This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. How's the audio? Feels like it's falling off over here. Uh... Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. I see some familiar faces in this room, and I think I see some new faces. Is anybody here for the first time today? Welcome. I hope you stay for cookies and conversation after the lecture. We have a wonderful courtyard. You can have tea and cookies and talk with other people. So... So today I want to talk about lay practice.

[01:11]

And I'm going to use the Vimalakirti Sutra as my vehicle for doing that. The Vimalakirti Sutra, I've got a translation by Robert Thurman here. And the Vimalakirti Sutra was probably written during the Mahayana period, which is about two centuries ago. Robert Thurman, whose translation I'm using, refers to it as a masterly faceted diamond refracting the radiance of all the other Mahayana sutras, beaming them forth in a concentrated rainbow beam of diamond light. I think he liked this sutra. I mean, maybe that's why he chose to translate it. What I like best about it is the hero of this famous Mahayana sutra is a layperson. He was a lay disciple of the Buddha who was supposed to be the wisest of all of Buddha's disciples.

[02:14]

So I think that's nice and encouraging for us since we're all essentially laymen here, busy working in the world, taking care of families. And so I think the fact that we have a hero of a sutra that's a layman is a very encouraging lay person, lay woman. He wasn't a woman, but anyway. He could have been, maybe. So this text praises the spiritual possibilities of householder life. He was a family man. He was a businessman. He was a politician. He was a successful landowner. He went to the racetrack and gambled to convert people to the Dharma. So all these things he did, but in all of the activities he did, he was a bodhisattva, turning people towards awakening and towards the truth of their life.

[03:16]

According to the book here, a hundred generation of Mahayana Buddhists in India, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia have studied, revered, and enjoyed this scripture, finding enlightenment and inspiration in the grace of pleasant humor. He's very humorous. And maybe we'll get a feel for that as we go. I'll start with a quote from Dan Layton. Dan Layton wrote a marvelous book on the faces of compassion, the different ways that one can be a bodhisattva. And he said about Vimalakirti, generally Vimalakirti in all his activities embodies the Mahayana view of being in the world but not of it. as Vimalakirti fulfills liberative work without being trapped or fettered by worldly desires or attachments. But the central point of the Vimalakirti Sutra is that the bodhisattva can only awaken in the context of intimate contact and involvement with the follies and passions of the world and its beings.

[04:23]

Isn't that nice? The only way to awaken as bodhisattva is to be in the midst, intimately in contact and involvement with the follies and passions of the world and its beings. That's us. Now, I think that's clearly, we're sort of saying only on the lay side. Well, that's not really true. I mean, I think a lot can be said for going out into the mountains and sitting in a cave for 20 years. But at least the position of this sutra is, it's okay if you're not sitting in a cave for 20 years. You can master the bodhisattva path in the midst of your daily life here. And I think it's, I mean, of course, I would always encourage anybody that could break away from their daily life and go to Tasara and spend three months or three years or two weeks. That would be a good idea. Live in the mountain as a monk. It's an excellent thing to do.

[05:27]

But if it turns out that you can't do that, then you can take up this path of practice in the midst of your life. So here's the setup for the sutra. Bhimala Kirti is sick, and Buddha decides to send some disciples to call on him. But none of them want to go. Because in the past encounters, they've been so criticized by Vimalakirti as to their qualities of their practice, and he's exposed the flaws in their practice, and particularly in the area in which they're supposedly most accomplished and respected. Now, of course, if the Buddha says, please go visit a sick person, and you're a Buddhist practitioner, that's one of the things you do, is visit sick people. But they were pretty adamant. They didn't want to go, and they all gave examples of the way that, you know, the last time I went to meet Vimalakirti, this is what he did to me.

[06:31]

I'll give you a short example. Shariputra, who was sort of the leader of all of the disciples, was sitting under the tree meditating, and Vimalakirti takes him to task for not being able to bring his meditation into his daily life. He says, you should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you can manifest the nature of an ordinary person without abandoning your spiritual nature. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you are released in liberation without abandoning the passions that are the province of the world. So he was pretty strict with Shariputra. It's not okay just to sit under a tree and feel peace. You've got to be able to go out and walk around in the world and make it happen. So then for about 20 pages in this book, we have one example of one disciple after another who Buddha says, well, what about you? And they say, well, I'm not going to go talk to Bhimala Kiriti.

