Thank you. So there's a very good book on the Paramitas by Dale Wright, who's a Buddhist scholar. It's somewhat scholarly. But I really like something that he says in the introduction, which is to study the Paramitas is to raise the question, how shall I live? I live. What kind of person. Do I wish to be. And what he suggests. We know that the perfect. But they are also practices that we.

[01:00]

follow in the process of really honing and I'll talk more about that later. The scholar Donald Lopez describes the etymology of the term paramita. It's commonly and it has two etymologies. The first derives from the word parama, which means the highest or the most distant or the primary. We were talking about Last week about Sojin saying that in his lectures he always tries to be fundamental.

[02:12]

I think that's an appropriate gloss on the word as well. So it can be rendered as excellence or perfection. As I said, the analogy divides the word paramita into para and mita. Para means beyond, means the further bank or the shore or the boundary. And mita means that which has arrived. So paramita means that which has gone beyond or that which has gone to the other shore. And this reflection is, this is also reflected in Tibetan translation of the word, which means gone to the other shore. The Chinese character that is used for the word paramita means crossing over to the other shore, which is the shore of non-fear and the shore of liberation.

[03:28]

So this practice of the paramitas is a natural practice of bodhisattvas. And it also is how we can live our lives. So let me say what they are. This is all outlined in Thich Nhat Hanh's book. You can find it in the Prajnaparamita Sutra. Prajnaparamita. So that's really embedded in our fundamental teachings. It's embedded in the Heart Sutra, which we chant every day. and a large number of other texts. And so these six perfections are as follows.

[04:35]

Dana Paramita means generosity or giving. Shila Paramita, Shila being the precepts, the ethics or morality or discipline. of proper conduct. This is the rule for monks. Shanti, which is patience, tolerance, forbearance, endurance. I'm going to talk more about this as we go on because I think that Thich Nhat Hanh and Suzuki Roshi have very interesting and very useful ways of framing the Paramita of Shanti. Virya Paramita, or diligence or effort.

[05:40]

And of course, there's a logic in which that fits with patience. In order to practice patience, sometimes we have to make effort. There's jhana, D-H-Y-A-N-A paramita, which is meditation or concentration. Most literally, it means a kind of one-pointed concentration, which is an element of our meditation practice. And finally, the critical one, which is prajnaparamita, which is wisdom, insight into the nature of reality. And it is the catalyst, the transformative element that works with all of the other paramitas.

[06:52]

It catalyzes them to make them bodhisattva practices. I'll say a little more about that. So really, all of these practices, all these paramitas, the six of them, each one of them implies all the others, includes all the others. So you can think of them as virtues. or as values. These are values that lead our life and lead our practice. They are also practices. But I think that each one of them needs to be then applied to the various practices that we have.

[07:58]

So these are the values of those practices to me. And they point towards how we move towards liberation as Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. And Prajna is the Paramita that really makes them That the first five, in a sense, you can do them as virtuous action in the mundane world. But when they are infused with prajna, then they become the realization of our...

[08:59]

full Buddha nature. They're really the basis for training for people who are practicing on the path of enlightenment. Prajnaparamita opens the door for all the others. So we look at one of the chapters of... in my beginner's mind, Suzuki Roshi talks about dhāna prajnaparamita. So he talks about giving as a manifestation of wisdom. And you can think of all of these as a manifestation of wisdom. Giving, morality, patience, effort, and meditation.

[09:59]

So we come back to Prajna. There's a couple of passages that I wanted to read you that are quite parallel. Because it, as I said, it infuses everything. So in the heart of the Buddha's, the heart of the Buddha's teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh writes, let us look at a wave on the surface of the ocean. A wave is a wave. It has a beginning and an end. It might be high or low, more or less beautiful than other waves. But a wave is at the same place. Water is the ground of being of the wave. It's important that a wave knows she is water and not just a wave.

