Good morning. Most of you don't realize that when the speaker on Sunday takes his or her seat, that's the whole thing. The whole ritual of sitting down, getting your robes in order. So are there any questions? If there aren't, we can go home. How many of you have never been here before? Welcome. Welcome, everybody. How many have been here just a few times? Okay. My name is Daigan. That's my Buddhist name. It means great vow.

[01:04]

V-O-W. V-O-W. Great vow. Great vow to accomplish the way, my teacher said. I said, what? Was he speaking to me? He said, it'll give you something to work for. This lifetime, the next one and several hundred to come, maybe. So I'm doing my best. So bear with me. Okay, so tomorrow, as you know, Maybe you know. We enter the sign of Libra, that is to say, autumn. The autumn equinoxes tomorrow. And I thought maybe I'd talk a little bit about that. What occurs to me around the changing of the light. Some poems about celebrating that. Actually, The four cardinal points of the changing of the light of the year, that is to say the summer and winter solstice and the autumn and the vernal equinox.

[02:19]

Generally in the morning, the monks go out and back here after our short service, do another short service, and then people are invited to read or read say something spontaneous that occurs to them about the changing of the light. It's the most ancient, I'm sure, kind of ritual that human beings have had, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, when the farther north you go from the equator, the more the change occurs, the more the light force gains or decreases, and the dark force decreases and gains. That's certain ceremonies and celebrations have been held since time out of mind around those particular points. Obviously so.

[03:22]

That's why when the dark of the year, when the sun is about to start back, the parent sun is about to return, We celebrate the birth. We used to celebrate the Saturnalia, but that is the time in which new life begins. You can imagine what it must have been to live in a cave and not see. We were so used to having light in our lives, but not until recently, pretty recently. It was a long winter, very dark, very cold. And so when the... You notice thousands of years ago that millions maybe, and the life force turned, and people knew that there was some hope to survive, that the sun was coming back, that the gods were returning, that the power of life was being renewed again. In the sign of Capricorn, that is to say that the winter solstice, astrologically inclined,

[04:33]

is the symbol of the seahorse, which is the one that rises from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the mountain. The sun will rise from its lowest point to its highest point. And at the springtime, of course, the vernal equinox, then day and night are equal. Then the light force begins to overcome the dark force. Now, the dark force is often seen, of course, as the dark force. is that in which things go bump in the night. It's kind of spooky. It's a kind of symbol of our unconscious mind, of all those things that can't be seen. Interestingly enough, in the Buddhist tradition, the dark force is the ultimate, sometimes considered the ultimate, because those things cannot be distinguished entirely. at night. Everything is together, it's all there, but we can't use our discriminating minds to pick out the different aspects of things.

[05:39]

And the life force has typified some of the scriptures as that part of our mind that discriminates. This is a chair, that's a person, this is this and so on. Makes sense out of it that way. But earlier, it was a celebration of, of course, the return of life, which is the return of our energy, which is the return of life. From the vernal equinox, of course, the symbol of that is, you know, it goes like this. It's like a seed coming out of the ground, beginning. That's when we do our planting. Well, now we're 180 degrees away from that. And now we're just beginning to descend into the longer night again. And again, we do this. And for many of us, autumn is one of the favorite seasons. A lot of us have that as our favorite season. There's a certain wistfulness, a certain melancholy, something that touches us because what falls is not only the leaves and so on, it's the sense that we're going toward the end of something.

