Good morning, and thank you for coming today to our Green Gulch Dharma Talk offered today by senior Dharma teacher Adrian Linda Ruth Cutts. We'll begin with the opening verse. It should show on your screen now. Please chant along with me. An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect Dharma It 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 words. Good morning.

[03:44]

Good morning to everyone. I thank you for coming to the Green Gulch Talk on this holiday weekend. And I've wanted to say something. Some of my thoughts about how I'm feeling these days and today, and also how I'm turning towards our practice, towards the practice of ever more strongly taking refuge. So today is the full moon. the full moon of July.

[04:45]

And the full moon, as many of you know, was traditionally a time for the sangha, for the community, the four-part community of ordained and lay men and women and all beings who feel they're in the sangha to come together, to come together to practice. to renew the practice, to renew our precepts and our bodhisattva vows. So this morning at Green Gulch and probably temples all over the world, we had our bodhisattva full moon ceremony, and we had ours on the lawn. Those of you who know Green Gulch, out on the lawn. Yesterday on July 4th, it was a very quiet day for me.

[05:51]

I'm in quarantine right now. My husband, Steve, and I are in quarantine for two weeks, 14 days, because we left Green Gulch for a family visit and are practicing. the protocols of Green Gulch, which upon certain kinds of outings or visits, one returns to quarantine for two weeks. So we're in quarantine, but yesterday at Green Gulch on July 4th, as perhaps a Independence Day, Interdependence Day, day interdependency, as Suzuki Roshi said, day Green Gulch offered a Black Lives Matter demonstration and sitting and vigil up at the place where Green Gulch driveway meets Highway 1.

[07:01]

And there was a procession from the lawn again. through Green Gulch up to the highway, and then as marking this day, there was a sitting. Our Black Lives Matter sign that was up at the road had been taken down, so we renewed those, put up new signs, and sat again. So this July 4th, I felt no need, no impulse to celebrate or congratulate or perpetuate the kind of myth, the legend and myth of freedom and equality and the throwing off of tyranny that

[08:09]

We celebrate. Somehow this year, I had no inclination in that regard. I felt rather serious and sad and feeling a little bit like... let's all together see through the fact that this isn't true, you know, and it is not inclusive of everyone. Also, right now, as we all may be very well aware, the coronavirus is is growing, is in various parts of the country.

[09:18]

And of course, I hope we're well aware of how it is affecting those who are most vulnerable, affecting people of color disproportionately all over the world and in this country. These facts are... I want them to be looked at and seen, and I want to have them be known for what they are. One thing I did yesterday on July 4th was read the... speech given by Frederick Douglass on, it was on July 5th, actually, about July 4th, Independence Day. And the oratory skill was, it was so amazing to me, the way in which he wove his tribute to

[10:38]

the founding fathers of this country and at the same time came back to let us look at the horrors that are being perpetuated in this country. And then finishing with, but this is a young country and this was in, it was 74 years old, I think at the time. That it's a young country, we have time. So I'm meditating on some of these things and coming back to our practice, to the practice that rings true, deeply rings true, of how we work with karmic consciousness. which are voluntary actions of body, speech, and mind.

[11:42]

And these voluntary actions are stemmed from or flow from a misunderstanding and a ignorance about the way we live. All, all sentient beings exist together. The reality of our existence. So our karmic life is based on a notion of a separate self, a separate I that is self-centered, self-clinging, and the actions flow from this are harmful.

[12:44]

These actions are harmful. Not the actions of taking good care of what arises in each moment, taking good care of our bodies and our minds, our body minds, and all those things we come in contact with in our minds and in our daily life. I'm not talking about the actions that arise from our interconnectedness. I'm talking about actions based on I, me, and mine at the expense of others. So how do we... How do we practice with this? This is basic ignorance, this ignorance about how we exist together. And out of this ignorance, if you look at the 12-fold chain, ignorance, karmic formations come from that.

