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? How shall I live? What kind of person do I wish to be? And what he suggests, We know that the Paramitas, but they are also practices that we follow in the process of really honing our character.

[01:09]

And I'll talk more about that later. The scholar Donald Lopez describes the etymology of the term Paramita. It's commonly translated as perfection. And it has two etymologies. The first derives from the word Parama, which means the highest or the most distant. Therefore, the chief or the primary. We were talking last week about. So, in saying that in his lectures, he always tried to go to the fundamental. I think that's a that's an appropriate gloss on the word as well.

[02:17]

So it can be rendered as excellence or perfection. More creative and pretty common etymology in parts. Para and Mita. Para means beyond. Kind of chomping up. Huh. Check your Wi-Fi. Networks again. Let's see if this is any better. This worse. It's OK. Yes. I can hear you, but your picture is present.

[03:18]

OK. How about now? My frozen in my my life. Still choppy. Your sound is good. Still choppy. Are you on your home network or Plum Mountain? You know what? Let's take a moment. I'm going home. OK. Well, the message the message on my screen is that your network bandwidth is low. Quote unquote. I think that's true. So I'm going to go home where my network bandwidth is very good. So please sit down for about two minutes. I'm going home now. Thank you.

[05:03]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[07:03]

you you you

[08:33]

you now is it okay first to sangha can you hear me okay yeah I don't understand this is why we are investing money in upgrading our system okay let me take a breath here so as I said the other etymology 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

[09:51]

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 so this practice of the paramitas is the 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

[10:59]

find it in the Prajnaparamita Sutra Prajnaparamita so the that's really embedded in our fundamental teachings it's embedded in the Heart Sutra which we chant every day in a large number of other texts and so these six perfections are as follows 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

[12:04]

forbearance endurance I'm going to talk a bit 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 which means energy or diligence or effort and of course there's a logic in which that fits with with patience in order to practice patience sometimes we have to make a big 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

[13:12]

our it's an element of our meditation practice and finally the critical one which is prajnaparamita which is wisdom it's insight into the nature of reality and it is the catalyst the transformative element that works with all of the other paramitas it catalyzes them to make them bodhisattva practices now 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 and includes all the others so you can think of them as virtues or as values these are values

[14:29]

that lead our life and lead our practice there are also practices but I think that each one of them needs to be then applied to the various practices that we have 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 perfections that the first five are in a sense you can you can do them as

[15:35]

virtuous action in the mundane world but when they are infused with prajna then they become part of the realization of our of our full Buddha nature they're really the basis for training for people who are practicing on the path of enlightenment prajna paramita opens the door for all the others so we look at one of the chapters of send my beginner's mind Suzuki Roshi talks about Donna prajna paramita so he talks about giving as a manifestation of

[16:39]

wisdom and you can think of all of these as a manifestation of wisdom giving morality patience effort and meditation so we come back to the prajna there's a couple of passages that I wanted to read you that are quite parallel and I'm starting with passion because it didn't as I said it infuses everything so in the heart of the Buddha's the heart of the Buddha's teaching uh did not how rights 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

[17:44]

beautiful than other waves but a wave is at the same time water water is the ground of being of the wave it's important that a wave knows she is water and not just a wave we to 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 touch the ground of our being which is Nirvana everything bears deeply the nature of Nirvana everything has been nirvana iced and then he take then he speaks pretty much in line with our teaching

[18:58]

so just teaching Dogen's teaching he says we don't have to attain Nirvana because we risk we ourselves are always dwelling in Nirvana the wave does not have to look for water it already is water we are one with the ground of our being but 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

[20:00]

talking about the non-duality of God God as I am who am he says think of it this way the ocean manifests an infinite number of waves it is its nature to do so it's not a matter of 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 being the way the ocean raises waves and then he says this is

[21:01]

interesting this is this is getting into perhaps theological discourse he said and God has a current justice compassion and humility is celebrated by the prophets this is a book on them on the Hebrew prophets unlike waves however you have a choice to flow with the current or against it it's 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 sustain you and to carry you so I think there's quite a few similarities here

