watching it go by and so I felt like that was a pretty manageable talk to get together easily for me and since I had since I was feeling very busy and then three and a half weeks ago I fell and broke my the top of my femur at my hip and that's why I'm sitting here like this and thank you Linda for being my bound body for me this morning and I just realized that the landscape of my life changed sort of radically when that happened, and I couldn't really talk about time or anything else without somehow bringing that in. So I'll start with some reflections about time, and then I'll come to my femur story at the end. So time is about as Buddhist a subject as you can get. Our Zen practice is all about time, as we sit in Zazen, trying to be present in the present moment, as we consider karma, the law of cause and effect, which needs time to happen in, and as we appreciate our ancestors going way back through time.

[01:18]

And most essential of all, maybe, in terms of time, is the teaching of impermanence. And as you probably know, one of the Buddha's basic teachings is that all things are marked by three characteristics. Impermanence, suffering, and no fixed self. And impermanence is really time. It's time itself. It's time passing. Everything is constantly changing because time is constantly flowing. Impermanence is painful because we lose what we love. But we tend to forget that impermanence also brings us joy. It's about birth as well as death. The passage of time brings us beginnings as well as endings. And that's one of the things I've been catching on to as I study time. And I want to share that idea with you. And the less able, we know this, but the less able we are to accept impermanence, the more we suffer.

[02:20]

So impermanence is really life being lived. It's life living itself. And that's what you want, isn't it? You want to live your life and you can't do it unless you're impermanent. What kind of a life would you have if you were a granite statue that never moved or changed? Michelangelo's David never gets an erection. It's lucky we're alive. This very moment is impermanence. And this time we breathe with every breath is what makes it possible for us to love each other. After all, it takes time to love someone. How can you love someone if you don't have a day in which to do it? And the greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of your time. Time is love. Time is not a thing. We say, I don't have enough time.

[03:24]

and we speak of spending time and saving time, but time is not something you possess. You might think you can save time by saving up your sick days at work or by getting a faster computer, for example, but you're not saving time. You're just doing something different in the time that's given to you. You still have the same amount of time. Time isn't like gravity or sunshine. It's not something you can put in the bank and use later. And you could say that time is the most important thing there is because it includes everything. It's sort of like God, if you believe in God. Can you think of anything that's not inside of time? As our beloved Zen Master Dogen said about 800 years ago in his essay called Uchi, translated as Being Time, each moment is the entire world. Reflect now.

[04:25]

whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment. So I've always been fascinated by the subject of time, even since childhood. When I was a child, we used to go to my grandmother's house in Illinois in the summer, and I liked to go up into her attic, climbing the narrow stairs straight into the past, where there was an ancient doll's house and a costume trunk. I like to sit at a little desk in a dormer window and look through the boxes of postcards on a shelf there. They were sent to and from long ago family members, most of them from my great-grandmother to my grandmother when she was a child. They were mailed decades before I was born with one-cent stamps on them, and they enchanted me. On one side, a photo of a large passenger ship in the harbor at Brussels, and on the other side, the handwritten message.

[05:30]

The sea is so smooth that nobody has been sick, and the stars are very bright. Does it not seem queer that I am looking at the same stars you are seeing? And there I was, a 10-year-old girl, musing over the postcard, looking out the window at the meadow below, and the rabbits with their long shadows hopping about on the grass, wondering how I could be there in that place that smelled so deliciously of old books in that moment, holding in my hand a postcard that had been written decades before I was born by the actual hand of my great-grandmother. And now, seven decades after that, here I am at Berkeley Zen Center telling you about this. We all are occupying these layers of time together, and the same stars are still over all our heads at night. Does that prove that past, present, and future are all happening at once?

[06:32]

I've been a member of Berkeley Zen Center since 1976, and this is my 50th year of practice. This is not an achievement to be admired. This is something that happened because I kept on living and kept on doing what I was already doing. and there are other people here who have practiced as long as I have and longer, and a handful of us who remember the old Zen Do on Dwight Way. So the history of Berkeley Zen Center is also my history now, woven deeply into my life and into the time of my life. I've been on the board, I've served on the practice committee, edited the newsletter, been Saturday breakfast cook, Kokyo, Doan, Jiki Do, and Chidan, And back in the day when we had Monday night dinners at Dwight Way, I used to cook the dinner. When my son Sandy, now in his 50s, was about six, he took recorder lessons from Mel and Dwight Way. He was a ring bearer in Mel and Liz's wedding at Green Gulch Farm.

