This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. This morning we're beginning with a talk for the younger assembly, the assembly of shorter people. you know you've already done something really remarkable I came into the room and none of you were talking did you all lose your voices did somebody say we don't talk in here and then you actually listen to them it's really unusual to have a whole group of kids being so silent maybe you know so were you meditating while you were quiet or were you just quiet meditating Well, you know, I don't always have a lot to talk about, so as I often do, I brought two of my friends with me to help me give my talk to you this morning.

[01:08]

Some of you met my little piggy here last time I talked. It's been about a year. This is Ponce, Ponce the Pig. And Ponce, Like Ponce de Leon, but Ponce, like he was French and not Spanish. And Ponce is going to be one of the people in the story that I'm going to tell you. And then I have another one. Excuse me, I have to take this one out briefly. And Ponce, by the way, can... Oh, I need to put on my microphone. That would help. Oh, my goodness. Thank you very much. All right. I don't know that it was worth hearing, but now you will.

[02:12]

This is Ponce the pig. Good morning, yoo-hoo. And Ponce, into the microphone. Thank you. Okay. Okay. And I also have a second person here. Some of us, you know, even though we practiced years of Zen, we never grew up. It's a problem, you know, how to actually grow up. And maybe it's good to never grow up, you know, and get too old for play things. This is a different kind of fellow, you can tell. He's kind of old and wise, you know, he's old and wise. This is Wilbur. Hi, I'm Wilbur. Wilbur is a recovering Zen student, you see.

[03:16]

He's sad and sad and sad, and eventually he lost his legs. He did so much of this sitting like this, cross-legged sitting, you know, for hours and hours and days and weeks and months. So now he doesn't have any legs. So he goes to recovering Zen student meetings and says, hi, my name is Wilbur. I'm a recovering Zen person. What do you think? Does Wilbur look like a dog to you? Is this a dog maybe, yeah. Okay, so we have the piggy. The pig and the dog. Okay, so are you ready for a story? Okay, we're ready for a story. So this is an old, old story and there's many versions of it. But it goes like this, you know, that one day there was a, well, there was a farmer and he was, they were pretty poor. And he had a wife and he had a son, one son.

[04:22]

And the son was about 15. And, is that right? Yes, and they were very poor, so the only thing that they owned besides they had their crops was they had one horse. So they were so happy with their one horse that they had a horse they could ride sometimes places. So one day the horse disappeared. Oh no! Boo-hoo, boo-hoo. So Ponce is going to do the boo-hoo part. Boo-hoo. And the neighbors came and they told the neighbors, oh, our horse has disappeared. Our horse has disappeared. And the neighbors said, oh, that's terrible. That's so bad. That's terrible. And then the old farmer said, we'll see. We'll see.

[05:23]

Let's see how terrible that is. So a few days later, the horse came back, but he didn't just come back by himself, but he came back with three other wild horses with him, leading them back. So now they had four horses. And then they said, yippee! Everybody said, yippee! Now you have four horses. And the old man said, we'll see. We'll see. We'll see how good this is. So then the son got on the horse, started trying to train the horses so that they could ride the horses. And he got thrown off of one of the new horses and he broke his leg. Oh no! Oh no! That's terrible! Oh no! And the old father said, we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. So a couple days later, or a week later, this was happening in China.

[06:37]

And the army came through and they wanted all the young men to be in the army. And they were insisting, you have to come into the army. And the son said, but I have a broken leg. I have a broken leg. And they said, well, you can't be in the army then. Ooh, yippee. We'll see. We'll see. So does anybody know what happens after that? It kind of goes on that. A haystack? Yeah, I can't remember what. It goes on like this that, you know, it's sometimes yippee, something good happens and other times, oh no, oh no, and then we'll see, is that good, is that bad, what will you do? And you know, these are the kind of stories that especially as you grow up, already you will find that sometimes you're very happy and things are great, you love it, right?

[07:47]

and you're having a good time, and other times, oh no, oh no, and then another voice says, we'll see, we'll see, maybe something will be okay, maybe it's not so bad, maybe it's not so good. So as you go along, you'll find you have some good experiences and some bad ones, and then pretty soon, it's all part of your life, the good times and the bad times, So it's very interesting, but we're learning how to enjoy ourselves and we're also learning how to get through the difficult times, how to survive the difficult times and the disappointments and the sorrows and sadness. So for instance, my next-door neighbor, when her daughter was seven, the daughter came into the kitchen and she said, Mommy, Mommy, I want an ice cream. I want an ice cream, one of those ice cream sticks. And the mother said, excuse me, but we're just about to have dinner, so I want you to wait until after dinner to have some ice cream.

