Good morning. Good morning. It is a good morning. Beware the Ides of March. It's today. I was thinking about that feeling, the quality of awareness that's been called up, not only from Shakespeare's time, but from far before and beyond. refreshed at every breath. Be aware. Walking down the hill to this temple, this place of refuge. Fly back. You know, a refuge is a unique place. And I really feel this beginner's mind temple is a place of refuge. In the old, the oldest times, um,

[01:01]

The times before the movement of the glaciers, as the ice began to recede and sculpt the earth, caches of seed were swept by the ice into little pockets or places of refuge. And then the ice lay on the land for a long, long time. And as the ice melted, these places of refuge served as a seed bank. for new life, for the growth of kindness and clarity. So I deeply consider this place and the refuge that you're creating here a place to fly back to as a kind of true refuge. One thousand eyes, one thousand hands, the mind of compassion. Take refuge. in that awareness.

[02:03]

And walking down the hill this morning to this home for wayward Jewish women of old, created by the beautiful skill and accomplishment of Julia Morgan, thinking, this is truly a place of refuge, a shelter, a spot to kindle the mind of awareness. And, you know, especially for me, walking past the Koshland Park garden is a reminder. I love to stop at the top of the hill and flow down past that wall and just run my hand over the work on all those tiles, those peace tiles made in honor of waging peace in these times. And in particular, in recognition, you know the wall I'm talking about, the beautiful Western Edition wall, dedicated to families who've lost their children to violence in this neighborhood.

[03:18]

I know one such young man who was a drummer at Locobloco, who was killed not far from this temple. this place of refuge. There was an altar on the street to him. And not long after he died, we planted a tree in the Koshland Park garden. And there are many memorial plants all over the world honoring the kindness and commitment of the peacemakers in violent times. So the soothsayer said, to Julius Caesar, beware the Ides of March this very day. Be aware, be alert, be watchful, be conscious, all cognates of awareness before we move and live in dangerous times.

[04:24]

You know, at Tassajara years ago, we had a workshop, Barbara Wenger and I and others, gathered together with young people who were coming of age. And our call was to practice together and to create out of the mind of those mountains, to create tiles of peace that would be dedicated to this very wall here at this temple. And I remember working with the young people. They did wildly expressive piece tiles. And we had a good number of other tiles that had been formed to inspire them, and they did some very fresh work. And then it was my job to bring the tiles out from Tassajara up to Jamesburg and then back to the city. And I remember that The road was in pretty bad shape and we had to go out in a Tassajara truck.

[05:39]

And so we loaded the tiles in very mindfully and carefully in the back of the truck, bowing to the tiles and slowly drove the truck up. And there was a huge rut in the road. And so we kind of gunned the truck to get across the rut. And I remember hearing this sickening lurch in the back of a truck and looking behind me. I wasn't driving. There was a very... stalwart, mindful, aware Tassajara driver who gunned the truck. I remember turning around slowly and watching the tiles fly out of the back. And just thinking, all that love and attention, what will happen? And then, of course, the Tassajara mountain soil, unlike the green gulch soil, is alive and very young, mineral rich. Basically, that's a code for rocky. So the tiles fell on the rocky road, and many of them shattered.

[06:40]

And we brought them up with a lot of picking up the pieces of the broken peace tiles, bringing them up, and recognizing this is the world we have, a world of broken peace agreements, accords. possibilities so let's not turn away from it let's pretend let's not pretend it isn't broken we didn't intend it to break but we will build a peaceful world grounded and dedicated to kindness out of broken brokenness out of brokenness And I can see those tiles that broke when I look at the wall. Luckily, one of mine broke, too. It chipped. And I think that that makes the refuge and awareness and call to peace all the more compelling for me.

[07:54]

Years ago with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the... conflict in Iraq in the early 1990s, we met and made a big peace sign and put it at the top of the driveway at Green Gulch to call on all who drove by the gateway into that place of refuge to practice peacefully in difficult times. And that sign generated a tremendous amount of ire I remember that we drew an image of the world and filled in the continents. And this was the Buddhist Peace Fellowship team, very deep souls painting the world. And then we painted the word peace on top of it. And it was right at the top of the driveway. And one morning we drove up and someone had broken the sign in half. There were two parts, just broken.

