you Thank you.

[09:09]

Thank you. So good morning. Just letting myself take in for a moment your bodies, your beingness here in this room. This still strikes me when I come here and actually get to see live, fleshy humans sitting together in this way, practicing. way. Faces that I haven't seen in some time.

[12:04]

It's a treat. It's a treat. Thank you for your presence. It's always a joy and honor to be with you. So this week at Beginner's Mind Temple, as well as on the Online Practice Center, we've embarked on a 10-week fall practice period, or Ongo, and the title is is an appropriate response encountering Suzuki Roshi's teachings on the Blue Cliff record. And for those of you who are not familiar with the Blue Cliff record, in Japanese it's Higigan Roku. It consists of a hundred Chan Buddhist koans. They were originally compiled in Song China by Shuedo Changxian. And then they were expanded to their present form about a hundred years later, by Yuan Wu Kekun, and he also added annotations and commentary to what Schrader had put together, and Schrader himself had included a verse with each of the cohorts, each of the cases.

[13:14]

And so Abidai are leading around 100 participants in exploring two dozen of the cohorts from the Blue Cliff Record in this collection. And in conjunction with commentary that Suzuki Roshi gave on the cases between, it was 1961 to 1963, or is that it? Mr. Poore. Mr. Poore, thank you. Yeah, so about three years of commentary. He actually taught all 100 koans, but we only have about 22 of his top notes. So... I think it's safe to say, even though it's a thousand years old, that the Blue Cliff Record is as vital to Zen Buddhism as it was when it was first published in 1128. It continues to be a living and an ever-expanding document each time someone encounters it, either repeatedly or for the very first time. And they encounter and they endeavor to, you could say, scale

[14:19]

is sheer depth and expansive wisdom. And frankly, as any of you who maybe have already concluded, if you've read any of the cases from the collection, the Pollute Fifth is not an easy climb. And yet, making a genuine effort to study this complex work can assist us in understanding the nature of suffering as well as the nature of liberation. So by encountering the Blue Cliff Record, the koans of this wonderful collection, we are not only encountering our venerable Zen ancestors, these wise ones who've come before us, who also like us have struggled to perceive and live from their true nature, but we are also encountering ourselves,

[15:21]

our karmic limitations as well as our awakening potential. As Matthew Juxton Sullivan says in his introduction to the translation that he made of the Blue Cliff Record, making any sense at all of the 100 cases is a daunting challenge. They are designed to be roadblocks to intellectual understanding. So if you find yourself baffled and frustrated, it means you are on the right track. And I would add that we don't study these koans to understand them. We actually study them to be suspended in a state of not knowing, in a state of uncertainty. And as Master Matsu once said, The very mind that does not understand, that is it.

[16:25]

That mind that doesn't understand, that is it. There is nothing else. And something I've been emphasizing over and over again to the practice period participants is that one enables us to truly enter into these koans and discover their wealth of wisdom is meditation. is the practice of zazen. Silent and still sitting is the source and endpoint of everything that the Blue Cliff Record contains. So a number of us here today are doing just that. We are participating in a day-long meditation to help us settle further into this practice period. and engage wholeheartedly in an intensive study of the koans and, if you will, the blue cliffs of our lives. So for today's talk, I'd like to explore with you case 19 of the blue cliff record, which is titled Gute's One Finger Zen.

[17:37]

Anyone familiar with this? No, just a few. Okay, well, I get to introduce a fun little koan to many of you. So this koan. consists of only one sentence. Ready? Whenever he was asked the question, Master Gute would raise one finger. That's it. That's the case. Whenever he asked the question, Master Gute would raise one finger. So versions of this also appear in other koan collections. There's a one-line, one-finger version in the Book of Serenity. which is case 84. And then there's also a slightly longer version in the Mumon Khan, case number three. And so both Rinzai and Soto Zen traditions find something of value in this particular koan. Now, whenever encountering a koan, I think it's helpful to get a little background on the main character or characters.

[18:40]

In this case, Chan Master Kinkagute. And that's actually his Japanese, his name in Japanese, in Chinese is Jinhua Juzhe. I think if I pronounced that correctly. Apparently, there's not much known about Gu Te, although Suzuki Raushi, in his commentary, offers a one-sentence background, saying, Gu Te was a disciple of Zen master Tenryu. and lived in a small hermitage in order to be free from the fierce persecutions of the first part of the 9th century A.D. in China. So the background on this is that in the time of Gute, the Chinese government persecuted the Buddhism. And they destroyed about 40,000 Buddhist temples. And they canceled the ordination status of 2000... 260,000 monks and nuns. Basically, they were trying to wipe out Buddhism, right?