[11:11]

We too live our life as an individual. Our life as an individual, as a wave. We believe that we have a beginning and an end. that we are separate from other living beings. That's why the Buddha advised us to look more deeply in order to look at the ground of our being, which is nirvana. Everything bears deeply the nature of nirvana. Everything has been nirvanaized. And then he speaks very much in line with our teaching, Sojan's teaching, Dogen's teaching. He says, we don't have to attain nirvana because we ourselves are dwelling in nirvana.

[12:17]

The wave does not have to look for water. It already is water. We are one with the ground of our being. That's really, to me, it's a beautiful passage. And the other day I was reading in a book by Rabbi Rami Shapiro called The Hebrew Prophets. And I was surprised to find very similar... very similar kind of analogy. He's saying, he's talking about the non-duality of God. God as I am who I am.

[13:19]

He says, think of it this way. The ocean manifests an infinite number of waves. It is its nature to do so. Choice. It is what it is to be an ocean. The ocean has a current. This too is not a matter of choice. It simply is what is. Now. God manifests beings. raises waves. And then he says, and this is interesting, this is getting into perhaps theological discourse. He said, justice, compassion, and humility is celebrated by the prophets.

[14:23]

This is a book on the Hebrew prophets. Unlike waves, however, you have a choice to flow with the current or against it. Not that God will punish you if you choose to go against the current of godliness. As with the ocean, you can swim against the current, but doing so will exhaust you and you will drown. Swimming with the current, on the other hand, allows the ocean to carry you. So I think there's quite a few similarities here. Maybe I'll let me stop here and just see if there are any comments or questions at this point.

[15:25]

You can raise your digital hand, and I think, will Yoni or Raghav call on you? I'm not sure. I'll call on them. Okay. If you have a question or a comment, please raise your hand. There's one from Heather. So you talked about this a little indirectly, but I wonder if you could say it explicitly to make sure. Would the precepts be considered... the tools or the action steps to experiment or experience the paramitas they experience they and what i did say was that all of the paramitas are in relationship to all the other parameters you can enter

[16:30]

At any point. You can enter by way of meditation. By way of precepts. But. The precepts are. Part of the threefold training. Which is the whole. Of. Of the Buddhist. Vision. That threefold training is. Morality. concentration, and wisdom. Shila, Samadhi, and Prajna. So it's possible, for example, that one could practice very deep concentration and conceivably ignore morality. That can happen. The example that I always give Went back to a couple of episodes of The Sopranos that I watched.

[17:35]

This guy came out of prison where he became a very adept yogin. But he was a stone killer. He had no morality. And... Other teachers have been asked this question. So the thing is that the threefold training, all of those have to interact. But it's also true that on our Ketchimyaku, those who have had lay or priest ordination, it says that... that it was transmitted from Bodhidharma that the preceptal gate to the practice.

[18:42]

So I think that morality is essential. It's an inseparable element. Does that make sense? Yes. I think you're saying it's... It's a very helpful framework or set of practices, the precepts, and it's not the whole of it, but it's a really great place to start. But it can be the whole of it. You know, the thing about the precepts to me is they are instructions for how we relate to things. How we relate to things and how we relate to people and how we relate to ourselves. To me, they are all instructions for relationship.

[19:42]

And I think at the heart of this practice is the awakening to the fact that of oneness. of our connection to, to everything. And so the precepts are very particular tools for how to arrive at that spot. And you find them in the Jewish tradition. It's really interesting. There's, I have a couple of books on it, very on what's called Lushan Hara, which is, you know, wrong speech basically. And, uh, It is very, very detailed. You know, our precepts are pretty detailed. Do not elevate yourself above others. Do not lie and so forth. But these Talmudic commentary, the Talmudic commentary on Loshan Hara, just great detail about

[20:59]

what is right and what is not right speech. And it's really interesting. Really interesting. And I don't think it's, I don't feel that it's at odds with doing. Great. Thank you. Gary? Do you think, you know, your your reading of the Jewish tradition and comparing it somewhat to the Buddhist tradition, that there's a universality that comes through us as humans. And that's pretty typical to find the same things. in various religions.

