Once we're past, penetrating in perfect dharma is rarely met with even a hundred thousand million kalpas. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words and unsurpassed penetrating and perfect Dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million Kalpas having it to see and listen to Remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words.

[12:15]

Unsurpass penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. Having it To see and listen to. To remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's word. Welcome everyone and happy winter.

[13:23]

It's all light from here on out. Thanks for making the trip over the wet road on a cold winter day to come practice together. Why do we come to a place like this? Everyone might have their own unique response. But I imagine that if you ended up here, there's some interest in being free. being awake, being in touch with reality.

[14:33]

You might not put it that way, but that's what Zen is about. And if you knew that it was a Zen center, then maybe something like that is true of you here. I think that's what we're all most interested in. But there's so many other distracting, interesting things that entice us into forgetting what's most important in this life. Meeting together like this is ideally for the purpose of remembering what's most important. Even those living in a Zen temple, I can attest to this because I've lived many years in Zen temples, it's easy to get totally distracted from the point of it all.

[15:52]

In some ways, the longer we practice, the more easy it is to get distracted from the point of it all, in some ways, because we just get used to Zen. And we get kind of complacent about it, and we lose our beginner's mind, our original intention that draws us to Zen practice. So I think at the beginning of practice, if we're interested in freedom and presence and awakeness and authenticity, it's nice to first set an intention and have a kind of way to remind us of the fullness of that intention. Whether we're just beginning or whether we've

[16:58]

been doing this for many years. And one of our Zen versions of this intention remembering, we call the bodhisattva vows. And we'll recite them together at the end of this talk. It strikes me that maybe we should recite them at the beginning of talks because it sets the intention for the talk. But the tradition is to recite these at the end. Maybe to then remember that when we leave this Dharma setting into the realm of infinite distractions, we'll carry this vow, this intention with us. Many of you have probably heard these vows many times, but it's worth remembering. So the first is... Beings are numberless.

[18:00]

I vow to save them. Living beings, sentient beings are numberless, infinite in this multiverse system of inconceivable vastness. Sentient beings are everywhere. And sentient beings is a kind of Buddhist term. Sentient beings means a certain kind of being that is confused, actually, about its own true nature. There's other ways of talking about it, but that's one definition.

[19:04]

Because beings have sentience, because they can know things around them, because they can know a world, their consciousness seems to be divided into a knower and a known. That's what we call a sentient being. And because of that, a sentient being is never quite content. Because there's always some other people, other things to do, other times, other places. That's how it is for a sentient being. we're all familiar with this we might think of ourselves as sentient beings it's not really who we are but but we often feel as if we are sentient beings and live as if we're sentient beings and therefore we're not quite content and that's what the save part means in this vow sentient beings are numberless

[20:27]

we vow, we wish, we intend. What is most important to us is to liberate, to save, to liberate sentient beings. From what? From being sentient beings. Sentient beings, even if they don't know it, what they most wish for is to relieve themselves of their sentient beingness. And We can't really do that for them. So it's kind of a funny vow. But together, we can help each other let go of our unconscious beliefs, which are basically just like this undercurrent of thought, of thinking, that I'm like a kind of person that needs to live in this kind of world and relate to these other people and things.

[21:43]

Sentient beings, dualistic consciousnesses are numberless. We vow to liberate them from the illusion that they are sentient beings and if we feel like we're a sentient being making that vow then we're included too it's not just like i'm cool over here but like i want to liberate all you sentient beings that's inclusive enough. In fact, we might say what's most important is to clarify who we are before we try to liberate other sentient beings, or else it's probably going to be kind of messy. But sometimes people say, I've heard many times, I'm curious sometimes, do you really want to be like a Buddha, like an awakened Buddha?

[22:57]

And many people, even long-term Zen practitioners, will say, like, I don't care about that kind of stuff. It's just some weird abstract ideas. But I do want to help everyone around me and to be kind. And I want to be kind, and I want others to not suffer. But me being a Buddha, it's too much. But I think in terms of this Zen kind of vow, it's... The understanding is that we really can't help others that much unless we're really quite clear about who we are. We can't really save others. We can't really liberate others unless we know what liberation is. But isn't that kind of self-centered to work on my own liberation? Well, if we remember that it's in the context of this larger vow, that I'm doing this work for others, but I need to take care of my sentient being.