[08:55]

Then the little girl said, you're such a bad mommy. You're such a terrible mommy. You're not even letting me have ice cream. What is wrong with you? You don't talk to your mom or dad like that, do you? You haven't... You know, you wouldn't talk to them like that, but when you get to be seven, maybe, you know, you'll learn. So then the mother says to the little girl, honey, when you can't have something that you really want, that's called disappointment. I think you're old enough now to be disappointed without attacking somebody and telling them what a bad person they are. Because, you know, I really love you and I really like being close to you. But when you attack me like that, I don't want to be close to you. So I'd like you to learn how to be disappointed. So we can still be friends.

[10:00]

And after dinner, you can have some ice cream. Okay? Do you understand? So you're going to have some things. Some things will work really well. And we'll see how good that is. Sometimes people get everything they want and then they don't know how to deal with when things don't go well. They don't know what to do. And then other times things aren't going well and then you learn how to be disappointed, sad, discouraged, and then come back and, you know, do your best. with your good heart and make a good effort and learn how to live with others and how to do this, both the good things and the bad things. We'll see. We'll see. Hi. Okay, so I think that's about it for today's Kids Talk. So I think it's time to say au revoir. Au revoir.

[11:02]

Au revoir. Toodles. If any of you are coming by to say hello, Ponce would be happy to shake your hand. Bye. Bye. Bye. I'm not going to have the puppets do the rest of the talk. few more seats up here if anybody else wants to move to the front. Well good morning once again. You know in about three or four weeks we have a there's a book coming out which is a story about Ponce.

[12:18]

the pig um my friend Tom Ingalls is publishing it and my partner Margot Koch is the illustrator another friend of mine I will give something away but not too much but you know Ponce does have an enlightenment experience wait for it and um Another friend of mine, John Simpkins, illustrated the Ponce's Enlightenment. It's not exactly my idea of how to picture enlightenment. It looks more like an Eastern Saint beatification. Ponce's on a kind of cross. But you know, artists get to do it their way, you know. So as you might have guessed, my subject theme for today is problems.

[13:27]

The horse disappears. Bad news. We'll see. The horse comes back with two other horses. Oh great, yippee. We'll see. Partly I was thinking about this because Malcolm Gladwell has a new book out on David and Goliath. And we went to see Malcolm Gladwell at Dominican College about three weeks ago. And it's about this kind of question of when is adversity useful? And adversity isn't always useful, but one of his examples is in the Second World War, the British were... actually terribly worried that the German bombing would discourage the population of London and they would become emotionally distraught and disturbed and you know give up. Which is certainly what the Germans thought. But it turned out as the war went on there was a few people who were killed in the bombing and a few near misses but most of the population was unaffected.

[14:38]

So they started feeling happier and happier. And more and more, like nothing can hurt us. They drop bombs, we're fine. So they started feeling better and better and their morale went up and up and up. And nobody understood this later on they studied that this is called a far miss. You know, you have a devastating circumstance, but you didn't quite, it didn't quite devastate you. So in some instances then, you feel like, oh, I've been through the worst and it can only be better. Another, by the way, example of this, there was a wonderful article in the New Yorker magazine about Japan and the cult of suicide in a Japanese Zen monk who was working with people who were suicidal and he was emailing them and trying to help people who were suicidal. And it described his Zen experience and he, at one point in his life, went into a Zen temple. And this is the really rigorous

[15:41]

Japanese Zen style. Japanese style Zen. So very, you know, you get up at whatever, 3.30 and you're up until 10 and you're working the whole day and meditation and the whole deal. So he did this for three or four years and he was pretty overwhelmed by everything. And Finally they were going to have their, there's a sashin that's in December, it's coming up next month, the big sashin of the year, Rohatsu. And for that, his temple, you don't sleep for a week. You're just meditating and it's day and night. And he was going to be the cook for this sashin, this intensive period. So for the week ahead of that, in order to get ready to be the cook and have everything ready for the sashim, he didn't sleep. So then about the third day of the sashim, he had a giant, giant pot of soup and he thought, I can't do this.

