Good morning. I just want to be sure that you can hear me. And thank you again Hiko for the introduction. And I know some of you live far away and some of you live just a few blocks from me. And some of you are long time practitioners at Berkeley Zen Center and some of you are new. And I want to welcome everyone this morning. And yeah, just welcome you all to our online Zendo. I think most of you know that the Berkeley Zen Center is in the middle of a practice period. And during a practice period, for those of you who don't know, we take a little bit more time for our sitting practice and for our study.

[01:06]

And for this practice period, we are studying Dogen Zenji's Gakudo Yojinshu, or guidelines for practicing the way. And just in case anyone here doesn't know, Dogen was a 13th century Japanese priest. And he is considered really the founding teachers of our Soto Zen school, and that's kind of the lineage of the Berkley Zen Center or the tradition of the Berkley Zen Center. So there are 10 sections to these guidelines, and we have already had lectures and classes on the first three. So today I'm gonna talk about the fourth section. And there's several translations of this text, probably many, and they have slightly different feeling and flavor, I guess, depending on when they were translated and who translated them.

[02:15]

I'm gonna quote several different translations during my talk. And I'm not going to stop and attribute the translator every time I do that, just because I feel like that gets sort of cumbersome. But if anyone wants to know the translations or which particular quote is from whom, I'm happy to let you know. And I think my email will be in the chat box. So feel free to email me if you want to know. I'm just going to read three translations of the title of this fourth section. And I will tell you who translated them. The first one is, you should not practice Buddhist teaching with the idea of gain. And that's Kaz Tanahashi's translation. The second is The Need for Selfless Practice of the Way.

[03:21]

And that's by Gien Inouye, and I'm not sure I pronounced that correctly. And the third translation just of the title is Do Not Practice Buddha Dharma with a Gaining Mind. And that's Shohaku Okamura. And this is not a long section. But it's dense, like much of Dogen's writing. And it touches on a lot of Buddhist teachings very succinctly. And I'll just begin by unpacking the idea of no gaining mind or selfless practice. And I'll start with a little story. Quite a number of years ago, I met a young man, not at Berkeley Zen Center, but at another center where I was practicing at the time. And we talked about what had brought us to practice.

[04:25]

And he told me he had first come to the center because he had a crush on a girl who was practicing there. And I asked him how that had turned out. And he said, very well. And I said, oh. So you are practicing here together now. And he said something like, oh no, she left a long time ago, but I've been practicing here for the last five years. Suzuki Roshi says 99% of our thoughts are self-centered. And I would guess that 99% of us come to practice with some idea of getting something out of it for ourselves. Maybe we hope for calmness, better health, a community, happiness, enlightenment. And I think we have reasons to hope for these things.

[05:31]

I've been reading the Lotus Sutra recently, which is a very central text in our tradition. And Here is a quote, and there are many similar ones. So this is a quote from the Lotus Sutra. This sutra, really this practice, enables all living beings to take leave of all suffering and all pain and disease and to completely undo the fetters of birth and death. Now, there are probably other ways to understand this, but I think someone could be forgiven for having quite a lot of hope of getting a result after reading that. One time when my son was in kind of an unhappy phase in his early 20s, I remember I probably very ill-advisedly gave him a Buddhist book entitled

[06:35]

eight steps to happiness. We live in a culture that is results oriented and achievement oriented. And, you know, to sit down and do nothing and get nothing out of it is a kind of radical, outrageous thing to do. When you think about it, it looks a lot like wasting time, especially with no goal, no outcome, and no getting better. I like these words of Trungpa Rinpoche. Now there is the point. Wasting our time. Give time a rest. Let it be wasted. Create virgin time, uncontaminated time, time that hasn't been hassled by aggression, passion, and speed.

[07:44]

Let us create pure time. Sit and create pure time. I want to add here that gaining mind isn't with us just when we start out in our practice. Gaining mind or gaining ideas really lurk around and show up throughout our years and years and years of practice. And hopefully we just keep noticing them. And personally, I think it's fine to come to practice with some hope or gaining idea. For whatever reason we start, like the young man I told you the story about, it gets us on our cushion. And once we're there, sooner or later, our self-centered dreams kind of collide with Buddha's teachings.

