Unsurpassed, penetrating, and perfect dharma is rarely met with. Even in a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to, remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth, the Tathagata's words. Good morning. My name is Penelope Thompson, Luminous Heart. Hi, Carol. Nice to see you. Special. So I'm glad to be here this morning. A special welcome to those of you who are here with us for the first time.

[01:05]

And a special welcome to those of us who are not here for the first time but are here for the first time today in this moment. So to us all. So... Behind me are the ox herding pictures, and that's what I'm going to be speaking about today. I've been dwelling on them in this time, practicing with them and dwelling on them. At this time in our lives and in my particular life stage, These pictures are sometimes defined as a presentation or a depiction of the ten stages of enlightenment, or a coming to understand the nature of consciousness, knowing the self or true nature, symbolized by the ox.

[02:14]

So this particular teaching is my heart very much, and for me is the core, the essence of practice and why we practice. Each picture represents an aspect or a principle, you can say a stage, but I prefer not, of the journey. And they're not really, although they are presented... Here, as pictures 1 through 10, they're not meant to be worked with necessarily or understood as linear so much as spiral. So we keep coming through and back again and deepening into them. In other words, you don't graduate at picture 10, which is important to know. Practice is never finished.

[03:18]

I want to explore them a little bit with you today. So the Rinzai Zen master Kaku and Chiang lived in China at the end of the northern Song dynasty, so 12th century. And the verses and the preface and the commentary of the Oxherder pictures are attributed to him as well as others. Every part, every aspect. There are earlier versions of the Oxford pictures, but interestingly, they all end with the circle. The last picture is the circle, so emptiness, enlightenment, the idea that realization of oneness was it. There we are. That's the goal. It was the ultimate goal of it. But Kakowin, feeling this representation to be not complete, added more pictures.

[04:27]

And I'll talk about the end ones later. Philip Kaplow says, to make it clear that this Zen person of highest spiritual development lives in the world of forms and diversity. mingles with ordinary people whom he inspires with his compassion and radiance. So, as I said, there are many versions, five pictures, just as with the precepts. There are many versions of the precepts, starting with five precepts in some traditions. I'm going to be using Kakouin's version, which is the most commonly referred to version. And it's interesting that in Japan, Kakuin coming from China, that this is the most frequently used for instruction and for inspiration, his particular form. We often say that we practice or that we should practice without a gaining mind.

[05:45]

And I've always understood that to mean we shouldn't at any point be looking to pat ourselves on the back or have somebody else pat us on the back for our spiritual attainments or so we can mark our spiritual growth the way our parents used to mark our height. We're a grade-oriented and competitive person And it really starts on the playground, actually. It gets more sophisticated, but that's where it starts. And it's kind of the same at the base, the competition. So what grade did you get on the test? How much do you earn? Where do you live? Where did you go to college? Oh, a state school. Oh, I went to Princeton. Like that. on and on.

[06:50]

So this is the water we swim in. It's our cultural norm and habit to compare, to measure gains, and to be public about what our gains are, to be in comparing mind, in effect. Our very own president takes this to the very highest order. He's, in fact, the greatest. So we have all kinds of levels of comparative mind, to notice this pattern and to release this gaining mind, this habit, over time, is a great freeing and opening and a piece of work. All that. But I think, unless we are fully enlightened, fully enlightened, I believe we have gaining mind. All of us. to varying degrees in another sense, that we practice because we want to become aware of what's stuck in us, to see more clearly what we don't yet see, to grow, to expand, to open ourselves fully to loving other people,

[08:15]

to seeing others as ourselves and ourselves as other. Truly, not just the words, but the music, the real music of that. To realize our full Buddha nature. As Suzuki Roshi is oft quoted, we are all already enlightened. We just need a little improvement. I love that. I say that to myself often. We may start out meditating because we have patterns of high stress or because we're disappointed in love or we didn't get the job promotion or we have family challenges. And or, I would say, because we sense... that something essential is missing. An essential is something that keeps us, no matter what our achievements, our gains, our possessions, it keeps us in dissatisfaction, in dukkha.