[07:36]

Liz says she doesn't remember that, but it's true. I remember. Sandy remembers. The passage of time has entangled my life with Berkeley Zen Center. Berkeley Zen Center is like a sturdy tree, and I am like one of those vines that twines itself around the tree, becoming more and more interwoven. As time has gone on, the past has come along with me into the present in layers of memories. I might sit on a particular cushion and suddenly remember a sesheen when I sat in that very spot many years ago. I've been practicing with my friend Norman Fisher at Everyday Zen for the last 25 years, so I'm not around as much as I used to be, or as much as I would like to be. But Berkeley Zen Center is my home temple, and I love it dearly, and so did was my first teacher. Because of impermanence, the old ones from here are moving on,

[08:42]

and because of impermanence, new Dharma friends have come, bringing new energy and keeping our precious Sangha alive. I'm full of gratitude for all of you who continue to make this practice place possible. Really, thank you so much, especially to the young ones and the new ones who I don't even know, and I'm getting to know. I'm thinking more about time than ever these days because I'm 82, and it's become obvious to me that I'm not going to live forever. But it seems extraordinary that I'm 82. A fellow old person said to me recently, I thought it would take longer to get old. So how did this come about? Where did all those 82 years go? Were they stolen from me along with my ability to stand on my head and my excellent sense of direction?

[09:43]

Could time itself be the thief? But no, time has given me everything I've ever had. Time has given me my life. Going back to Dogen's Uji, he says, do not think that time merely flies away. If time merely flies away, you would be separated from time. and he tells us the self is time, so I'm actually made out of time. I'm glad I'm still alive. I've crossed an invisible line where I accept being old, and it's a relief. I accept the impermanence of youth. That's pretty obvious to me. I even accept the impermanence of being 82, because before you can say, Jack Robinson, I'll be 83, unless I'm dead. This is really a distressing time, speaking of time, for our planet. And you can offer your love to our planet and our fellow beings by offering your time, because time is love.

[10:51]

You can give in whatever way feels right to you by resisting, demonstrating, writing letters, working on elections, supporting immigrants, connecting to others with kindness, sitting quietly by yourself, or shouting from the housetop with passion. If the candidate you worked for loses, you can remind yourself that you have given your good intentions and your time. Remember the law of karma. Beneficial actions produce beneficial results, even if you can't see them. Your actions will bear fruit in time. Everything you do matters. We vow to save all sentient beings. What a great and timeless vow. You can try in every moment to save all sentient beings. And if it turns out they aren't all saved yet in one day, you can try again the next day. What a great vow. It's a gift to have an intention that we won't fulfill, that we won't finish, because it's always there for us, ready to be renewed, ready to guide our life.

[11:59]

So now I come to my femur, my hip. So on Labor Day weekend, I was staying in a remote cabin in the woods in Mendocino County. Pat McMahon, my old buddy who's here, was up there with me. He loves that cabin and goes there often, sometimes on his own. And by the way, I hasten to tell you that our friendship is completely chaste, as it has been for many, many years. On Monday, September 1st, we packed up our stuff so that we'd be ready to leave first thing on Tuesday morning. come back to Berkeley. At about 9 PM, I was going to the wood closet off the main room to get a jacket that was hanging there. The cabin was lit with only a candle and a kerosene lantern, so it was pretty dark. I tripped on a brick hearth that protrudes into the main room and fell suddenly and hard on my left hip.

[13:03]

I felt a crunch, a pain like a lightning bolt shot through me. and it came again in waves. Pat kindly suggested he could help me up onto the couch where I'd be more comfortable, but moving was not a possibility. Only if I stayed completely still with my head in the wood closet where I fell and my body sticking out the door into the main room was the pain almost bearable. The slightest movement, like shifting my cheek off a piece of kindling, felt like a bomb exploding in the middle of my torso. I couldn't stop myself from crying out. The pain left no possibility of being anywhere else but the present moment. Pat sat next to me on the floor and held my hand. He was steady, calm, and reassuring. His hand was like a lifeline. I thought... of that pain scale the doctors always ask you about.