[06:48]

It evokes in us a sense of our mortality, as it were. And so we feel that very deeply, I think. I know when I was in Tassajara in those years, I really enjoyed the Angol, the autumn into winter practice period, the three-month practice period, because for those of you who have been there, you know that it's way down deep in the mountains at the very bottom, and it's already kind of deep and dark. And by the early... In the middle of October, the sun is rising behind the mountains, and about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, about 10.30 in the morning, a little sun peeks through some of the trees and just barely crosses the top, and it's ecliptic crosses the tops of the mountains and then goes down about 3.10 behind it. But there's a sense, because we are doing this practice of interning, involuting

[07:54]

introspecting, looking at ourselves. It's very conducive, in a sense, to that practice of sitting there and just watching everything turn in. And feeling the, of course, the transiency, the darkening, the ungraspable, the scary, the unknowable, becomes quite... a feeling that becomes almost palpable as you sit there. Of course, you only have, you know, kerosene lanterns down there. For the most part, there's more electricity these days, but for the most part, kerosene lanterns. So the dark is very, very dark, you know. Very dark. But of course, at night, if it's clear, the stars and constellations, the firmament is right in front of you. So it's very elemental, I'm trying to say. There's something we don't appreciate sometimes enough in our life being most of us urban dwellers now, in some sense, that we actually get elemental for that long a period.

[08:59]

So I always enjoy that aspect of the light darkening and the deep shadows that fill in the crevices of the mountains and so on. The light is quite beautiful. And then around the 20th, 21st of December, the practice ends, just about the time of the winter solstice for the holiday season. And when you come back, Now, of course, the life force is gaining, and everybody's beginning to talk about, look forward to the spring, the summer, the guest season. And so the feeling of energy goes outward more. It feels like instruction is that way. It just seems natural to express it that way and feel it. For me, what autumn always evokes is the smell of burning leaves. When I grew up, this was in the 30s and 40s, people still rake their leaves, put them over the curb and burn their leaves in the streets. This was in the Midwest, so all over town you would smell the smell of smoke.

[10:06]

Kind of a pungent but sweet smell of burning leaves. That always evokes that time of year for me. course it's the time of year two as we all know of the harvest the harvest moon the hunter's moon when the moon is the fullest turn the fullest toward the earth you get the greatest perspective of the moon this is september october because the way things line up you have the clearest picture of the moon and so of course it's been celebrated since the beginning for its power at that time. In the moon, you know, also in the Buddhist tradition, there's a symbol of enlightenment, often in many cases. Interesting. It's a feminine aspect. Also, this idea of enlightenment, it occurs to me, you know, the scriptures, different scriptures, different...

[11:12]

commentaries and scriptures over time talking of the Buddha's night of enlightenment. Of course, that's actually in the springtime, which makes sense. The return of the light, the enlightenment in the springtime, the life force comes back and so on. But he, in one case, a couple of the stories, he looks up before dawn and sees the morning star. In the old days, the morning star was the harbinger, was the servant carrying the light ahead of the sun god, the head of the god, to light the way. And if you've been in a place where you can really see that, the brilliance of the morning star, it is quite startling and it's quite beautiful. Of course, it's Venus. But the idea that the day is coming, the light is coming, the enlightenment, the things are going to brighten up is part of the symbol, the poetic poetic mythology of the tradition.

[12:20]

Certainly it is a time for poetry, and it has been so, particularly in all countries. But above all, I would say in the Far East, both the Chinese and the Japanese seem to be extraordinarily sensitive to the changing of the light. to the feeling of the loneliness of autumn, of the sense of melancholy, of the sense of the impermanence above all, of all things. That all goes basic to Buddhist practice, to most practices and to most religions, that all things are flowing through the river of time, of life, and are ultimately unstoppable and moving, and that there is no way that we can hold back change. Or would we if we could, maybe? So impermanence becomes a fundamental aspect of the season that we're about to enter.

[13:24]

And I thought I would like to share some of the Japanese poems that account for the subjective feelings that we have as human beings that manifest in ourselves as awareness of what is happening in the world at large and to ourselves. Of course, Western tradition too, but what I think I really, in poetry, is very important. Shakespeare says a lot about it. One that comes to mind is when you get old. Remember he says, that time of year thou mayest behold when yellow leaves or none or few do hang upon the bowels which quake against the wind.

