For about ten years I have sat in this centro every day, or every day I was here, just most of the year. And it's just wonderful, you know. I haven't been here for quite a while. I'm living in Mill Valley, going a lot to the city center in the city, and just standing there and then coming in and bowing and, you know, bowing to this wonderful Bodhisattva, Manjushri on the altar and Buddha. and sitting in front of this incredible shiso bodhisattva, which is the bodhisattva of passing, for the journals, of passing from one life to the other, the bodhisattva whose vow is to go to hell realms and stay there till everybody is really of suffering and liberated. And then the Buddha of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, the Torah statue right in my back.

[01:07]

What can go wrong today? So today I want to talk about how to live our life's fully and completely. And I want to talk about it from the point of view of dying and death. And that's because I have just come back three weeks ago, tomorrow, from spending seven weeks at my parents' house, which they built, and we moved in when I was 11. And I lived in that house with my parents and my six siblings until I was 21 and moved out. So I was there seven weeks, the first five of which I was given the opportunity and the gift of taking care of my mother, who died on March 13th, three weeks after her 90th birthday.

[02:29]

So that has been, so far in my life, the most incredible way beyond finding words for it, most alive, most focused, most, I don't know what, experience that I feel has been the biggest gift. And if I never experienced something like this, it made all the 61 years of my life so far and all the practice worthwhile. And so from coming from that experience, I just would like to say a few words today. and explore with you what does it mean, what helps us to live our lives as fully as possible, completely, wholeheartedly, not wasting our time in the face of dying and death.

[03:51]

We live in a culture that does not encourage our contact with death. I'm coming from Switzerland, and there it's also not close, but there are villages and places where death is still part of the living. And I think people that live in agricultural areas and work with animals, unless it's kind of a industrial animal taking care of, death is right there. If you have a garden, death is right there, and life is right there. If you pay attention, it's there all the time, because the only thing that we are certain of, with no question, is that we all are going to die one day.

[05:00]

That's the only thing we know for sure. And that's the only thing we behave like it's not going to happen to us. Isn't that amazing? I find that when I really let that in, I find that the most amazing thing, that the only, only, only thing we know is that we're going to die. And look at all the other things we set in front of it and behave like we know about them and they're going to be there tomorrow or in a month or in two years, and we don't. So Buddha is encouraging us to contemplate death, to be aware of death, to... really let it become a reality of our life.

[06:05]

And an effective reality, a reality that has effect. So for example, the word reality in German is Wirklichkeit, which means that which has effect. Which is not so much in your language. Sometimes it's interesting to see how different languages kind of give you a little more information about what reality is, is that which is in effect all the time. So on one occasion the Buddha asked several of his monks, how often do you contemplate death? One of them replied, Lord, I contemplate death every day. Not good enough, the Buddha said, and asked another monk, who replied, Lord, I contemplate death with each mouthful that I eat during the meal.

[07:12]

Better, but still not good enough, replied the Buddha. What about you? The third monk said, Lord, I contemplate death with each inhalation and each exhalation. That's all it takes. The inhalation comes in, it goes out, and one day it won't come in again. And that's it. That's all there is between you and death. Just that inhalation, the next inhalation. Obviously, the Buddha considered this a very important part of meditation and training towards becoming more wise and more peaceful. So...

[08:14]

My mother, about 12 to 15 years ago, said one day, from now on, I can go anytime. I have done everything I had to do. I have done everything I really needed to do. You know, there were many more things out there that I could think would be nice to do, but I do not have to have them. And I do not want to live a hundred years. Then when she became ill three years ago, it started, she had, in 2000, she had a mastectomy. breast cancer and I don't know if she never did any follow-up checkings because she said she always said you have to die of something and I don't want to know everything or if she wasn't encouraged to do them I don't know I forgot to ask her I can't ask her anymore but she started feeling not well with wandering pains and not feeling well and energy dips

[09:58]

went to see the doctor, and the doctor said, well, you have eaten something wrong, you have food poisoning, or you have rheumatism, and gave her pills for that. And she kept occasionally saying to him, how about checking for cancer? No, no, that would give you very different symptoms, and that's not it. So we went up and down and up and down. And so one and a half years ago, she actually said, I... want to be tested for cancer. Regardless of what you think, I want that. So she got tested for cancer. Lo and behold, she had metastasized bone cancer all over her body. Which kind of didn't incapacitate her mind at all, but it did incapacitate her body. She was having a hard time letting go of her capacity to do the things she liked.