[14:03]

On a scale from zero to 10, what is your pain? I always hate that question and I want to say, it's not a number, it just hurts. But on the cabin floor I thought, oh, now I know what a 10 is. I don't want to be telling you a sob story about poor me. I want to speak to you like a scientific observer reading my field notes about an experience I had with pain. because I think it might be of interest, and people don't really talk about the specifics of it that much. It was a unique experience for me, and yet it was a basic experience, a basic human experience. I want to speak about how it connected with my understanding of time and how it connected with my practice. So Pat called 911. Then he had to drive two miles down the twisty dirt road to meet the ambulance. on the paved road and lead it back up to the cabin. I was alone for half an hour or so.

[15:06]

I chanted the Heart Sutra over and over, shouting at the top of my lungs to Abalokiteshvara, Abalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when practicing deeply, etc., reminding myself that she is the one who hears the cries of the world, and so she was hearing me. I was suspended in time, waiting, staying as still as I could. I wanted time to pass so that the ambulance would come, and yet I didn't want time to pass at all because I knew that they would have to move me and I knew that it would be exceedingly painful. When the EMTs arrived, they were kind. They said they would have to carry me up the narrow path through the woods to the ambulance in a blanket sling. I said, okay, but I'm going to have to scream. They said, that's okay. And I did scream. I let go and screamed, knowing there was nothing for it but to give in to the process. I thought, I'm a Zen practitioner.

[16:09]

I should be brave. I should be able to accept the pain. But actually, I did accept the pain because it refused to be rejected. And somehow the screaming helped. It must have taken about 15 minutes. for the EMTs to get me up the hill from the cabin to the ambulance in the blanket sling. And that period of time was probably the most pain I have ever felt. It was worse than bearing my children. In between screams, I thought of other people who suffered from physical pain and for a much longer time than me. I thought of a friend telling me about the pain he experienced when passing kidney stones. I thought of people suffering from chronic pain. I thought of children in Gaza undergoing surgery without any anesthesia. I thought of soldiers in war. Then there would be a new lurch and a tug on the blanket sling, and I would scream again. I had fully joined the human race as a person subject to pain.

[17:13]

Maybe what was more remarkable than the pain was the fact that I had never felt anything like this before. It seems like a long time ago now. It seems impossible that I could have had that experience and be here now telling you about it. Thank goodness the time has passed. Time isn't a thing, but it gives us our life and it gives us each moment. And there was also, with the pain, an unexpected gratitude. The moment I fell, I knew something bad had happened. I was pretty sure I had broken my hip. even though it turned out to be my femur, and I knew that I was in a dark and relatively inaccessible cabin in the woods, lit only by a kerosene lamp. I also knew that I wasn't going to die right then, that Pat was there, that one moment was going to unfold into the next.

[18:15]

What amazed me was that I didn't have to make my care happen. The EMTs came. They knew what to do. They took me to the local hospital and the people there knew what to do. People who didn't know me gave me morphine and a surgeon who wasn't expecting me was there to operate on my leg and put a rod in my femur. They wheeled me on a gurney into a single room and a nursing assistant put pre-warmed blankets over my shivering body. What did I do to deserve this? How wonderful that human civilization had developed to the point where there were such things. as hospitals and surgeons. And I didn't have to ask anybody to do anything. It could have been worse. I could have hit my head. Or Pat's bone could have been out of juice. Horrible to think. Or it could have been better. I could have walked around the brick hard. But those things didn't happen. What happened, happened. And time carried me along from one moment to the next.