[08:49]

Impermanence. no separate self and non-attachment. It's hard for hopes of gain and fame to withstand an understanding or maybe an experience of impermanence or no separate self. Dogen writes a lot about impermanence in other sections of these guidelines, but he doesn't actually mention it in this section. So in this section, he talks about two other reasons that we can't practice Buddhism for gain or fame. And the first reason is that our mind, what we sometimes call our small mind, our own ideas, can't really conceive of where this practice will take us. This past June, I gave a talk about why I started practicing and what I'd hoped to get out of it.

[10:02]

And at the end of the talk, I spoke about whether I had gotten what I wanted. And my answer was yes, sort of. But what I got was different and bigger than what I thought I was going to get. So Dogen's words are, the practice of Buddhist teaching is always done by receiving the essential teaching of a master, not by following your own ideas. In fact, Buddhist teaching cannot be attained having ideas or not having ideas. So he's saying that in order to practice We need to let go of our own ideas and accept the teachings and sort of our predecessors, our teachers, those who have walked the path before us.

[11:12]

We need to set aside our preconceived notions because we can't grasp really the totality of the practice. From our kind of habitual, self-centered point of view. We can't conceive of what we are aspiring to. Suzuki Roshi says, gaining idea usually limits our meaning of practice. Our practice has the limitless meaning in it. I'm going to tell a story here that I heard from Reb Anderson. And I think others of you may have heard this story, but I was really intrigued with it. And I felt like it illustrated this idea of sort of the limited mind very well. And it's a story about Christopher Columbus.

[12:18]

And so the story goes that Christopher Columbus really had enough, sort of an open enough mind to understand or grasp that the world was round and not flat. And he was kind of an early adopter of this idea. And he was willing to put his money or his queen's money, where his mouth was, and sail west from Europe, from Spain. And thinking that he would sail around the world and end up in the East Indies, or what was then called the East Indies. And the East Indies had been explored. And so there was a certain amount known about Japan and China and India.

[13:22]

Marco Polo had been there and other explorers had been there traveling east. And so Columbus wanted to know what to expect when he arrived. So he actually read a lot of what had been written by those explorers. And some of that was quite accurate. And some of it was sort of fantasy, actually, but he he read it and believed it and was really expecting to find what he what he had read about. So he sailed across the ocean and of course, ended up coming to what we now call the Americas. And he thought he had come to the Indies or what was called the Indies.

[14:23]

And he but he he could tell it wasn't quite what he had read about. So he called where he came to the West Indies. And I think we still call it the West Indies. And, you know, he he realized that, you know, he wasn't quite where he thought he was, but he still was expecting some of what he had read about, including a lot of gold, which unfortunately. There wasn't a lot of, there was a little bit of gold and actually the native people were very generously willing to give it to him. But of course, ultimately he wanted more and perpetrated a lot of violence and cruelty and even genocide, trying to extract it from the people. But ultimately he made four trips across the ocean. And he never realized he never could conceive that he had come to something different than what he where he thought he was going.

[15:25]

So I just really like that metaphor of like kind of our ideas of practice and sort of what we think we're going to get out of it and how it sort of. You know, we just aren't open to what's possible and sort of our. habitual way of seeing the world conflicts with really what is possible. And I'm going to sort of diverge a little bit here and say just a word about aspiration. Because to me, aspiration is different than expectation or gaining mind. And our teachings tell us we are all Buddha or have Buddha nature. And through our practice, we are aspiring to realize that. We aspire to realize that. But exactly how or even what that means, we don't know.

[16:33]

Aspiration to me has some of the qualities of our vows. Like beings are numberless. I vow to save them. We vow and we have no idea how that will be manifested. We are stepping into the unknown. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. End them? Again, we don't know how. But this is a sort of a kind of a slippery thing, I think. and aspirations can turn into expectations when we think we know where we're going and and then we kind of start to grasp them and you know we all i guess have to i have to keep watching for that i guess so dogan has another reason we can't practice for gain or profit

[17:37]

And it's because, and this is a quote, unless the mind of constant practice is one with the way, neither body or mind will know peace. When body and mind are not at peace, they become obstacles to enlightenment. How are constant practice and the way to be harmonized? To do so, the mind must not be attached to or reject anything. It must be completely free from attachment to fame and profit. When we wanna get something from our practice, by definition, we want things to be different than they are. We are rejecting things as they are or how we are. We are dissatisfied. We want to feel better or like ourselves better or get some quality we don't have.

