An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma. is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. I've always thought that it was kind of a trick, this thing with the Dharma talk and good morning during Sashin.

[01:17]

You know, it's such a Sodazen thing. Someone says good morning and you think, oh, I should say something back. I should respond. And then you think, but they told me not to talk. What is an appropriate response? So now I got to feel what that feels like. I'm glad you guys said good morning. That's what I hope to say. I'd like to thank the abbot for the... invitation request to address you one more time, to welcome our guests, and to thank my teachers, particularly Daijaku and Leslie James and Tenzin Wongyal Rinpoche, all of whom are deeply written into this talk, which is actually not written. They're woven into this talk. But also all my other teachers and all of you as my teachers.

[02:19]

Because what I want to talk about today is refuge, taking refuge and finding refuge as we come to the end of this period of refuge that we've taken together. I'm going to move this and see if that helps. Is that better? Maybe, maybe not. Okay. Thank you, Gladys. So I want to start with two stories. And I guess they qualify as my favorite two stories from the Buddhist tradition. And for me, they're both stories about refuge, but stories that... really, in some sense, exemplify what appear to be the two opposite poles of refuge. And thinking back to the Tantos talk, one of them is really about tariki, about other power refuge, and the other is really about self-power refuge. So lean back and I'll tell you two stories.

[03:28]

So the first story is from... the Tibetan tradition. I first encountered it in Andrew Harvey's book about Ladakh, but I've since heard it in other forms. And in Andrew Harvey's version, I should say it centrally features a dog, but I can't get through the story when I tell it with a dog, so I'm going to tell it with a cat. No offense to the cats, but I just would like to get through one Dharma talk without... completely losing it. So I don't even know if I can tell this story with a cat in it, quite honestly, but I'll try. So in this story, Avalokiteshvara or Chenrezig has done his work as a bodhisattva and he's finished with that time. And it's time for him to... move into the Buddha land.

[04:33]

Do you want me to move this thing? It's not me. Okay, that's nice. Isn't that nice when that happens? It's not me, it's you. So he's going to cross from the lands in which he has been doing his work as the Bodhisattva Chenrezig or the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara into the Buddha land and waiting. See, I'm not going to be able to tell the story. Waiting in the Buddha land is his father, Amitabha Buddha, the primordial Buddha. And so Chenrezig is walking towards the border between this world and the other world, whatever that means. And his father is standing right on the other side and he's just about to get off the wheel. And his father is waiting for him and he hears a kitten crying.

[05:38]

And he pauses and he hears the kitten again and he turns around and he scoops the kitten up and tucks the kitten into his robe and keeps walking. And just as he gets to his father, his father says, That one can't come in here. She's not ready. So Chen Rezik says, then I guess neither am I. And he turns around and comes back over here to us. And as he's walking away, his father goes, son. And he turns around and his father goes, and a thousand arms. Well, 998 arms and 998 eyes explode around Chenrezig.

[06:43]

And his father says, you're going to need those. So this, to me, is one example of refuge. You know, we are tucked in the robe. of the Buddhas and ancestors, of the Bodhisattvas. We're protected and guarded and we call out for that kind of protection and we long for it in some way, even if we think we don't. I think some part of us wishes to be taken up, as Leslie always says so beautifully, we all just want someone to tell us that we're okay. We all just want someone to gather us up. And I think that's a very powerful version of refuge. And the other story is from earlier and is quite appropriate to this week.

[07:48]

There's many versions of this story, but the one that I heard from Lama Sultrim Alioni is it's the night of Buddha's determination to awaken. And I'm sure many of you know the story. He sits down under the Bodhi tree and he sits and sits as we are about to sit and sit. And all of a sudden he hears a voice. And the voice says, that's my seat. And I think for a lot of us, certainly for me for a long time as Buddhists, if someone said to me, that's my seat, I would have said, oh, do you want my seat? I can move over and take the other seat, right? That's fine. That seat will do. I'll give up my seat for you. But that's not what Shakyamuni Buddha said. He said to Mara, no, this is my seat.

[08:54]

And it's this establishment of, this is my place. You can come and sit next to me. You can come and sit opposite me, behind me, above me, because you're Mara, below me. But this is my seat. And Mara said, by what authority do you claim that seat? And Chakyamuni Buddha said, by the authority of my practice. That's it. That's all I got. No gold stars, no certificates, no diplomas. Just my practice. That's what authorizes me to have this seat. And Mara said, do you have any witnesses? And Shakyamuni Buddha, not yet quite Buddha, touched the earth and said, the earth is my witness. And this is Bhumisparasa mudra, earth-touching mudra, and you see a lot of Buddhas in that mudra.

