Good evening. I was just remembering last time I spoke at the city center, took me a long, you know, half an hour to pack my robes and pack my car, drive across the bridge, you know, find parking. That was probably the longest period of time. And then going into the building and having a room and so on, you know, and this is amazing. I just sat down at my kitchen table and here you are. It's so great, you know. I don't know if we'll be able to go back to the old way of meeting in person, but I hope we can. I hope we can. I wanted to start by looking around the room. I was doing a little bit of that a minute ago, and let's say I've got to go to the gallery view here. Some of you are old friends I haven't seen for a while, and others of you I'm just meeting now, but just give me a second to look around at all of you, and thank you for coming. Some of us have practiced atasahara together.

[01:06]

Oh, how lovely, how lovely. Great, wonderful. There's another page, excuse me, I'll be right back. Great, wonderful. And I also wanted to mention that I just got an email today from, I forget who sent it. I think it was Dana. And it was some publicity that had gone out around the beautiful mural that's been painted on what used to be a grocery store across the street from the building. I lived in the building for many, many years. And it's so beautiful. I just am so happy you all have that to look at, the Amanda Gorman painting. Anyway, for those of you who are in the city center, some of you aren't.

[02:08]

But anyway, check it out. It's absolutely gorgeous. And I know Arlene had a great deal to do with that. And I don't know who else, but it's a wonderful gift to the neighborhood and to the city and to everyone, really. So I know our time is somewhat short, which is fine. So I'll dive in to what I wanted to talk about tonight. I think a number of you may be in the... intensive, January intensive at Green Gulch, which is being led by senior Dharma teacher Reb Anderson. And you probably know, if you are, that we're studying the Lotus Sutra, the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the True Dharma. And so I thought I would pick up on some of that teaching this evening as well and share with you some of my own thoughts about one of the parables. You may already know that the Lotus Sutra is the most popular and influential text among East Asian Buddhists.

[03:08]

And it is the basis for all of the major schools of Buddhism, of the Mahayana tradition, rather, including our own, the Zen tradition. So before I talk about the Lotus Sutra, I wanted to first share with you a story about a duck. This is a story that I told several years ago at Green Gulch for the children's program. And so I thought I would invite all of you to imagine if you like yourselves as children, as we once were, with that eyes and ears of a beginner. So once upon a time, there was a mother duck who laid five eggs in a nest by a lake. Night and day, she sat patiently on those eggs to keep them warm. And then one day, four little ducks appeared in the nest. But the mother duck had to wait just a little longer for her last egg to open. A few more days went by, and then a few more.

[04:10]

And then after a while, the other ducks went and waddled down to the water to go for a swim. So just as the mother duck was starting to worry, Very slowly, the last egg began to crack and to open. But the little duck didn't come out. She stayed inside the egg, holding the broken shell over her head. So the mother duck went down to the water where all the other ducklings were waiting and called out to her. Welcome to this beautiful world, my darling daughter. Come on down and take a swim with us. But the little duck stayed right in the nest, shaking her head sadly. And then she said, but mother, I don't know how to swim. Well, the other ducks said, of course you do. You're a duck. And they all paddled around together singing their happy duck songs. But no matter how hard they tried to convince her to come into the water, the little duck sat quietly in the nest, just shaking her head.

[05:10]

Hearing about the little duck who couldn't swim, a wise old duck flew over to the nest and spoke to her very kindly, telling her that she needn't worry at all because there was a magic stick that she could borrow to hold herself up in the water. The stick was called a sky hook. All you need to do is hook onto the sky and you can swim. And then the old duck showed her how it worked and gave the little duck the magic stick. Everyone was overjoyed as she went into the water with her skyhook and swam just like everybody else all day long. Well, many days later, while the family of ducks were resting on the grass, a fox came sneaking up behind them. The old wise duck saw the fox and cried out for everyone to jump into the water and be quick, which they did. But the little duck who couldn't swim forgot to grab her stick and jumped into the water without it. What do you think happened then?

[06:13]

Exactly. Suddenly she realized that she really could swim just like all the other ducks. And so she did for the rest of her days. And they all lived happily ever after. So this other story I have for you this evening is also about a skyhook. in the form of the magical tricks used by the Buddha to help teach us humans how to manage our lives while learning, just like the little duck, that we already know how to swim, that we are already complete in every way. The story of the parable of the prodigal son is one such story from the Lotus Sutra, which is in a sequence of parables, and each of them tells us again and again that this very place at this very moment is the pathway to Buddhahood. If only we would just get out of our own way.

