This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. I'd like to introduce our speaker today. She is Lopan Rita Gross, and Lopan is a title which means senior teacher. It's similar to the word Acharya in Sanskrit. And her teaching brings together academic and dharmic practice perspectives. She's been a professor of comparative studies and religion, and is a Buddhist dharma teacher authorized to teach in several Tibetan Buddhist lineages. Her Buddhist teaching is non-sectarian, and she offers teachings for Zen, Vipassana, and Tibetan centers.

[01:03]

She's one of six senior teachers appointed by her eminence Jetson Khandro Rinpoche to teach at Lotus Garden. Khandro Rinpoche is western center she has specialized in topics pertaining to buddhism and contemporary issues including gender issues ecology religious diversity and she teaches also about the implications of having an accurate understanding of buddhist history for buddhist practitioners so i'm looking forward to an interesting talk please welcome Rita Gross, thank you for coming. Good morning, everyone. Sound is okay? Yes, sound is okay? A little echoey there. I think it's okay now.

[02:05]

Thank you for inviting me, and thank you for having such a large turnout here. I'm very happy to be here, and I'm honored to be here. able to present the talk at this Saturday morning, Saturday Sangha event here. I have been at the Zen Center of San Francisco quite a bit, though not for about 10 years at this point. So when I come back here, it's in many ways very familiar to me. though I don't know many of the people who are here now. Only a few of the people are people who were coming regularly when I would be invited to teach, which was in the middle to the late 90s and into 2000, into the 2000s. I was scholar in residence here for a month in the summer of 1998, which was a great time. Also for me, coming back to San Francisco Zen Center brings memories of my first teacher, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who was a friend of Suzuki Roshi.

[03:11]

And I know that he taught here and that the two of them had a great Dharma friendship. And actually, I was a member of the Shambhala Sangha for many years. And Trungpa Rinpoche... borrowed many Zen forms, which he taught us, including Orioki. So I have done many, many, many Orioki meals over the years. The bowing, while it's a little unfamiliar, isn't completely unfamiliar to me. My great temptation is always to do a Tibetan bow instead of a Japanese bow when I'm here on these cushions. So the introduction gave a very good synopsis of the kinds of things I'm teaching about these days and that I think are really important for the successful transplant of Buddhadharma in the West. I'm really primarily concerned with what works for Westerners, not with preserving Asian cultural forms simply for the purpose of preserving them, though for other people, that's really important.

[04:22]

What I want to talk about this morning is the importance of understanding and contemplating the foundation teachings. The longer I practice Buddhism, the more I study Buddhism, the more completely convinced I become that we need to have a very firm grounding in two things. In the teachings of the historical Buddha, as recorded in the Pali scriptures, and a very firm grounding in what I call the foundation teachings of Buddhism, the teachings that were taught and emphasized by the historical Buddha himself. I came to this conviction more clearly as I became more familiar with the way Buddhism was taught or is taught in most Tibetan contexts. As you know, Trungpa Rinpoche was very innovative in the way he taught Buddhism. And so in my years working primarily in the Shambhala world, I wasn't quite so aware of the traditional Tibetan presentation of Buddhism.

[05:32]

which does not emphasize the foundation teachings very much, and it doesn't emphasize the Pali texts at all because they were never translated into Tibetan. That was one of my great shocks and one of my great disappointments when I learned it caused something of a crisis of faith for me, which I had to get over because as a Westerner... I had long since realized that the Pali texts are actually the root texts of Buddhism, and everything comes from them. So if you don't know them or if you ignore them, in my view, you have a fairly unbalanced view of Buddhism and what Buddhism is about. I started to feel, after some years of working more with my current teacher, with much more emphasis on a lot of form practice, very complicated visualizations, and sadhanas, which I had done also to some extent in the Shambhala context, but they were really, really emphasized in this much more traditional Tibetan tradition I became immersed in.

[06:42]

I began to feel that studying both Mahayana and and Vajrayana Buddhism. Vajrayana Buddhism for sure, but I would say Mahayana Buddhism as well, without a firm foundation in the foundation teachings, the foundation practice in the Pali texts, is like trying to balance a triangle on its point. It doesn't work. It flops one way or the other. And I began to feel that more and more keenly. and to feel more and more dissatisfied with a lot of complexity that what was it grounded on? Where did it come from? Why was all this complexity necessary? Why do we gloss over the more basic teachings and move on so fast to things that are so complex? Now, Khanda Rinpoche actually has a very good answer to that question, and I think she's 100% correct.