[07:31]

The last time I talked to him, he so outwitted me that I just sort of shrank away. But of course, each one of these little conversations is a teaching of some sort about the ways in which you can get... too caught up in one kind of practice or another kind of practice. But because I'm not going to try to cover a 100-page sutra in one hour or in 45 minutes here, we're going to skip that part. Finally, Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom, says, okay, I'll go. So, I mean, that's pretty good. Manjushri is the Bodhisattva with the greatest wisdom. He's going to go. And he arrives and asks Vimalakirti, well, why are you sick? How did you get sick? And Vimalakirti says, his sickness comes from ignorance and the thirst for existence and will last as long as do the sickness of all beings, of all living beings. And he goes on to tell a story about a mother and a father, if their son or daughter gets sick, then they feel sick because their son or daughter feels sick and they're going to stay sick.

[08:41]

feeling sick until their son or daughter is well. And he says, you ask me, Manjur Sri, whence comes my sickness? The sickness of the bodhisattvas arises from great compassion. So it's, and essentially the sickness he's experiencing is the suffering of the world. And as long as the world is suffering, well, then I'm going to be suffering because I'm a bodhisattva who is committed to helping the world. I mean, we have a great example for those of you who are not familiar with bodhisattvas. They're like beings that are dedicated to the awakening and well-being of the world. So Avalokiteshvara is the bodhisattva of compassion. So he has a thousand arms. Many of you have probably seen that marvelous statue with a thousand arms to help everybody. And he uses all those hands and arms in different ways to help people depending on what their need is. And in each hand,

[09:42]

He has an eye to witness your life. And in many cases, isn't that enough that someone just sees you, sees your life, witnesses your life? So anyway, I'm kind of reminded of a story a friend, a student, told me of Siddhartha. Siddhartha was giving a lecture, and he looked out and he said, you're all my friends. around everybody. And this student had been there about three days and never actually met Suzuki Roshi much, maybe passed him in the pathway a couple times at Tassara. And so he went up to Suzuki Roshi and he said, I don't understand, Suzuki Roshi, how could you say that we're friends when you hardly know me? And Suzuki Roshi says, you suffer, I suffer. Therefore, we're friends.

[10:42]

So that is something we share. We all suffer. And in our willingness to share our suffering, we make our lives better. Anyway, so to continue with this story, since Manjushri said he would go visit Vimala Kirti, 32,000 bodhisattvas said, well, we're going to come see this, you know. Manju's going to take down Vimalakirti. We want to see it. So Manjushri goes to visit Vimalakirti with his 32,000 attending bodhisattvas. And Vimalakirti thought to himself, Manjushri is coming here with numerous attendants. Now may this house be transformed into emptiness. So he takes his room, which is about a 10 by 10 bedroom, and everything is removed but his bed. so that there's plenty of room for 32,000 bodhisattvas to come.

[11:47]

Because we know if you've got an empty room, then there's space for everything. Just like if you have an empty mind, then there's a space for plenty of things to come into it. If you've got a full mind, you don't have much room. As a sort of acute dialogue, though, sort of Manjushri arrives and he says, well, there's no chairs here. And then, you know, Bhimala Kirti in his standards, did you come to hear the Dharma, or did you come to sit on a chair? And they'd go back and forth like this for a while, and finally, Bhimala Kirti, being the generous man that he does, searches the universe for the greatest chairs in the world, you know, mile-high, huge, golden chairs, and brings 32,000 of them into his 10x10 room so that everybody can be happily seated. One of the traditions in these kind of scriptures is at the end, when they're looking for a title, Ananda, who was Buddha's assistant or attendant, asks Buddha, well, what should this sutra be called?

[12:57]

And Buddha said, the teaching of Vimalakirti, or a part of inconceivable liberation, or the reconciliation of dichotomies. So this is one of those sutras that has three titles. And I like the inconceivable liberation idea because even though we've jokingly talked about 32,000 thrones and huge bodhisattvas sitting on them in a room that's 10 by 10, as phantasmagoric as that is, is that any more inconceivable than a hundred of us sitting in this room on a planet spinning around an earth around a sun in a... galaxy called the Milky Way which turns out to be part of a series of galaxies and every time you open science news you find out this thing is even bigger and more spectacular and how many million planets out there that look like there might be places where human beings could live on them.

