This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I thought we'd start out with just, you know, some breathing exercises that I use. And it helps when you're... sitting, but also just listening, you know, to the world, listening to voices, listening to music, whatever. So I wanted to share it with you. You might, some of you might have done this breathing before, but I thought to share it would be helpful for all of us. And then I'll speak for about, you know, 15 minutes, and then I'd like to hear from you and engage your voices, you know, get to know you that way. So, all right. So I'd like us to begin with just one hand on the belly, one hand on the lower belly, the Hara.

[01:07]

And so when you inhale, I want you to let that belly out rather than inhale with it in. So it's like blowing it out like a balloon as far as you can get. So what you're doing is getting air down here rather than breathing here. So I'm ask you to put your hand here so you know that that's what's happening for sure for you. So it's taking it in, belly out, and then exhale from the chest. Come on in, Dan. You can sit there. So it's breathing in again with the belly out, going out, and then exhale, letting it blow out from the chest. So normally we do the opposite. We breathe in from the chest and we breathe out from the chest, actually. So I'm trying to get it down lower. This is very helpful for settling yourself in zazen or just settling yourself, period. So let's try it again.

[02:18]

You're breathing in and pushing the belly out. When you go to sit, maybe you could do this for like two or three minutes before you actually just sit or before you even come to the Zendong. A few times. If you do it very long, you fall asleep. Because you get very relaxed. And so here's another one. So put one hand, doesn't matter what nostril it is, and just breathe in. And close it, let it out on the other side. So you breathe it in. Out on the other side. If you notice there's quite a bit of mucus, I suggest cutting down on the sugar.

[03:23]

So breathe it in. And let it out. On the other side. So it's getting air on both sides of the brain. And if you notice, you might notice a releasing in your head the more you do that. And then out the other nostril. Breathe it in and then out. That's a good one to do as well before your neighbor sits next to you in a zendo. Good. So thank you all for being here. I really appreciate it. And I really want to say thank you to Greg Thain. He runs my fan club.

[04:26]

And he's the only member. No, I'm kidding. But anyway, I want to thank her for inviting me this year and next year. I really appreciate being invited. I don't take it for granted at all to be able to come to Tassajara and sit with everyone and just be here in this beauty. And I want to thank Leslie Meyerhoff also for her work here. And thank you, Michael Eno, for the work that you do in helping to set these events up and keep things going. And thank you, Rachel. for your assistance and everyone else for helping everything that happens here. We're all in here together. So I thought I'd start out with this poem and I'm going to talk about what I call the three elixirs of Sangha and that's compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation. And you'll find out why I'm calling these elixirs.

[05:31]

You know, and why an elixir is like a medicine, something very thick that you could take down and hold. So being that we're in community, I thought this would be helpful. It has helped me. I'm sharing something that has helped me. So I want to start out with a poem that I wrote when I came in as Shuso this past fall at City Center, San Francisco City Center. where the abbess Christina Lanher invited me to be Shusou, which is head student. And the teacher who ordained me was Blanche, Zenkai Blanche Hartman. And so both of them invited me to come and be head student. So during that time I spent the first two weeks lying around in bed modeling how to do that. And during that time I wrote a few poems. And so I want to share one with you to lead into a kind of different angle around compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation.

[06:34]

So you can close your eyes if it's best for you to listen to a poem this way or at a glance or just whatever you feel. And try to use that breathing, you know, where you're breathing in and your belly is out, going out. Life is no endurance test in which we must race. like wild horses being chased from behind, barely hearing the sound of creeks running over small stones. Rushing forward, we fall over jetted cliffs in an earth-pounding gallop to claim the gifts thought to be scarce. At the bottom of the canyon, the serenity we thought was lost crawls out from inside and presents itself while we are on the ground. No need to compete for the inherent gifts, exhausting ourselves in fierce competition, making less or more of our lives, blinded by the beauty of another's cloak.