[18:42]

Maybe get rid of some qualities we do have. That is clinging and rejecting, picking and choosing. And I think that's essentially what gaining mind is. So I want to be clear that I'm not saying we don't get anything from practice. I actually think it's likely we get many of the things we want. A calmer mind, better health, a community, less suffering, hopefully some insight. But it's like that image of walking in the fog. Eventually we get wet, but it just happens over time. To grasp at it limits what is possible and undermines our harmony with practice and the way. And like all clinging, it shows up all the time. At this point, Dogen goes on to talk about another kind of selflessness or not gaining.

[19:56]

So here's another quote. This is a little further on. The various Buddhas do not show deep compassion for sentient beings for either their own or others' sake. This is the Buddhist tradition. Observe how even animals and insects nurture their young, enduring various hardships in the process. The parents stand to gain nothing from their actions, even after their offspring have reached maturity. Yet though they are only small creatures, they have deep compassion for their young. So Dogen is telling us we shouldn't show compassion to benefit ourselves or others. We shouldn't do what we do to

[21:01]

feel good about ourselves or because we feel guilty or sorry for other people. He compares it to the way animals care for their young, even though they get nothing from it. They just do it. We might use the word instinct, although he doesn't use that word and maybe didn't even know that word because they do it without thought. It's just what they do, a natural response. So I don't think I can think of any insects or how they carry for their young, but this brought to mind a bird that I'm familiar with. And I spend, as some of you know, quite a lot of time in the mountains in Washington state. And there's a bird there called a grouse.

[22:02]

And there may be grouse other places, and they're not rare in this area, but there is actually quite a few of them. But they have particular qualities of caring for their young that kind of remind me of this. So grouse are kind of the size of a chicken. if you're not familiar with them. And they have some kind of chicken-like habits, actually. They're low flying. They don't ever fly high. And they spend a lot of time on the ground or on stumps or, you know, kind of, I don't know, maybe low branches. And they're really well camouflaged. They're kind of speckled. black and white and brown and gray. So they blend in very well to the, to the undergrowth and the ground.

[23:06]

And I think in the winter, some of them, if they're in the high altitudes, actually turn white. So they blend in with the snow. And I've never seen a nest, but when they have babies, the babies are out and about quite when they're quite little and they also are well camouflaged. But if you come upon them and you do kind of often up in these mountains, the mother has a particular behavior where she'll like, if you come close, she'll like fly up in the air and like beat her wings and really make a kind of a scene. And... And when she does that, you know, it's very startling. Like you step back and the babies run away, but they run, as they're running, they cheep very, or make a little cheeping sound that's very, very quiet.

[24:10]

But so the mother knows where they're going and then she'll fly after them. But if you follow her or follow them, she'll, turn around and do exactly the same behavior again. And, you know, if you were hungry or if you were a predator, by the second time around, you wouldn't be so startled. And it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to actually grab her. So it seems like kind of a selfless act. And all grouse do it. It's not unique at all to a particular grouse. Like every grouse has exactly this behavior. So, That, you know, that sort of innate, you know, unthought out, uncontrived act of caring is, I think, what Dogen is talking about, that our acts of compassion and generosity should just...

[25:20]

Be a sort of a manifestation of expression of who we are or of our practice. And the way we respond or express ourselves in the circumstance we end up in. And, you know, I think it's worth, at least for me, noticing of how much of myself can show up in my good deeds or my kindnesses. So Dogen ends this section and I'm going to read what he says at the end. Trainees, do not practice Buddhism for your own benefit, for fame and profit or for reward and miraculous powers. Simply practice Buddhism for the sake of Buddhism. This is the true way.

[26:23]

And I'll just read a little, actually a little bit longer section from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind from a chapter called Right Effort. Right Effort directed in the right direction is necessary If your effort is headed in the wrong direction, especially if you are not aware of this, it is diluted effort. Our effort in our practice should be directed from achievement to non-achievement. Usually when you do something, you want to achieve something, you attach to some result. From achievement to non-achievement means to be rid of the unnecessary and bad results of effort. If you do something in the spirit of non-achievement, there is a good quality in it.