[22:02]

Well, I think that, you know, this is what is sometimes called perennial wisdom. And, you know, it cuts across a lot of, it covers a lot. And you also hear the expression sort of all roads lead up the same mountain, right? I don't think that all roads lead up the same mountain. I think all roads lead up to the top in a huge range. And we, you know, it's like we stand on the top and we yodel to each other. It might be different paths. It might be some different particularities, but in similar ethical and moral principles, In many, I wouldn't say all, but many religions. But it seems like something, you know, it's kind of like you go outside and you say, ah, this is amazing.

[23:17]

And that ah is common. That ah is universal. Pardon me? Yeah, I think that the ah or the ah is common. all of us. Thank you. Carol? You said that the Paramitas are embedded in the Heart Sutra. So I was looking at the Paramitas and is that more not so literal? But all of these, you know, to really understand Heart suture, we would need to be practicing those. I don't know why there's that feedback. It might be me. Let me shut the picture for a moment. Because I was looking, well, giving. I don't see that so much in literally.

[24:17]

So I was just curious about what you meant by that. They're embedded in the heart suture. Well, I think it's that. Prajna paramita includes all of the paramitas. You don't have... Prajna paramita is not a standalone thing. It is intimately related to all of the other five. And... But you said embedded in the heart sutra. I was thinking of the heart sutra sutra. Yeah, I'm not meaning literally in terms of the words. I'm meaning in terms of the centrality of prajna. And it's clear that if you have prajna, then the bodhisattvas are doing all these other practices.

[25:26]

And you do find them spelled out. The Praja Paramita, the Heart Sutra, is a highly compressed version of the larger Praja Paramita Sutras. And in those, they are spelled out directly. Thank you. So let me go on, okay? The first paramita is dana paramita. And dana is a Sanskrit term that means to give freely with a heart of compassion. To give without expecting anything in return. And the practice of dana was really laid out by Shakyamuni Buddha as the practice of lay people.

[26:44]

But it's also the practice of the monks. But the lay people were encouraged to give and they were the ones Without their giving, the monastic communities would not survive. So we offer gifts of many kinds. That going back to the heart of giving is just... the activity of connection. So you have different, there are different interpretations, kinds of giving. At a base level, there's a giving of material goods, the things that we need for survival.

[27:50]

And for a person, you know, face... disaster or in a refugee camp or in a war zone. The need for the goods of survival are a matter of life. So that's a first priority in that context. On a higher level, Our giving is the giving of the dharma, the giving of the teachings. And this is what our teachers did their whole lives. This is what Sojin did and what Suzuki Roshi did. And so many of the ancestors, going back, in all kinds of Buddhist traditions, they dedicated their lives to just giving these teachings.

[28:55]

Because the teachings are teachings of liberation. The teachings of liberation in the context of resolving the issues of suffering. They're also teachings of liberation in a mundane source. in a mundane nature. I'm thinking of it. I'm really thinking about it today since the Congress approved and President Biden voted to make Juneteenth a national holiday, which is remarkable. And that is recognizing the historical fact of liberation. But there's further to go.

[30:01]

The highest level is fearlessness. And this is what is spoken to me in the pivotal verse of the Artsutra. where it says, without hindrance, no fears exist. And so the Prajaparamita Sutra is a sutra that is designed to remove us from the hindrance of thinking of things as having a self-nature. But the point of that is so that we can face stances of each moment with fearlessness. And finally, the point of that fearlessness is so that we can simply connect.

[31:15]

And that connection is... We all understand it. We all feel it when it happens. And it's... Yet it's very mysterious. So I've often read this. In thinking about giving, one of my favorite books is The Gift by Lewis Hyde. And if you haven't read it, I really encourage you... Louis Hyde, he has a background, but he's delving in this book into anthropology, social history, and psychoanalysis. And at one point in the book, he describes dinner at a village, just an ordinary restaurant in the south of France.