[22:01]

maybe I'll let me stop here and just see if there are any comments or questions at this point you can raise your digital hand and I think will Yoni or Raghav call on you I'm not sure I'll call on on them okay so if you have a if you have a question or comment please raise your hand there's one from Heather so you you talked about this a little indirectly but I wonder if you could say it explicitly to make sure I understand it would the precepts be considered the tools or the action steps to experiment or experience the paramitas they

[23:07]

experience a as what I did say was that all the parameters are in relationship to all the other parameters you can enter at any point you can enter by way of meditation you can enter weight by way of precepts but the precepts are part of the threefold training which is which is the whole of of the Buddhist vision that threefold training is morality concentration and wisdom sheila Samadhi and Prajna so it's possible for example that one could practice very deep concentration and conceivably ignore morality that can

[24:20]

happen the example that I always give right back to a couple of episodes of the Sopranos that I watched where this this guy came out of prison where he became a you know a very adept yogin but he was a stone killer he had no morality and other teachers have been asked this question so you the thing is that the threefold training all of those have to interact but it's also true that on our catch in Miyako those who have had lay or priest ordination it says that that

[25:23]

it was transmitted from Bodhidharma that the precepts are the single gate to the practice so I think that morality is essential it's inseparable element does that does that make sense yes I think you're saying it's it's it's a very helpful framework or set of practices the precepts and it's not the whole it's not the whole of it but it's a really great place to start but it can be the whole of it uh-huh um you know the thing about the precepts to me is they are they are instructions for how we relate to things I relate to things and

[26:27]

I relate to people and how we relate to ourselves to me they are all instructions for relationship and I think at the heart of the 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 it is very very detailed you know our precepts are

[27:28]

pretty detailed says you know do not elevate yourself above others do not lie and so forth but these Talmudic commentary the Talmudic commentary on lushan hara just goes into great detail about what is right and what is not right speech and it's it's really interesting really interesting and I don't think it's I don't feel that it's at odds with with what we are doing great thank you Gary do you do you think you know you're you're reading of the the Jewish

[28:29]

tradition and comparing it somewhat to the Buddhist tradition that there's a universality that comes through us as humans and that it's pretty typical to find the same things in various religions 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 of territory and you you also hear the expression sort of all roads lead up the same mountain right I I don't think that all roads lead up to say mountain I think all roads lead up to the top of a

[29:29]

mountain 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 uh you find 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 you go outside and you say ah this is amazing and that that ah is common that is universal what to pardon me yeah I think that the ah or the all it is is common to all of us okay yeah thank you Carol you said that the parameters are embedded in the heart sutra so I was

[30:42]

looking at the parameters and is that more not so little but just that all of these you don't really understand heart sutra we need to be practicing those I don't know why there's that feedback might be me because I was looking well giving well this I don't see that so much in the heart sutra literally but so I I was just curious about what you meant by that they're embedded in the heart sutra well I think it's that Prajna Paramita includes all of the Parmitas you don't have Prajna Paramita is Prajna Paramita is not a standalone the same it is intimately related to all of the other the other

[31:42]

five and but you said embedded in the heart sutra I was thinking the heart sutra sutra yeah I'm not meaning literally in terms of the words I'm meaning in terms of the the centrality of Prajna and it's clear that if you have Prajna then the bodhisattvas are doing all these other practices and you do find them spelled out the Prajna Paramita the heart sutra is is a highly compressed version of the larger yeah of a larger Prajna Paramita sutras and in those they are spelled

[32:43]

out directly thank you yeah so I think let me go on okay the first Paramita is Donna Paramita and Donna is a Sanskrit term that means giving it means to give freely with a heart of compassion to give without expecting anything in return and the the practice of Donna was really laid out by Shakyamuni Buddha as the practice of lay people but it's also the practice of the monks but the lay people were encouraged to give and they were the ones who it's without their

[33:51]

giving the monastic communities would not survive so we offer gifts of many kinds and I think that at the going back to the heart of giving is just the activity of connection so you have different they're different interpretations of kinds of giving at a base level there's a giving of material goods the that we need for survival and for a person you know facing say a disaster or in a