[07:48]

There is no more admirable work than to breathe, to turn back in the middle of the race, avoiding crumbling edges along the way. You turn to the creek where water rolls over stones. And then, ever so lightly, you make footprints in the direction of home, where your heart lives, where tea is ready and you are invited. So I'll read it again a little later, okay? Just hold the little piece that you got. Just a little piece that you got. So I was looking at this idea of competition and looking at, we just had had the presidential race around this time. And I was looking at competition in our society and in our lives.

[08:51]

And somehow it told me that it had a lot to do with with our capacity to have compassion or to experience compassion. You can't have it. You have to experience it. Experiencing forgiveness and experiencing reconciliation. And I, at the time, as I said, I was Shuso. So I had this idea that came up and I thought, oh, you know, I thought I was grown past this. You know, we always think we're excelling somewhere. And so I had this idea that I was on top. of this mountain as Shuso. And I didn't like it there. I wanted to be on the bottom. So where I thought everyone else was. So I had this idea that the top, there was a top and there was a bottom. And I went to someone to tell them I want to come off the mountain. I'd like to climb down. I don't like it. It's too much energy, too much attention. It's exhausting, you know. And I didn't tell anyone.

[09:54]

I just kept that in my head for a little while. eventually I did go see somebody outside of Zen Center because I didn't think they would be happy with a chuseau that wanted to leave. So that was thinking about, it was way too much. So I went to this person, I said, I feel like I'm top of the mountain and I'm like maybe three feet from the top, you know. And if I keep going, I'll be at the top of the mountain. And I don't want to, you know, not make it. Because if I do, then I don't know if I could live with myself. So the person said, well, what will happen to you? Who will you be when you get to the top of the mountain? What self is that? Who will you be when you get to the top of this mountain? And I just had to laugh, you know, because of course I knew that I would be nobody other than who I am. And so, but it really opened up inside myself that I really did have this sense of top and bottom, in and out.

[11:00]

And that in communities and in sanghas and in places and in society, there were people that are top and people that are bottom. And so I saw that competition really, really feeds that notion of top and bottom, in and out, not included, excluded. included and that there was this sense that comes like just from the earth where we live that we must compete with each other and I thought that this was a great place to begin to look at compassion for myself so I'm just going to start with compassion and I found that being in Sangha that compassion forgiveness and reconciliation. I saw them as medicines of Sangha because none of these things, you will not have an experience of compassion or forgiveness or reconciliation without being interrelated with other people, without being in Sangha, with being in community, being connected.

[12:09]

You cannot have that experience of compassion or forgiveness. reconciliation and so I really saw that maybe all my life I have been working to get off this so-called bottom place and that that caused some kind of competing you know like in the poem running to the edge running to compete for the inherent gifts the things that are already there I'm trying to compete for so that it all looks different in the end and so it was that kind of competition was enabling my ability to have compassion. I was too busy competing. And if I was competing, I cannot have compassion. I cannot have forgiveness. If there's a top and a bottom, I cannot have compassion. If I'm on the top, if we are on the top, and they are on the bottom, there's no compassion. And so I sat with this for a while, you know, and began to come up with a few questions around compassion.

[13:14]

And I just wanted to offer this to you. We will continue this topic tomorrow as well. So if we don't get through to it all today, because I really want to hear from you. So I call compassion a gentle response to life, to self and others and things. And are the shapes of the compassion. So that's why we have the Heart Sutra within this practice and other Dharma practices. The Heart Sutra is that place of learning to be compassionate, to experience the compassion. Because where we are now, because we think there's a top and bottom, we might fall off the top. We feel we're not doing things right. Or, you know, we come into complications. We feel rejected. We feel ignored. All of these things come up.

