remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words, an unsurpassed, 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, the Tathagata's words, and unsurpassed, penetrating and Perfect Dharma. Is rarely met with.

[04:31]

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 words. Good morning. How nice to see you all here. Sunday morning. It's getting more normal. Welcoming you back to the Zendo. So for those of us who are just joining now, for the Sunday program, we are on the final morning of a three and a half day sashim. meditation retreat, and I have been talking these few days about a set of drawings from the Zen tradition called the Ten Oxherding Pictures. These Oxherding Pictures have been used as teaching devices in the Zen tradition for hundreds of years, based on a set of illustrations from the 12th century by a Zen master by the name of Kakuan Zenji.

[05:43]

So along with each illustration, the Zen master added a poetic verse. describing the journey to enlightenment. So I thought I would give a brief overview of the first seven pictures for those of you who are joining this morning, and then go on to finish the last three drawings that are depicting the final stages of the ox herder's search for his true home. So in the first drawing of the series, the ox herder represents the human mind that's believed that something is missing. something without which the young ox herder, the child, feels lost and alone in the dark forest of their own imagination. So the ox represents that thing that we believe will complete us, the possibility of wholeness at a time when all we can see is the missing piece. Although the first of these images of the journey to wholesomeness sound somewhat bleak,

[06:49]

As you can see in the drawing, the boy, meaning all of us, is already riding on the back of his beloved ox. So here's drawing number one, which I probably can't see in the back, but I'll tell you what's here. It says the boy or girl, the ox rider, is riding backwards on the ox, looking for the ox. Sound familiar? All alone, something missing, everything shifting and unsteady. So the good news is that at this time in our life, we have become determined in our quest for both understanding and for relieving the pain of our isolation. So this aspect of Buddhist practice is called way-seeking mind or way-seeking heart.

[07:53]

In Sanskrit, bodhicitta, the thought of enlightenment. At the beginning of the sashin, which seems like a very long time ago, but it's only a few days, I offered the people here a simple proposition. If you are not in awe, you are distracted. And then I suggested other words for both of these terms, for awe, awakened or illuminated, and for distraction. diluted, or sleeping, dreaming. The dynamic relationship between these two aspects of our human life, between awe and distraction, or awakening and dreaming, are what the ox-herding pictures are helping us to see. I also mentioned that it's important in our understanding of these drawings not to think of them as a sequence, such as a start to finish, or a beginning to an ending. but rather as a circle of perspectives. Ten points of view through which we can better understand our relationship to the ox, better known as reality itself, the one that always wins.

[09:02]

A relationship, as we know, that can go from disturbed and irritated to intrigued and elated in a matter of minutes. In this teaching, each perspective is an aid to understanding our fundamental wholeness. although it is not something that we may ever really see. And that's because, no matter how hard we try, we can't step out of reality in order to get a better view. We are reality, and that's what makes these drawings so reassuring. From the very first picture, the ox herder is in an intimate relationship with his missing piece, which makes his journey home a guaranteed success. So for me, these drawings give us a big clue about what happens to us humans as we search for liberation from our own suffering. The very thing the Buddha was seeking on the day that he ran away from home. And as you saw in this first drawing, the ox herder truly believes he has lost his ox and is seeking it everywhere, not realizing that he is riding on his back.

[10:12]

So here's the poetic verse. that Kakuan wrote to accompany the first drawing, searching for the ox. Never lost from the beginning, what need to seek and to search? Yet the child has turned their back on awakening, so estrangement is born. There the boy, fixed on the dust, until finally the ox is gone. Home on the hill ever farther and farther away, where the trail forks, the child instantly errs. Gain or loss smoldered into flames. Right or wrong is a lance's thrust. Aimlessly, endlessly, the child parts the grasses, seeking. Waters widen, mountains loom far off. The path goes deeper. At strength's end, weary at heart, with nowhere to begin to search. The child hears, amid ghostly maples, the cries of the late autumn cicadas.