[16:46]

I'm going to have to, I'll just, I can't do this, it's going to drop. And then this huge energy came into him. And he could do anything. And then at some point after that, he stopped being a monk, left his temple, and he got a job in Tokyo flipping burgers. And he was all the time so happy. And he'd be flipping his burgers. And the owners would say, Are you okay? Are you alright? And he said, just fine. I'm loving it. And it's pretty hot back there, isn't it? Not a problem. Yeah, it's really hot. That's fine. Not a problem. And then pretty soon customers and people started noticing, this burger flipper is really happy. What's your secret?

[17:48]

So that's how he started then talking to people who were depressed and suicidal because he was just happy. He had all this energy that's just pouring through him all the time. Eventually, after about three years of trying to help people, he had heart problems, and he was in the hospital, and he had to take a break. And he eventually decided, towards the end of this article that explains, he decided, you know what, if I'm going to talk to people and try to help them, I want to meet them first. He realized too many of these conversations are just online and they're not real. And it turns out in Japan, you know, there's hundreds of thousands of people who just stay in their rooms and spend their times with video, their days with video games and internet. And that's what they do. And their parents bring them food. And there's hundreds of thousands.

[18:51]

So he said, if you want to, and eventually he had become a priest again and got his own little temple. It was way out in the countryside. So this article in the New Yorker ends with somebody coming, walking five hours to meet him. And he got there and he said, excuse me, but I don't need to meet you anymore. I was walking for five hours and I figured things out. Get out of your house, do something, you know, do a little gardening, do something, you know, and let the energy move through you, you know, see what happens. Anyway, I wanted to tell you a poem by Hafiz, which I came across recently. Hafiz is, you know, a Persian poet. And I don't know that he was popular at the time.

[19:56]

Poets aren't always so popular. They're not necessarily in favor of going to war. Let's go to war, yippee. You know, they're not like, excuse me. You know, William Stafford was a conscientious objector in the Second World War and a friend of mine recently, had dinner with Hayden Reese. He did a movie about William Stafford, Every War Has Two Losers. And you know, humanity loses with any war no matter who wins. And that's all that, and did you know like 85,000 tons of armaments have been destroyed in Afghanistan because we're not going to be there anymore. 85,000 tons? So that couldn't have fed anybody or done, and that's how we spend our money? Oh my God. Pretty amazing. Anyway, We're here today to talk about sin now, aren't we? So Hafiz, the Hafiz poem is, what is the difference between your experience and the experience of a saint?

[21:10]

The saint knows that life is a subtle chess game with God. And the beloved has just made such a fantastic move. The saint is tripping over joy, bursting out in laughter, saying, I surrender. I surrender. Where you, dear friend, I'm afraid you still think you have a thousand serious moves. So this is a very interesting point. You know and are the thousand serious moves to avoid a problem? To solve the problem? And I find this over the course of my life very interesting because I've come to the conclusion that studying Zen is really about studying how to have problems.

[22:14]

I think a lot of times we begin Zen practice thinking, this will be a way that I can not have problems. I will meditate and let my mind be empty and I will become impervious to problems. And then what happens? Oh my God. And then it only gets worse. The longer you practice, oh my God, I've been practicing for 30 years and I still have this problem. I've been practicing for 40 years now, oh my, and I still have this problem. So, do you have a thousand serious moves, or are you gonna just surrender at some point, like, oh, human life, wow, how about that? It doesn't always work the way I'd like it to. Oh, first noble truth, oh my goodness, wow, okay. It doesn't work the way I'd like it to.

[23:19]

Hmm. Squeak, squeak. So I want to tell you about, somehow I've been thinking about this lately, and it seems apropos to the business of having problems, but when I started sitting, I started sitting in 1965, And shortly after that, starting about 1966 and certainly by 1967, I couldn't sit still in meditation. I'd sit down and we used to do, you know, lean from side to side, take two or three deep breaths, settle into steady, immobile, upright sitting, said Master Dogen says, that things come from beyond. And if I got a grip on my hips, my head would go.

[24:25]

And if I stubbed my head, my hips would shake. And it was pretty upsetting in some ways. But I thought, well, I'm going to keep sitting. Because I was young. I didn't know any better. And somehow, my teachers didn't know any better. They didn't tell me, stop sitting. But they also didn't know. They didn't have any advice for me. They didn't talk to me about it. So I went on. And then, you know, and then I could shake so badly that, you know, the whole ton would take, you know, the platform. The platform would shake. And then other students, other students in my area, were like, stop that. You know, like... The whole floor is shaking in that corner of the zendo. And for a while at Tassajara, it was the old zendo at Tassajara, which is now the student eating area.