[19:19]

I spent about a week in the Willetts Hospital, which turned out to be an excellent, well-regarded hospital. They even had their own farm a couple of blocks away, so we had farm-to-table eating. It was a Seventh-day Adventist Hospital, and the Seventh-day Adventists are very committed. They have started a lot of hospitals, it turns out, and so it was run on loving principles. Most of the people who worked there were not Seventh-day Adventists, the people who ran it were. And everybody was really kind to me there. I got PT, I got OT, physical therapy, occupational therapy. And Pat was able to stick around for an extra day visiting me before he had to go back to Oakland. What a true friend he was and is. Then my son Noah flew out from Austin to be with me. He stayed in a motel and hung out with me in the hospital during the day, encouraging me, asking questions of the nurses and the doctor, taking care of me.

[20:29]

Time turned upside down. Half a century ago, I was the one who put Noah to bed every night and sang him a good night song. Now he had taken a week out of his regular life to sit by my bed. He offered me his time. He offered me love. Time is love. The week in the hospital was kind of a time travel for me. My to-do list was completely forgotten. I had no responsibilities. My mind was cloudy from the drugs and it was hard to attend to anything outside the room. I couldn't read, I couldn't plan, I couldn't look at email. The lightning bolt pain was gone. The number 10 pain replaced by, I didn't know, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, somewhere in there. Time slowed. I slowed. It took a long, long time to get from my hospital bed to the toilet a few steps away, using the walker with the help of a nursing assistant.

[21:39]

It was like science fiction. It was like a dream. It was like a week spent in another reality, people by a shifting cast of characters and a shifting cast of human helpers, really, who I had never seen before and who I would never see again, probably. My Buddhist practice helped me to be grateful to all of them who were giving me their time as if they wanted to. One of the nurse's assistants had the longest fake eyelashes I had ever seen. At first, I was horrified. How could she see past them? She was also patient and kind, cheerfully answering my calls through the night to take me to the toilet because I wasn't allowed to go by myself. Time is love. I loved her, and I even loved her eyelashes after a while, which I came to see as her own exuberant celebration of life. For that week, my judgments dropped away, replaced by thank yous.

[22:46]

And having Noah there with me was a tremendous gift. He was also a bridge to the world that is my life and was my life, is my life, outside the Willetts Hospital. And when I was ready to be discharged, a nurse took me down the main entrance in a wheelchair, and Noah went to get my car in the parking lot. When I was outdoors, I was amazed The breeze shifting in the big green leaves of the trees was intoxicating. Wow, fresh air, incredible. And I came home and now I'm getting better and the pain has very much diminished and is very manageable. And now here I am in this really beautiful room with all of you. So how did this happen? I'll end by repeating Dogen's words. Each moment is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment.

[23:54]

In fact, I want to do this as a call and response. I'm going to say a phrase of that and you can all say it back to me. Each moment is the entire world. Each moment is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world. Reflect now if any being or any world is left out of the present moment. Is left out of the present moment. Thank you for that. And thank you for letting me come. And we have some time. We have plenty of time for some comments or questions or discussion. Colleen. Thank you so much for your talk and sharing your theme or story and your thoughts on time. I just want to share, when you talked about sort of screaming in the pain and not really even having a choice, but maybe for a moment thinking I'm a Zen student, I should be hitting someone away other than screaming.

[25:00]

I was just reminded, I ride my bike a lot and when I'm on a busy road and a car gets too close or a truck or whatever, and I can tell they're going to do that, I actually scream. And it helps. Because I'm merging my noise with their noise and their loudness and their too muchness. And I've had the same kind of thought with myself. Shouldn't I just be like, blah, blah, blah, I don't find that you're two inches from me. But no. And I'm not screaming to alert them. It's for me. So I hadn't thought about that, but when you told your story, it reminded me. that practice. Well, it makes me think that we've evolved to be able to scream. There must be a good reason that we can scream. Well, I think it's soothing. When you were alone there in the cabin, you were doing what you needed to do to soothe yourself. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick, for taking care. Yes.