[11:14]

So in the second drawing, called Seeing the Traces, the child sees some tracks of the great beast that they have been aching to find. And in this illustration, the trace is shown as a sudden flick of the ox's tail in the young child's face. Again, in the back, he's on the ox, facing backwards, and the ox's tail has suddenly clipped up. And he says, what is this? something flashes, startling, right under his nose. So suddenly, right before the eyes, the child discovers here and there, beneath the trees and along the river, the tracks of the ox. And with a dancing heart, heads deeper and deeper into the forest of his own imagination. In these drawings, these tracks signify our first encounter, with the buddha's teaching so here are the verses for picture number two through the sutras she catches the drift looking into the teachings she discovers the tracks she realizes that all vessels are of a single gold she experiences all things as the self but if she cannot even distinguish right from wrong how can she know truth from falsity

[12:42]

She has not yet learned to enter the gate. This is tentatively called seeing the traces. Near the brook, under shadows in the woods, many the scattered tracks. Fragrant grasses in luxuriant growth. Doubtless the ox has also seen them. Be it deep in the mountains and the deepest recesses still, how could such nostrils raised to the heavens ever have been hidden in the first place? So as we each begin our own spiritual quest, we have no choice but to bring our pain and our doubt into view. The questions that we need to ask ourselves have to be real ones about the dissatisfactions and the fears that we feel in our everyday life. This aspiration for clarity allows us to deal with the many layers of our conditioning as they arise, what I've heard called our intersectionality. the intersection of all of our multiple identities, our gender, our class, our age, and so on, that seem to separate us from one another.

[13:52]

And this is what we are here to study, to learn from, and then to watch as they simply float away. It's in the midst of this self-study that we empower ourselves, and it's in the midst of the silence and stillness that emerges within self-study that we may come to trust ourselves completely. And yet, given that self-study is undertaken in the near darkness of the mystic woods, the sound of the cicada signals that night is approaching, and for a while anyway, things may only seem to be getting worse. While we wait for those powerful forces that are still dominating our lives to come forth and reveal themselves, we need to be extra careful. establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries and if it's not possible as yet then to pull back from the intensity of it all until we feel safe enough to continue the search in the verses for picture number three called seeing the ox we catch a first glimpse of reality itself in japanese is called kensho meaning to see our true nature

[15:08]

Picture number three, seeing the ox. The beast is licking the ox in the face. Sudden insight, overwhelming, unexpected in his face. Here are the verses for picture number three. Following its bellowing, the oxard gains entrance. Wherever he looks, he encounters the source. None of the six senses diverges from it. In each daily act, it is plainly manifest. It's like the salty taste of brine, like the adhesive in paint. Suddenly, the eyebrows go up, and there is nothing other. A yellow warbler trills on and on in the branches. The sun is warm. The breeze is calm. Willows on the bank are green. Just this place, there is nowhere at all that it can flee.

[16:13]

Those majestic horns impossible to portray. So in a very down-to-earth explanation about Kensho, an experience that will have taken place within the wholehearted activities of our daily life, a gateway suddenly opens. A gateway through which one of our six senses... opens into what in Japanese is called chin, meaning our heart-mind. Sometimes the gateway is a sound, sometimes an odor or a touch or a taste, sometimes the sight of a flowering tree, or at other times some intellectual clarity about the meaning of words. And at such a time as these, as I've said, if you are not in awe, you are distracted. And yet in this initial experience of awakening, if we haven't gotten caught by some self-centered story about what an amazing person we have become, that initial astonishment may simply wear off, as it did when we were children, through familiarity, in which case we may need some encouragement to continue toward a more complete liberation from the trickster of our own imagination.

[17:30]

Once we've had enough of transmigrating through what the Buddha called the six realms, the heavenly realm, the realm of worldly ambition, the animal realm, the human realm, the realm of the hungry ghosts, and the hell realm, each a product of our vivid imagination, we encounter the perspective shown in picture number four, catching the ox. Again, for you in the back, the boy, the girl, the oxeter, has captured the ox by its horn and is hanging on for dear life. Chaos, nowhere to stand, attachment, aversion, clinging in fear. So here are the verses for taking hold of the underlying reality that supports our life, if we dare.

