Good morning, everyone. Good morning. It's wonderful to be here to see some old friends. And a week ago in Chicago, we had snow. So it's nice to be here in California. This is not going to be a book talk. I want this to be a Dharma talk. But I am going to read from a few sections of the book. So I'll start with some material just about Zazen itself, and this has to do with the famous phrase from Dogen's admonitions for Zazen, for Kanzasengi, that Zazen is the dharma gate of repose and joy, or joy and ease, depending on how you translate it, that may seem Sometimes a strange thing to say with all of the thoughts and feelings and difficulties and challenges of actually just sitting and being upright and facing ourselves and facing the wall.

[01:17]

And yet, I really feel that this is the gateway to true, deep repose and joy. And how does that work? I would say it has to do with not holding back from ourselves or from our lives. Without trying to get anything from Zazen and also not trying to get rid of anything. Do not hold back at all. Do not hold back from just being yourself. From just fully enjoying or engaging this present experience. Whether you feel good, bad or indifferent about it. This is the heart of Zazen practice, at least in Dogon's tradition. If you think about what you are going to get out of this experience while you're sitting, that's just consumerism. Or turning your experience into some kind of commodity. If you try to get rid of anything, that is also a kind of holding back from actually just being yourself.

[02:23]

This is a practice about learning to be radically yourself, to be completely ordinary. to be a human being of all things. In fact, to be the human being on your cushion or chair right now. So I think this is very challenging for us, to actually just be ourselves. It's of course, you can't help but actually being that. We fight it. Our consumerist culture particularly, but also our human faculties of discriminating consciousness lead us into thinking we have to get some benefit from our activities. People come to spiritual practice as well with consumerist attitudes. They want the coolest teacher, or the flashiest experience, or the neatest zazen. This happens on very subtle levels, but our idea of what we think we want to get, and of what we want to get rid of, is not how we deepen our realization, not how we may loosen our attachment.

[03:28]

Zazen and Buddha are much deeper than our ideas about them. Just don't run away from yourself. Our society and culture offer us many distractions and many entertaining toys to help us run away from ourselves and to not be present with this fraught mind right now. So this true entry into joy and repose, repositioning ourselves, returning back to uprightness over and over again through the period of Sazen, is radically contrary to our culture and maybe many human cultures. But I'm suggesting that practice is not about being passive. This is attentive, calm, settled attention to body and mind.

[04:30]

Not trying to manipulate or turn ourselves into yet another commodity that we're trying to get something from. It's really not easy to let go of that manipulative habit. Thinking, if I could just improve this or that, we get caught and become commodities. And, you know, if you make judgments about your experience, well, that's okay. Just simply acknowledge the judgment without making judgments about the judgment. Really pay attention without trying to manipulate reality, without trying to get something or get rid of something, just to become intimate with this experience. It takes some attention. And there's some responsibility involved. We have the ability to respond. We must engage this responsibility. The Bodhisattva precepts provide guidelines to how we may respond and how we can simply return home to Buddha. We return home to reality, to community, very important, to fellowship with our world and each other.

[05:39]

How do we settle into a way of taking responsibility for how we see the world, acting on that, coming from a settled and settling place, And forgiving ourselves for being human beings. As well as this Buddha heart which each of us is sitting with right now. We have our human legacy of grasping and anger and confusion and we all know that. But don't try and get rid of that. Just to actually be who you are. To practice reality. Reality never happens according to our expectations. Very important point. Reality is not our little meager idea about reality. And yet we can take responsibility for our efforts. When we show up and befriend ourselves, we start to see more subtly the ways that we try to grab or to get rid of things. But we have to prepare ourselves for being human beings. Zazen is a practice for human beings, not some super-beings.

[06:41]

And we easily have ideas about that and what that should be. So that's a little bit on the gateway to joy and peace and really settling into this Buddha heart. In the next section I want to talk a little bit about, I talk a lot about Dogen in the book, there's commentaries on Dogen's extensive record, several, half a dozen different sections, but I want to talk this morning about a a little bit about an essay from Shobo Genzo that Kastanahashi and I translated. It's called Gyobutsu Igi in Japanese. And we translated it as the awesome presence of active Buddhas. So this relates to what I've been saying about true joy in practice. A little bit about that name.