[13:59]

This is totally inconceivable. This life we're leaving. Much less the mind that you have. I mean, much less your human body. We have no idea how our consciousness works, what's going on in our heads. I mean, it really is inconceivable. And what's the advantage of sort of thinking about inconceivable liberation? Inconceivable liberation is useful because despite the fact that in certain moments we realize, well, this is really beyond the beyond here, this life, we... we forget and we think, oh, I've got it all figured out. It's just this little way and I'm just this messed up person that can't do anything and the world is a disaster and I've got a really big, I've got a very fixed idea about what's going on. And inconceivable liberation as a term is just some sort of reminder. Well, no, maybe not. Maybe it's more complicated than you think. Maybe it's a little bit, maybe there's more possibility here than you think.

[15:04]

So I just wanted to talk a little bit about what an empty mind is. This is a common theme for those of you who are familiar with our lineage. Suzuki Roshi wrote a wonderful book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. The mind of Zen is a beginner's mind. And in that beginning lecture in that book, he goes, for Zen students, the most important thing is not to be dualistic. Our original mind includes everything within itself. It is always rich and self-sufficient within itself. You should not lose your self-sufficient state of mind. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind, a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything. It is open to everything. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few. It's a wonderful feeling, isn't it, when our mind is kind of like just ready to learn something?

[16:31]

Just open to what's happening in the world? I've been reading a wonderful book recently called Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism by Dale Wright. And I'm going to share a paragraph with you which is kind of a mouthful, but if you listen carefully, you'll kind of get the feel. It's a sort of exploration of this empty mind idea. Wang Bo. Wang Bo was a famous Zen master in the Tang Dynasty. He was the teacher of Rinzai, who founded the Rinzai sect in China. Wang Bo is talking about enlightened ancestors, enlightened patriarchs. Wang Bo pictures enlightened patriarchs in real life situations, effacing themselves so that the true contour of the situation comes to disclosure in them.

[17:34]

You get that? Enlightened patriarchs in a real life situation effacing themselves so that the true contour of the situation comes to disclosure in them. So efface means to sort of wipe yourself away, make yourself insignificant, inconspicuous, sort of disappear. So you make yourself disappear so that the contour of whatever situation you're in is disclosed in you. So instead of you being whatever you thought you were before, you're just the situation. They encounter the world not through acts of will and mind primarily, but through relinquishment. Relinquishment is like renunciation or letting go. They let go of your small self. Opening their minds and will, the larger context of the situation, comes to manifestation through them.

[18:39]

They relinquish their own position, open themselves up in the larger context of the situation, comes to manifestation in them. Right? Got that? It's a mouthful, right? It's as complicated as those words are. It so reminds me of Suzuki Roshi. He could walk into a room and his whole being would be what was going on in the room. Or if he met you, he could meet you because you became him. I mean, there was this kind of ability to connect so deeply because of this willingness to not take a fixed position into the encounter. That's a kind of fancy way of saying open mind, beginner's mind, ready mind, empty mind. So how does this work?

[19:44]

Some classic examples would be compassion. opening oneself to the possibility of being moved by another, an experienced identity between self and the social world beyond self. You identify with the larger world around you. I was thinking about this in terms of conversation with another person. It's interesting to watch a conversation, sort of pay attention to how a conversation works. Are you just trying to convince them of some idea that you have, or are you listening to what they're saying, and as it comes into you, something then flows out of you into them, and then they come back again, and then something new happens that never could have happened before you got involved in that dialogue? This is the way Dale Wright writes that. about how a conversation would move between two Zen masters. Conversations move back and forth, neither participant controlling or pre-planning the movement of words and images.

[20:51]

Each opens himself or herself to the encounter as a purified respondent, responding freely without pre-planned intention to what has been said by the other. Opening themselves to the unexpected, both await disclosure, the moment in the conversation when open minds find themselves in an event of insight that is not their own product. I'm going to read that again because I couldn't even follow that. Opening themselves to the unexpected, opening themselves to the unexpected, both await disclosure, the moment in the conversation when open minds find themselves in an event of insight that is not their own product. Beautiful. Would that more of our dialogues were at some characteristic like that.