[18:36]

Long hidden in the distant meadows, finally met with today. And yet, because that realm was so pleasing, the ox can scarcely be restrained. It longs for the sweet grasses ceaselessly. Its obdurate heart yet stalwart. Its wild nature remains. If the ox herd wants it tractable, she's got to use the whip. Pushing all of her powers to the brink, she takes hold of the ox. But its will is strong. Its sinews undaunted. it won't be easily broken. One moment it's suddenly clamoring up into the highlands and the next settling deep into the cloudy mists of the valley again. So at this point in our practice, the majestic beast that we've been seeking is now seeking us. It's lowered its massive head and at full speed is heading our way. And it's no coincidence that this portrait of our practice, picture number four, has been called

[19:38]

the great death. And yet the great death of the falsely imagined and isolated self is the only means through which a new life can flourish. And in picture number five, called herding the ox or taming the ox, we are being called to reenter the world of our delusional thinking in order to see just how useless and even harmful our imaginary version of reality truly can be. So here's picture number six, herding the ox. In this picture, the ox is contented, chewing on the grass in the meadow, and the young ox herd is hiding behind a tree. Dropped away, too much to handle, just observing looks okay. Through our continuing meditation practice and our Dharma study, we come to see clearly, if even for just a moment, the moon of reality peeking out from behind the clouds of our dreams as the clouds peek back.

[20:55]

And we begin to see how things in themselves are neither true or false, sad or happy, so that no matter how hard we search, as I said yesterday, there is no truth to be found. And that is the truth. A truth that simply arises from one's own mind, moment after moment, just as it's doing right now. So here's the verse for picture number five. Whip and tether moment by moment must never be let go of, or else the ox will wander off where it pleases, drawn by the dusty objects of the world. If the ox herd always leads firmly, the ox will grow serene and good-tempered. Even unfettered by rope or chain, it will naturally follow after the oxford. So although we can control animals and humans with brute force and terror until they no longer resist us, in the end of such treatment, they neither love us or wish to be around us.

[21:59]

In the tradition of Zen training right here in this temple, we hope to teach and to learn both by example and by an ongoing reflection of our own and others' virtues. Many years ago, I lived out at Jamesburg, which is the gateway to Tassajara, Zen Mountain Monastery. And one of the people I met there from the village was a woman who trained horses. Having spent a good number of years myself living in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I was used to the cowboys on the ranches. I lived on ranches as well, and how they treated animals, which for the most part didn't seem very nice. So when I went to visit the ranch where this woman trainer was living, and I watched her go out into the pasture with a couple of carrots in her back pocket and some sugar cubes in her hand, the horses came running. She went on to snuggle them, praise them, and show them just how much she loved them.

[23:02]

For us human animals, I think we already know which style of training. gives the best outcome that we most wish for ourselves. When we are kind and patient in how we train ourselves and how we train each other, we reduce the harm that's being done in this world. This is our faith, our effort, our intention, and our Bodhisattva vow. This vow is articulated in the Zen tradition as the 16 Bodhisattva precepts. with each precept serving as a promise that we make from ourselves to each other and to the entire world. I promise not to kill you, to steal from you, sexualize you, lie, poison, slander, brag, hoard, hate, or disrespect you. By enacting these precepts, our intention becomes visible as the body and the shape and the activities of an awakening being.

[24:05]

Through the precepts, we begin to conform ourselves with reality and thereby to take our places on the back of the ox, the very place where we have been sitting all along. Drawing number six, coming home on the ox's back. So here he is. Young ox heard, content and smiling. holding on to the giant beast who also seems to be smiling and content, walking along the path. Strong and steady, marching homeward, now is found what was not lost. The verses for drawing number six. Shields and spears are gone. Winning and losing are nothing again. You sing woodsman's village songs and play children's country tunes.

