Good morning. Troubling technology land. I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk this morning. I appreciate Sojourn Roshi's invitation. Thank you very much. It's a different experience to speak from the depths of Seshin, as it were, and so I'm going to talk about an aspect of the Platform Sutra and First, just a little history. My history with the Platform Sutra, I think it was one of the first, it was also one of the first Buddhist books that I read, and as far as I can recall, we had it or part of it in an Oriental Humanities class in college, and I think this is the translation that we had.

[01:24]

And I don't remember much, I don't remember much about college. College was sort of a haze of marijuana smoke that suffuses like incense smoke. I'm not sure that's the wisdom incense or the stupidity incense. But when I When I started to practice seriously, and I think Sojin Roshi was teaching from this at various points, because it seems like it's a core text for him, and I read it early on, and the autobiography was very... that was familiar, so I must have read that, and it really resonated with me, and the rest of it didn't make a lot of sense. It was way over my head. and I set it aside and a few years ago a number of things came together and I picked it up again.

[02:30]

One of the things that came together was just a being witness to a dialogue between Sogyal Roshi and Aitken Roshi where they were discussing the chapter that Sadanarosa has been teaching on Samadhi and Prajna, and they had a different perspective on it, and if I could characterize it curiously, it seems to me that Akin Roshi was sort of coming from, they were talking about it generally, not in terms of the Platform Sutra, but if I think about back on it, Akin Roshi was more coming from the Shenshu position of the Samadhi being the kind of the necessary precondition for prajna and Sojan Roshi was asserting the unity of samadhi and prajna and they kind of I think ultimately sort of agreed to disagree although there was a lot of respect essentially between them.

[03:50]

But I think it was working on Sojin Roshi's mind. He called me up on the phone, which he doesn't do, the next day. I think it was a Friday, and he said, could you come down? And he had that chapter open on his desk, and he said, see? And that made a big impression. I went back and I read it and yeah, I did see, I understood what he was saying and that kind of opened the sutra to me in some critical way. And then a few years later, a few years ago, I was reading the sutra and thinking about it a lot and there's this thing called National Novel Writing Month. Has anyone heard of that? Well, I wrote a novel. during National Novel Writing Month. This is a totally great thing to do.

[04:55]

You're supposed to come up with a 50,000 word novel and you could write the same word 50,000 times and that would win the prize. Because there is no prize. But I wrote a novel that involves a fictionalized version of the autobiography of Winning. and how that intersected over history with a character in the Cultural Revolution, and where it intersected. I'm not going to go into this. I was going to read you the chapter, because I actually wrote a chapter about Hsien-shu and Winang meeting later, and practicing together as Dharma brothers, and the sweet quality of that, which was which was very interesting. So, I thought I would show you, I don't know if people have seen, has anyone been to Wen Yang's temple, Nam La? You have.

[05:56]

Did you see the mummy? So, this is a picture of Wen Yang's mummy. And what they had, they had this practice in China for some illustrious figures, not just Zen masters, but also great, you know, great leaders. When they died, they dumped their whole body into a vat of lacquer to mummify them. And that's what they did to Winnem. So you can see his body, yeah. Did they recover his head, actually? His head was stolen like twice. Yes, they did recover his head. Actually, that's in the novel too. They recovered his head and they glued it on really good. Somebody was sent from Korea to steal his head, because that's where wisdom resided, I guess. But they did recover his head.

[06:58]

What? In the head? In the head. The Koreans wanted wisdom, so they stole the head. I'm not getting to what I want to talk about here, you notice that? Anyway... I'm not going to go into the novel, but it's really amazing. You can see this mummy. I would like to see it one day. And it was smashed about a bit in the Cultural Revolution, which figures in this novel, but they put it back together. Yes? Is there any indication that I noticed that the mummy is wearing bright yellow and red robes? Is there any indication that those were the colors that Waynum would have worn I don't know. But I think that monks often wore, some monks wore red robes, wore saffron color robes. You know, I don't know what they wore.

[07:58]

I don't know. And we don't know what Bodhidharma's robe that he gave to Huineng, that Hung Ren gave to Huineng was. I think it was really mustard muted colors when I was there. But it's probably been painted many centuries ago. It may have been, yes. Anyway, so what I wanted to talk about today was this chapter, the next chapter, which is a piece, just a particular piece of it on repentance. So in the previous chapters, what you've covered, if you think about it, is two of the three essential elements of practice. We talked about Samadhi, and Prajna, and then this chapter talks about Sila, the precepts. So those are generally, those are the three core aspects, Sila, Samadhi, Prajna.