[21:53]

Anyway, we need to move along because we've just finally got our 32,000 bodhisattvas settled in this empty room. it's kind of interesting, you know, this 10 by 10 room of the 32,000 Bodhisattva, in Japan it's called a 10 by, it's a Hojo is the name for a 10 by 10 room, and it's been associated with where an abbot's room is called a Hojo, and an abbot is called a Hojo-san. And every morning in this temple, in Tassar, and I think Green Gulch too, the wake-up bell is rung, like at five o'clock here, somebody runs around the entire building ringing the wake-up bell. and they stop in front of the abbot's room and say, good morning, Hojo San. And the abbot, if he's awake, which hopefully he is, he says, good morning back. A lovely tradition dating back to a little story 2,000 years ago. Oh, anyway, I'm diverted.

[22:57]

So now we're starting a conversation between Manjushri and Vimalakirti, and Manjushri asked Vimalakirti, how should a bodhisattva regard all living beings? What are living beings? And in this particular passage, which is Chapter 7 of this book, Vimalakirti addresses a core question for the student of Buddhism. If, as Buddha taught, the nature of the self and other beings is insubstantial, impermanent, and fundamentally empty of own being, then why and how should we care for each other and love one another? Everything is so transitory, so insubstantial, so impermanent. And then there follows a whole long series of metaphors that Vimalakirti uses to talk about how impermanent we are. A bodhisattva should regard all living beings like the sound of an echo. like a mass of clouds in the sky, like the previous moment of a ball of foam.

[24:05]

The previous moment of a ball of foam, that's pretty transitory. Anyway, there's lots of them, because that's part of the style of this thing. It just goes on and gets more and more elaborate. And I gave an entire lecture in January on this particular chapter about how viewing things that insubstantially turns into loving them. but I'll just give you one sentence. Vimalakirti indicates the bodhisattva's love is not merely commiseration, but a spontaneous overflow of his great joy and relief in realizing the radiant nature of reality. The bodhisattva's love is not merely commiseration at other people's suffering, but a spontaneous overflow of his great joy and relief in realizing the radiant nature of reality. Well, when we realize the radiant nature of reality, certainly we feel like we would like to help everybody else realize the radiant nature of reality.

[25:19]

The great joy of being alive, living in this situation. As I said, I'm not going to go into that chapter. I'm going to skip to chapter 9. So in this chapter, Bhimla Kirti has reversed the tables and is asking the bodhisattvas to explain how the bodhisattva enters the door of non-duality. Non-duality in Buddhism is not just oneness, because that would be duality. That would be like, you know... oneness and duality, non-duality, then that would just be one half of a duality. So it's beyond oneness and duality. We call it the middle way. Freedom from the extremes of being and nothingness, or the relative and the absolute, sort of in the middle of that, between form and emptiness. So then many bodhisattvas give examples of how do you get to this place of non-duality?

[26:29]

not being caught in the dual ways of thinking, good and evil, big and small. So I'll give you a few examples. The bodhisattva, I'm not going to actually pronounce these bodhisattva names because they're not well-known bodhisattvas and they're almost impossible. But the first one declared, I and mine are two. If there is no presumption of self, there will be no possessiveness. Thus the absence of presumption of self is the entrance to non-duality. I and mine. So all these objects out here are mine and I'm over here and I own them, I possess them. There's kind of some separation between me and my objects. That's a dualistic idea, you know. Is this stick, am I here and is this stick part of me or is there much difference between my hand that's supposedly part of me and the stick that's in my hand?

[27:44]

Is there much difference between Tova and me, actually? I see her, she's right inside here. There's no possessiveness than the absence of presumption of a self. The absence of yourself, this is the empty self, is the entrance to non-duality. So what is this self we're talking about here? I have a phrase I've been running around with lately for a while. Self-concern is the organizing principle of all our thinking and feeling. Roll that around in your head for a while. Your self-concern, you know, how am I doing? Are people treating me well? Are things going my way? That's a conversation that's going on inside of us a lot.

[28:49]

Self-concern is the organizing principle of our thinking and feeling. A friend of mine told me that and I thought, well, that's pretty good since he was a Zen teacher and I actually think there's a lot to it. If we can eliminate or moderate our self-concern, that's an entrance into the gate of non-duality, of not talking about me here and the world out there, and I've got to figure out how I'm going to live and operate in this world. I've got to make my way. Oh, by the way, I forgot. I wanted to talk some more back there about this marvelous thing we were talking about where we were going to be renouncing ourselves. I've got to find that. Yes. They encounter the world not through acts of will and mind primarily, but through relinquishment.