[10:05]

So in one of these stories, we take refuge in and find refuge in and ask for refuge from other beings, often more powerful beings in our imagining of them. And I think for some of us, that's very powerful. And for some of us, it's really not powerful. It's like, eh, I don't want any part of that bodhisattva cloak. And then in the other story, it's really, I take refuge in my practice. I take refuge in myself. I take refuge in my seat. I come home to myself. That's all we have at the end of the day to come home to. And what I'd like to suggest today is that these two notions of refuge are not as far apart as they seem.

[11:10]

And that in our tradition in particular, there's a way in which they fold back on each other and draw strength from each other that I hope will be helpful as we enter into this week of deeply taking refuge in our own practice with all Buddhas and ancestors and Bodhisattvas to guide us. So we begin and end the day by taking refuge here. We start the day with repentance. That's kind of nice. We get to clear the slate the first time we open our mouths during the day. and avow our ancient twisted karma. And then the very next thing that we do is take refuge before all beings, before all beings. So they witness us for our morning taking of refuge.

[12:12]

And then we end the night with sharanam, which is the, saranam is the Pali word, sharanam, the Sanskrit word for refuge. So we take refuge before we lay ourselves down at night in part to close our day and in part I was told early in my practice in case we die at night so that the last thing that came out of our mouth was I take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. So I love the way in which we bracket our day with that and I really appreciate the fact that in our silent days the Abbot has allowed us to continue outwardly repenting and outwardly taking refuge to begin and end the day. And those are the only words that we speak if we're lucky on the silent days, if we're lucky and canny. So this word, Sharanam, means protection.

[13:19]

It means guarding. It means shelter. It means asylum. And while I'm not going to be speaking about refuge and asylum in our current political situation today, it's been impossible to spend a month thinking about refuge and asylum without having the situation of refugees and people seeking asylum kind of constantly in the background. So as you think about what taking refuge and giving refuge means to you, I hope we can all remember that we're in a world full of people looking for refuge. Most of our ancestors, close or far, would not be on this continent now. And some of us would not be, were it not for this taking of refuge or finding of asylum. So there's a very real, not real, as though the other thing is not real.

[14:21]

That's not the right world. There's a worldly conversation that we could also be having about refuge and asylum. And if we were having a Q&A, we could talk about it in the Q&A, but it's a shin, so no Q&A. So write down your question. We'll talk about it afterwards. So where do we look for protection? Where do we look for refuge? Out there or in here? That's one of our questions, I think, on the Buddhist path. When do we look out and when do we look within? When I think about refuge in this valley, at the end of my Tongario practice period, I had what people of my generation would have called a nervous breakdown because I didn't want to leave the valley because I felt safe here and I had never felt safe in my life before and I didn't want to give up that feeling. and I hadn't yet figured out how to generate that feeling for myself.

[15:24]

And I remember this day in class, it was probably the last class of the practice period, and Leslie was sitting to my right, and Ann Baker was sitting to my left, and Tim Kroll, who was my inseparable Tongario brother, and the only other person on general labor, was sitting behind me, and Leslie said, We've got her surrounded. And I've never forgotten that moment because what happened in that moment that was so interesting was that I both felt the confirmation of what I had felt all along, which was this sense of safety, and also something that would carry with me. Like, I still remember this 11 years later like it was yesterday. So interestingly, that moment of being given refuge had a permanently transformative effect.

[16:27]

And then the other morning when I was ringing the wake-up bell, I came down the steps and I started through the work circle towards the dorm, towards the, not the dorm, towards the hill, and there was a young deer just past Fawn Hood in front of me, and as I... I kind of ran up to it, I saw it look up the hill, and so naturally my headlamp went up the hill following it, and I saw what I presume was its mother just lying quietly on the hillside at 3.45 a.m. And I had this really strong sense of, oh, she can rest here. She's been out in the rain, she's been out in these big storms, she's trying to get this small creature to adulthood. And this valley, as the abbot said after the fire, when all the animals came, this valley is a refuge. And I know that Kinu being here made it not as much of a refuge as it might have been. Kinu is my dog who was here for most of the practice period. But it was so sweet to see the fawn kind of finding its way in the world and the mother just both taking refuge and giving refuge at the same time.