[08:58]

If you think about the Noble Eightfold Path, that can be divided into those three dimensions of practice, which make up an entire life of practice. So this chapter on repentance covers Sheila. And the model, so what you have in this chapter, you have a number of different stages. The first is he offers incense, Sheila incense. And incense is, interestingly, it's identified with morality and ethics. the smoke of incense is the character of our ethical behavior. That's what it traditionally characterizes in Buddhism, in almost all of the traditions. So, actually when I was at Zuyoji, I don't know, Mary, we were at Zuyoji in the other place.

[10:02]

When we did the Bodhisattva ceremony, before we did the Bodhisattva ceremony, it was just like in It was sort of like, in this, we incensed our robes. They do that at the city center also. The corners of the robes? Yeah. So that's a very traditional practice in a monastic setting. So, the first is shila incense, and then the second part of this ceremony is the formless repentance. Repenting just as we did last night. all my ancient tangled karma through body, speech and mind, I fully avow. The formula is a little different, but the essence is the same. Then he puts forward the four Bodhisattva vows, and that's... I'm going to talk about one of them. And afterwards offers what's called the threefold guidance

[11:08]

which is basically one version of the refuge. We take enlightenment as our guide. We take the Dharma as our guide. We take purity as our guide. And Sangha stands for purity, as in his comments later. Buddha stands for enlightenment. Dharma stands for orthodoxy, or rules and regulations. And Sangha stands for purity. and then refuge in the three bodies of Buddha. I'm not going to go into all of this, but this is Luening's presentation of the precepts, what he calls the formless precepts, or in some translations, the markless precepts, or sometimes we call them, I think in some of our seminars we call them pure mind precepts, Or the dharmakaya precepts?

[12:18]

Yeah. But what he means by formless is that these are the precepts of what we've been talking about over the last few days of essence of mind. Essence of mind you can think of as being mind. You could think of as dharmakaya. Sutra and I were talking yesterday, again without going into a lot of technical Buddhism, there's a lot of reference in this Platform Sutra to the mind-only or consciousness-only Lankavatara school. In fact, Hung Rin was going to have scenes from the Lankavatara Sutra painted on the walls. I think it would be interesting to do that here. I don't know, scenes from the life of Suzuki Roshi painted on the walls. Or we could have a poetry contest.

[13:23]

But what Wineng is pointing to with this emphasis on essence of mind is something beyond what's typically framed as the eight consciousnesses, the seven or eight consciousnesses in this mind-only school, the six senses, manas, which is kind of the controller and kind of ego consciousness, and then ilaya-vijnayana, the storehouse consciousness. Essence of mind is not a consciousness. It's something that transcends that. It's not a It doesn't attach. It doesn't have any mark, which is why it's called markless or formless. And we can't quite get our minds around it to characterize it or define it in some way.

[14:32]

And that's where he's talking about these precepts. That's why they're called formless precepts, because they're the precepts that arise from essence of mind. and they're offered here in the context of you could say an ordination some scholars call this an ordination but it's more kind of an open initiation into Buddhism so an ordination in his time would more typically involve Vinaya precepts 250 or 270 precepts and Tantra, cutting of the hair. And then in the Chinese tradition it would probably also involve receiving the Bodhisattva precepts. But this is an initiation into Buddhism for anyone, not just for monks or nuns or priests.

[15:37]

And actually there's a ceremony like this in Japan, which is actually called Jukai, where you receive the precepts, which is not quite the same as what we've been calling for years Jukai, which is actually an ordination. It's a lay ordination. Jukai is just you don't receive a Raksu, you don't receive a name or a lineage paper, you just receive the precepts, the Bodhisattva precepts. So this is kind of like that, and as Surgeon Roshi said in the first day, this might be a model for the ceremonies that we have, our ordination ceremony, our Bodhisattva ceremony, weddings, funerals, whatever you got, we got like one ceremony, which is these precepts. So, okay. To get to, I think, Minyan was very creative and not bound by orthodoxy.

[16:47]

So he had a version of the Bodhisattva vows that it's subtly different. So what he says is the sentient beings of our minds are limitless and we vow to save them all. Let me see what the translation is in here. Something like that. So, learned audience, having repented of our sins, we will take the following four all-embracing or Bodhisattva vows. We vow to deliver an infinite number of sentient beings of our mind. We vow to get rid of the innumerable defilements in our own mind. We vow to learn the countless systems of Dharma in our essence of mind. We vow to attain the supreme attainment, the supreme Buddhahood of our essence of mind.

