Welcome to day three of Sashin. And if you're here for the first day, welcome to day one. I know there's a few of you. A little closer? How about that? And hello, Zoomers. I know you're over there, but I see you here. So how are you doing? I hope that you're feeling settled and spacious, content. Maybe you're on the joy train. Every time I hear the Amtrak horn, I think joy train going through. I hope you're not in too much discomfort in the body or the mind. And that you're enjoying being here together in this concentrated, mutually supportive way.

[01:08]

But maybe that's not at all how you're doing. Maybe your hips and your back and your neck and every little body part ache. Maybe you're really tired. Maybe you can't stop thinking of whatever it is you had to set aside to come to be here in this way. Maybe someone or something in Sashin is pressing on your nerves. Maybe unruly feelings are bubbling up. Anything is possible, especially in Sashin, and sort of especially on day three, which tends to be a kind of... rubber-meets-the-road kind of day. So whatever your internal weather, it is included. There's no weather that you should be having other than the weather you are having. Remember the words of Merrill Cotto Boyd, who did the commentary on my koan, on Chiono's story.

[02:16]

She said, you can't fall out of your life, and you can't fall out of Sashin. So this is a new experience for me of entering wordiness, entering language during Sushin. I mean, I do remember, because it was not that long ago, Mark and I have just sort of traded places. When I was Sushin director just last year for this Sushin, and the year prior to that, because it's a two-year position, You know, entering that silence of the first period of Zazen to read the Sashin guidelines, it's like you have to summon some speaking willingness to enter the silence like that. And I've had that experience with the bells, too, when I need to ring the bell as timekeeper or doan. And I just sort of imagine a kind of bow to the silence, which we do when we bow to the densho.

[03:21]

a bow to the silence and asking permission to enter. So I bow to the silence and I ask permission to enter your mind, whatever state it is in. And I hope that today the words I'm offering are just an encouragement. So I want to start by sharing a poem by a beloved poet of mine in my experience of poetry, Elizabeth Bishop. And this poem is called One Art. Does anybody know it? I hope you don't so that you get to hear it for the first time. That's a little greedy of me, but I admit it. It's called One Art. The art of losing isn't hard to master. So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

[04:25]

The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster. Places and names and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch and look, my last or... next to last of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones, and vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. Even losing you, the joking voice, a gesture I love, I shan't have lied. It's evident. The art of losing's not too hard to master. Though it may look like, write it like disaster.

[05:28]

So this is a villanelle. You can hear the rhyme and some bits of the form in there. And it's the only poem of this type that Elizabeth Bishop ever wrote. She was a pretty disciplined poet, but she didn't really write formally. And if you look up Villanelle, this poem is going to come up because it is so beloved. Her original draft titles included The Gift of Losing Things. So she didn't go with that, but that was one of her starting titles. You might have noticed the poem starts with these really kind of small, insignificant losses, you know, the keys, the hour badly spent, and moves on to much bigger things, ending with, you know, a beloved, losing a beloved in the last stanza there. And Elizabeth Bishop didn't tend to write very personal poetry, so that's a big move for her to address a you in the poem.

[06:34]

She called... what's known as confessional poetry, where one really digs into one's, you know, specific biography, the school of anguish. But she has this, the poem opens with this kind of like breezy confidence, you know, the art of losing isn't hard to master. She says it several times. And it becomes more and more kind of unsure about that thesis and more kind of halting. And there's sort of, I would say, the way I experienced this poem, a kind of paradox between that confident assertion that the art of losing isn't hard to master and the feeling that I would say is running underneath the poem, that it sure can feel like disaster. And that little two in the last couple lines is really important. The art of losing is not too T-O-O.

[07:35]

hard to master. So we're kind of left wondering, she's left us with the question, you know, is losing an art that can be mastered or is it disaster? And the title, One Art, that she settled on, I think sort of says it's both, that there's one art. It's the art of losing even when it feels like disaster. And to me, this really sounds like something that Dogen would be nodding his head to. He also speaks of mastery, actually, in Genjo Koan, which we've been studying. So please forgive me, I couldn't resist it. I did a little mashup of Genjo Koan as if it ran into Elizabeth Bishop's poem. Here's a couple things I came up with. Those who greatly realize losing are Buddhas. Those who are greatly deluded in losing are living beings.