[11:02]

Way years before, maybe 12 years ago, she started to have severe macular degeneration and had to stop driving her car. And I could find her three years ago on a ladder fixing the automatic garage door, which didn't work anymore. So she would kind of feel along that machine on the top, and there was this string hanging down. Then she was kind of getting down the ladder and pushing the button. Nothing happens. Getting back up on the ladder and kind of fixing it again. And she made it work. And she immediately signed up for the audio library that was in place in Switzerland by the Association for the Blind. And she immediately stopped and said she didn't want their journal, to receive their journal, even though she was a member, because all they did was, in their words, complaining about their plight of being blind and that that was just worrying and wasting time.

[12:10]

For her, it was like, how can I manage to do the things that are important for me in a different way? Because I can't do them the way... I could do them while I was seeing. So till she died, a lot of people never really realized that she was barely seeing anything because she was just finding ways to live her life fully. But to be physically, energetically, by pain or tiredness or just not having the energy to do what she would like to do was really, really hard for her. And she... resisted it and, you know, struggled with God and her fate for quite a while. But she was also a very, very truthful and honest person. So she could see what she was doing.

[13:12]

She wasn't hiding it. She wasn't blaming anybody. She just said, I'm having an incredibly hard time, there's a German expression, to give the spoon away, to give the control away, to let go of being in charge, of having other people deal with the things in her house, which was her realm. She was at home raising us. She thought Being a housewife and a mother was the most creative job in the world because you got to do everything. You got to do accounting. You got to be creative. You got to hang out with your kids. You had to help them with their homework, so you had to keep up with everyday life. You could garden. So she felt like she was the most engaged in that, and she kept doing things. So I have written, while I was in Switzerland, I have written a few notes and updates to the people here and my friends.

[14:21]

And I'm very glad I did, because while I was in the midst of this event, I thought I will never, ever forget one moment. But if you ask me now, I can't remember them. Because when you're completely in the present, that part of your brain that keeps track and kind of files thing isn't engaged because it's really moment by moment by moment. So I'm glad for myself to have written them down. They helped me to really feel how supported and connected I was. But just putting those names in the address department made me just realize and think of All of these people, one by one, that have crossed my path or in my life in very different ways, but without them, I wouldn't be the person I am. They're part of the fabric of this being.

[15:23]

So I'm going to read you some of these and then spin maybe off from there. This was on February 22nd. Dear all... Twelve days have passed since I left for Switzerland. I am very glad to be here. My youngest sister Cornelia, who lives in New Zealand, arrived a few days later, and so we are both there with our parents, which makes it possible for my mother to be at home. She is getting weaker every day, feeling deeply, deeply tired. Since six days, Now she is staying in bed all day. She's eating very, very little and only in liquid form. She's all skin and bones, weighing about 90 pounds, but her mind is as sharp and clear as ever. Still and again, there is no telling at this point how slow or quick it will progress.

[16:31]

It is very poignant and sweet and an incredible privilege to be able to be here at this time. My parents' relationship is very loving and intimate and both continue to express deep appreciation and gratefulness for their own lives, each other and the life they shared together. They are married since 63 years." So that was one of the amazing things to witness, was that both my parents have a practice. They both grew up in the Catholic faith, but they're completely different. Where my mother was a very liberal, free spirit, my father is very dogmatic and principled. So they were kind of on opposite sides. kind of ends of the spectrum.

[17:39]

And what I found is that they have let each other be as different as they were and kind of supported each other in their being so that they were, and my father still is, their very own person even though they were a couple. And usually, you know, we find somebody and we are very attracted to the otherness they have, to how they are different from us. And then as soon as we get together, if we don't pay attention, we will try to change them to conform to us. And we will have a lifelong struggle trying to do that. And if we manage, we have two half-dead people. half-alive people that have given up being completely who they are and are resentful about that and are despairing about that and have kind of pulled, have cut some of their roots that nurture them and make them able to face whatever occurs in their lives.

[18:57]

My parents, for some degree, were able to do, for whatever reason, were able to not do that to each other. And that didn't mean they didn't have struggles, but they could really recognize those differences in qualities and also appreciate what it actually brought to their relationship. So after 63 years of living together, their relationship was still alive. and still inspiring to them. So because they were both at peace with my mother's time, they had come to be at that place, they were able to and had been given the time to look through their lives together and kind of express their deep, deep appreciation.