[32:20]

And he writes this. The patrons sit at a long communal table. And each finds before his plate. A modest bottle of wine. He begins. A man will pour his wine. Not into his own glass. But into his neighbors. And his neighbor will return the gesture. filling the first person's empty glass. In an economic way, nothing has happened. No one has any more wine than he would have if he poured his own. But society has appeared where there was none before. And if you think about those of you who... has some awareness of Japanese traditions.

[33:26]

In Japan, you always pour tea for the other person. You don't pour tea. And sometimes we do that if you're... In some places they have oryoki where... You're passing the bowl-washing water down the tan, and you don't pour your own water. You pour water for your neighbor, and then you give them the teapot, and they pour water for you. So the idea of that is the creation, the very literal, not symbolic, the very literal of society. It's really beautiful. So this dana is a circular activity.

[34:30]

It's the activity of the giver, the receiver, and the gift. And often what we forget is that This circle has to be unbroken. That if we hoard a gift for ourselves, if we don't pass it on in one form or another, then we're actually breaking the circle. Dr. Roshi talked about this. It's a wonderful... piece of a lecture that found in the windmill, I think I have it someplace on my computer, talking about money. Where he was saying, just believes in it flowing and circulating.

[35:40]

And I find that really inspiring. Instead of trying to keep it for yourself, give it away. Let others benefit from it. When that happens, then often more flows in to oneself. But you don't do it for that reason. Actually, pure generosity is simply giving and forgetting. The emptiness of the giver, the gift, and the one who receives. So with an empty hand, I offer an empty gift to an empty receiver. And what arises is gratitude. What arises is connection.

[36:44]

Dogen talks about this in the first section of... the bodhisattvas for embracing dharmas, shishobo. He says, giving means not to be greedy. Not to be greedy means not to crave. Not to crave means in worldly expression, not to flatter. So he's really digging down here. You know, he's talking about, he's not just talking about value, he's talking about actual practices, not to flatter. If I flatter someone, invariably, it's because I want something from that person, right? So if you eliminate flattery, your social repertoire, then you're allowing something else to happen.

[37:52]

In this paragraph, he says, we must simply and unfailingly not be greedy. It is like offering treasures that are going to be discarded to people we do not know. Which is really interesting, because our driveway is filled with these treasures. And we've been giving them away from the weekend, you know, and just watching, after watching people, and sort through some of these stuff, some of these things. Somebody came by yesterday. There's a big couch out there. And they said, oh, this must be an heirloom. And I said, well, I don't know if it's an heirloom, but it's really a beautiful piece of furniture. We just don't need it now, and somebody might. So it's to be like offering treasures that are going to be discarded. Oh, no, that happens every time we put stuff out in the, you know, on the curb.

[39:02]

Very literally. It's like giving flowers blooming on the distant mountains to the Tathagata. I love that expression. Just, you know, it just... The flowers don't belong to us. They don't belong to the Tathagata. And in our day and age, compared to Dogen's day and age, it actually, in our day and age, it's a conscious effort to allow flowers to bloom on the hillside. We were driving to the airport the other day in South San Francisco, and what we saw, you know, those beautiful flowers or brownish, depending on the season. There's beautiful hillsides in South San Francisco that are filled with grasses and wildflowers in the right season.

[40:06]

Now the developers are creeping up the hillsides. And you can see the houses. So to leave flowers, the space to bloom, is a remarkable thing in our time. It says a gift is never disregarded for its small value. It should be genuine. My favorite line in this whole passage is in the next paragraph. It says, we offer ourselves to ourselves and we offer others to us. This is Donna Paramita. This is dhāna prajnaparamita. This is dhāna that is fully enacted by wisdom.