[24:09]

First, or at least at the same time, the next vow is, delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. So that's like the, if we have this first vow to liberate, save all sentient beings, including this one, then how do we do that? The second one is kind of how to do it. At the end, the delusion, all delusions, inexhaustible delusions, but maybe focusing mainly on this kind of root delusion that I mentioned that I'm a sentient being. How are we going to do that? How are we going to end the delusion that I'm a sentient being?

[25:12]

We're so used to thinking that I'm a sentient being. So then there's the third vow. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Dharma is like truth or reality. And there's many gateways, entrances into. verifying reality, experientially in the present, beyond our ideas and concepts and words about it. There's many gateways to verify who we are and what this all is. There's many ways, and so bodhisattvas I mean, usually we wouldn't say, try them all at once, because that, again, would be very messy.

[26:13]

So it's nice to focus on one at a time and really get into it. They say if you want to find good drinking water, you have to dig a well, but you don't know where the water table is, so you just have to keep drilling the well until you reach the water. If you give up after just drilling down a foot into the earth and say, well, there's no water here, I'll try drilling over there, you'll probably never reach water. So it's nice to pick any place on this earth and drill down, down. On the other hand, we might have been drilling in one place like several miles down into the earth for several decades or something like that.

[27:16]

And there still doesn't really seem to be water here. So there's also room for remembering that Dharma gates are boundless. So maybe if I just moved like 10 feet over this way and drilled down, the water table would be really much higher over there. So this is a very intuitive thing. how deep to drill before not finding water and trying another Dharma gate. Even within Zen, we have many Dharma gates, many practices. And that's, again, the vow to enter these Dharma gates, these entrances to reality are so that we can end our delusions so that we can liberate sentient beings from being sentient beings.

[28:23]

They all kind of go together, these vows. The fourth one is Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Buddha It means awake. The awakened way is unsurpassable. That is our teaching. It's an all-inclusive realization, being Buddha. So it's unsurpassable. There's nothing missing from that. It includes benefiting others. It includes relief from suffering. It includes being in accord with reality. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to be that moment to moment in order to truly enter all Dharma gates, in order to truly end all delusions, in order to truly save all beings.

[29:39]

So that's, in a way, the entry point to Zen, is this intention, setting this intention, renewing this intention. It's nice to recite these vows a lot if we resonate with them. If we have such an intention, we have to remind ourselves, because there are many distractions that run contradictory to these intentions. So it's just a very practical thing. Since the whole world is kind of running contradictory to these intentions, we have to really remember a lot because the world is telling us, forget about that stuff and buy this, do that, fix this. Tell that person that.

[30:42]

these things. So these vows, these intentions are ideally, though they may feel kind of burdensome because they're pretty big, they're pretty big vows, ideally they are also joyful vows. Even if we feel like, I'm not doing very well at remembering these and practicing like this. I want to. And that's what vow means. I want to. I can't think of anything more important. So let's do it. Oh, I forgot again. It's okay. Because I can remember again. So then we have these intentions. Maybe the most important thing. we might say that everything else will just take care of itself if we really remember these powers.

[31:48]

But since the talk's not over yet, right? So if we want to say some more, we could talk about some Dharma gates to enter. Zen. The beauty of Zen is that In a way, it's quite simple. And Zen is, I think, the beauty of Zen, even within all those traditions of Buddhadharma, Zen is kind of traditionally known for very directly pointing to the heart of the matter. We still get caught up in the branches and twigs, but the root is always emphasized in Zen.

[32:51]

And we have these stories. A lot of the Zen stories are about accessing the root. There's so many, but here's one for today that you may have heard. It's a classic Zen story. about the founder of Zen in China named Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma's name means awakening to reality. And once upon a time, he was a sentient being. And he looked kind of like this this figure on the altar that's standing there with a kind of hood to the right of the Buddha and Manjushri. He's the standing, the dark standing figure.