[17:51]

So, we take these, at the end of the day, we take the refuges. At the end of the lecture, we say, Beings are numberless, I vow to save them. He's adding this phrase and it's interesting because some translations have this and some don't. But I think it's incredibly useful. The sentient beings of my mind are limitless. I vow to save them all. And I've spoken on this before. It resonates with me with something from Whitman's Song of Myself. There's a verse that says, do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes. Dan Whitman says, I concentrate towards them that are nigh, and I wait on the door slab.

[19:09]

To me this is very much recognizing I'm large, I contain multitudes, I contain all these sentient beings, and I concentrate towards them that are nigh, which means I turn towards these beings that arise or come forth in mind. And I wait on the door slab. I turn to them. I don't get, again, as Satya Raksha was saying yesterday, you have to reserve something of yourself. You don't get entangled with these deluded beings, with these suffering beings. But you keep turning towards them. I will get to mind, but first, let's think about what these sentient beings are.

[20:11]

Huining says, Learned audience, all of us have now declared that we vow to deliver an infinite number of sentient beings. But what does that mean? It does not mean that I, Huining, am going to deliver them. And who are these sentient beings within our mind? They are the delusive mind, the deceitful mind, the evil mind, and sex-like minds. All these are sentient beings. There's a commentary by the wonderful Zen teacher Soke An, who talks about this verse. First he says, sentient beings, this means that beings, this means beings that have desire. Those that live from morning to night to accomplish their desires.

[21:15]

And in that verse, those which abide within my mind are numberless. Sentient beings within my mind are numberless. I vow to save them. In Buddhism, there is no particular ego within you. You yourself are an aggregation of the elements of beings within you. Elements of insects, fish, pigeons, and all varieties of animals. They are the sentient beings. Each individual possesses a city of sentient beings within herself. So, this could sound like multiple personality disorder, but I think that the work that we're engaged in here in Seshin, is examining our mind and our body very carefully. You see the different states of mind that arise and, you know, your states of mind are not the same as my states of mind, but I'll bet that each of ours is every bit as wild and

[22:30]

awful and wonderful as each other's, although quite individually different. We observe our bodies, too. I'm sure well, perhaps this is my obsession, but I'm much more attuned to my rhythms of bowel movements and hunger than I normally pay attention to during the day. We get very finely attuned to things. We get attuned to the things that we handle and how we handle them. All of this is what he's framing as mind. Mind and body are not separate. But I think that a couple... So within that, what I noticed, there is this individual sense of mind. And what I've been thinking about in the course of this session is how various states of mind

[23:41]

I notice various states of mind arise and they can be quite absorbing and they can be distracting, they can be distressing, etc. I can get, as we've talked about in other contexts, you can get very obsessive about what someone else is doing how you feel about the way they breathe, how you feel about the way they serve, you can get obsessed about the food, what's right with it, what's wrong with it. So all these are kinds of arising of sentient beings. At the same time, mysteriously, what I've been noticing, particularly in this machine, is irrespective of how distracted or unconcentrated I may think I am at any moment, as the koan says, there is one who is not busy.

[24:43]

Even with that, Samadhi, if you follow the schedule, if you do the activities, if we do everything together, there is something else that is evolving, that is holding, mind that is holding and taking care of all of these other beings in a very general sense. We may not think of it. We may judge ourselves. We may have all kinds of opinions about the inadequate character of our practice. I hear this a lot, talking to people. But yet, the feeling in this room deepens, right? Day by day, it deepens and so there's also the sense which there's one who is not busy and despite our busyness, the activity of co-creating this session there are 30 to 40 beings who are not busy in this room 30 to 40 beings creating some mysterious

[26:03]

mind together. So if you think, as we understand from the Buddhist teachings, that we can't draw some clear boundary between self and other, then the mind that arises is intimately connected to all of the other minds that are practicing together, functioning together. We can see that very clearly, I think, in the context of Seshin. I wish I could see it more clearly in the world at large. And yet, I actually have faith that that exists. This common mind that pulls in all these different directions. So, the beings of our mind, that we vow to save in this session, is both oneself and everyone in the zendo.

