Thank you. I spent a journey giving me an animal to his birth, and I had become a mother.

[07:53]

If he had lived in this square, I would give him a nice great thing. If he had been like 100,000, he's moving beyond us. I have been admitted to sitting at a bus in his room. He's been moving to my career in his house. I have been allowed to have a policy in this, which we were going to allow, but to partner with other stories. that form and ceremony. It's both centering and un-centering.

[08:59]

I'm really not happy with my Zagu. Linda, would you fix my Zagu? I was going to just accept it, but since I have friends... It doesn't get used much, and it's got its own system. Okay. Thank you very much. Sorry, those of you out there can't see, but my bowing cloth was kind of cattywampus. Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Susan O'Connell, and I've lived here a really long time. And I want to thank the whole Tonto team. So we have new Tontos, old Tontos, Tonto assistants, heads of practice who got together and invited me to give this talk.

[10:01]

So thank you all. Where's Heather? Is Heather here? Okay. Anyway. So movable Tontos. So there's a lot going on. Do you resonate with that? Yeah. And one of the benefits of having a practice that encourages us and trains us to pause, to be still, to be kind, is that in that space of receptivity, in that brief hesitation before responding, we can sometimes... Touch the ground and have a choice about how we meet a lot going on. Think for a minute of all the things that are going on in your life.

[11:05]

The family, relationship realm, the work process, your health. your concerns about what's happening in the world? At what point does your chest start to get tight? And do you find yourself holding your breath? Are there strong emotions arising, like anger or sadness or thoughts of overwhelm or paralysis? When Heather, who is in Tassajara, asked me a week or so ago if I would be willing to give this talk, my first reaction was, oh, wow, my plate is so full, I can barely function. And there's a lot going on.

[12:07]

I moved to San Francisco Zen Center in December of 1995. And I've lived at all three of our temples. I moved back to City Center from Green Gulch in the spring of 2006. And on October 31st, I will be moving out of the space that I've been living in at City Center for 17 years and out of the practice community that I've been taking refuge in for 27 years. transitioning to Enso Village in Healdsburg. It's a Zen-inspired senior living community that's opening on October 31st. And this is after many years in which I've been leading the effort to create this community, to raise the money, to develop the various partnerships, to oversee innovations.

[13:23]

and advocate for the Enso Village idea, which is initially to provide adequate care for the retiring Zen teachers at San Francisco Zen Center and to share the practice of conscious aging with the wider world. So I'm leaving my familiar space and I am... transitioning from one community to another. I'm taking 26 of my retiring Zen Center friends with me, and I'm going to be living with 250 new friends. Oh, and I'm working full-time in the capacity of what I call Mama Lion, around maintaining the difference makers at Enso Village, because... It takes vigilance when you're creating something new to keep from slipping back into older and perhaps easier ways of thinking about aging.

[14:35]

The premise of Zen-inspired senior living is that wellness includes attention to the body, mind, heart, and spirit. And that it's really important to not turn away from and to help each other meet the realities of this amazing and difficult and inevitable process of aging. Oh, and San Francisco Zen Center is in partnership with the Kendall Corporation to develop a second Zen-inspired senior living community in Southern California called Enso Verde, for which I am also serving as Mama Lion. There's a lot going on. So I asked Heather if I could please sleep on the request.

[15:41]

It was quite possible I was actually going to say I have limits. Those of you who know me may think that's funny. But I was thinking about saying no. But when I woke up the next morning, And I looked at my calendar and I saw that there was a lot going on. But at the same time, I felt energized and happy. Actually, more than happy. I felt joyful. And it was clear to me that I wanted to talk with you about the kind of power of joy. and how it can help us when there's a lot going on, which is always. So also this is an opportunity to publicly say goodbye to this place and to this phase of my life with you.

[16:52]

So what is this joy? What does it feel like? Where does it come from? How do we cultivate it? So I want to start with, what does it feel like for me? So I've been looking at this over the past couple of days. When I'm feeling joyful, I'm aware that my, I can feel that my lungs are filled with fresh, cool air. And that the diaphragm is dropped and released. And there's an awareness of my heart beating and also kind of radiating warmth. And the corners of my mouth are slightly turned up. I think that's an important one. And my eyes are relaxed.

