This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, everyone. It's pretty joyful to be here right now. Joyful and a little, little anxiety making, which... somehow seems appropriate to giving a talk about right speech, trying to enact the very thing I'm talking about as I do it. And I think maybe that's an aspect of right speech, or I guess what we're calling noble speech during this practice period. It's upright and complete, practicing with noble speech. So I think the anxieties may be appropriate to noble speech because I think if one's trying to speak nobly or completely or uprightly, then there's a chance you might not.

[01:04]

You might get it wrong. So there might be a little bit of anxiety about it. I notice I have a somewhat... Is this mic picking up okay? I notice I have a slightly different feeling coming into the talk tonight than I often do. I often have a pretty well-formulated kind of arc of the talk kind of in my mind as I come into the room. So I have some sense of kind of where I'm going. And that's much less so tonight. I'm having some themes that I've been kind of meditating on for a while for the talk. And they didn't quite put themselves in an arc exactly. So I feel a little bit more like I'm moving in the dark, maybe like Hakuin's blind men kind of walking across the log. which I think also might be appropriate to this topic of noble speech because I think really that's the situation we always find ourselves in we're always actually speaking into some situation which is ambiguous and murky that's the result of kind of inconceivable causes and conditions

[02:28]

and we're trying to meet it in some truthful and kind of timely way, you know, each time in the moment. So to have some preconceived idea about how to do that, how to meet that moment, probably is actually off the mark. So follow me into the dark as I give the talk. The main thing I've been kind of meditating on in the context of the talk is a play by Shakespeare, King Lear. And I have some ideas about why this might have come to mind as something I'd want to talk about, and then maybe other ways in which it's kind of mysterious to me. Just out of curiosity, how many of you are fairly familiar with Lear? So, okay. Okay. probably have to do a little bit of explanation and if those of you who aren't familiar if you don't get anything out of the talk other than being inspired to go read the play well then my talk was successful so so so King Lear is a play about the abdication of a king and kind of what goes wrong when he tries to when he tries to abdicate and it

[03:59]

Some people find the start of the play, kind of the premise of the play, a little something of a stretch, like it has kind of something of a fairy tale or kind of mythological quality, basically. There's a king who has three daughters. There's no kind of queen in sight. And he's basically decided it's time for him to stop being king. He's ready to retire, pass on power and authority to the next generation. and the way that he decides to do this, this is kind of the fairy tale plot, like once upon a time there was a king and three daughters, and he basically says, he asks each of the daughters to basically express how much they love him, and then based on their expression of love, he'll give them some portion of the kingdom, so he's going to divide up the kingdom according to the love that's expressed by the daughters, and so this does seem like kind of an unlikely scenario, right, that this is how someone would try and pass on their kingdom, try and pass on. the authority, be sovereign.

[05:03]

But in thinking about it, I actually thought there was something maybe kind of like really deeply human in it, something that maybe in some ways we all could kind of relate to. Because in some ways what Lear's doing at the start of the play is he's trying to make this exchange of power for love. That he wants to be loved. I mean, we all want to be loved. And maybe he has some anxiety that once he's given up his power, once he's no longer king, that maybe there won't be anything lovable about him. That maybe his lovability is kind of tied up in his power. So kind of all at once he's trying to make this exchange when he gives away the power to kind of get the love at the same time. This kind of transactional thing that he's doing with his power. rather than maybe kind of trusting like he could just pass it on and still be loved. He doesn't need his power to be loved. But anyway, he does this thing.

[06:11]

He asks his daughters to express their love from any exchange. He's going to give them part of the kingdom. So you can feel kind of the pretense in the situation. He's kind of putting on a show, right? He's kind of asking for this display of love. and the first two daughters, Goneril and Regan, kind of go right along with what he's asking for, and maybe they're also kind of putting on a show for the court and express in really beautiful, eloquent, surpassing poetic language how much they love him, although I think we all can probably hear the flattery, the insincerity in the speech, but Lear maybe wanting to receive their love kind of looks past the flattery and he was very pleased with their remarks. And then it's time for his third daughter to speak, Cordelia. And I think the feeling is that of all the sisters, Cordelia is the one who really loves Leo.

