There's been a lot going on, and I just want to take note of the fact that there is a lot going on right now in the world. I'm not going to make it part of my talk, but I do want to recognize that we're in the Middle East and horror happening. And so anything we do here today, I think we need to kind of dedicate maybe some of our practice, some of our sitting, to the notion of peace and compassion and peace. So I want to say that. Yes. So I think we're ready. Men of the surface penetrating and

[01:02]

Day. It is my great pleasure to introduce Jeri. Boliva Sese is her dharma name, pure stream, nourishing heart. Jeri began her practice in 1989 at Green Gulch with Reb Anderson, came to BCC seven years later in 1996, became a priest ordained by Sojin Mel Weitzman in 2012 and then received Dharma Transmission in 2017.

[02:04]

She currently leads and facilitates the Wednesday night group, open to everyone. And her just personal note about her, she is now retired. She was a pediatrician and also was a focus on public health. and was on the faculty of UCSL. She spends a lot of time now with her four grandchildren. You might see her rolling on the floor with them and all of a sudden breaking out in a song, here or there. So let's give a warm welcome to Ikushin, Seisen Ikushin. Closer or 5 o'clock? Further. Yeah. Is that good?

[03:10]

Everybody put my gown. Very good. Okay. It bodes ill. So the first thing I wanted to say is welcome to practice. That's a four-week period every year led by the senior students. And it is a time for us, an opportunity for us to deepen our practice, to really get in and study. and make a commitment to some regular participation when we make out our forms, when we sign up for sashimi, sign up for a certain number of Saturdays and classes and so on. But that's really, that's our aspiration and our wish to be part of the sangha and our wish to be part of an effort to awaken.

[04:26]

and have that opportunity. And it's a really great opportunity for all of us, for all of us who are trying to participate and do something just for everyone to come together, especially at this time. It's an important thing. So I'm hoping that you think about during this practice period, think about your efforts and what is appropriate and try to make it make it make some kind of commitment to yourself of what you're going to do how you're going to how much you're going to study um what events you're going to be part of um so that we when we're all in this uh this kind of boat together uh riding the waves of this practice period and the waves of not knowing how to be and so forth um seems to be we're all fortunate to actually be in a place of beginner's mind and so i hope people have that mind and make the commitment to participate as much as they can.

[05:36]

What I thought I would do before getting into any, Dara not particularly, was background for the Ginzer Cohen which we're studying right now. And because a lot of us know some of this, So I wanted to make sure we kind of set the stage before diving into text. So the first thing I was going to talk about was Dogen's life. Ehi Dogen, of course, is the founder of the Soto Den tradition in Japan. And so he's our guy here. And we rely on Dogen. And we learned about Dogen and his practice through Suzuki Roshi and Sochi.

[06:37]

We continue to learn through them. But he was really their inspiration. And his work has been a guiding force for this temple for a long time. So Dogen was born in 1200 in the 13th century in Kyoto. which had been Japan's capital. He was born, interestingly, to a high society family. I don't know that I knew this before. He had a father that was related to the emperor. His wife was related to the ministers. A very wealthy family, a very aristocratic family, and born into that. And at that time in Japan, interestingly, Buddhism has gotten to the point where kind of the practice of the rich, the rich folks owned the temples and they had armies to protect the temples.

[07:47]

and the armies were fighting, fought anybody who tried to invade, and they supported it. So it was a very different society that he was born with. And many people in Japanese felt, in Japan at that time, felt it was a very bad time for Buddhism there. So unfortunately for Dogen, He was born on privilege. His mother died when he was three, and his father died when he was three, and his mother died when he was eight. So it's kind of like, in a way, Shakyamuni Buddha was born to a family of wealth that supported temples and things, and lost his mother in birth, childbirth. But then somehow, got in touch with in his childhood, he was exposed to Buddha's teaching.

[08:51]

And he basically rejected his lay life and entered the monastery. And by age 13, he was ordained as a novice monk in the Tendai tradition. And he practiced in the Tendai tradition through his teen years. He was concerned about this question, the question that led him to actually change the whole space of Buddhism in Japan. And that's the question that, if we're already already Buddha, why do we have to practice? And that was... And that was something that really became his mission to answer that. And so when he was 21, he and I teacher to China and to many monasteries, visit many teachers.