[09:30]

In this tradition, For those of you who don't know, we have on Monday morning something called Wayseeking Mind Talks, which is one of my favorite parts of the Sangha experience, to hear how each of us arrived at practice, how we came. And I'm always touched, always amazed at how unique we are, how each of our unique stories on the one hand, and on the other hand, there's... tends to be this very strong recurring theme of dukkha, of dissatisfaction with one's life, in the sense that something is missing, not fulfilling, like that, of something else. It's sort of like the old Peggy Lee song, Is That All There Is? And I think that actually... is a motivating line.

[10:41]

Is this it? Is this all? So that's what this first picture of the ox herders story evokes. We're all ox herders searching for something. I so wish I had a huge screen on which to show you these pictures. which are so inviting. I invite you, especially if you're not familiar with them, to come up and look at them after the talk, or if you go online and put in Oxford or pictures, prepare for a feast. There are many, many, many versions of them, and they're quite lovely to see and also to work with. So I'm going to just jump in here. So picture number one... It's called Searching for the Ox. So this is that from the place of Is That All There Is.

[11:42]

The preface reads, so there's usually a preface and then verses and then commentary. The preface reads, Till now the ox has never been lost. So that sort of echoes Suzuki's were already enlightened. It continues, Why then do you need to search for it? Turning away from your own awakening, you became estranged from it. Winning and losing consume you like flames. So the verse is, Vigorously cutting a path through the brambles, you search for the ox. The path seems endless. Strength depleted, mind exhausted, you cannot find it. So for me, this is a parallel to the hero's journey or the hero's or heroine's journey, where in the first part of the journey, the seeker has left home.

[12:43]

They may have been thrown out of the castle. They may have stumbled and fallen into the woods, or they may very consciously have said, I'm going out for this grail. I'm going out for something. I'm going looking. So they basically are leaving what is familiar. what's already known. And in a very real sense, they can't go back home again. They don't quite fit in. It's like they got a little bit too much going, so they don't fit back. But at the beginning, the seeker is in confusion, lost in the brambles in the picture, still in the state of perhaps thinking that what we want or what we need is dependent on conditions. If I only had a true love, if I only had the best job, if I only had a house, and on and on, it would be better.

[13:44]

Although our experience, actually until then, would say that's not even so. It's kind of like searching for love in all the wrong places, in the real sense. So what is the ox? And who's the ox herder? What is she, he, they, we looking for? And we can ask or remember what our experience has been of being lost along the path. Holding in mind that these stages can and do arise and... They go this way, not this way, so we can fall back and forth. So in this first picture, the search has started with confusion, with obscuration, but still sort of game on, kind of.

[14:50]

The second picture is called Seeing the Traces. And the preface is, if you do not distinguish... Correct from incorrect, how will you recognize true from false? Since you have yet to pass through that gate, only tentatively have you seen the traces. And the verse is, Along the river, deep within the forest, you find traces. The tracks, suddenly as clear as the distant sky, lead you into the endless mountains. And it's followed by a waka. A waka is a... is a Japanese word for Japanese poem. So a waka is, like a haiku, is three lines, five, seven, five syllables. A waka is five, seven, five, seven, seven. This waka says, determination deep in the mountains, your efforts bear fruits. Tracks, how gratifying to see a sign.

[15:55]

So for us, since we're not out in the woods here looking for the ox, what might be the sign? Perhaps the ox herder heard Dharma talk or had a brief encounter with someone where there was a palpable felt shift or some deep sense of another possibility. And interesting for me always is that the person who's on the, who's the, giver, so to speak, in that situation, we have no awareness whatsoever of the gifting being received. Picture three, seeing the ox, and what I love about this, in every version that I've ever seen, there may be many more I haven't seen, and I know you can't see it from here, but you see the rear end of the ox

[17:01]

the tail, the buttocks, and the hind legs. It's not the whole ox. So, seeing the ox. Preface, through sound you gain entry, by sight you face your source. And the verse says, one form of the verse says, when the herdsman opens his eyes and takes a look, he sees nothing but himself. This is no longer a place for the ox to hide. So as with our practice, when our mind begins to quiet down, we begin to get the wonder, the sense of the wonder around us, and our sense of separation begins to drop away. So this is an important shifting time in our practice as ox herders to feel that, the dropping away.