[25:08]

Stretched out on the back of your ox, you gaze at the sky. We call you, but you won't turn around. We catch at you, but you won't be tied down. Mounting the ox, slowly I return homeward. The voice of my flute intones through the evening. Measuring with handbeats the pulsating harmony, I direct the endless rhythm. Whoever hears this melody... will join me. As we continue cultivating concentration through sitting meditation and walking meditation and mindfulness practices, we may naturally begin to slow down, to slow way down. And we begin to notice the colored lights and shadows that are making up the textures of what we have been calling the world. Number seven, the ox forgotten. So this one's a little hard to see, I know.

[26:11]

The dark room, the moonlight is shining in through the window. The young oxer is snuggled in bed. A little smile on the face. The dream is over, but something lingers. Safe, content, she floats. So in picture seven, the Buddha is gone and the ox is gone and the way is gone and the child is lying in bed or sitting upright in their hut, contented and at ease. The urge to find the ox is completely dissolved. Nothing is fixed. Nothing is extra. Nothing is lacking. The tether with which she had firmly grasped the ox hangs idly under the eaves, which sounds an awful lot what we have been seeking. And maybe some of you have found such a spot for yourselves right here on your cushion. Every now and then, or perhaps lying on the beach.

[27:14]

And yet right there in the center of this idyllic scene lies yet another danger on the spiritual journey. The danger of neglecting the importance of practice and wholehearted effort. Only this time, it's not for ourselves or our own liberation, but for the sake of others. who have only just begun the search. And so we are nudged along yet again, like the ox, to the drawing that appears in number eight. The ox and the boy are both gone. So what you're seeing is basically a full moon through the window. Through the window, moonlight streaming floods everything, all dissolves. So this is as far as I'd gotten yesterday during the talks for the Sashim, but hopefully by the end of the day I will finish all ten of the ox-herding pictures.

[28:25]

In picture eight, the gap between the boy and reality itself has vanished. The ox and the ox-herder are both completely forgotten. This is the view of no view, where all dualities are merged as if into one view, a view in which no one thing stands alone without everything else tagging along. No eyes all alone, no ears all alone, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind all alone, no suffering alone, no cause of suffering alone. No cessation of suffering alone and certainly no path all alone. As we all know and chant daily by heart. At this stage, the medicine of the heart suture begins taking hold. And standing at the very summit of existence, there is nothing left of a boy or an ox or a summit. Just the shadow of a dead person breathing. And maybe not even that.

[29:27]

The image is of an empty circle filled with light. The danger here may be too obvious even to say. Not even your grandmother would fail to tell you what's wrong with this picture. And that's simply that it's time for you to come home again. There is still something that remains in saying there is nothing. As it says in this poem by one of our women ancestors, the bucket held by Chiyono has lost its bottom. If it doesn't even hold water, how will it hold the moon? I once described to my therapist an image that I had in my early years of practicing down at Tassajara, especially during the oryoki meals when the servers are bringing food into the zendo. This image of myself perched up here on the ton as though I were on the edge of the Grand Canyon like a giant bird of prey, sadly unable to open my wings.

[30:29]

So I thought it could help. My therapist might help to get my wings open at last. One of the main reasons I had gone to see a therapist in the first place. And it's all I thought I ever wanted was to fly. But he said to me instead, maybe you're standing on a curb and you can try just stepping down. And although it seemed kind of mean, popping my dream bubble like that, he was right. I and all of you are much more like penguins than we are like eagles, even in the way we dress around here. And yet the eyes gaze skyward toward the light, somehow still longing to fly. And yet having finally given up trying to get something or somewhere by ourselves, a self that no longer appears as separate from the world through which we travel, our steady practice allows us to recognize who we truly are. to draw back from our amazement with the products of creation, from the sunsets and the warblers and the baby lettuces, in order to take a closer look at the luminous pearl of our own imagination, the very mind itself, the mistress of our dreams, and the dream that has been dreaming us.