[10:03]

And finally, he found his true teacher, Ru Jing, as we know, and Ru Jing gave him face-to-face transmission of the Dharma. So his dog was Rujim. So it's interesting, this lineage, I found it interesting looking back at the lineage of Rujim, because lately I've been interested in finding the traces of the current Dharma and where they come from. and actually where they originate. And it turns out that, and so in thinking about Dogen, I also, the teaching of Hamshir, who was generations before Muzhin, but it turned out that,

[11:10]

Kongshur, the silent illumination as a teaching, had been the abbot at the same temple as Ruzhin. And that explained to me that that teaching came through a generation and through a generation of Kongshur. And it explained a lot about Dogen because and Sojin Roshi and Suzuki Roshi, because they really used a lot of that material, a lot of that teaching in their teaching, and they brought that teaching to us. I looked then at that teaching and looked beyond So I looked for all of the possible ancestors that would influence Dogen in his writing of Genjo Koan.

[12:14]

And so what I found... Basically, there are echoes of the teaching of Genjo Koan that you can kind of trace back. And of course, many of you might know that or not, but you can trace... here, and I thought it would be interesting to just hear them before we get into any discussion of Benjo Koan. So the first one was Sekadopisen, or Shitu, who was also one of Suzuki Roshi's favorite. And he wrote something called The Song of the Grass Roofhut. And part of it is Turn around the light to shine within and just return. The vast and conceivable source can't be faced or turned from. Meet teachers, be familiar with their instruction.

[13:20]

Find grass to build a hut and don't give up. Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk innocent. Thousands of words, a myriad interpretations are only to free you And he also wrote the Sando Kai, which we chant here, which says, with a few excerpts, the spiritual source shines clear in the light, the branching streams flow on in the dark. Grasping at things is surely delusion, but sadness is still not enlightenment. In the light there is darkness, but don't take it as darkness. In the dark there is light, but don't see it as light. Light and darkness oppose one another. In front and back, foot, and walking. And then, following Sekutokisan, came Tosan Myoka and Dantram, with his Julmira Samadhi.

[14:28]

And there are echoes of Julmira Samadhi in Genjo common as well. The teaching of thusness has been intimate. from Buddhists and ancestors, by Buddhists and ancestors. Turning away and touching are both wrong. Just to depict it in literary form is to stain it with defilement. It is like facing a jeweled mirror, form and image, behold each other. You are not it. So as you start to study Genjo Cohen, you see almost the same lines repeated. in the same ideas, like the use of the mirror, the light and darkness. These just came down through the ancestors. And the most important one for Dogen was Hamshir, who took from those people and wrote his interpretation of how to understand the way.

[15:35]

So Hang Shur's poem, which really inspired Dogen, and very much inspired the angel Cohen, is called the Acupuncture Needle of Zen. The essential function of all Buddhas, the function of all ancestors, is to know without touching things, and illuminate without encountering objects. Knowing without touching things, illuminating without encountering objects. This illumination is miraculous. Knowledge innately subtle has never engaged in discriminating thinking. The illumination miraculous has never displayed the slightest identification, never engaging in discriminative thinking. This knowledge is rare without match, never displaying the most minute identification. This illumination is complete without grasping. Here's the bottom, fish lazily swim on, the sky is vast without end, birds fly into the distance.

[16:44]

So just hearing that, you're also hearing part of NinjaCon. There are references all the way through. So I just find that, for me, because we talk about our practice, and we talked about that, Alan talked about it a little bit, walking in the steps of our ancestors. We walk in the steps of our ancestors and then we jump off the 100-foot pole or whatever into ourselves. Understanding. So these are the steps of the ancestors and they are for me very much so. And so I think it's interesting to look at these connections. For me, I find that part of a study period, that's what aspects is, to have us be able to dive through and see the depth of it, not to learn all of it, not to read all of it, but to just get a sense of the richness of the teaching of the ancestors and how they come through these thousands of years and are still alive in our practice.