[17:58]

And... welcoming whatever is appearing. And lastly, there's an overall sense of lightness that I call buoyancy. So I want to invite you to see if you can join me in this process of studying joy and see if you can identify your own sense of or memory of joy. Just take a moment and see if you can conjure up a moment or a situation in which you felt what you would call joy. Those of you in the electronic world, please do the same if you'd like. Just take a moment. Close your eyes if you need to, and... So, you know, for me, two days ago, I was up at Enso Village and walking around studying the construction.

[19:22]

And I walked into what we call the bistro, which is the vegetarian restaurant that we're going to have there. It's inspired by Green's Restaurant. And I looked up and I had known what we had planned for the ceiling. And I looked up. It was so beautiful. It was beyond my imagination. I thought I knew what it was going to look like, but I didn't. And I looked up, and those feelings, that physical sensation I just described, was there. So how many people could not find a joyful experience? Raise your hand. Really? Oh, then there's a whole part of my talk that might not even... Okay, so I'm going to talk about it anyway because in the past couple of weeks when I've been at 10 days that I've been talking to people about joy, a couple of people I know rejected the concept of joy.

[20:28]

They said, it seems too big. It seems too energized. So just to widen the gate a little bit, I'm going to add a couple of other synonyms. And I'd like to add gratitude. So I was grateful for that ceiling. I was grateful to the architects. I was grateful to the people who did such an exacting job. Delight is another word. Ice cream, that reminds me of ice cream. You know, taking a lick of an ice cream cone on a hot day, delight. Glee, that kind of reminds me of kind of... hopscotch or dancing gleefully. Or sort of another whole basket of joy is peacefulness or equanimity. So if those words are helpful to you, please use them.

[21:36]

But each of those words require the corners of the mouth turned up. Another way to explore joy is by thinking about what it is not, or what I might refer to as the near enemy of joy. Many times, extreme feelings can be an attempt to control our life. We go very high or we go very low. We mistakenly believe that that the advantage of going very high or going very low is that we think we are the ones turning the volume up and down. So in a way we feel in control. And we imagine we can protect ourselves from our hearts being broken by floating above the situation or dwelling in the pain and in that way preemptively breaking our own hearts.

[22:48]

And I want to also take just a moment to acknowledge depression, which is, to me, kind of a dwelling in the pain, being stuck in the pain. And I understand that there are many people who experience depression in various titrations. And I also understand that sometimes it's not possible to turn towards joy. However, the circumstances of my life are such that I've only had a handful of experiences where I have felt despair. And for a period of time, I felt, oh, there won't be an end to it. I've had that experience, like no way up, no way out. But these experiences did not last long for me. and I was able to actually watch them fade, then a lightness return.

[23:57]

And I've been accused of being too buoyant, but it's just, these are the causes and condition of my life. So this experience I have is like being a cork on the ocean, not in the air, not above it all, but like right in the middle, bubbling. But I respect that the area of depression is not an area where I am able to report or teach very much or how to work with it. But I can talk about joy. Now, joy can become ungrounded and too breathy, in which case it's not the joy I'm talking about. Ungrounded joy is joy that is overinflated and maybe an attempt to get out of a situation, to bounce around it, maybe spiritual bypassing.

[25:05]

But buoyancy is not the same thing as ecstasy. Joyful buoyancy is being that cork that's simply bobbling on the surface, not above it, not below it. So where does joy come from? What are the conditions for the arising of joy? Well, the kind of joy I'm talking about is not something that needs to be created. It's the joy that's flowing right now at the ground floor of being alive. It's the place that Suzuki Roshi talked about when he said, Just being alive is enough. We are human. We are alive. We are breathing. We are in community. We are flawed.

[26:09]

We are restless and frightened in one breath and comforted and settled in the next. We are surviving the ebbs and flows of our intentional interconnected lives. Joy is cultivated. Joy is conditioned by not resisting it. It's right here. It's right here. And at the edge of this joy is the potential for tears of appreciation. be tears. For joy and gratitude are different titrations of the same thing. Knowing we are so, so fortunate to be alive.

[27:12]

This appreciation can increase as we age and settle settle with the reality of life's ending coming closer. Or of a pending transition out of this community. There are other responses to the awareness of an ending or a transition. we sometimes have those too. Fear, panic, denial. Our choice is whether to dwell on those or to allow the joy that's already there to arise. It's not to say we should cancel those other responses.