[27:28]

So just to do something without any particular effort is enough. When you make some special effort to achieve something, some excessive quality, some extra element is involved in it. You should get rid of excessive things. I'm going to just talk a little bit more. Last week, Peter Overton gave a lecture. And in it, he read a quote from a book, a little book by Thich Nhat Hanh called Walking. And I don't have the book, but my recollection of the quote sort of speaks to this non-gaining mind. And it talks about letting go of our our destination as we walk and being present for each step we take. And we have a walking practice in the zendo and outside the zendo.

[28:35]

And for me, it's not so difficult to attend to my movement and my body and my feet on the ground when I'm in that setting. But when I leave the zendo, and take my practice out into the world. Things speed up and it gets harder to stay present to my movement and my body and my breath. And we all do need to accomplish things, make plans, get places. When we go pick up our child at school, It's not an aspiration. It's a destination. And when we look for a job or a place to live, we have a result in mind. It's so easy in this busy life to run ahead of ourselves.

[29:36]

And for me, it's kind of a balancing act to move forward and to stay present. And it's been a real process, I would say, over my years of practice. I remember I once was doing some long-range planning, this is a long time ago, for my dance company, and I asked Sojin, I think, like, how do you stay present when all you're doing is thinking about the future? And I don't think he answered me. I think he didn't even give me an answer. So, I mean, I'll just say that I think this is our practice. This is what we're doing kind of all the time. And I'm going to stop here and kind of open this up to your thoughts about this idea of gaining mind or

[30:48]

ANY QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT HAVE. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, ELLEN, FOR YOUR TALK. EVERYONE, PLEASE PREPARE YOUR QUESTIONS AND LET'S HAVE THEM WHEN YOU'RE READY. I SEE WE HAVE A QUESTION FROM DEB SELF. PLEASE GO AHEAD, DEB, UNMUTE YOURSELF. GOOD MORNING, ELLEN. Good morning, Deb. Thanks for a fantastic talk. I tried to write down everything you said. And I intend to listen to this recording, if not ever another one. Mostly in terms of how I can use it for gaining racial justice and a better workplace at my organization. I can't help it. It's so applicable, but also as a white person trying to practice with not knowing what it is I'm trying to get. and believing that I can't possibly imagine the result that's possible.

[31:48]

But there's one thing that you said as a quote of Dogen's, I think that's perplexing to me, which is about, I think it's about the ancestors, but about not practicing for the benefit of self, I get that, but for others, not practicing for the benefit of others. Why not? Is it, again, related to the idea of the limited nature of my ideas about what the benefit for the benefit of others is? I'm curious about why we should only practice for the benefit of Buddhism. Well, I do think that's kind of a surprising thing to come upon. And it was for me also to see that. And sort of I did. really ponder it quite a bit. And kind of what I came down to is that, you know, it kind of goes back to Suzuki Roshi's idea that 99% of our thoughts are self-centered, that we want to kind of let go of the self part of

[33:10]

compassion that that what we're looking for is it is for it to be or the idea. I mean, it's kind of this is sort of an aspiration. I would say that it just it flows from us without any complication or interference. So the idea that we're helping someone is at least dualistic. but this idea really is that it's I mean really the his example I think of animals um and insects is it's just who we are without without adding anything else and again I'm talking an aspiration but that's that's how I get it thank you Thank you, Deb.

[34:10]

We now have a question from Pauline. Please go ahead, Pauline, unmute yourself. Thank you for your talk. At the start, you mentioned some lines from the Lotus Sutra that seem to make some very grandiose claims and might lead someone to believe in great benefits from practice. So I'm curious how you read those lines in that text now. well i i have many thoughts about the lotus sutra which i will not go into here but i think you could read those thoughts as really you know this is what this practice is about you know it's it's when you hold on to it when you you know that it doesn't it doesn't it so it's not wrong it's just the way it gets presented as a promise that, you know, seems, as somebody recently said, like marketing.

[35:17]

But, you know, it's not like it's actually wrong, necessarily. Like, you know, I got what I wanted when I started practicing. It's just different. But just the way it gets said is, you know, it's like in the Heart Sutra with nothing to attain. And then it goes on to say, and attain, you know, so it's like it's just a sort of does that make sense to you? It does. It does. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Pauline. We now have a question from Daniel O'Hara. Daniel, please go ahead. Unmute yourself. Hi. Hi, Daniel. So I think you mentioned that gaining mind is associated with extra effort.