[19:59]

So when I arrived, the house was just filled with appreciation and gratitude. That was just the all-pervading energy, and that stayed there the whole time. And my mother said, you know, I was resigned to dying, or at peace with dying, and now suddenly there is this deep, deep, deep gratitude in me. And it's not because I think of particular things that were nice or happy or lucky of events. It's there all the time. And that had something to do with having lived their life consciously, having integrated their beliefs into daily activity and their convictions, and having worked at that, and having struggled with that and failed with that, but not having given up.

[21:07]

On Wednesday, February 20th was my mother's 90th birthday. We had a wonderful but also quite crazy day. My mother woke up very weak. in the morning, and the hospice nurse was back. She had been sick for three days and took care of her in the morning. At 10 a.m., the visitors, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nephews, brothers and sisters, in-laws, friends, neighbors, and household helpers from decades past, and the phone calls My mother was incredibly present and graceful, very clear each time someone came or phoned on who she wanted to see and how long. Which person she wanted to speak on the phone with.

[22:15]

For the ones she was not up to meet or speak, she gave us precise and very loving messages to give them. So everybody actually who got to talk to her or visit with her went away and felt and said so, you know, it's amazing I come here and I think, you know, I'm going to support and I'm going, you know, to express my love and I feel like I go out and I am... Oh, I can't find the English word. Does anybody speak German here? I am consoled, thank you. I go away deeply consoled, deeply supported, deeply affirmed, and have been given a gift. Deep peace is pervading the whole house.

[23:21]

Outside, the late winter, early spring sun has been shining most days, and its light is streaming into the house from morning to evening. Thank you all so very much for holding us in your minds and hearts. We feel very supported by all of you. Love and many bows, Christina. So another thing my mother said one day years ago, she said, you know, when I look at our lives and how happy we are, it has something to do that both of us, talking about her father and herself, are not very ambitious people. And she said,

[24:22]

So we never were running after more and more and more. And that made us able to appreciate what we had. And my father says, you know, when I look at our lives, most of it was luck and circumstances, and that much was practice. which of course, if it's your life, that much is 100%. So it's not like your practice is only that little bit within the circumstances. It actually makes how the circumstances affect you a different story than if you don't practice. But still, we are all mostly determined by circumstances.

[25:27]

Buddhism, of course, says, well, the circumstances you can look at as karma, as kind of results or fruits from beginningless living. And all the actions you've done from beginningless living and living and living again and living again, being reborn and reborn. So... But at the same time, Buddhism says there's not this person going from this life to this life. So whatever the story is, we all are born into particular circumstances that we have no control over. But what we have control over is how we relate, how we relate to those circumstances. And what are the most important things we have decided to pay attention to in our lives?

[26:30]

And there comes in the contemplation of that we're all going to die. Because if we don't know that, we spend time in a different way. We spend our lives in a different way. There's another German saying, it's... Lebe, wie du, wenn du stirbst, wünschen wirst, gelebt zu haben. If I translate this, it goes a little bit long. Live like when you're dying, you will wish to have lived. So, you know, often we are not very kind. We have... fight with our partner, our children, our neighbor, and we think, hmm, yeah, it wasn't very nice of me, but, you know, let them stew a little. I'll talk to them in a week. It's only right they should feel that, you know, I was upset or angry.

[27:36]

And this is all in the picture that we think we see them next week, and they're still alive next week. So my youngest brother, Martin, who is now 45 years old, 46, he says, I never leave the house without making sure that my wife and my two children know that I love them above anything. It doesn't mean that we had a fight yesterday or we don't agree on something, but that I love them and that that is not true. altered by any other event. Because I know, I do not know for sure that I will see any of them when I come home in the evening, or that I will be able to go home. So he practiced this every evening before they go to sleep, and every morning when he leaves the house, or they leave the house.

[28:37]

And just imagine doing that every day, twice. will change your life radically. Dear all, after two weeks of wonderful spring weather with its incredible light, we are having high winds and rain, even a little bit of snow. Apricot tree and prim roses have started to bloom and the robins we have here have started to sing their beautiful, very delicious songs in the evenings, always sitting at the very top of a tall tree or a chimney. My mother is getting weaker every day and has started to want to spend more time by herself. She describes a kind of leaf or shadow moving over her eyes and it getting dark and And then after some time, the light returns and she becomes aware that she's still alive.