[07:44]

Gyo-butsu, which we translated as active Buddhas, it also might be read as Buddhas activity, the activity of Buddhas, but it's active practicing, the Gyo, Shu-Gyo, practicing Buddhas, actual Buddhas, Buddhas in the world, not some theoretical Buddha, not some Buddha sitting up on a on an altar, although they may also be active Buddhas. So Dogen starts the essay talking about all the other types of Buddhas there might be. The three bodies of Buddha, and Buddhas who acquire enlightenment, or Buddhas who have innate enlightenment. Anyway, he says it's not any of those. It's the actual act of practicing Buddha. More complicated than that part of the title, though, is the term Iggy, which we translated somewhat flamboyantly. this aspect of causes translation I really appreciate as awesome presence and I think that's right but it also more simply means just dignified manner or decorum or maybe even etiquette in our culture we don't think of that as an aspect of what Buddhas do but just this dignified manner which we learn by sitting upright and finding our gateway to joyful ease this is what this is about this upright awareness and expression

[09:13]

And so this essay has a lot of material in it. And I'm just going to talk about a little bit of it. It's in, of course, it causes new full show book. It's also in the little book that came out before that, Beyond Thinking. And early on in this essay, Dogen says, know that Buddhas in the Buddha way do not wait for awakening. So this is another way we might get misled about this practice. We might think if we sit enough periods of Zazen or read enough books about it or come to enough Dharma talks or sit enough Sashins, sometime in the future there will be this thing called awakening. And Dogen, you know, very clearly, very strongly says that that's not what it's about. It's not about some awakening some other time, some other place, on some mountaintop or whatever.

[10:19]

It's right now. Buddhas do not wait for awakening. And all of Dogen's teaching, he's talking about the practice of Buddhas, not some practice to, you know, where we can manipulate reality to eventually later on become Buddha. That's not possible. That's not reality. So, Buddhists do not wait for awakening. And then he says, shortly after that, one of my favorite sentences in all of Dogen's teaching... So, some of you know about Dogen. No, he says, to study the way is to study the self. Anyway, there are many well-known phrases, but this is one that I've asked him. Suggested my students memorize and even uses a mantra. He says Active Buddhas simply fully experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha Active Buddhas or practicing Buddhas real Buddhas Just fully experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha

[11:33]

So this is something we experience. It's not something, you know, you may have some understanding of Buddha, or you may have some flashy experience about Buddha. That's fine, but that's not the point. Just to fully experience this vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. This is a kind of alchemical process, a vital process. This is about bringing our life to life. bringing, making our world alive. Fully experiencing the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. It's not about getting to some destination, it's this path that all of you are here right now, in the middle of. I know that, you wouldn't be here otherwise. It's a vital process on the path. The point isn't where it is to get, isn't to reach some experience or destination or understanding or, you know, it's actually fully engaging this vital process on the path.

[12:43]

And what is it the path of? It's the path of going beyond Buddha. So, you know, Rinzai says it much more kind of assertively. If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha. He doesn't just say, he talks about going beyond Buddha. He talks about that a lot. He uses that phrase much more than Shikantaza just sitting, for example, or even Shinjin Datsuraku, just dropping body and mind, although he does talk about that a lot. Going beyond Buddha. What is going beyond Buddha? Well, if you do have some understanding of Buddha, it's possible, or if you do have some experience of Buddha, or you do actually, you know, fully engage the practice of Buddha in your body and heart. The point is to go beyond Buddha. To not think, oh yeah, that was it, and then you draw a picture of it and put it up on the wall and bow down to it. No, Buddha is alive.

[13:44]

And that means that Buddha is always going beyond Buddha. So going beyond can be an adjective describing what Buddhas are. Buddhas are those who are going beyond. Shakyamuni Buddha, when he awakened 2,500 years ago, more or less in what's now northeastern India, when he had his awakening experience, that was not the end of Buddhism. He didn't stop practicing, and I would say he didn't stop awakening. He continued every day. And in each new situation, Buddha goes beyond Buddha. And for us, there was this huge cultural leap that Buddhism took historically from India to China to East Asia, huge leap, very different cultures. That's minuscule compared to the leap from Asia to here we are. So how do we make Buddha alive in this world, in our lives? This is the point. Buddha is always going beyond Buddha. In each situation, how do we wake up to this deep heart that actually is here, that we meet when we can settle into this gateway to repose and joy?