[07:14]

At the beginning of the Sutra in chapter one, we're told about a very large gathering on Vulture Peak, during which the Buddha has entered into a deep meditative trance, after which a ray of light appears from the center of his forehead. There's a tuft of white hairs and this bright light comes shooting out. And it's such a great light that illuminates thousands of Buddha fields throughout the universe, which according to the Bodhisattva of wisdom, Manjushri, indicates to the congregation that the Buddha is about to expound his ultimate teaching, the highest meaning of the holy truths, vast emptiness, nothing holy. And then in chapter two, the Buddha explains that he too uses skillful means, skyhooks, to adapt his teachings to the capacities of his audience, such as telling an encouraging story to some young people about a little duck. The Buddha then tells this great gathering that the ultimate purpose of all of his teachings is to cause sentient beings, again, that would be us, to obtain the insight of the Buddha and to enter the pathway

[08:29]

of an awakened life. In other words, not only to teach them, but also to show them, as the wise old duck had done, that they truly have been born to swim. So the next few chapters of the sutra, the Buddha begins to use parables to illustrate various aspects of his teaching. Each one of these is given to help us to build some confidence in ourselves. And then he promises us That through our effort and through our willingness to be taught, including in our modern idiom, our willingness to receive some feedback or some job reviews and so on, that we will realize what is most deeply true about ourselves. That very truth that brings joy to humankind. So part of the great popularity of the Lotus Sutra is this very promise that all beings have the same potential to become Buddhas. and to awaken in this very lifetime.

[09:30]

The lotus flower itself symbolizes that we human beings who are rooted in the mud of delusion can come to flower above the waterline and to open into the sunlight in the air of awakening. You know, I can swim, says the duck. You can indeed, says her mother. In chapter four, is where Faith and Understanding is the name of that chapter, that the parable of the prodigal son is told to the assembly by the senior disciples of the Buddha, who have just had a realization about themselves, who have come to realize that they have been wandering away from the promise of Buddhahood, have become neglectful of their own bodies, and had mistakenly thought of enlightenment as a formless void, immaterial and without function, kind of absence. And then they congratulate themselves on having come to understand the Buddha's skillful teaching, thereby acquiring, as they proclaim, this is from the sutra, so great and good a gain, an invaluable jewel, and yet, without any seeking on our parts whatsoever, that perfect jewel of understanding, of complete awakening, which had been there all the while.

[10:50]

You know, I can swim. I can swim. So this radical teaching of the Lotus Sutra not only includes the fact that all beings have this potential to realize Buddhahood, but that such a realization is available to each of us right now. This is it right now. There is no other time. There is no other place. There is no other person. So where else could enlightenment possibly be? The parable itself is very simple, actually. It's an easy to understand story. And I often tell students that this parable is the basis for how we train ourselves here at the Zen Center, that this parable is the skyhook of the Zen tradition. So for those of you who don't already know the story, it's rather simple, as I said. A young man has left home and forgotten who he truly is. When by chance he wanders back to his hometown, his father, who's now a wealthy lord with a vast estate, calls out to him, my son, my son.

[11:58]

But the boy in disbelief thinks he is being ridiculed and he runs off in terror. The father then sends his guards to capture the boy who faints on the spot, certain that he is about to be imprisoned and executed. So how many times have each of us, you know, felt some kind of inferior feeling like lesser than about ourselves, shrunk away and behaved in ways that reinforce that feeling, thereby confirming to ourselves our status is unworthy of admiration or even of love? You know, in fact, this low self-esteem is one of the most insidious afflictions of our culture and of our age. So the rest of this story has to do with the father, the Buddha, setting up skillful devices to attract his son, starting by sending two men in disguise to offer the poor man a job at double wages. They offer him a job cleaning out the stables. So the poor man agrees, well, that's something I can do.

[13:02]

Here at Green Gulch, and I'm sure it is the same at the city center, we offer new students, the ones we call guest students, piles and piles of our dirty dishes. Well, that's something I think I can do. That's certainly where I started my career at Zen Center. Sometime later, the father too disguises himself as a crew head. He goes to the stables and in a very stern voice pretends to admonish the other workers not to be lazy. He then tells his son that he's not been lazy. that he has never been deceitful or angry or complained about the work. And because of that, he will from this time on be treated like his very own begotten son. So little by little, the poor man is given more instructions and responsibilities, first for the stables and then the household and the granaries and the investments and finally the entirety of his father's estate. But even so, the poor man continues to live in the stables unable to abandon the sense he has of his inferiority to those that he imagines to be more worthy than himself.