[34:54]

refugee camp or in a war zone the need for some the goods of survival are matter of life or death so that's a first priority in that context on a higher level are giving is the giving of the Dharma the giving of the teachings you know and this is what our their whole lives this is what Sojourn did and what Suzuki Roshi did and so many of the ancestors going back you know all kinds of Buddhist traditions they dedicated their lives to just giving these teachings because the teachings are teachings of liberation the

[35:58]

teachings of liberation in the context of resolving the issues of suffering there are 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 the Congress and but 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 the highest level is fearlessness and this is what is spoken of to me in the

[37:10]

pivotal verse of the art sutra 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 of having as having a self nature but the point of that is so that we can face the circumstances of each moment with fearlessness and finally the point of that fearlessness is so that we can simply connect and that connection is we all we all understand it we all feel it

[38:19]

when it happens and it's yet it's very mysterious so I've often read this that 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 to read it. Lewis Hyde is he has a very strong Buddhist background but he 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 restaurant just an ordinary restaurant in the south of France and he writes this the patrons sit at a long communal table and each finds before

[39:23]

his plate a modest bottle of wine before the meal 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 sense nothing has happened no one has any more wine than he would have if he poured his own but society has appeared where there where there was none before and if you think about those of you who has some awareness of Japanese traditions in Japan you always pour

[40:25]

tea for the other person you don't pour your own tea and sometimes we do that if you're in some places they have orioke where you're passing the bowl washing water down the ton or across the table and you don't pour your own water you pour water for your neighbor and then you give them the the teapot and they pour water for you so that the idea of that is the creation the very literal not symbolic the very literal creation of society it's it's really beautiful so this is a Dana is a circular activity it's the activity of the giver the receiver and the gift

[41:34]

and often what we forget is that this circle the 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 Suzuki Roshi talked about this was 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 he just believes in it flowing and circulating and I find that really inspiring instead of trying

[42:41]

to keep it for yourself give it away let others benefit for it and went from it and when when that happens then often more flows in to oneself but you don't do it for that for that reason actually pure generosity is simply giving and forgetting we say 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 Dogen talks about this in the first section of the bodhisattvas for embracing Dharma's

[43:47]

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 he's talking about he's not just talking about values 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 from your you know your social what is your social repertoire then you're allowing something else to happen later in this paragraph he says we must simply and

[44:56]

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 right now because our driveway is filled with these treasures we've been giving them away from the weekend you know and just watching after watching people and a sort through some of these stuff some of these things somebody came by yesterday that 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 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 to people we do not know that happens every time we put stuff out in the you know on the on the curb very literally it's like giving flowers blooming on the distant mountains to the

[46:03]

Tathagata I love that expression just you know it just fills my heart the flowers don't belong to us they don't belong to Tathagata and in our day and age compared to Dogen's day and age it actually in our day and age it takes 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 your greenish or brownish depending on the season is beautiful hillsides in South San Francisco that are filled with grasses and wildflowers in the right season and now the the developers are creeping up the hillsides you know and you can see the houses so to leave some

[47:10]

to leave flowers the space to bloom is a remarkable thing in our time says a gift is never disregarded for its small value but our effort should be genuine my favorite line in this whole passage is in the next paragraph he says we offer ourselves to ourselves and we offer others to others this is Donna Paramita this is this is Donna Paramita this is Donna that is fully enacted by wisdom to give ourselves to ourselves how do we

[48:10]

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 allows Yoni 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 teaching is 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 minutes let's see if there's any questions I want to we're not going to get

[49:14]

through all the parameters but I want to talk about to Shanti because it's my favorite but if you have a question or comment please Ross thank you who's on 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 anyone but if I not fill the space so much and meet people and I can trust that with their practice they will find their way and I

[50:19]

have to fight the my kind of habit or instinct to want to do something for somebody else and help them which I think is not letting others find others is 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 when one does maybe the correct way to to offer it is tentatively you know not not not sort of holding back but just saying well this occurred to me you know and I wanted to share it with you uh-huh so I mean I think that sometimes there are things that we that we might see about others but basically