[14:53]

So, again, active Buddhists just fully experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. Then he says a little bit after that in his essay, and it's a long essay with all kinds of other wonderful things in it that I'm not going to get to today, but then he says, well, because active Buddhists manifest awesome presence in every situation, They bring forth awesome presence with their body. This is not something theoretical, this is something we do physically. And then he says, thus their transformative function, the transformative function of active Buddhas, practicing Buddhas, flows out in their speech, reaching throughout time, space, Buddhas, and activities. So, this is a little controversial in terms of our talked about non-gaining attitude. And that gets misunderstood as, like, you shouldn't get anything out of the practice.

[15:58]

Or that it's meaningless or purposeless. That's not true. We don't try to get something specific from the practice because if we have some outcome we want to get, some outcome we think is the point of our practice, that's just consumer's just trying to acquire more goodies. But our practice is not meaningless, and it's not purposeless. We have Bodhisattva precepts to guide us in how this transformative function works. So, I think you all know this, and anybody who's been sitting a little bit, that there is a transformative function that has some effect, and it doesn't have an effect based on our ideas about it. But there's a kind of opening, there's a kind of letting go that happens. And it does change our lives and the world. This can change the world. There is this transformative function in our practice. So, just a little bit more from this essay, and there's, again, a lot of good stuff in it, but, and I talk just about a little bit of it in this, in this, in my Zen Questions book, but I want to talk about what I think of as the

[17:18]

essential art of zazen, which in that Ese Fukan Sasangi Doken says is this beyond thinking, and that is important, this awareness that's not thinking, and it's not not thinking, it's a kind of aware presence. But there's also letting go. So in this essay was Iggy Duggan says this is to abandon your body for dharma to abandon dharma for your body this is to give up holding back your life to hold on fully to your life the awesome presence not only lets go of dharma for the sake of the dharma but also lets go of dharma for the sake of mind do not forget that letting go is immeasurable so this letting go this Uchiyama Roshi talked about opening the hand of thought this letting go is the art or the craft of zazen to not hold on to our ideas of who we are or how the world is or how we should be but to actually settle into this and this to bring our active awareness to this situation and our world

[18:40]

Again, this is letting go, holding back from your life. We have so many reasons and encouragements to hold back, to get distracted by all the sophisticated entertainments that our culture provides, and to retreat from actually living our life. Dogen says, give up holding back your life so as to hold on fully to your life. How do we do that? How do we do that? How do we give up holding back our engagement in this vital process so as to hold on fully to our lives? Don't forget that this letting go is immeasurable. Dogen continues, who would regard this apparition of blossoms in the sky as taking up a mistake and settle in with a mistake? Can you do that in the midst of the flowers falling from the sky? I'm falling from the roof, or falling up from the floor right now. He says, stepping forward misses, stepping backward misses, taking one step misses, taking two step misses, and so there are mistakes upon mistakes. And then he says a little later, active Buddhas are free from obstruction as they penetrate the vital path of being splattered by mud and soaked by water.

[19:56]

So again, this is not some theoretical experience or awareness that only happens on some mountaintop. How do we take on being present, actualizing this Buddha, embodying this Buddha here in this world, in our lives? there is this possibility. And one of the main obstacles to this is some idea about Buddha or practice or the world. Of course we have ideas. It's not that we should get rid of all of our ideas. But don't believe everything you think. How do we settle into the deeper reality of just being here? He also talks about finding the home village of the self. What is this home village of the self? It's not just about any one of us. It's about this home village of the self that we all inhabit together.

[20:58]

How do we come back to Buddha heart? So I do want to have some discussion and question and answer, but I'm going to talk about one other part, one other section from the book. There's actually many parts to the book, and I talk about Gary Snyder, and Johanna Macy, and Rumi, and Van Gogh, and I talk about Bob Dylan's song about Sashin. But I want to... Oh yeah, it's a song about Sashin. Anyway... What's this song about Sashin? It's called Visions of Johanna. Anyway... But I want to talk about our society and one of the great entryways of dharma in our society, which is the idea of freedom and liberty and justice for all, the Declaration of Independence.