[18:03]

of body and mind. This does not rid us of all our stuff, however. Poisons and vexations and personal annoyances we carry, we continue to have to work with. But we can trust in having seen the ox, at least the rear end, that we know the possibility of connectivity, of non-separation. And as we step into practice and we're studying sutras and texts, we hear Dharma talks, most particularly we study the precepts, which we can recognize. It's so deeply recognizable as true. They feel irrefutable when you face into them and work with them. We take chukai. And all of these steps that may be challenging, nevertheless, we at this point take vows to practice, just to practice with faith.

[19:20]

Picture four, catching the ox. This is also a charming picture. Preface, if you've chanced upon it, but you can't keep up with its high spirits, and it won't give up its love of sweet grass. If you want to tame it, you must lay on the whip. So the verse is, Through extraordinary effort you seize the ox. Still its will is forceful and its body spirited. Sometimes it runs high into the mountains, Other times it disappears into the mist. So we could call that monkey mind as well as ox mind at that point. So after the honeymoon that most of us have, I think, there's a certain time when we've just entered practice and it's new and we're deepening in and feeling the resonances and deepening into the experience of non-separation and oneness.

[20:28]

touching it. We all have and we may have had Kencho's moments of real temporary enlightenment. Then comes the practice of hanging in, taming the ox, working with our impediments. So at this stage there's wrestling with ego, giving up fixed positions. Sensei Michael Brunner says, sometimes our true nature is on the high plateau and we bask in its splendor. So that's when, you know, we use the label sometimes, do you have a good sit, you know, or do you have a good moment of time or a not good sit. Actually, there is no such thing, but we do that. We bask in the splendor. And other times where truth is shrouded in clouds. He says, we cultivate wisdom where oneness is perceived, but staying with that wisdom is a challenge.

[21:37]

Our focus shifts wildly between subject and object and boundlessness. So, this catching the ox is also a teaching of impermanence and not grasping. not even holding on to our kinsho experiences, and giving up fixed positions and ideas, which does not work for sissies, actually. Picture five, taming the ox. Preface, once one little thought arises, another follows. Nobody has that experience here, of course. Adhere to awakening and all becomes truth. Reside in ignorance and all is unreal. This happens not because of the world, but only because of your mind.

[22:38]

Keep a firm grip on that rope and do not waver. And the verse is, not for a moment put down whip or rein lest the ox wander back to dust and desire. Pull again and again until it's tame and gentle. Of itself it will follow without bridle and chain. So this picture depicts the art or the practice of taming our ox. So here the ox herder is no longer pulled around by the mind. This invites the ox herder to bring him or herself into one wholeness in everyday life. Zen teacher Shinzen Yang describes this as internalizing enlightenment to the point where it can't slip away from you.

[23:40]

And still, it's necessary to see where we're getting caught in our conditioning, our self-created world. Okay, picture six, also... It's the top one up here. So I know you need binoculars, but it shows the ox herder sitting astride the ox, very carefree, playing his flute as the ox... heads home. So Trungpa Rinpoche describes this saying the mind now obeys the master and becomes creative activity. And he calls this phase the breakthrough to a state of enlightenment. The preface says in part, stretched out on back of your ox, you gaze at the sky. We call you, but you won't turn around. catch at you but you won't be tied down.

[24:45]

So to imagine what it would be like to live in complete ease with your life just as it is now. What vexations rise up and then again how do we practice with them? Roshie Gyoku Nakao says of this picture, imagine that you can be just as you are at home. All your warts and shadows, strengths and weaknesses need not be hidden and are completely embraced by you. What is the unique expression of your original heart? And Qin Zanyang says, this is the ultimate surrender falling up into existence without fixation or needing to know what will happen next.