[13:55]

Karmic formations are these actions of body, speech, and mind that are about... turned by greed, hate, and delusion. So, you know, we haven't been having kids' lectures during the closing of the Zendo, and I was thinking this would have been a kids' lecture, and what kids' lecture would I want to bring up today? And the one that arose for me was... The Emperor's New Clothes. The Emperor's New Clothes. Some of you know that fairy tale. And it just came to me how apt a story that is for me right now. In the story, there are con men, actually, I would say, who sell clothes

[15:03]

fame and reputation and having the most wonderful clothing in the world. It's so wonderful that only those who, you know, are really intelligent and those are the only ones who can see it. The material is so fine and so magical. And, of course, the emperor wants such an outfit. And the con men come and they show him bolts of cloth, which are, there's nothing there, but they mime, isn't this beautiful, and show it to them. And then they pretend to sew in their sewing workshop, creating the clothes. And everyone around them, the psychophants, is that the word? All the courtiers and all the king's henchmen and everyone in the royal party doesn't want to be seen as the one who's not intelligent or who doesn't have what it takes.

[16:19]

And they all go along with it. Oh, yes, how beautiful, it's magnificent, these clothes. And the day it comes for the... The July 4th parade, you know, the day comes for the big parade. And the Khan men, tailors, bring the clothing to the emperor and have him get dressed and help him get dressed. And then he walks through the town, through the city, in his undies, you know. And everyone has heard about these clothes, and they all, oh, oh. Aren't they beautiful? Aren't they magnificent? Isn't it beautiful? Except for this one little boy who's standing in the sidelines and watching the parade. And he points and he says, but he's not wearing anything. The emperor's not wearing any clothes.

[17:20]

And he, you know, speaks truth. He speaks truth to power. He's not afraid of... looking one way or another, protecting his reputation, being seen. He just sees what he sees. He's not wearing anything. And, of course, as soon as that little boy says it, everyone in the sidelines also says, he's right, he's right. I don't see any clothes either. And the whole thing comes tumbling down. I've been watching this documentary called Babies on Netflix. I think there's two seasons so far. And in the one we saw recently, these young babies, maybe as young as four or five months, point.

[18:22]

They point. They point. And they did a... kind of experiment where they had a person's their mother or yes I think their mother was with them and then the person doing the test and they showed them a kind of puppet show and very lively puppet show and the baby would point at the puppets and the person testing did three different things one is just look at the child. They didn't look at where they were pointing. They talked to the child and looked at the child and the child kept pointing and pointing. See, look, look. That was one of the tests. The other was the child pointed to the puppet show and the testing person looked at the puppet show and kept looking and the child kept pointing and pointing.

[19:24]

And the third was The child pointed at the puppet show, and the testing adult looked at the puppet show, looked back at the child, said something, looked back at the puppet show in relation to the child, and the child very soon stopped pointing. So in the first two instances, it wasn't satisfying. It wasn't relational, just staring one way or the other, but including what you're pointing at and the child and the interaction that they didn't need to point anymore. This pointing was called joint sharing, and it starts very young, where we want to include, we do include everyone around us. We want to include our community, starting with those closest to us, our family, but then the wider world, whoever we come in contact with.

[20:36]

Our lives are a relational field, not even in a relational field, but are a relational field, an all-inclusive field. relational feel, whether we know it or not, and whether our karmic experience feels it or not. And this is problematic, that we don't feel the truth of our relational life. There's a quote from Maya Angelou. She says, I've learned that people will forget What you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. And, you know, I would tweak it a little bit if I were to, what I would say is how you felt with them.

[21:47]

They'll never forget. how you felt with them. They'll never forget how you made them feel, how it was to be with them. That is unforgettable. And I think we can call up in our imagination, you know, family and friends and teachers with whom we felt seen, we felt listened to, we felt We felt that we were precious. My deep wish is that each one of you has felt this, knows what I'm talking about. People actually would say that about Suzuki Roshi. They felt that he saw them. He saw completely who they were.

[22:50]

and accepted them for who they were. These are words for each of us. How are we with our friends, with our family, with our teachers, with our Dharma brothers and sisters, with all beings? What is it that we're expressing in the relational field. And this expression is our understanding of the teaching expressed in this way, as well as our understanding of ourselves. The more we understand ourselves, the more we understand our own vulnerabilities, our own fears, our own karmic life. our own habits, the more we can understand the vulnerabilities, the frailty, the fears of others.

