrate on what is happening at the moment. And that includes our physical bodies, our feelings, our minds, our objects of mind, which is basically the four foundations of mindfulness, right? Where is my body? Whenever I sit down, where am I in relationship? What is my body doing? Being very aware of that. And being aware of what's going on in my body in terms of feelings, sensations.

[09:02]

Recognizing, as I said, to get myself ready to have Zazen. Kind of can take a little look at myself and what's here right now. And we do that throughout Zazen, really. But these are practices that can be done formally, but he's talking about kind of a more easy practice. Sitting down, I'm getting myself settled, I need to be able to be settled for 40 minutes. What's going on here? And so taking stock of what's going on and then relaxing with that awareness or having that awareness. Sojun, of course, tells us we need to go back to our breath. And of course, we all have heard talks just last week about going back to our breath extensively.

[10:09]

And then to do a kind of a scan. Sojun always said we give ourselves Zaza instruction. And he means by that, really focus, you know, where is my, are my ears in line with my shoulders? Is my nose in line with my navel? Is my back, is my lower back having that nice easy curve? So he's saying, sit down with some intention, basically, when you sit down to do something. Sit down and see what happens. and guide the process yourself by taking note, by giving yourself Sasa Instruction. We're ready to use our breath.

[11:14]

And he talks very intentionally about directing our breath. and to where the tensions are, taking them in, taking a deep breath, and making sure that goes all the way down to our lower abdomen. You can also breathe into your heart. You can breathe into your lower abdomen and tighten your lower abdomen. All these things are ways we learn to keep our balance, because balance, and we allow ourselves not to keep that big, broad awareness of our whole body and our whole environment and our whole sangha with us. When we do that, that's when we get in trouble with emotions, with storytelling. But if we're keeping ourselves in our bodies in a very conscious way, repeatedly throughout the 40 minutes,

[12:22]

those things are much less likely to throw us around. Those are much more likely to just be there because we're cultivating the awareness in the broadest sense. I always think of us so. And then, of course, we all have some particular times that we have learned. that help us when we sit down, when it doesn't seem to work that particular time. And some of us have little sort of mental post-it notes. You know, don't get . What about your slouching? What about your sternum? Is your sternum up? Because you notice after time that when your posture goes, It's telling you something.

[13:24]

It's always telling you something, and that's information, right? When you start, when I start slouching, I actually start hurting because it throws me out of balance, and I can feel the tension then, and I can start feeling aches and pains that come from just not keeping that posture. And so that's our . And of course, you can't state, I mean, the other message Sojourner always gave was, you can't really, you say we're in balance, but balance isn't a thing. It's not a state. If it were a fixed state, it'd be all tension, right? But this is a relaxed state. This is a natural state we're trying to cultivate. that is more, that is natural to our body, that is our basic, innate sense of balance.

[14:28]

When we fall out of the way we do, it's a signal. And if we are aware of that and go back to that, then we're allowing that to happen. It's interesting, one thing Surgeon said that was interesting, even though He says, stay seated. This is interesting. He does that a lot. He has a lot of things that he says one thing, and the next second he says something the opposite. He gives us something to work on. But he says, he says, stay seated all the time and stay in your posture all the time. And then in the very next sentence, he says, Suzuki Roshi, always talked about everything falling out of balance and finding balance moment by moment. So this is the start of what I'm gonna mention.

[15:29]

He's telling us to be completely immobile in the posture, and then we're gonna fall out of balance moment to moment. What's that about? So that starts to be talking about our minds, And he says, it's our minds are going to be distracted. We can sit, but that posture is not going to control our thinking. Our thinking is still going to happen. That is what's coming in and out of balance, our thoughts and feelings and so forth, our perceptions. Our body, we can sit very, very tight, but the issue is that when we start, when our mind starts taking us various places, it naturally affects our body. It's so innately, we're all innately attached. So, of course, when we, when our mind gets distracted, our body will change. Because our attention will not be, our attention will be on our breath, or it won't be on our posture.