[08:57]

and thrown down on the road. So we had a long discussion, what shall we do with this broken peace sign? How are we going to live with this? Let's redo it. And to our deep credit, I think many of us said, you know, the possibility of peace is broken open and not peaceful. So let's practice with both parts right there. And I remember putting, it was almost like fitting the pieces of the continent together as we'd done when we drew the globe, putting those two broken pieces of the peace sign up there. So there's a noble Zen tradition of awareness and also willingness to make peace out of the broken parts of our life and not honor wholeness. more than the brokenness, to have them be together in one living world.

[10:04]

So this morning's talk is very much dedicated to the peacemakers. Blessed are the peacemakers. And the impossible work of making peace in times of conflict and unrest. And to gather the heart and mind to come together into a place of refuge, to settle down, to bring up the commitment to receive the work and blessings of a thousand hands, a thousand eyes. To generate kindness in unkind times. And to begin with each of us dedicating ourselves in you is a is radical work. Radical in the sense of the roots going down, breaking down through seized ground into the depths.

[11:10]

Let's just breathe. That's a great bell of mindfulness. Let's take a few breaths. That's great. It's a bell of mindfulness. It's not a broken cell phone. Dharma. But let's enjoy it. Three deep breaths. Did you see how smoothly he reached in and got it? Wearing a t-shirt dedicated to Che Guevara who said, let me remind you at the risk of appearing ridiculous that the true radical is guided by deep love. Let me remind you at the risk of appearing ridiculous.

[12:19]

The true radical is guided by commitment to love. I have my book of favorite quotations, and I'll get it right. It'd be best to hear it in Spanish. Anyway, we gather in a place like this place to know the mind and shape the mind and free the mind with one another. And now in the extended... In the extended community of San Francisco Zen Center, we're in deep, this gathering mode here at Beginner's Mind Temple at Green Dragon Zen Place at Green Gulch, one day sitting today, deep in Zen Shinji, Tassahara Zen Mountain Center. Gathering the Mind, Katagiri Roshi used to remind us that when we come into practice period, we create

[13:25]

A forest thicket, he said, a Sol-Rin community. A community Sol-Rin means forest thicket, meaning a healthy forest is made up of many different species growing together. And let's not exclude from that health the life of death in the forest. So some trees that are dead, some that are quite young, brand new seedlings, wild soil, old rocks, all together there is a soaring community or a forest thicket that represents our time of practice and coming together to rededicate ourselves. I had the immense pleasure when I was... Actually, I shouldn't say immense pleasure.

[14:32]

I had the opportunity when I was a young woman, 23 years old. I'm 60 years old now. 23 years old, I felt I could no longer live in this country because of the amount of violence that was here. My dad, this was during the Vietnam War, he was probably a little older, maybe 24. My dad left his job as a publisher in New York City to do full-time counseling against the Vietnam War. And I thought, I don't think I can continue to live in this country. So for some strange, complex reason, I got myself to Israel of all decisions. Really amazing. I wanted to look again at the roots of peace and religion. And I thought, I'll go to Israel. It was a kind of crazy notion. And I lived in Israel for a number of years.

[15:36]

I studied agriculture on kibbutz. And I also studied the science of religion or comparative religion at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I learned enough Hebrew to be able to be a graduate student at the Hebrew University. I'm not Jewish. But I have a heart that wanted to know where religion, what the roots of religion were like, what the different roots of religion looked like and felt like. So I lived in Jerusalem. And there I was introduced to a wonderful older woman who was a yoga teacher. She said, I can teach you yoga, but I can see you're looking for something else. And introduced me to her Zen teacher, who was a student of Soa Nakagawa Roshi. And I went up to the Mount of Olives and began to sit without having any interest in Zen practice whatsoever. I felt like I was an activist, not a sitter.

[16:36]

And I never stopped doing that. So I had this wonderful introduction that was rare and surprising, very simple. And I remember the monk that was at that place... He was also a monk that trained Dan Welch years ago at Ryo Takaji Monastery in Japan. He said to me, I have a key that fits my door. It may not be the key that fits your door. You have to find your own key to open your door. When you find that key, then you practice. So for me, to live in the Middle East in my early 20s or mid-20s, in a country that was burning with war. And to be looking for the roots of peace, the roots of saying response, was extraordinarily important to me. I don't think that my commitment to meditation practice would have held as strongly had I not had that opportunity to be in a world that was on fire with war.