[17:57]

So studying them, to me, is very exciting. And so I hope I can transmit that. I mean, it's hard when you're listening to material and it's kind of, oh yeah, but it's really, if you take it to heart, it's like this is what is part of us. This is part of our lineage. This was part of Suzuki Roshi. These people were, Suzuki Roshi talked about these particular people very often in these particular writings. And so that's why I wrote decided that I wanted to share that. And it may not, you know, many of you can't be interested in that sort of thing. But I find it feeds me. And then I see Dogen jumping off from here, taking the next step. The step, you know, where he's taking the next step. And Genjo Cohen is really

[19:00]

fascicle, that was the first fascicle in the Genja, was originally in the Shrivo Genzo. Other versions have the Perfection of Wisdom as the first chapter, but this was the essence. This, and this, on this whole lineage. So it felt like to me, Dogen was taking the next step from these people that inspired him. Sherry, your microphone needs to... Oh, he's doing it again? So, interestingly, Genjo Koen, which we're studying in this period, was originally written as a letter for a lay practitioner. It's written in Japanese. And he was teaching, he dedicated it to this lay practitioner. And he wanted to bring, it was part of his effort when he came back from China to bring the practice to lay people.

[20:01]

and to take it out of the aristocracy and to bring it to the people. And to really work to make this practice something that people could participate in. Kind of elitist, elitist kind of magic thing. It's something that the regular people could participate in. So, And in this particular chapter, I guess, there was a quote from Nishiera, who was one of the translators, a famous Japanese scholar of dogen, and one which, again, Suzuki Roshi very much admired in Sojin. And he says that this work of the Genjo Koan is the skin, flesh, bones, and marrow of Dogen.

[21:07]

And that all the other fascicles are merely offshoots of the Genjo Koen. And he's saying this is really Dogen's central teaching. This is the teaching of the Soda Zen lineage. So the Genjo Koen comes by a lot of names. So you'll hear it as the actualizing the function, the question of everyday life, the matter at hand, the realized law of the universe, the acupuncture needle of Zen, and manifesting suchness. So it has lots of names. People really seem to have a lot of fun with translating Genjo. Because usually you can get a Japanese name and you just say, okay, that's simple. I'll get, I'll just go to the, I'll just go to the dictionary and get again.

[22:11]

And apparently it could be, I learned, but I picked what felt from mostly Okamura, what felt most comfortable and most accessible, so hopefully. So gen, the gen part of genjo koan, means to appear, to show up, or to be in the present moment. It can also mean and that be a noun for something unseen that can now be seen. Okamura says so gen can be a kind of manifestation or actualization of something potentially. And Jō means to become or to complete or to accomplish. And Uchiyama Roshi says in his own way, the ordinary profundity that the present moment becomes the present moment.

[23:24]

Gen is something which is beyond hidden and apparent. Jo is something beyond decaying and dichotomy. So, and Okamura says, again, genjo-kon means to manifest, to actualize or to appear and become. And as a noun, it means to experience reality as actualizing present moment. The word ko is to equalize in an inequality or not tunis of inequality and equality. An is to keep one's position beyond such boundaries. So Genjo Cohen is sort of an active call to us of actualizing our practice. Walking through all of our practice and emerging with the understanding that will save us.

[24:31]

So... Dogen comes, Dogen in his working with the Genjiro Koan, takes a step beyond the Heart Sutra and the notion of the Heart Sutra, which talks about how we free ourselves from ego attachments, transform our lives from suffering to the expression of reality. If there are fixed places or conditions, it's called samsara or nirvana, delusion or enlightenment. But the teaching from the Heart Sutra, he feels, he felt, was too concrete in terms of it's either this or that, and that there is samsara and nirvana.

[25:53]

And we have to work to go to enlightenment. Here, and in order to do that, we have to get rid of forms. We have to get rid of attachments. We have to get rid of names. We have to go into emptiness and non-form. Be free. Dogen doesn't say that. He says, the five aggregates form, feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are not obstacles truly. They themselves are manifestations of impermanence and lack of independent existence. In fact, he says that they express the reality of all beings and are therefore prana. So we must accept body and mind and use these practices.

[26:57]

There's no escaping body and mind and the aggregates. Action rather than thinking is practice. So to see the reality of every being, to see the reality of the world of phenomenon is practice. To actually see and understand and penetrate is practice, and that's where Dogen steps forward in the Pencha Khan. So he basically is encouraging us to open ourselves completely to the world as it is in this moment, and take in everything. It's not negating. It's not an negating thing. It's an accepting thing. It's accepting what is. And not, Hozan talked about putting names on things, and there's a whole thing with, certainly with the people who teach through the Heart Sutra, once you name it, you know, the name kings, your Adalaya consciousness, your storehouse consciousness, and you have a whole story with it.