[07:46]

We have become habituated to complexity. We somehow think complexity is more profound than simplicity. We like complexity. And we often say the first time we hear simple, basic teachings, it can't be that easy. It has to be more complicated than that. because we've become so habituated to complexity. And she says, and I think not just Tibetan Buddhism, but all forms of Buddhism essentially work this way. She says, the first teaching we give you is don't do anything. Don't change anything. But you can't do that. You won't let things just be. You have to change things. You think you can improve on things. So we give you a more complicated practice because you want to change things. You can't rest in simplicity.

[08:48]

And then you, after a few years, you say, well, that's not complicated enough for me. So we give you another more complicated practice yet, and we keep doing this until finally you wear out. Until finally your love of... it's a word I think I've coined, your love of complexification wears out. And you're willing to hear simple, profound teachings and do simple, profound practices. So, in a sense, my own frustration with the seemingly very complicated Tibetan forms and her basic teaching are very much on the same track. Um... As a result of that, I began to, I took up a project. I wanted to do a reading retreat on the Pali scriptures, which I knew about and I had studied some, but I had never studied very intensely.

[09:49]

I think it was now about five years ago over Christmas break. I read many, many hours every day. I read in the translations of the Pali texts. And it was really a very life-transforming experience. I learned that everything central to Buddhadharma is in those old texts, that very first layer of texts, which many Mahayanists dismiss, don't study seriously, and even call by that pejorative term Hinayana, the small vehicle. I have come to one of the things I'm on, one of the topics I'm on is trying to get Mahayana Buddhists to stop using the term Hinayana, which was invented by Mahayanists as a pejorative label for Mahayana. There was a major schism in Buddhism. It started about 100 years after the death of the Buddha.

[10:53]

It became very, very prominent four or five centuries after the death of the Buddha. And as you know, Buddhism really split seriously. And Mahayanists are the ones who coined this term, Hinayana, to refer to older forms of Buddhism, Buddhists that did not accept the Mahayana Sutras as having been spoken by the historical Buddha. So it's a pejorative term of people do not self-identify as members of the small vehicle. What kind of Buddhism do you practice? Oh, I'm really into the small version of Buddhism. So I am really trying to get people to be more careful. I think it's part of right speech. In Buddhism, I'm trying to get people to be more careful about not using the term Hinayana. I think there's a perfectly good substitute, the foundation vehicle or the foundation teachings. And that's what I've been using. I have been successful with most of my Western colleagues in my sangha.

[11:57]

I have not been successful with my teacher. She still uses the term Hinayana all the time. And... I think it's great to have a relationship with a teacher where we can be so honest with one another that she knows what I think about the term Hiniana, and I know how she uses it, and she encourages me to keep on doing the work I'm doing, because she also sees... that there are problems with the way Tibetans and other Mahayanists usually use the term Hinayana. And so she hasn't stopped using the term, but she has changed how she uses it. And she's very, very respectful now of Hinayana teachings in a way that many Mahayanists are not. And she has started to really insist that the foundation teachings be taught very thoroughly. and very well, and that they are, in fact, the foundation of Buddhist practice.

[13:00]

So some years ago, we decided that there needed to be a kind of basic curriculum, a foundation curriculum that would get at these basic teachings of Buddhism as found in the Pali texts. And so I was asked to come up with what did I think we needed to do for that. And I have come up with a curriculum that I think would cover the profound simplicity of Buddhism with enough complexity that anyone could learn anything you really, really, really needed to know from these basic teachings. And then from there on, if you want to engage in complex rituals or profound teachings, complicated philosophy, it's fine, but you're no longer mistaking the cart for the horse. You know that the basis is these profound simple teachings and that the more complicated philosophies, the more complicated rituals are elaborations upon the profundity rather than the other way around.