[17:47]

You know, I mention that because just a few days ago, I heard an extraordinary interview on the radio, on Terry Gross's Fresh Air, an interview with an organization called Combatants for Peace. Amazing name. A person from that kind of paramilitary person from Israel. and a Hamas fighter from the Palestinian front working together to wage peace agreements. The young man from Hamas had witnessed his 10-year-old child be killed by an Israeli soldier. And the Israeli soldier had witnessed a terrified Palestinian child running toward his battalion. opened up his life, reminds me very much of the story that Blanche Hartman told us years ago of facing the so-called enemy across the barricades and her life opening up.

[19:01]

So these two people were speaking on the radio, and at the same time, Emela Hellert was telling me about her son, who is an Israeli and has a blog in Israel. He's living in Israel in Sderot, which has been the site of a lot of current shelling. in the Middle East, shelling from the Gaza Strip into his community. His family is spending the night every night in shelters. And this very courageous young man has started a dialogue with a citizen from the Gaza Strip. Eric, Emily's son, calls himself Hope Man. And the other gentleman calls himself Peace Man. And together, they're writing... a strong testimonial advocacy for making peace, even though they are sworn enemies on one level, on another level.

[20:02]

Peace men, hope men, they don't say their names because their lives are not so safe on that edge. And there's a petition that they've taken up, and friends from all over the world are signing this petition. So there is a movement in our times, And a movement in the brokenness and in the center of the fire toward a peaceful meeting without turning away from the fire. These stories to me are the living Dharma text I take refuge in. And the food and nourishment from the gathered heart and mind of places of refuge, like the city center, Green Gulch, Tassajara, and other places where people take the time to sit down without turning away from the fire, are places of refuge not just for each of us, but for our world.

[21:22]

I'm quite convinced of this. It's my deep experience. So I am a student of meditation and of the Dharma world. So in Roshi, as I said, he was my primary root teacher, first teacher. I remember the very first time, I actually only practiced with him once for eight days outside of Jerusalem in the monastery of Latrun, which is a Trappist monastery. And Son Roshi had come from Japan, and he was a tiny, tiny person, but a huge force. I remember meeting him in the hallway outside of the monastery, and he said to me, please, can you help me? I am completely lost. I thought, right on. What should I do? I will help you.

[22:24]

What do you want? I said, I need to find my room. So we navigated the halls of that monastery. And I remember his room going and taking it. I said, I think this is your room. Ah, yes. We opened the door and there was a long... Long scroll and a pot of ink. He's an incredible calligrapher. Marvelous calligrapher. And it wasn't a spare, clean Zen room. There was a nice, juicy apple core right near that scroll. And I thought, this is good. The apple of truth. Fruit of the tree of knowledge and understanding. Right there in the ink. Very alive. And he gave us, for that sashim, he gave us a koan for everyone to work on. It was my first sashim. The world was burning all around me. The height of the Vietnam War. Bombing in Israel every night.

[23:28]

He said, there's a girl deep in a well without a rope. Bring her up. He said, if you don't like the girl in the well, there's a moonstone. without a rocket ship, bring it home. So we spent seven days working with this wonderful teacher. He was so small and petite. No one could see him in the Dharma seat, so we had to put two tables on top of tables. And then he climbed up onto the tables and sat there. I remember he never opened his eyes, and he gave these incredible talks. One talk, the first talk, he said, He thought that in Los Angeles, California, there was great Dharma intensity and awareness. And the Americans in the room were kind of looking at each other like, okay. He said, because I saw a sign in Los Angeles on a window that said, no vacancy.

[24:32]

No vacancy. Anywhere in the world, no vacancy. And I... I just, I remember this feeling of, I was quite a young woman, this was one of my first, it was my first ashing, and I remember feeling this life force, like electric force running through me, hearing that talk. It was a poet speaking. Ascend the hill. Descend the hill. Ascend the hill, descend the hill. Dragon spring. Later, Soan Roshi came to this temple, and I heard him give a talk here. He came in a little early and met with Nakamura sensei, and she was going to do a tea ceremony, a proper tea ceremony, and I remember he...

[25:40]

licked his finger and ran his finger underneath the wallboard and said, oh, very clean Zen center. Wonderful teaching. He did very wild tea ceremonies, too. Quite a strong character. I'm a lucky woman to have my root system run through his ground, that old ground. And in that root system, I... came to treasure the power of rooted language, language that lets us stand by our words. So, you know, we speak of kindness and the poet says, kindness, okay. I'm sure you're working with this poem, but from Naomi Shabnai. I'm not going to read the whole poem, just a little part.