[25:49]

There is a faith here, letting go of the need to know, to actually experience the freedom of non-self or other kinds of judgment, even if not all the time, but to know this intimately. Okay, picture seven, the ox forgotten, the self remains. So here's the ox herder. Sitting in his hut, there's a moon, and he's gazing peacefully out his window. Preface, the Dharma is not dual. The ox just points to our subject. And the verse, this version, is from Dido Lurian Kaz Tanahashi. Astride the ox, you reach home.

[26:52]

Now at rest, the ox is forgotten. You are in blissful repose. And in the Trevor Kennedy version, he says, Singing and dancing, the herdsman leads a leisurely life. no longer bound to anything anymore. He has become his own master. The distinction between subject and object drop away. The ox is transcended. We see through the eyes of the universe, and importantly, compassion flows freely, and practice begins to take on a full sense of joy rather than striving. Here we are no longer attached to a fixed abiding place. The structure of the self will change. With practice it will drop away. So, this is picture eight, and this is when I spoke before about sometimes the pictures stopped with the empty circle.

[28:08]

This is picture eight. Whoa! With the empty circle, as you see up there. It represents, it's not the end for Kakuan, but it can be for some people, the end being full realization. This picture represents an entrance into Dharmakaya, which means the body of absolute reality that's without form, no form. We're identified with everything that is, and there's nothing outside of us. The Heart Sutra describes this as the place of prajnaparamita wisdom, the absence of striving and non-striving. Body and mind, self and other fall away. Philip Kaplow has a version of the verse that says, says, he, the axe herder, lingers not in the state of I am a Buddha.

[29:13]

Even the thousand eyes of Buddha can discern in him no specific quality. And Brunner says, our body extends in the ten directions without distinctions. We abide neither in enlightenment or in delusion. Both are void. Even thoughts about ourselves are no longer an issue. But, this is not the end. One can get stuck here, not opening, for example, to the suffering of the world, just staying in the bliss realm. It is even said of the Buddha that after enlightenment, before he returned, he was engaged in the bliss. And the return, the return part of the journey, the hero's journey, so to speak, heroine's journey, is that there is return that needs to happen.

[30:25]

One of my favorite descriptions of this is Joseph Campbell, who talks about, he says, after enlightenment, or after attaining the grail, whatever the grail is, we'll call it here enlightenment, there's this invitation to return, and he then says, I love this, how to render into light world language the speech-defying pronouncements of the dark. Let me say it again. How to render into light world, mundane world language, the speech-defying pronouncements pronouncements of the dark. This is another kind of leaving home, leaving the bliss, so to speak, not leaving it, but bringing it along, we can say. For bodhisattvas, this achieving of wisdom or shunyata is not a place to dwell. Full actualization in line with our vows.

[31:30]

to serve all beings, save all beings, makes us press on. Picture nine, return to the source. And the verse in this one is from Daito Luri and Kaz Tanahashi. Having returned to the source, effort is over. The intimate self sees nothing outside, hears nothing outside. Still, the endless river flows tranquilly on. My teacher, Roshi Nakao, used to suggest that at this point, at this place, in the pictures, is to take on the practice of really seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, awareness, without any preference. To just notice... When preference arises, just watch it. It's a very interesting practice.

[32:30]

This picture is referred to as the Sambhogakaya, which is the body of enjoyment and luminosity. Trungpa says there's a total absence of fear because there's warmth and space. Compassion is alive, so all communication is creative. It is the source in the sense of being an inexhaustible treasury of Buddhist activity. And Ruben Habito says, we open our hands and walk innocent. In so doing, the great absolute perfection of wisdom, Prajnaparamita, shines forth as compassion, beginning with the desire to have everyone. Experience this clarity. We show up without pretense, fully present and available, committed by vows to actualize what we have learned.