[07:21]

They have some kind of special relationship. There's some kind of real pure love and joy between them. So he has no doubt that Cordelia is going to say the most surpassing things in terms of her love for him. But her first remarks to the audience, it's kind of an aside to the audience, when she kind of sees what's going on, what the setup is, is she says, love and be silent. There's some part of her that can't speak in this situation of pretense. And I think that's partly what's kind of fascinated me about Lear in the context of Zen practice, this idea of love and be silent, like somehow, um, the real, the real thing can't be expressed. But, um, her turn comes, and kind of like categories where she says, you have to say something, right?

[08:23]

She can't just love and be silent. Um, um, Although, you know, there are different readings then of what happens. This is kind of one of, like I said, one of the major problems of the play is like what's going on with Cordelia in the first scene. Why can't she just say, you know, she loves him more than the other sisters and gets her greater share of the kingdom and all would be well, but for some reason she can't. And so there are different, maybe different understandings of why that's. So I think one is, could be just having to do with the kind of purity and sincerity of her heart that she... she can't play along she can't do this game of pretense and she says something like that I can't heave my heart into my mouth and so she kind of does the best she can and at first she maybe I don't remember three things she says please don't make me or nothing and then at some point she says to Lira I love you according to my bond very simple

[09:28]

I love you as a daughter should love her father, and then when I'm married, I'll love my husband that much. But nothing matching that kind of poetry of her sisters. And so there's some sense of her being quite constrained in the situation, constrained by that kind of falsity and duplicity of the court. And maybe she tries to say what is true and honest for her. I mean, she might be also not trying to expose her father, that she can see... the falseness of the situation, and feels like if she were to speak the truth, if she were to say something sincere about her love for him, it would just expose the kind of sham that he's created. It can be embarrassing for him, so she's trying to not do that. So that's one understanding, is that she's actually trying to be as faithful in her love as she can. In other ways, maybe she's being defiant. you know, she sees the falseness of the situation and is kind of being defiant in somebody who refuses to play along, but in kind of a way that she's kind of opposing, you know, opposing the situation.

[10:34]

And, you know, then we might understand her thought about, like, I can't, I can't heave my heart into my mouth. She has some idea, like, she has some authentic, sincere, you know, love that she's in touch with is kind of personal to her for her father for Lear that she can't that she somehow can't express that she won't express and yeah and from that view maybe if like she were somewhat more mature she could just make her best effort she could heave her heart into her mouth and it wouldn't be perfect but she could say what she needed to say but she won't this idea of kind of protecting something that's kind of personal and authentic to her. And then by that reading, she's really not meeting him. I mean, she could have met him, but she chose not to. And then Lear on his side, in terms of what he's, because we're talking about speech here, what he's doing with language is, you know, and this is kind of a theme of the kind of tragic kings and Shakespeare as kind of a performative speech.

[11:46]

I mean, there's... something called speech act theory and one kind of speech act is a performative speech where by saying something you make it so. Like classic examples like I christen thee blah blah blah and then by the words I christen thee it has happened or vows are sometimes like this or oaths or things like this. And this is kind of so sometimes the tragic kings in Shakespeare are kind of an exploration of a nightmare of performative speech when the king just has the power to make anything happen just by virtue of saying it. And that's sort of what Lear is doing here. He's kind of set up the whole scenario just out of his mind. He's saying it. His words have the power to divide the kingdom how he chooses. And so there's kind of this quality of kind of performative speech. He's putting the meaning into the words. And then Cordelia on the other side maybe has an idea like, well, there really is a meaning that's personal to me. and it won't go into the words.

[12:47]

I can't get it into the words. There are two different ideas of having kind of like a private language, one where you can make the words mean what you say, and one where the meaning is personal to you, and it can't go into the words. And these might be kind of misunderstandings of speech or misunderstandings of language. So you could partly understand that tragedy is coming from this. So how do we move from there to what might be complete speech or what might be noble speech? One thing she does say is she says, I love you according to my bond. So what's a bond? What's something that you've given your word, essentially, or that you owe or is due in some way or some commitment that you made? Kind of a clue where to... look. And then another might be in Shakespeare's own interest in what it means to be sovereign, what it means to be a king.