[14:27]

Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang. As you get older that begins to make more and more sense. Where late the sweet birds sang indeed. And now look at me I look in the mirror these days and I say, who is this? I feel the same way I felt when I was 20, but my feet go clump, clump, clump. So impermanence in that sense of the passing of things. You can't hold it back. Maybe the most famous Japanese poet, haiku poet, Most of you know what haiku are, but I'll just for the sake of passing time, actually. Haiku is a very short form. Actually, in the old days, there was a form called, I can't actually remember, it's called link verse.

[15:35]

Poets would get together and the first poet would make a verse and the second poet would try to use that verse and turn it slightly. and add to it. And sometimes this would go on to link verse 7 or 8 or more verses. But in time, it became popular for the last verse, it's a so-called capping verse, or summation verse, which was called a haiku, to sum up what all the verses were saying. And it had a certain number of features to it that were important. One was, of course, It was either directly or indirectly indicating a season. Not only a season of the year, but a season in one's life. And it was done in a certain number of syllables, 17, in a series of 5, 7, 5. And, of course, this has mutated and changed much over the years, and there's many different ways to write haiku now, and there are haiku groups, haiku classes, haiku...

[16:42]

outings all over the world now. It's a big thing. You get on the net and there's, you'd be surprised how many nets, how many stations, logs and so on have haiku on them from all over the world. But anyway, the most famous, of course, is Basho, who lived in the 17th century and you've heard his name. He's the one who kind of captured the whole essence of the idea of the non-duality of self and other at that moment of recognition of some binding force between the self and phenomena in which they become united in one, you might say, one snapshot, one flash, one sudden joining together of the subjective and the objective worlds in a non-dual way. And includes in it the feeling of the sudden transiency of life and that the movement of life and so on.

[17:48]

And this is what the Japanese language is particularly suited to grasping. And naturally, as in all poetry, we lose things in translation. But even so, most of us know about the old pond. You've heard this one. Old pond, old pond, a frog jumps in. the sound of water, or old pond of frog jumps in, plop. And it's just that plop. There's nothing about basho in that. He's not writing about I hear it. There's just that happening, being witnessed by itself in some sense. We are the witnesses of this. We are the consciousness of this moment that brings these two forces together, these two sides of ourselves together. This is so-called subjective, the so-called objective, the so-called apparent world, the so-called apparent self, which as we know as Buddhists, you know, that's practicing Buddhists, the more you look to grab some essence of that, you can't find it.

[18:51]

So there's always a very temporal feeding kind of experience. Another one of his famous haiku is, along this road, no one goes. this autumn evening. Now it doesn't sound like much in English, does it? I mean, we think that's poetry. You see, in Japanese, of course, it's So along this road, he's not saying along any road, he's saying along this one. This road I'm following, this path I am on, or you are on, This moment today, this place today, there are many interpretations of that. People have even gone so far as to say what he's talking about. His road is a poet. And he's very lonely being a poet, since poets are kind of outsiders, even in Japan. And nobody's going to follow in his footsteps and so on.

[19:54]

There's that kind of realization. But that's adding feet to a snake, as they say. That's gilding a lily. But you can imagine, we've all had that experience. We sit and look out the window and it's a... Dark twilight, getting twilight, and there's this empty street in front of this empty road. You look out and you feel that. No one's coming along. It's empty of anything. And yet, and yet it's filled with life. It's filled with that sense of transparency. Another one famous. Autumn evening. A crow perched on a withered bough. Autumn evening, a crow perched on a winter bough. You can just see that one flash. This is very common here to see that in the evening, particularly the withered bough, the one that has lost its leaves probably late in the year and so on.

[20:55]

Again, there's no sense of his subjectivity in that. There's just that feeling. This is not true of all of his verses, but it is true of these that are kind of... prototypes, prototypical, haiku in its most classical sense. There was one when he says, when I speak, my lips feel cold in the autumn wind. For that experience, I'm sure. Again, in Tassajara, we talk about the benefits of being there. And everybody who's been to Tassajara has heard this one. One goes to the teacher and he says, I'm If I were to leave now, what would you say? And the teacher said something like this anyway. I'm kind of paraphrasing it. I would say that you will miss the benefits of being here. And if I stay, what would you say? He'd say, well, then I think you will meet the benefits.