[27:18]

It's the mind that cultivates and allows samadhi to arise. It's also the mind of joy, lust, jealousy, ideas, trauma, all of that. mysteriously share. But I think another implication of this verse for me, sentient beings of our mind are limitless, applies to what I've come to understand or think about birth and rebirth. In our Zen tradition, we don't talk so much. The last time I heard him talk about it, Sogen Roshi was saying, well, I don't know about rebirth because I haven't been there yet, or I don't remember.

[28:23]

Something like that. But we're reborn moment by moment. And this is also a traditional understanding in the Theravada tradition. Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, the Thai teacher, writes about dependent origination and rebirth, grasping and attachment will give rise to becoming and birth. So in that moment of becoming and birth, which takes place in our mind, I would say what is born is a sentient being of our mind, somewhat very close to us that we have to take care of. can be born in any one of an infinite number of realms or characters, as infinite as the beings are on this planet. Buddhism sort of generally outlines these six realms, which we've talked about before.

[29:26]

Lower realms of the hell realm, which is marked by hatred and aggression, the hungry ghost realm, which is marked by kind of insatiable hunger and greed. The animal realm, and this is, my apologies to, I don't think this is really the animal realm, but in Buddhist cosmology, the animal realm is depicted as, animals are depicted as stupid and prejudiced, which, I don't think so. But, what? Except for Sam 87, I agree. Except for my dog. Well, and Andrea's dog, and Surgeon's dog, and you know, everybody else's. And Alexandra's birds, and you know. I didn't make this up. And then the three higher realms, the demigods, who are fighting demons, and the devas, which is supposedly the inhabitants, this is sort of a heavenly realm where the inhabitants are very complacent and self-centered and addicted to their pleasures.

[30:44]

We don't know anyone like that. And then the human realm, which is where we can wake up. It's our temporary realm. so but they're actually an infinite number of realms and you know I'm thinking about so Monday I don't know what's you know why things happen or how things happen is mysterious to me but Monday second day of Sashin I don't know about you but sometimes entering Sashin is hard there's kind of the tethers to daily life are not, they're still pulling at me and I just was really irritable. I was, you know, by way of confession, which is part of it, you know, I was irritated at how Ron was running the work meeting. I thought it was taking forever, you know, and it's like, why is he doing that?

[31:44]

You know, he's curled and then I found myself rushing step right here? Yeah, I felt like, I didn't lay this on you, but I felt like I was rushing around the Berkeley Bowl to get all this stuff for cooking, you know, and it's like, and then I did something, I was trying to work out something with Paul, with the pots, the cooking pots, because I needed a cooking pot, and I really spaced something out that upset him, and I I had to stop and think, what's going on here? Who is this being? And how do I take care of him? I don't know exactly what realm you might put that being in, but at a certain point I realized he needed attention. And so I turned my attention to him because I didn't want to

[32:48]

It was no fun to carry around that irritation. And it wasn't necessary. And I couldn't actually... Ron wasn't doing anything. The Berkeley Bowl wasn't doing anything. Paul wasn't doing anything. It was all... me. Why? I don't know why. But what do I do? So... This is the question. The question is... How do I save them? What do you mean by save them, Alan? What I mean by save them? Okay. What a good question. So, Dogen's entry talks about Roshan, or parental mind. The mind or attitude of a parent. How a parent, irrespective of difficult circumstances or poverty, loves and protects the child, ideally.

[33:53]

That's what it's supposed to be. So, with children, as with ourselves, I think there's an attitude, hopefully, of unconditional love and acceptance. You love that being, and you may not, but you may not like its behavior. Right? But you don't stop loving it. You set boundaries. You turn towards it. You may turn towards it with just an embrace. You may turn towards it with kind of a rule or boundary, but that doesn't impede the love. And sometimes what you do You don't do anything, you just watch it. This is what Suzuki Roshi talks about in the control chapter of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

[35:05]

He says, to give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him or her. So it is with people. I would say, so it is with the sentient beings of our mind. So it is with everybody in Seshin, if we think of it as one mind. First, let them do what they want and watch them. That's the best policy. To ignore them is not good. This is, I'm quoting Suzuki Roshi, that's the worst policy. The second worst is to try to control them. The best one is just to watch them. Just to watch them without trying to control them. We talked about this on the first day of Sashin. Somebody asked a question about forms and correction. Who was it? Was someone here? Luke, right.