[31:48]

In other words, we turn the light around, and then we turn it around again and again, until only the vastness of the light remains. Juan Huayca said to Bodhidharma, our first Chinese Zen ancestor, My mind is restless. Please help settle it for me. Bodhidharma replied, Bring me your mind and I will settle it for you. Huayca says after some time, When I look for it, I can't find it. Bodhidharma then said, There, I have settled it for you. So here's the verse for picture number eight. The ox and the boy... both gone. Whip, rope, person, and ox all merge in no thing. This heaven is so vast, no message can stain it. How may a snowflake exist in a raging fire? Here are the footprints of the ancestors. There was a time in the history of Zen that these drawings ended here at number eight, nirvana as a wish for extinction, to be blown out.

[32:58]

And what might be wrong with that? Well, maybe we know from the earlier brush we had with the dangers of Kensho, the danger that we might actually forget the Buddha's awakened insight that the world and I are one, that your suffering and mine can never be extinguished until everyone is free. And that's a big job. And even the Buddha said it's a tiresome job. And therefore, we will be needing a lot of help. And as I said earlier, this practice is not done by our self alone. There is no self alone. In fact, at this very moment, literally millions upon millions of people are needing food and water and shelter and vaccines and test kits, kind voices and kind faces. Lots of them. So as we return to the source, just as the Buddha did at the end of his long journey to freedom, he went home.

[34:00]

Kapalivastu to his parents and to his wife and his child, and he shared his practice and his love with not only them, but with all the other parents, wives, and children of the world. The world and I are one. Picture number nine, returning to the origin. this picture. Yaksurda is reaching his arms up. It's morning, and there's his mom greeting him. Morning sunlight restores the world so familiar, ever new. Too many steps have been taken returning to the root and the source. better to have been blind and deaf from the beginning.

[35:02]

Dwelling in one's true abode, unconcern with and without, the river flows tranquilly on and the flowers are red. So the world is now visible and tangible and lovable again. Our time out in the desert or up on the mountain is finally over. Having gone over to the side to see that it's there, we come back to this side to practice. And what a lovely view. out there from my window up in spring valley what a lovely garden and a lovely floor and what a lovely room full of lovely people how wonderful what could be better than this in an early stage of practice on seeing the ox capturing it and taming it we came to appreciate emptiness and dependent core rising as the fundamental underlying condition of all differences how emptiness relates to form, and form relates to emptiness. At this stage, we see how the relationship of form and emptiness is the basis of the reality that we experience in our everyday life and our everyday activities, like washing the dishes and cleaning our rooms, sitting zazen, and speaking kind words to everyone.

[36:19]

As it says on the drawing for number nine, done in recent years by one of our good friends, Morning sunlight restores the world, so familiar and ever new. We have gotten to the peak of the mountain of our endeavors in this lifetime. We've chewed them up, fully digested them, and let them go, again and again, endlessly. These final three pictures of this set of ten are very much in the spirit of contentment, of utter contentment, the reward for which is picture number ten. entering the marketplace with bliss-bearing hands, or as we say in our departing student ceremony here at Zen Center, entering the marketplace with gift-bestowing hands. In this picture, our young oxherder is in the shopping cart,

[37:22]

probably moving through Whole Foods, and he's got in his arms his stuffy little ox. Life goes on, moment by moment, his delight shows the way. Here's the verse for number 10. Barefooted and naked abreast, I mingle with the people of the world. My clothes are ragged and dust-laden, and I am ever blissful. I use no magic to extend my life. now before me the dead trees become alive again so now we are old and utterly goofy we play with children and we grieve at the sad news of the world and there we have it the journey from home to home just like frodo baggins bearing the ring of power which must by right be tossed into the fiery furnace of the non-dual nature of reality in which power and rings and persons and oxen have all, in an instant, melted away.

[38:28]

And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. Through one word or seven words or three times five, even if you thoroughly investigate myriad forms, nothing can be depended upon. Night advances, the moon glows and falls into the ocean. The black dragon jewel you have been searching for is everywhere. Thank you very much. May our intention equally extend. To every being and place. With the true merit of Buddha's way.

[39:34]

I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. So why don't we just do one verse and go to some questions, and I'd be happy to answer, and then maybe we could chant it again at the end. I think we have some time if any of you would like to make a comment or offer a question.