[22:02]

That there's this idea of, well, Buddhism is about liberation. It's not about liberation as something we try to get, but it's about actually the liberation that's here right now. and that we can practice and activate. And in our society, we have this idea of liberty and justice for all. And so I want to talk about Tom Jefferson a little bit. And, you know, a very problematic, difficult aspect of our society. But, you know, he said we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator and in Buddhism creation is happening thanks to all of us in every moment with certain inalienable rights among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness but one of my favorite American Dharma utterances and there's so many but Jefferson said the price of liberation is eternal vigilance actually I'm re-translating a little bit he said the price of liberty is eternal vigilance

[23:14]

But this applies to our political liberty, and it also applies very much to Buddhist liberation on our cushion. This ongoing vigilance is critical. One must continually attend to inner intentions and habitual patterns. Insights into our habit patterns may be transformative, but are not usually sufficient to eradicate them. Our humanity includes the recurrence of these patterns of personal shortcomings, so this eternal, ongoing vigilance is very important. Both liberty and liberation require maintaining ongoing vigilance, whether for freedom from social oppression or from personal oppression, freedom from corrupt corporations running our government or from our own corrupted psyches. The price of liberation is eternal vigilance. And part of this has to do, you know, I mentioned the declaration of independence. Buddhism starts from the insight into the interdependence of all things.

[24:16]

Because everything is totally interdependent, we have independence. In Buddhist teaching we might call this non-dependence. Non-dependence means that there's not a single thing to depend on. When we face any one thing, we face everything, all together, all at once. or as you sit on your cushion in any period of Zazen, in some way, everybody you've ever known is there, is part of your experience. Really. We don't necessarily think about all of them, but... How many of you remember your 6th grade teacher? Of the people who raised their hands, which was most of you, how many of you have thought of your 6th grade teacher in the last month? A few. Oh, that's cool. Okay. But most of you didn't. But still, when I asked the question, the hands went up right away. Many beings are part of who you are sitting here right now. So, eternal vigilance, Jefferson's phrase, could be described as heightened constant attention.

[25:21]

Attention is the cross required for this liberation. We must continue to pay attention. This is not The sitting is not passive. It requires our attention. When the Buddha awakened, he paid a great deal of attention to how he could share this with all beings, and he continued to do that. So, you know, Jefferson is controversial. We all know he was a slaveholder, and maybe fathered slaves. So I want to talk about that. But first, there's other sayings. You know, his writings I really appreciate. There are other sayings that are relevant to our practice. Jefferson vowed eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the human mind. This was his personal vow. It feels very close to the traditional bodhisattva four vows to save all sentient beings, cut through all delusive afflictions. In his wonderful correspondence later on with his former rival, John Adams, we see many other things.

[26:27]

One of the things that Jefferson said is, quote, if there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest. He also said, quote, I hope we crush in its birth the aristocracy of our money corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country, end quote. It's his hopes about that the same question our current situation, but anyway, this is And he was also he formulated the separation of church and state a very important idea. He did not mean that in our Spiritual expression we should ignore what's going on in society He didn't say that he just said that he just meant that no person not even the president or whatever should speak to God or to the Divine on behalf of everybody else, or impose some view of that.

[27:37]

We, in fact, he was very much believed in, each of us finding our own context. So, okay, there's this problem though, this karmic situation that we're all in. Again, Buddha and Buddha's heart doesn't happen in some vacuum. in some abstraction. It happens in this particular place and time. We can't escape our situation. This practice is not about running away from our lives. So liberty and liberation do not happen in some ideal place somewhere up in the sky. We are always in some particular time and place and we have to see ourselves and others in this context. So, you know, in the case of Jefferson, he was dependent on a slave economy. We could even say Shakyamuni Buddha, 2,500 years ago in patriarchal northern India, eventually founded an order of nuns, but he had to be persuaded, you know, and was reluctant to do that.

[28:49]

So we could, you know, criticize them and maybe we should, yeah, maybe we should for those things. you know, what will they say about us in 250 years or 2,500 years? We live in a very violent, militaristic society. This is the consequence of our own collective karma, this particular history of slavery and of the near-genocide of the Native American peoples who lived here before the colonies, when Jefferson was here. What things that we take for granted today, or things that we protest against today, will people look back and wonder, how could they have done that? We create pollution, many problems with the environment, many wars. We watch people on television butcher each other and don't know what to do. The planet's climate has been damaged by human consumption and massive corporate corruption. The extreme disparity in resources between the extremely wealthy and most human beings accelerates. So I think we should be pretty humble in looking back and judging others.

[29:51]

and you know we have this dynamic between our individual karma each of us has our own particular combination of causes and conditions and fortunately for all of us here that has brought us to practice but we all have our own particular hang-ups and problems and graspings and confusion and anger and so forth and our society has its pattern too karma is not just individual So, just to wrap this up, I want to say, and I do want to have some discussion, comments, questions, but there is this vital process of going beyond Buddha. We are all on this path. And there is also this inner repose and joy that is available to us right now. As we connect, and they're not separate, as we connect to this inner repose, that supports our vigilance and attention.