[19:42]

So it was a tumultuous time to be a Buddhist. And this took place in 845, and it lasted for about 20 years. And so this young monk, Gute, he lost his temple, he lost his home, and he went into the mountains and hid himself, living as a hermit in a little hut and begging for food. secretly among the villagers, and it said, intensely practicing zaza. So the key to understanding this koan is understanding the circumstances that led up to Gute's enlightenment, which gave him his one-finger approach to teaching. And it's often the case in koan commentaries, they provide a description of the principal character's awakening. Because It offers insight into not only the core teaching of the koan, but also the teacher's particular approach to expounding the dharma.

[20:46]

Why do they teach in the fashion that they teach? What are they emphasizing? So the story goes like this. Gute spent his time alone in the mountains meditating, and it said chanting the Kanan Gyo. This is the 25th chapter of the Lotus Sutra. And one day, a nun named Jisai came to visit Gute, and entering with her hat on her head and a program staff in her hand. So she was walking, visiting many teachers. And Jisai's name could be translated as true world or true encounter. So I think the name True Encounter is particularly apropos in that the koan tradition, as Ed was talking about on Wednesday in the talk, is built on what was called encounter dialogues. And these are encounter dialogues of the exchanges between Zen teachers and their students, or in some cases, peers.

[21:55]

And these exchanges were in service of... and deepening their understanding and their awakening. And while they were original exchanges in time, they were written down, and those written exchanges became the koans that we've inherited. So True Encounter came in and walked around Gute's seat three times where he was sitting zazen, banged her staff on the ground and said, I will take off my pilgrimage hat If you can give me a satisfactory statement. Okay, so you're sitting in your hut by yourself quietly. Someone bursts in. You don't know them. They come in. They walk around you three times. You know, bang their staff down and say, give me an appropriate statement. Right? In other words, say a word of Zen. Say something to reveal the fundamental mind and express the truth. Right? Well, Gute was flustered. And he couldn't say anything.

[22:58]

Right. He had nothing to say. And so true encounter, true encounter started to leave. And he's like, you know, this one, there's something about her. Maybe I should ask her to stay. Right. So he tried to stop her, you know, in part because it was laid out. Right. And it was dark and he wanted to make sure that she was going to be safe. So she said, well, if you can offer one word good enough to stop me, I will be happy to stay. And again, Gute could not. So she turned on her heels and left. Now, Gute became quite ashamed of himself because he couldn't come up with an appropriate response to true encounter despite all his years of Zen. I've been sitting here, I've been practicing, practicing. Here comes this true encounter and I can't meet it. I can't respond. What's wrong with my practice? So he decided to leave his hermitage on a pilgrimage in order to seek out a teacher who could help him deepen his practice.

[24:01]

However, that night he dreamed that a bodhisattva visited him and said that an incarnate bodhisattva, someone in person, was going to come and teach him. Then, the next day, the famous Zen master Tenryu came, and Gute told him about True Encounters visit, And about the dream that he had. And about also having a new determination to practice to awaken him. So he asked Tenryu a question, a Dharma question. He said, what is the essence of the Buddhist teaching? What is the essence of the Buddhist teaching? And Tenryu, in response, lifted one finger. And guess what happened? Gute was enlightened, right? And upon enlightenment, he said, I have acquired Tenryu's One Finger Zen as an inexhaustible treasure for the rest of my life.

[25:08]

So from that time on, Gute answered innumerable questions, all kinds of questions by lifting up one finger. Now, when first encountering this koan, Perhaps like me, you wondered, which finger did Gute raise? Is it his thumb, his index finger, maybe his pinky, maybe the ring finger? Each finger has its own response, right? So there's another important detail to the story that's actually recounted in the longer version of the case that we find in the Mumon Khan. So once, sometime later on, while Gute was away from his temple, a visitor came and asked one of his disciples, who's described as a boy, what does your master teach? And the young boy answered by raising one finger. Okay, makes sense.