[21:58]

You will partake of the benefits. I can't remember the verb exactly, but something like that. He said, what are the benefits? The teacher said, Cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Those are the benefits that you will experience if you stay here. If you stay alive in this world, those are our benefits. Cold in the winter, hot in the summer. And there's another one. He says, this autumn, how old I am getting. Ah, the clouds, the birds. There's a more subjective, you see. And you suddenly feel, I'm going to get out of bed this morning. Creak, creak, groan, moan. I'm getting old. Life is losing its savor. Everything is dying. Look out the birds singing and the clouds are billowing up in the sky and you feel this rush again. Your heart leaps up when you behold a rainbow in the sky, that feeling. We have many kind of didactic verses about this too, more that point to the lesson.

[23:09]

I always think of the one, do not pick the flowers, says the sign, but reaping lightly among them goes the wind, which cannot read. This is a feeling that we don't really have control over. everything, maybe very much at all. And these particular poems like to point out that fact that we have to appreciate the lack of control we have. There's another kind of paraphrase of one of the commentaries, I don't think it's a sutra, but a commentary that we like to study in Zen. The translation I like is, we like the flowers and dislike the weeds. Although we like them, the flowers die. Although we dislike them, the weeds grow. There's another, reminds me of yet another Japanese one.

[24:17]

Happiness, sadness, Still the weeds grow. But in Japanese it sounds better. Remember how it went in Japanese? But it has a beautiful flow. It wasn't only though, there's also humor in this. There has to be a certain amount of humor. If our practice of life is humorless, then I think we're really doomed in some sense. We have to have a certain perspective on all of it that's humorous. And these poets do. I always love this one. Basho wrote, you know, he devoted most of his life to walking, later life, to taking long walks, long, long journeys, pilgrimages, as it were. And he wore Buddhist robes, even though he wasn't actually a practicing Buddhist.

[25:29]

As such, he still wore Buddhist robes, which many pilgrims did in those days, 18th century. In Kyoto, he says, in Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo, I long for Kyoto. Have you ever been in a place that you wanted to get to and you still long for the spirit of it, even though you're there? Yeah, that happened to me in Hawaii recently. Boy, it would be nice to be on a sand beach and palm trees and all. Oh, I am. But there are sand flies and the sun is too hot. Another one I like, he writes, the rose of Sharon, the rose of Sharon, beside the road, my horse ate it. Probably, however, the poet that I think of the most this time of the year, and actually my favorite Japanese haiku poet is the one who goes by the name of Isa.

[26:39]

Isa was, his real name was Kobayashi, I believe. I got something about him here. He's 1763 to 1827, fairly getting up closer to our time, and His life is very interesting. He was like so many people, like so many poets, like so many religious figures, like so many literary figures who became famous. They lose their mothers at an early age. Have you ever noticed that? I think of many people who lose their mothers early in life. Dogen Zenji, for example, one of our great teachers, lost his mother quite early in his life, at seven, I believe. Tolstoy lost his mother early. I can think of many others. But anyway, Esau lost his mother, a very young man, and his... Father remarried, very young boy he lost, I should say, his father remarried, married a very stern woman who had a child by his father, by Esau's father, and wanted to shut Esau out of the family circle.

[27:43]

And so she made life a kind of torment for him. And he led a very unhappy life and left home fairly early and just wandered for a long time, very poor. And became interested in writing haiku and studied it and so on. Over the years, we don't have a lot of records. But at some point, he came back to his, he was cheated out of his inheritance, actually. But finally, I think the mother, the mother-in-law dies and the mother, stepmother dies. And I don't know what happened to her son, his stepbrother. He finally returns to his hometown. I think he was about age 50 by this time. and marries, but all four children die in infancy, and his wife dies, and the house burns down. In spite of all that, Esau's most famous poem is the poem that he wrote upon the death of one of his children. It is a world of dew.