[16:36]

It'll be on some story, or some distraction, or some, or I'm hot, or what's that noise, or whatever it is. So, kind of his first look at balance. And then he goes on to address that, just that point, basically, address that point, everything falling out of balance, because he talks about sitting in the midst of waves. So the waves are, and he said, And he starts talking about waves, and then he says, gets you off balance again, or me. He says, we have to ground our practice on the bedrock of reality.

[17:39]

Now what is that? Bedrock is solid, unchanging reality. So first he says, You have to sit immobile. Everything's changing minute by minute. Then he goes back to saying we have to find ourselves in the bedrock of reality. Hmm. What's that? So that's his challenge to us, really. What is that? And then he gets another sense of the bedrock of reality. Don't get so hung up on that. He talks. He says, don't. Don't get hung up, though, on all of these stories in Buddhism of all of these great ancestors who had one disaster after another. They did incredible ways of just continuing their practice over and over again, no matter what happened to them. Their family all died, their house burned down, whatever it is, all these stories about our ancestors.

[18:43]

He says, well, We should not do that. We should see our own practice only in our present day. What's the reality in our present day? In our present day. and he talks about the challenges of our present day when we get bombarded by distractions and we can be easily pulled around. And then he proposes, again, then he proposes that zazen is the bedrock of our practice. And zazen, of course,

[19:46]

is a practice and ever moving. So we're kind of dealing with these, what am I supposed to be absolutely still? Am I supposed to be moving? And he's saying the bedrock is something different than bedrock, right? So we have to, he wants us to get the essential nature of practice, the essential nature of Zazen. That is the foundation, but it's not something we can grab onto. I'm grabbing onto this posture in a certain way. I'm grabbing onto this way. Because the Zazen is our falling in and out of balance. So it's very challenging, I think. It really pushes us. beyond all of the kind of, the way we would use the word. He is not using it. Bedrock doesn't really mean, yeah, we should practice all the time, really hard, no matter what, except we shouldn't follow the old ancestors and the way they did.

[21:02]

We have to find our own way. And that's the same thing. He takes that foundation out of us. He takes, you're just, oh, I've studied that. Sancestors, I think this one is so inspiring. I want to be just like that. You can be just like yourself is what you can be just like. That's all. And that's the challenge. We have the control, quote unquote, control because there is none. But we have the agency. Maybe that's the word. We have the agency. We can develop a skill set. so that within our, this own being, I can find that stillness, that place I can rely on. Not really, we can rely on it and it's gonna change. But we're gonna rely on the fact that it's gonna change, that we're gonna fall in and out of bounds.

[22:04]

That's just the way it is. And that's just the way it is. That's just how the universe is. Impermanent, arising and ceasing, throwing you around every moment, no guarantees. Is that the bedrock? I guess so because there we are. He mentions several several sutras in this, not sutras, fascicles, urban fascicles in this section, is the Ocean Mudra Samadhi. And he uses that to talk about the ocean and water, as he's done in many of his chapters, as a metaphor for our mind.

[23:09]

So the water and the waves and whatever's happening, it's cold, it's hot, it's turbulent, it's peaceful. That is just our metaphor for, it's a way to look at the natural, something in nature and say, well, I can understand. I can understand the idea of waves and how the waves come and they go. ripples when something gets, the waves get disturbed. We can see those and feel those in a way that maybe we can't, that help us to see our mind. So he, and he uses some of the part of that metaphor. So he talks about the importance of keeping ourselves grounded by imagining that while we are swimming in the turbulence of the water, we need to be sure our feet are walking on the mobile stillness.

[24:12]

So again, there's this same kind of juxtaposition of movement, change, and grounding. And he's just playing with that in another way. And the way he, so he goes to the ocean to referring us to another sutra called Gyoji, or continuous practice. He says, so we talked about the ocean and the waves, we negotiate our minds, and then he talks about continuous practice. And in continuous practice, you can find It sounds like ocean samadhi, right?