[26:11]

When later, when Gute heard of this, he called the boy to him and asked the question. And when his disciple answered by lifting one finger, Gute reached out and cut off his finger with a knife. The poor boy cried out in pain and ran screaming from the room. And just as he got to the door, Gute called out his name. And as the boy turned around, Gute held up one finger. Guess what happened? The boy was enlightened. Right? But of course, right? Would you sacrifice a finger for enlightenment? How about an arm like our second Zen ancestor, Waco? What would you sacrifice for enlightenment? What would you give up? What would you surrender? So did Gute really cut off the boy's finger or not?

[27:17]

Did Nanue really cut the cat in two when the monks couldn't say a word? If so, how could Zen teachers, who we expect to be wise and compassionate, do such harm? And Cohen's frequently and deliberately mess with our sensibilities and with a purpose. While we may never know if this really happened or not, in a way it doesn't matter. as the whole story is meant to be a teaching device. The place you get stuck in a koan is perhaps the place where practice is asking you to look more deeply into the stories and the conceptual complications you hold dear. And furthermore, is it that Gute gets away with copying Tenryu's one finger Zen and for the rest of life, it says, while the boy gets his finger cut off when he makes the gesture the same gesture just once?

[28:33]

What's up with that? Is Gute's one finger the same as Tenryu's? Is the boy's one finger the same of Gute's or not? And who's holding up whose finger? So what is the meaning of one finger? And what are we to make of Gute singularly teaching in this way for the rest of his life? Now, you know, it might be the case that we imagine Gute's one finger is a symbol of something, right? Perhaps a symbol of oneness. Maybe he was aiming to dismiss all kinds of arguments and... complications and questions by simply pointing out we're all one man, right? However, I find such an interpretation unsatisfactory and a little bit too facile. To my mind, the truth of Gute's teaching is not to be found in the finger as a symbol or a representation of something.

[29:39]

But then, where is it? Perhaps the one finger doesn't represent anything other than exactly what it is. Gute and Tenryu could have held up maybe two fingers, three fingers, maybe even held up a flower like the Buddha did. And it doesn't matter that it was one finger particularly. What we have in Gute's physical gesturing is the presentation of something immediate. The one finger is the thing in itself. Just this. A direct, immediate experience before any conceptual mediation or overlay. And Sam Cohen's are full of playful sparrings around the relationship of immediate and immediate experience. And they're designed to encourage us to often to give up our stale concepts in the service of a sense of aliveness.

[30:42]

So, Immediate experience provides meaning and additional information that's not contained in the original event or the individual stimuli itself. So immediate thing would be for me to say the words, this is a finger on David's hand. And then there's in contrast the immediate experience, which are the elements or the characteristics of an event or a stimuli. as perceived directly and without interpretation. So there's the immediate initial experience before we try to know it through conceptual understanding interpretation. And in Zen, sometimes this is called the first nan. So a finger raised, or more so, just this. This is a direct, unobstructed experience that requires no belief, No thoughts or concepts.

[31:45]

You don't have to believe this. You don't have to think about this. And then there is the second Nen, right? The experience or kind of a flash of a mental reflection that tries to grasp or understand the previous experience, tries to understand this with concepts. and ideas and words. There's this, and then there's this. Now in Zen, the presentation of immediacy, for example, requires that we renounce or cut off any attempt to grasp it conceptually. So the finger Gute holds up, if it's going to be reality, if it's going to be just this, if it's going to be what we call Zen suchness, it can't have any meaning attached to it.

[32:49]

The one finger doesn't mean anything. This doesn't mean anything. It's exactly what it is, just this. And this just this is inexhaustible. There's no end to it because there's no end to immediacy. There's no end to suchness. We could say that immediacy is the principal practice of Zen. The practice with no end. It's the principal practice of all the Buddhists and ancestors. In fact, when Gute was about to die, he gathered his monks around him, and he said to them, I inherited this one-finger Zen from Master Tenryu, and I have used it all my life without exhausting it. whereupon he held up one finger one final time and passed away. So when we give ourselves over to just this, we're learning to rely on something that never leaves us and can never be exhausted.

[34:01]

I read somewhere that Joko Beck once said, each moment life is, It is. Each moment life is, it is. And it is a teacher. It is the only teacher, really. What we have in just this moment, what we have is just this moment. And this moment and each moment is a teacher. Are you relating to this moment as a teacher? Are you open to receiving what it has to instruct you about what it is to be alive? to be a human, to be awake, to be free, be someone who suffers, someone who experiences joy? What are you learning just by being alive in this moment? And this moment is always with us. It's a teacher that never dies. This moment is always and profoundly available to teach us what's true.