[26:41]

poet who has her roots, her family roots in the Middle East. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, know sorrow as the other deepest thing. Wake up with sorrow. Speak to it until your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of a cloth. Then It is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes, sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, and only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say, it is I you've been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere, like a shadow, like a friend. to stand by words like these words takes our full attention and open-heartedness, our full awareness.

[28:02]

And it's our inheritance as human beings to work and live in this way. So I have a very strong sense of my roots in the Zen tradition. I would not have continued to practice had I not begun the way I did in a broken world on fire. Because of that awareness, I kept going. Just continue. said Kategori Roshi, under all circumstances. We just continue. And that continuation has given me a path of practice that's run right through the heart of the garden, the natural world, growing food, finding nourishment, offering it back, a field far beyond form and emptiness, you know, feeding a hungry world.

[29:20]

And This year, actually every year on Veterans Day, in the extended lineage of Thich Nhat Hanh, we celebrate two weekends of mindfulness a year, one on Veterans Day weekend, one on Memorial Day weekend, to remember the roots of war and peace and how intertwined they are. Last year on Veterans Day, we gathered at the Ben Lohman Quaker Center with veterans from the Vietnam War and also with young people who are working with Iraqi veterans right now. And the Buddhist Peace Fellowship is doing amazing work, too, with veterans, knowing that there was a whole lineage of folks working. And our guide was activist and writer Maxine Hung Kingston. So she gave the Dharma teaching from her seat as a writer. And a few of us attended her with meditation.

[30:24]

We had an incredible three days deep in the mountains and wished at that time to be able to work more fully with current veterans coming home to hear the stories, to find the nourishment in the stories, to offer an opportunity to hear the words. And so this winter, to my surprise, as part of the annual ecological farming conference, I met a young vet of the Iraq war. who had recently returned from Iraq, and he was part of a program called Food Not Bombs, which was really interesting. When he was in Iraq, he said he often, this was quite recently, he had a patrol duty of guarding parts of Baghdad, and he said he began to notice, even though there was a lot of fear in him, he began to notice that the people that got through the lines into the heart of the city were the people carrying food.

[31:37]

He said at one point, one day in his service there in Baghdad, a young woman came up to him and offered him a handful of pomegranates. And all of his friends said, don't take them, don't take them. He said that just the meeting this person and having her put out this basket of pomegranates to offer him one represented a real turning point in his service. He took a pomegranate and ate it. And he realized, you know, the kind of peacemaking I want to be doing has to do with growing food and feeding people who are hungry. that woke up for him in the middle of the Baghdad marketplace where there have been numerous bombings and unsafe circumstances. So now this young man is working as an organic farmer outside of Sebastopol with other veterans coming to work with him and to get their growing food.

[32:47]

He's also done some study at the University of California at Santa Cruz. accepted for a six-month program. When he first came home from Iraq, his, just his whole awareness had been so shattered that it was only that program that brought him back to life. And I mention this because in our lineage of practice, you know, we are permeated with each other. Liz Milazzo, who trained at Green Gulch for years, is now working in that program. She's a few years after Matthew. Here's a Zen person working in that program, Mark Sammons, deep, strong practitioner from Tassajara. Many of us have trained there at the University of California. So this young vet chose to go back to go to the university. He had six months of immersion in farming, and then he went and found this piece of farmland where he's working with other vets and growing food. I think this is...

[33:48]

An extraordinary story. And one to pay attention to, to really look at how we're nourished from our broken open lives. And the intention to find real nourishment. So I'm... a person who is immensely grateful for my Zen training and immensely grateful for my training as a gardener. They definitely go together. When I came from Jerusalem to Tassajara, it was very hard to settle down at first, because I think I'm a little bit like that veteran. coming back from Iraq, needing the refuge of the farm.

[34:53]

I needed a wider refuge to settle into practice. So Tassajara for me was that kind of place. I went directly from the fire of the Middle East to Tassajara. Unusual, because generally you spent two years here in the city center. I spent about two hours here in the city center. And I was immediately shipped down to Tassajara. I had good recommendation from Son Roshi, so that helped. But mostly the mountains and the land were what really healed me and made it possible to practice. And I worked for six months, no, three months pickaxing and doing the work of general labor. And then I was in the kitchen, which was a torture, and eventually I was in the garden. So I'd like to read to you, kind of to close this morning's talk, I'd like to read to you a section in honor of the healing and the kindness that comes from a good piece of land giving back generously.