[13:54]

This is something that he was kind of endlessly obsessed with and kind of moving from this idea of the tragic king, someone who's sovereign by virtue of their own power, by virtue of their capacity just to express their will, to much more kind of intersubjective idea of the sovereign. I think it's probably had to do with the kind of political changes happening during this time. But this idea of actually being sovereign is a highly intersubjective event. It's not something you can kind of make happen on your own. And it's available to anyone. Like it's an accomplishment of the self to become kind of sovereign or free in this kind of intersubjective way. So this kind of idea of nobility that's not actually based on class. It's an accomplishment. and so what these things make me think of actually and kind of where I'm going with this is the kind of ground of complete speech or the context of noble speech or the only way to really understand complete and noble speech as as Val Val being kind of the epitome of this and all and speech that's noble speech or complete speech

[15:15]

has to be kind of grounded in vow. And Shakespeare explored this theme, he often explored it in terms of wedding vows, in terms of marriage vows, as a kind of like ideal form of speech, this idea of the capacity to give your word endlessly into the future. Who knows what circumstances will come? Who knows what hardships will follow? But to be able to say a word and be true to that word through whatever comes. or make your best effort to be true to that true to that word and you know so for us I think it's much the same I think what the only way to make sense of some idea of complete speech is in the context of this commitment to liberate all beings to end all delusions to learn all dharma to accomplish the Buddha way.

[16:16]

These things that we know are actually impossible to accomplish but that we set some intention toward with this like vast horizon basically like this infinite horizon of time and space. So there's this kind of commitment or intention that we set over this kind of infinite horizon with the understanding that we never can accomplish this. Like any given Any word I say, any conversation I have in itself will never be complete, partly because words can be endlessly unpacked. The meaning of what I say can be endlessly interpreted. It can have no final meaning. And also because we can't ever get it completely right. So the only way to think of speech as being complete is our endless attempt to kind of realize vow, to express vow, to realize.

[17:17]

And as opposed to kind of the kind of tragedy of Kingly performative speech where the idea is like you say it once and then it's so. Complete speech in the context of vow means we're endlessly trying to realize it, right? So that's the effort of complete speech is one of bringing practice to bear all the time on what we say. And then realizing that we also always fall short, that in fact everything we say is always incomplete. There's always some incapacity to completely express what we want to express. So as a kind of complement to this idea of right speech, you need... repentance and atonement, right? Because we're never able to completely do the thing we want to do or completely say the thing we want to say.

[18:19]

So we're always having to also recognize that little gap or that little failure. So I think that's the way kind of our zazen practice kind of complements our speaking practice. Our silence practice complements our speaking practice that we need. The kind of repentance or atonement of zazen to kind of acknowledge the failure to completely realize our vows while we just continuously make this effort. And the other thing about vows, or the point that I wanted to make about them, is that like Shakespeare's idea of the sovereign as being this kind of intersubjective event and is kind of opposed to both Lear and Cordelia's opposite ideas of the capacity to have some private language, that vows themselves are intersubjective. We don't create the vow ourself, and certainly we don't even perform it ourself.

[19:23]

Vows are social events. They're communal events. Vows are typically witnessed. So there are other people kind of witnessing and supporting us and joining us and holding us accountable. in some ways, to the vows that we make. And precisely the way that vows make the possibility of something like complete speech and that we're constantly living them out, we're constantly living them out in the context of community, in the context of other people. We don't perform our vows kind of privately, you know, alone in some ways, they're always being performed with others. So this is kind of profoundly kind of intersubjective event. So in some ways you could say the distinction between what might be complete speech and what isn't, what's upright speech and what isn't, or what's noble speech and what isn't, is whether the words, whether the speaking is coming from vow or coming from karma, right?

[20:51]

That's maybe the distinction of what's karmically driven and what's coming from vow. So as I was saying kind of earlier, beginning to talk, the situation I find myself here, there's some moment, there's something that's happening, kind of causes, inconceivable causes and conditions coming together. I'm kind of doing my best to kind of speak into that situation. And then what determines whether that's a karmic act, whether I'm speaking now as a karmic act, or if I'm speaking from Val. And I think it's kind of a mystery, actually. I don't really know the answer to that. And I mean, I think in some ways we're never free of our karma. We're never free of the karma of our situation. And yet, there's a way in which by entering vow, there is also some freedom. But when I was kind of meditating on this, what came to mind is studying the self.

[21:53]

Like Dogen says, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. Study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. So I felt like that was kind of helpful for me. Like, oh, so as I'm speaking, am I studying this? Is this an expression of studying the self? Are my words an expression of studying the self? Elsewhere Duggan says, to carry the self forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. I think this is also why speech is such a challenging practice, such a challenging Buddhist practice, such a challenging Zen practice, because I think we're so tempted when we speak to be carrying those self forward and experience myriad things. One of the main ways we kind of present ourselves to the world is through what we say.