[28:20]

Fear. But I have found that leaning towards joy is what helps me meet my life in a refreshed way. It helps me better tolerate the heaviness of grief. To counter the temptation to close my heart to others in kind of solitary suffering. These are the moments where you see, oh, I've got three pages left. Do I edit? There is a sweet story, so I'll tell it to you. You may have heard this. This is about what it takes to kind of shore up that choice towards joy. And there was once an elder Cherokee man who was with his grandson teaching him about life.

[29:24]

And the man says, a fight is going on inside of me. It's a terrible fight, and it's between two wolves. One is filled with anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other, on the other's shoulder, is filled with joy, peace, hope. Love, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. And the same fight is going on inside you, my beloved grandson, and inside every other person too. The grandson thought about it for a minute, and then he asked his grandfather, which wolf will win?

[30:30]

And the elder Cherokee simply replied, the one you feed. Maybe you've heard that story before. But it's the one we feed. This is the part I'm going to cut. Okay. So I'm leaving the container of this community. It's the end of something and the beginning of something else. And I can assure you that joy is helping me navigate this transition. There is a relationship between joy and loss

[31:36]

Or as my friend Emela, who lives at Green Gulch and is also preparing to move to Enzo Village, I asked her how she was doing, what was her state of mind, and she said she's feeling gratitude and grief. Gratitude and grief. Blanche Hartman, who many of you know and maybe some of you don't know, was the first female spiritual leader of the San Francisco Zen Center. She was the abbess, and I think the first female abbess in the West, maybe anywhere, anywhere. And Blanche once wrote an article in Lion's Roar that I found, and it was talking about her relationship between joy and death. in which her awareness of the closeness of death after her heart attack gave rise to spontaneous gratitude.

[32:48]

She'd had a previous brush with death when she was younger, and then her primary response was fear, terror, actually, at the realization of her own mortality. Up until then, she had known that everyone eventually dies, but it was impersonal. Now that she knew that she personally was going to die, and that it could happen at any moment, she understood firsthand the teaching that death is certain, the time of death is uncertain. And with that, she was spontaneously grateful. Just being alive is enough. When I first came to Zen Center, we all come with our ideas about wanting things to be better, wanting me to be better, wanting my life to be better.

[34:07]

and thinking that maybe there was some advanced state of consciousness that one could enter into with a great deal of rigorous practice. And there are, you know, occasionally little blips of ecstasy after you've been sitting a long time in the Zendo during Sashin and you happen to kind of fall into a state. They don't last long. And actually this is what the Buddha, this is what made the Buddha sit down for seven days because he was able to go up into various states of ecstasy, which are possible when you do strong concentration practices. But then he'd come down and, you know, it'd be back in his actual life. And so what's the way to work with our actual life? That's what this practice is about. But I, for a long time. thought that it meant special states. So sorry, any of you who are here for special states, go for it, but it's not what it's about.

[35:15]

Just being alive is enough. And being here, I've watched a few people go through the process of knowing they were dying soon. One was another spiritual leader here, Abbott Steve Stuckey, who I had the great privilege of working closely with when I was in the leadership here. One of his students, Renschen Bunz, recently put a book together of stories about Steve from Steve's various friends and family and students. And one was from a diary that Mary Stair's was keeping during the last month. She was his attendant and basically lived at his house along with his wife, Lane, and attended to Steve as Steve, in a very short period of time from when he knew he was dying, about four months, actually finished that process of dying, finished that process of living, actually.

[36:27]

And so Mary, in this diary, says that she was watching him in that process of being near the end and clear that it was unavoidable. She felt that as he was doing what we call dying, he was being born. He was being liberated. Every time something ends, We're afraid of losing that thing. What happens? And so village. A new arising. As long as we're alive, life keeps refreshing itself. It's not always pleasant. What arises next is not always pleasant. But it'll be new. It'll have never happened before. So...

[37:30]

Steve's response to the news that he had fatal pancreatic cancer and about four months to live was to offer one of the most amazing Dharma talks I've ever heard. It's on gratitude and it's in our archive and I highly recommend it. Now I'm not exactly dying any more than all of us are dying. But I am experiencing a level of change that seems maybe bigger than the normal moment-by-moment renewal of life. And in a sense, I'm being liberated. I had expected that this part of the talk I was going to give was going to be about saying goodbye and it would be painful. It's not.

[38:33]

I'm filled with joy and completion. I have made mistakes. I have hurt people. I've let people down. In the Shusso ceremony, the head student ceremony, we say, My mistakes fill heaven and earth, leaving me no place to hide. So anyone in this room that I've hurt? Anyone out there that I've hurt? Sorry. And I have a sense of both my mistakes and the offering that I've been able to make.