[14:15]

What do I think is important? What did I find in the Pali texts as so utterly basic? By the way, I'm not the only person who is primarily trained in Mahayana Vajrayana traditions who in the last five or ten years has decided to take a serious study in the Pali texts and has found that this was very, very important, very, very important, and that... We sort of wish we had made it our first stop, not a stop that we took up seriously after 25 or 30 years of Buddhist practice. I used to tell my students at the university many years ago that Buddhism actually isn't difficult. It's very, very simple, but it's so simple that we make it hard. In a certain sense, little did I know what I was saying or even actually listen to what I was saying to my students, which I wonder how often as teachers we do that.

[15:22]

We don't actually listen to what we're saying. The Buddhism is very, very simple, but we make it much more complicated than it needs to be, which I think may be why the historical Buddha, it's always told in those seven weeks he spent in Bodh Gaya, under the Bodhi tree after his enlightenment experience, that he had initially decided not to try to teach what he had understood. Why? Because he said, people, it goes against the grain of what people want. It's very simple, but it goes against the grain of what people want. And that, I think, is why we make it complicated, that we hear the simple teachings and we say on the one hand, Well, that's too simple, but we also say, you know, if it's that simple, I'm going to have to give up some of the complexity I've come to believe in and love and cherish, and that we don't want to do.

[16:26]

So what is it that we would study and contemplate and do if we really took these foundation teachings from the polytexts? as our basis, as the basis of our study and practice. Well, we would, of course, begin with the four truths. The four truths, the content of the Buddha's first sermon, at least as recorded in the scriptures. We don't know, historically speaking, if that's 100% accurate, but at least in terms of our legends, that's what's always been said, that this was the Buddha's first teaching. And this is something, at least in the academic study of Buddhism, we have done straight. In the academic study of Buddhism, if you took a course on world religions and had a month on Buddhism, which might be as much as you'd get, you would for sure hear about two things. You would hear about the life of the Buddha, and you would hear about the Four Noble Truths.

[17:28]

But it's amazing how long you can be at a meditation center and not hear about the Four Noble Truths. It's amazing how little they're studied in many cases. Even in Theravada Vipassana context, even Theravada teachers complain that Theravada students and Vipassana students don't want to study the four truths because they want something more complicated. It's too simple. You hear that, and well, okay, I got that. Give me something else. That's often also what we do. Instead of really contemplating in depth what we hear, we say, okay, I've got that. I've memorized that. It hasn't changed my life yet. Give me something else. Always asking for another set of teachings that we think this time it will do the trick. what are those teachers holding back from us? They haven't given us the full goods.

[18:29]

If they would give us the full goods, we could get enlightened. And they have given us the full goods, but we don't want to take the time and the depths that it takes to not just hear and memorize those teachings, but to contemplate them deeply, to really spend a lot of time asking questions. What is this? What does this mean? How does this apply to my life? We don't take the time to take those teachings and practices into our daily lives. We do our 20 minutes or hour or whatever it is a day of sitting on the cushion and then we say, oh, I'm done with that. Now I can get back to life as usual. I'm done practicing back to life as usual. We don't take the time to... take simple ideas, simple teachings, contemplate them in great depth, not ask for something more complicated, see how it applies to our lives and actually apply it to our lives day by day.

[19:36]

So we would clearly begin with the four truths. And it's pretty amazing to me that in many books on Buddhism written from various points of view, You don't get much on the four truths. In many Tibetan contexts, they're not taught much at all to beginners. They're really not taught much at all. We all know what the four truths are. I teach a lot of programs in the four truths, and I always make people memorize them so that you can apply them later. But we know what the four truths are. There is suffering there. Not all life is suffering. That's a complete misunderstanding of the first truth. But there is suffering. Suffering has a cause. There's a reason. If the cause is given up, suffering ceases, and there is a path that helps us give up the cause of suffering.

[20:37]

We know what those four truths are. I am completely convinced that if we fully understand the four truths, we don't need anything else. that we would do everything we need to do. And in a certain sense, it's even simpler than that, which I will go back to in a few moments. The second component, the second set of teachings in this basic curriculum I'm advocating are the teachings on interdependence. The teachings on interdependence can be classified as part of the second noble truth. the cause of suffering, which in early forms of the teachings is said to be mainly grasping, clinging, desire. But I think if you look at the Pali teachings later in his life, in his teaching career, the Buddha started to emphasize ignorance as an even deeper cause of suffering than grasping or clinging.