[17:40]

So that's what I'm really interested in is how do we take and give refuge together. Katagiri Roshi says, everyone consciously or unconsciously is seeking for something trustworthy, something dependable, beyond worldly affairs, from which one can feel relief. Everyone is seeking refuge. And then he follows that up in good Zen form with the sentence, this is why we suffer. So it's a complex point. We suffer because we're looking for something to rely on, something trustworthy and something dependable. But we also practice because we're looking for those things. Both of those things are true. And in all the reading that I did about refuge, those were the two... sides of Manjushri's sword that kept coming up.

[18:47]

We can only find refuge in groundlessness and the only reason that we're practicing is because we're looking for some foundation beyond what we usually find. So this longing for something more is what leads us to kind of yoke our life to the triple treasure. Katagiri goes on, we still seek for something more than we have. This is pretty deep. No one knows what it is, but we're all seeking it. Certainly, all of us are seeking it, but I think everyone is seeking it on some level. The three refuges, he says, refer to that which is our goal in life, and through taking refuge, we can establish our life as a whole personality, that is profound, and that helps all sentient beings. So when we take refuge, we establish ourselves in ourselves, and by doing that we then become available to other beings.

[19:57]

I talked at the beginning of the practice period about the way in which kinu helps me to be available. So I take refuge in kinu, kinu takes refuge in me, And somehow through that, both of us are available to all beings. And this is the kind of magical give and take that I think is at the heart of the refuge vow. And it's, I mean, we could talk about vow for a long time, but... It's fascinating to me that we repeat this refuge vow over and over and over again. It's not like you take your refuge vow once and then you're done, right? Twice a day, every day, at least, we're taking refuge vow, taking refuge vow, taking refuge vow. And everyone I read, even though I don't think I've ever heard a talk on refuge, everyone I read for this talk, including Dogen Zenji, about whom more in a moment,

[21:04]

says, if nothing else, refuge. If nothing else, take refuge. The secret, the key to all of this is to take refuge. Trungpa Rinpoche says, by taking the refuge vow, we commit ourselves to freedom. So I find that really interesting. By taking a vow... which seems in some ways a kind of unfree thing to do, right? I vow to, I commit myself to X. We are actually committing ourselves to freedom. So by yoking to the triple treasure, we are committing ourselves not to some static idea, but to our own freedom and to the freedom of those around us. Trungpa uses the language of refugees in his writing about refuge.

[22:14]

He says, we become homeless refugees. And at times when I was reading it, I thought, oh, this is a romanticization of being a homeless refugee until I remembered that Trungpa was a homeless refugee. He had fled to that... over the mountains. And while he found a home in England and he found homes in the United States, he was fundamentally homeless and a refugee. So he knew what he was talking about. He said, we become homeless refugees. The point of becoming a refugee is to give up our attachment to basic security. So Katagiri says, we're all looking for basic security. That's why we take refuge. And yet, we take refuge in order to give up our attachment to basic security. It's a puzzle. And Trungpa says, you commit yourself as a refugee to yourself.

[23:16]

You commit yourself to yourself. Nonetheless, we take refuge not immediately or in our language to ourselves we take refuge in the Buddha Dharma and Sangha in the Triple Treasure and everybody I read had a different wonderful translation of what each of the jewels means I think my favorite is Gary Snyder who said we take refuge in teachers plural the wild That's his translation of Dharma. And our companions. Teachers, the wild, and our companions. Trungpa says, one takes refuge in the Buddha as an example, in the Dharma as path, and in the Sangha as companionship. Nonetheless, it is a total commitment to oneself.

[24:21]

Nonetheless. So we are committing... to the example of the Buddha's life. Certainly Trungpa doesn't over-idolize the Buddha whom he calls before his enlightenment a wishy-washy spiritual tripper, just like us. He talks about how he went around to all these different practices and he was a wishy-washy spiritual tripper. And then on that night that we are commemorating with this Sashin, he gave up his wishy-washy spiritual trip and just sat down with himself and the intention to wake up with all beings. The Dharma as the path and the Sangha as companions. Nonetheless or nevertheless, it is a total commitment to oneself and also it is the beginning of what he calls an odyssey of loneliness.