[22:55]

Our speech is so revealing and often we're We're saying something about ourself or we're organizing the world in some way. We're experiencing myriad things with our language. So the temptation is almost always to be kind of karmically driven in our language, to be something about me, [...] or it, it, it, it. So what's this other option? Language that comes from studying the self or language that comes from allowing myriad things to come forth and experience themselves. You know, in some ways that's allowing the very words to come forth and experience themselves. The words in that situation don't come from me. They're maybe like passing through what we call me. They're not my words. Actually, in the prelude,

[23:58]

Wordsworth actually has a section where he talks about Val in much this way. And I think it's the moment when he realized he was going to be a poet, the moment he found his vocation related to Val. And he writes, Magnificent, the morning rose in memorable pomp, glorious as air I had beheld. In front, the sea lay laughing at a distance, near, the solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds, grain tinctured, drenched in imperial light, and in the meadows and the lower grounds was all the sweetness of a common dawn, dews, vapors, and the melody of birds, and laborers going forth to till the fields. Ah, need I say, dear friend, that to the brim my heart was full. I made no vows, that vows were then made for me.

[24:58]

Bond unknown to me was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, a dedicated spirit. On I walked in thankful blessedness, which yet survives. Need I say, dear friend, that to the brim my heart was full. I made no vows, but vows were then made for me. Bond unknown to me was given. that I should be else sinning greatly, a dedicated spirit. On I walked in thankful blessedness, which yet survives. It's such a beautiful expression of words of this kind of intersubjective nature of vow, the way vow is actually given to us. It's not something that we can do ourselves. It's a self-driven act. And then, as I say, then we do our best to be faithful to them, knowing that that will always be kind of imperfect.

[26:11]

And in thinking about this and thinking about Cordelia in the first scene, why can't she just try and meet Leah, right? Why can't she just play the game? Why can't she just go along and say something that'll kind of... smooth over the situation and make it all kind of work out. And I thought, well, what if she really is living from a place of vow? You know, kind of, for the rest of the play, she's kind of like the purest arch of love. You know, her... And maybe what ends up being the kind of most beautiful moments of speech in the play, where you could say kind of the highest point of noble speech is her reconciliation with Lear at the end of the play. So, throughout the whole rest of the play, she's this... almost pure expression of love. So why in the first scene would she kind of be defiant or rebellion? So, I kind of lost my train of thought. So if she is acting to say, why can't she meet him? And I thought, well, he's kind of set up this situation where she would have to be speaking to get something, right?

[27:23]

That's the situation. You say the most beautiful thing and you get the land, right? It's this transactional thing that I was talking about. at the beginning. And so I was thinking, if she's speaking from vow, maybe there's something that's kind of inhibiting her, that's stopping her from doing that. And I thought, well, what if renunciation is built into the structure of vow? Like, if she's living from vow, and that means, to live from vow means I'm not doing anything for myself. I'm not doing anything to get something. Then she might feel like, I can't say something in order just to get part of the kingdom. And then kind of looking at the place, one of the striking things about the play is that, I mean, it's kind of interesting in this way, because Shakespeare's often somewhat subtle and complicated with his characters, but in this play, it's really clearly good characters and bad characters. And pretty much all the good characters get banished. Cordelia gets banished. Kent, the loyal servant to Lear, who kind of tries to speak up to him when he kind of does this kind of mad thing in the

[28:30]

and banishes Cordelia and, you know, tells him he's crazy. You should, you know, believe his older daughters. And, of course, Cordelia loves him more. And what are you doing? And he banishes Kent. He says, if you come back, you're dead. Lear's fool, who, you know, I think also tries to kind of wake him up to what he's doing, you know, ultimately gets hanged. So all the... And Lear himself, who, you know, was kind of flawed in this first scene, but... you know, ultimately redeemable, is also kind of banished by the daughters who take over the kingdom. So, I was thinking about, there's something about the banishment of having to leave the place of worldly power, right? It's a kind of renunciation or a kind of home-leaving, right? In our tradition we talk about home-leaving. So all these good characters are banished, they're kind of forced to leave home in a certain way. And then the characters who do exhibit maybe something like noble speech, like The Fool or Kent, are in disguise or in some ways not in a worldly role.