[31:00]

Becoming friendly with our breath, with our inhale and exhale, allows us, it's a great resource for how we can activate our ability to respond, our responsibility. It allows more effective response. to not hold back from our lives. So, you know, in some ways I might today sum up all of Dogen's teaching. Cos was asked that when he was visiting my temple in Chicago and he said, non-separation, and that's pretty good, one word. But I would sum it up in terms of his teachings about abiding in one's Dharma position. Each of us has our own special gifts, our own way of responding. There's not one right way to respond to the situations of the world. So if I had to pick one word to sum up Dogen's teaching it would be occupy. Occupy your life. Occupy your sangha.

[32:05]

Really be present in with the difficulties of your life. Be willing to be upright and face them. And of course that includes occupying the situations of our world, and the institutions of our world. And so that's happening in various ways, and it's very encouraging. Thank you all very much. Comments, responses, questions, please feel free. Yes? You know, I've gotten a lot out of reading translations, particularly yours and Shohaku's, For instance, in your large book, Dogen's Other Teachings... Dogen's extensive record. It's a paperback now, it used to be Dogen's extensive record. Just an aside, I'd love to see any of those you can get in a Kindle. It would be really good. But I have the hard ones. Some of them are on Kindle and I've heard that sometimes the Kindle doesn't get the... I'd like to use the diacriticals.

[33:10]

But some of them are on Kindle. My wife uses Kindle, I don't. the opening the hand of thought is, and I enjoy that too, but my question is, there aren't commentaries in some of these, and so how does one read Dogen's talks, and how does one get the depth of understanding, or any depth of understanding, without some commentary, is my question. What would a person do to get the most out of it, since that's not there? Good question. How to read Dogen. First of all, just read. Read through it. Let it wash over you like a symphony or jazz or a hot bath. Don't try and understand it. Read through a section and then go back and look at the places that stopped you, that kind of tingled, or that you resisted, or that interested you, and sit with them. So I will say that in my new books and questions, there are six chapters with specific comments on various little portions of Dogen's extensive records.

[34:19]

And another plug, I'm going to be doing an online course at the Institute of Buddhist Studies near here, Graduate Theological Union, in the spring on Dogen. Auditors are possible. So anyone who wants to check that with me can email AncientDragon. And I can send you the syllabus. The point is to just sit with Dogen and, you know, ask, what does he mean here? What's the point of this? And, you know, in Dogen's extensive record there's just, you know, all of these short little talks. Some of them may not be relevant to you. Find the ones that are. And yeah, a lot of them have references to other Zen stories and so forth, and we tried to put some of that in the footnotes, but find the parts that are useful for you, and sit with them. And ask yourself, and ask Dogen, well, what do you mean here? What's going on? How does this help my practice? And it's not just about helping your practice, it's about recognizing something from your zazen, in what Dogen is saying.

[35:27]

Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah, yes. So, I've been doing Buddhism for quite a while, but mainly the Buddha and the Dharma. really found it hard to find Yesenia, and here I am, you know, first time I've been here. What are your thoughts about that third refuge in a very capitalist, consumerist society? I mean, it seems to me that it's the hardest one. And it's the most important one, in a lot of ways. It's where we actually express our practice. So I live in Chicago now, so I'm not going to tell you to move to Chicago, but this is a wonderful sangha here. The Bay Area is the center of Buddhism in the world today, from some point of view, really. And so there's many sanghas around, and it just takes a while to find where you're comfortable. But also, each of us has many sanghas. It's not just the formal sanghas.

[36:29]

There are various communities that each of us is involved with in terms of family, relationships, co-workers, neighbors, bring your practice to life there. And see, and the Sangha is a jewel, so it supports, the Sangha means, the Sangha as a jewel means it supports your practice and supports your life. So find the ways in which you can support the various Sanghas you are already in, and you can look around for formal Buddha Sanghas too, or come back and hang out at the Berkeley Zen Center. But, you know, bring your practice to life there. Thank you. Hi, Peter. Hi. You had a question? Yes. How are you doing? Good. Good. It's good to see you. You spoke very eloquently about the ways in which our culture simulates us to go towards all kinds of imagined outcomes, including internal, seeking for meaning or quote-unquote meaning. But I'm aware that all of that activity, which

[37:31]

seems to cause a lot of trouble, is coming from some deep energy that's alive in us. And how do we not cut off that off while we're attempting to refrain from this fascination with the imagined outcomes? Yeah, I think imagination is totally important in practice. And use the problems in our society and in your own life These are, this is also Sangha, these are resources. How do we sit with them? Not to figure them out or fix them, but how do we turn that, you know, Sukhya Rishi talked about mind weeds. How do we turn that into compost for supporting our life? So when there's some situation where somebody you're working with, for example, is acting like a jerk and, you know, you could say all kinds of, there's this precept about not speaking of the faults of others. How do we, instead of, you know, going wild with critical mind turn to us, oh how can I help that person?