[21:40]

That we would not grasp to things if we understood how things are. Grasping is only an error of not understanding things are the way they are for reasons. And our grasping is just not wanting to accept the way things are. So we need to dig in and understand the desire, yes, but desire rooted in ignorance. That's what leads to suffering. So interdependence is really... a deep understanding of the second noble truth. Now, in the classic texts, the word interdependence may not come up so often. What comes up instead that we hear about a lot are the 12 nidanas, the wheel of causation, one of the most neglected teachings in Buddhism because most people are really afraid of the teachings and the 12 nidanas. They seem too complicated.

[22:42]

Most people think I can't get it. I remember myself for years. That was one of the lists I hadn't memorized, and I didn't understand. I think the reason why we avoid teachings on the 12 Nidanas is that we don't understand that the fundamental point of teachings on the 12 Nidanas is that everything is interdependent with everything else, that nothing stands by itself. Nothing is self-caused. Things don't arise out of a vacuum or out of random. They arise out of an interdependent matrix of causes and conditions. It's pretty simple, isn't it? Things arise out of an interdependent matrix of causes and conditions. Now, the great virtue of really studying interdependence and contemplating interdependence is that once you understand interdependence existentially.

[23:43]

Teachings on emptiness are very easy. You know, that emptiness thing that we all bust our heads against. It's very easy if you truly understand interdependence. Now, fully integrating that into our lives and into our expectations may be more difficult, but at least having a clear intellectual understanding of emptiness that that we really, truly do understand it really well, at least intellectually, isn't that hard. And from an intellectual understanding, a deeper understanding can come. Nagarjuna, in his very famous text, put it very succinctly. He said, interdependence, or pratitya samuppada, is sunyata, or emptiness. It's that simple. Emptiness is, first of all, understanding that nothing exists by itself.

[24:46]

Nothing has its own existence. Nothing is self-caused. It has no core of its own being, which is the literal translation. The Sanskrit word there is svabhava, things lack inherent existence. Very simple. Things lack inherent existence, very obvious in a certain way, but it does take a certain amount of contemplation to get it. I think those two, the four truths and really getting interdependence, that's basic, really basic. Beyond that, what else do we need to study? Well, in the early Buddhism, The next thing that is important to study is the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, which is part of the Eightfold Path. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness are the seventh limb of the Eightfold Path. And I think in a very strong sense, all Buddhist traditions of meditation in some way or another come from the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.

[25:55]

Explicit, direct teachings on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness isn't always taught in Mahayana and Vajrayana forms of Buddhism. In fact, you can often look long and hard for what are the four foundations of mindfulness in Mahayana and Vajrayana texts. But the point that a spiritual discipline, a discipline of sitting still and doing nothing, remember my teacher said, what you need to do is do nothing. not change things. Discipline of sitting still and doing nothing in particular has to be part of Buddhism. And so I would claim, I think I can demonstrate this, though I'm not going to today, that even the very complicated ritual sadhanas of Vajrayana Buddhism are an extension of trying to learn how to sit still and do nothing. because it's hard to sit still and do nothing. One of the things Tibetans have done is quiet the mind down by giving people so much to do that you can't possibly have time for your own fantasies on top of it.

[27:05]

And believe me, it works that way. If you have an extremely complicated practice to do, it absorbs all of your attention. And then you learn how to have a focused... that is not going off in one's own fantasies and one's own wishes all the time. And then the practices are simplified. From there, they're simplified and simplified and simplified until people are finally willing to sit still and do nothing. So next time you wonder about all that complicated stuff you see in a Tibetan place, Regard it as an antidote to being unwilling to sit still and do nothing. Regard it as an antidote to wandering mind, a very effective antidote to wandering mind. Beyond the four foundations of mindfulness, the next component of really understanding the foundations of Buddhism, in my view, is to understand and teach and practice the four immeasurables, which are friendliness, unlimited friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.