[25:23]

So it's this real paradox that I really highly doubt I need to explain to anyone in this room that our path is companioned both by the Buddhas and ancestors and by those that we practice with now and it is fundamentally a solitary path. So Trungpa emphasizes the solitariness of the path of refuge, but he also puts a lot of weight on Sangha. And there's a famous place in the Pali Canon that I didn't go and look up where somebody asked the Buddha, which is the most important Buddha, Dharma or Sangha? And he says, Sangha, that's the one you can't do without. And Trungpa says some really wonderful things about taking refuge in the Sangha. He says, there is a sense of belonging.

[26:25]

You belong to a tradition of loneliness where people work together. He says, taking refuge in Sangha means that we have a lot of friends, fellow refugees, who are also confused and who are working with the same guidelines we are. We are able to act as a reminder and to provide feedback for each other. I was really interested to find that word in Trungpa. So we're confused together, and we're working with the Shingi and the Sashin admonitions together in our confusion. And then my very favorite thing that he says about Sangha, he says, the Sangha is the community of people who have the perfect right to cut through your trips and feed you with their wisdom, as well as the perfect right to demonstrate their own neurosis and be seen through by you.

[27:27]

So that's what we are for each other. The Sangha is the community of people who have the perfect right to cut through your trips and feed you with their wisdom, as well as the perfect right to demonstrate their own neurosis and be seen through by you. So we're walking around cutting through each other's trips, seeing through each other, working with the same guidelines, and sharing in our lonely confusion. And we take refuge in that. That's how we are together here living in this valley, but it's also how we are together here in this room, doing this courageous, crazy thing that we're doing. And in a way, we're not only reflecting our wisdom and our confusion to each other, we're reflecting the choice to take refuge to each other.

[28:34]

When I think, what on earth am I doing here? I look up or I look over and you help me remember and they help me remember And the Buddhas and ancestors that we chant, help me remember. I've been really obsessed this week with the line in the meal chant that I've never really listened to before because I'm so compelled by the line that comes after it, which is entrusting ourselves to the Sangha. But right before that, we say, in the midst of the three treasures which verify our understanding. In the midst of the three treasures which verify our understanding. And this really flipped my sense of taking refuge when I really heard that line, because I thought, oh, we take refuge and then maybe we get some understanding.

[29:40]

If I take refuge, then my payoff eventually will be a little understanding. But actually, the three treasures are verifying what we're already understanding. And we wouldn't be interacting with the three treasures if we didn't already have some understanding of some kind. We wouldn't be here in the first place. We wouldn't be saying the refuge vow at God knows what time in the morning or goodness knows what time in the evening. So they make... Verify is to make true or to make trustworthy. And so there's a feedback response where I have some understanding and I kind of bring it to the triple treasure. I bring it to the Buddha and I say, okay, teacher, what do you think? And I bring it to the Dharma and I think, okay, path, what do you think? And I bring it to you all and I say, what do you think? And there's a back and forth happening in the relationship between

[30:45]

my understanding, my seat, my practice, and this triple treasure outside it. So Dogen, as the abbot noted earlier in the practice period, Dogen Zenji has a fascicle on taking refuge. It has two names. One is Kie Bu Puso Ho, which is on taking refuge in the Three Treasures of Buddhadharma and Sangha, and the other is just Kie Sambo, on taking refuge in the Three Treasures. And in that fascicle, the abbot and I were joking because it It's kind of a rough draft of the fascicle, and it's very lucid. It's really easy to understand. And so we decided that what maybe Dogen did in the editing process was to go in and make everything much harder to understand.

[31:50]

And so what we really need are the unedited Dogen fascicles, because this one you can pretty much get right through with no confusion, I guarantee you. And early in the fascicle, he describes the fact that Kie has this structure of return that I've been talking about. Key, he says, is to keep returning to. And A is to submit ourselves with devotion to. And so to take refuge is to devote oneself to returning to, taking refuge in this endless looping. And refuge, it means the same thing. Refuge in the Latin tradition means to fly back. to run back. So the form of this returning, Dogen says quite beautifully, is like that of a child returning again and again to its parent.