[29:57]

Remember I was talking about we empty our mind and feel the whole world? Well, there's a kind of feeling of passiveness to that, isn't there, in some sense? I'm just giving my own will and mind up. That's not how we actually operate most of the time in the world. And so I think, like all things in Zen, you have this one idea, this idea of renounce yourself and feel and experience the whole situation you're in and that will give you a better way to act. But there's the other side where you actually assert yourself, your own will and your own idea of what's going on. And there's actually a sort of a play back and forth between these two ways in which you conduct yourself in the world. Actually, most of the time we're asserting ourselves, but this sense of being able to, and the level and quality to which we can actually open ourselves up and feel the world, is going to inform ourselves when we're acting with our will and stuff.

[31:01]

Does that make sense? I just wanted to make sure we're not stuck too much on one side of this discussion. Okay, anyway, minimizing our self-concern a little bit can help us enter the gate of non-duality. The... Another bodhisattva declared, form itself is emptiness. Emptiness does not result from the destruction of form, but the nature of form itself is emptiness. Such understanding is the entrance to non-duality. Wow. The Heart Sutra is... As most of you know, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. That's too much for us to go in today, isn't it? I think we're going to just skip that completely.

[32:05]

Excellent. In fact, I'm just going to move along because I've realized, as usual, got more material in front of me than I'm going to finish in the next seven minutes. So there's a whole bunch more of these conversations about these marvelous bodhisattvas presenting what they think is the Dharma gate to non-duality. And finally, at the end, Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, has his turn. And of course, because he's the bodhisattva of wisdom, his answer is going to be far superior to all the rest of them. So he says, Manjuci replied, Good sirs, you have all spoken well. Nevertheless, all your explanations are themselves dualistic. To express nothing, to say nothing, to explain nothing, to announce nothing, to indicate nothing, and to designate nothing, that is the entrance to non-duality.

[33:17]

This is the problem with language. Once you say anything, it's dualistic. That's what language is. It's saying it's this way versus not that way. And as soon as you've done that, you're caught in some dualistic thing. So mind you receive being very clear. To express nothing, to say nothing, to explain nothing, to announce nothing, to indicate nothing, that's the only way. That's the entrance to non-duality. It's a good answer, a solid answer. Everybody was impressed. And then Manjusha said, now, Vimalakirti, what do you have to say? What is the entrance to non-duality? And Vimalakirti was silent. This is the famous thunderous silence of Vimalakirti. Because to have said, to express nothing, to say nothing, is saying something. So the only way to not say anything is to not say anything.

[34:21]

So this is, of course, you know, there's all kinds of silence, right? There's passive silence. You know, I'm not going to say, you know, you want some for me. You know, there's angry silence. There's manipulative silence. There's lots of kinds of silence. There's confused silence. You ask me a question, I don't know what you're talking about. So there's lots of different kinds of silence. This is not that kind of silence. This is a kind of silence that's truly saying we cannot speak of what is going on here. so let's not speak of it. But this is also not silence and opposition to talking, you know, because that would be a dualistic thing to say, oh, I'm never going to talk, I'm just going to be silent. I think I ran into a person recently who didn't talk for 20 years or something. Maybe not so bad. But anyway, it's hard to be a, you know, person that has to give talks and not talk.

[35:25]

I mean, there are several famous talks given like that. Those of you who are familiar with the Zen koan stories, there was Buddha himself who, you know, mind you, she announced Buddha's going to pay attention to everybody, Buddha's going to give a talk, Buddha gets up on the seat and then gets down from the seat. Many years later, another famous Zen, and of course people, what did that mean? Another famous Zen teacher, the director of the monastery, said, it's been a long time since you've given a Dharma talk, teacher. Please give a Dharma talk. The students need a Dharma talk. So the teacher said, okay, if you ask me. So he got up on the seat, got down from the seat. Lots of talk about what that was all about. You can give entire lectures on that. And does that make sense?