[28:30]

And sometimes the order is reversed, that first we want to understand equanimity in order to actually be able to practice friendliness that isn't biased, compassion that isn't about compassion for my group, and genuine sympathetic joy. I emphasize this part of a basic curriculum and of early teachings of what the Buddha taught for a very specific reason. One is that, first of all, the Buddha did teach the four immeasurables. It's everywhere in the Pali canon. But I also emphasize this teaching because there's a Mahayana prejudice that's especially strong in the Tibetan world that, quote-unquote, Hinayanists lack compassion, that they... practice Buddhism only for personal enlightenment and not for universal enlightenment. So in talking about what is basic, what is foundational to all forms of Buddhism, I think it's really important to emphasize the four immeasurables to undercut this Mahayana prejudice that we Mahayanists are better, we have more compassion.

[29:49]

early Buddhism wasn't adequate. We needed to come along and improve what the Buddha taught by adding in more teachings on compassion. So a lot of this also has the agenda of correcting our understandings of what the Buddha taught and Buddhism altogether. undercutting the very strong Mahayana-Theravada divide that we still find in the Buddhist world. I think that that's really quite unfortunate. By the way, one of the reasons I also emphasize teachings on interdependence is for the same reason. Many Mahayanists, especially in the Tibetan world, Tibetans often claim that Hinayanists don't understand emptiness. but only we Mahayanists understand emptiness. They didn't understand emptiness. Now, it's true that the word emptiness is not used very often in the Pali camp.

[30:50]

That's definitely the case. But the 12 Nidanas, the teachings on interdependence, are the most common teaching in the Pali scriptures. The Buddha is always answering questions by going through the 12 Nidanas, by going through, ending up with things come from, but things do not have any standing on their own. Things are interdependently arisen due to our ignorance about how things are. So there's a very profound understanding of lack of inherent existence of anything in Theravada teachings and in the teachings of early Buddhism. One of the things people assume often is part of Madhyamaka that was first taught by Nagarjuna is what is called the four extremes. But this actually goes back to the historical Buddha.

[31:53]

One of the questions he was most frequently asked is what is the existence, what kind of existence does an enlightened being have after the death of their physical body? And the Buddha always, it's like people will ask you when you give a simple presentation of Buddhism and you talk about the third truth and you talk about cessation. I can't tell you how many times I've then been asked, what's next? What's after nirvana? What's next? Buddha was asked that question all the time. And he always refused to answer the question. He just said, you know, you can't say anything about what experience is like after cessation, after the death of the physical body of an enlightened being. There's nothing you can say about it. You can't say it exists, it doesn't exist, it neither exists nor does not exist, it both exists and does not exist.

[33:00]

How's that for a koan? None of those alternatives apply. They just don't work. And that's how Nagarjuna talked about inherent existence of everything. Inherent existence can't be found. It can't not be found. It is not in both, nor neither. So teachings on emptiness are very much part of the foundation of Buddhism. They didn't wait for Mahayanists to be discovered. So we teach... very strong emphasis on interdependence to indicate that teachings on emptiness are foundational to all forms of Buddhism. And we teach the four immeasurables to emphasize that friendliness and compassion and sympathetic joy are foundational to all forms of Buddhism. They are not Mahayana specializations. And then the last set of teachings I emphasize in this foundation section

[34:02]

foundation teachings of the Buddha, much less well-known. It's called the 37 Bodhi Factors. And this is perhaps optional, perhaps not so important, but I'd like to round out what did the Buddha actually teach with this list of 37. The source for this is a text called the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, which is a sutta about the last days of the Buddha. There's a Pali version and there's a Sanskrit version. And the Pali and the Sanskrit versions are completely different from one another. But in the Pali version, which unquestionably is older and closer to what happened during the Buddha's life, at the end of his life, his students come to him and they ask him, everybody can see he's about to die. So they come to him and they ask him, he's taught now for 45 years. in all the teaching you've done for 45 years, what should we emphasize for the Dharma to continue to flourish?

[35:08]

What do we really need to focus on? And he gave a list. He said, if you pay attention to these things, Dharma will flourish. And the list he gave is the four foundations of mindfulness, which is part of the Eightfold Path, the four right endeavors, which is part of the Eightfold Path, it's right effort, the four legs of miracle, which is something we don't hear much about, the five strengths, the five powers, the seven factors of enlightenment, all of which are also less known lists. And then finally, the Eightfold Noble Path. The Eightfold Noble Path. So he didn't mention the four truths in that list, which I think is very interesting. But he did say the Eightfold Path and then pull out for even more highlighting aspects of the Eightfold Path about mindfulness and about endeavor or intention or application, and then the Eightfold Path itself.