[41:11]

To give ourselves to ourselves. How do we do that? Of course, that's one of the dimensions of our practice. To give others to others. You know, is there something I can do that to be Yoni? You know, or a giant to be a giant? I don't have any agency for that. But I think that the way we do it, and this is, I think, totally resonant with Sojin's teaching and Suzuki Roshi... just to accept each person as they are in any given moment. That's giving others to others. So I'm going to stop there for a couple of minutes.

[42:17]

Let's see if there's any questions. I want to, we're not going to get through all the Paramitas, but I want to talk about Kishanti because it's my favorite. But if you have a question or comment, please. Ross? Thank you, Huzan. I've been thinking about giving others to others as an opportunity to let people find their own way. Because I can't give anything to anyone. But if I not fill the space and meet people, I can trust that with their practice, they will find their way.

[43:24]

And I have to fight my kind of habit or instinct to want to do something for somebody else and help them, which I think is not, there's this kind of like letting me help you, which is, you know, this sort of a very different dynamic. What do you think? I think you're right. Yeah. And I also think sometimes one might see something that can help a friend. And when one does, maybe the correct way to offer it is tentatively. You know, not sort of holding back, but just, well, this occurred to me, you know, and I wanted to share it with you. So, I mean, I think that sometimes there are things that we might see about others that,

[44:30]

But basically, I mean, this is, again, goes back to the conundrum of the control chapter in where he says the best way to control a person is to give them a wide field, is to watch them, right? And then not to ignore them. So to watch them means that we're in some relationship to them. And if we're in a relationship to them, there's going to be some communication. Yeah. For me, it's just like I never... I don't have the... I don't believe that I know anybody else's reality. It's challenging enough to try to figure out what mine is.

[45:32]

And I don't believe I know that either. There's a number of stories where the students thank their teacher for not telling them and letting them find their own way posthumously. Right. But I will say, hard as it was, I am very grateful for the thing Sojin said to me that he thought I needed to know about. Wasn't always easy to hear, but I never dismissed it. Well, that's what you signed up for. Not necessarily, but, you know, I appreciate it. That's because we had a relationship. Right. You signed up for it, so you invite him to critique your practice, and then your practice is refined, whereas on a more peer level versus teacher-student, It's a little more delicate, I think.

[46:33]

So maybe I'm asking if it's okay to get more feedback or I've been thinking about this. Do you have space to listen, to hear me? Then we can have a relationship on that level. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yoni, and then we'll move on. Hi, Hozan. Um, before the lecture started, some people were talking about making music and, um, you know, whenever, sometimes I'll hear a song and I'll feel like the song was this incredible gift to me. Cause I, it brings something up for me. And I was, um, since we were talking about, you know, giving others to others, how like creative acts like that, um, making music or making art, where's that sort of fit in? to the Paramitas or just Buddhist life in general?

[47:34]

I'm a big fan of creativity. The kinds of music that I play are folk-based. And not all other kinds of music, but it's music that's been... that has been handed on for many, many years. And it's been handed on within a tradition the same way that the forms that we have in the zendo are handed on. And the songs that survive survive because there's something essential in them. You know, if there wasn't something essential, if a song, whether it's the words or the melody, if it doesn't have something that catches people's hearts, then it doesn't survive.

[48:39]

It's survival of the fittest music. You know, um, but in terms of, it's a very subtle thing in terms of actually, uh, In the past, I loved performing. I do it a little now. But I only love performing when I'm playing with other people. I do not enjoy it. And what I had to learn the hard way was I think there was a time when I was somewhat ambitious and my band was somewhat ambitious. We wanted to get a response, a certain kind of response.

[49:40]

And I would play like that, with that intention, and I would come out of feeling completely drained and hollow. My attention was in getting that response, not in... entering the music. And so I just stopped. I just stopped playing that way. I play out, I play as an offering to people and they can or not. But the real satisfaction is in the larger nexus of communication between the musicians who are on stage and the audience in whatever form that takes, whether it's a listening audience or a dancing audience or something like that. So that, in many ways, that was my training before I came to active Zen practice.