[40:38]

And our Eno, Valerian, has a microphone. Thank you. They're in the back. Thank you so much for your talk. You're welcome. From the first statement that if you are not in awe, then you are distracted. Is it safe to say that an integral part of the Zen path is cultivating awe and perhaps even cultivating joy? Yes. Thank you. You're welcome. I was studying this old text called the Vasudhi Maga when I was down at Tassajara.

[41:41]

It's a very old traditional text, particularly in Theravadan. studies, a lot of people study the Vasudhimanga. And I was, I think I was extremely serious at that time and not easily amused. And I felt like Zen was a very serious thing to be doing. And yeah, my Oxford was really on a roll. So as I was reading these practices, I would try some of them, you know, because I wanted the real thing. And Zen seems so kind of, I don't know what. Hard to figure out. And so I basically, when I got to the end of each chapter, it said this very surprising verse. You know, one thing it said was, if you stop doing these particular practices, what that means is you have stopped doing that particular practice. Which I thought was rather strange. There was no punishment or no consequence. Just, oh, I'm not doing that anymore. And then the next thing it said, these practices are to bring joy to humankind.

[42:43]

which really surprised me. I had not considered that possibility. So, yes, indeed, please, find the joy. I really appreciate the words around just practicing kindness and being patient. I find myself very challenged when I encounter injustice. And I want to know, like, in the context of that story, how would our ox herder manage or move with injustice? Yeah, well, one would hope that the Buddha did meet injustice I mean, the world was on fire then like it is now with hatred and lust and confusion.

[43:47]

Same human, same species. And I think that's what he did. He sat up, right? He watched his mind. He spoke kindly. He welcomed everyone. He wasn't armed. He lived simply. So as the Quakers say, others could simply live. So he modeled a way of behaving and being, and it drew a lot of people. I think a lot of people would like to join you in that. you know, peaceful abiding, being kind. And I think people do respond to kindness. Buddha also said, I hold no views for or against anything, which means to me, it doesn't say don't have views. We have views. Here's my view, but I'm not holding it. And if I hold my view and you hold yours, we're probably going to fight. So how can I share my views in a way that isn't about fighting or killing or winning?

[44:47]

It's hard. I told the story of the samurai who went to the Zen master. He was about to go to war, and he said, tell me the secret of birth and death. And the master said, no, I can't tell you that. It's not a secret. And the warrior said, well, don't you know I'm the one who can kill you? pulling his sword out. And the Zen master said, don't you know I'm the one who can be killed? And with that, the samurai put down his sword and asked for the Buddhist precepts. So how do you win the heart of an angry person or an angry bull or an angry animal? His dog whispers, his horse whispers, you know, we've seen miracles with animals that everyone else thought just needed to be put down. So I think the skills are there within our species to bring peace. And we need to all practice them and be responsible for them. I had to choose during the Vietnam War whether to join my friends who were angry or find something else to do with my own anger.

[46:01]

And so I came here. And it's worked out pretty well. So I vote for nonviolence and kindness. And I think it's good medicine for everything else that's out there. So don't give up. Thank you, Fu, for your Wonderful talk this morning. I've been so looking forward to getting the end of the story. I made it. My question pertains to beginner's mind. And which of the ox herding pictures most closely relates, I guess? And is there a danger of residing within beginner's mind? Is that a Zen sickness?

[47:02]

Or is it something that we hope to culminate by returning to the marketplace? Many questions. Yeah. Well, I think beginner's mind and the way Suzuki Roshi spoke of it is just what we've got. We have a beginner's mind. You know, that's what we are. We're learners. We're beginners. It's the ox? Well, the ox is our dynamic relationship with reality, which we think is outside. I think I'm over here and everything else is over there. Like I'm a little cutout, separate from reality. You each see it that way. It's kind of weird. I mean, we're all seeing everything else as something else. I even said that, everything else. That's from my point of view. So that point of view is what's suspect. And I think we're always beginning again and again because we're so habituated to seeing things upside down. And Buddha called it the upside down views. And until you've righted your view of how things really are, you're a beginner, which is great.