[29:40]

She says that this is not scary for her at all. Still, she inquires about us, asks the hospice nurse how she is, how her little son is doing. And sometimes she gets angry. very involved in what we are eating and wants to make sure that we are taking good care of our father and keep the supplies stocked. It was really cute. She would just go through the whole house and all the staples and the stock and make sure it was all there and we did the right things and we all laughed together. That was another thing. We have been laughing in those five weeks so much. My parents remembered events that they found funny and laughed, and my father has an incredible humor. And so it was just a very joyful time while my mother was dying. It was filled with joy and laughter, and sometimes we cried, and it was never heavy anymore.

[30:49]

It is an intense time for all of us. My sister from New Zealand has postponed her departure to next Wednesday, March 5th, and so it happened that all seven children were at my parents' home last Sunday. So we got to have a time when all of us were there. The fundamental atmosphere in the house is light, peaceful and profound appreciation and gratefulness underlies everything. even when we get stressed out or have bouts of irritation. Every day is different and what my mother needs changes continuously. I feel my departure date approaching quickly. I am still planning to leave here on Wednesday, March 12th, keeping in mind that a lot of things will and can happen until then. What also became really clear was that you cannot begin to practice while you're dying.

[31:55]

First of all, we don't know. My mother had been given a long, long time to get used to her actual dying and then to actually die. Some of us go like that. We have a stroke, we have a heart attack, we get hit by a car. Something falls on our head. We may not have time. When I got there, my mother said, oh, maybe I should learn meditation. Maybe you should teach me meditation. And I said, you know meditation. She used to lie outside for her nap after lunch. She and my father would take a siesta. which I recommend to everybody. It's a wonderful practice. And she would just love to listen because she couldn't see anymore, really.

[32:58]

She loved to listen to music, but she loved to just be outside and listen to the wind in the trees, the birds, the voices of the workmen or neighbors, a car driving by. And she would really be there for that. So I just said, you know, just pick up all those times you listened deeply to music or outside or... And that's your meditation. Because you can't learn something new and apply your mind to something new while... your body is falling apart. It just doesn't have that energy. And she only said it once and she never brought it up again, that part. But the universe was really participating in this whole event because we had spring a month early in Switzerland this year.

[34:05]

So we could actually open all the windows, cover her up to here, and she could be like outside. It was not too cold for that. So it is really crucial what we practice, and we practice something every moment, even though we may not call it practice. If we do our habitual thing, we practice that habitual thing. So we deepen its power over us. Each time we allow ourselves to be unkind and unfriendly, we kind of give that tendency, energy, and practice it. So it takes effort and it takes awakeness and remembering what are the important things.

[35:07]

How do I want to have lived when I look at it from the point of view that I'm dying now? What was really important in my life? Was it my car? Was it the next car? In two weeks something? More money? Being right in this fight? And what is the price we pay And, of course, our culture and the way we've let it evolve and the way we are impacted by it, we are not encouraged to ask those questions. We are seeing on TV and on the papers always how we can get more and how if we get that more we will be happy and we will be young and ever young forever and, of course, not die.

[36:11]

I mean, it feeds that thing that, you know... We just don't look at things from the point of view of, I might not be here tomorrow. And one person in a group, Saturday Sangha, told me she, every time she has to make a decision about something, she thinks, what would I decide if I knew I would die tomorrow? How would I decide? And it helps her tremendously because she immediately knows what's most important to her. So in the Genjo Koan it says someplace, to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. When that myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. And that was kind of what I feel I was given in those five weeks.

[37:21]

Because the focus was so clear. It was my mother and her well-being and the support of her and my father. I could continuously see that all the circumstances were helping and were shaping how it was happening. So my sister being here, my father, for example, having complete trust in us. I mean, that was just Amazing. That was just so complete that it freed us to just be completely there. My mother's deepest appreciation because she always had wanted to die at home. So the house they had built, that they still lived in the house, made it possible because we had rooms to live in. Otherwise, if they would have been in an old people's home,

[38:23]

wouldn't have been possible in the same way. The light streaming in the house, the early spring, and that you can feel. It wasn't me, me this being, me doing things. It was like becoming or feeling how ultimately we are just a responsive organism. And if we are wholehearted, then that being just responds and responds and responds, and the others respond and respond and respond. So my sister and I, of course, were very different, but it complemented, differences complemented each other. So to really truly see that we don't do anything by ourselves, that we... We are shaped and arise within and kind of conditioned by the circumstances.