[28:48]

It is indeed a world of dew. And yet, and yet. You know, we say, you know, in the sutras, life is like a dew drop, the fleeting quality of life, like a flash of lightning. You say, emptied in an instant, vanished in a flash. It is a world of dew. It is indeed a world of dew, yeah. But all the philosophy in the world is not going to keep me from feeling this loss. That's one interpretation. And yet, and yet, I feel this bitter, bitter sense of loss, irreparable sense of loss, even though I know that actually if I look for it, there is no self that's lost. We always seem to be here, and we always seem to be losing something. Don't give me your philosophy right now. I'm grieving. And yet, and yet. Another interpretation, however, is interesting that somebody brought up, I think Robert Aiken.

[29:51]

And yet, and yet, there is still, he was a He was a Shin Buddhist, that is to say, a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist, whose, I should say, essence of the Jodo Shinshu school is that you take refuge in Amitabha Buddha, one of the Buddhas who, in the lexicon of many Bodhisattva Buddhas in the Mahayana tradition, has made a vow, like Christ's vow, to suffer for all beings. to take one of your suffering. And so when the Shin Buddhists became popular, it was in the 13th century in Japan, same time that actually Zen became very popular and that Nichiren Zen became popular. It was a time of tremendous social upheaval, natural disasters, Mongol invasions, and so on. And typical of those crises times in history, we often get very new ways of looking at the world.

[30:53]

which is probably something that's going to be happening to us more or less sooner, if not later, perhaps because we're all here today listening to something like this. It's also an indication that we're looking for a new way of viewing our life, the world. But anyway, the Shin Buddhists commonly say Nama Mirabutsu, Nama, Nama Mirabutsu, Nama Mirabutsu, calling upon homage to Mirabutsu, homage to Mirabutsu. Times are so bad, and human beings are so corrupt, this is the way, it's called mappo, the time in which the Dharma is lost, the dark period of the Dharma is being lost. And in 13th century Japan, this is a very popular feeling. And there's no way that you can redeem yourself, which is too far gone. So all you have to give, it's called other power, giving over yourself to that which is, that of which there is no witcher, the ultimate. call it what you will. We call it God, Jesus, Mohammed, whoever, whatever.

[32:04]

So, and yet, and yet, I turn my life over to you, Buddha. I appeal to you, Amitabha Buddha. So that, and yet, and yet, And yet it has that sense to it as well. The poem, I just read the, it is a world of dew, it is indeed a world of dew. There's many translations. It's literally, while the dewdrop world is the dewdrop world, yet, yet is the kind of literal translation. While it is that, still it's not just that. That also reminds me of a famous Tibetan story. I think you could probably know this one too. There's a famous Tibetan teacher called Marpa. Teacher of Milarepa, the famous Indian Tibetan poet, teacher.

[33:07]

I don't remember the century. I think it was maybe like the 10th century. Anyway, Marpa was a farmer. He was a layperson, but he was a realized Buddhist teacher. That is to say, he understood the fact that phenomena is not worthy of confidence. And he did not put story into any aspect of the world. But he was a farmer and he raised children and he had a traditional life. But his son, a favorite son, was thrown from a horse, broke his neck and died. And he was grief-stricken, according to the story. It was told by Trungpa Rinpoche years ago. And he was deeply deeply grief-stricken. And one of the students said to you, well, master, you're a Zen, you're not Zen, you're a realized teacher and so on. And why are you crying?

[34:11]

Isn't it all delusion? You said it's all delusion. You said it's all really illusion that we're living in this world. You said that's true, but this is a super illusion. And he also supposedly said, I'm grieving you, idiot. Just because we get free, just because we feel free of the sometimes of the binding force of phenomena upon our subjectivity does not mean that we become insensitive to the world. I wouldn't think, not knowing exactly, but it would seem to me that so-called enlightenment does not make us invulnerable to the whips and scorers of time. particularly when it involves the suffering of their beings and the passing of those things by which we gauge our life. Here's another one that I like a lot. Isa. Now, remember, he's lost all of his kids.