[36:08]

We're talking about the same thing. Well, first, what I've learned to do, because I have a propensity for correcting, is first I try to watch. If I see something wrong, I don't try to fix it immediately. I try to watch and feel where this is coming from. But the distinction that Sojourn Roshi made was a distinction between helping and correcting. So when people come in the Zen Do, new people come, and you see they have some confusion, or they don't know where things are in the Sutra book, you help them. You don't correct them, because this is the right way to do it, and it's like, first time they come in and say, no, you have to hold the book this way. No, you just let them find their way, and when they're comfortable with finding the Sutras, then they may want to see what the next step is. But if you correct them, then you are going to midwife the birth of a sentient being in their mind.

[37:19]

So I think that this parental mind that Dogen is talking about is what we have to do. And we have to be very patient. for ourselves. It's a way, in a sense, of reparenting ourselves. And so when a sentient being arises in my mind, or when a sentient being arises in our community, we have to take care of that sentient being for its entire lifespan. Now, if it's a being of my mind, that lifespan if it's something that stems from a trauma may be very long and very deep and you have to hold it very tenderly not with a kind of sharp force of correction but if it's a state of mind like the kind of irritability that I was talking about the other day it tends not to last very long but if you try to force it in one direction or another while that being

[38:36]

has its life, then you'll get pushback. Notice? You know, you confront somebody on something that, some way they're behaving, they will push back. If you just watch and let the, you know, what I think about, let the neurotransmitters ebb a bit, then you can work with that. So For me, if I'm irritable, that means there's various chemicals going around in my body, aside from ideas or beliefs. While they are there, I really have to be very, very patient with them. When they start to taper off and their life seems like it's ending, then I can move them more gently in one direction. kind of an abstract way of talking about yourself, but it's... I think it's what we do, and I think it's what we do momentarily in Zazen, that we watch the methodology of our Zazen, of Shikantaza, is just to allow feelings and emotions to arise, allow them to flow through.

[39:58]

Watch them. Don't try to control them. As soon as you try to control them, you're injecting a lot of energy into that mental and physical system. And when you do that, you'll create something. Something will be born. Something will arise. That's not necessary. Sometimes, in Sachine, here we are, what, day six? It's kind of getting to be a blur to me, but you know, if your legs are really hurting, or if there's something that's really aching in your soul, you really have to put your attention on it. You may have to, you may have to actually focus and bear down on it, not in a forceful way, but just really watch. Put a lot of attention on it, but you want to put just enough. You don't want to put so much attention on it that you

[41:00]

give it life and feed it. You want to let it flow, let it go through. But sometimes if something really hurts a lot, you have to turn towards it. And you may have to embrace it for a time. But don't get caught there. Don't get caught in that embrace. In the same sense that if a person is drowning, you don't want to be pulled down with them in the embrace, in the attempt to save their lives. So it is with our thoughts. But often, I think Zazen is this kind of laboratory in which we can actually experience the rising and passing away of thoughts that may, in a momentary sense, have a lot of vitality, impact, and yet they are transient also.

[42:04]

So I think I'm going to stop there. It's 11. I'd like to leave a few minutes for questions or comments. And Sojong Roshi will continue from somewhere tomorrow. So comments or questions? Helen. So when you say I mean love all beings. But in the sense of like Maitri or Agape in the Christian sense of unconditional love. There's a piece that I liked by Martin Luther King Jr. called Love Your Enemies. It's a sermon that he used. And he said, I'm not going to like everybody.

[43:11]

But this unconditional love is a kind of acceptance of their essence, that they are partaking of essence of mind. So love comes from that. But it may not be the same as, you don't have to like everything, and you don't have to accept everything that anyone does. That's a koan. How do you do that? How do you enjoy irritability? Because irritability is not necessarily pleasant. How do I enjoy it? Sometimes I enjoy it. what I came to on Monday was just thinking, all right, this is the second day of session, this is just Alan being Alan, you know, so familiar to me. It's like all I could be is bemused. I wish that I didn't, you know, I wish I hadn't done something that irritated Paul, you know, and I apologize for that, but And there's no point in holding on to that, but I'm generally, if I'm not really hurting somebody, I can cultivate some, I can bring up some feeling of amusement.