[36:22]

I'm wondering what the relationship is between extra effort and or just effort in general and motivation. Yeah, that's a good question. Let me ask if you have a thought about that. Do you have a thought about that? I think maybe there's some sort of like level of effort which can be uh like sort of general or just maybe sometimes it's easier to put less effort when there's less motivation in terms of uh

[37:35]

of a goal, like it makes the process more continuous rather than discrete. I feel like if you don't have a motivation, maybe. Well, I think motivation may not be quite the right word. I think goal is really a better word. But yeah, I think our practice, I mean, there is some ease in our practice and some, you know, kind of harmony really is the word that Dogen uses with you know, with our practice that, you know, having a sort of a grasping or a kind of really clear idea of what we want, you know, it is an attachment. It's a holding on. And if we can let go of that, I mean, our practice does take effort. There's no question about it. I mean, it is. It is effort to sit down and sit up straight and keep your hands where they belong and get to the zendo.

[38:43]

That all is effort. But there's something sort of relaxed about it that isn't sort of like pushing all the time, I think, that just makes it have an ease to it. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Daniel. We now have a question from Linda. Please go ahead and unmute yourself, Linda. Hi, good morning. Hi, Linda. So while you were speaking, I had a clear, simple impulse or wish to give you a kiss on the cheek. And hard to do virtually, but when I had that feeling I felt like a grouse. That was one thing I wanted to tell you.

[39:44]

One other thing I wanted to mention is that somebody just asked about why would we do this for Buddhism? What's that kind of phrasing? And this might be helpful. I was quoting in something I was writing the famous line from the Genjo Koan to study the And I wrote it, to study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. And none other than Kaz came along, Kaz Tanahashi. And he looked at it and he said, have you looked at my translation? And I said, I don't know. I thought this was what it did. Anyway, he said that it should be to study the Buddha way. That's how he did it. And that is actually different from Buddhism. And that might help. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I don't know, it's just, it was funny during all the reading I did, you know, of these various translations, I got more comfortable with this language than I've ever been, you know, and sort of easily moving.

[40:51]

But I do appreciate that distinction, sort of easily moving from Buddha to Buddha Dharma to Buddha, you know, I didn't feel as hung up on that as I have at other times. But I appreciate that. If I could just insert one actual question before I go. You know, I'm a writer. You're a dancer. So these are kind of arts that we practice. And I often wonder, like, what am I trying to accomplish by publishing it? Like, I'm always trying to get praise, support, success in publishing, whatever. And do you... And I asked myself, like, why do you really want to publish this? And I just wonder if you ask yourself that about why do I want to perform this dance or make this choreography happen? Have you found a way clear of gaining idea or, you know, egoism there?

[41:51]

I do, but I'm not sure it's not a gaining idea, but I'll just tell you what it is. I feel when I perform like I'm trying to show people how to be present in their bodies. Now, that might be a gaining idea, but that's what that's my that's what I want to do. I want people and actually I'm not sure it happens for everyone. But when I see it, you know, somebody really present in their body and they're performing, it translates to my body in a way that. is really, really important and powerful to me. So I think that's why I do it. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Linda. We have a question from Blake. Please go ahead, Blake. Hey, Alan. How do we... Sometimes when we're dancing on a team, we think we know more than...

[43:01]

others, or we know even more than the team leader or the teacher. How do we wake up to our own delusions? And sometimes we think we've reached India, but we're just in the West Indies. Like, how do we wake up to our confusion? And how does the practice help us do that? Well, I think you have to be careful. Maybe you do know more than the teacher. I mean, you know, you have to be realistic here. Maybe you do. I mean, it's not necessarily that you don't. Right. Well, in that case, how do we how do we sit with that? How do we move forward with that? Well, I think you just. Kind of. take in the circumstances. I mean, if that's the case, okay, you're somehow dancing with the teacher who you know more than they do.

[44:07]

They're the teacher. You're not gonna take over the class. You just be the person that knows more than the teacher and do your moves, right? You don't have to give that up if it's true. How can we be helpful to the teacher and to everybody on the team? You must be really good at that, Blake. I mean, you're helpful all the time. Thank you for personalizing it for me. Thank you very much. Sorry to take up so much time, peeps. Not at all, Blake. Thank you for your question. We have a question in the chat, which is, I am sad and still digesting your bringing in of Christopher Columbus. Without contextualizing the horrific atrocities and genocide of indigenous people, how can we engage this context together while making a Dharma point as non-grasping?