[25:26]

They said, well, you sit in the entryway here. We're not going to have you sit in the meditation hall. And then, you know, the other students used to say, you know, what are you doing anyway? You know, you could stop that any time, you know, if you just wanted to. You could stop it any time you wanted, but you just do that to get attention, don't you? You could stop it any time. You know, you don't need attention that badly. Stop it. So, and usually if you have a problem like this, people have advice for you. And your problem is so obvious, though, they're not saying to you like sometimes people have, Ed, you have problems. Like, you know, like you didn't know. What they mean is it looks to us like you're avoiding your problems, but, you know, you have problems that you are not addressing.

[26:32]

I know now to say, yes, I'm aware of those issues. I have resources. Thank you for your great insight. But people would say, you know, you invite the guest to have tea, but you don't invite them to stay. Or you invite them, you say hello at the door, but you don't invite them in for tea. Or, you know, and like, okay, yeah. But what does it have to do with my shaking? So this went on and on and on, you know. Not quite every period. But then, of course, in those days, we would hit each other with these big sticks. This is a little stick. You know, I'm talking about the three-foot sticks, you know.

[27:33]

And, you know, people like... Bam! You know, you have your back to the room, and they come by, and they tap you on your shoulder, and then you, okay, and then they go, bam! And then you, okay, the other one, bam! And, you know, most of the time, if they're accurate, it's not a problem. It makes a loud noise. Everybody jumps and wakes up, and you feel kind of refreshed. But sometimes they clip your ear. Or they hit you across your spine. Or they hit you across your neck. Not everybody. The Japanese teachers are always, you know, they're very skillful at this, but Americans. So sometimes I would start to relax and I'd calm down and then I'd fall asleep. I wouldn't shake. I'd be calming down and I'd fall asleep and then they'd come by. Bam! Bam! Oh! Wake up, wake up. Oh, let's shake some more, wake up.

[28:36]

Okay, I'm gonna be awake, I'm not gonna sleep, that's right. You laugh. I think people might have told me that too. The day will come when you laugh about this. Uh-huh, thanks. Or another good one, you only have this problem because you're sitting. This is an interesting point. When people sit, sometimes they say, well, I can't stop my mind. Well, the rest of the time you could. So usually, and of course we say classically in Zen, the sitting will only bring up the problems that are already there. You know, beneath the surface. that you don't necessarily notice, but sitting will bring those problems to the surface, so you'll actually have some problems to work on. And the Suzuki Roshi always said, you should have some problems.

[29:41]

We all need problems, and Buddha will give you problems, and if they're not enough, he'll give you some more. And you need to have a problem, at least a small one, Because you need to have something to work on, something to be studying, finding out about. What do you do? How do you work with this? Rather than thinking, what's my problem? One of the things, as soon as we have problems, we think, what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? What did I do wrong? I have a problem because I did something wrong. And we don't understand. Like in this case, I'm having a problem because I'm sitting. Otherwise I wouldn't have that problem. So Suzuki Roshi also often would say, you practice then and hindrances become the opportunity for practice. You need to have some problem.

[30:45]

So this went on and then one year then we had Sesshin. We're not like the Japanese. There's only a few temples where you don't sleep night and day. Sashing goes on around the clock. We would sit, I don't know, from 4 to 10 or something. I don't know. 12 or 13 periods in the three meals. And I was sitting and shaking and falling asleep and bam. And... one period finally on the third afternoon or shortly before dinner I fell asleep I got hit four times which is you know once I need children so eight times eight hits four double hits which is about the most you can be hit in our tradition because person is walking around the room and they have to go all the way around the other side and then when they come back by you they can hit you again and then you go down the way and they come back and they come back past you and they can hit you.

[31:53]

So they can only get around the whole room a limited number of times so to get hit four times is kind of max. I think that was the only period that I ever got hit four times like that. Some people I think just like think just kind of like they see me sleeping or shaking they just kind of roll their eyes and keep going. Not everybody decided I needed to wake up, encouraged to be encouraged to wake up. So I got at that point I said like I give up, I give up and I put my knees up and I put my arms around my knees, put my head down. Kobanchino was there. Koban Chino was one of our teachers who came to help Suzuki Roshi at the old Zen Center. There's some funny stories about Koban, you know. When Koban first got here, they were having a Zen Center dinner.