[24:02]

And the more we understand, the more compassion we have for all beings. And this is our Bodhisattva Lao, living for the benefit of others. So what gets in the way of this trust and ability to allow ourselves to be vulnerable as part of what it means to allow others to be who they are? What gets in the way of this for us? You know, I was, our own karmic life, our own experiences, our own education, our own ways we've been treated and

[25:19]

Whether or not we've been mirrored or listened to or seen will, of course, that's part of our karmic life. And this is something we need to examine, you know, be aware of. The trust that happens... between people, wherein there can be a relaxed feeling in body and mind when we're with people, allows for us to express our true self. I've been reading about... What gets in the way of that relaxed trust? Well, our past experience, for one.

[26:20]

And as we bring that into the present, we kind of... In mountain climbing, there's something called a haul bag. It's got the food and the water and ropes and all sorts of things, and it's hauled up the side of the mountain, and it's heavy. And you have to, but you need it. And you've got to haul it up. But without the haul bag, you can move pretty quickly. And so we often are carrying this haul bag with us that we don't know how to let go of and leave at the bottom of the mountain, you know. So trust between people. can't be, can't allow for so much. There's an old poem by the third ancestor, supposedly called Trust in Mind, Xin Xin Ming, Trust in Mind, and it's sometimes called Faith in Mind, and that character for trust or faith in that,

[27:43]

piece is it has two parts to it one is the radical on the left side for person and the other is words so in kind of studying the character kind of etymologically it's to be able to trust in someone's words rely on someone's words and to be able to, that those are upstanding words that you can rely on. So this is part of trust, but not the whole thing. When there isn't trust, one thing that happens in our brain, which to me is kind of amazing, is that when there is trust, we feel safe, we feel relaxed, and creativity can rise, curiosity can rise, listening is possible, all sorts of things.

[29:04]

When there's trust in the relational field and there's a sense of connection, And there's, you know, chemically, there's oxytocin is secreted, which is the kind of bonding chemical. Enormous amounts of oxytocin are secreted after a baby is born, not only for the mother before the baby is born and after and during lactation, but also for the father. Oxytocin in the father's bloodstream. And I would suspect if they did the studies, it would be in the grandmother's and grandfather's bloodstream or in any caretaker. What they found is the oxytocin or this chemical bonding arises. When we care for beings, the caretakers...

[30:07]

you know, adoptive parents or same-sex parents who are not able to have children taking care of a baby, and this oxytocin is generated. We are built, we are built for relationship. We are built for caring for one another. So this being able, To feel this connection takes time. It's not an immediate thing. Maybe between a baby and a caretaker and a caretaker with a baby, this naturally arises for most people, maybe not for everyone even. But between adults, this... relational bonding, there has to be some kind of trust there.

[31:13]

And this grows slowly. It's not immediate, necessarily. We have to give it time. We have to be together. We have to be with one another in all sorts of situations. I've been reading a lecture by Suzuki Roshi. That was from 1961. pre-Tasahara. Tasahara was in 1967. And... Suzuki Roshi's talking about... And I feel that he's thinking ahead, like foreshadowing what he would love to see someday, which did come to be, which is a place where people can... be together, live together, eat meals together, sit together, work together, and work with him and eat meals with him in day-to-day contact, taking care of one another, listening to one another, sharing a life, joint sharing.

[32:29]

I think we're built for this, and yet we may not have opportunities that are safe to do that in our life. We may well not have had these kinds of opportunities. And when there isn't trust, you know, we have functions of the brain that are on alert and vigilant 24 hours a day, 24-7. The reticular activating system, the RAS system, is on alert 24 hours a day for possible, well, actually for novelty, for something that's new or changed. But this new or changed could be a threat, and it could be a threat to one's life. It could be a threat to one's life as a social, communal, relational being.

[33:37]

So all these kinds of threats that can come to us, we're on alert for this. And we're also on alert not only for possible harm, harm of all kinds, harm of humiliation and being put down but also bodily harm we're on alert for that and we're also on alert for rewards of being able to get food and being able to have companionship and relational rewards so it's amazing this 24-7 system that's scanning the environment for these things We also have part of the brain called the amygdala, which is like a guard dog.