[48:06]

I mean, that's good. You have training wheels. And we all want to help each other to not keep falling over, but to just basically learn the skills we need that then take those training wheels off. And then you're a beginner without training wheels. Right? So whatever you're doing, you're always beginning anew. Whatever, every day is new for us. That's what that picture of the sun coming in in the morning. It's always new each day. What's not new are our habits, which are wheels of suffering that we have just gotten ingrained with a certain way of going. And that's what we have to really hack into. And Heart Sutra is about no, no, but I only want no, just no. Couldn't I just know? So that's really taking on the responsibility for our own delusion. rather than expecting others to do that for us.

[49:07]

They will. They will try. But, you know, that's just theirs. So, again, without asking other people to take on our life for us, to really find yourself on the back of the ox and then steady your balance. I once said to my teacher that I feel like a seal on a wet ball trying to balance. And he said, that sounds about right. So maybe that's all of us, you know. We're just trying somehow to get our balance as things keep changing. And so, of course, each of those moments is a beginning. Again, looking for the center. The middle way is not a thing. It's an activity. Okay? That's wonderful. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I think behind you... thank you so much for your talk I am wondering I'm feeling so much deep grief and fear over the fires that are happening right now and I appreciate the idea of finding awe but I feel like how do we find awe when I guess you know there's so much grief and loss and I feel like

[50:33]

my sense of safety is just shattered. I sort of felt like, okay, if California lights on fire, I can go to the East Coast and that will be okay. And it sort of feels like with global warming, I'm sorry this isn't related to the ox, but that each place that we think might be safe is not safe right now. And it feels very hopeless. I guess I'm wondering, how do we feel awe and just grapple with that sense of fear and hopelessness? Yeah. Well, there's two forms of awe. There's awful and awesome. They're both awe. We're much in awe of the awful. These fires are awful. And they're stunning. And all of the things that are happening, degrading. I mean... How many of you, most of you are probably my age or close to it.

[51:35]

Well, I don't know if that's true. But anyway, don't I wish? Anyway, I think, you know, basically, what was I going to say? Awful. Yeah, I forgot. See, that's pretty awesome, too. Yeah. And it's considered a great blessing in Buddhism to have a bad memory, because you can't hold on to things that are terrible. What was that thing they said to me? Awesome. Well, okay, I don't know, I'll make up something else. So basically, we are basically called on to respond. Oh, I know. When I was younger... These predictions of global warming were like 100 years from now, right? Remember that? Or 40 years from now, or the atomic clock is ticking, we have two minutes left, but we don't have any minutes left.

[52:37]

It's happening in my lifetime. I am in awe of how quickly we have degraded this planet, how tiny it is. You know, Carl Sagan, that tiny blue dot, you know, he said you could put your thumb over that tiny blue dot as the, I think it was the Challenger, Voyager. went out of the solar system, he had them take a picture of the Earth, this tiny blue dot. That's all we've got. And we're turning it gray. It's terrible. And we're doing it. It's not them. Fire's not evil. Not getting rid of the invasive grasses, that's not so smart. I mean, the things we're doing to not care for... Our beautiful planet, the stewardship of this, our home, is all of us. So I think we can say, you know, it's them, but I think that's not true. I think it's us and how we're living. And how are we going to take responsibility?

[53:40]

Not by ourselves. So I like this community for one reason. It seems to be trying to do something together, shout out, you know, hello. And people are coming. You're all here. I think people come and they hear and they listen. And if we can inspire one another to take action in a kind way, not that way, but in a kind way like the Dalai Lama, there's a great shot of him putting a flower in the rifle of one of the guards in India and bowing, touching the man on his hand. So it takes a lot of courage. For us to confront. Not confront. That's a bad word. To meet. Anger. And violence. And. Gandhi inspires. Martin Luther King Jr. Inspires. They were both assassinated. So it's risky. Something doesn't want that.