[14:17]

Misunderstood, being wrong, all of these things come up in community. And they come up for a reason. And we chant the Heart Sutra in tandem with all of these things coming up. And so I bring this point to you. So when you're chanting the Heart Sutra and you're arousing the lesson that was taught to Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva, you're arousing that compassion. And so why does it go, know this, know that, know this, know that? No distinction. No distinction between this and that. No up and down. No top and bottom. No in and out. And so when you get to that place where you feel wronged or there's a place of rejection, maybe you're being rejected or you're the rejecter, or judgment, or invisibility, you're at that very place in which compassion can be experienced. You're at the door of it in which you can actually take in that heart sutra that we chant consistently. you can actually take that in as medicine, that compassion, that elixir.

[15:20]

In there, there are many teachings. You don't even have to go study all of the details of it. So let me go study the skandhas. That's admirable, and it would be good to do that. But if you just start taking it in, just the feeling of that, what it would be like to just let things be and to understand that what you're feeling is your heart. Because in this practice and in all practices, there's going to be that place in which you're going to need to experience that compassion as you move along. And so the reason why I added forgiveness onto that is without compassion, there's no forgiveness. So in compassion, can you accept who you are? Can you accept who you are just as you are without working on somebody else to make you... allow you to be who you are. I'm going to work on you so I can be me. How is that for you? Would that work? No, not really.

[16:22]

No. You're just going to start here. Can you accept who you are? You don't have to accept me. That's not the work here. That's not the work. Can you not let in another's negative impression of you? Or even if it's not negative, can you Watch what is imposed upon you versus what you feel of yourself in your own life. These are questions to arouse compassion. Can you continue with love when love is not returned? Can you have an open heart when it feels as though others' hearts are closed? Can you sense your own open heart? And most times we can. That's where the tears usually come from, when you feel wronged or neglected or put aside. Those tears come from that place in your heart, you know, that says this is not true. And it's not true for anyone, not just your life. So can you continue with love when love is not returned?

[17:26]

This is sort of the basis of that compassion. Heart Sutra is where we start. You know, it's not a flute that we chant it, as I said. And then forgiveness comes from compassion. So I'm just going to read you this little short piece here. The most difficult times to be compassionate are when a person does something you find hard to accept or when loving those who are unwilling to return such love. In the face of not receiving love or what we think is love or in the face of rejection or what we feel as rejection, forgiveness becomes crucial for continuing the path of compassion. So some of us feel compassion is over here. Oh, this is a time for compassion. Then we go over here. This is a time to forgive. Well, they're not separate. They're all one. They're all one. And so to forgive or not to forgive is a choice of being free or not. Yet forgiveness is not meant to just unburden us of our pain.

[18:29]

It is an evolutionary journey into the willingness to forever let go of anger, violence, prejudice, bitterness, and revenge. In the midst of our greatest hurt and pain, to forgive is to see that we all struggle and act out when we are confused or filled with debilitating emotions. Forgiving is not only an action that takes place after the regrettable events. Right in the middle of the events, we can forgive by pausing when we hear the voice in our heads that say, I've been wronged. In the pause, we can see ourselves. and or the other person struggling with past life experience in the present moment. Many of us have difficult lives. And so we have to understand and realize that we all have our places. We all have our challenges. And so some of us live that apologetic life in which we say, if you are frequently saying, I'm sorry, all the time, take a look at that.

[19:34]

Take a look at how often you might say that. And see if you can move into, instead of apology, into forgiveness, starting with your own life. And then I'm going to read a little bit about reconciliation, but we will go back through these as we're talking. So in reconciliation, we reach the place where we are willing to look softly upon one another. We are willing to abandon stories, rumors, and gossip. We are willing to sit face to face to explore and work through misunderstanding and discrimination. And then once the reconciliation happens, we're willing to let the story go. So what happens a lot of times in the community, we continue talking about, did you hear about what happened? And oh, yes. And it just keeps going in the story. You know, you hear stories of things that happened 20 years ago, you know, still going. And feeding that in just takes away our complete experience of reconciling with each other, even if you don't know the people.