[26:04]

Thank you, Sue. Can you hear me? Yes. I agree. Okay. First of all, thank you very much for your talk. I have a question about how we describe time. About how we? How we describe time. So you talked about time being fast, being slow. I wonder, I mean, you're a writer, you're very close to language. What other metaphors do you use? Large, small, near, far? I find that the more I think about time and the more I practice with a mind towards time, I find this question less obvious, so I'm curious what you would say. Yeah, well that's a good question, and time is certainly subtle and mysterious, and we really can only describe it with metaphors in a way, because we can't really get our hands on it and show it to each other. But also, I didn't say this, but I think in this talk, but I think of there being two kinds of time,

[27:05]

there's sort of horizontal linear time that we mark out on the calendar, days, weeks, months, etc. And then there's what I think of as vertical time, or Uji time, which is in one moment, it's infinite and it's just a second. It's this time that goes, and these are metaphors too, like a graph along the wall that tells you, you know, human beings are over here, one man coming out, beginning caveman or whatever. We've seen those different... graphs. But then the time, the vertical time, that you can't really measure, and that's also there. I mean, we need to have that calendar time. We couldn't arrange our lives with each other without it. So in terms of metaphors, we talk about flow and rivers and I don't know, you can probably think of lots of other ones, but it's, I don't know.

[28:11]

Well, like I said, it's like gravity or sunshine, or God, it's something so huge. Time, and it's sometimes, or time also, it turns out, is the most commonly used noun in the English language. which seems sort of surprising. You would think it would be something like, I don't know, or some specific thing, you know, hands, table, no, time. So anyway, it's always with us, and we're always with it. Yeah. Thank you. What do you think about choosing a completely random set of metaphors, like a Marshall McLuhan, like hot cold for time, or dense, open. I mean, we often talk about the spaciousness of our practice, which when I think we're sitting in Zazen, sometimes time seems very, I mean, vast is a word we can use, but also just there's this openness to it.

[29:23]

And maybe it includes everything, but at the same time, we're just with what's in front of us. It's very paradoxical in a way. It is. Everybody's welcome to bring forward whatever words help them talk about time. I don't think they're arbitrary exactly, but yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your talk. My name is Jeff. Seven years and five days ago, I adopted two cat littermates, and I put one to sleep this past week. Oh, I'm sorry. And something that was abundantly clear over the last two-ish years of their life is how differently they were experiencing that.

[30:33]

One of the cats, the cat that passed, was pretty sick. And he's had been sick for a while. And just watching the two of them go from equal playmates and, you know, totally saying each other as they were running around to really start to slow down. And then in the last week when he was just lying there, unable to eat, it was just really... incredible to see how she, this riding cat, responded, and just kind of like gave him his face. And she kind of calmed down, and then even this past week, watching her kind of reconnect with her vigor, as she no longer has to accompany this seemingly old man. She's like, oh, right, I'm actually only seven. I still want to put her around a lot. And so I've just been thinking about time being relative in that sense.

[31:36]

Yeah, that's great, and it is so relative. Thank you for reminding us about that. And as an old person, time slows down. You have to slow down, or at least I have to slow down. I cannot do things as fast as I used to be able to do them. Instead of thinking, oh my God, I'm so slow. I used to be able to do this so much faster. To just think instead, well, I'm still going forward. Take one step at a time, and I know there's no way that I'm not gonna just keep on breathing, and maybe it takes me longer to take 10 breaths, but so what? To change the pace to your own, bodily time in a way is kind of what you're talking about with your cats. Yeah, and that's appropriate. And I think we do ourselves some damage sometimes by trying to keep somebody else's time.

[32:40]

It can also be hard, I know, to slow down. I mean, well, it's hard to make yourself speed up when you need to go slow, and it's also hard to make yourself slow down when you need to be slow and you're being too fast, you know? Thank you. Yes, Greg. Hello, my name is Greg, and I'm only 69. You're a Zen Sprout. I am a Zen Sprout, and in fact, a Zen Sprout. I just want to say thank you for your talk, and thank you for your practice. It's really great to see you here at this point. I want to say that. When I I have trouble sleeping sometimes. I will go to my iPad and go through a Wikipedia page on the history of planet Earth.

[33:41]

Oh, yeah. And I think about geologic time and geologic epochs a lot, actually. I especially enjoy the page on snowball Earth. It's so peaceful. Nothing happening. Apparently. Apparently. for millions of years. It's like Hozan used to say, you know, take a long view. And taking a long view like that, it really helps me. It helps my anxiety. I don't know, if my troubled mind about, oh my God, what's going to happen next? It's just idiot. Don't go there. I just, I can chill out. You know, because I feel that vastness. I actually, I let that sort of get into me, that vastness. Like, I'm just like, you know?