[33:55]

That's Bodhidharma, who practiced Zen in India for a long time. And when he was well over 100 years old, as the story goes, he decided, Zen is kind of flourishing in India, but over to the East, in China, they don't know about this yet. They're really into Buddhism, but they haven't heard about this Zen thing yet. Because of my vow to free all sentient beings from being sentient beings, I heard there's a lot of sentient beings in China. Maybe I can help them. I don't know. I'll be able to or not but I feel called to make this journey by sea which isn't the most convenient way to get from India to China but Bodhi Dharma wasn't so into convenience he had time he was only a hundred and ten or something so he made this journey and

[35:10]

Somehow, we don't know a lot of the details, but somehow he ran into the emperor of China. I mean, a lot of things must have come together to make that happen. Because you don't just randomly run into emperors. But maybe because Buddhism was really already very popular in China. And it came from India. So here's an Indian practitioner and meditator. The emperor hasn't met yet, so he wanted to. Somehow they met, as the story goes. And the emperor was curious about this scruffy Indian character and said, who are you? And Bodhidharma said, I don't know. And the emperor didn't really understand, so the emperor

[36:14]

Bodhidharma left because he felt like they didn't really have a connection. And Bodhidharma said, well, I guess that didn't work so well, even though that's our kind of central dharma gate of Zen. One of our central dharma gates is don't know. But it didn't work for this emperor who was already a Buddhist practitioner. So Bodhidharma said to himself, Well, I'll try another Dharma gate to save sentient beings. So he wandered around until he found a good place to sit down in this cave up above Shaolin Monastery, an old abandoned temple in the cold north country of China. And he sat down and he faced the wall of the cave. that's a Dharma gate to save sentient beings and that's supposedly why we in this Zen tradition when we sit zazen in this hall we face the wall that's to celebrate Bodhidharma's Dharma gate of wall facing facing the wall

[37:41]

And because he was facing the wall, he didn't really see what was happening behind him. So he didn't really know how this Dharma gate was going, whether it was saving any beings or not. But my sense is that he had this deep trust. This was like digging a well. Well, I could try some other Dharma gates. Let's just do this for a while and see if it saves any beings. Just face this wall. And he just kept facing the wall and sitting there. Spider webs were growing around him and stuff. And seasons were passing for nine years. Supposedly, he just entrusted himself to this Dharma gate of wall, facing the wall. And maybe after nine years, something like that, somebody happened to come. somebody heard the Bodhi Dharma is up there facing a wall so and this was a very sincere practitioner a monk who is had these Bodhisattva vows I really want to verify the nature of reality and myself not just for my sake but I feel like I

[39:09]

I think this will be the most beneficial thing I can do for others as well. He already had that part going, which is great to have that kind of vow. And he forgot it sometimes, but he remembered it a lot too. And that's why he ended up way up that mountain trail in front of Bodhidharma's cave. It was winter. It was cold. There was snow up there. Bodhidharma was, you know, felt okay, wrapped in his shawl with his body heat cooking in the cave there. But Huayka, this practitioner outside the cave, was quite cold. He said, I've come all this way because I have these bodhisattva vows and I want to...

[40:10]

enter your Dharma gate Bodhidharma and Bodhidharma was still engaged in and fully engaged in his his Dharma gate of facing the wall so he couldn't really turn around he wasn't quite ready to turn around yet devoted to this Dharma gate, and I think there's somebody talking to me there, but I think this is going to help. I think this is the best I can offer. You might say, that is so lame, Bodhidharma. The best you can offer when somebody's asking for your help is to just keep facing the wall. This is the founder of Zen in China. All Zen lineages sprout forth from Bodhidharma. So something must have worked, and the story got passed on to us.