[45:16]

There was a bit towards the end there too. How can we engage this context together? while making a Dharma point as non-grasping constructive tension? I guess I feel like I was quite clear that he perpetrated, you know, a lot of violence and genocide. I think everybody knows that. And I don't know really what else to say. You know, I would open the floor to you saying some more if you want to, but I don't really have a lot to add. You know, I don't think I feel, you know, that

[46:27]

You know, every time Columbus's name is mentioned, there needs to be, you know, a discussion of, you know, his atrocities. Thank you very much, Ellen. For our questioner, please, if you want to clarify or add on, please chat again. Thank you. We have Linda with a follow-up question. Please go ahead, Linda. Briefly. Yeah, briefly. Just to let you all know, I Columbus did not think that up himself, that grand idea.

[47:35]

And I have maybe I'll send to the community list an account of where it came from. It came entirely from someone else. And it was passed along and passed along until he got this understanding that you could sail east to go. You could sail west to go to the east. It's really fascinating. I'll send it to the community list. And I didn't say he thought this up himself. It's interesting. And I heard you say that he perpetrated terrible, terrible suffering, cruelty and genocide. But I also understand why somebody would want that fact to be more foregrounded. I would also say that, did I say that he made that trip four times? Thank you, Linda, for that. And we have now a question from Barbara, Joan and Jeff.

[48:37]

First, I want to say thank you for a wonderful talk and interesting conversation. I'm not sure I even have a specific question because there are so many things I wanted to reflect on. I just... wanted to be part of the out loud conversation. I thought the question of motivation was really interesting in relation to the image of the grouse that you painted so vividly. And actually, I can see you dancing the grass. Like, I don't even know what your whole body looks like right now. I can only see from here, but I can imagine this movement. So you translated the motion with words really well. And that was the impetus of motivation. I was thinking about it as how do we get to the cushion and not

[49:48]

not be gaining, not with gaining mind, but motivated to go there. And, and I will be thinking a lot about that. Also, as often happens, Linda proposed questions and thoughts that that I responded to in my mind having longer conversations. And particularly about both writing and dancing, both of which I do. And I was thinking during your talk about that aspirational versus goal oriented, and that was really helpful. And I wanted to thank you for that. I think coming up with an aspiration for my writing is... extremely challenging because there is this sort of public external goal and maybe my question is is whether you could talk a little bit more about that like where you start the idea like the choreography like my imagination of choreographing the grouse and um

[51:08]

And then how you get from there to sort of the the conversation and the transmission that occurs with your imagined audience and then actual audience like what's that? What are you confronting each step of the way that that helps you alleviate yourself or relieve yourself from the goal oriented mind? And that's. a complicated question and long to thank you everyone else for putting up with me wandering here. Yeah, I mean, I think we're all involved in that question, you know, when we're creating something and we're not, I mean, I'm certainly not free of my goal-oriented tendencies in my dancing work or in any other probably aspect of my life.

[52:13]

But I don't know. I mean, you know, they're just moments, I guess, when I have this what really does feel like sort of a liberated sort of idea or vision, like it's not bogged down with oh, this is going to be good, or people are going to like this. It's just, it's almost like a, it's almost like a bird, you know, it's free of that. And, you know, then it gets all enmeshed again with, you know, oh, this is such a good idea, or, you know, this is going to be great, or, you know, all the other things that go along with it. But there are those moments, and I guess I would sort of maybe compare that to aspiration or call that aspiration when it's just like a vision. It's simple like that. Beautiful.

[53:17]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Barbara. We have now a question from Stephanie Solar. Please go ahead, Stephanie. Hi, Stephanie. Hi, Ellen. Thanks so much for your talk. I was wondering as I was listening that Improvisation, true improvisation, is being in the moment without gaining idea. I'm assuming that you have experienced improvisation and work within your work, but what do you think about improvisation? Well, I would agree with you, basically. And, you know, just like... anything else or our practice, you know, it's, it's hard to keep it. You know, our minds are our minds and they, I had a friend who I used to do a lot of improvisation with and actually a lot of performing with and she she had a great quote where she said, she said, Oh, we just have to keep those chihuahuas of the mind, you know, and tell them not to bark.