[20:35]

You don't have to know the people. The energy is just there. And so I'm offering compassion, the experience of compassion and forgiveness and reconciliation as elixirs during those times in which you feel in your way of competing, you might find yourself in these places that don't feel so good. You know, there is no up and down, no top, no bottom. The positions we hold are not positions as in the world. These are positions to help further the Dharma, to create an environment in which we live. And there's no graduation. How many people graduated? You filled out the application, now come on. There's no graduation. No promotions. More practice. Become a priest. More practice. More practice.

[21:36]

Practicing what? Not the forms, not this, not that. But practicing the unfolding of your own lives. Having that become a part of your life to a point you're not practicing. It's just happening. It's just unfolding. You know, some people are practicing to be very good. I'm practicing to be improved. I'm sitting Zazen, so I'm solid, so that people can't see my disruption, my discord. That's not what we're doing. We're unfolding. We're human beings. It's going to happen. You're going to fall off that chair, I guarantee you, if you're human. You're going to have emotions if you're human. You're going to have them. So this is not a practice to move those emotions aside. So I only speak to this because I do have my experiences in many communities and just in society, our own society. So I'm just going to open up the floor to you and then I'll spend a little time again reading the poem and then I have a chant that I'd like to share with you to end the session.

[22:47]

So did anybody get kind of something happening for them as I was speaking about this sense of competing or the sense of maybe looking at your own places of rejection and invisibility and using the competition and using the environment to deal with your rejection or invisibility or being ignored or those kinds of things using what is happening here rather than allowing whatever is happening to unfold for you and seeing that as what this is. what Sangha is. Let's stop there. Yes. Yes. If you find that it's quite you know it's a sentence in your life that constantly happens

[23:56]

then you might be using apology as an excuse not to really face and deal and confront with the things you need to do, confront before it happens or in the midst of it happening. So you might rely, it's kind of like a backdoor hatch and escape. So I know I can apologize later, but right now I'm going to tell you off. You know, I'll just tell you I'm sorry later. You know, I know this is not really good, but you can stop before that if you find yourself doing it a lot. Now, It's okay if I'm not saying apologies are wrong thing at all or a bad thing at all. But if it's everything you do, you live an apologetic life. I know people who say I'm sorry all the time. I mean I know someone my only relationship with that person is I'm sorry. And I just have compassion because I understand that that's the place where that person is. They can't get before that I'm sorry. They can't see themselves. So I'm sorry is how they see themselves as a person that at least can say I'm sorry.

[25:01]

And that gives them some type of lift. And I see that, but I can have compassion for that person. For me, for myself, because I feel that way too. Like I want to say I'm sorry to everything, but I don't. Because it's not what's always needed. It just seems like an erasure of things sometimes. which is not being erased, nothing's being erased. We don't, we can't erase parts of our lives like chalk, Milo. Recently someone asked me to apologize to them for something and I didn't know what to do and I just didn't feel like an apology sent him out of me. I didn't really, I didn't say that I had nothing to be sorry for but I also couldn't say I'm sorry. I said that I would try to express whatever harm I may have caused, even if I see it now.

[26:01]

Try to reconcile that over time. It was kind of beautiful to just hold it. Hold all of that, what's going on, and watch it shift and change and feel more. There's the reconciliation of ongoing response. There's something I can say, I'm sorry, can be an eraser. It can also stop the process of really So when you said that to the person, did that help? I don't think it helped at the time, but I think it helped overall. Because I'm staying close to that person and close to my feelings and keeping them not closing down. Yeah, it is, and I think Of course you don't have to say what someone wants you to say, but it's understanding from that place of compassion from that time when you might have felt that.