[39:41]

They both fill heaven and earth. So I'm satisfied that I've done my best because I deeply believe that we are all doing our best. Because if we could do better, we would. This is our best. This is our human best. And we can use a little improvement, right? But that's in the process of doing our best. So right now, the joy is outweighing the grief. And maybe another condition for the arising of joy is being humbled by one's mistakes. And the deep acceptance of being human, accepting imperfections, except for my bowing clock, that was not okay.

[40:52]

So it's an ending and a beginning. A liberation from the familiar. a venture into the new, and a sense that I have been fully supported for 27 years to make my offering. And I've learned from many teachers and all of you to better understand and do my best to embody the importance of compassion. I'm a doer. And I have done things with very little compassion. Those are my mistakes. And I still have this next breath and this next breath to encourage that compassion.

[41:56]

And I think a joyful state is a great place for compassion to arise in. So what could be better than this? So we don't chant now, I was told, by somebody. We don't chant now. What we do now is we leave some time for questions. I embarrassed the abbot. I'm sorry. Mistakes. Mistakes. So if anyone wants to bring anything up about what I said or have a question, this would be the time, and then we will chant when we're done. Yes? There's a... It's... Terry. Terry. Susan, as you know, I've been, I invited a man who didn't have a place to live to stay with me.

[43:08]

And I was trying to figure out what, I knew I didn't want it to go on forever and how it was going to go on, how it was going to happen. Anyhow, he disappeared. He just, I woke up one morning, he was gone. Yes. seen him once, he came briefly, but it seems more like he's disappeared. And just any helpful hints about not being dragged into Oh, somebody under a blanket on the street that I can't see. I think maybe that's Jeff. Not being dragged into grief and also for my mistakes. You know, wow. So many times making the wrong choice in terms of, you know, being open and dealing with him.

[44:15]

So anyhow, any... So there's a lot in what you just asked. There's a lot, and we can talk later. But I would say the first thing that came to my mind is when he left, something major changed. So this is an opportunity to study your expectation that things aren't going to change. So you can not go into that other realm of emotional kind of seeking and wanting to find him and wanting to fix it and all that, and just stop for a minute in that first realization. You're upset, but before you start to go into all the things that could be happening, just look at, here's an opportunity to study that we don't think things are going to change. Yeah. And they do, and they go in all kinds of directions.

[45:19]

They change in a way that's pleasant. They change in a way that's unpleasant. And that other whole category of mistakes by caring too much, keep making those. Okay? Thank you. Thank you. I think we have one question online. Jeremy, you can go ahead and we'll unmute you, or you can unmute yourself and you can ask your question. Okay, you can go ahead. Okay, so my question is about... Quite the opposite of what I've been talking about, which was joy and the sense of happy to be alive.

[46:29]

And the opposite of what I felt today was tough to be alive. I don't want to be alive. So, Jeremy, I confessed also in my talk that that very strong emotional response to being alive, which is I don't want to, is not something I'm very expert in. I haven't had to... live in that state for very long, ever. And as a professional clergy person, I would say, please get some help.

[47:35]

If you have any thoughts of methods that might be interesting to you to pursue, to end your life, please get some help. I'm not the one to help you. Do you have friends and family around you? Are you isolated? Yeah. I mean, it's not all the time, but it goes from isolation. I'm alone completely. Right, right. So if it's not debilitating, if it's not got you completely stuck... If you have a positive relationship with a friend or a family member, call them after this talk. And maybe tell them you love them, to kind of pull the heart out of self-concern about how hard it is, how tough it is to be alive. And that feeling of love is something we actually have available to us to give to someone else.

[48:39]

If we can't give it to ourselves... Maybe we can offer it to someone else. And that might shift the state. I don't know. But that's what I have to offer you. Okay. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I'm glad to have been heard. Okay. I'm happy to listen. Thank you. You're welcome. over here. Hey. So in regards to sort of having joy for and gratitude for what you have had and accepting what the new beginning is, what about in regards to

[49:42]

to seeing your own mortality? Is that something that you accept it as a new beginning? Or you sort of, I don't know, you hold no view of it because you don't know what's coming. Oh boy, you want to know about death. Okay. There's this quote, I can't remember who said it, but something along the lines of, in order for one to have true... Joy, one must have joy with one's own destruction or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So destruction's happening all the time, right? Destruction meaning the falling apart of something, right? And so being aware of impermanence, which is a little bit what I was saying to Terry, it's like there's something here and then it changes. That constant awareness of impermanence has a whole range of... of how big that impermanence is or how, you know.