[39:30]

And that practice, you know, in those moments, there's no time to think, what is the practice? What should I do? What did I do here? It may look very different. So if you've practiced a lot, it becomes... it comes to your help in very different forms. It's not sitting down on a cushion, you know, or having a lot of time to think. You may have it, then you can think, but it's really a dependent co-arising. March 9th. Dear all, my mother continues to get weaker every day. Her dry humor is coming through here and there. A few days ago, she said, my intention was to board a bullet train to heaven, but it seems that I am on a very, very, very slow, low-cold train.

[40:35]

You can write the book soon about the slow-dying... My sister from New Zealand needed to return home and has left last Wednesday, March 5th. Kathy and other sister is now here with me. It is good and helpful for our parents and for us to be two, not just one alone, as we can support each other and take better care of both parents. the fundamental atmosphere in the house continues to be light and deeply peaceful. Being present and witnessing this steady and so far incredibly graceful decline of my mother, seeing how layer upon layer of worldly, mental, and physical matter drop away, uncovering the pure luminosity of her spirit or soul or essence of or Buddha nature, is a profound teaching and deeply moving gift.

[41:42]

So, somehow, because my mother had gotten to a place of this deep appreciation of life, really layer upon layer of what her personality had been, dropped away, became unimportant, and we could experience her being. Besides being our mother, besides having done these things, besides having done those personality traits, she became this luminous being that was very different than the a luminous being of somebody else, even though they share the luminosity. So to have had the time and space to see that and experience that, also to be able to experience the essence of our parents' relationship was just amazing because this is what we all are.

[42:57]

If we are not completely identified by who we think we are or who we think we should be or who we don't want to be and who we want to be and what we want to have and what we don't want to have. It is what brings us into this world and is with us and is part of who we are deeply, deeply. And that's what this meditation practice... is aimed at to kind of loosen up this obscuration we have over this luminosity and radiance. And that if we separate death from life, we can't really live. Because it is part of life. It's there every moment. This moment will never be there.

[44:01]

the same. You can't get a moment back. How much do we try to do that? And so the experience was that we all were exquisitely alive by having had the opportunity to be There, while my mother was dying, her dying was full of life and her living was full of dying. And you couldn't say this is living and this is dying. It was one full life moment by moment. The originally planned departure date, Wednesday, March 2nd, 12th, is approaching quickly, and it is becoming clear that I want and need to stay on, helping and supporting both my parents through this slow dying process that my mother is going through.

[45:05]

It has taken the last few days for me to decide this. I am sorry that my staying on longer in Switzerland means that I will not be available to you for some more time. I very much hope that this will not be foremost felt as lack or abandonment, but rather turn into opportunities of opening for you. I will keep you updated. So when we look at what is most important, we often have to let go of things we feel we are doing. We have to do too, or we committed to do, or we... And so to... I think that's another part that I find very important, is to ask people if they can support you.

[46:08]

Or ask for help. Usually when we have a difficulty, we present the other person with a solution, which, if you look at your experiences, often doesn't really work out so well. Or if you're presented with a solution, you're often kind of startled or not so happy. If the other person shares the problem, or you share the problem, you may come up with a shared solution which is more than you can come up by yourself. So that's another way of how can you let other people know what you're struggling with or that you're struggling with something and not present them with how you think you're going to deal with it or what you think is the solution, but to really include them in the process. So for me, just to write to people helped me stay open to the support

[47:12]

They were sending our way just by thinking about us and wishing us well. March 17th. Dear all, last Thursday, March 13th, at 6.20 p.m., my mother died very peacefully. My father, my sister Kati, and I were present. We have been sitting with her until this morning, Monday. Now she has been taken to the cemetery. The funeral will be next Thursday, March 20th. We are happy and grateful for her and the peaceful passing that she had so longed for, while also very sad and painfully adjusting to the gradually increasing realization of her loss and the empty space she's leaving behind. When I look back over the last five weeks, I am filled with deepest gratitude, reverence, awe, joy, and wonderment for life.

[48:17]

The universe, my mother with her clear, sober, radiant, loving, and indomitable spirit, my father's capacity of unconditionally loving and abiding presence with her decline and his undying enlightening and enlightened sense of humor the tangible support we felt throughout from all the loving thoughts you were sending our way at every stage of the journey from life to death the universe's timing was impeccable there was always just enough space just enough time, just enough awareness, just enough support, just enough flexibility available to adjust. In that way, it has been an irrefutable experience of dependent co-arising and of the fundamental harmony that runs through the whole universe.