[28:12]

But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about this, process of actually being present with what is acknowledging it, being okay with it, seeing its impermanence, seeing its lack of permanent self, or even seeing and then seeing how things can be beneficial or not, the duality of things. So we have to actually make that part of our practice. rather than sitting and saying, well, let everything go. Don't think of anything. Don't name anything. Don't go. Of course, emptiness is fine. I mean, it's fun to hang out there. I mean, we all have that, you know, that feeling when we go into Samadhi and we really say, oh, thank God I'm in it. Thank Buddha. I'm in the temple.

[29:13]

I can relax now. I can let everything go. and I can be without interruption. And yet we're here, and there's constantly noise, and there's constantly things going on. So there's never a sense where you're in a place, no matter where you are, that there isn't stimulus. There isn't light. There isn't touch. There isn't heat and cold. There isn't noise disruption. There isn't building. Even when you go to Casa Hara, you know, here they build the crew, you know. whatever, even though you're in the temple. So you really can't, even though we say we drop everything, we can never really drop everything, because it's always there. And what Dogen is saying here is that you, very key part of what he's saying, is that that is everything, everything is Buddha Dharma. Everything can actually, can help us actualize Buddha Dharma.

[30:15]

So that's a really different message than the Heart Sutra. And so I just want to do a little bit about the first couple of sections of the Genjurkan, which actually many of the people who talk about the Genjurkan say basically The whole Genjo Koan, the whole premise of the Genjo Koan is the first three sections. That basically they all create the reality and the practice, and the practice and actualization, that model, and that all the other sections of the Genjo Koan are just offshoots. They're really late. So the first three give you the basis and the first three generally are seen as sometimes the first step is the characterization of human existence or the world of form, right?

[31:34]

How do we work with the world of form? The second is how is it when we are seeing the emptiness. How do we see the emptiness? And the third is transcending both of those. Transcending those. So, yeah, form is emptiness, emptiness form, but it is beyond form is emptiness, emptiness form. Two, they both are the Buddha Dharma. There's no picking and choosing this Buddhadharma. And so he starts off with section one of the Genjo Koan. As all things are Buddhadharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, birth and death. And there are Buddhas and sentient beings.

[32:39]

There's a second translation. uh when all buddhas are buddha dharma there is delusion and realization practice life and death buddhas and living beings so sojan when he you can if you go back you can hear so many talks so i should love again when i was here he was always talking about when i first came gave so many classes on it i wish i you know remembered all of them but One of the things he did was he wanted to make sure that people really understood these words. That these, even though have meaning, words have impact. And so, and it's, so one of the things he wanted to be sure to clarify, when he started off his lecture on gender equality, is to make a dharma's small d and dharmas big d. And we do talk about that.

[33:41]

Dharmas are all the things that we can encounter, right? Small dharmas are basically all phenomenon. They include the constituents of mentality and constituents of body. This is the world of cause and effect of karma. Duality. And all dharmas, all small dharmas are continually interacting with one another in this world transformation. Buddha's teaching is that all these parts fit together as parts of the universal whole. Ucciyama puts it, this sentence can be seen as a description of how our minds work as we begin Buddhist studies. Observing different aspects of all things. So it's interesting because when Sojin talks about it, he's saying basically every Dharma is to learn from.

[35:01]

Every experience is to wake us up. And so, no matter what it is, being kind with yourself and being accepted, something has presented itself that you don't work with. And the Suzuki motion you send you is always going to be a problem, so you don't have to look for that. So, you don't have to look hard to find something that's bothering you. You know, your leg hurts. You're hungry. You're hot. You have an annoying thought about somebody. I mean, these things are coming up all the time. And what Dogen is saying here is all of these things are Buddha Dharma. And that's pretty radical, really. All of these things are Buddha Dharma. So they're not annoyances. They're actually welcome.

[36:04]

You know, you have problems? Great. Because if you can be with your problems and you're settled in your Zazen practice and you're able to just be with them without any kind of problem, you can see them come and go. You can see a pain that you have early on relax sometimes. It can get worse too. You can sit there like I did today saying, wow, you know, I had hurt my knee about a year ago and it was Finally back into working order, but I sat down and I was comfortable and I thought, ah, this guy is so great. I can sit comfortably again. Yeah, until we were eating and my legs said, oh, I don't want this. This is not okay. So, and that's just, you know, I started to grab onto the fact that I could sit a certain way again as a thing that was permanent.