[08:39]

Furthermore, there are those who master losing beyond losing and those who are lost within losing. Or, one more, the boundary of loss is not distinct, for the loss comes forth simultaneously with the mastery of losing. So in Genjo Koan, Doan is really working hard to free us from our tendency to be so dualistic in our thinking, you know, losing bad, keeping good. He's trying to show us how reality contains everything, that everything is functioning in its particular way and its particular scope as part of a whole that is ever-present and constantly unfolding. Everything is included, Buddhas, living beings, delusion, enlightenment, even your day three mood.

[09:44]

If it's, why did I think this was a good idea? Or I never want to stop doing this. Or maybe you're going back and forth between those two or maybe something in between them. So if everything is included, And nothing is left out. In the relative sense, there's losing and there's disaster. And in the absolute sense, there's no losing, no disaster. We're not separate from realization, right? This is Dogen's teaching. We're always within realization whether or not we know it. But we have to practice realization. Here Bishop's poem really resonates with Dogen because she even calls the art of losing a practice. Practice losing further, losing faster. So the poem also holds these two truths, the relative and the absolute.

[10:49]

On the one hand, there's the confidence that losing isn't a disaster and it can be mastered. And on the other hand, it sure does feel like disaster. So how do we practice? Losing. I think we can think about losing. I'm just going to suggest some similar concepts. We could think about it as letting go, surrendering, allowing. I mean, those are all, I would say, corollaries to this idea of losing. And mastering as continually practicing without a fixed idea of results. And Ours is basically a letting go practice, right? I mean, we let go of self. We study the self to forget the self. We let go of stories about ourselves and about others.

[11:52]

We let go of the need for certainty. We let go of expectations of any kind of... or of permanence. We let go of fixed ideas. We let go of a sense of separation and independence or set-apartness from the world around us. And in Sashin, this letting-go practice is concentrated and intensified and contained, and the heat is turned up. Sashin, I remember... in one of my first multi-day sashins going up to, I think it was Raul Monkayo, and asking, what does sashin mean? And he told me at the time, it means receiving the mind, which I've always held on to that and really liked that. And I think yesterday, Abbot Linda said, you know, to gather or collect the mind. So that's all happening. Whichever verb resonates for you, you might hold on to that.

[12:59]

But it's not grasping or clinging to the mind. We let our mind do what the mind does without hanging on to what it's doing or pushing away what it's doing. So we watch the mind. We're not separate from the mind, but we are not exactly going with it when it goes on its trips. In Sashin, we let go of creature comforts. We surrender to the schedule and we just show up when the bell rings and when the schedule tells us we're supposed to be a certain place, we are there or we try to be. We let go of our preference for a certain kind of practice position or we try to let go. And we let go of our, like I mentioned at the beginning, whatever our responsibilities are outside of Sashim, family, work.

[14:02]

We let go of thoughts, emotions, stories, preferences. We let go and let go and let go. Because when we let go, we allow the myriad things to come forth and we can experience our inherent Buddha nature. So I'm going to tell a couple, three if I end up having enough time, stories of loss. One is set in Tilden Park, one is Tassajara, and one is 6th century India. So a year ago, almost to the day, it was June 13th and today's the 12th, almost to the hour of

[15:08]

My beloved miniature Aussie was attacked by a pack of coyotes when my husband John was out walking him. And I, and they are listening to this talk, I see John, I know Mojo's right there, I was skier directing the five-day Sashin, and it was day three, just like today. And because the Sashin director cannot just put the phone down and turn it off and not look at the phone because there's cancellations and illnesses that come up, I looked at my phone after lunch, and I saw a text from John, can you call me? John knows the schedule, you know, but it didn't occur to me right away. I just said, can it wait? The reply came, no, call me now.

[16:14]

So I called him. And, you know, he told me what happened, and he told me that Mojo was at Pets Hospital on University, which we have been at with more than one animal more times than I want to say. I love them there. And they didn't know if Mojo was going to make it. So even to think of that now, you can tell it's very hard. And because this is a sheen and our hearts are open, I hope I want you to know Mojo is going to survive this story I'm going to tell you. Some of you saw him just a couple of weeks ago when John brought him on Saturday in his full, vivacious, unruly glory. But I want to share this story because I am 100% confident that everyone in this room has lost something or someone that they could not imagine losing or they've come close.