[35:15]

The young child, he still has one, apparently, left. The young child, but when he laughed, the autumn evening. He thinks, you see, the autumn evening, the child is playing on the floor, he lets out one of those, you know, babies, all they spontaneously laugh, joyously. For a moment it brings you up, and then he remembers his mother's gone, or her mother, I think it was a girl. The young child, but when he laughed, when he laughed, the autumn evening. He really felt it then, felt the loneliness. Another one, in autumn evening, the only sharer of my complaints, the wall. Is there anybody in here who hasn't felt that? You're sitting there looking at the wall. I'm sure that has a special meaning to we Zen Buddhists. We look at the wall a lot. So life jumps.

[36:17]

We have heard, life jumps, it surprises us. One moment, everything is going along pretty well, and the next moment, bingo. All of those things, our reputations, our livelihood, our loved ones, our homes, you name it, God. That's what we practice, partly what we must practice. How do we meet that day? How do we meet that moment? In autumn eve, it's no small thing to be born a human being. In autumn eve, it's no small thing to be born a human being. The Japanese have a saying, man's heart is like the autumn sky. Now it's changing, now it's a stormy, now it's Indian summer. The autumn wind, there are thoughts in the mind of Esau.

[37:20]

The autumn wind, there are thoughts in the mind of Esau. Well, he also liked to, he was very, very loving. He had a style that he used, he used colloquial, very colloquial language, the language of the people we'd say, we'd go as far as to say, he used street language. And Esau enters a lot of his poems as a subject, even though I, in the Japanese form, is not usually used in the poem itself. There are intimate ways of saying it that makes it much more personalized, much more subjective, and he's famous for those. The same mouth that cracked a flea said, Namo Aminabutsu. The same mouth that cracked a flea, or the same fingernails that cracked a flea, says, Hamishita Aminabutsu. It's like doing this sometimes when a Catholic can swat a mosquito. That's another thing that reminds me about Tassajara.

[38:23]

Tassajara, you know you're on the food chain. If you want flies, go to Tassajara. Because this is the time of year that people who go down there now and sit and they sit there for a week, you know, for seven days. And they have this time of year where all the sweat flies and the mucus flies are swarming around the face, crawling in your ears, up your nose, sides of your eyes. And you have to learn to deal with those, you see. And you don't dare kill them in this interval. And even if you do, it doesn't do you any good because there are thousands of them, and they're back, you see. So, as my teacher said, just feel the little feet walking on your face. Suffer them. But there is a time... In fact, here's a poem that says it very well. All the time I pray to Buddha, I keep on killing mosquitoes. All the time I pray to Buddha, I keep on killing mosquitoes.

[39:24]

There's a deer fly at Tassajara that comes out in the late May, in early June. And it's a small fly, and it moves fairly slowly, but it comes by the tens of thousands. It only lasts a certain amount of time, and then it disappears when it gets very hot. But it's a time of real torment. for a lot of us, and some people seem to be invulnerable, but for others, I can remember going up to hit the Han or to ring a bell, and as I'm doing it, they're landing on my head and face, and so I'm biting, and they leave wells like that. At first, I'm trying to go, you know, go and go, but after a while, it's, you know, one or two, three or four can get away in a sense of reciprocal understanding, you know, that we're all on the food chain, and I give some. Sometimes I sacrifice and sometimes you sacrifice. But after a while, when it becomes exponential into crisis mode, then it is kill. And so it's a very humbling experience to face ourselves in that kind of situation.

[40:30]

When do I sacrifice and when do you, you see? I was never stoic enough to just allow them to get away with all of my blood. New Year's Day, big day in Japan, as you know, like our Christmas, really big day. Everybody celebrates on that day. New Year's Day, everything in blossom. I feel about average. People are out in their best clothes. They're celebrating. They have homes to go to. He said, hmm, seems like any other day to me. The moon tonight, the moon tonight. I even miss her grumbling. I love that one. And then there's one when his father's dying, speaking of flies. The last time I think I'll brush the flies from my father's face. The last time I think I'll brush the flies from my father's face.