[38:37]

That's the heart of the Bodhisattva practice in a lot of ways. And it's not easy. This isn't about, this isn't that we're going to fix everything. You know, Sangha was started 2,500 years ago or so, in this cycle of big banks by Shakyamuni and Sangha is about how do we take care of our world and how do we transform our world and it takes a long time. So is that like watching the political debates and trying to see what's in the hearts of the people speaking? You can try that, you can try it then. I have been watching them myself, I hear a little bish in there. You know, the point is, our society is so caught by a really deranged way of seeing the world. That the world is something we can exploit, the world is something that we have to manipulate, that we need to get energy from the world, that we need to get, you know,

[39:41]

Not all of the 1% are acting this way at all, but there are some people who think that the point of their lives is to, you know, if they have 10 billion, they need to have more. So this greed is part of all of us. How do we transform the, not just these people, but the way of seeing what our life is in the world, to see it in terms of Sangha, that actually We are all expressions together of all of these problems and all of these joys. And how do we work together? And this is endless work, it seems like. And yet, we have the ability to respond. Each of us in our own way. Each of us has our own special gifts. Thank you very much. So it's back there. Yes? Hi. Thank you for this really wonderful talk. Could you say something a little bit more about the Occupy movement.

[40:42]

I'm so glad you said that. Occupy is the summary of Socrates' thesis. It strikes me that there is so much resonance with Dharma practice and the Occupy movement. Literally, that movement of occupying the ground, touching the ground. Could you say a little bit more about how you see it as a Dharmic expression? I can't say a little bit more. And I think We can go back to that in the other room, but I'll try to say a couple of things. I think I'm tremendously inspired by it. It's also problematical and difficult and who knows what's going to happen with it. But people all around the world are speaking out. What I like about it is that it's a moral movement. It's not about making demands and political positions or ideology. it and we need to stop and look at it and see how do we take care of each other rather than, you know, trying to get as much as we can for ourselves.

[41:46]

And so, you know, it's, I think nonviolence is important and for the most part it's been nonviolent. I know that here in Oakland and Berkeley there have been police, there have been cases of police brutality, but the police are connected with us too. It's, you know, so It's so many different things all around the country and the world that I don't want to try to evaluate it, but it's something that we can, for those of you who are so moved, can give yourself to and to try to support the positive side and the non-violence. As a moral statement about what's wrong with our whole governmental and economic justice system here. And so I'm very encouraged by it, and I think it has a lot of potential, and it's not going to fix everything. Maybe just one more, and then we should stop, I guess.

[42:49]

Yes? I wanted to ask a couple of comments. Often we hear that it's in government places, or how can I help this person? And I have found, actually, I find this incredibly irritating. Oh, good. Because it's ineffective. I think what I have found more close to the actual teaching is that when you're faced with some kind of violence or aggression or hostility, what you ask to do, actually, is to respond. And often that kindness is to match the force, because someone on the other side is lost. They're not really in touch with what's happening, and they're pushing. And that means we're lost too. That's right. So, what this brings up is, you know, I said letting go was

[43:52]

That also is not a passive practice. Kshanti paramita. It means paying attention. So most of the time, when there's some difficult situation, there's nothing to do. Practice of patience is not, though, just kind of giving up and, you know, turning away. But to remain upright and watch the situation, and with somebody who's giving you a hard time to watch what's going on, And again, most of the time there's nothing to do, but the practice of patience is to watch it, pay attention, and be ready to respond when there is something. And skillful means isn't that you fix it necessarily, but that you make a response when you have seen some response. But most of the time it maybe just may look like passivity, because there's not much to do. But if you're paying attention when there is a chance to say something that may engage and start real dialogue, then you're ready to do that.

[45:04]

So patience is really difficult. Waiting is difficult. So I think I'm supposed to stop now. So thank you all very much. I really appreciate being here.

[45:18]

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