[41:11]

He kept sitting, facing the wall. Huayka, the sincere visiting monk, said, Please, can you teach me a Dharmagate? Can you offer me a Dharmagate? I've tried a lot of other ones. I'm not satisfied. And Bodhidanath said, Well, if you really want to fully enter the Dharma gate of Zen, you have to really let go of everything. You have to be so sincere. You have to... a burning vow to really enter this fully. Or else, if you have a half-hearted vow, you'll enter it half-heartedly.

[42:16]

The snow is piling up around Huayka. He was quite wholehearted. He wasn't going to give up. But he convinced Bodhidharma of his sincerity. waiting there in the snow. And Bodhidharma, he hadn't moved his neck for nine years, but he went like this. He turned around. He was convinced that this is a very sincere practitioner. Yes? And Huayca wanted to go right to the point. He didn't say, okay, Bodhidharma, thank you so much for meeting with me. Let me give you some background about my life.

[43:20]

I was born here, and I had these really difficult childhood experiences. Bodhidharma would have probably just faced the wall again. I was like, I got his attention after nine years of facing the wall. Let me get straight to the point. This is kind of the spirit of early Zen. Straight to the point is my mind is not at peace. I've been practicing a long time already and many Dharma gates and it's sometimes pretty peaceful. But I'm not satisfied with little. My mind is not at peace. Please, Bodhidharma, in your great compassion, Pacify my mind for me. And Bodhidharma said, bring me your mind and I'll pacify it for you. I don't think Bodhidharma had offered this Dharma gate before.

[44:28]

He was too busy facing the wall. But this is... an essential Dharma gate of Zen offered by the founder of Zen. Bring me your non-peaceful mind and I'll pacify it for you. Bring me your agitated mind. Bring it to me. Show it to me. And Huayka, we don't know in the story, if he spent a minute looking for his mind, or if he spent several years. Because this is a practice. I'm imagining Quaker really, he was standing there in the snow, he was really ready to give up everything. He took up this Dharma gate with complete wholeheartedness.

[45:32]

okay, I'm going to find my mind, my agitated mind, and bring it out. What is it that I can bring to this teacher Bodhidharma? Bring me your mind and I'll pacify it for you. Vekka said, when I look for my mind, I can't find it. And I think he looked. He really looked everywhere he could for this mind. And he knew that he looked everywhere and he could not find it. He could say it definitively. I've looked for my mind and I cannot find it. And Bodhidharma said, your mind's now pacified. And it was. Wake up. Huayca's sentient beingness dropped off.

[46:37]

And he became the second Zen ancestor in China. And the story continued. He offered very similar Dharma gates to his students and so on, all the way up to today. So this is one of our original Dharma Gates, the founder of Zen. If your mind is not peaceful, if your mind is ever agitated, which means at the time that you're a sentient being, another definition again of a sentient being, is an agitated mind, a not completely peaceful mind. So the Dharma gate, when we feel as if we're a sentient being with a not completely peaceful mind, the Dharma gate is to look for this mind, to look for this mind that's not at peace.

[47:46]

Where do we look for it? We don't like start knocking on different doors and walking down the street, and we don't even look for it in the books. Why do we look for it? We're so used to looking for things out there in front of us, right? That's because our eyes are aimed this way. So we're looking. Our ears are aimed this way. Even if it's back there, we're going to turn around or walk that way, looking out in front, moving forward. looking out there for whatever we're looking for. So this is like the kind of opposite kind of looking. And the only reason it seems challenging to us is because we're so used to looking out in front. So in our tradition we call it the backwards step. We can learn the backwards step of turning our looking light directed outwards back

[48:56]

towards the looker. What's the source of this looking light? Turning the light around and shining it back is another name for bring me your mind and I'll pacify it for you. Zen has many ways of expressing this dharma gate. What is your original face before your parents were born? Exactly the same, Dharmagate. But it comes in these different flavored words. But these practices are exactly the same, I would propose. And I would propose they're the heart of Zen. And you don't have to do it on a round cushion.