[17:21]

So on the phone, John was, I have to say, maybe more upset than I've ever heard him. I think that phrase we have beside oneself with grief and despair is fitting. But in the moment, and also because I didn't have the visuals yet, I was in shock. I immediately went to, it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay. It was like words that got put in my brain for me to offer. I had no idea if it was going to be okay. But I kept saying it, and My primary concern in that moment was John, actually, because that's who was in front of me. We decided I had to leave, and I had to go to the hospital with him to be there for whatever was going to unfold.

[18:25]

I thought I'd come back. I left all my stuff. I was staying in the abbot's office. I left all of my things. I remember coming out of the back room where I'd been resting and seeing Carol and Greg, who were planning. the first rehearsal for the Shuso Hosan, and telling them. And again, still not with it, not really with the reality of it, not crying, not anything. But of course, right away, they, oh yes, you have to go. I'll just also say, you know, we had also just had a COVID outbreak, and we were trying to deal with that. And then all of the kind of excitement and preparation for the Shusohosen, for Mark's Shusohosen, was afoot. So there was a lot of tenderness and importance. I won't say too much about what it was like to first see Mojo because I think it's a little traumatizing, but I'll say they had to shave him, you know, head to toe to find all of the injuries and deal with them.

[19:31]

And by the time I saw him, They gave him methadone right away for the pain, so he was completely gorked out. I mean, he knew me, but was kind of staggering and clearly out of it. But he was alive and being cared for, and I do really trust them at this place. There was that weird little refrain, that faithful refrain, it's going to be okay, which I think includes even if it's not. And at first I really... I really thought I was coming back. And Linda may remember I talked to her a couple times. Like, I just wasn't ready to let go. And maybe Mark can really intimately understand this right now. You put so much work into Sashin. And if you haven't done the position, it's hard to imagine the amount of behind-the-scenes puzzle pieces you're moving. And so to just drop that all, it took me a minute to get there. But then...

[20:35]

It really became clear that I needed, once I was home, like, no, I'm not leaving. This is my sashim now. We are keeping a vigil for this dog that is like our world. We do have two cats too. I didn't need to include them, but they stay inside. So no traumas like that with them yet, although one of them did almost die. So two out of the three have almost left us. So my sashim was going to be at home. It took a couple days for them to release Mojo to us. I think it was maybe Sunday morning that he got to come home. And the vets were really clear. If John had not plunged into the poison oak and the brambles and got him and carried him up the hill and got him down there as quickly as he did and interrupted the attack, in fact, Mojo would not have made it. And It wasn't clear, in fact, that he would make it.

[21:38]

They said, you know, give it about a month because there can be internal injuries we don't know about. And you have to watch him very carefully. And they gave us, oh boy, a big list of medicines and I had to make a spreadsheet and I had to get up at the, you know, two in the morning and four and six and whenever to give him his medicines. So Sashin was operating. Sashin was happening. And Mojo pulled through and he healed. And there's some psychological scarring, I would say, for all of us. But this is a story of disaster and loss averted. It's a story of practicing losing. Six months after the attack was actually like Thanksgiving Day, it turned out, and John said, okay, I'm ready to go to the spot.

[22:44]

Let's go. And we went back to the spot, and I watched him go off into the... He geared all up again so he wouldn't get poison oaken this time and get prickered by the blackberry, and went and left... six treats for the coyotes, six of Mojo's favorite cheese treats for the coyotes. We don't blame them, never did, for what happened. Everyone, John likes to say, was operating on pure instinct. So we didn't lose Mojo. What did we lose? We lost the ability to trust him, on off-leash walks. That kind of sucks. I'd say he lost a little confidence in himself. But, you know, we can live with these losses. It wasn't a disaster.

[23:46]

But someday, we're going to lose Mojo. I mean, his life will end. He's going to turn nine in July. I can't believe it. And we'll lose each other. We'll lose our own lives. That's the nature. That's part of the deal. This fleeting, fragile, wondrous life. And certainly, you know, John and I, I mean, we've had a kind of peculiar hahn the entire length of our, almost the entire length of our marriage because we've lived closer perhaps than other couples to losing each other. because of this blood cancer that we live with, that John has in his body, but that is in the body of our marriage, myeloma. There's times when we thought everything was fine, but it was in there doing its thing. And what it does is it chews on bone and likes to go after his pelvis and his spine.

[24:59]

In fact, for Rahatsu a few years ago, I was all set to come and we got a PET scan in which we learned that a lot of John's C5, pretty much half of it, was gone. So it's long periods of like, I don't know what other word to use other than maybe normalcy, punctuated by, there it is. At any moment, things could turn. So how do we practice with this almost losing, knowing we will lose what we love? What is the gift of losing things? My goodness, time is going so fast. I don't think I'm going to get to all my stories. But I'll go to Tassajara because I think it's in all of our hearts.