[36:10]

That's what we really, really need to focus on. So someone just pointed out to me something that even after 40 years of studying the Four Truths intensively, I had not noticed. The Buddha began his teaching, his very first teaching was talking about the Eightfold Path, And his last advice to his students was on the Eightfold Path. He began the first sermon not by going through the Four Truths, but by going through the Eightfold Path. And then at the end of his life, when his students asked him, what should we do to maintain Dharma? He said, Eightfold Path. So that's one of the reasons why I like to also emphasize ending with the 37 Bodhi Factors. Now, in the few minutes that are left, I want to go back and talk again about the four truths for just a few minutes. It's one of the things that's really interesting about the teachings and the four truths, and part of what I think often makes Buddhism so off-putting and so confusing at the beginning, is that people normally teach the four truths starting with the truth of suffering.

[37:22]

which is not something people especially care to hear. You know, I mean, people have a lot of resistance to the first truth, especially when it's not presented well and when it's presented as all life is suffering. What I said is really a very serious misunderstanding. If that were the case, there couldn't be a third noble truth. How can you say, oh, life is suffering, and then say suffering ceases? Doesn't make any sense. So there is suffering. People start with that. People don't want to hear that. Then next people move on to this cause of suffering is grasping, usually translated as desire. Well, it seems incomprehensible. You mean I have to give up pleasure and fun? This is why Buddhism has a reputation of being a pessimistic religion. But actually, when the Buddha first taught... You know the story, he came back from Bodh Gaya to Sarnath, to the deer park, and the five companions he had been practicing with said, you know, that guy's a backslider, we're not going to pay any attention to him.

[38:31]

But they couldn't help getting up and standing in his presence, preparing a seat for him, reverencing him. And then they asked him basically, you know, what happened to you? You're different. And the first thing he taught, he said, the first thing he taught is what should one avoid to attain cessation, to attain peace, contentment, peace and contentment, not needing to change things. The first thing he taught was... avoid extremes. He said there are two things that one should avoid, that a practitioner should avoid. He said you should avoid devotion to sensual pleasure and you should avoid devotion to harsh austerity. The operative word here is devotion. He didn't say you shouldn't ever experience pleasure. He said you should avoid devotion to pleasure.

[39:36]

being fixated on pleasure. And about a year ago, I was teaching this in a context where one of the people in the audience was a professor of Indian religions, mainly Hinduism, who had never noticed that. She also had to teach Buddhism at a university. And she had missed the word devotion to sensual pleasure. She had always interpreted Buddhism as being against sexual pleasure and therefore sensual pleasure. and therefore not a very workable path. And she was amazed. She came up and said, how did I never notice that word in there? But devotion, the middle path, avoiding devotion to sensual pleasure and devotion to harsh austerity. And then, of course, the middle path also includes avoiding nihilism and eternalism, if you want to take it up a level to a more philosophical interpretation. And then the Buddha said, how do you avoid extremes?

[40:38]

How do you avoid extremes? Here's how you avoid extremes. Right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. So in other words, next he taught the Eightfold Path. And... The way this can be understood, I've heard people teach it this way and I now teach it this way myself. If you know how to be on the middle path, that's all you need. You don't need anything more complicated. If that isn't clear, next you need to focus on the eightfold path. If you can get the eightfold path, you don't ever have to concern yourself with suffering and the cause of suffering because it will take care of itself. You won't have to go there. So only, in fact, after explicating the Eightfold Path did the Buddha go on to say, and if you don't get that, then you have to start thinking about suffering and the cause of suffering and the cessation of suffering and then go back to the path again.

[41:53]

So this is among the many, many reasons why I have come to be so grateful for the simplicity of the basic teachings and so firmly convinced that from the very beginning people can get these simple messages that it doesn't have to be 10 or 15 or 20 years before we come back and really get the Eightfold Path and the simplicity of simply not wanting to change things, not wanting things to be different, because we understand that the way things are now is the result of causes that have already been laid down. What we can do is change what the future could be with the actions we do now, but there's no need to complain about the past or what is. What is in our ability is to work with the middle path, the eightfold path, to from here on out,

[42:59]

not cause undue complexity and thus diminish a great deal the suffering in our world. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dorma.

[43:35]

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