[41:33]

Very, very lovely, little short bits of truth that are universal. Well, now Basho himself, you know, he was not above talking about such things. One of his most famous poems are fleas, lice, a horse pissing by my bed. He's out on the road. He's traveling. He lies down on a bed of straw at night. There's fleas, there's lice, there's disagreeable things happening around him. He's not saying, oh, I hate this. He's just stating it. This is the way it is sometimes. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter. But On the other hand, we have Esau, who in a sense makes friends with these creatures. One of the things that Esau also said, approaching my village, I don't know about the people, but all the scarecrows are crooked. He also says, I'm going out, flies, so relax, make love.

[42:40]

Don't worry, spiders. I keep house casually. Careful, cricket. I'm about to roll over. You know, in Japan, you sleep on the floor and the crickets are. And he says, even with insects, some can sing, some can't. He wrote about 20,000 haiku, by the way. Couldn't be. 2,000, I guess. That wren, looking here, looking there, lose something? Then this one. Napped half a day. No one's punished me. In this world, we walk on the roof of hell, gazing at flowers. And finally, his death poem. Japanese write death poems. particularly Zen teachers and students, but common lay people too, would write a summation poem of their life.

[43:58]

We've heard many famous ones. I think my famous one by a priest is one you almost never hear, which was simply, I don't want to die. Nisa's death poem, a bath when you're born, a bath when you die. How stupid. So this is that time of year when we feel these things may be more, or they become more apparent to us. And as the summer goes away and as we gather the harvest and turn inward, look at our lives and so on, the sign of Libra. Library, have you noticed the sign of library looks like, you know, Aries goes like this, but library goes the top, there's two lines, you know, like all the Aries signs, the top line goes like that. The bottom line goes like that. Now, some say the top line is the sun going down.

[45:00]

The bottom line is like a horizon. But others say it's a scale, you see, the weighing and balancing of the six months that have come, the six months that have evolved ever since the gaining of the light is now being weighed out. What have you learned? You're bringing in your harvest of your life now. You're weighing off those kind of things. Soon the frost will be on the pumpkin. Those things that are no longer useful, let them go. Let them die. Die to yourself. It's also a social sign, and so you open up. Time in the fall is the time when we have to work together. It's hard to live alone. To be alone in the wintertime, particularly in those old days, I imagine you had to cooperate with one another to survive. So that's a sign of bringing people together as well. Well, I think I probably said enough. I just felt I really wanted, I always think of Esau this time of year, you know, so kind of wanted to share some of that with you.

[46:03]

And it seems a little simplistic in our day and age. Sometimes it strikes me that these poems, I mean, after somebody said, there's no poetry after Auschwitz. There's no poetry after Hiroshima, really. There's no possibility of poetry after 9-11, what can you finally say about this world in which we're all complicit in the misery? But we have to say something. We have to bring our attention to the universal condition. Oh, one last thing, speaking of the universal condition, joyous sense of, there happens to be, there's a website you can tune in to, and You can get it on Google. Look it up. It's called Where the Hell is Mac? Anybody know that one? Look it up. It's wonderful. Huh? It's on YouTube, but all you have to do is put it in Google and it'll come up. And you can watch this young man who goes to 47 countries dancing with people in all four countries. Not a good dancer at all.

[47:06]

But the music behind it is based on, I think, The Blessing of the Flow of Life by Tagore, the great Indian poet. And this is a lovely piece. It makes you feel good about being a human being because it doesn't matter what our nationalities are and so on. Everybody gets out and they're just throwing their arms and dancing, like Zorba. Finally, what you do is dance. So I urge you to look at it. And thousands of people have seen, somebody turned me on to it. And I leave that with you today.

[47:43]

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