[33:36]

Last picture. You can fall in love with this person so much. It's called Entering the Marketplace with Extended Hands. Preface. Hiding your light, you shun the tracks of the sages of the past. Dangling your gourd, you come into town. Thumping your staff, you return to the hut. Visiting bars and fish stalls, you turn all into Buddhas. Verse. With bare chest and feet, you come to the market. Under dirt and ash, your face breaks into a laugh. With no display of magic powers, you make withered trees burst into flower. So here we are, us ox herders now, back in the daily life with all its challenges.

[34:47]

But how we are here with them is different, is other. We can be with them with open heart and a lightness of being. It's a deep freedom. We know how to be with difficulties, and we know how to transcend life's puzzles and demands not by trying to get away from them, but by entering into them with a clear sense of trust, acceptance, and always equanimity. And as we do so, compassion naturally arises to serve others, to alleviate suffering. It's simple responsiveness. This is the nirmanakaya, the fully awakened state of being in the world and manifesting the teachings for the benefit of all beings. Still, practice is needed to keep refining our understanding.

[35:54]

It never stops. Because we can get stuck in any of these stages. We all do sometimes, just us being human and all. We do. We can get becalmed. We can be deluded even by our spiritual realizations. I think it was last week or the week before during the memorial and celebration of Sojin Roshi, Cheikh Akron shared with us what Roshi had written on his Rakasu, which invites us to this nobody special way of being, and it reads, the true person is not anyone in particular, but like the deep blue color of the limitless sky, it is everyone, everywhere in the world. So this nobodiness, this nothing specialness, is an essential part of the return to the marketplace.

[37:00]

There's a poem I've always loved by Emily Dickinson that speaks into this for me. I'm nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too? Then there's a pair of us. Don't tell. They'd advertise, you know. How dreary to be somebody. How public like a frog to tell your name the live-long June to an admiring bog. Wonderful. Sort of nails it, doesn't she? During the time of the Tang Dynasty in China, there was an historical character who was called the cloth bag monk. There actually was such a figure and was probably what we might call a street person. And he was known for playing with children and he did carry a cloth bag with him with gifts for the children.

[38:14]

This returnee, this oxherder returnee to the marketplace is often described as being slightly shabby, disheveled, nothing special. So what is he doing? What are we doing as this nobody, this nothing special being? What happened to all that journey for enlightenment? Actually, he may be considered as an ideal. an enlightened person who looks like an ordinary person, who's easily approachable, available, but nothing special. Teacher Shinzen Young says, if we stay on the path, this is where we will end up. With bodhicitta, an intense call Intense call to be of service to our fellow human beings wherever we are.

[39:18]

This is a natural outcome of practice. The end goal, so to speak, of practice, to live as nobody. One of the descriptors for the ox herder in this picture is returning to the marketplace with bliss-bestowing hands. How lovely. To respond. He's just responding. How am I doing here? On occasion, I consider encounters that I have had with such nobodies in my life and how each one of them opened me, changed me, deepened me, re-pointed me. Sometimes they're people I've never met but I've heard, people like the Dalai Lama or... Certainly, I practice with Thich Nhat Hanh, with my own teacher, Roshi Egyoku, Nakao.

[40:21]

Sometimes it can be a chance meeting with somebody, a very brief paragraph of connection, so deep that I fall or have fallen into not knowing, and there's an opening, and I'm changed for the better. I know we've all had these experiences. I really trust this to be true. I'm very grateful for all these teachers, these helpers along the way, either by the example of who they were with others or by what they shared with me in word or in spirit or both. Each one a lover. One could say a shameless lover, simply seeing as is. by heart-mind, what is wanted, what is needed, and then responding. So I'll end by saying this being nobody is an almost unimaginable freedom.

[41:29]

The freedom of being nobody is sort of like being able to fly. There's a weightlessness, not needing to know not needing to be concerned with how we're seen out there, not needing to have a backup of our accomplishments or attainments, including the spiritual ones. It's a spaciousness beyond all words. Total freedom. I'm nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too? Thank you. So I'm open to whatever wants to come forward. Thank you for this wonderful, encouraging talk.