[27:06]

You would like somebody to apologize. This person was courageous enough to ask for it, you know, but just really feeling when you felt that you would like somebody to apologize, what you really are asking is to be seen, you know, and to be understood and to be felt. And sometimes you can say, I see you. I do see you. And I know what, you know, what has happened. You know, acknowledge, they want acknowledgement. And sometimes, I'm sorry, it's not an, even if you had said it, it might not have been enough acknowledgement. So I think what you said was great. But just to know that, you know, one of the things that happens when we're... really close together like this in community is that it's an intimate and vulnerable place to be. And so it's very hard to allow that vulnerability to rise and then wake up tomorrow and still see the same person, you know, every day. So I do understand that, you know, from my own experience. But I also feel that, you know, to be as most authentic as you can and seeing someone and feeling them from the heart and not having kind of a packed answer,

[28:12]

or something you've learned in a workshop, you know, that let's do this, you know. I was here one time and some friends of mine were having, you know, going head to head and then one of the friends said, let's talk. And she said, well, I'm going to do this thing called looping, you know, with her. I don't know. It's a process. I don't know about looping. And it's a process. I guess you listen and you speak and you listen. She kept saying, I'm going to go over there and do the looping. And I said, wait a minute. Before you go loop, I didn't know what it was, what the looping was, so excuse me for my ignorance around that. I said, before you go there, I want you to really see what in your heart do you want to say. And she just really started crying. She said, she's my friend. I said, and why don't you go say you're my friend and cry. Forget about the looping. Let's loop later because you're going to miss an opportunity to reconnect to this friend, a Dharma friend that you're going to see at dinner. after you do the looping, you know?

[29:13]

So this is the specialty of this. This is the specialty. You won't be able to do this other places. This is really, really genuine place, environment. Elixirs left and right. Medicine, I call it. Left and right. Not easy medicine. Hard to swallow. Hard to keep down. I'm worried that I'm not going to be safe. I'm not going to have enough. I didn't really have a question, but I can hear you keep talking about it, still that it can cement in my mind. If you could say more, it's all attached to an I, of course, and worry about myself being something, how can my conflicts or all this friction, like,

[30:32]

How do I use sangha to heal itself? The friction, you don't have to use sangha. Sangha is here. And the friction is going to come up quite naturally. The same friction and tension that's out in the world. It's the exact same friction. But you just don't get to go home for dinner. You know, you have to see the person in the morning, in the evening, lunch, all the time. So that's, to me, the elixir of it, even though it's the hard medicine. It could be tough and bitter medicine. But I think that it is the I involved in it, and we all know that. I am this, and that's why I'm feeling bad because you don't realize I'm this, you know, or something like that. But I think when sometimes you can just start with the simple things. You said something about not getting enough. That kind of stuck with me. And these things can come up for you just in the forms or just, you know, in oreoche where we have oreoche where the ceremony where you eat with the bowls and you're just not sure you're not going to get enough of the pasta you like or whatever it is you know because the person serving it doesn't serve enough or whatever you're afraid you're not going to get what you need because you're used to this and you're used to that you know so those kinds of things so those are inside of you and they operate when whatever you do whatever you do if you go and you're helping a teacher

[31:56]

You're not going to get enough attention from the teacher. If you're going to cook in the kitchen, you're not going to get enough. It just kind of follows you. So it's a time to really stop and look at how in that way it keeps you from, because when you don't get enough, you probably get angry and there's no place for reconciliation. There's no forgiveness and there's no compassion. The compassion is okay. I really do acknowledge, sometimes in compassion, just acknowledging. I'm not going to get enough. There is a conflict here. There's a tension here. The tension is the same tension except we're living together. That is out there. I mean, that's what kept me from running and screaming because I realized when I went out there, it's just going to be a bigger pull of the same world that's in here. It's just in here we have an opportunity to sit and we have teachers. And we have an opportunity to read or, you know, be with nature and understand that it is us.

[33:00]

That nature is us. And so everybody says, I don't feel like I'm nature, you know. Well, just hold that you're in a body. And nature is form. So you are form. And you're part of the other form. Nature is form. So if you can just hold that. You know, sometimes even when you're feeling the conflict, that it's just the same nature. That's why we're out here. You know, we're seeing things evolve, unfold right now. There's an unfolding song going on right now, you know, unfolding on, you know, those kinds of things. You know, it's all unfolding in one existence. So far, they haven't discovered any other forms on any other planet, I don't think. So we're lucky. What about self-love?