[14:08]

So the father, knowing that his son's ideas about the world have been enlarged and his skills have been developed, commands his son, along with all of his retainers and ministers, to assemble around him. Seeing that his own end is growing near, the father tells the entire assembly This really is my son, and I really am his father, and now all the wealth which I possess belongs entirely to him. When the poor son hears these words from his father, so great was his joy at such unexpected news that he thinks thus, without any mind for receiving them or any effort to do so on my part, these treasures now come to me of themselves. Having told this story, the disciples now declare to the Buddha, the very rich elder in this story is you, dear teacher, the world honored one. And we are as your children. You have always declared that we are your children.

[15:10]

But because of the sufferings of greed, hate and delusion, we have borne all kinds of torments, being deluded and ignorant and enjoying only our attachments to trifles. So with the simplest elements of this story in mind, you know, that being the use of skillful means, you know, of the sky hook, I want to talk a little bit more about the value of training, such as the elder gave to his prodigal son. You know, here at the Zen Center, I think we consider the primary value in all of our activities to be training. We often refer to ourselves as Zen training temples. And training is... given in order to reveal to ourselves and to each other those essential values and skills that are conducive to living a life of happiness within the constraints of human life. In one of his earliest teachings, the Buddha said, I teach just two things.

[16:11]

I teach suffering and I teach the end of suffering. And that's what he did. I think suffering isn't so hard for us to understand. It comes with the territory, the territory that we traverse from the day that we're born until the day of our death. And it comes in a familiar and repeating set of conditions. These conditions were outlined by the Buddha in his very first sermon called Setting, Rolling the Wheel of the Law. The law in Buddhism is also called the Dharma or the truth. is for each of us to validate for ourselves. As the Buddha told his own disciples, just try it out, this truth. And if it doesn't suit you, if it doesn't work for you, well, let it go and try another one. So here's what he said about the truth of suffering. This is from the first sermon. Birth is suffering. Aging is suffering.

[17:14]

Sickness is suffering. Death is suffering, sorrow and lamentation, pain and grief and despair are suffering. Associating with the loathed is suffering. Dissociation from the loved is suffering. In short, not to get what one wants is suffering. So I would imagine that all of these examples of suffering in varying degrees are familiar to every one of us. You know, throughout the day, there's probably not a single day that one or another of these hasn't arisen. The conditions for depriving us of what would otherwise be a life of unending and seamless pleasures. As in our dreams. So it's therefore the Buddha went on to say that suffering as above is caused. And this is the hard part for us. It's caused by how we think. And how we think is driven by our desire for things to be the way we want, by our preferences.

[18:22]

So in the Buddha's own words, it's craving which produces the cycle of suffering. This is the second noble truth. Craving accompanied by relish and lust. Relishing this and that. In other words, craving for sensual desire. Craving for being, for existence, for life. Or craving for non-being. for non-existence, for death. In other words, wishing or scheming and planning for things that we must have or on the other hand must eliminate is the source of all of our suffering. And then what are those wishes, schemes, plans and desires made from? They are made from ideas, from notions and thoughts, from words. We build our house of cards out of our thinking. out of our minds, which indeed we often are. Learning to see how our unhappiness is related to this particular habit of mind called craving is the basic training program for all of us who endeavor to study the Buddha way.

[19:30]

In order to understand this training a little better, I find it useful to be reminded again and again that these habits of mind formed from ideas into patterns and shapes are what I am using, like my glasses, to see the world. It is no accident that the ideas that I use to see the world look exactly like the world that I see. The world of my preferences, my judgments, my limitations, my terrors, and my delights. A world in which not getting what I want is suffering. So I have really come to appreciate a term that's used in the mind-only teachings of Buddhism, which I have been studying this last year to some extent. The term is emotionalized conceptualizations, those strong feelings which come up together with our thoughts. In other words, we believe that how we feel and what we think is simply the truth.