[26:04]

So I think Zen is a kind of, ever since writing Fire Monks, I've thought of Zen as a kind of disaster training. It's like a continuous practice of mastering loss. Because even in the middle of what we think of or call disaster, there's something that's not disaster. Even in the middle of losing, there is something that's not lost. And like Mojo's story, the Fire Monk story, which just every day I kind of have to pinch myself that I was lucky enough to get to put that into a book form, it also has a happy ending. And I've often wondered, and I've sometimes been asked, would you have written that book if someone had died? Would you have wanted to? And honestly, I always have to say I don't know if I would have been up to that task. And I want to share some things that... When I interviewed Myogen, Steve Stuckey, for this book, we talked about this disaster preparedness aspect of Zen.

[27:08]

And some, but not all, of our exchange made it into the book. So I'm going to read a longer bit of the quote that I think did end up in abbreviated form. So he said, On the Han, it says, birth and death is a serious matter. Death could be construed as a disaster. Birth, another kind of disaster, or just something unexpected. Things arise and you have to take care of them, but there's a sense of not having preferences. Okay, if it's disaster, then we take care of disaster. We take care of whatever comes up, and that includes disaster. We consciously take that on to remind ourselves daily, actually every moment. In a way, when you're living in the present moment, you're not so involved in hope, invested in a particular outcome. Equanimity is recognizing that all emotional states have their time and place.

[28:11]

You completely include emotions, and you don't reject any of them. Whatever the intensity of your feeling is, you simply include it in your awareness. When I learned about the Tassajara Zendo fire in March, I felt a rush of sadness. I did have some tears, but it was pretty quickly that it turned for me to not a disaster. Building gone. Nobody hurt. I mean, maybe some psychological pain, but everybody healthy and okay. I thought of Bishop's Line, I will miss it, but it wasn't a disaster. Then, I think probably most of you know in this room that last week that story took a turn when a woman was charged with deliberately starting that fire out of hatred and with ill intent towards other Buddhist temples.

[29:19]

So it appears that the fire was not an accident, but something that's actually kind of harder to harder to hold, harder to understand, darker. And I found myself remembering how in 2008 when I was watching what was unfolding down at Tassajara and then later when I was interviewing folks, nobody was talking about that fire as a malicious force. So here's another outtake from an interview with Myogen that really speaks to that. He said, After night patrol one morning, someone said, it feels like the fire is lurking out there. This is after it had passed, and they were doing these continuous patrols to make sure it didn't crop up again. He went on to say, I said, yeah, it's tempting to think the fire wants to come in, pounce on us, and burn down this building. But that's attributing a kind of intention to fire.

[30:22]

This is the way humans impute our own desires and fears onto something, onto fire. Fire is simply a coming together of various elements. There actually isn't any fire. We don't fight fire. We meet it and work with it. Fire isn't trying to burn us. Fire is doing what fire does. To relate to it as simply what it is, rather than as something that has some malicious intention, trying to destroy us, or even a positive intention, fire trying to transform things. Our language does that, but it's actually not accurate. So because wildfire acts beneficially in the ecosystem, especially that ecosystem down there, that landscape at Tassajara is meant to burn, it isn't so difficult to regard the fire in this kind of neutral way. or coyotes being coyotes, or I would even say myeloma being myeloma.

[31:27]

Really. But Myogen's description of our misunderstanding of fire as a force wanting to, quote, come in and burn down this building that has some malicious intention, trying to destroy us. That's this woman, right? She meant to start the fire, She wanted to burn the Zendo down, and she succeeded. Or so it seems. We are still a country of innocent until proven guilty. So let's assume the alleged crime is true. And if she confesses to this crime or is found guilty, that is... In my body, that is more painful than just the loss of the building. It feels personal, not like wildfire or coyotes or cancer. But this woman, this arsonist, just like you and me, she is not a fixed self.

[32:39]

She is a coming together of various elements, in Myogen's words. And our practice is to extend compassion. for the pain and confusion that caused her or someone to do this harm. I feel like I can't say it better than Abbott David and Fire Monk David Zimmerman said. She needs care, and she needs to be held accountable for her actions in the world. So can we hold both, you know, our pain, Tassajara's pain, and hers? Can we resist closing down and becoming wary? I mean, my first thought when I first learned this was, oh no, you know, this place that we experience as so completely safe, a refuge, except maybe during the height of fire season, you know, it's not safe.