[34:43]

Like Belvin said, he did an instant, vanished in a flash. Also, in the famous novel, Gulliver's Travels, you know, he didn't only go to like a place where everybody was big, a place where everybody was tiny. He went to all these other places in Japan. It's a really long book, and one of the places he goes to is an island where everybody lives forever. Oh. Yeah. I forgot that chapter. And what he finds is that, let me die, I just want to die. I am so miserable. It's kind of funny. Thank you very much. Thank you, Greg. Those are really important. points about geological time, too. I think it's really true, especially in the difficulties of this moment and our fears about this time. It's helpful to me to think, well, you know, we are just a blank, like you say, and I think it was something like 14 billion years ago that the sun

[35:49]

came into being or something, and four billion years ago that the Earth did something. 4.3 billion. 4.3 billion years Earth was created, and human beings came into being just the tiniest little fraction of that four billion, you know. So, anyway, we're just a blink, as you say. And probably, you know, there was a time before human beings existed. There's going to be a time after human beings exist. And we don't know where we are on that timeline, but you know, our species isn't permanent as well as our own individual lives. And our planet. The Earth is going to die when the sun burns itself out, then the Earth will die and won't even exist as a planet. It will fall apart or something. Yeah. True.

[36:53]

Hi, Sue. Hi, Jerry. It's so nice to see you. It's so nice to see you recovering. Thank you. It can be really scary. When I get into this space, I think of Dogen's term, total dynamic working of the universe. About 10 years ago, there was a movie called The Tree of Life. And people would go to that place and they'd sit there and they would be totally open. Their minds would be expanded. And they became part of the total dynamic working of that moment. The oceans, and the trees, and the birth, and the death, and the whole thing. And they would get in touch with that. And that really affected me a lot. Because it felt like, oh, I can sit on my cushion, or I can take a walk in the forest, and I can feel that.

[38:14]

vastness and that activity and that in real time being part of everything. And it feels like it has no barriers. That total dynamic working is just that total dynamic working in every moment. And I tap into that. And I'm not gonna say my age because my mother would really It's not like that. She said, a lady never tells. Tell. We should tell. Are you wrong, too? I'm 81. 81? Wow. Well, you're a lot younger than I am. You're a year old. Well, Jerry, I also, I want to I'm curious, with your practice, seeing that movie and then practicing all these years, do you feel as though that sense of being part of total dynamic working is more accessible to you?

[39:27]

You can tap into that more easily as you go on? Well, you know, like everything else, it's impermanent. So, like everything else, it's impermanent. You know, I have to remind myself. And when I feel myself going into a sadness or a grieving, which we do a lot of in our years, we're losing people all around us. They're getting sick and they're dying. And it seems like a very much more frequent rate. And so you're constantly having to look at the grief, the fear, the grief, and I have to remind myself. And I actually, as I say, I've got kind of my skillful means I have certain ways of touching into that and reminding myself, oh, you're falling into a hole of suffering that is really not necessary. It's still the same world. It isn't going away.

[40:28]

It's here in this second. It's here in this moment. Well, I think that's great that you mentioned the phrase total dynamic working, too. That's a great... one, like those Dogen quotes I gave you, but that's a great phrase just to come back to. Oh, yeah, totally dynamic working. Exactly. A little mantra. Yes, I use it. You have a question or online? Sorry. Go ahead, Lynn. Hi, Susan. Hi. I have a question because It seems from what you said in a way, and I'm so glad that you're recovering, and it's so scary to hear also, and with Joanna having fallen, I'm so glad you're recovered. But it sounds like you're saying that time is the, I don't know if you'd say the first, the primary, the underlying element of everything in one sense.

[41:36]

And I actually feel, That time and space arise together out of a process of interaction of all energies. Like that quote from Togan, the total dynamic. This to me feels like time and space arise out of a process of interaction and a creative advance. Not as if they're there defining everything. That's I'd love to hear. That's a great comment, and I didn't talk about space, but in a way time and space are synonymous. They arise together continually, and you couldn't have time without the space for time to be happening in, and you couldn't have space without time for it to be there. contemporary physicists are exploring this connection in ways I don't really understand, but looking at the relationship between time and space and the universe, is the universe things that exist or is the universe time passing?