[20:34]

That what we feel and how we think is the truth. However, the Buddha said, to the contrary, those emotionalized concepts are the cause of your suffering. For example, the prodigal son who believed he was inferior to his father and fainted in terror when he was summoned to the palace was certain he was going to be imprisoned and executed. So after detailing the truth of how and why we suffer, the Buddha then went on to teach his second and most important message. that there is an end to suffering. And that's the one that got all of our attention. The end of suffering, he declared, is the fading and ceasing, the giving up, the relinquishing, the letting go and rejecting of that attachment we have to our emotionalized conceptualizations. The end of suffering is the fading and ceasing, the giving up, the relinquishing, the letting go and rejecting of that attachment

[21:37]

we have to our emotionalized conceptualizations. In other words, the end of suffering is to leave the sky hook on the grass and jump into the water with your friends. And before we do that, we need to make use of those sky hooks or skillful means that have been given to us by wise old ducks or by our wise old elders, just as the poor son did in growing into his true worth as the heir of his father's estate. It was his willingness to be taught actually that made the huge difference, his willingness to receive the offerings of greater and greater responsibility that brought him to full maturity as a man. At which point when the letting go was complete, he himself was a Buddha, was the great father. So I hope that all of us as the sons and daughters of good family temporarily falling into poverty, will come to realize our own truest state, and that is that there is nothing whatsoever restraining us other than our own ideas of some more perfect and better world than the one that we're in, or some more perfect and better freedom, some more perfect and better self.

[22:57]

Once the Buddha saw how ideas themselves were all that troubled him, he felt a tremendous relief. He was enlightened up and he said things that no one had ever heard before. Things like no suffering, no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path to the cessation of suffering, no knowledge and no attainment with nothing to attain. This teaching from the Heart Sutra is a declaration of perfect wisdom that this is how the world was for the Buddha. You know, when his egg cracked open and all the colors and shapes and flavors and odors and sounds of the universe were set free. Inside and outside and no sides at all. You know, bodhisattva, hallelujah. May all beings in the universe be set free at last. May all of you, may all of us be set free at last. And thank you very much for your kind attention.

[23:59]

So now. I would like to open to hearing from you and speaking with you, whatever you would like to talk about. I think you all know how to do the hand, if you like. Yes. Abbas Fu, I would like to leave it to you. Would you prefer to do the Bodhisattva vows now or at the end of our Q&A time? Oh, whatever your tradition, whatever your way is. What do you do usually, Kodo? We usually do it now so that questions have a moment to bubble up. Okay, let's bubble up. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them.

[25:04]

Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it. And if anyone would like a reminder about how to raise hands. The old version of Zoom, you open the participants window, and there's a raise hand button. The new version of Zoom, touch this reactions button, and the raise hand option is there. I see a question from May. Hi, May. Hi, Fu. How are you? I'm quite well. Thank you so much for being here. You're welcome. Yeah, wonderful to have you over here. across the bay. Yeah. I really appreciated hearing you speak about the Lotus Sutra just to have a different flavor of the Lotus Sutra come forth from you in addition to Reb.

[26:10]

Something I think it was last week Reb was jamming on was freedom from suffering versus freedom with suffering. And so that's kind of floating around for me. When I was hearing you go over the Four Noble Truths and the Buddha taught an end of suffering. There's an end to suffering, Third Noble Truth. And then we chant, delusions are inexhaustible. And so I'd be curious to hear you share a little bit about kind of the early Buddhist notion of an end to suffering and this notion that there's no end to suffering. Well, that sounds pretty Buddhist right there. The end is suffering and the no end is suffering, you know, this non-dual.

[27:13]

I mean, our language is dualistic. We have, we're kind of stuck with that, right? If I say you, you say me. I mean, we don't know how to talk without dividing things into parts. So if I say the end of suffering and someone else says there's no end of suffering, like as the Buddha says, what are they talking about? What's going on here? So one of the ways to be free is to stop talking. That silence and stillness that we so enjoy in our meditation, you know, that time when it just, just stop, you know, just stop. It seems as though there's an end of something. There's an end of the commotion. One definition of nirvana is utter contentment, which I like very much. I don't know if that's the end of suffering or the start of suffering or what it is, but to be content, to really feel content with what's happening. Words are coming or not coming, but just to be relaxed in your body and feel safe.

[28:16]

and with your community. I don't know if that's the end of suffering, but it's really great. And that's how I've lived my life, is being with all of you and all of those who came before you got here. And I hope it will continue on and on and on. And so I guess it's just, to me, it always ends up, it's just words. And when we're quiet, it seems to be close enough. So how's that? Is that okay? Thank you. That'll do. Don't worry about it too much. That's it. That's really, don't worry. You remember Alfred E. Newman. Cool. But me worry. That's right. Terry. There's Terry.