[34:10]

You don't have a question about it? It's a topic, a term that people use, self-love, and I don't know what necessarily at all means. I have a friend who did an entire dissertation on it, self-love. And when I asked her, what did she find out about self-love? And it kind of boils back down to the truth of it not so much being about the love we think love is. you know, the concepts of love at all. You know, it kind of boiled down to that there is this way in which we have to, we don't have to, but we sit with just being our human selves and giving ourselves that place to live, a space to live in this world, saying, I belong here, you know.

[35:13]

I feel like Buddha's teachings were all about that. People don't use that word. But not self-love, like the self-I love. But when we say no self here, you hear that? Oh, no self, so how can we have self-love? Well, if you're going to use self or the word self, you're definitely talking about the other. If you're even going to say the word self, you're talking about the other as well. So no self, it doesn't mean zero. It means that there's no self in and of itself. That we're all, it's just another way of saying we're all related, interdependence. That's why there's no self. When I walk out in the street, they don't know nothing about Zen Center or priesthood or anything. Or if I go read from my book, I'm not an author as soon as I leave the reading. I'm just some bald-headed woman on the street. So these things are relational.

[36:19]

You're talking to me and I'm talking with you. Does that necessarily mean every moment I'm the teacher and the student? Not really. Not really. We're just engaging in a process and sharing. That's all Buddha asks is sharing. All the teachings are from his experience of life with the monks and his own life, his own reflection, his own dreams. So I don't really have a definition for that self-love. Michael. Most of us grew up in a place where our parents didn't compare us to other people, they compared us to our brothers and sisters, or we compared ourselves to our brothers and sisters, or we compared ourselves to other kids in our class.

[37:22]

And we do that in college, we do that in high school, we do that at our jobs. And so we have this way of knowing how we're doing, this way of touching and going, doing okay here i'm not doing okay over there but it's like this whole set of languages internally around how am i you know and then you come to a place that's a lot of story like this and in your head you might buy into the fact that okay so we're not supposed to be like in some sort of competition with each other you know but if i showed up here on day one and you know i kind of understood what the teachers were saying is pretty understandable to me, and the forms were really easy, and I digested them, and it just all kind of flowed, you know. But it didn't for other people, mostly. I might feel one way, based on my background, and just vice versa. If I came here, and it was just saying, oh, I can't get all this stuff, it's all abstract, and blah, blah, blah, and everybody else felt the same way, I might feel the same. But they didn't feel that way, you know, so it's like this reflection of, how am I doing here?

[38:25]

So, Can you talk a little bit about like the new internal language or a new first step or a new way of approaching? I mean, I've got my own ideas, but I know you probably have some thoughts on this. And I just I was thinking, well, OK, you know, where do you go when you arrive? Well, you hit on it right in the beginning when you said and we're supposed to not compete. Forget it. you're going to compete. We live in a society that says, compete, get to the top, accomplished. And then we come in here looking to be graduated and promoted for the sake of something. And I found that for sake of something is rooted in that place in which we come in of the invisibility and that place where we feel wronged or rejected somewhere compared to our brother or sister that was really great, you know, that in somebody else's eye.

[39:29]

But in the poem, which I'll read again, there inside, we walk in with our own inherent life as it is. And we have an opportunity to be there without the comparison of the you and the me, the up and the down, the superior and the inferior. We have an opportunity to unfold the just being. And you do that when you're in Zazen, although some people want to sit I sit better than he does or she does. We still might want to do that. But if you just breathe and just sit facing the wall, doing nothing and gaining experience of doing nothing and being nobody, gain that experience just right there in the moment, the feeling. You can walk with that feeling in the world, just not doing nothing. You know, even if you might... tend toward it. You're a human being. You're going to tend toward jealousy. You're going to tend toward envy. You're going to be heard inside because things don't feel right because we're human. But I think the first thing when that happens, I'm saying, is to look at that place in which you are competing and in which you are turning your back away from that inherent life that you've already been given.

