Good evening. So last night, last evening, I had this opportunity, really wonderful opportunity, to interview a teacher. His name is Larry Ward, Dr. Larry Ward, who is from the Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen lineage. And I hadn't met Dr. Ward before. black American and spent much of his adult life living abroad. So he had a great deal to say about what it's like returning here, how it was for him coming back and the trauma that is there and living in this country for many people. And we learned a lot from him and I was so grateful to have his kind teaching, very generous, kind-hearted person. And so I wanted to basically share with you my appreciation of his book recently out called America's Racial Karma, Dr. Larry Ward.

[05:27]

And as a Buddhist teacher, it's wonderful to have the combination of the Buddhist perspective on racial conditioning. And what was really exciting for me in talking with him, getting to know him, is that he talks a great deal about the mind-only school. So Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a book about the transformation of consciousness, Transformation at the Base, I think is the name of the book. And he also taught a great deal, taught Yogacara quite a bit. And so Dr. Ward studied the Yogacara, which is what we're doing too. So I was very happy to hear how well the study of this conditioning of mind-only works. with our coming to understand what racial conditioning where how's that come? Where's that coming from? How'd that happen? Well, it happened the same way all the rest of our conditioning happened. And that's what these teachings are trying to help us understand. So I want to quickly read through the first few verses that we've already talked about.

[06:30]

And for those of you either who are just joining or who I know this is a lot of stuff, so I think it's helpful to kind of go through it again and again. I hope you all have your copies at hand of the 30 verses. I think they may have gone back into the chat. Mark was going to help today. And, Mark, if you have those and could put them in the chat, that would be great. And if not, I will get them to you again soon. Yes, I can do that right now. Great. Thanks, Mark. 30 verses, the first verse, everything conceived as self and other, occurs in the transformation of consciousness. It's going on here. This transformation, verse 2, has three aspects. The ripening of karma, the consciousness of the self, and the imagery of sense objects. So this is what we've been looking at. The first of these three aspects of transformation is called alaya, the storehouse consciousness.

[07:32]

which contains all the karmic seeds. So that's that big bag, that big cloud that's unconscious. We don't know where it is. We don't know what's in it. But we do get visitors from the alaya all the time. That's what we're conscious of. And that's what this teaching is trying to help us realize, how it works. How does it work? How does the mind work? So alaya, the storehouse consciousness, which contains all karmic seeds. What it holds and its perception of location are unknown. So that's verse three. Verse four, aliyah is always associated with sense contact, attention, sensation, feelings, perception, and volition. So this is a story about the duck. I hear a sound. My attention turns to the sound. I like the sound. I perceive it as a duck. It's my consciousness labeling what I've just experienced.

[08:34]

It's a duck. I like ducks. I'm a birder. So I get my binoculars. I take action. That's volition. And I go and I look at the duck. So that's the kind of behavior that's going on for us all the time. It's the normal course of events that we don't pay attention to. So these teachings are drawing our attention to the mechanism by which we know the world or we think we know the world more accurately. Verse number four, a lie is always associated, I just said that, always associated with sense contact, attention, perception, volition. It's neither pleasant or unpleasant. It can go any way, either way. And it is unobstructed and karmically neutral. So that's this unconscious realm. Don't know much about it. It just has a huge impact on our life. Like a river flowing in enlightenment, it is overturned at its root. So that's the first transformation, is the alaya, storehouse. So now he goes into, starting with verse 5, the second aspect of the transformation of consciousness, which is the lover, manas.

[09:41]

Again, an unconscious element. Depending on the storehouse, on the alaya, and taking it, alaya, as its object, manas, the lover, the consciousness of itself, arises. And it consists of thinking. So this little thinker, the little lover, who's in love with alaya, with itself, is bringing all this material out of the alaya, all this stuff that's stored in there, and is presenting it to our conscious mind all day long. All day long, we're being fed these little narratives from the lover, from the self. And we think that's us. That's me thinking these thoughts. That's the way I've been conditioned to think, that that's me. That's me. That's just my thoughts. And, you know, and I'm in control of that. That's even further down the line of what's the problem here. I think I'm in control of all of this stuff that's going on. So, manas, consciousness of itself arises, which consists of thinking.

[10:44]

That's verse five. Verse six, it, manas, is always associated with four afflictions. Self-view, self-delusion, self-pride. And self-love. Self-centeredness. It's all about me. And is obstructed. The self is obstructed. But it's karmically neutral. We're not trapped. We do have choices. Karma is choice. So along with these four, verse 7, from where manas, the lover, is born, come these universal factors that we've just talked about. Sense contact. I hear a sound. Attention, I turn to it. Sensation, I like it. Perception, it's a duck. And volition, I get my binoculars. So manas is not found in enlightenment. Same with alaya. Neither of those are found in the enlightened state. It's that those are the self.