[50:07]

this you don't have to do it when you're quietly sitting in a certain posture you can you can do it when you're walking down the road when you're engaged in any kind of activity anytime you remember you're always welcome according to Bodhidharma to enter this Dharma gate called Bring me your mind, and I'll pacify it for you. We look for it. We look for it. Can we find it? Huayca looked for a long time, I think, and he was a sincere practitioner, and he did not find it. So I would propose, I could be wrong about this, but I would propose that if

[51:09]

If any one of us looks for this mind, we won't find it either. But then are we failures? We set out to find this mind and we can't find it. Have we failed this Dharma gate? Not at all. If we were to find it, that would be a failure. If we're looking for... some lost treasure out in the world and we don't find it. That's a failure. But this Zen Dharma Gate, we fail it if we do find it. And we joyfully celebrate if we don't find it. And what's so great, you might ask, about not finding this mind, especially this agitated mind? Because we feel as if it is here. There is this me with an agitated mind right here, and it's unworkable and unfixable.

[52:13]

But when we look deeply and can't find it, that's the real freedom. That's for the moment that we know that we can't find anything that we actually are, and we can't really find an agitated mind at the moment we know we can't find it for that moment we're not a sentient being but the next moment probably will find something again be born again as a sentient being so it's not a one-time thing for the moment that we don't find a mind do we find just vast empty space totally always okay but what about this this contraction in my belly yes I can find that but um where is that happening in this it's happening within this spacious unagitated mind

[53:35]

that can't be found anywhere. It's not located anywhere. It is peace. It is peaceful mind. The peaceful mind is the mind that can't be found. And at the moment we don't find it, delusions are ended. And again, the next moment, we're probably going to find something. And we're going to renew our delusions so we can enter the Dharma gate again. At the moment of not finding this mind, we could even go so far as to say all Dharma gates are entered. All Dharma gates are included in this simple root practice and realization of looking who am I and not finding anyone and for the moment that we don't find anyone Buddha's way there is the becoming Buddha's way for that moment so we set our intention and then though there are many Dharma gates

[55:03]

This is my personal favorite. And I think it was Huayca's favorite because it worked for him. And I don't know if it was Bodhidharma's favorite, if he tried this Dharmagate with other people or not. We just have this story. But the nice thing about it is it's so simple. It's so simple. And we don't have to... We don't have to... do some particular kind of meditation practice in order to enter this Dharma gate. We can do it in any situation, in any posture, in any context. Is it easy? Or is it difficult? It's kind of like it doesn't really fit into those categories, I would say. It's not maybe it feels not so easy because we're so used to the forward step of looking for something out there.

[56:09]

But also, it's not so difficult because it's kind of like not doing anything. If we're really trying to go back, dig, ditch into the back of my head looking for it, then that's difficult. But it's more the actual practice of bring me your mind and I'll pacify it for you, is more like just resting or sinking back into this ordinary awareness. It's extremely not difficult, but it's difficult to remember. So that's about it for today. But we have some time for some discussion if you'd like to. bring anything up, especially if there's anything to clarify about Bodhidharma's Dharma gate.

[57:11]

Hello. My question is... Is there any difference between this sort of sense of self or I and the mind? Great question. Central question. Bodhisattva question. Question that goes to the root. We want to understand what's going on here and this I is kind of a big issue. So is there The question is, is there any difference between the sense of self and the mind? We look for this mind. Sometimes we can ask this question as, bring me this mind. Try to find this mind. What is this mind?

[58:27]

is one version of the question. But another one is, who am I? I'd say, again, the same question. That kind of poetic way of asking it in Zen is, what was my original face before my parents were born? My original face. We try to make it personal. So there's something about self here. my original self. So self is this kind of tricky term in Buddhism because on the one hand we have this teaching of not self, one of the Buddha's prominent teachings. When I look for, if you want to, this is one of the Shakyamuni Buddhas, I would say also really prominent, one of his main Dharma gates was look for yourself.

[59:33]

And where do you look? Look in all the experiences of body and mind. These body, these feelings, these perceptions, these habitual tendencies, even the way that we know objects. Look in all these experiences of a sentient being and see if we can find ourself in any of them. This is one of the Buddha's main Dharma gates. And with the understanding that we won't find ourself in any one of these aspects of our ever-changing experience. In other words, this body is not myself, the Buddha. These feelings are not myself. These... Perceptions are not myself, these habitual tendencies and habit patterns. They're not really who I am. They're just changing stuff. Even the consciousness that knows things, changing moment to moment, depending on what the things are, that's not myself.