[25:14]

So if you look at it, in the continuous practice, Sasakali says, Buddhists and ancestors continually maintain the ocean mudra samadhi. While swimming in this samadhi, they practice. Traveling through water includes journeying along the ocean bottom. This is called coursing along the bottom of the deepest ocean. So again, the same... So it conjures up for us that are sometimes helpful when we're sitting, at least for me. I kind of imagine I'm sitting in a boat I often feel I'm in a boat when I'm in Zendo. I feel like this is kind of an arc carrying us somewhere. But that we're sitting in stillness and our bodies are still and we're very quiet and yet our minds are still navigating the waves.

[26:26]

There's no way that that's not gonna happen. That it's not, so he says, the only way to navigate waves successfully is not to keep, is to navigate each one as it arises and each one as it falls away. And that to concentrate on that, use that as an idea of how these thoughts and these feelings come up and you're taken by a wave and then the wave goes if you let it. So this way of using that metaphor I think is really very powerful and he uses it a lot. So then he goes on from talking to about our posture and our zazen practice to raise another issue that helps us in our navigating

[27:30]

...terrain as we go along. And that is the practice of acceptance. Because one of the things... Let me read what Sojin said. Sojin proposes that our ability to navigate the rigors and challenges encountered in developing the practice of Zazen involves the conscious practice of acceptance. He... repeatedly talks about his relationship and his, part of his, part of how he learned acceptance was from watching Suzuki. He brings this up all the time in all of his, many of these fascicles, I mean many of these chapters. And it's his trust in his teacher that helps him to navigate what for him would be difficult. It wouldn't have been natural to take on.

[28:32]

So he watches Suzuki Roshi move. He emulates that. And through his personal relationship, which is speaking about the role of what a teacher can be, his personal relationship and his... Well, that person is doing it. And I can just trust that person is... and I have a relationship, and I trust that, and that's part of how I start to recognize, well, if that person is accepting, if that person is able to negotiate, maybe I can. And he said that in another one of these chapters. He quotes Suzuki Roshi. we must open ourselves to each sensation and become one with it. It may sound counterintuitive, but it encourages us that instead of shutting down and resting, instead of narrowing our borders, we allow them to expand to include everything.

[29:39]

So Sojin, again, is reiterating what he said earlier, which is, as we notice, we, instead of concentrating here on the knee or here on the chest, we start to open to more, our whole body, our feelings, the temperature, feel the air, hear the noises, that back in the moment completely rather than stuck. Because if we're in the moment, we're seeing the changes, things we're rising and ceasing, noises are coming and going. Our lesson is right there. All we have to do is pay attention. We don't have to, you know, it's not like some obscure thing. Impermanence, arising, relaxation, tension. That's every day. We do it every minute. So all we, when we have to, it's realization is, it's right here. Where are you going? So, Sojin also, what's interesting, he says in terms of,

[30:50]

and I don't know why he puts it in this particular chapter, but it was interesting and I thought, he reminds us in the chapter on acceptance of remembering to practice with the awareness of the second noble truth. The suffering comes from attachment and aversion, desire and aversion. So when you notice your body and mind are attached to discomfort, let go of the attachment, let go of wanting to get rid of it, let go of ending it, and have that be part of your acceptance. That's accepting it and letting go of it. Because if you don't accept it, you're going to hold on to it. Acceptance is key to that internal process. If I accept it, this is how it is. It's just, hi, he says.

[31:52]

You know, he said one of these things. He said, say hello, hi, you know, when something comes up, even if it's something that you might not like. Oh, you're here. That's all. And you're impermanent. This whole thing is part of the vision of my imagination, what I've made out of something. Why bother wasting my time on it? Just easier said than done, as we know. So he says, letting go is, in a sense, he says, this acceptance and freedom from attachment is the bedrock of practice. That's the key element. When you recognize that you just, whatever comes, you don't have a choice really of whether or not to accept it.