[33:41]

It's not safe. But actually, that is always the case. I mean, we are not safe. Life's an off-leash experience. It's risky, precarious, and full of loss. And when I thought about this further, that the actual disaster would be if Tassajara were to close its heart and clamp down. if it became a place not of disarming but of distrust. That's the disaster. And the same goes for us here and in our everyday lives. The disaster would be a closed, hardened heart. Dogen says in Genjo Koan that firewood doesn't become ash after burning.

[34:47]

Firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood, which fully includes past and future and is independent of past and future. Ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, which fully includes future and past. Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death. We do not return. We can no longer be, if we were before, people who cannot imagine someone feeling hatred towards Tassajara, towards Buddhist temples in general, and wanting to burn them down, being willing, in fact, to start the fire. On the relative level, there is disaster, but in the absolute realm, everything is just... simultaneously and mutually unfolding. So how do we hold these two truths that seem to be tugging at each other, opposing each other?

[36:01]

I think with our tender, open, warm, broken hearts. Knowing zendos burn, but what happens inside them does not burn. Knowing humans do great harm and humans do great good. Knowing that our task is to awaken to all of it, not turn away from any of it. So how do we practice losing? Can we receive it as a gift? I think I do have enough time to go to 6th century India. Because that question, can we receive it as a gift, it calls to mind, it called to mind for me the story of Patachara, which is in The Hidden Lamp along with the story that is my koan for practice period along with Chiyono's story.

[37:09]

Patachara experienced unthinkable loss within the span of a day. Her husband's bitten by a poisonous snake. A newborn is carried off by a hawk. Another child drowns. Brother, mother, sister. No, no sister. I think I inserted a sister there. And father are killed when a house collapses on them. This is one day. And the story goes that she went mad with grief. I mean, who wouldn't? and tore off all her clothes and wandered around, getting sort of loopier and loopier, more and more bereft, and isolated from people. And when she encountered the Buddha, he said to her, Sister, recover your presence of mind. And that woke her up enough, brought her back enough to realize, oh, I'm completely naked, and she put on clothing again.

[38:16]

and she told the Buddha everything that had happened to her. And he said something kind of surprising. He said, I can't help you. I can't help you. But then he went on and said, for countless lives, you have wept for loved ones. Your tears could fill the four oceans, but no one can be a secure hiding place from suffering. Knowing this, a wise person walks the path of awakening. And these words eased her mind more. The truth of impermanence and our ability to be present with whatever comes. So she ends up taking ordination and when she encounters the Buddha again, he says to her, It is better to see the truth of impermanence even for just a moment than to live for a hundred years and not know it.

[39:18]

It is better to see the truth of impermanence even for just a moment than to live for a hundred years and not know it. Okay, I think we're doing all right, so I just wanted to leave you with Elizabeth's poem, and then I think we might even have time to talk a little bit. So one art. The art of losing isn't hard to master. So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day, except the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster. Places and names and where it was you meant to travel, none of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch, and look, my last or next to last of three loved houses went.

[40:27]

The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones, and vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. Even losing you, the joking voice, on gesture I love, I shan't have lied. It's evident. The art of losing's not too hard to master. Though it may look like, write it, like disaster. Thank you for your warm, warm attention. And Gary, how are we doing? Excellent. Okay, so we have about 10 minutes to have comments or sharing or questions, and that includes folks online. I guess raise your hand there online if you want to ask a question or make a comment.

[41:34]

Gary. Hi, thank you for your talk. Did uncertainty come up for you in being Shusel? That's my question. Yeah, because I like to do everything I do 100% or more. And I didn't know if I could do it 100% because life is very full right now. Very, very full. So it wasn't optimal. And then also there's not knowing what it even is. Like, what are you even saying yes to, right? I've watched a lot of people do it, but that doesn't mean I know what it is. But, you know, now that you ask, I think I may have had that same sort of mind, that, like, it'll be okay mind.

[42:40]

And I trusted Linda, and I trusted all of you. which is a learning for me, how to trust others to support me. So, yeah. It did, but it didn't stay. Uncertainty, it didn't stay. Yeah. Heather has her hand up in the back. I'm just really breathless about your talk. There's so many dimensions. And this exploration of loss. There's a realm I've been grappling with, which is a lot of the losses you named are, they're like losses you can touch in a way.