[40:36]

When they say unsurpassed life, they're talking about there's nothing that can be surpassed by what we've been given. this life, nothing can surpass it. If we could really feel that, not believe it, feel it. Because it doesn't matter if you don't know the definition of unsurpassed. Just feel that could this be it? And then we go, oh no, this is it? Oh no, well then deal with that too. But I feel that that is when we're getting to that place where it It feels very competitive and tension and friction and all of these things, you know, people coming with the ideas of what you should do and you're coming to what they should do. These are opportunities. These are just chances to take in that medicine, you know, see, you know, have that. Who are you? Sometimes I ask myself, who do you think you are? You know, when I start feeling like, oh, he, he, she, she, da, da, da, and who do you think you are?

[41:42]

Who do you think you are, Zenji? Right now. And just pull back out of the competition into the ever-presence of all of our lives, the ever-being right now like we are here right now. This is special. I have to keep saying it. As hard as it is to take time out of your life to do this. One woman told me she didn't understand where I was going. She said, it's so great to take out... because God has given you so much. And I really loved that. I knew what she was saying, to take time out for God because he's given you all this. At first I was like, well, wait a minute, let me explain to you where I'm going. And then I just felt it didn't really matter. It was the message. The message was that I was feeling that call. or whatever it was, and it could be any reason why you're here. It doesn't matter what the reason. Some people think it has to be very inspiring.

[42:44]

Whatever has gotten you here, congratulations. Congratulations on what work you could do for yourself walking in the world. And you'll know. You'll see. You don't have to know the details. When you walk out, you feel it. You just feel it. And you don't have to be different than anybody. You just feel this other presence inside yourself, which is you, your life, your heart. You know, so that I feel into my heart when I'm in the, you know, hmm. You know, I have a sister that makes a lot of money, you know. And I was supposed to be the smart one who was going to make a lot of money. And, you know, I used to worry about that. Like, I was supposed to make a lot of money. You know, because I was the smart one, you know, who I thought I was, you know. And I look at her now, she's still the one who makes a lot of money, you know, more money than, you know, me in that sense, if I were to compete with her.

[43:49]

But there was other areas in her life I would never give up mine for, ever, like this, never. She just does not have the open heart enough to do, walk into a threshold, a gate that says, come here. and do this work. She's too afraid. And so she has a lot of money because she's very afraid. And I figured that out Ray later. I said, oh, she's very fearful. That's why she has a lot of money. And I'm thinking, she's all that. You know, so you just never know. And I began to see her and love her in her fear and ask her for more money. Yeah. I want to read this poem to you again. Let's see. Let's see what I did with it. And then I want us to do one chant before we leave. And let's see.

[44:52]

This happens when you bring too much paper. So this poem, I didn't name it, it's called Human Race. So I kind of twisted it around there. Life is no endurance test in which we must race, like wild horses being chased from behind, barely hearing the sound of creeks running over small stones. Rushing forward, we fall over jetted cliffs in an earth-pounding gallop to claim the gifts thought to be scarce. At the bottom of the canyon, the serenity we thought was lost crawls out from inside. and presents itself while we are on the ground. No need to compete for the inherent gifts, exhausting ourselves in fierce competition, making less or more of our lives. Blinded by the beauty of another's cloak, there is no more admirable work than to breathe and to turn back in the middle of the race.

[46:05]

avoiding crumpled edges along the way. You return to the creek where water rolls over stones. And then ever so lightly, you make footprints in the direction of home, where your heart lives, where tea is ready, and you are invited. So I want to see, we're going to have to share this because this is, let's see. got quite a few chants that stuck in here. I'm going to pass them this way and we'll just chant this together. Are there any more questions as I'm passing this or any one more response? Here's some more. Here. I got a few more. Passed to that. This chant is also in this book. I'm not selling the book but if you want to get a book in the library and copy it you can do that. You can copy anything out of this book you want.

[47:06]

So are there any more questions about what? So we will talk more tomorrow and maybe a different poem. I don't know. But I just want to make sure before we read this chant. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[47:58]

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