[37:04]

Well, of course it wasn't permanent. It was just some ordinary thing that happened, you know, and it happens to us all the time. I mean, this is really the bottom line of this first... So, the other thing Sojin pointed out about this, it's interesting, so we're only on the first word, right? He talked about the first word of the Genjo Koan, and you see that... In one translation it's all things are Buddha, and another one is when all things are Buddha. And Sojin wanted to realize, Sojin's interpretation of when is at the time you realize that all dharmas are in fact dharma. So when you realize that, You can see the forms.

[38:05]

You can see all the phenomenon. That's okay. That's part of practice. That's part of our sitting practice. So the forms are here. They're here. They're gone. I see an attachment to this one. I see an aversion to that one. All of this is part of our enlightened experience of seeing reality as it is in the present moment. This is the present moment is here. It's reminding me, oh, be careful of my knee. That's okay. I need to know to be careful of my knee. I don't need to do anything about it. I don't need to make a whole story about it. Oh, it's not going to be really better and I'm going to have to do, I don't have to do that. I can just say pain in the knee, fine. The food is good. I need, which I did. The other translation he said is, as all things are Buddha Dharma, as all things are Buddha Dharma, not when.

[39:11]

And that's kind of, I kind of added a word for myself, as if all things are Buddha or something like that. How could we do as? As it is, this is as it is. I'm in trouble, but actually, I think as can be something too, as it is, as this is, can tell you the same thing, but harder for me to identify with. So, So this section basically allows us to have some discriminative thought.

[40:20]

We can, by seeing things, we can see the reality of things. We can see dependent co-arising. We can see interdependency. We can look and see that in our lives. And so that is not such an easy thing in a way, because how can you realize the Genjo Kahn in this way? How can you realize all of the universe existing, interacting, arising and ceasing in each moment? How do you do that? And what Dougie was kind of saying is, well, it's not so magical. You just look at what's happening every moment. And whatever happened every moment is your teacher. And if you can do that, you're living, you're actualizing the Buddha Dharma. That's what he's saying. I think that sounds pretty good.

[41:22]

So this section is, it just says, I was summarizing here, The view of seeing things in the phenomenal realm is essentially the first step to study the realm of forms, the form of forms, to be with them, to accept them, to penetrate them, in order to see their emptiness and their interconnectedness, and to recognize that Buddhadharma includes duality and non-duality as aspects of reality. I wrote that in some words. Yeah, so that really is the summary of the first section, which is really important. It's kind of like basic, right? It is our basic practice. That is what we do every day. But we don't recognize the value. We don't always recognize that when Buddhas are Buddhas, he says later, when Buddhas are Buddhas, they don't recognize that they're Buddha.

[42:25]

Just living that way every day living in that moment-to-moment awareness and acceptance and inquisitiveness that's actualizing the practice so section two that was only the first step you can imagine all the however many sections we're going to go go through or something um the second one the second one is as without an abiding self there is no delusion no realization no buddha no sentient beings, no birth and death. Another translation is when 10,000 dharmas are not fixed self, there are no delusion and no realization, no Buddha, and no living . So, Soja says that this is really just, this is really the Heart Sutra, right?

[43:27]

And first of all, the 10,000 dharmas and the Buddha Dharma are the same. So he's just recognize the emptiness and the no self. Things don't exist in the same way. Not that they don't exist. So he says there's no delusion. Of course there's not. There always is. So he's just saying when you go and realize it's kind of a negation. Know this, know that, like the Hartsusha. But in this case, Um, always, in Genji Koan, he's saying the opposite. So whenever you hear one thing, you hear the other part. And so, um, so he, um, he says that you have to, you have to know, um, that there,

[44:35]

There are different conditions and different circumstances in our lives. That's always part of every bit of practice. And that we need to... so that we can experience this emptiness, we can experience this feeling of me, but yet know that it is, that's a one-sided view. It's never known, it's always the other in everything. So Algamora says, we wear the clothing of occupation such as doctor, student, teacher.

[45:38]

But when we sit down facing the wall, we let go, including comparing ourselves to others. We take off this clothing. In Zazen, I am not a priest, not Japanese, nor American. In Zazen, we are neither rich nor poor, have no religious label. The wall in Zazen, we are neither deluded or enlightened beings. We are neither alive or dead. We're just as we are. We take off our clothing and become the naked self. So he's saying, first, you know, in the first one, examine all the phenomenon. See them, recognize them as Buddha Dharma. And in the second one, give all that up. Basically, give all that up and recognize that just being there in the present moment without any identity. stories or anything just being there and being your naked self creates an opportunity actually for you to actually see really see because you're not you're not you're not coming in with a bunch of mind clutter so we use we start off you know in our shamatha practice of sitting to be calm right and to drop off

[47:07]

and to be comfortable, and to be solid. And then the phenomenon come, and they do us what they do. And then we penetrate the phenomenon, and recognize their no-self, and recognize their emptiness. And then we'll come. We're still calm. And there's no delusion and no mind. We're going in and out of these things all the time. And Sojin says, we're always, always continuously facing our tendency to find aversion or attachment in what's going on. And that's not going to go away.