[43:49]

And sometimes loss is about the loss of a dream, an idea of what you hoped your life would be or some aspect of your life. And somehow that's almost harder for me to wrestle with because it's like the Cheshire cap. You can't quite grab it. You don't know what to grieve. You don't know what to let go of because you never had it in the first place. What do you think? Yes. Thanks for bringing the light to those kinds of losses, which I can completely relate. I don't think they're any less weighty in our bodies and in our hearts, but they're more sort of ephemeral in a way, especially if they're not even shared.

[44:54]

They're in private, you know. And I'm a big believer in rituals for those things. If you can figure it out, or even if you can't figure it out, can you create a ritual for yourself around letting go of that, that thing, that thing. Mm-hmm. Greg. Caroline Meister died in Tazara, stepping on a rock that she thought was perfectly firm on her outdoor walk in the rain, as I imagined it. Just causes and conditions coming together, like you were saying. And, you know, it took them five days to find her body. I'm sorry if this is too much, but we're talking about loss.

[45:57]

I primed the pump, Greg. The thing that really struck me the most about that whole tragic story was her parents came to Tassajara. It took five days to find her. And her mom stayed for quite a while. Her mom started wearing Caroline's robes. And practicing. That's the most incredible story of practicing with loss that I've ever heard. Wow. I didn't know that about her mother. I mean, I knew they'd been there, but I didn't know that about the robes. That place has some serious power. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I see Maddie has a hand up. When you find yourself with and live with chronic illness, your world gets smaller and you lose access to things.

[47:21]

You lose access to nature walks, to sports, to pastimes and hobbies. And you start to wonder, what do you do with the time? Because it turns into staring at the ceiling when you can't sit up. Or... the wall, you know? And how do you turn staring at the ceiling into sitting and staring at the wall? That's something that I've been puzzling over as I've started coming here. So that is a kind of ephemeral loss that your stories tell me you may have some experience with at home and I just wonder, what do we do with the time when there's less to do because of that?

[48:35]

That's such a good question. I don't know if I have the answer. I bet you have the answer more than I do. Yeah. It sounds like a... stern teaching about time itself. I mean, when you have too much of it or it can't be filled with the things that it used to be filled with or might have been filled with if circumstances weren't the way they are. But you're practicing with it. That's all you can do. stay engaged with it and keep asking that question. And those don't sound like ephemeral losses to me. Linda.

[49:43]

It was a very moving talk, so first, thank you. Are you being Shuso 100%? I think so. I'm trying. Yeah. I'm trying. Yeah. I thought you were being 100% just now. Yeah. I don't know. It's funny, you know, That expression, has anyone noticed how it's entered our lexicon 100%? There's even an emoji now, 100% emoji. But nothing is 100%, right? I mean, I feel like it's our quest for... It's saying something about the uncertainty we're living with now, that that expression has entered the lexicon. And then I went ahead and used it. But all I know is I'm not leaving anything behind. I'm bringing my whole self here.

[50:53]

I've been bringing my whole self here. So maybe that's 100%. Thumbs up emoji. Thank you. Gary. I have to ask another question. It's not really a question though, but I think sometimes with loss, there's actually some happiness around it. And I think we shouldn't forget that. There's actually a lightness of being that can come about with loss. I'm so glad you said that, Gary, because I feel that way. And sometimes, I mean, if I talk about it in Zen Company, I don't get that look like you are out of your mind. But I really feel that is true. If we're willing to open to all of it, that there's also... Something about just the fullness of being alive, you know, that there's a joy there, even in the midst of grief.

[51:58]

I have felt that. So I'm grateful to you for bringing that up. We have a question online. Yeah, Baika. Oh, you're muted. Too many buttons. How many times have I been on Zoom? Like one million. Anyway, working on it. I really loved what you said about, or what Mjogan said about fire and doing what fire does. But throughout your talk, especially about Mojo, I couldn't help but remember the first time Mojo came to the Mount Diablo Zen group. And it seems to me, I could be making this up as something very remarkable, but he ran into the Zendo right away after we kind of greeted him, ran up to the bowing mat and did downward dog.

[53:14]

Anyway, I just wanted to, I've had so much loss in my life, so at the moment I wanted to recount that story. Yeah. Yeah. He's kind of the temple dog. We call him the temple dog.

[53:28]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.57