[29:48]

So they too have kind of entered some place of renunciation, having stepped out of a place of worldly power. So I think also one of the messages for the play for us is not to fear banishment, that maybe in some ways we have to be banished. It may have something to do with the impossibility of completely realizing vow, that we will mess up, and not to be afraid of that, and in fact that maybe some feeling that we can in the kingdom or stay in the garden is completely misguided. We'll just end up like Goneril and Regan trying to kind of stake out our territory. But maybe the freedom is actually through banishment, risking banishment.

[30:50]

And then we talk about jumping off the 100-foot pole. So it kind of came to mind and this idea that we have to kind of go into the storm. We have to leave home. We have to go out of the nest. As I mentioned, there is also this quality in the play, these characters who do try to speak truth to power. There's Kent's effort to speak to Lear and Fool. And what's striking about the Fool is the way that he talks to Lear in Riddles, right? He tries to say enough to weight Lear up to himself.

[31:52]

Lear's described early in the play as having but slender knowledge of himself. One way to look at the play is also this is kind of the arc of Lear's own spiritual development of starting in the play places with very little self-knowledge where he kind of acts in this imperious way and then being banished into the storm where he loses everything maybe becoming kind of a true person of no rank and then is able to kind of truly abdicate at the end of the play in the kind of reconciliation with Cordelia and his relationship to power completely changes during that arc. When he's the king, he has this kind of imperious power where he's enforcing his will in this kind of duplicitous court. And then by the end, when he reconciles with Cordelia, he's found the power of kind of liberating poetry.

[32:53]

And... what's left is just a kind of softness and vulnerability to him and so the fool is probably what catalyzes this development in Lear but the fool can't say to him directly you know directly what he wants to say or that won't be effective in some ways the fool says it in this other way so I was also thinking about this way we were talking about speech in the practice period of being upright and I was thinking yeah but in some ways the Fool speech is indirect, right? And it reminded me of the Emily Dickinson poem about tell all the truth, but tell it slant. The poem goes like this. Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies. Too bright for a firm delight. The truth's superb surprise. As lightning to the children eased with explanation kind.

[33:55]

the truth must dazzle gradually, or every man be blind. Tell all the truth, but tell it's slant, success in circuit lies, too bright for our infirm delight, the truth's superb surprise. As lightning to the children eased with explanation kind, the truth must dazzle gradually, or every man be blind. sometimes there's a need for kind of an indirect speech and, you know, upright speech may not, we may not know what upright speech looks like. Our idea of upright speech may not be what upright speech is. So I thought we wanted to kind of bring out that theme as well in the play. Thank you. And, you know, again, maybe kind of commenting on Lear's arc that the kind of tragedy starts with a kind of false abdication.

[35:39]

There's some understanding of needing to give up power. But this subtle way that Lear tries to get something in exchange, right, doesn't actually make the abdication complete. While by the end of the play, once he's passed through the and as I said kind of lost everything discovered that he's nothing but the poor forked bear animal poor bear forked animal and then kind of comes to again and meets Cordelia and he meets her he actually kneels to her and she says no no don't don't kneel and you kind of can see in that like another abdication that he's kind of kneeling to her and He says, I'm just a fond, foolish old man, and I don't think I'm in my perfect mind, and I don't know how I got these clothes. It's like he doesn't know who he is, but somehow I think you're my daughter.

[36:45]

There's this kind of purity of love between us, this kind of pure connection. So having to kind of lose everything, give up everything, pass completely into not knowing, and then recognize the other. Well, that's my story, I think, about complete speech, noble speech. There are a couple minutes left Questions? We can make it an intersubjective event and you can ask me questions of all these words. Yeah? Thank you. Yeah? If King Neer were just, if all the characters in King Neer were in one person's mind... Which they were, yeah.

[37:55]

What does here represent and what does Cornelia represent? one person. Oh, I see. If those were just aspects of the psyche, if those were all different aspects of the psyche. That's an interesting question. Well, I mean, one thing that comes to mind is power and vocation. These different ways that we can be in the world. So Lear, certainly at the beginning of the play, expresses a certain kind of power. He has a certain kind of authority that's coming from him. So he can kind of direct things. He can make things happen according to his vision and his will. I'm going to divide up the kingdom the way I want and I have the power to do that. And Cordelia maybe expresses this quality of...