[48:10]

And that's really what this is about, is that stuff is never going to go away. In reality, that stuff is feeding us. And so he said, see, I guess Sosha said something, the poisons, greed, hate, and delusion, are always there. Always there, and they always will be there. So there's no state of nirvana. They're always interconnected and interacting, and we go from one to the other. We might feel certainly differently, but the reality is that it's not going to change. We can't expect the way our minds work completely. We try to transform our consciousness, get rid of some of our hindrances and our obstacles that's true we do and we can but we're still human and we still have our our feelings and our sensations and our scandas kicking stuff off all the time so we're never going to be we're free only when we accept that when we accept both the form and the emptiness and the and go beyond it to a to to

[49:35]

Weeping clear, as he says in the third thing. Weeping clear. Thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas, yet an attachment blossoms fall and an aversion we've spread. So that just is, so we went through working with forms, dwelling in emptiness, and yet And the leap clear is an opening to duality and non-duality, to everything, the whole picture. So it's really kind of a radical when you think about the old Buddhist teachings and how Dogen brought this teaching. and how effective it was in transforming, basically transforming.

[50:38]

So I really, I know I went on, but I just actually love this, I don't know. Maybe other people don't, but. I love diving into the material like this, and I love parsing it, because it makes me feel like I can internalize it, and really in it, and if you just kind of swish over it, He doesn't. You have to kind of get it. That's what he's talking about. You have to live it, get it, breathe it in your body and mind. So, there you go. Do we have, we're going to stop? We can, right? It's 11.20. So, we can have a few minutes, huh? If people want to say something. I went over, I know. What can I say? There are a couple of questions. Comments. Kabir online has one.

[51:45]

Okay. Morning, Jerry. Hi. Thank you for this beautiful talk. So I have a bit of a, the phrase that kept coming to my mind was see as is. I wanted to see if you can say something about that. See as is. As it is. See as it is. Or see as is. Yeah. Well. And I think that's. To me see as is. Is exactly the idea of. Recognizing. That. The emptiness and the non-self in everything that we see. Because that's ultimately the reality of whatever we're seeing. So see through it. Penetrate it through it. And see it as basically something that's arising and ceasing.

[52:47]

Basically something that is not separate. That is not self itself. It's just it. It's just it, right? That's it. It can be anything, right? It can be my understanding. I've got it. I don't know. What's that? But it is what is in the moment and real. And to look at the reality, the true reality of what we're looking at. And it's constantly. Yes. And it constantly goes away. And comes in. Constantly having to come back to it. Always. Just don't serve them tea. You're never going to make it to. I'm sorry. Thank you, Carrie. Thank you. Your talk brought to mind that Thich Nhat Hanh said that Maitreya Buddha would be collective awakening.

[53:49]

So it would be the collective. And we chant that we're waking up. So I'm wondering, If you could say a word about, like this week, in very present is collective greed, hate, and delusion. Yes. So I'm just wondering how this teaching relates to Sangha practice, refuge of Sangha, waking up together. You kind of have two thoughts there. One is how we collectively work collectively when we are faced with whatever situation. And to me, it works by encouraging people and hearing people.

[54:55]

and having compassion, and in that state of having compassion, knowing that we're all the same, there's no separate self, and we're all part of an interconnected self, that we can together move. You're talking about what's going on in the world today. And in that state of collective awareness, something may arise. So is that the purpose of our collective forms, like Oriopi and so on, chanting? The purpose of our forms is to show how we're interconnectedly. We have a form of eating in the Zendo. We have the giver, receiver, and gift. You're interacting with somebody. And it's one action. It becomes one action. It's not separate. It's not a separate server, a separate eating. We're doing a dance together of interconnectedness, and that's really what our practice is about, and recognizing that we are doing an interconnected dance.

[56:09]

Okay, well, here we go. One more. No? Okay. Well, then we will.

[56:39]

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