[54:27]

You know, because they're always at you. That's sort of, oh, this isn't a good move or I shouldn't have done that. Or, you know, what she's doing is better than what I'm doing. You know, you just have to say, down, boy, down. And it's a challenge. It's a challenge. It comes up all the time. Thank you. I love that image. That's a good image. Thank you. Thank you, Stephanie. Ellen, actually, I have a question for you. You kind of brought it up yourself. you've made it clear how gaining mind gets in the way of actually moving through Buddhism. And I wonder if you have anything to say about what you have gained by not using gaining mind. That's a really hard thing for me to articulate. You know, it's one of those things where words are hard for me.

[55:32]

I don't know. I don't know how to answer that exactly. Something about kind of being at ease with the world, I guess, or is maybe what I would say, but it's very hard for me to put it into words. I mean, it's a really good question, and I actually have thought about it quite a bit, but it's just hard for me to articulate. Well, we'll leave that as a question open for everyone to ponder. And we'll go on to Sonia, who has a question. Yes. Couldn't you find somebody else besides Christopher Columbus to have the story of an explorer? He was personally brutal. He kidnapped. He inaugurated. Hundreds of years of exploitation, colonization, genocide.

[56:51]

We're still dealing with intergenerational trauma as a result of that. And frankly, bringing him up really created a wall between you and me as an other. You know, it's not enough for people to put by their name, oh, I'm on unceded Ohlone lands or Miwok lands. We really have to think about the past and how it's expressing in the future and how we're going to be allies or at least understanding and sensitive. You really lost me whenever you brought him up. and putting it in a historical context and, oh yes, he did bad things. It really creates barriers in distance.

[57:59]

So I sent you a personal message earlier. I think your story would reach more people like me and others like me, if you had referenced another explorer, context isn't enough. I can't tell you how painful it is. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing. Thank you, Sonia, for your comment. And I'm interested actually in the suffering and other of other people under this And I wonder if maybe Hozan could speak to the quality or the effect. I have a comment in the chat box that is asking for me to do that. And I'm deferring to Hozan.

[59:03]

Thank you. I don't want to go on at length. I think. Part of the problem that I see, and I'm in, I love Ellen, and I'm in pretty good, pretty close agreement with Sonia. I'm not sure that I could find a single explorer, maybe there are some, whose enterprise was not somehow rooted in conquest and exploitation. And at the same time, you know, I think simultaneously such people unloose a chain of suffering in the world. And they also

[60:06]

an understanding of the world, but it's a distorted understanding. And this is what I think that we have to reckon with is to what extent are many of the ways that we see the world distorted by what Ellen referred to in the first minute of her talk, the 99% of our views that are self-serving. So you broaden it out to a global scale. You're seeing that played out. And these are global historical figures, but they are captured by the same self-serving views. And the question is, We can't erase that history, but how do we hold it?

[61:14]

And also, how do we want to go forward from here? So that's the question that comes to me. And I think the examples that we choose do make a difference. So I don't have an answer to that. But trying to think in relation to Sony's question, I'm sure I could find some, I could identify some explorers who were just wanderers in the world and shared that vision with us. But honestly, none of them are coming to mind right now. So that's a real conundrum for me. THANK YOU.

[62:18]

I GUESS I WOULD ALSO ADD THAT I FORGIVE. AND THAT'S FOR ELLEN AND FOR ALL OF US WHO HAVE MADE EFFORTS IN LIFE WITHOUT HAVING BEEN ANYTHING OTHER THAN HUMAN AND FAILED TO LEARN. our lessons and yet perpetrated our crimes. That's going beyond starting as human. Ellen, please, last word. I think I'm not going to get deeply into this. I feel like I'm sorry that this was upsetting to Sonia and to others. I guess I feel like You know, the thought that I can never talk about Columbus again without, you know, an extensive discussion is, you know, kind of something I'll have to think about, I guess.

[63:24]

But, you know, it's an interesting thought for me. THAT'S ALL I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT IT. THANK YOU, ELLEN, FOR YOUR WONDERFUL AND STIMULATING TALK.

[63:49]

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