[38:57]

a vow having to answer to something bigger than herself. There's some calling, right? She's not just free to say what she wants. There's something she has to be true to. And it's kind of out of her control, and it kind of leads her into unfortunate circumstances, right? Like answering that call of vow or vocation. Often we get banished, right? We have to leave home. We wander. We go into the... storm, wait. It's like, oh, this wasn't what I planned for myself. This wasn't what I wanted to do, but somehow I have no choice. So that's one possibility. Raven? Is relunciation there, at least in this moment, about not trying to get for oneself, about, like, just knowing, like... In the case of Cordelia, I'm here.

[39:58]

There's the same particular relationship. I'm not going to speak about the intensity of my love for you, even though that's true, because I will not enter into a transactional relationship with you around love and power. I will not modify love in return for anything. But extrapolating out of that, would you say that the practice of renunciation is, yeah, it's about, it's about just not, like, not doing for something, not trying to get for oneself. Yeah, I mean, I think what I had in mind, I think that is, like, this phrase that Suzuki Roshi would say, like, no gaining, no gaining idea, no gaining mind. Yeah, so it's, it's not about trying to look like, it's also not like trying to look like a renunciate, right? But it's about, like, not, yeah, not trying to get anything for yourself. Like, in our community, like, actually maybe looking like renunciate would be like the way to get stuff. Actually, I once asked, many years ago at Tassahara in a Shosan ceremony with Vicky Asuna, Victoria Asuna, I asked her, what is renunciation?

[41:05]

And she said, renounce the appearance of renunciation. But yeah, so I think it's like not trying to get anything. And then that's like why it's so important to study the self, right? because it's so easy to fool ourselves, so easy to think that we're acting from love, but there's something we want. Yeah. I have a question about the Dogen. So, in studying the self, you see so much of your stories and delusions. Yeah. And then you're at a place where you recognize that... You've created all of you, and so you aren't actually... There is no self. That's all been created. So then, how do you study that? So you start from some place of your... You think there's a self. Yeah, and then I see all the stuff that I... Now I get that what I thought was true was totally made up.

[42:11]

Yeah. And everything I do is made up. Yeah. So now... what's left and how do I study it if I know that it's all fabricated? Yeah, well, it's not... Yeah, so it's not like there's no... It's not like there's nothing to the stories, right? It's just that the stories don't... The stories don't have kind of a fixed meaning, right? Okay. And... And... Yeah, and that they're your kind of subjective take on things, right? Yeah. but they actually live in this inner subjective place, right? So one way to study your stories is with other people, right? You can't get around in the world without any stories, right? You need your stories, but the problem is when we completely believe our stories. We believe our stories are the way things are, right? So in some ways, once you realize, oh, my stories aren't the way things really are, it's not like you just toss out the stories, because then you're just kind of totally lost.

[43:15]

Yeah, that's where I am. Yeah. So then you realize you're always in this profoundly dialectical situation. I've got my story and then there's like 50, 60 other stories going on in this room. So how do I bring my story to meet those other stories? What's the truth that arises when these things come together, right? with this lens and given the arc of Lear and the arc of Herbelia and their sincerity, how do we make sense of the ending? Play. You mean per death?

[44:21]

And his... Fate. His fate being, remind me, his fate. Oh, I see. Well, it's a tragedy. So, I mean, yeah, so a lot hangs on that final exchange between, you know, when he's, like, what like his last words, you know, look there, look there. So what's happening there? Is there some inexpressible kind of transcendence that he has access to? And still she dies?

[45:26]

I mean, I think it's ambiguous, right? And I think that's the kind of nature of Shakespeare, right? I mean, there's actually something else I was going to say. Like, there's this effort, I was talking about noble speech, to meet each situation in a way that's timely and true. But it's not clear what the truth is. There is no kind of naked truth. I mean, that's, you know... There's some effort to contrast the duplicity of the sisters with some blunt speech by Kent or something, but truth is more complicated than that. You might think of Lear Out on the Heath as being a kind of naked truth, but that's madness. There's nothing there, so there is no naked truth. It's kind of complex, and so I think there's this kind of ambiguous ending where there's a suggestion of there is possibly some transcendence that happens between them right at the end. but we don't know.

[46:33]

Yeah, I'm over time by seven minutes. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

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