[50:51]

Does that make sense? Thank you. Okay, I'm going to go on. I wanna talk about Shanti, because it's really interesting. Shanti is what we translate as patience or forbearance, endurance. In the Pali Suttas, there's a line that that I like, which is that patience is the incinerator of defilements. Patience is the incinerator of defilements. Defilements or hindrances. And, of course, it's linked very closely to the which is virya, or energy, or persistence.

[52:00]

um also it's related to dana so one of the things that it means is basically bear what one experiences the real test if you if you look in in the the path of perfection the vasudhi maga what Buddhaghosa says is that the true test of patience is patience in the face of insult. And so, or patience in the face of being unjustly accused. Inside out also, It's almost harder to bear what one is justly or properly accused of.

[53:08]

It's harder to bear one's real harmful errors. But any patience is the paramita that you apply. Without patience, What Thich Nhat Hanh writes is, you know, you face your world and you say, this is a situation. I must go somewhere else. And you'll go from place to place, wandering like the prodigal son. So, there's also... wonderful gloss on patience in Shantideva's Path of the Bodhisattva. I don't know if any of you have read it.

[54:11]

The Path of the Bodhisattva, by the way, is a commentary on and it goes through all of them. But the pivotal chapter is the chapter on patience. And he talks about patients in the context of frustration. And he says, if there is a remedy for a situation that's difficult, what's the use of frustration? And he says, if there is no remedy, what's the use of frustration? It's like I saw on a T-shirt once at Tassajara, somebody had a T-shirt with the motto that worry is not preparation, which is pretty good.

[55:14]

It is not preparation. It happens, though. And when it happens, what we can do as the practice of patience, is really to investigate. Investigate it. And investigation, this is one of the factors of enlightenment. So investigate how is it and where is it in your body. So investigate qualities. and location and sensation. If there's a pain, whether it's physical or mental, is it a tightness? Is it a sticking pain? Is it a gnawing hunger? The pit of your stomach?

[56:17]

Is it burning in your chest? Does it feel like your head is on fire? In those circumstances, look very carefully. Just investigate not why, but how is this pain manifesting. What I love are the two, to me, very resonant and creative mutations of this Paramita by Suzuki Roshi and by Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich Nhat Hanh says that Krishanti is the practice of inclusiveness, including everything.

[57:26]

And I think this is very much in line with what Sojan Roshi's teachings always were, that we need to include everything in our field of being. And what Thich Nhat says, to suppress our pain is not the teaching of inclusiveness. We have to receive it and transform it. I would revise that a little bit. I think sometimes we should be careful about embracing things. Sometimes we are not ready to embrace it. Sometimes embracing it may be hazardous.

[58:30]

but to face it. Some of us last night watched quite a beautiful Burmese film about some young monks who had been left alone in the forest when their teacher went away. One of the monks had the ability to Well, he was visited by spirits. And what he said to the spirit basically was, if I look at you, I have the power to frighten me. He wasn't trying to embrace it, but he wasn't turning away. What Thich Nhat Hanh says, and I fully agree with this, is If we receive it, if we turn away from it, this is how we make our heart big.

[59:45]

We look deeply in order to understand. If we don't understand, but in anger, hatred, we will think that we will feel better only when the other person is punished. So he says to practice shanti paramita, we need the other paramitas. If our practice of inclusiveness, of shanti, does not bear the marks of understanding, giving, and meditation, we are just going to make the effort to suppress our pain. and drive it down to the bottom of our consciousness. It's dangerous. That kind of energy will blow up later and destroy ourselves and others. I think in psychological terms, in Freudian psychological terms, that it's what's known as the return of the repressed.

[60:52]

Whatever you repress is going to turn to you in some form or another. But if you practice deep looking, your heart will grow without limits and you will suffer less. So that's Thich Nhat Hanh's inclusiveness. Suzuki Roshi writes, the problem with the word patience is that it implies that we are waiting for something. We are waiting for something to get better. We are waiting for something good that will come. In other words, and to me, this is kind of the root cause of most of our suffering, is that we want things how they are.