[44:19]

Two more. You know, essential beings are numberless, we vow to save them all. It can be very motivating and very inspiring to also realize that our practice is saving all beings, not just all beings of our mind. I mean, this is one way of looking at it, but I think also that, actually, I quite sincerely believe that our practice saves all beings. So do I. Literally. Yeah. I think that is the function of it. And that's sort of our koan, as in practice, to see more and more and more about how our practice saves all beings. this is a practical approach that that we name was laying out in the context of saving all beings and your original question was what is mind and so all to me all beings are co-creating essence of mind so to save the sentient beings of our mind means it works in both directions

[45:37]

We take care of what's really in front of us, within ourselves, and we also have to take care of what's in front of us in the world. Our practice has some mysterious impact. I don't know how it works, but that's kind of what I have faith in. I think from what I've heard you say, I think you have faith in that. and as I was doing the Zazen, I was already planning, oh, okay, when I get home, I'm going to make some phone calls, I'm getting all ready, you know, I'm already like, I've got a lot to do to get out of here, you know. I never, you're the first person that's ever said anything like that. Anyway, and what, in my practice discussion with you, you were teaching me how to sit, and just gently, you know, tip the pelvis, just a little, and gently you know, rise the sternum just a little.

[46:39]

And I was noticing when I was doing my really serious planning, I had really, really tipped my pelvis a lot. And it was really, really, you know, like I was getting all ready. And as soon as I went back to the balancing that Sylvia was talking about yesterday, gently, it all just like, I realized, okay, hold off on all of these big plans. That was one noticing pain and then the other thing is um I have a question I complicate in my feelings of my job I also talked to both of you about I have a one employee who's a fighting demon and I'm really difficult and barbed comments designed just to catch me on her little, there's like a little juicy hook on there. And I've learned by my, you know, Zen practice, don't open your mouth. And catch on to that barb.

[47:41]

So that's one of the things, I was wondering, the hungry ghost is the insatiable craving person, right? And what is like, the barbed comment, what is like a distinctive Something that you see in that person, like something that you don't want to get tangled up in them. I need you to do this, I need you to do that. They need you to do that because they really feel something very, very painful is missing in them. And they think if you did such and such, then they'd feel okay. which they won't. So, and how you meet that is, I don't know the answer always, you know, but to recognize their need and to figure out how to understand what their true need is.

[48:46]

And they may not be ready to accept if you're capable of meeting that true need, They may not be ready to accept that, but you have to look for what that is. Okay, maybe one or two more. Mary? There's something I heard implicit in what you were talking about. You were talking about being irritable on the second day. And you said something like, you know, and I realized I needed to give that being some attention. And not that you weren't trying to figure out why. I wasn't trying to figure out why. But implicit in that, and then talking about the big field and so on, it seemed to me that there was something, and I just wanted to ask you to comment on it, that there was something about not simply watching, maybe, I'm asking you, but like watching with a spirit of inquiry or something. That's my reading of what Suzuki Roshi is saying.

[49:53]

You watch. You don't watch. You're not like a dispassionate observer. You watch because you are connected to that being. I watch because I'm trying to understand what's going on. But I'm not trying to figure out why. I'm just trying to understand what's going on. That's my sense of it. I don't know if you have anything to add to that. How do you watch? Right. Which is. But that's the other side. So sometimes you watch and sometimes you're very careful to put yourself in a narrow slot.

[51:02]

Right. And correct the cow. Correct the sheep. I think the main thing is. I don't know if I love my sentient beings or not, but I treat them with respect. I think respect is maybe their word. Because when you treat them with respect, then what you're offering to others is respect. So, you know, we respectfully address each other. And I think that that's how we stay out of trouble. Well, you know, it's interesting when answering Ellen about love, this is bizarrely for me, this is my Christian side coming out, which I don't... But you're Jewish.

[52:04]

That's right, I don't have a Christian side. What side is that? But that's how I understand, what I understand from reading King is actually the manifestation of love is respect, is really respect for the individual integrity of each being that he meets. And just, to me, to give your horse or cow a wide field means also, implicit in that language is, oh, but there's a fence around the field. field. It's like they're not totally free-range cows. You know, there's a fence. There's a fence. There are walls around this room. So sometimes those walls are really narrow, sometimes really wide, but there's always something there. Last one, Courtney. Just to follow on that, I actually do have a Christian background, so the angle

[53:07]

that strikes me is, I guess the word I would use is inclusiveness. So, I don't know, love, respect, we're trying to find a form, but I think it's like a recognition and not a rejection or invalidation, or let's get rid of this. It's not embracing or rejecting, it's here it is. And in a Christian sense, it's, you know, we're all brothers and sisters, and we're all the children of God, and so you can't pick and choose. There's no picking and choosing. Everything is included. Right. That is a particular theological position, which actually is called inclusivism. That's what King was. He was inclusivist, not a pluralist, and not an exclusivist. Not everybody subscribes to that, but Sounds pretty good to me. So, thank you very much.

[54:10]

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