[49:25]

With many, many bows and love, Christina. No, we don't. Like, for example, I don't know how many of you in here still have both their parents, how many have one parent, how many have no parents left. And that's another thing. We do not have no control over how long they are going to be part of our lives. And a few years ago, I started to feel impatient. You know, I felt like it's time they go.

[50:27]

What a terrible thought. And then I kind of looked at it a little bit more, and I realized, yeah, there's a part of me that's kind of, you know, when are they going? And I realized there is a part of you that only can grow up that more when your parents are not behind you anymore. And that part was saying, gosh, I'm, you know, I'm 59, I'm 60, I'm getting 61, and they're still here. I mean, when are they going? You know, and I'd be too old to grow up. You know, I won't have the energy anymore. And it was a really good thing for me to realize, yes, that's true. That's part of me. It wasn't like I was wishing them... But a part inside myself was waiting and felt like it's time. It's time to grow up that next speed.

[51:31]

Now my mother died. So, you know, one morning she was still in the house. I woke up and said, it's, you know, before I even was fully awake, I said, now I know how it's been to die. Now it can be alive again. You know, smile again. I've had it. I had, you know, I got it. And so I still have that sometimes that I think, oh, no, you know. But then I felt the loss and I felt, oh, I had this feeling like I want to go back and start all over. I want to be able to be a child again and know all this and kind of appreciate my life more and be more present and see really who my parents are. And I felt like I'm diminished by her loss. And now very undefinable. I feel something actually feels like liberated into or getting space into becoming.

[52:40]

And I don't know, you who all have lost parents, may know more about that i'm just entering that you know it's just starting to have a little bit of sense of that So if we have a chance, and if we are really allowing the reality of the certainty of death, with its uncertainty of how and when it will occur, we have a chance to not let conflict linger, not let fights linger,

[53:47]

hatred, debts, we can take care of these matters so that if we were to die tomorrow or would get sick and wouldn't be able to do it tomorrow, we would have done it. My talks are a little bit like these papers. It doesn't matter what I think before I sit down here or what I write down before I sit down here. It's always a completely different story. It puts itself together in its own unknowable ways. I do think, you know, we were very lucky and most of us here are to a large degree lucky because actually we can get here, sit here, can walk down to the beach, can appreciate the incredibly beautiful weather

[55:25]

And if we are able to really allow the fact of death and dying into our everyday consciousness and into our everyday actions, it will also enable us to take better care of this planet with its limited resources and on which we behave to some degree like the lemmings that just walk and jump into the ocean and then swim a little bit and die because they just can't stop and they can't turn around. And we all walk like that thinking, well, somebody else should, or if they don't see solutions, we can't start. If we know we're dying and are not afraid of it anymore because That was the other teaching of my mother.

[56:28]

It was that when dying was being just fully present with this body that was slowly, slowly falling apart. And when she was dying, it was like her mind was completely occupied with dying. There wasn't a space to look back or hold on to anything. She was just going. And we were lucky. She was clear in her mind till the day before she died, and still on the day she died for long stretches. She was very in touch with her body. She could say, oh, my earlobe is bent over on the pillow. And we could, you know, help her. So she could give us a lot of help helping her. If you have a mother who can't, or a father or whoever, a friend, who can't tell you what they need, That's a whole other story, but there is a way of being present for that too.

[57:34]

And there wasn't space anymore to comparing, which enabled you too. You weren't going, oh, we wish it would be different. When you're very much there, there is nothing missing, even while you're dying. Because it's full of life. And it's full of love and it's full of presence. And in those moments, there's not the slightest thing missing. It's really amazing. And so to practice appreciation, to really every day say thank you that you have a roof over your head, that you have to eat, that you have... you're not in war, and think of those who are and don't have that. And it's not that it should make you not appreciative of what you have.

[58:37]

Actually, if we don't appreciate what we have, while other people don't have it, that's what I call sin. It's like we waste... If we think, oh my God, I can't be happy about this because other people don't have it, it's like... we are not appreciating what is given to us and they don't have it more. But if we fully appreciate it and know that others don't have, we are more sensitized to how we can support them or how we participate in their not having. So appreciation is one of the most transformative and awakening practices. So just to tell your partner every day what you appreciate, who they are, what they're doing, how they support you, will be a big difference.

[59:38]

Who does that? We are much more occupied with thinking, oh, no, why did he do that or she do that? Thank you all for listening, hanging in there with me. Happy day. We are all alive at this moment.

[60:12]

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