[32:58]

It's come. That's the bedrock of crap. This is just, what was I think, what was I expecting? Birth, death, anger, you know, tiredness, worry. What was I expecting? That's just here. I'm accepting it. That's life. I'm totally accepting my life, your life. I wanted to read, I don't want to waste too much time on it, but anyway, I wanted to read a little bit from the Oshin Mudra Samadhi that I thought is kind of helping us or helping people by reading it, reading it over and over again or writing it down or something. This is what the ocean, part of what the ocean mudra samadhi says.

[33:59]

Appearing and disappearing continue endlessly while self appears and disappears. Reflect on the words continue endlessly and let them continue endlessly. Allow the moments of appearing and disappearing to continue and discontinue as the life stream of the Buddha ancestors. The moment when appearing and disappearing continue endlessly is what appears and disappears. With this body I awaken beings. Now I manifest this body. I expound the Dharma. Past mind is unattainable. You have attained my marrow. You have attained my bones. is what appears and disappears. It is not only that there is a person in the ocean. The ocean of I am in the ocean is not an abode of people in the world. It's not where sages love to be. It is just I am alone in the ocean.

[35:01]

Thus the Buddha said, I am always in the ocean expounding. Recognized or not, myriad things are just Encountering the Buddhist faiths and the ancestor faiths is nothing other than fully recognizing myriad things as myriad things. Because myriad things are all-inclusive. You do not merely stand atop the highest peak or travel along the bottom. Being all-inclusive is just like this. Letting go is just like that. What is called the ocean of Buddha nature or Vyrochana's ocean storehouse is just myriad things. Although the ocean's surface is invisible, there is no doubt about the practice. Simple as that. So I found that for me, just swimming in that language actually was

[36:05]

reassuring. It just felt all right. Myriad of things are coming and going. It felt like being in the water and letting the little waves come. And I think it's really nice. It's interesting because it's almost hypnotic if you let it be. And so it's not like a lot of Dogen's fascicles where they're You know, it has a lot of references and koans and whatever. It just kind of takes you along in the ocean and through the reality of moment-to-moment experience without any minimal concepts. So after all that wonderful trip through the ocean, then Pup Sojin goes back to talking about breath and posture. But he, and he really, I've talked about it before, so I won't say all that much more about it because I think I kind of actually made the points that I was going to make in this section already.

[37:23]

But basically he, what he brings up here is the idea, he talks about concentration on body and breath and using your breath as I mentioned. But he goes back to this issue of stay perfect, don't move. So he's told us we're in balance, in and out of balance, move, no, don't move. Now he's back just talking about not moving. And he brings up in posture something different, which I haven't really thought about and I think is interesting. And he used the idea of cultivation of patience, which is one of the paramitas and a key practice of our lineage.

[38:25]

And so then he says, of patience, for yourself. Patience for reality, patience for a situation. So, yes, I'm sitting, I'm sitting and sitting here for 40 minutes. My legs are hurting. And a student asks him in the questionnaire, you know, well, what should I do? Am I really hurt? I can feel the nerves, whatever. And what I would have said, if I were giving this talk before reading this, was saying, oh, yes, be really careful that you don't hurt yourself. But what he says here is, be patient. Yes, it hurts. So it's an attitude of patience and a kind of a pain. You're patient with the pain. You have a different relationship with the pain. Again, not fighting the pain.

[39:26]

Maybe adjusting yourself. But the idea is that you're not, this idea of cultivating patience of yourself and your body and of what's happening and of the fact that they won't ring the bell so we can get up and walk. You know, patience for the whole process. That was a really interesting, I think, to bring into it. Because it almost feels to me like that's something like when we take a deep breath, We want to get back to our breath to relax. That's also a way that we're cultivating patience. That we're stopping the noise, all the attitudes, all the fighting, all the stuff that's going on. We're having just patience with ourselves without any of that conceptual stuff. We leave it alone. And that just by leaving the conceptual stuff, just staying with our breath and cultivating a patient attitude.