[34:40]

I read that it's described sometimes as a guard dog. And this guard dog is trained to prepare the body for, you may very well be very familiar with this, but for fight, flight, freeze, or a fourth one, which is appease. freeze, flight, fight, or appease. So how many times we can think about this, that the amygdala, by the way, when there's threat that's sensed, in less than a second, It bypasses the parts of the brain that are thinking, gauging, reference points, these kinds of things, and goes immediately to the reptilian part of the brain for this flight, fight, freeze, or appease.

[35:54]

The emperor's new clothes, you know. Frightened of being thought of in a social realm as ridiculous or stupid or loss of reputation. And so what do we do? Well, we appease. We go along with. And this amygdala, this is called the amygdala hijack. In less than a second, it sends stress hormone cortisol, you know, immediately to the parts of the brain that know about or that react in fight, flight, fright, freeze, appease. This, you know, I was not aware of appease as one of these reactivities.

[37:02]

So this happens when there's going to be both physical harm or social harm. And it bypasses all these other parts of the brain of creative thinking and problem solving and weighing things. All the cognitive functions are is looking at ourselves. Do we recognize this? Do we recognize strategies built coming from fear, coming from some lack of ability to trust those around us, trust our environment, trust our own hearts?

[38:12]

This is part of our karmic formations, part of the skandhas, part of the five aggregates, samskara, skanda. So there was a Zen teacher who's in our lineage, Tanka Shijun Daiyosho, and in a story... There's a quote from him where it says, if you are not devoted to walking among people, then you fall into dirt and mud, wearing feathers and horns. And that's a kind of idiom for acting like, you know, not like a human being. like a beast, although, you know, I don't know about that in terms of animals that we know and love.

[39:23]

However, this phrase, if you're not devoted to walking among people, then you fall into this situation. Walking among people, I think this is... This is our Bodhisattva vow, walking among people. And not only walking, but in this walking, there is listening. And from listening comes understanding. And from understanding comes compassion. And... this under wisdom and compassion as our way. So we can ask ourselves this question, how are we devoted?

[40:26]

Are we devoted to walking among people? What will it look like? Right now, during this time, what is walking among people? is this, I've been noticing the animation of the eyes, you know, behind masks, the power, you know, of people's twinkling eyes and openness. And how do we, in this situation, in this karmic situation, how are we going to devote ourselves to walking among people. So our practice, you know, over and over again in so many different ways is bringing up the relational.

[41:34]

We are born of the relational field. And recently someone was telling me about being in a situation. I think it must have been a Zoom situation because it was, you know, in the last weeks. Feeling that there were people there in the Zoom room who they recognized and trusted and knew. And that... It didn't even take that many people. But that was enough to feel that there was trust there. And that there was room and space and a relaxed space in order to draw on creative expression.

[42:38]

all of our thought processes, opening our heart. It's very powerful. It's very powerful to be trustworthy. If you're worthy of trust, then trust is born from that relational field. Others feel trust arising. So I began this talk thinking about ignorance and what flows from ignorance. I also wanted to say something that helps me to look at the work that needs to be done.

[43:51]

This is also from this babies documentary. They've been able to, scientists, neuroscientists, have been able to document that babies very young age can distinguish faces, not only faces of all different types, their family, strangers, different ethnicities, different from their own, but also small babies can distinguish the individuality of, for example, animals. Monkeys, actually, is what they had. And they showed these monkeys. And to me, they seemed, I could not tell one from the other by the faces.

[44:54]

But they were saying these young babies were able to distinguish different faces. But as they get older, this drops away. And what also drops away is the ability to distinguish different who were different from the family and the people around them. And I imagine there's probably a lot of, you know, survival, coping, and... evolutionary things where you need to recognize and pay attention to and prune all these other and pay attention to the people closest to you because those will see to it that you have what you need.

[45:56]

And so this as human beings we need to work as adults and in our maturity to re-understand and look at our relational field in a broader way than when we were younger. This is our work. This is, I think, human beings' work, and I want to look individually at the work that I need to do in this regard. So, so, being devoted to walking among people, being devoted to one another, brings, brings with it, great,

[47:06]

joy actually we might think well if I devote this is one of the things that comes up around the Bodhisattva vow if I devote myself to others you know what might happen to me or something like that and what we find is this devotion walking among people and benefits self and other. It's not just benefiting other. It benefits self and other because we appear from and are born from this relational field. The 10,000 things. This relational field, I'm kind of maybe conflating it. It sounds like I'm conflating it maybe, but how I'm understanding it is this great field of interconnectedness whereby we are conditioned by one another and condition one another so much so that we can't say that we exist as a separate self.