[35:11]

what's real. It teaches what's essential. And what other truth is there other than what is presenting itself here and now? If you can find another truth, please point it out to me. Now turning to Yuan Wu's preface, or the pointer that comes actually before the case in the Blue Clef record. Yuan Wu writes, when one speck of dust arises, the great earth is contained therein. When one single flower blooms, the world arises. But before the speck of dust is raised, before the flower opens, how will you set eyes on it? Therefore, it is said, it is like cutting a skein of thread. When one strand is cut, all are cut.

[36:12]

It's like dying a skein of thread. When one thread is dyed, all are dyed. This very moment, you should take all complications and cut them off. Bring out your own family jewels and respond everywhere, high and low, before and after, without missing. Each and every one will be fully manifest. If you're not yet like this, look into the text below. And then he shares the case itself. In reading this preface, the well-known lines of William Blake's poem come to mind. To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower. Hold affinity in the palm of your hand and an eternity in an hour. You see that too? But when Yuan Wu says the entire world arises when a speck of dust arises or when a flower blooms, this isn't just a poetic metaphor, but an actual experience.

[37:19]

The fact of seeing this universe as it is at this moment is the heart of this case. Experiencing suchness But one grain of sand or one flower or one finger is to experience the suchness of the entire universe. Suchness is suchness in whatever form it takes. So now to bring in Suzuki Roshi commenting on this preface. He says, one gains a good understanding by approaching this statement. from a scientific viewpoint. Everything in the universe is closely related to every other thing and to the whole. And the whole is involved in each separate part. So, in other words, both Buddhism and science can appreciate the idea that when one speck of dust arises, the great earth is contained therein.

[38:23]

And one single flower blooms, the world arises. Because both traditions embrace to... varying degrees, an understanding of dependent origination, or sometimes it's called interdependent co-arising, that everything arises in dependence upon multiple causes and conditions, and nothing exists as a singular independent entity. However, Suzuki Roshi then adds, but Yuanwu is coming from another standpoint and raises a new problem. What happens before the speck of dust is picked up. Or before the flower opens. Here Yuan Wu is talking about the necessity of practice if one is to realize the oneness of the subjective and the objective. So, in other words, Yuan Wu wants us to have a direct experience of non-duality or the ultimate.

[39:25]

And he's saying that practice is essential in our recognizing that which comes before our minds divide the immediate experience into subject and object. What is experience before your mind creates division? Can you taste that now in this moment? Zugiroshi continues, even though something significant happened in your practice, you may not feel that it did. But if you do realize what happened and accept the way it happened, the whole world arises. So here he's speaking about having faith in our practice. Even if at times we can't see how we might be changing due to our practice.

[40:28]

But when we do recognize that Practice has changed us. And I don't know about you. I have noticed over, you know, several decades that practice has changed me. I can't tell you how necessarily. Actually, someone once said to me in the first several years of practice, you're different. You've changed in some way. And I was like, no, I'm not. No, I'm not. I'm not different. And I'm still puzzled. I had to defend that, you know. I want to, well, I don't know if I want to be different. That's a trap too. Anyhow. So he's saying, you do recognize practices changes, even in a small, mysterious way, right? And we accept this. Then we can see how the whole world itself transforms because of our practice. So your practice is transforming the whole world, even if you don't see it or recognize it.

[41:30]

Do you trust that? Do you have faith in that? Suzuki Roshi continues, if one does not practice, one may be easily driven by various impulses and repeatedly fall into wrong activity. Ignorance causes elusive ideas, illusive ideas, which encourage wrong thinking. and discourage right observation. It is impossible to attain reality without being one with the objective world. When perfect acceptance takes place, there is no subjective or objective world. In the realm of reality, there is nothing that disturbs perfect acceptance, and there are no elusive which are usually mistaken for the true nature of things. We cut off complications, removing self-centered desires in order to allow our home treasure to reveal itself.

[42:39]

So, the Zuckeroshi is saying, we practice in order not to be led around by our impulses. Right? our ignorance, our wrong thinking. And I'm sure you could come up with a whole list of ways that you are drugged around by your impulses and wrong thinking and so on. We practice experiencing what it is to be at one with the world, to be in accord with reality. And what is this practice? That is the practice of Sazen, right? And perfect acceptance of reality means we let go of our egoic impulses, and our deluded ideas about how the world should revolve around us most of the time, right? And encounter it as it actually is. We let go of our judgments and our preferences, our likes and dislikes, our opinions for and against, wanting the world or others or ourselves to be somehow different.