[36:06]

And this piece in the book is at the very end of the book. It's called Dragon Greens. And it's a story of a... You gardeners love affair with a cabbage. And I'd like to dedicate this reading to Annie Somerville and to our friendship of many years. This is a story, Annie Somerville, and also to Linda Ruth Cutts, who is the tenzo that's mentioned in the story. When I practiced at Tassajara Mountain Center, In the early 1970s, it was my responsibility as head gardener to make a survey of the garden once a week with my Dharma sister, who was serving as head cook, or Tenzo. Our task was simple, to plan nourishing meals to feed the monastic community out of the bounty of the Tassahara garden. I loved our slow walks through the dawn garden as the chill of the night rose in cold columns.

[37:15]

from the razor-sharp mountains surrounding Tassajara. Now, these planning sessions were as much a part of my monastic training as the rigorous periods of formal meditation that ordered our practice life. No grumbling about ingredients was our common sworn pledge, drawn from the 13th century instructions for the Zen cook, written by Ehe Dogen, and passed on warm hand to warm hand through generations of monastery cooks and gardeners, to our modern Zen place. In the formal monastic system of China and Japan, the Tenzo was also known as the head of the rice pot. Since it was the chief responsibility of the Tenzo to sort, clean, and cook the rice that fed the monastic community, I asked my Tassajara Tenzo friend what she imagined would be a good title for the garden manager at Tassajara. How about head of the cabbages? She suggested with a sly little smile.

[38:18]

Now, this title proved prophetic for me, especially during my first winter growing season in the Tassajara garden when cabbages ruled my life. And actually, they ruled my life. They also brought me back to life. Nothing like a cabbage to make you real. I had inherited scores. of tiny packages of Asian vegetable seed in the autumn and loath to waste a single seed, I had dutifully planted out more than 20 garden beds with hundreds of mysterious seedlings grown from indecipherable Japanese seed packages. There are some who survive that winter in this room now, many who are not. By midwinter, When all of the plump heritage tomatoes and succulent French butter lettuces of the summer garden had expired from cold, I was marooned in an ocean of ice-capped cabbages without end.

[39:19]

From a single leaf of greens, create a 16-foot golden body, admonished Dogen in his instructions for the Zen cook. And from a 16-foot golden body, create a single leaf of greens, rejoined Ed Brown. This became our secret Zen challenge as we negotiated the high seeds of Tassajara cabbage and planned our daily menu to nourish a Zen population of almost 80 hungry meditators. Every evening at Tassajara, we were served a grain casserole or gruel composed of delicious leftovers. Yes, composed of leftovers all blended together into one substantially dense Offering. There you go. That's the right response. Accompanied by a side dish of fresh greens harvested directly from the garden. That winter we ate an unaltered diet of cabbage in its many guises. Napa cabbage, bok choy, joichoy, kyonama mizuna, tan taitai, Osaka, purple mustard, komatsuna cabbage, Tokyo bekama greens.

[40:32]

along with a long green swell with no apparent end of Chinese cabbage. These cabbages thrived at Tassajara. They lacked all subtlety and overflowed with an embarrassment of vigor. The colder and wetter the winter weather became, the nastier the pelting hail and frozen mud of the monastery, the stronger the cabbage is. Now and then I stood alone among them, my cropping knife resting at my side and looked out over the cold field, some cabbages elongated with frosty green cone heads, some squat and dimpled with raised icy warps like old bullfrogs suspended in frozen animation in the cold soil. These chilly guardians of the winter garden seemed to incline selflessly toward the warmth of their final fiery destiny. awaiting them on the monastery kitchen stove top. Sadly, I was well aware that my reverence for the cabbages was not always shared by my monastic colleagues.

[41:38]

Some evenings when the Zendo doors swung open to admit the supper servers with their heavy casseroles of gruel and their unmistakable vats with steaming sulfurous fumed cabbage, a thin but unmistakable groan rose from the hungry assembly. Concerned, the head of the rice pot and I intensified our menu planning sessions. We began to walk the garden twice a week now, admiring the multitude of cabbages and proposing braised, baked, boiled, broiled, stir-fried, seared, sautéed, and even fresh Chinese cabbage salad tossed in a rich tahini dressing and accented with baby mandarin oranges. That was the year that recipe came up, guys. Still... That winter practice period was one of the longest forced cabbage feeds on record, ending not a moment too soon in mid-April, when the cabbages finally succumb to spring temperatures, narrowly averting a monastic mutiny. So, you know, I still think of them, though, those incredible sincere cabbages.