[48:27]

It's rather we're our impermanent process. of ever-changing and never-ending life where the 10,000 things come forward. Each circumstances, each situation, each person comes forward and realizes itself through us as us. As how we appear. So the relational field. Or our. We are. Creating it. It is creating us. There's. We are held. And we hold. This is.

[49:35]

There's a kind of faith here. you might say, and trust. And I think in our sitting practice, when we are able to allow whatever arises to arise without pushing it away, without trying to make it be one way or another, without trying to achieve something It's not about trying to even be calm or even to benefit others, trying to do those kinds of things. That even is saying too much. It's allowing the mysterious arising of life.

[50:36]

Conditioned by life. So my practice these days is to be as honest as I can. And to feel what I'm feeling and to listen. And out of this comes... You know, the three minds of the Tenzo, the joyful mind, ki-shin, the nurturing mind or parental mind, or Suzuki Roshi says, old lady mind, grandmother mind, rose-shin, this mind of nurturing, caring for, looking out for, and then... the last mind, the daishin, the magnanimous mind, that there's some trust that this can hold, that this is holding everything.

[51:54]

So may we each have the capacity not to turn away from our lives and to what our experience is, to ask for the help we need, and to be there for one another. And I wish for your well-being, for your health, and for your relaxed and open openness. to be ready for whatever arises. Thank you very much. Please chant together the closing verse. equally extended to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way beings are numberless I vow to save them delusions are inexhaustible I vow to end them

[53:30]

Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it. Before moving into time for questions and comments, I'd like to... that direct people's attention to the chat window where I'm putting in a link if you would like to make a donation to San Francisco Zen Center to keep these programs running. You really do rely on your generosity. So thank you very much. And I believe that Adrian Roshi will be taking questions and receiving comments. So if you'd like to express yourself, please raise your hand. Digitally is best. You should see somewhere on your device an option, maybe in more or maybe around participants to raise your hand.

[54:39]

So please go ahead and do so and I will call on you and bring you on. I see Judith. Good morning. Good morning, Judith. Linda, thank you so much. I have to say that Zoom, I felt like you were talking to me the whole time. It's just so old hippie trippy. So your talk was wonderful, and it was wonderful. perfect for today. And I am celebrating 39 years lean and sober today. And this morning, my granddaughter called me and your thing about grandmother mind or grandparent mind, you know, ever since she was born and I was at her birth,

[55:56]

I just got this mind that, you know, and it's been like that ever since. And this morning she called me and she was crying because she had lost her key last night to her house at a party. Her parents are away for the weekend. And she asked me if I would come and pick her up. And I said, of course, you know. And so she told me where she was, which wasn't too far from her home, because I have a key to her house. And I drove up through the Tenderloin, and I thought, you know, there but for the grace of this power greater go I. You know, people all sort of... drinking and using and hanging out. And I got her and, you know, I told, I said to her, you know, this is so wonderful.

[57:08]

You're calling me today because, and she said, wow, that's perfect. And, you know, So the other thing you said was, oh, so I had a bike incident in March. And I think I have no memory of it, but I think a guy pushed me over and I ended up with a concussion and a brain bleed and a fractured clavicle. And I know it was really a bummer. But I have no memory of it. I have no memory of the accident or the ambulance or the first day or two in the hospital. But because I am connected with other people and have been for many, many years, plus I do a gratitude list in the morning by text with a number of people,

[58:22]

So one person who had been a nurse heard about it, came over to San Francisco General. I have no memory of it, but it's like we're all, because we've chosen to stay interconnected, everybody rose up to help me. And, you know, I couldn't drive. I couldn't ride my bike for like six weeks. And people brought me groceries. My daughter took me to her, you know. So you're right. Yes. This trust, this. And so in AA, they say self-centeredness, that we think is the root of our troubles. So the whole thing is to drop this and to care about others.