[32:51]

So this is a little bit more like the Chenrezig version, where we're taking refuge, we're allowing ourselves to be taken up by something that can protect us and take care of us. It's a really interesting fascicle. I particularly like it because it has two stories involving dragons, one involving a wild fox and one involving a lay practitioner, a lay disciple of the Buddha who asks him, what is a lay disciple of the Buddha? And the Buddha says, it's a lay person who's taken refuge. That's it. So I won't tell you the dragon stories, but I will tell you that the stories are all about people who once were practitioners. and then went far astray of their vows, very, very far astray, especially in the case of one female dragon. And in these stories, by calling on the triple treasurer or asking for refuge, they are restored.

[33:55]

They are freed from their afflictive states by what you might think of as their residual wisdom. So no matter how far away they've strayed, they are able to remember enough to ask for refuge, and immediately the Buddha restores them to their prior state. And I think, you know, it's like us, right? I mean, we forget, we go astray in small and large ways. Some of us have gone astray in quite large ways in here, and somehow something in us remembers, and we call out, right? We call out... with a kind of force of wisdom that persists in us. So the one asking for refuge is in some sense not different from the one who grants that refuge. And I think that's essential to our understanding of what's happening when we take refuge.

[34:58]

Wisdom calls out to wisdom to be verified, to be reminded of itself. Katagiri Roshi says, the spiritual communion between the Buddha and the practicer, the Buddha and you, is the interacting communion of appeal and response. And he really loves this word of communion, coming together. There is nothing to ask for help from in this world, but there is something we can appeal to beyond the human world, even though we don't know what it is. So we're appealing or calling out. You know, it's like those mani walls in Ladakh with those stones that are just calling, calling, calling to the heavens for mercy, you know, for compassion, for relief from suffering. And in Katagiri Roshi's sense of things, refuge and communion are identical to each other.

[36:03]

And he tells us, that when we call out for refuge, for the relief of suffering, in what he calls prayer, but you don't have to call it that. He says, when we call out, the response comes from the whole universe, from space, from akasha it comes. If we feel this spirit of the universe completely and appeal for help, or appeal that we may come alive in our everyday life very naturally we can be one with the universe this is response so when we call out for freedom from suffering or just for freedom period it's as though the universe echoes our own freedom back to us it's not an external force placing it in us it's the

[37:07]

lining up the coming together, the communion, the fellowship of us with the whole universe. And that is the response. So one more story. This is the wild fox story from Kie Sanbo. Those of you who know me know I just can't resist a wild fox. So unlike the dragons, we are not told that the wild fox was previously a practitioner. We're just told that the wild fox is a wild fox. And the wild fox is traipsing along doing wild fox things one day, and all of a sudden it is being chased by a lion. And the lion chases and chases and chases the fox, and the fox falls into a well. So the lion doesn't get the fox, but the fox is in a well. And it stays there for a couple of days. And after a couple of days, it realizes, I'm going to die down here. So it composes a song.

[38:11]

And this is the song that it sings. Due to misfortune, I suffer today. And I'm about to die inside this well. All things are impermanent. It would have been better if I had been eaten by that lion. I take refuge in the Buddhas of the Ten Directions. Please know that my mind is selfless and pure. And I just love that moment. It would have been better if I'd been eaten by the lion. At least the lion would have had lunch. But there's this just complete giving over that is exemplified in I take refuge in the Buddhas of the Ten Directions. I got nothing left. I'm in the bottom of a well. I'm starving to death. So Indra hears the fox's song.

[39:13]

And Indra thinks, there's a sage in the well. I should go down there and get some teachings because I don't have a teacher. And so Indra comes running down to the well. And Indra is almost always very selfish. Thank you, kitchen, wild foxes. And so he just yells down the well, hey, fox, can you give me some teachings? I am on my own without a teacher. I see a fox, but you must be a bodhisattva with something valuable to teach. This is what Indra says to the fox. So the calling out for refuge of the wild fox is heard as the possibility of refuge by Indra. So there's already a kind of coming back of the wisdom in this moment. Now, this is no dumb fox. And so the fox says, I can give you some teachings, but apparently you don't know the forms.

[40:19]

So when someone teaches, they're supposed to sit above the person that they're teaching. And also when someone comes to teach you, You're supposed to give them something, preferably some nourishment. And so Indra says, I'm so sorry. I'm a terrible student of the Dharma. And he lets his cloak down into the well. And the wild fox clambers up the cloak. And the 60,000 devas who have come along with the wild fox to hear the teachings mix up some amrita, some nectar, and they feed the fox. And the fox goes and sits up on a high seat with his full belly and gives teachings. So it's this wonderful story of the way in which wisdom returns to wisdom and the calling out for relief from our own suffering, the calling out for refuge is answered by the universe and actually recognized as wisdom. The call for refuge is recognized as wisdom by the universe.