[60:40]

So that's the Buddha's Dharma gate. So then we might ask, OK, well, none of those things are myself. So what is myself? Buddha's foundational teachings, he never talked about that, really. He just said, really emphasize what's not, really find out that everything in your experience is not really who you are. But then who am I, Buddha? And he would just sit. So that was his Dharma gate, is like, let's really emphasize what is not myself, but... Let's not talk too much about what is myself, because then people will skip looking for what's not myself. That's kind of how I understand the Buddhist method. There were other teachers in the past and present who also had the same method as the Buddha, who would also say...

[61:44]

Look for myself. This body is not myself. These feelings are not myself. These thoughts are not myself. These emotions are not myself. What is myself? Well, that spacious presence in which all these not-self experiences are happening, that's really who I am. Some people would talk like that. But the Buddha usually didn't say what myself is because he I would propose because he thought we might get distracted from the more important practice of confirming all these things that are not who I am. But then in Zen, they started bringing this out again. Some people started feeling more comfortable talking about self in this big kind of way, true self, in the Zen tradition. So maybe the old timers, like when the Buddha didn't talk about this true self, so like, what are you doing? Zen people talking about it again.

[62:47]

It's just different Dharma gates. So if we talk about self, not as these particular changing experiences of our body and mind, but as this ever-present, unchanging, spacious, unnameable, peaceful, unimpeded, bright, mind, we can call it, our true self. So to hear a question, yes, true self and true mind. We could say the same thing in this way, but I have to clarify those terms like this.

[63:51]

So bring me your true self, and my self is not peaceful. Bring me your true self and I'll pacify it. We could put the question like that. I've looked for my true self, and all I find is this body and these feelings and these thoughts and these emotions, and I know they're not within my true self. I can't find my true self, because that's kind of how the true self is. Maybe why the Buddha didn't like to talk about it, because we can't find it. But that unfindable presence, we could call it who we truly are, our true nature, or Buddha nature. Yes, yeah, yeah. Good question, because this is the heart of the matter, who we are. anyone online. Thank you for your teachings.

[64:52]

There's four hands up online, but I'll start with the first one that came in. Pamela is hearing you say it's impossible to find a peaceful mind and once help with a real... life issues, for example, the holidays and personal and political trouble. So Pamela's having trouble finding a peaceful mind. Her mind is not at peace. And there's a vow to, a wish to bring peace to a non-peaceful mind. So this is always the starting point. It's the most wonderful starting point. maybe everybody, in a way, whether it's in the Zen context or not, actually does want a peaceful mind.

[65:56]

But the question was asked in an interesting way because Huayca asked... He said, I have a non-peaceful mind. I have an agitated mind. Please pacify it for me. Bodhidharma said, well, bring me your agitated mind. And he couldn't find it. But then the question is, I can't find a peaceful mind. But I think there's two different meanings. One is I want to find a peaceful mind. And the other would be like succeeding in the reality of not finding any kind of mind, which is... This is Zen instruction. And then the real-life situation is, of course, every moment. So, yes, so holidays can be a stressful time, but so can this moment be a stressful time.

[67:01]

Like, why doesn't this guy get to the point? Give me some practical thing about the holidays. Sometimes we can get distracted from, we want to verify this right now and then again right now and right now. So we're thinking about next week I have to meet my family and it's going to be like agitating. It could be like that. Then I would say, well, forget about that because it's not, we can't find next week's family celebration. We definitely can't find it now. So we always start with now. But if the real life situation right now is not peaceful, then if we go right to the root, and again, I think the beauty of Zen is not trying to fix the external branches, which is what we usually do. That's part of what sentient beings do, is they try to fix the stuff outside of themselves, which is not such a bad thing, because a lot of stuff could use fixing.