[59:30]

And this morning, as you were talking, I just thought, yes, you know, Zen, it's just all of it is like, okay, how do we get, you know? Yeah. Judith, congratulations on your 39th. year anniversary. That's marvelous. And I just want to say this blessedness of all these people who are there for you. This did not just happen sort of happenstance. This is your dogged, devoted way to others, to your program, to your practice without Because it was a matter of life and death and you were there and you never looked back. Or I don't know if you look back or not, but here you are. I celebrate with you and thank you for coming this morning.

[60:33]

Yeah, thank you. I hope you stay healthy. Yeah, thank you. Before moving to the next question, I neglected to mention that We will be posting the Q&A also as part of the Dharma Talk, so please know that. And if you'd like to offer a question that won't be recorded, you can just send it via chat to me, the Zendo Events. Christopher. All right. You got me? Linda, thank you so much for a wonderful, wonderful talk. The part that hit me as this kind of like a metaphor, a framework for analyzing what I've seen happen over and over again in majority white Buddhist songs is the notion of the planting that the prophets show.

[61:38]

And it's not enough just to look at the planting out of the Pointing at the puppet show. Yes, yes. That it's not enough just to look at the puppet show or look at the person pointing, but to look back and forth. And it's just, it's been my experience that POC and in sanghas, including San Francisco Zen Center, have been very generous at the kind of pointing to the puppet show. Of like, you know, It's an apt metaphor, right? The puppets, like white privilege is kind of like puppeteering our white bodies unconsciously. Like we don't even know we're enacting our privilege in a harmful way. It's like we're puppets of it too. There's like a largely unconscious dimension to it, but it's incredibly harmful. And so that's a gift.

[62:42]

That pointing out is a gift. And then often that part of the equation kind of gets stuck and gunky and fragile and strange and we just get stuck there. We're only looking at that and only looking at ourselves and we're not looking back. We're trying to get fixated on the pointer and then they become kind of conspicuously hyper-visible but actually invisible too because we're just seeing them as a pointing person we're not doing the work of seeing what they're pointing to honestly and so it freezes on that end of things and so how do we as individuals and as collectives as practitioners actually see who's pointing and actually see what's being pointed at and establish this back and forth relationship and you know the metaphor just keeps unpacking itself beautifully And I just wanted you to kind of maybe speak to that as a practitioner and as a leader of a sangha, like how you see that, that honestly seeing both sides and going back and forth and creating that relationality, that seems like the crux of a liberation practice.

[63:58]

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I think. Part of why that struck me so strongly is the child who was pointing, they had to keep pointing. And it wasn't right when it was only half. But once the person looked at them and the show and back and forth, they could relax. And they didn't have to point anymore. They were on the same side looking and relating to what was going on. There was the same team, kind of. And I think that may be a definition of ally, you know. So, yes, our unconscious processes are not in our control. It's unconscious bias. However, once enacted, we can listen and we can respond to that, even though it may be not in our control.

[65:04]

And the consequences of our actions are not in our control. However, we can respond to both, even though they're not in our control. Yeah. There was another. Oh, I won't get into it. Watch the documentary. You might appreciate it. This baby's documentary. Because there were some other things about the same team where the babies preferred about. those they thought were on their team. Yeah. So anyway, that's another, that's another, yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Christopher. Thank you for helping organize yesterday's vigil. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Happy to do it again. Terry. Hello.

[66:09]

Oh, dear. I can't see you. You can't? I can see you. All right. Good. Yes. Yeah. And a very. Made me think about a lot of things and but especially something that has come forward in my mind. And a sort of a friendly acquaintance who. is homeless, and, you know, has been camping in her, she calls it camping, living in her car. And now she's got, she doesn't have COVID-19, but she has a collapsed lung. And she says, I need to move inside. And I have more room than I need.

[67:14]

And I am very, I'm trying to figure out how to deal with this. I'm, you know, high-risk person if I did get the virus. And I don't feel that I could trust her to stick with any, if she moved in. I don't feel that I could trust her to stick with whatever rules about what she does outside. I just don't. I mean, she's destitute. She's been destitute a long time. And I'm trying to figure out what... I'm trying to... I have been... just pushing it to the side and it was already coming forward. I'd already decided to, I'll have to talk with this friend who is, you know, very, very generous and open about this.