[51:25]

I mean this is again goes back to goes back to the conundrum of the control chapter in reminding yeah where he says the best way to control a person is to give them a wide field is to watch them right and then he also says 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 but I think you know 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 it's challenging enough to try to figure out what mine is and I

[52:26]

don't believe I know that either well there's 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 things that Sojan said to me that he thought I needed to know about mm-hmm wasn't always easy to hear but I never dismissed it well so you said necessarily but you know I appreciate but that's because that's because we we had a relationship right you signed up for it so you advise him to critique your 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 so maybe I'm asking if it's okay to give feedback offer feedback or

[53:31]

I've been thinking about this do you have space to listen to hear me then we can have a relationship in that on that level yeah yeah thank you thank you yeah Yoni and then we'll move on I was on before the lecture started some people were talking about making music and you know whenever sometimes I'll hear a song and I'll feel like the song was this incredible gift to me because I it brings something up for me and I was wondering we were talking about you know giving others to others how like creative acts like that making music or making art where's that sort of fit in to all to the parameters or just Buddhist life in general well I'm a big fan of creativity

[54:32]

um the kinds of music that I play you know are folk based and not so different from all other kinds of music but it's music that's been that has been handed on for many many years and it's 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 minds and hearts then it doesn't survive it's survival of the fittest music yeah you know but in terms of it's a very subtle thing in

[55:47]

terms of actually performing in the past I love performing I haven't been doing a little now but I only love performing when I'm playing with other people I do not enjoy it by myself and what I had to learn the hard way was I think it was a time when I was somewhat ambitious and my band was somewhat ambitious and we wanted to get we wanted to get a response a certain kind of response and I would play like that with that intention and I would come out of feeling completely drained and hollow because my attention was in getting that response not in entering the music and so

[56:58]

I just stopped I just stopped playing that way I play out I play as an offering to people and they can accept it or not but the real satisfaction is in the larger nexus of communication between the musicians who are on stage and the audience and whatever whatever form that takes whether it's a listening audience or dancing audience or something like that so that in many ways that was my my training before I came to active Zen practice that makes sense thank you okay I'm going to go on I want to talk about Shanti this is really interesting Shanti is what we translate

[58:04]

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 next paramita which is virya energy or persistence also it's related to dana so one of the things that it means is

[59:07]

basically being able to bear what one experiences the real test if you if you look in in the the path of perfection of the Siddhi Magga what Buddhaghosa says is that that the true test of patience is patience in the face of insult and so or patience in the face of being unjustly accused I kind of turn that inside out also it's almost harder to bear what one is justly or properly accused of it's harder to bear once once real harmful errors but anyway patience is the paramita

[60:11]

that you apply without patience what Thich Nhat Hanh writes is you you know you face your world and you say this is an unhappy situation I must go somewhere else and you'll go from place to place wandering like the prodigal son so there's also a wonderful gloss on patience in Shanti Deva's path of the bodhisattva I don't know if any of you have read it the hope the path of the bodhisattva by the way is a commentary on the paramitas and it goes through all of them but

[61:16]

the the pivotal chapter is the chapter on patience and he talks about patience in the context of frustration and in verse 10 he says if there is a remedy for a situation that's difficult what's the use of frustration then 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 anxiety 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

[62:26]

an investigation this is another system is one of the factors of enlightenment so investigate how is it and where is it in your body so investigate the physical 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 annoying hunger is it in the pit of your stomach is it burning in your chest does it feel like your head is on fire in those circumstances look very carefully just investigate

[63:28]

not why but how is this pain manifesting what I love are the two to me very resonant and creative interpretations of this paramita by Suzuki Roshi and by Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich Nhat Hanh says that Kshanti is the practice of inclusiveness including everything and I think this is very much in line with what Sojourner Roshi's teachings always were that we need to find a way to include everything in our field of being

[64:35]

and what Thich Nhat Hanh says to suppress our pain is not the teaching of inclusiveness we have to receive it embrace it and transform it I would 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 but to face it we watched some of us last night watched a quite a beautiful Burmese films about some young monks