[36:27]

I don't know. Maybe so. Anyway, in fact, this sort of interchange between Manjushara and Vimalakirti, where he's silent, has been extracted from this hundred-page sutra, and there's a koan in the Blue Cliff Records and a koan in the Book of Serenity that just sort of captures this dialogue in terms of what does that mean? And the one in the Blue Cliff Records, another Zen master, Swedu, added, when Vimalakirti was silent, what did he say? That's the question I was... The students, the guy got up there and did nothing. What did he say? So in some sense, silence is a practice of questioning. Well, all of Zen practice is a practice of questioning. What's said? What is this silence telling me?

[37:28]

What are those words in my head telling me? They're going on all the time, mostly. Are they making any sense? Are they causing me suffering? You know, words are really tricky. That's what all this dualistic stuff is about. It's so easy for us to latch on to one fixed view of things and not be able to see the other side. So hearing is a great practice. I don't know, for me, a lot of times I'll be sitting zaza and I'll hear a dog barking. It's like I'm back in the summer of my childhood when we used to run around playing games kick games and things, hide-and-seek and dogs are barking. What is all this hearing about? So when you're looking at those words in your head, are those words controlling you or are you controlling your words?

[38:35]

Are you being used by the words or are you using the words? We do have to talk. We can't be silent all the time. So then the question becomes, are we using those words or are our words being used? Using us. Anyway, this famous Zen master, Suedo, added one other comment about Vimalakirti's silence. He said, completely exposed. I mean, did Buddha really need to do anything more than sit there? I mean, basically, every moment, everything is revealed. Everything is completely exposed. I mean, I remember Suzuki Rishi walking around. We didn't, you know, you'd have conversations with him, but mostly it was just sort of like being with him. You know, if you sit a seven-day sushin with us here, you don't talk for the entire seven days. But everything's revealed, everything is exposed.

[39:36]

I mean, you're talking in your head, because even seven days of sitting can't completely eliminate that. Anyway, since I'm ruminating on silence, I thought I would share a marvelous poem by Kay Ryan, which I've always liked. It's called Shark's Teeth. Everything contains 10 o'clock. That's when we're supposed to end this lecture. We've had that clock since I was here in 1970. Somebody has to wind it up all the time so it rings. I think it's one of our house jobs, isn't it? To wind that clock. It's not very efficient, but it sounds beautiful. Anyway, getting back to our poem by Kay Ryan.

[40:40]

Everything contains some silence. Everything contains some silence. Noise gets its zest from the small shark-tooth-shaped fragments of rest angled in it. An hour of city holds maybe a minute of these remnants of a time when silence reigned, compact and dangerous as a shark. Sometimes a bit of a tail or fin can still be sensed in parks. Want me to read that again? Kay Ryan. She was our national poet, you know, a couple years ago. She lives up in Marin. She's been a good friend of Zen Center. Everything contains some silence. Everything contains some silence. Noise gets its zest from the small shark's tooth shaped fragments of rest angled in it. An hour of city holds maybe a minute of these remnants of a time when silence reigned compact and dangerous as a shark.

[41:52]

Sometimes a bit of a tail or fin can still be sensed in parks. So I wanted to sort of end with one short story about Suzuki Roshi and non-dualism. For those of you that have been to Tassahara, There's lots of blue jays at Tassara, and they're really an incredible nuisance. They steal your food, and if you're not really quick about it, they get your sandwiches, and they just squawk, squawk, squawk, all of it. Noisy, you know. So you're trying to think. You can't even think for all the noises. So Sukiroshi was in his cabin trying to write a lecture to give. He always spent quite a bit of time writing his lectures, and then, of course, diverged enormously from the lecture when he gave it, but he did... prepare his lectures. So he came and he was talking about the fact that this bird was above his roof squawking at him. And it probably was squawking right there above the zendo while he was giving his talk.

[42:52]

And he said, you think the blue jay is over there, up there on the roof, irritating you. I think the blue jay is in here singing in my heart. Well, this has been a lot of words about silence, hasn't it? Thank you for coming and taking a peek with me at just a little bit of this Vimalakirti Sutra, a wonderful teaching from two centuries ago. It's not so easy to be a human being, is it? You know, we don't have any fixed rules to follow. We have to sort of be flexible. stay close to our own experience that we're having and the experience of others. But we have to practice because the world needs all the sanity we can bring to it.

[44:02]

So I wish you all well in your practice. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:35]

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