[42:35]

I'm going to ask about the circle part. and the emptiness, and whether, is it our belief as Soto practitioners, or do we think that a person comes to a point in their life, nobody's ever finished with practice, but is there a point when a person says, well, now I'm completely empty, I'm nobody, and now it's time for me to go back to the town with gift-bestowing hands, or is it, something that might happen 10 times a day. I mean, the people that we talk about as our teachers and that we admire, do we think that they, even if I didn't come to that place, do I think that the Dalai Lama did and that's something he could do, but I'm never going to be able to do it? Or how do you conceive of that as a possibility?

[43:38]

Can everybody get enlightened? What does it really mean? Can everybody get enlightened? We're all already enlightened, of course, but can we become nobody? I think what I'm understanding is, and that's why I was speaking about the phases and stages that go in and out, even if we achieve... This is my story. This is my belief. I'm not... the authority on this in any way, but that we can become enlightened many times. And we can also behave in a less than enlightened way. We can go back to stage one and two. We can do this many times in a day. And I personally had to come to grips with the teachers of mine that were life-altering for me, also had warts and flaws and made mistakes, sometimes way big ones.

[44:49]

I'm not going in the sexual territory. I'm not going there. I'm talking about other kinds of errors of judgment or where ego suddenly rose up and so on. I'd like to trust that they worked with that thought. came back again. So I think I don't see these this way. I see them this way and sometimes like that and then forward again and like that and forward again. It feels more like a flow than a road. I don't know if that got to what you asked. Well, that helps. So there's not... Such people wouldn't say, oh, March 1973, that was the month that I... got clear. And I've been coming back to the marketplace ever since. I'm sure that there may be people who say that, but probably those would not be your best teachers.

[45:51]

Thank you. Okay, that's what I was hoping you would say. Do you have a question online? Oh, sorry. Hi, that's me. Hi, Ariadne Thompson. Hello. This is my daughter. Go ahead. I was so incredibly moved by that talk. Really, it was so beautiful to me and really encouraged my kind of desire to practice more. And I just appreciated the way you talked about things as like a movement and a development that keeps going in a spiral and never ends. I also really, what stuck out to me was something about the honeymoon period of practice. And I sometimes feel like when we're in that period of practice, there's like a given kind of energy and excitement to do things for practice.

[46:54]

And I was wondering if you had any thoughts about when the pilot light is not so lit. When the what? Say again, please. When the pilot light is not so lit. You know, when you get kind of deflated or bored or you kind of lose your aim, how you work with that? Did people hear that more or less? Yes? Okay. What rose up for me as you were speaking was when we, sort of like the different, if we stay with the honeymoon image, after the honeymoon is the marriage. Is the... And any relationship that will hold requires, unless people just go into sheer denial or drugs or however to survive, requires work, requires seeing, requires self-looking, requires all the work of practice to let things drop off or not stay attached.

[48:06]

So any practice that one has that supports that seems to me to be how you... And sometimes you can come back into honeymoon. I mean, their phase of honeymoonedness along the way can also be there at times to remind you what you're doing. Thank you. Hi, Luminous. Hi. Beautiful talk. When are you going to play music? When am I going to play music? That stand there. It was supposed to be a joke. Okay. I could sing you a song, but you'd be sorry. I wouldn't mind. My question is, how do you find...

[49:07]

yourself in others and others in yourself? This is the one I feel like I have to work with the most personally. This is very hard to do. I mean, we can say the words of it. We do say the words of it that we want to live this way. And it's very challenging. But it for me means if I'm looking at you... and have a judgment or a response or an impulse that rises up, usually in the negative then, instead of stopping there to say, well, he's just a so-and-so, to take it home, to come back, to turn into it and say, where is this? What is this? Where is this in me? What's triggering here? What is this? to look into it so I can see it more clearly so that I can begin the process of releasing.