[43:42]

We let go of all that. Even a single hairbreadth's wish, a wisp of a wish for things to be other than how or what they are, are going to create complications for us. Do you see how that is? Now, this doesn't mean we don't take, we don't make the effort to create a healthier, more just, more compassionate world by addressing the various social problems that we have. We do. We must act. We must do something. But before we take any action to address problems on the dualistic relative plane, we need to first be firmly grounded in the non-dual, what I'm going to call the shorthand in love. When we cut off any desire that has attachment, then our true home, our family treasure, as Yuan Wu called it, our boundless Buddha nature will reveal itself.

[44:48]

But Yuan Wu goes on by quoting an ancient saying when he writes, it's like cutting a skein of thread. When one strand is cut, all are cut. It's like dyeing a skein of thread. When one strand is dyed, all are dyed. And this brings to mind something that the philosopher Martin Buber wrote. He wrote, to grab a hold of any shred of God is to grab a hold of the whole thing. So likewise, to dye one strand is to dye the whole thing. Again, nothing can be done, even to the smallest individual thing, that doesn't in some way impact the entire fabric of the universe. When you see how impactful everything you do is, I forget who it was. Kategori Roshi, maybe? It makes us want to sit down, right? But even if we cut off all complications and desires and maybe find ourselves hanging out in emptiness with no concerns, Suzuki warns there could be another problem.

[46:01]

He says we are apt to stick to the idea of enlightenment. We should cut off the complications moment after moment, one after another, big or small, including attachment to enlightenment. To cut off is to replace small mind with big mind. This is Shikantaza. Gute's one finger always tells us how and where the thread of complications should be cut off. The opportunity is right here in this very moment. There is no time for anyone to use their mouth or tongue. Tremendous numbers of blind tortoises in the dark sea are landing on Gute's one small finger, one after another. There is no time for anyone to lift up. another finger. So Zyukuroshi is reminding us that cutting off or severing our attachments is a moment-by-moment practice. We need to let go of every experience, even the ones of great insight and enlightenment, even the ones we really like and enjoy.

[47:08]

Because if we hold on to it, maybe putting up on a pedestal and thinking we can recreate it or thinking that it's something special, right? we're going to fall into entangling complications. We're going to fall into what Suzuki called small mind. To be free of complications, we need to give ourselves over to big mind, to Buddha mind. And what is the Zen method for cutting off all entanglements and giving ourselves over to Buddha mind? Zazen. Thank you. Shikantaza, just sitting. Just being with our direct experience as it's manifesting right at this moment. And this is how we get the taste freedom. Right here, right now. We don't have to wait for it. Your liberation is already here. It's already available. You don't have to do anything. This is what Gute's one finger is pointing to.

[48:10]

Here, here, here. Just as being with what is, is the teaching of a lifetime. And so this is the endeavor that those who are participating in the one-day sitting, right, were engaged in. Just being aware of a whole body experience of being here, being embodied. And zazen entails giving attention to our posture, both our physical posture and our mental posture, and nothing else, right? Whether... we are sitting upright on a zafu or on a chair or in a wheelchair or on a kneeling bench or standing or walking or lying down, whatever it is we're doing, the effort is to be as outwardly and internally upright, perfectly present as possible throughout the body-mind. Zazen is ultimately the posture of being in alignment with the reality, with things that it is.

[49:14]

As I see it, there's a certain sense in which the upright posture of Zen is like Gute's one finger. When we take the posture of complete oneness and acceptance and receptivity, and we're perfectly present, then nothing is missing. There's nothing askew. There's nothing out of alignment in our life. And such a singular upright posture will take you through any situation, any circumstance. It's, if you will, always an appropriate response. The one that you can rely on totally, anytime and anywhere. So if you practice in this way, do Zazen, maintain the posture of Zazen in your body-mind, it's like holding up Gute's finger. This is it. This is the posture of the entire universe. And this upright posture, it's not symbolizing anything.

[50:22]

You're not doing it to get anything. You're not doing it to demonstrate anything. It's not a means to an end. It's the thing in itself. It is it, as we might say. And this is how we carry our practice forward. This is how we transmit. the Dharma, how we transmit Gute's finger. It's not by mimicking our teachers. And we might do that when we first come to practice, we get a teacher and we kind of, you know, copy their gestures and their way of being and their way of speaking. You know, sometimes I can tell someone who someone's teacher is by the way they express themselves or express the Dharma. Oh yeah, that person, that's Paul's student. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, that person. Yeah, that's... That's Ed's student, yeah, yeah. But the effort is to really find our own authentic expression of upright posture, right?