[29:17]

Hi, Terry. Hi. Thank you for your wonderful talk. The concept of the skyhook is very useful to me, I think. I've just been wondering, I've been going more and more to the morning service and chanting the Heart of Great Perfect Wisdom Sutra. And I don't understand it at all, at all. And it's kind of comforting to do because I've done it so many times and it's comforting to do it with others. But is there any, is that okay? I just don't get it. It is so okay. It's really okay not to get it. It's okay to enjoy chanting it.

[30:20]

It's okay to keep on chanting it. And we'll all chant it with you. And I'll bet you if anyone in this room was going to tell you they got it, they probably will ask them, what did you get out of that? There's nothing to get. No attainment with nothing to attain. That tells you right there in the sutra, right? Oh, that's right. That's right. So it's perfectly fine. Absolutely fine. The sutra says it's fine not to understand the sutra. Yeah. And, you know, that's the Buddha said that. So, you know, you got to kind of believe somebody. Yeah. I did know, however, that enchanting the heart sutra way back in the day when I was somewhat quite a bit younger than I am now. I first heard it. I thought it was bizarre. And then. I was walking out of Point Reyes at a friend's house. And I was walking by myself along a path. And this line from the Heart Sutra, no path, popped into my head.

[31:21]

And all of a sudden, I was like, there's no path. I'm at Point Reyes. There's the ocean and the sky and the trees. And like, it was all of a sudden, this whole thing just blew up. into this very large space. And I was like, how did that happen? Well, no path. No path. So I don't know, but they're triggers. Each one of those lines is a trigger to a possible insight, which doesn't last. It's not like it lasts. That was just a nice thing for me that I've remembered now for 40 some odd years. You know, I would... I can't make it happen again. I'm not in control. But these lines can come to us at various times and be very liberative or give us some kind of little peephole into a bigger reality that we haven't noticed. Okay, thank you very much. You're welcome. You're welcome. Nice to see you.

[32:23]

Good to see you too, Fu. Yeah. Nancy. Excuse me. That's okay. I'm sorry. I'll let you do your job. She's looking at the hand. I know. I know. I can see it. Thank you so much for being with us this evening. You're welcome. I'm wondering if during this three week intensive of studying the Lotus Sutra with your teacher, Tenshin Roshi, I'm sure you've probably studied the Lotus Sutra with him possibly many times by now. I'm just wondering if there's something that you are hearing new in the teaching this time around, if there's something that has, you know, popped out or standing out for you as,

[33:27]

we're taking this up as a sangha, global sangha, right? As we take this study up together this time. Yeah. Completely. That's a funny book. In a lot of ways, because every time you open it, it's like those magic books from, you know, Harry Potter or something, you know, the Marauders map or something. You open it and all of a sudden you have a it's a universe in there. Everything's in there. I mean, it's amazing. They just didn't stop adding stuff for centuries. It's an amazing collection of all of these beautiful images and all the hell realms and all the tortures you're going to have if you don't respect the Lotus Sutra. I mean, it's an amazing vision. It is a trance induction. If you read the Lotus Sutra slowly, you will see the dragons and the towers.

[34:32]

So a lot of these sutras were used by meditators to induce visions. So if you read the Abhatamsaka Sutra, you read the Lotus Sutra, you will begin, your imaginarium, I like to call this my imaginarium, your imaginarium will begin to get very big and will be filled with all of these wonderful images. And as the Buddha did in the very first chapter, he did that. One quarter of the universe, he showed everybody, right? Kaboom. And then what did he do? He shut it down. So... For me, the big startling event from the Lotus Sutra, which happened again this time on a different chapter, is how brilliant it is in showing us the workings of our own mind. When I give you an image like that, all of a sudden your imagination can actually do – you can do that. You can – like soap bubbles. You can blow this big bubble of hundreds and thousands of –

[35:32]

People sitting around and dragons and all that sort of thing. And then he shut it off. He put the vision back into his forehead. Where did it go? Where did the one you had yesterday go? Where's the one you're having now going to go? So I think learning how the mind works to create fantasy, to create image. And, you know, one great form that we create is suffering. To watch how we blow these bubbles of suffering and then how they pop. is such a gift. And I think that was the greatest gift to me from the Lotus Sutra. And it happened again this time in reading through it because I have all these post-its in there from years of looking at it. And I think if you don't have the threefold Lotus Sutra, I hope you all do, the first sutra of the threefold, there's three sutras, is the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings. And that's the one that blew my mind this time. I read it very slowly and I'm like... And it says right in there, what is the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings?