[68:20]

And then it seemed like your talk was exactly about this. And so I just, I just wonder if you can give me some, words of wisdom. I have not responded to her since she texted me that she had a collapsed lung and needed to move inside because I just, I honestly, I definitely want to be able to stand behind anything that I offer to her. Yeah. Well, I think the last thing you said, to say yes and not have it be wholeheartedly yes, it won't work. It won't work for her. It won't work for you. So what can you wholeheartedly say yes to? Maybe it's contacting social services, doing all that.

[69:23]

Maybe you've already done that. You know, getting her connected, finding another place, doing all the legwork. However, there's a boundary there where coming into your home at this time with the causes and conditions of your own life, you say no. But it's a loving no, and you do other things. I think to allow someone in when you don't want them and where you can't, there isn't trust. you said there isn't trust, then more difficulties will happen, and it won't be a benefit, actually, true benefit. And you have an aching heart. Would it that it were different, you know, that I was younger?

[70:25]

Yeah. had my own little cabin in the back for her or whatever. However, this is what, this is what it is. So accepting that and accepting some grief maybe about that on her behalf and yet to not have like tip over into, yes, because that goes against something that you're pretty clear about. Yeah. Okay, thank you. That's very, very helpful. Thank you so much. And, you know, of course, I feel, you know, how bodhisattva. The bodhisattva lives for the benefit of beings, and you are included in that. It's not everybody else but me. It's not the bow. Yeah, that's right. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me of that. And someone on the chat asked if you could offer a reference for those fight, flight, freeze, appease, where that comes from.

[71:37]

That was from this book called, can you see this? Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond. And it was recommended to me by a high school teacher, one of our priests, Erin Merck, who teaches high school. And this was one of the things that the teachers at where she teaches was looking at. Yeah. Thank you. Is that a question or comment from Grace? Grace, go ahead. If you can unmute. Linda, I got to thank you so much.

[72:38]

Thank you. Good to see you, Grace. I got a question last week, which seems to be totally relevant from Nancy Petra, which is, how do you make the decision? You personally make the decision about... What ally you're going to be today, because I know how many requests come before you. How do you decide where you're going to throw your energy as an ally? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. I mean, one thing is to notice where you're drawn, you know, where there's already affinity. You know, affinity, it's almost like it can't be built sometimes. It's there. You feel a draw or a pull towards a situation or a group that's working or a person. So there's that.

[73:40]

And also, yeah, where is their wholeheartedness? Because there's lots of pulls, as you know, from your life. Yeah. Some there isn't a wholehearted yes to even though it's valid and important, I'm sure. So I think it's a stomach, gut, heart thing, you know. And then there's also you can add to it what needs me the most or what's needed the most here is another kind of lens to put on it, yeah. And how do you look at it? what's needed the most, what lens, what part of your body feeds that decision? Yeah. Also the gut. I think so. I think so. Because, you know, whenever I, like I read about some small nonprofit that's doing, I don't know, community gardening, and they're all, there's wonderful things all over, small and large and international and neighborhood.

[74:49]

And You know, and often it's relational. You know somebody. They're working at that garden. And so you're going to donate and give and work with them. So the relational thing, I think, is a part, is a big part. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. There are no more questions or comments. Shall we conclude? I just wanted to say one thing, which is I've been noticing with these Zoom events that, you know, when they end, they end. It's over, done, everybody's gone. And it's very different. I just did an evening with Jane Hirschfeld conversation, poetry, and then when it was over, it was over.

[75:54]

And She was saying if it were Tassahara, you'd walk back together in the evening from the retreat center, maybe stop and have a bath or quiet murmuring and talking together. Or you'd, if it's a Dharma talk, you have tea and you stand out behind the Zen, don't talk. And that's in the Zoom life, in the Zoom world we're in, that's not, it doesn't happen. It's when it's over, it's done. And there's, you know, I, I don't know if you feel it, folks. I'm seeing some heads that are nodding, but I certainly feel it, this connection, and then it evaporates. So I wish you all the best. Thank you so much for coming and staying for the Q&A. Thank you so much. Thank you, Linda. Thank you, others. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thanks a lot.

[77:02]

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