[51:26]

It's how we use the posture or the performance, if you will, of zazen, the way Gute used his finger. And so when life confronts us with various questions, various koans, with things that are very unsettling, Disappointment, regret, illness, body pain, heartbreak, even the disturbing sound of the blue angels ripping through the sky, which will probably be happening later this afternoon. It's disturbing to me. Maybe it's not disturbing to you. What do we do? We respond from a place of zazen. So the upright posture of zazen is perfect and complete response to whatever is happening because it means we're not separate. and what is happening. We're just encountering this moment as best we can with an attitude of open, wakeful receptivity. Okay, so before closing, I may go a few minutes over, but we don't have Q&A today because we have a one-day sitting, so I'll take a few extra moments, if I may.

[52:36]

I want to briefly say something about Spado's verse that accompanies this case. And it goes like this. For responsive teaching, I deeply admire old Gute. Since the universe has been emptied, who else is there? Having cast the float of driftwood onto the sea, in the night waves together, we take in blind turtles. For responsive teaching, I deeply admire Gute. And responsive here means... actually meeting the situation. But of course, the question is, how is Gute's one finger meeting the situation? How is that responsive teaching? Putting up one finger when someone comes to you with their tremendous suffering. If I'm overwhelmed and I feel my heart is breaking, when day after day, gunmen walk into schools and businesses and start shooting people, how is this responsive? When the climate crisis is devastating our planet and the future of our species is in question, all species, how is this responsive?

[53:48]

How is raising one finger an appropriate response to so much pain and misery and confusion and dismay? And yet, Schrader says here in his verse that he deeply admires Gute, saying his is responsive teaching. That one finger teaching is an appropriate response that meets a situation, pointing us again to the fundamental practice of zazen, the only posture that can offer us enough presence and stability and resilience to meet the tumultuous waves of our life. The next line, since the universe is emptied, who else is there? That kind of goes to the heart of it. Who else can be there if there is Just this. And the last line. Having cast a float of driftwood into the sea, in the night waves together, we take in blind turtles.

[54:53]

What a beautiful, poetic, and haunting poignant image, huh? Have you ever felt like a blind turtle at times? Tossed about on a vast ocean in the dark of night. seeking refuge, seeking lights. And our reference here to blind turtles comes from a story in the Perinirvana Sutra. It says, there was once a tortoise living in the deep sea. It had no eyes in its head, but only one in the middle of its belly underneath. So the poor creature could not look up to see and worship the sun, and it was greatly distressed. But one day, by great good luck, a single board with a hole in it came floating by. The tortoise managed with considerable difficulty to cling onto it from underneath in an upside down position. And then put his eye to the hole in the board and look upwards to see and worship the sun.

[56:03]

Take that in for a moment. Feel that. Do what it would be like to be that turtle floating in the ocean, coming upon this piece of driftwood with a hole in it, maneuvering yourself to get your only eye, your only aperture for seeing light into the right spot to see the sky. Again, I don't know about you, but I've certainly felt like this turtle many times in my life. Zazen and Zen practice have been some of the few things that have offered me a glimpse of Buddha's ever-present sunlight. I would say nature does that too. There might be other things, but practice I find for me is one of the most essential. And how compassionate were the Buddhists and ancestors to have offered us this true Dharma I. To some, this I looks like the various sutras.

[57:07]

and teachings that we received. To others, a koan collection such as the Blue Cliff Record. And so others, maybe simply a piece of driftwood containing a small hole through which the sea a brighter possibility. And then there is Gute's finger. In his commentary on this last line, Suzuki Roshi says, tremendous numbers of blind tortoises, in the dark sea or landing on Gute's one small finger. One after another. There is no time for anybody to lift up another finger. So there is no other time than now. Just being completely here for each other. Completely present here now is the most compassionate response we can offer a world in distress. Even the simple activity of raising a single finger is already too much if it's done with the mind of duality.

[58:19]

So I will end there, and I don't know if Brian had said this, and I just said it earlier, there won't be Q&A today. We will, those of us who are participating in today's meditation will continue. And I invite you all to observe Gute's finger everywhere, in everything, in whatever way it's pointing. Thank you. attention equally extend to everything.

[59:36]

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