[50:44]

But I do have an idea about death, which is I have no idea what death is. That's my idea about death. It is not what I think it is. Because I'm thinking with a mind that doesn't really get something that changes in that way. So I see death itself, if I... I'm going to be conscious in that process, and who knows, as like, well, Mary called it liberation. Liberation from knowing. Because I don't know. hi susan hi i just want to thank you um first of all the way you talked and what you talked about brought joy to me so i i enjoyed your talk good thank you and then and i'm sure you know this you know in this context of our forms and of our black outfit um

[52:10]

we are very often seen very serious and stern and rigid. And of course, this perception is not all wrong, right? So I think it's very important to speak about joy here and let everybody else know that we are actually very joyous very often. But it's not so easy to see that. Because with all this form and the sincerity around the form and the sincerity in practice, which is... necessary, I think. Sometimes the joy is kind of leaving through the back door, right? So thanks. You're welcome. And I want to say, when I first moved into the San Francisco Zen Center, people were really depressed. And this entire building was full of people who were really depressed. And used to... walking around, looking down, not making eye contact. There was this big value for not making eye contact, which is fine in the morning when you're on your way to the Zendo or until breakfast, but there was no eye contact.

[53:19]

So later on, I can't remember exactly how long I had been here, we actually trained people to smile. And there was a whole movement to be welcoming. Like, that was it. We're going to be welcoming. And so, you know, people would be told, if you're going to meet people at the door, if you're going to be the greeter, smile, right? And make eye contact. So that admonition I said of whatever of those words might help you experience that kind of sense, do it with the corners of your mouth turned up, right? You can put your shoes neatly. in a row out there, with the corners of your mouth turned up. Thanks. Welcome. Was there one more question on this side?

[54:19]

Greg, did you have one? Okay. It's scary for Greg to ask, but don't let Greg ask a question. You can sit on it, we can come back. I have a question about joy. In my experience, it has sometimes received a reaction not joyful in return. It feels sometimes that expressing joy too strongly or expressing joy too individually sometimes may evoke a response I don't expect or an opposite response. And it brings the question of how much of my joy I'm allowed to express, or is it even helpful to others sometimes to express it? So I'm very confused about what to do with my joy, and when is it harmful even to others if they're not in a state where that's a... Yeah, that's kind of the question.

[55:33]

I'm confused in the question. So do you think it's harmful to me right now? No, not at all. Right. So... Why? Why do you know it's not harmful to me? It feels like body language, tone, everything is in a receptive, not in a non-receptive state. So, awareness of our impact on people. Joy can be self-indulgent. Joy can be too much. Too much energy in the room. We get feedback about that. And then it teaches us either that particular person needs a different approach or the situation was not a good one and let me just keep that in mind. So all responses, all skillful responses include taking in the causes and conditions of that moment. So if I am in a room and it has a kind of a...

[56:37]

lower vibe in it, a different vibe that's kind of down here instead of up here, I would be self-indulgent to try to impose my joy, right? So I'm talking about joy in terms of what I am feeling. It felt pretty safe to talk about it in this room, but I was very aware, like Jeremy, there are people for whom joy is not, they don't have access to it, and they feel confronted by it. just up your awareness. Thank you. You're welcome. Margie had a question. Hi Margie. Thank you for your talk. I want to reflect on the first time I met you which was in the context of you talking about taking on this project to find housing for our monks when they hit retirement age or that moment, and you had lost.

[57:41]

You were in a negotiation, and I'm not going into all the details, but it didn't go well. It fell apart. Yeah, it fell apart, and you were feeling so defeated, and I didn't know you at all, and I said, you know, it This is going to be complicated work. It's going to take a long time. There's a reason no one undertakes this. But we are so grateful that you personally have undertaken this enormously complicated mission that you dedicated yourself to doing. So I'd like to reflect for a moment about the role that you have played in bringing joy to many people who are now going to have the opportunity to live in safety and security who honestly don't even know your name. And there's a role of joy that we provide to a broader community, to people who just feel lucky to have a place to live. But behind the scenes, there are so many people who make that happen. So I would just like to say that I remember that moment. I remember saying to you, it's going to be okay.