[32:57]

And Silas Hodley was the president of Zen Center. And this is back in, you know, 66, 67. And so a lot of people in those days smoked cigarettes. including Silas, he had a package of camels or Lucky Strikes. And after the meal, he started to have a cigarette, and he said to Koban, Koban, would you like a cigarette? And Suzuki Rishi was sitting there, and Suzuki Rishi said, Koban does not smoke. Which was news to Koban. But he quit for a year or so, you know, at that point. Later on, Coben sometimes would give talks, and we were all so tired, and Coben would sit there, and we'd all be sleeping, and then people said later, he was sleeping too. In his own lecture. And we were falling asleep because we were waiting to see what he would say.

[34:04]

Anyway, so I put my head down and within seconds, Coben was there and this voice said to me, Ed, let's go outside. And it was Coben. He'd seen me from, I was sitting by the back door, you know, the last seat. to disturb people as little as possible. That was, I don't know if that was before or after I was actually outside. This was the last seat in the row. And Coburn was way at the other end of the room, but he saw me. He was down there. I got up, and as soon as I got, as soon as the doorway, tears were just flooding down my cheek. It's flooding. And we went up, we got outside, and he said, Coburn, I can't see. And he said, Ed, just hold my hand.

[35:04]

We're going to your room. Let's just go to your room. And I said, OK. And every so often, I kind of like, oh, my god, there's the winter trees, the bare branches, the blue sky. And we got to my room. And again, at the threshold, then I started really crying. I got into my room. I was crying and crying. And then he had me said, lie down, lie down, it's okay, don't worry, everything is fine, not a problem, just lie down, you're okay, it's all right. And I lay down and the crying got even louder. Sometimes I think of you have crying, sobbing, is that more than crying? I think of sobbing, so I was sobbing, and then after sobbing, what I call bawling. You know, where you're not just crying or sobbing, you are screaming and crying. And then my arms and legs were like shaking.

[36:06]

And then after a while, they were like flapping on the bed. And Coben kept saying, Ed, it's okay. It's not a problem. Don't worry. You're okay. It's fine. And after about, that was a 30-minute period right before dinner, so after 20, 25 minutes, the bell sounded for evening service, and Coburn said, Ed, I need to go now. You're fine. Just rest. It's okay. Don't worry. You're going to be fine. Just get some rest. And he left. We never talked about it again. This is very interesting. This is a very interesting point because it's a cultural thing, too. It's a sort of a Zen, in a way, and it's sort of culture, and it's Japanese. And there's two sides to it. One is you're fine.

[37:06]

Everything is okay. Everything is unfolding. Trust in the way that things unfold. You can trust in how things unfold in the course of practice. And on the other hand, you know, 15 years go by, 20 years go by, 30 years go by, and at some point I got Peter Levine's book, Waking the Tiger, shaking, releasing residual trauma. Oh, that's interesting. But nobody at the Zen Center or the Japanese teachers said, you know, you might want to do some trauma work. You know, the people who do sensory experiencing are really good at this. Of course, sensory experiencing probably wasn't around in those days. So on one hand, tremendous support to go through, to undergo whatever you're undergoing. And on the other hand, not necessarily a lot of, there's a kind of being there at just the right time.

[38:11]

Oh my God. Anyway, after that, it was a lot easier to sit. but I still shook. I still would shake some, but it was a lot easier, you know? So I want to tell you, um, in a kind of, you know, I want to explain to you something about how I under, you know, how we, we might look at this, um, in terms of problems and the kind of problems, you know, another thing we say is that, um, Like my teacher, Mel, now, my mentor, Mel Weitzman, says, when people say, oh, I'm interested in having a relationship, what shall I look for? And rather than you look for somebody to fall in love with, he says, because you only fall in love with your projection, right? And then you start living with this person, and then you have to take back your projection and say, who the heck am I living with?