[36:34]

Non-duality and emptiness. That's kind of what the whole book is saying. Non-dual and empty. Page after page after page. So I was, you know, I wrote that down. It was like three words. Non-dual and empty. And so that was exciting. And, you know, I would say that each each day I go through my post-its and I like, oh, yeah, that's it's fresh. Now I'm looking at it again and it's fresh. This mind hasn't seen these words for a very long time. So like an old friend, you know. So the more you read it, the more you review all of these texts, the more they become old friends. And it's nice to see old friends. It's like, wow, like seeing some of you, you know, it's like. Oh, wow. Those are my old friends. Kind of like that. Thank you, food.

[37:36]

Non-dual. Empty. And then you can relax and you can just enjoy the Maginarium. Well, might as well. It seems to run on its own, you know. Nice to see you. Thanks for the invitation, by the way. Thank you for accepting. You're welcome. More questions arising from the Imaginariums? Imaginariums. Peter. Yes. Thank you, Fu, so much for your parable about the mother duck. You're welcome. Alexa, stop. Excuse me. I'm sitting here with my sick old kitty, and I've wondered how I could comfort her, and the idea of a mother hen sitting on her egg came to me, and I thought, well, I can just sit next to her and give her my warmth, you know, let her know I love her, and

[38:56]

And I did. I get down the floor and I sat with her and she crawled up on my lap, which is a very unusual. And so I sat on my egg and she hatched and she's been very much a sweet, sweet old gal. Lucky her. I appreciated your Your talk Sunday, I think it was in reference to the, you know, I always get the name wrong, but the not disparaging Bodhisattva or the non-abiding, the non-disparaging. And you... At one point you made a comment that sounded a little bit skeptical and practical and hopeful.

[40:03]

And I just thought, boy, that's the approach that I want to have. Questioning and questioning and yet full of hope. life and joy. And so thank you so much. Yeah, I don't know about my Imaginarium. Oh, and thank you for letting me know about the mural on the Green Gulch Greengrocer building. Although I live Just a few blocks away. I haven't been by Zen Center in weeks. And I have to make an effort to go by and check it out. Do it. It's beautiful. Yes. What's your kitty's name? Greta. With two T's.

[41:05]

Greta. Blessings, Greta. Yeah. A little girl. She's a fierce old soul, but she's got nine lives, that's for sure. Yeah. So again, thank you so much. And let me see. I will relinquish the rest of my time. Okay. There's about minutes left. I know you guys are very precise about your ending times. I was well informed. Do not go over 830. That was what that alarm was. I wanted to make sure I didn't exceed the time. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Perhaps if there's one more burning question, we have a minute and a half. I also want to say that Abbas Fu will be leading and intensive with senior Dharma teacher Ryushin Paul Heller and Gil Fransdahl at the end of April, beginning of May.

[42:08]

Stay tuned for more details. It's not yet on sfcc.org, but with our guests here in town, I wanted to mention this. Zana and Vipassana. Should be fun. Miss Fu, would you like to offer a closing word? Just gratitude. I feel really, I don't know, kind of giddy being at the city center. I lived there for a very long time, about six years I lived in that building. I know all the secret places. So I really appreciate the life of the city center. I wish you all the best, and I hope you all will stay safe. I know it's maybe a little harder for you without that much room around you, but I hope you're safe. can continue to be safe until we all have a chance to be together again in person. And please come to Green Gulch when you can. So thank you, Kodo, for hosting. Thank you, Nancy, for the invitation.

[43:09]

Thank you, City Center and others. Thank you so much. And everyone should be able to unmute now if you'd wish. Very much appreciate all of us being part of this conversation. Thank you, Abbas Fu. Thank you very much. Thank you, Foo. [...] It's a big wave. Thank you, Foo. Oh, there's another one. We should all do that. Bye. Good night. Good night, Foo. I got my sky hooked. Good night, everybody. Good night. Barbara. Sweet. Arlene. Beautiful job, Arlene, on that mural. Thank you, Fu. We have the Chronicle coming tomorrow.

[44:12]

It's very nice. And thank you, Tova, for such a beautifully written article on the news. It's really very nice. I haven't seen it yet. I look forward to it. It's in the chat. It's in the chat? Yeah, David put it in the chat. Oh, how nice. How do you get it out of the chat? Thank you. I know it's been a long day of Zooming. Oh, hey, Eli. See you soon. Tomorrow we'll be on again. Never say never. Never say never, right?

[44:47]

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