[42:51]

It seems to be both of those things mixed up together and continually arising and changing together. So, yeah. something to look at, something to, you can watch it and notice, oh, am I in time or am I in space right now? I guess it's both. Well, it's like be here now. Be here now is both time and space. Be here now. That's how we live. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Lynn. Hi, Sue. Hi. It's Preston. I'm coming. Hi. And I'm wondering what it means to you, what it looks like to slow down.

[43:59]

And what is slowing down? Well, I wish I knew better because I'm not very good at it. That's one of the good things about breaking my femur is that it's forcing me to slow down. Sometimes I just think, wow, I don't have a single thing I have to do today. I can just take one nap after another. I have been taking a lot of naps as part of my recovery. But slowing down can feel really good, and it can feel... It's nice to have some old friends to go for walks with who walk just as slowly as you do, or else to have very patient young friends to go for walks with.

[45:03]

But there was a man during the COVID epidemic, there was a man in England, what was his name? He was called Colonel somebody or other or something like that. And he was a very loyal British citizen and he wanted to raise money for the National Health Service, which was being much put upon by the COVID epidemic. And he was almost 100. He was 99 and something, I don't remember, a couple months from 100. And so it took this vow that he was going to raise X amount of money, I can't remember what the amount was, before he turned 100. And he was going to raise it by walking in his garden. And then he was going to walk, I don't know, 100 times in his garden. He was going to take 100 walks. and back and forth in his garden every day. So he did that and he did raise, people were supposed to donate in sort of like a, you know, fundraising, yeah.

[46:13]

Donate a certain number of pounds for each time he walked the length of his garden. So, and people loved it and they were very impressed by him and it was really wonderful. And it turned out, you know, I read more about it, it turned out his garden was the walk that he took was about as far as from here to the other end of this room. And if you added up the whole distance that he traveled, it was something like two miles in two months. But it didn't matter. He was going slowly and he was giving this intention in this time. So I think that's a great example of the virtues of going slowly. And people responded to it knowing that that was what he could do. That was his best offering. So, but it is, I think it is important for some of us as we get older to really kind of train ourselves to, for me it's not just going slowly, but it's not doing so many things.

[47:16]

Just let go of things. I don't do that anymore. And then there's a little more time. Yeah. So it sounds like there's, they're slowing down the body, the literal movement of our bodies. And then there's also speaking to a sense of busyness or the circumstances of one's life and one's obligations and things to do. And that sounds a little more in the realm of like quality of mind and like the story that I have about the things that I need to do in the supposed urgency therein? Well, that's really good that you're making that distinction, Preston, because I think I didn't really answer your question about slowing down the way our mind works, and actually our practice is about that, too.

[48:18]

It doesn't matter what age you are. When you sit down in zazen, of course you're slowing down. When you sit sashin, You're totally slowing down, and you're slowing down not just your body, but you're slowing down your mind and letting your mind stop jumping around so much. And that's a great favor to yourself and your body and your mind, which are of course the same thing at some level, but to just slow down and find the right rhythm. What is the right rhythm here in this moment? the appropriate rhythm. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, Dean, is that you? Yeah. That is me. Wait for the mic. Thank you for your talk. I imagine you've heard of Carlo Revelli. Yes, I read a book of his, a couple of books.

[49:19]

Several of his books talk about time and space. At one point when reading it, reading one of them, I thought, oh, it's partly different because I'm 69 now and every year is one 69th of my life. As opposed to when I was five, it was one fifth. So that part helped me sort of shift into this whole slowing down thing. But the other thing I've noticed recently, I've had a problem with a pain that at some point I find this may never go away, ever completely. And I know in practice often I'll think, you know, this is just this moment. But something in me shifted and it was just this time and this space. And I've noticed sometimes when I can't do anything about this, I think of time. Oh, I'm just participating with time.