[54:41]

To happen. So. You know. What is it? What is it? I don't know. I did ask. I was a. trustee for a while for the Marine Community Foundation, which was a real privilege to know a little bit more about our home here and to try and support good works, which is what that foundation does. And I asked Tom Peters, who's the CEO at the time, you know, who's the bad guy? I mean, where's the bad guy? We're trying to heal the wounds, but where is it? He said, market forces. And I was like, oh, yeah. I believe that. There's no person. There's nobody home. Market forces. So we got a big job. How do we talk to market forces? Anyway, I don't want to go down the road of despair, but I just really feel like we have to understand what's happening. We have to think about what's happening. And we have to find our good friends who are doing things, smart things, to address what's happening to our home.

[55:50]

THAT'S ALL I KNOW. THANK YOU FOR YOUR QUESTION. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TALK, FU. MY QUESTION WAS WHEN WE TALK ABOUT BODHICHITA, ENLIGHTENED MIND, IT SOMETIMES SOUNDS LIKE A SPECIAL PLACE THAT WE GO TO, BUT CAN YOU SAY HOW BODHICHITA RELATES TO ordinary, everyday mind. No difference. I didn't want to ask the question because you've already answered it with what you've been talking about all day today. But that question arose for me. Well, as Bodhidharma said, you ask, that's your mind. I answer, that's my mind. No other mind. So it's got to be the bodhicitta, the mind that wishes for clarity, for peace, and for The end of suffering. I think everyone's got that one.

[56:53]

Right? How? How to do that? That's what the Dharma is all about. How? Precepts. You know, taking precepts seriously. But you know that. He's got the mic coming, right? Is it on? Is it on? Okay. I wanted to share, if you haven't seen the Kehinde Wiley show in the city, that's an extraordinary example of transforming tragedy into beauty. And it's really astounding. So whoever's going through grief back there, get yourself over to see this exhibit. It's phenomenal. Yeah, humans are awesome.

[58:00]

Yeah. With a little asterisk. Except for when they're awful. Yeah. That is a beautiful exhibit. I went there recently. Amazing. Okay. I'd like to ask two questions. One, from the very beginning, I kept saying, why is it a child? So I don't know if there's anything in that. And the other is that in the way you spoke about the six realms in your talk and then in your answers now, they felt like not necessarily like places, but states of mind. Right, exactly. Yeah, I would love to hear more about that. Psychological states. That we fall into. And we know them all. We've all been in all of them. I would bet. We've all been to heaven, right?

[59:01]

Have you all been to heaven? Briefly. And hell. After heaven ended. An animal. Teenagers. And hungry ghosts. Can't get enough. Can't get enough love. Whatever. Stuff. and then the fighting demons, the fighting gods who want to get into heaven and will do anything to get the stuff. Fighting gods are chopping down the trees that are flowering in heaven. I can't have it, and you're not going to have it. It's kind of brilliant the way they're depicted. If you look up the image of the 12-fold chain of the pinnacle rising in Wikipedia, and then you can see the wheel of birth and death, it's also called. It's being held. by this, looks like a monstrous lord of death, yama, impermanence, which is behind us, so it scares us, transiency. So he's holding this wheel, and the driver of it is greed, hate, and delusion, the center, the hub.

[60:06]

And then these six realms are the result of how you engage with greed, hate, and delusion, how you meet the world, the ox, how you treat the ox. And you go up if you treat it well, and you go down if you treat it badly. And the recommended of all these six realms, the one recommended is the one that we all have arrived in, which is the human realm. Kind of like Greengalch. Farming, dishes, bread baking, arguing. You know, just living and trying to be kind. That's where you can practice. There's a little Zendo in that picture. What was the other one about? Child. Why is it child? I think we are. Beginners and young, very young in our hearts and kind of got hurt, pretended we were grown up, you know. And actually, if you start looking through the layers, there's still a little kid still there, hoping the teenager doesn't keep running the show.

[61:07]

So then we have a grown up that is responsible for those other two layers, protecting the child and training the teenager. Let's just do one more. Yeah. Is that the right first? Go ahead. Our intention equally to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way.

[62:10]

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