[41:24]

And it turns out that there's a name for this in Japanese, which my teacher, Daijaku, has said to me many times, and I have never understood what on earth she was talking about. And I think I finally get it. So Katagiri Roshi says, in other words, if we reach out our hands to the universe, the universe sticks out its own hand to us. Then the path of your life and the path of the universe cross each other. So if you don't stick your hand out, The path of your life can't cross with the path of the universe. That wasn't category Roshi, that was me. Then the path of your life and the path of the universe cross each other, become one or interconnected. In Japanese, this is kan no doko. Kan, appeal. No, response. Do, path. Ko, cross. So appeal and response, crossing on the path. Kategori Roshi says, appeal and response cross very quickly.

[42:32]

This is wholeheartedness, exactly. And he actually translates Kanadoko as wholeheartedness. So when we wholeheartedly take refuge, it comes back to us immediately from the universe. So the more we give ourselves over, the more we receive our own wisdom back. And then we can share it with others. He says, if we see deeply the total picture of the human world, how transient the world is, how fragile human life is, then we can hear the cries of the world. And how are we going to see those things? We're only going to see those things authentically if we feel them ourselves. If you can't cry out for the relief of your own suffering, as I've said before, I don't think you're going to be able to receive anybody else's.

[43:33]

So if we see deeply the total picture of the human world, how transient the world is, how fragile human life is, then we can hear the cries of the world. The cries of human beings, he says, are simultaneously the one who listens. the cries of human beings are simultaneously the one who listens. And I would say to beloved Katagiri Roshi, the cries of all beings are simultaneously the one who listens. Okay, this is not only human beings. You know, when those animals come to this valley, they remind us, they remind us, they put us in touch with the possibility of refuge. So this kiei or this kanodoko, this returning and returning of our own wisdom to us at the moment at which we're willing to show up and ask for help. I think that's what taking refuge really is. And sometimes from the teachers, sometimes from the path, sometimes from each other, sometimes all of those things at once.

[44:41]

But the more we can practice wholeheartedly, authentically admitting, I need a little help here. the more we can see that the one who knows how to ask for help is the one who can help ourselves and others. So I'll finish with two offerings. One is a Lidaki yogi refuge prayer that the yogis there say, the folks who live up in caves, They say, in my heart, I turn or return to the three treasures, the three jewels of refuge. In my heart, I return to the three jewels of refuge. May I save suffering beings and place them in bliss. May the compassionate spirit of love grow within me so that I may complete the enlightening path. May the compassionate spirit of love grow within me

[45:48]

so that I may complete the enlightening path. And maybe for some of you, completing the enlightening path is an A to B journey. I think for me, it's may I complete this day so that I can get up tomorrow and take refuge again so the compassionate spirit of love can grow with me so that I can take refuge again and again and again. And May I learn through asking to hear the cries of others and to act skillfully in response. And I'll finish with a poem. It's really one of my favorite poems. I suspect some of you are familiar with it. But it's a poem about Kanodoko, about appeal and response crossing by Rumi. called Love Dogs.

[46:49]

One night a man was crying, Allah, Allah. His lips grew sweet with the praising until a cynic said, so I've heard you calling out, but have you ever gotten any response? The man had no answer for that. He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep. He dreamed he saw Kidder, the guide of souls, in a thick green foliage. Why did you stop praising? Because I've never heard anything back. This longing you express is the return message. The grief you cry out from draws you toward union. Your pure sadness that wants help is the secret cup. Listen to the moan of a dog for its master. That whining is the connection. There are love dogs no one knows the names of.

[47:56]

Give your life to be one of them. One more time. One night a man was crying, Allah, Allah. His lips grew sweet with the praising until a cynic said, so I've heard you calling out. but have you ever gotten any response? The man had no answer for that. He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep. The confused sleep that we fall into over and over again. He dreamed he saw Kidder the Guide of Souls in a thick green foliage. Why did you stop praising? Because I never heard anything back. But this longing you express is the return message. The grief you cry out from draws you toward union. Your pure sadness that wants help is the secret cup.

[48:58]

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master. That whining is the connection. There are love dogs no one knows the names of. Give your life to be one of them. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Thank you.

[50:01]

Thank you.

[50:07]

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