[39:13]

You know, my idea of this lovable, incredible, lovable, perfect person that you are is that I can't get it to stick on you anymore. You seem to be somebody else that I don't know. Where did you come from anyway? And my great picture of what I can love doesn't stick anymore. Oh, no. So, you know, Mel says to people, look for a good person to have problems with. And a person that you can have good problems with. Because sometimes you're having problems where it's just kind of endless. So this is an interesting point. Which are the good problems and which is the person that you can have problems with? And that you can trust to have problems like, even though you have a problem, well, a day later, two days later, your partner's thought about things and like, you know, I've thought about this some more and I... I'm starting to see it this other way. That's pretty nice rather than, you know, I'm still seeing it the way, the same way, and I haven't, and so I'm going to keep making sure that, because I'm right, you know.

[40:24]

So it's very interesting, this kind of point. Anyway, I want to tell you, and then we'll finish up here. I want to tell you just briefly my, partly how I think of Zen practice sometimes. And this is related to things that Suzuki Rish used to say about when we sit and you're not moving, you're not talking. The energy inside builds up. Because you're not using the energy that you would normally use in moving and you're not using the energy you would normally use in expressing and talking. So the energy inside begins to accumulate. And then this energy inside itself, you know, and this is the part where it's not up to you to solve things or figure out how to meditate. All you have to do is sit there. The energy builds up inside. What's it gonna do? So, but if you can, when you learn to be still with it, that energy starts to move in you, inside you.

[41:37]

And it starts to move in literally speaking, in channels, energy channels, that have not been, for most of us, used in a while. Because the energy's been going into these other channels that are more accustomed to our usual activity and our usual talking, so it's not going into these other channels. And when it does, it meets some blockage, which is also why you didn't put your energy in those channels. because that's where you had stuff hidden away. So you didn't want your energy to go into the hiding places and open the closet doors and have you face the difficulties and problems that were there. You wanted to keep those buried as to protect yourself from your difficulty and your problem and protect others. And this is our usual idea of, and when we're young that's appropriate. Learn how to, you know, grow up.

[42:39]

Don't be sad. Don't be scared. You know, get over it. We'll get you another puppy. Robert Bly has a line in one of his poems. He says, Last night I sobbed and sobbed for the thousand nights I could never weep. This is what happens when the energy channels start to open up. you know, for all those times and you didn't acknowledge what was going on inside and then something started and this energy starts to move and that's going to start to move in places that you're not used to the energy being and you will have emotions and feelings and pictures and images and all kinds of things coming up. The wonderful thing is that as that clears and meditation can be a very skillful way to allow things to surface and to clear away with mindfulness, etc.

[43:40]

As these things clear, now you have good, well, you know, the energy can really flow, flow through. And you have energy and vitality for doing so many things, you know, of your choosing rather than spending your life hiding and keeping things closed down inside so that you don't feel what it could be upsetting if you allowed it to surface. I may or may not be making sense here, but it's a suggestion as a way to look at it. So as the energy flows in these channels inside, you know, it's going to be like turning on the faucet that hasn't been on for a while. A lot of rust and debris comes out. Oh, no. And then you have this clear flowing water. Oh, yeah. We'll see. Which is which? So we also say sometimes, of course, about Buddhism is you're in sitting and meditating, you're developing enough stability.

[44:48]

You're having enough stability of, and it took me a long time there to have enough stability to have things surface. Because in the meantime, there's all these blockages inside. I mean, literally. And nobody talks about it much, but the years go by, and I read Peter Levine, and I read other things, and so many things, and I've done so much work now over the years. I'm not gonna tell you about my childhood trauma, but it's there. If you come to the question and answer, we might. But what I want to say is that, you know, we're developing enough stability to be able to allow things to surface and allow this energy to move through us and to allow things to, you know, to clear things up from the basement, to clear up our inner channels, our inner, you know, our basement, our, you know, the debris that's inside, to clear it, things can clear.

[45:51]

And so then you can have a good flow of vitality and then, you know, let... Let things come from beyond. What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life? You know, Mary Oliver says. And of course, then people say the same thing. Suzuki Roshi said, you know, we're here for you to, you're here to express yourself fully and truly. And he said something, you know, very similar to Hafiz. One day in meditation he said, don't move. Just die. I surrender. And he said, not even enlightenment will help you now because you have no more moments. This is your last moment. So express yourself fully and truly. A little different than Hafiz.

[46:55]

And you have to be at a sashim and... you know, early morning meditation, and it's not just a Dharma talk. It's like, exactly, exactly. Then you hear that and you're like, okay, yeah, whatever. Yes, this, just this. Okay, got it. All right, thank you very much. Blessings. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[47:51]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.84