[42:49]

right there on the edge of the world, and how they brought me back to life. And, you know, over the years, I've had the pleasure of working with Annie at Green Gulch. Together we do this workshop called Fields of Greens, where we go out into the field, and whatever's there, we bring back to the kitchen and we cook. We spend a whole day, the morning, harvesting food from the farm, whatever's there, in the afternoon cooking. So the book ends with... Just a very brief story from Fields of Greens at Green Gulch. The last time we were together, Annie Somerville surprised me by creating a savory dish she called dragon greens in honor of the spring cabbages that populate the Green Gulch fields with almost the same ferocious presence as their Tassajara relatives. I watched her as she composed this piquant Asian dish. Surrounded by the harvested bounty of the Zen fields and by a lively group who'd spent the day together, it was a little cold outside this season.

[43:57]

A March wind licking closed the warm seams of the kitchen windows while fragrant steam rose from our old wolf stove top all the way up to the roof of the world. I stood in the back of the kitchen wearing my garden overalls with an old blue denim apron over the top. I closed my eyes and I let the tangy scent of freshly cut cabbage carry me back to my first year of gardening so many years ago in the Tassajara Mountains. To my surprise, the end of that infamous cabbage season practice period came back to me. When the last Chinese cabbage of our winter lifeline was finally cut, a respected Tassajara monk suggested that we hold a special ceremony to honor the cabbage. This ceremony was simple and intimate, convened after hours in the quiet of the Tassajara kitchen, and attended only by the cooking and gardening crews.

[45:04]

My friend who had suggested the ceremony officiated, he was a newly ordained Zen priest, wrapped in reverence, wearing his best ceremonial robes. we entered the sanctuary of the kitchen, solemnly bearing the sacrificial cabbage. Well-trained, I dropped my gaze, followed my breathing, and focused my eyes on the worn tiles of the Tassajara kitchen floor. On the altar, the last Chinese cabbage reclined ceremoniously on its right side, its green wrapper leaves tucked demurely beneath its ample carcass. It was a large cabbage, slightly limp. It clearly had expired of heat prostration. We gathered around the plump offering, chanted and bowed and offered incense to the cabbage, while the altar candle flickered in the spring wind. From the core of the ceremony, the celebrated cabbage expelled a long, world-weary sigh of farewell.

[46:11]

Now, I had not thought of this ceremony for three decades until Annie picked up a handful of new cabbage leaves from our present-day garden and staccato chopped them into fiery dragon greens. Then every cabbage, throughout space and time, gathered in the warmth of the Green Gulch kitchen as all beings in the ten directions entered the tangle at the dragon's gate and were fed. So... So we ascend the mountain of our memory and then descend into Dragon Spring. And practice is not memory, it's awareness. This day, the Ides of March, have peace and violence all chopped up together.

[47:13]

And the nourishment that we find. by really tasting our life. So please enjoy every moment of your practice. Those of you who are in the inner circle, in the core of the practice period, and then those of us who support you from the outside, please feel our mutual presence and let's dedicate our strong upright sitting or lying down practice, whatever way you find a practice, to the full well-being and nourishment, to kindness, beyond kindness in our world, and to the opportunity to work together. Thank you very much for inviting me here. It's a real pleasure to be with you. And I don't often come to this hall, and it's a true delight to be with you. And I look forward to signing the book, this book,

[48:18]

I want to say, I do really want to say this is a Zen Center book. I wrote it as part of my life and practice at Zen Center, and the sale of the book supports the work of the San Francisco Zen Center, but not only the San Francisco Zen Center. Because it supports the work of the San Francisco Zen Center, it also supports the work of peacemaking and finding refuge and breathing room wherever we are. It reminds us to do that. So please enjoy the book if it's of interest to you to buy it. Great. If not, just enjoy it. Be sure to look at the art, which is beautiful. Be sure to look at the reclining Chinese cabbage that closes the book. It's one of the best drawings. And, you know, if you're longing for Tassajara, you can... If you actually go to Tassavara this summer for the summer work practice, it's just a little pitch from the inside world here.

[49:21]

So you'll see these announcements out front. Yeah. Okay. Enough. Thank you very much.

[49:36]

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