[68:08]

But when we're... in the Zen context, not going to the root of it, then let's temporarily put that aside, which might be one of the hardest things we could ever do. If I put that aside, it's going to get worse. And this is some weird abstract Zen thing. So this is part of our trust. I trust that if I fully do this, that the other so-called external stuff that needs help will be helped. If we don't have that trust, we will not do this practice. And 99.99999% of the world does not have this trust and will not do this practice. So this is just for like the few people happen to be in the room and bigger room. First of all, so I think that's an important point. We have to really trust that in some ways the question

[69:10]

which comes up in, I think, every Dharma talk. Can we apply this to a real-life situation? Usually refers to some thought situation, some abstract situation. It's not like right now. My trust is that it will apply to every situation as it arises in your moment. Let's take this situation. My mind is, if I can't find the peaceful mind right now, let me look for the non-peaceful mind. Or let me look for the non-peaceful mind if I can't find the peaceful mind. And if I feel like I found a peaceful mind and I really got a hold of it, this would be the other way to understand the question. I can't find that peaceful mind. that peaceful mind either. I can't really find any kind of mind.

[70:12]

And then not finding even a peaceful mind, I would propose, is what we mean by the most peaceful mind. In other words, peaceful mind is not kind of a thing or an experience to get a hold of. Anything that we can get a hold of is slightly agitating. And the more we can be the peaceful mind that we can't find and feel that it includes everybody and everything, if we're moving through the world in that way and experience some harm around us, then I trust that then we can respond to that harm in a more skillful way. If we're looking for particulars of like... How can I change the political situation or something? I would say it's kind of getting distracted from Zen, actually.

[71:14]

This may be a hard thing to accept. Zen is apolitical, I would say. It's going to the root of unraveling what a sentient being is with the trust that that way of being will help in the world of politics. But if we skip the route, the branches won't really work out. Something like this. Do we have time for another? A minute? Anyone? In the room or in the Zoom room, I'd like to ask a 30-second question, and then I can give a 30-second answer.

[72:16]

We'll fill in. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, so when I do look for my agitated mind, I cannot find it. But then I can sometimes... perceive an agitated mind. So is it just a matter of focus? Or when I perceive the agitation, where is it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we can find, in a way, we can find agitation as particular thoughts. Thoughts feel like they're kind of agitation. Or like tension in the body. We can find those things. But the question is so specific. It's like, find a mind that is agitated. And then you don't find it, right? So that if you can... And anything that we feel like we do find, some agitation, then we ask, well, what is the mind that's aware of that agitation?

[73:19]

So we keep tracing it back and back until we don't find anything. And then ideally, in that not finding, see if there's some... If the effect of that not finding... is for that one moment of not finding, see if it actually has an effect on the agitation. It does, it brings calm. Yeah, so that's it. That's it, right? For that moment, and then we're like, I'm not sure I was doing that right, or something, because now I feel agitated again. That's why then the next moment, look for that mind and not find it. There's a moment of calm, Buddha. And the holiday season can be stressful. So this practice can be taken into every situation. And I personally constantly forget. And that's why I keep talking about it to remind myself. And you are subjected to my self-reminding talk.

[74:23]

Thank you for your patience with this. Yes, may we. Continue. And now we get to recite those vows. And if you're not so sure about them, you can just mouth the words and pretend. And if you're warmed up to it, or you might not know them, then you can listen. They're crazy vows. They're insane. They're impossible. But let's do it. May our intention equally extend to every being and place, the way the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless, they love to save them,

[75:33]

Delusions are inexhaustible. We bow to an end. God is the darkness. God is the spirit of God. God is the spirit of God. God is the spirit of God. It didn't have any meaning since I don't want to enter into any time, which was this. I couldn't let it be more than one of our own promises to accept me by then. To contribute to the religious law, I don't want to let it be more than one of our promises to do anywhere. But I don't want to let it be more than one of our promises to accept me by then. I couldn't let it be more than one of our promises to accept me by then. I couldn't let it be more than one of our promises to accept me by then. I couldn't let it be more than one of our promises to accept me by then. Thank you.

[76:38]

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