[65:43]

who had been left alone in the forest when their teacher went away and 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 you will not 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 do not turn away from it this this is how we make our heart big we dip we look deeply in order to understand if we don't understand then we'll be caught in anger hatred we will think

[66:56]

that we will feel better only when the other person is punished so he says to practice Shanti we need the other parameters if our practice of inclusiveness of Shanti does not bear the marks of understanding giving and meditation we are just going to be able we're just going to make the effort to suppress our pain and drive it down to the bottom of our consciousness that is dangerous that kind of energy will blow up later and destroy ourselves and others I think in psychological terms and for you in psychological terms that it's what's known as the return of the repressed whatever you repress is going to return to you in some form or another but if you practice deep your heart will grow without limits and you will suffer less so that's Thich Nhat Hanh's

[68:07]

expression of inclusiveness Suzuki Roshi writes the problem with the word patience is that it implies that we are waiting for something to get we are waiting for something to get better we are waiting for something good that will come in other words and this is to me this is the this is kind of the root cause of most of our suffering is that we want things to be different from how they are and so if you practice waiting because you're expecting things to be different than that how they are you're just going to continue to suffer Suzuki Roshi writes a more accurate

[69:09]

word for this quality Shanti is constancy a capacity to be with what is true moment after moment and I think that is that's where Thich Nhat Hanh and Suzuki Roshi intersect that capacity to be with what is true moment after moment is the capacity that we develop in practice to to broaden our hearts to be able to include whatever we encounter sometimes we can't do that sometimes it's too much sometimes we might need to take a step back figuratively or literally and collect

[70:17]

ourselves and reckon with the blow that we might have received this is really hard patience it's a really hard practice the character for patience it's very interesting that the ideogram in Chinese it has two parts the bottom part is really the radical for heart slash mind Shin and the part above that is a sword so it's a sword hanging over one's heart and mind that's

[71:27]

that's what the feeling of patience can be that's why it's it's to me it's it's very clearly a practice some people are naturally patient you know and they've been blessed I think that I always felt that Sochin was a very unusual person because and I think that he was very he was just naturally very patient or at least that's what he had become I'm not sure that he was always like that 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 we need to step back and collect

[72:34]

ourselves we may need to we may need to speak to a friend we may it's fine to get help to cultivate the parmita of patience but I really again I come back to this expression that that patience is the incinerator of defilements if you don't have that the defilements will just you know just burn free incinerator creates some 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

[73:36]

Joe yes I uh you mentioned from the book pouring wine for the other yeah and and I've noticed that in our American society that we we our default mechanism is rugged individualism 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 well that's an interesting question I want to take one quick step back and how do you see

[74:56]

that manifesting in the Zen community roughly um where people they may not seek help that right 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 they I was given this task and it's my task and that's what I'm going to do right 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 end of it 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

[75:59]

self-centeredness but of course you can build ego on the head of a pin and as a culture we're good at that it's true I don't know what the answer is you know it's we practice and practice and hopefully there are there are openings and I'm not talking about enlightenment experiences there are openings where we reshape or recast 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 you know I feel to what extent

[77:07]

that's happened in me and 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 it was resonant with that kindness and I wanted to be more like that yeah as in a dr. Martin Luther King would say the strength to love yeah and the strength to love is you know what we learn which is tough is that the strength to love is not always it is not always the same as like oh yeah we love because

[78:08]

we recognize our oneness and sometimes like or not like is precisely where we have to practice patience thank you thank you those questions your comments I think I've been through my notes give you one last chance

[79:49]

I've really enjoyed all the different I've enjoyed studying myself this practice period and also the other classes that that haven't given in all the lectures by senior students I just want to thank you all for 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 people see many of you there and then we'll have one day off and then we just begin our schedule again and you know as some of you may be wondering we are strategizing and moving towards opening step

[81:02]

by step later in the summer and we'll have an opportunity to talk together about all of that but meanwhile we have sushi and please enjoy sashimi and I'm looking forward to it myself and we'll see you in the morning

[81:23]

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