[61:57]

And so if you practice waiting because you're expecting things to be different from how they are, you're just going to continue to suffer. Suzuki Roshi writes, a more quality shanti is constancy. A capacity to be with what is true moment after moment. And I think that's where Thich Nhat Hanh and Thich Nhat Hanh intersect, that capacity to be with what is true moment after moment is the capacity that we develop in practice to broaden our hearts, to include... whatever we encounter.

[63:01]

Sometimes we can't do that. Sometimes it's too much. Sometimes we might need to act figuratively or literally and collect ourselves and Reckon with the blow. This is really hard. Patience is a really hard practice. The character is very interesting. The ideogram in Chinese. It has two parts.

[64:05]

The bottom part is really the radical for mind, shin. And the part above that is a sword. So it's a sword hanging over one's heart and mind. That's That's what the feeling of patience can be. That's why it's... To me, it's very clearly a practice. Some people are naturally patient. You know, and blessed. I think that... I always felt that Sochan was a very unusual person. And I think that he was just naturally very patient.

[65:12]

Or at least that's what he had become. But some of us are more easily plagued by our impatience. And we really have to work with it. When... something comes up that's really hard to deal with, back and collect ourselves. We may need to speak to a friend. It's fine to get help to cultivate But I really, again, I come back to this expression that patience is the incinerator of defilements. If you don't have that, the defilements will just, they'll just burn free.

[66:14]

Boundaries around it. So I think I'm going to stop there and see if there are any other questions before we finish for the evening. feel free to ask or to comment on your own experience. Joe? Yes, you mentioned from that book, Pouring Wine for the Other Person. Yeah. And I've noticed that in our American society that our default mechanism is rugged individualism.

[67:31]

Yes. And then I noticed that it also manifests in the Zen community. And is the inclusiveness, is that the key to creating that community or enabling the community to take place? That's an interesting question. I want to take one quick step back and say, how do you see that manifesting in the Zen community, roughly? Where people, they seek help outright, or they'll want to do something their own way, and it may not be the right way, but they'll keep doing it that way because I was given this task, and it's my task, and that's what I'm going to do.

[68:35]

I think that's one aspect of it. As you were speaking, I realized another aspect is that to some degree, we're asked to give up our individuality in order to do a practice together. And that's, you know, that's really a remedy for our, an attempted remedy for our self-centeredness. But, of course, you can build ego on the head of a pin. And as a culture, we're very good at that. It's true. I don't know what the answer is. We practice and practice, and hopefully there are openings, and I'm not talking about enlightenment experiences.

[69:51]

There are openings where we reshape ourselves from what we've learned. And I will say I've seen a lot of people who... for whom that's happened. And I feel to what extent that's happened in me. One of the things that I loved when I came here was I felt that people were very kind and that the shape of the practice was such that it was resonant with that kindness. And I wanted to be more like that. As in Dr. Martin Luther King would say, the strength to love.

[70:55]

And the strength to love is, you know, what we learn, which is tough, is that the strength to love is not always the is not always the same as like we love because we recognize our oneness connectedness and sometimes like or not like is precisely where we have to practice patience Thank you. Questions or comments? I've been through my notes.

[72:52]

I'll give you one last chance. I've really enjoyed all the different, I've enjoyed studying myself this practice period and also the other classes that have been given and all the lectures by senior students. I just want to thank you all for participating. We begin session tomorrow morning. I don't think that's quite registered with me yet, but it will when I get up. And I hope that many will see many of you there. And then we'll have... one day off, and then we just begin our schedule again.

[73:55]

As some of you may be wondering, we are strategizing and moving towards opening step by step later in the summer, and we'll have an opportunity to talk together about all of that. Meanwhile, we have Sushi. And please enjoy Sashim. And I'm looking forward to it myself. And we'll see you in the morning. So let's chant the four vows.

[74:37]

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