[40:29]

Like even that, like, my body, when am I, I can't do it, why can't I do it better? Why does it hurt? It's not supposed to. They told me all the pain would drop away and I'd be in somebody. That feeling of inadequacy is being patient with yourself. The final thing that he brings up here is making a commitment. in another section that's a little further away from this, but the role of commitment in this process. I talked a little bit about my relationship with Sojin, what he was wanting me to balance and wanting to make sure that I was practicing, pushing myself to put practice as an important part of my life. about commitment from a very, very simple way.

[41:37]

It's like he said, commitment involves taking stock of what you can do, taking stock of the causes and conditions in you and in the world that you have to work in or live in. Take stock of what's there now, right? And then where does your practice fit? Then push yourself a little beyond where you think it might fit and say, okay, in order for me to cultivate this mind, this bedrock practice, this practice in which I can have this, ...Mudra Samadhi and live the Ocean Mudra Samadhi. What am I willing to do? What am I willing to do for this?

[42:39]

And he would say, as he started Ruby, very simply saying, make a calendar. Look at the calendar. Look at your... And make a commitment. And he says, start out by just coming twice a week. And okay, as I said, my own life was so full. Finding twice a week was whatever. Anyway, so I would go, if I had to go to San Francisco Zen Center, I'd go to San Francisco Zen Center after work and practice. But I would make a commitment that there would be this many things. And then he said, well, you know, when you get the calendar from the practice, What all the activities are at the Present Center. Put them on your calendar. Put them on your calendar in January.

[43:40]

Make a commitment that this is what's going to happen this year with my practice. And that's what I did. I still do. The practice, the thing comes out. Because otherwise you're not going to do it. You're going to make other things. That becomes then a way to to have a consistent enough practice, a reliable enough practice, that you then kind of absorb the practice by putting yourself in a formal way of practicing, which helps you get the muscles, the balance muscles. So I think I probably should stop. But anyway, yeah. And that's really what continuous practice means. That's why he points us to the vesicle on continuous practice.

[44:46]

And we talked at my class about just have to be in the Zendo. Sometimes your practice can be taking a walk after lunch at work. and being mindful. You practice, you take your zazen with you, and you add that as part of what you're committing to. So you can come not only to formal practice, but also taking your practice, your zazen outside the gate, and making a commitment to that. And through that kind of commitment, and really holding yourself accountable, I did it great, or not so unlikely, Oh, whoops. But he said that's okay because you look at the whoops and you say, well, maybe I overcommitted. Or maybe I need to rearrange my schedule. And you do that. But you stay in the game, so to speak. You're not saying, oh, this is too much for me.

[45:49]

This is what I think I can do. And I'm going to really stay in that for a while. And then I'm going to add something else. I'm going to add another day. I'm going to add a sashimi or whatever. So that it's not putting your whole life out of balance. You're still in balance. And then, you know, your priorities can be initiated over time. So, questions? Where are you? Mark. Jerry, thank you. What do you balance here in your life? I'm balancing the grief of who was met with my husband. That's a big thing. And all of the many things that I had to attend to 25 years.

[46:51]

And so all of the administrative stuff is a big distraction. I have grandchildren that I help out with, one of whom has a hyperactivity disorder and needs really special help to people around him who really can work with him. I have a 12-year-old dog who has cancer in her leg, and hopefully it won't kill her before her regular lifespan. and she needs attention or home, you know, she can't run in and out of the doggy door anymore. You know, I balance that. I balance my own health and my fitness and taking care of myself. It's always balanced, right? So every day you sort of say, well, when do I do my, when do I walk? You know, we all have that, right? Yeah.

[47:55]

Joel, are you there? Yes, I'm there. Thanks, Jerry. There was an incident with Sojin that was wonderful and really addresses exactly this, I think. I asked him about keeping still at a session, and he just said something like, you see that you just moved ever so slightly and you return. And so that was very powerful for me because it was like keeping still included constant movement. Yes. Yeah. And it seems to me like that balance is exactly the same way we fall out, we return. And so Balance is about losing balance and restoring balance. Yes.