[50:14]

It doesn't mean that it's so easy that the next time I see you, it will automatically I'll be having that response. Thich Nhat Hanh used to always talk about the storehouse consciousness and then the seeds rise up, rise up. At different times, different emotions, different everythings rise up in all of us. And whichever seeds we water are the ones that grow. So if I can stop watering the seed of a particular judgment or stop watering it by looking into it, that's the way I know to practice toward it. I cannot say... I mean, there are people that when I look at them, I think, I'm not you, man. I am so not you. I am so, I mean, who am I referring to here? But, you know, so it's work. It's work. Thank you. I also thought that the Oxford pictures are really like marriage or like relationship.

[51:21]

It's really like relationship, all those steps. Yes. Not steps, you know. Yeah, thank you. Yes. This is the last one. Okay, Judy, your last but not least here. Thank you, Luminous Heart, for your talk. So as I was listening to your talk, I couldn't help, my eyes kept moving from the ox herding pictures to the memorial picture. card for Renee Goode. And it got me pondering these pictures anew in terms of the path, the practice of solidarity, and specifically in terms of nonviolent resistance. Of course, I'm thinking very much of Dr. King and how they had to train and keep training

[52:25]

And so envisioning that now, you know, thanks to your talk as a spiral, I'm wondering how you see this, if you consider this as the spiral of solidarity specific to the path of nonviolent resistance in these difficult times. I'm not quite getting your essence. I'm sorry, but say for me, please, another way I want to respond. Another way to say it might be, how do you see the marriage of fear and courage? Because, you know, I'll speak for myself. To get up and, you know, get through an app a request to show up, somewhere where I might get arrested or shot or someone near me might.

[53:31]

But if I don't go, someone will get arrested or shot or something. And so I have to really be with what is it to open those hands. And is that for me to do? Or is this in the Maha Sangha, the bell is ringing, I'm the Doshi this morning, I need to go. How do we discern? And for me, what comes up often can be the sensation that I might first experience as fear and how it can turn, and if I were to give it a label, could be courage, or the way I think of it, I can't remember if it was Rosa Parks, but it was someone, maybe someone here can correct me. You know, why did she get on the bus? During the, you know, when... Why did she get on the front of the bus?

[54:43]

She was supposed to be on the back of the bus. And she said something like... her job was to do what she was doing. It was somebody else's job to kill her if they needed to. Something like that. And I'm using this kind of extreme because we have someone who was killed. So it's real. And so if this is really a spiral, and we envision it as a spiral of solidarity, whether we call that bodhicitta or love your enemy or whatever it might be, how How do you practice with that in terms of these pictures? Because you've brought those forward as a path. I'm feeling Joanna Macy in the room very much because she worked so much with young activists.

[55:47]

That's how she started her work. For those of you who may not know her, she was a... a Buddhist teacher, scholar, poet, social activist, supreme, and the author of many books on how to be deeply involved. And the first workshop that I ever did with her was called Despair and Empowerment in the Nuclear Age. That was the name of it. It was a three-day process, two-day. And we started off with despair. people naming despair and despair and despair and despairs and fears that they had about where we were going, where the world was going. And that took a very long period of time, people just putting it out, putting it out, putting it out, feeling it, wailing, crying, not holding it very quietly but still stating it.

[56:48]

And then there was this... or lack of better description, organicity, like enough, and it started to move this way toward empowerment, toward personal empowerment, and noticing that, and then empowerment in the larger phase. So you asked the question, I think, or you said at one point there, fear to courage. I don't know. I suppose there are people who just macho it over the edge. I don't think that's a useful way. I think it's important to really notice one's fear and to feel one's fear and to own it and to name it and to shake with it like animals do, to literally have it, allow it. And then there's this, again, possible organicity for outer movement. And then I think as well...

[57:51]

You're speaking of sangha accruing around how do we respond sangha-ly in larger support groups to what is happening in our world right now, which is very strong stuff. I don't know if that answers. I think you just added a picture there of the ox shaking, the trauma response. So I had this image of all of us oxen just shaking our way. Wouldn't that be great? Thank you very much. Thank you. So I think we're at time, yes. Beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible.

[58:52]

I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless.

[59:02]

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