[50:20]

And I'm wondering if that ever happens with you, with your femur and with all the other parts of your body that are also impacted by your femur. And if you ever just think of time, oh, and this is its time. That's a good question and a good point. Well, I think... I learned a kind of motto from a dear friend of mine who died a few years ago of cancer. And she was in quite a lot of pain for a long time at the end of her life. And she was a Buddhist practitioner and teacher in Sacramento. And I used to go stay with her sometimes to help her. And she was always kind of cheerful. And I remember asking her one time, well, how do you How do you deal with this? How do you just keep on going with this discomfort and pain?

[51:24]

And she said, well, I just say to myself, this is how it is right now. And that's kind of what you're saying too. And it became a teaching for me that I say to myself, this is how it is right now. If I can handle it in this exact moment, that's all I need to do. This is how it is right now. I don't know how it's gonna be the next moment. I mean, it may not be very good, but I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking this is how it is right now, and that's helpful, I think. Thank you, and just listening to you just now, I realized that the other thing that has happened in my mind is I think when I do that, oh, this is just, it's time, or this is the time. I also realize that when I started doing that more regularly, it shifted how I felt in my body, or I shifted my relationship with pain, because I realized I've been spending most of my time thinking, how do I manage this?

[52:25]

How do I get rid of it? What do I need to do about it? And that, oh, it's its time for just this moment. I was surprised at how it allowed me to accept it. a little bit more clearly. So thank you. That's really good. I like the idea that this is its time. This is its time to happen. Thank you. I think, is there one more person? No. It's probably time to stop. Thank you all very much and I just want to say again how grateful I am to this Sangha and to Berklee Zen Center and I'm grateful that I'm really a part of this Sangha. I want you to know that I feel that even if you don't see me very much. It's just so dear to my heart, this rum, these practices we do together. So thank you so much for keeping it all going. Thank you, and thank you all for your help this morning.

[53:28]

Beams are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Goodness, the way is unsurpassable.

[54:35]

I vow to become it. Beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Karma and the gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. Center.

[56:11]

Thank you, Sue, for your talk this morning. Thank you, Shoray. Thanks. Welcome to everybody online. My name is Shoray. I'm today's Saturday director, and here are some announcements. On Monday, Joel Feigen will give away Seeking Mind talk in the online Zendo at 8 a.m. Next Saturday's Dharam talk will be given by Greg Fane Roshi. Next Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m., there'll be a Jukai. or lay ordination ceremony. This is a joyful public ceremony where some members in the Sangha will receive the precepts. In order to allow room for the Ordini guests, we invite most Sangha members to attend in the online Zendo. Join us to support the Ordini's and all are welcome to come in person for the reception following at 515. Registration is now open for the one day sitting on October 11th, which begins our aspects of practice period. Registration for the aspects class on the Sandokai will be available soon and information about registering for the one day is also on the website.

[57:19]

BCC's full Saturday program is open to everyone. It starts at 6 a.m. and includes Oreoki breakfast, our formal practice of eating together. If you want to learn more about participating or volunteering for any of the practice roles, you can come talk to me during our formal T. A group has been meeting to consider ways for BCC to address racism. If you would wish to participate, you can contact Karen Sundheim. Her email is in the links for recurring activities page on the website. For more information about programs or membership, you can see the bulletin board outside. There's information in the Zoom chat and you can also visit the website. To make a donation to support our temple, you can use the donation box in the courtyard or you can visit the website and click on the generosity tab. I will need two volunteers who can stay after tea to help wash teacups. Thank you. One more.

[58:22]

Thank you. I will also need three volunteers, able-bodied people who will be able to help set up the Zendo once people exit for the Jukai rehearsal. It will involve moving this wooden divider, so kind of heavy labor. One, two, one more. Thanks. Thanks, Jeff. Sure. Those people should see me right after. Okay, great, and you can see Jim right here once people exit the Zendo. All right, well, thanks so much, everyone. Please maintain silence as we exit until you're off the porch. Then please feel free to socialize at our Tea and Cookies in the courtyard. Those online can unmute and share greetings. Thank you, Sue. Hi, everybody. Have a good week. Great talk.

[59:25]

Yes. Much needed for me. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Good day everyone. Bye.

[59:53]

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