[58:43]

It's going to all work out. And you sort of look at me like, who are you? And why are you telling me this? But... It turned out to be true. We are here in this moment because of the work that you and so many other people did. But you really led the impossible dream for so many people. Thank you, Margie. I just want to say thank you for that. You're welcome. You're welcome. Thank you. I remember that moment. And I remember reporting on it at the board meeting. And as I was reporting on it, I was weeping. And it went through me, and then it was over. That's what I mean. I definitely felt defeated and the pain of that and everything. And then near the tail end, it just sort of dissipates. And it's not there anymore. That sense of I can't move forward kind of thing. But it's really painful when it happens. Yeah, yeah. Happened twice. Thank you so much for your talk.

[60:02]

You're welcome. I really resonated with it because I feel like I'm a naturally joyful person and go about through most of my day just feeling that beautiful joy of existing. And I was thinking about it this morning and feeling as if that's really something that I've come to identify with as being something that I can offer to the people in my life. And I think that's beautiful. because it's something that I was kind of born with in my disposition. But I also realized that it's something that I identify with to the point that when I'm not feeling joyful, it can feel as if I'm maybe not, I don't know, meeting not necessarily the expectations of other people, but the expectations that I have for myself of what I can bring to offer my friends and my community, and that can be quite painful and cause suffering. And so I was wondering... if you had any recommendations for feeling this joy, but not identifying with it so much. Very interesting question.

[61:07]

I do sometimes feel that responsibility that since joy is available to me to like share it, spread it, hopefully not in situations where people are being, you know, like that. So when I feel down, I often hole up in my apartment and don't let people see me that way. So I'm aware of wanting to be seen as someone who isn't down, right? And now that I'm older, I need more help, right? So it's more likely that people who are helping me do various things are going to see me when I'm down. And how will I handle that? How will you handle that?

[62:11]

Right? So, yeah, it's, you know, these identities are with us and we kind of get used to them and we maybe get skillful with being whatever way we are. pushing away the other parts takes a lot of energy. So I hope that I am going to be more willing to let people see me in all stages of being alive. And I hope that for you too. Thank you. You're welcome. During your talk, you touched on gratitude. And there's something I've always wondered about gratitude. And that is, it is my understanding that gratitude is felt and expressed with respect to an object, something that you have or you experience.

[63:19]

And your having or experiencing of that object is kind of defined or is significant in relation to others not having that. And I've never quite come to terms with how do I not feel callous in feeling gratitude given the fact that I just mentioned. Gratitude is necessary. I am privileged, extremely privileged, to not acknowledge that vis-a-vis things, let's say, or ease, various kind of ease in my life that other people don't have. If I don't see that,

[64:22]

if I don't see my privilege, I'm going to do some damage. I'm not going to see the disparities and I'm going to come top down and not even be aware that I'm not meeting people where they are if I'm not aware of my privileges. So that's in terms of things, being grateful for things or states. The kind of gratitude... I think I was talking about is just being alive is enough. And there are many people who don't have things for whom just being alive is actually enough. And there are many people who have lots of things for whom just being alive is not enough. It's dependent on things. So I do think gratitude is essential. in that way that I'm talking about it. Does that make sense?

[65:26]

That is certainly clarifying. But even in that context, I would say the problem persists in that my being able to... I'm assuming gratitude is a positive affect, has a positive balance. My being able to be grateful and feel something positive... for just being, is again kind of contrasted with people who are, at the time at least, incapable of that. People who feel like that existence is suffering. So you think gratitude is better than not being grateful? You were saying you felt... You're able to feel gratitude. Others aren't. There's a disparity there. Well, I didn't say grateful was better. I said it was necessary. I think we have to be careful of putting ourselves above.

[66:35]

We meet. We meet in the middle. Grateful, ungrateful. But for you, who have questions about gratitude, I would suggest keep looking at what it really is. Thank you. You're welcome. We have just a few minutes left, and I think we have a question online. A question from Seishin. You can go ahead and unmute yourself, Seishin. Okay, good. Susan, thank you so much for your talk. You're welcome. I love the juxtaposition of joy and gratitude, compassion, delight.