[49:03]

Yeah. So I just wanted to share that. It was a very powerful thing with Sojourn. Because you can still be, you can, I don't want to use the word still because I'm going to use the word still. The still, you can attain stillness while balancing. And I had an experience not being next to a relatively new person all the time. And I was particularly having some issues with my sitting that day. And I was being very careful, trying to be very, but you know, I would like flex my gluteus muscles so that there would be some blood flowing to my leg, which was falling asleep. And I thought, I wonder if anybody can sense that, right? And then at the end, I met the person outside and he said, oh, I just really was so nice sitting next to you.

[50:08]

You were so sick. And I had felt that my mind was going and my, you know, I was trying to say, can I get it? My foot is gonna fall asleep. I'm like, no, no, but I kept, but you keep the composure. Even though that's happening, you're, You're adjusting to have that composure. And after a while, that composure can be felt. So you can have that composure while moving or while adjusting. Yes. Thank you. Sue? Thank you, Jerry. It really got me thinking, this topic, scheduling, commitment. What else is there? Can you say something about committing to practice positions, beginning, entering?

[51:15]

When I first came, I was a dishwasher. That made me happy. And I came, well, not just for the tea and cookies, but for washing dishes. And I just thought, Because I wasn't able, I had to have some physical activity. So maybe you can talk about that. Well, there are two ways of thinking about that. One is just, if you're asked, we're in practice where part of asking people to take a position is also asking them to come in. So if you see that, requests as inviting me to come in, you know, inviting you to be drawn in in some way, to be more involved, to get to know everybody, then whatever position they ask you to do, some position that makes you feel part of supporting the Sangha. And, you know, Sojin, actually with me, always said, you know, when you're asked, say yes.

[52:25]

And that is one of our things, right? We don't pick and choose a position. And we learn when we become head student and we have to clean all the bathrooms that we have to clean the bathrooms. And the bathrooms start being really great because you really like cleaning all the little corners and whatever. So it doesn't really matter what the position is. It matters that you're part of it, you're interacting with other people around it, and that's how you contribute and become embedded in the community. Not embedded, but just integrated into the community. Rich. Last point, I was thinking about that.

[53:26]

I think balance is sometimes about saying no. There's a need to sort of prioritize whether it's outside the zendo or inside the zendo. I find sometimes during longer sittings I need to drop my mudra and put my hands on my thighs for a little while. Where does that fit in? I wonder sometimes if you think about balance as this shifting prior, I think about it as shifting priorities, giving attention to what's necessary, saying yes to what's in front of me, following that through, but there's this other element that's sort of sometimes turning away a lender. Well, I mean, there is when something is too much. For example, if you were, you know, asked to be board president, you know, you may not feel that that's a okay, it's too time-consuming, you don't have the personality for it, you know, there's reasons why we don't, I mean, I was going back to Sue's example of getting asked to do a position.

[54:39]

I mean, we have to adjust, and there are realities, there are physical realities. Some people just have that, they can't bend that. You know, they can't do that. So there are legitimate reasons why we can't do something. And there are family issues that are important that we have to take care of. There are all sorts of things that are important. That's the balance part. There's commitment, but there's also balance. So committing doesn't mean without any strictures. Committing means take into account what you can do. That's what Sojin told me. Take into account what can you do. And then make a commitment. And setting yourself up for failure is not a good idea. You know, and some people do that. They take on a position. They were proud.

[55:40]

People ask them to do a position. They think it's a really great idea. Whatever. They can't do it because their life just doesn't allow it. It doesn't work. Situations like that. Doesn't mean they're bad or anything. It just means, you know, all the important elements were not taken into account when the person said they would do it and they can't. Turns out they cannot. So that's adjusting to the waves. Just another wave. And we just adjust to that. I can't do that. I'm sorry. I'm not able to. We? There? Okay. These are numberless. Not a vow to awaken with them. Delusions are.

[56:40]

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