[67:46]

I guess I was going to ask, is there a scale? Is one like above another? Or are they all just kind of bobbling along in the same sea? But I don't know. I guess I'm losing that question now. Yeah, lose that question. I have... I really like the story about feeding, you know, feeding the wolves. And I have had to feed myself with gratitude, and I've just reaped such a bounty from that practice because I'm just, I guess I'm just a naturally crabby person. And it doesn't serve me, and it puts other people off. It doesn't serve them at all. But developing a practice of gratitude, I'm grateful that there's clean air today.

[68:54]

You know, I'm grateful that I woke up. I'm grateful that I have a bed, you know, so many people don't. And just being grateful for little things and larger things too. I'm very grateful for all the work that you put into Enzo and its manifestations. But I don't know if you can just talk about, is there a difference? Gratitude, compassion, delight, and joy. Thanks. I told you to lose that question. It's not that interesting to me because the responses that we have need to be based on skillfulness, right? Right. And so if I start to feel one of those conditions, glee, whatever, and it's in the wrong situation and people are not up for it, then is it better?

[69:56]

No. It's what's appropriate in the situation. And, you know, boy, all of those states that you mentioned are pretty pleasant. So are you looking for the most pleasant one? No. So just be careful about comparing states. It isn't better to have gratitude or not have gratitude. It's what is. It's the way things are right at that moment. And then we move from there. We are aware of what's going on. We are in whatever state we're in, whatever default position we have. Crabby. I know crabby. I was crabby yesterday because something wasn't going well. And then what I did was... I confessed it. I wrote a little text and said, I'm being crabby right now because I just had a flu shot and a COVID booster shot, and then I listed about five other things, which justified being crabby, but wasn't helpful.

[70:58]

Wasn't helpful, so. Okay? Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Now we're going to chant. Now we're going to chant. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true narrative of the Buddha's way. It is the word of resistance. I don't know what to say then. Do you know what to say then? I don't know what to say then. I don't know what to say then.

[72:08]

You do not want to be able to pick yourself. You do not want to. Thank you all so much for being here.

[73:56]

My name is Kay. I'm the head of the meditation hall. I wanted to share a few announcements. The first is an open invitation to come and join us for meditation. We have daily, except for on the weekends, morning and evening meditation, 5.30 in the morning. You can show up on the door along Laguna and also 5.30 in the afternoon and join us in the Zendo. If you're newer to meditation or you would like some instruction, most Saturdays in the morning at 8.40, right in this room we have Zazen instruction. Michael led Zazen instruction earlier today, and he will also be leading Zendo forms instruction. So if you'd like a bit more of an introduction to how to enter and move through the space in the Zendo, you can meet up with Michael a few minutes after the end of this talk right here in the lobby.

[74:58]

We have beginners half-day sitting coming up on Sunday, not December, how about October 22nd. Those run from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. And the next one-day sitting is next Saturday, the 7th. There's still time to sign up. I believe you can register for that up until Tuesday. This coming week, on Wednesday, there'll be no normal Dharma talk. Instead, we will have just started the fall practice period, and there'll be a Sangha practice review happening for practice period participants. Next Saturday, it'll be during the one-day sitting, but there still will be a public talk. and Ryu Shinpal Haller will be offering the talk that day. And just to let you know, on Friday morning of this coming week, we'll be having our Bodhidharma Memorial Ceremony.

[76:06]

So it's an annual memorial to honor one of our important founders in this tradition. On Saturday, October 14th, we have our member and volunteer... members and volunteers Appreciation Day. This is a chance to, if you are someone who has supported Zen Center in all the many ways that people do, through contributions, through volunteering, through showing up and attending things, this is a day to come and we want to celebrate you. So there'll be a lot of activities happening that day on the 14th. It will include a free lunch and desserts. Please RSVP on our website so we have a head count of how many people are coming. So shortly after this, we'll have tea and cookies in the courtyard. You're welcome to stick around and socialize, mingle about.

[77:09]

Do we have an announcement from our Urban Gate Sangha today? Hello, my name is Lisa. I'm inviting all of you to join us in the Urban Gate Sangha. We meet most Saturdays at 8.50 in the courtyard. If you join us, you will learn how to hit the Han and ring the bell and do other Doan Rio jobs. And after tea and cookies, we get to meet with the senior teacher and do some study together. So we'll be in the courtyard and happy to answer questions and meet you. Thank you. Thank you. A reminder again, as we exit, please return cushions to the cushion rack and chairs can go back to the dining room. And thank you all again for being here. Have a great day.

[78:03]

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