[11:45]

That's a belief in self. It's all about selfishness, self-centeredness. So that dissipates at some point when you realize that it's a fantasy. That's what we're... up to here is recognizing the illusory nature of self-clinging of self-making so it's not found in enlightenment or the meditation of cessation and there's certain meditations where you can cut off the train of thought there's no alaya there there's no manas there it comes back because that's not full enlightenment that's just a brief interruption or the super mundane path if you're really on the path that's enlightenment enlightenment is the path there's a way of traversing our experience that's based on good choices, good karma choices. Okay, so where we left off then, this next verse is verse number eight. And we're now on the third transformation of consciousness, which is called the perception of the six senses.

[12:45]

So if you can remember, if you have that, see, I should probably put that on the screen. So the map of the consciousnesses, which I will show you again right now, just as a quick review. I can get to where I share. Where can I share? Here we go. Okay, almost. Great. So this is the illustration of what I've just been talking about, these verses. And I think that Mark, did you put this in the chat right now? Do they have a copy of the eight consciousness? I believe it's in the chat. Great. If not, someone send me a chat to that effect. Okay, great. So this model of these eight consciousnesses, which we just named. The unconscious, Alaya, this bag of old tricks we carry around all the time, storehouse.

[13:51]

The lover is in love, was created by Alaya and falls back in love with its creator. The lover is defined as thinking and defiled thinking. So this lover is constantly whispering sweet nothings into our conscious arena. So this line represents above the line is conscious, below the line is unconscious. So the lover is whispering these sweet nothings to the awareness of concepts. Consciousness number six. These other awarenesses are of sensory experience. So everything up here is what we experience. The sixth sense consciousness. And you can just check that out. Now and then it's kind of nice to take a little tour of what you're experiencing. You just got to run through the eyes and ears and nose and tongue and mouth. Just kind of reassure yourself about that. This is kind of true. What this is talking about here is a pretty good description of what it is to be a human being and to have conscious awareness. We use our senses.

[14:53]

Those are the doorways, the gateways into our thinking and our knowing of the world, how we think of the world comes through our five senses. And then what we think about it is coming from the sixth. And that's based on what we're being told is so from our conditioning. So this is where racism comes very clear. It's like we've got all this conditioning down here, along with every other kind of prejudice we have. We have all this conditioning from our history, you know, hundreds of years of it, and our families and so on and so forth. And then this little lover is whispering, oh, you should be afraid. Oh, you should be, you know, you should move over there. You should do this. You should do that. Depending on your circumstance, how you appear in the world, then you have to decide, do I run? Do I hide? Do I lie? Do I... Say hi. You know, what do I do? So we're being driven by this whispering that's coming to us from our conditioning. OK, so this is the map. And if you all have it, I think it takes a little while to catch on.

[15:56]

But it's not that complicated when you map it onto yourself. It's like, oh, I've got this. That's my parts. These are my parts. OK, I'm going to stop the share on that. So this section that we're looking at now starts with verse number eight. And basically verse number eight is beginning to discuss these sense above the line, what we're aware of, these six sense consciousnesses. So he said, what Vasubhanta says about these is that they are beneficial, they are harmful, or they are neither. So we've got flexibility here. We can go a variety of ways. Devil on one shoulder, angel on the other, as my therapist used to say. We can choose which of these voicings to follow and how we're going to organize our lives based on the choices we make.

[16:57]

So we are free, and that's good, and that's also part of the responsibility. So verse number nine... So what Vasubhanda is doing now is he's breaking down these categories into even finer detail. And it's fine detail, but at the same time, every element that I'm going to name that he writes here are familiar, because this is our family of being human. These are the emotions that we have. These are the tendencies that we have. So they're just going, the meditators... you know, 2,500 years ago, studied themselves and said, I found this and I found this. And then they all agreed on having found pretty much the same stuff. And then they made these lists of what makes a human. And these are the names of things that they found as they meditated. So verse number nine, in the perception of the six senses... is associated with various mental factors. So our senses have this association with our unconscious.

[17:59]

Some of these factors are universal, like the ones I just said about the duck. Those are universal. They're always happening. We are always listening for the duck or smelling the toast or tasting our lunch or looking at a sunrise. You know, we're constantly involved in these universal factors. They're always producing an awareness of the world around us. This is how we survive, by being aware of what's coming or what's going. So there's the universal factors are always involved with the senses. And then there's some other factors which are important. There's some very specific ones that are not always present and they're named. And then there's some afflictions. So here's the angel devil categories. And there's secondary afflictions. And then there's sensations that are, I like it, I don't like it, I'm not sure. So again, these are just naming things, naming the lists of what we've got to work with as humans.

[19:02]

Repeating in verse 10, the universal factors, once again, sense contact, attention, sensation, perception, volition. So just repeating those. The specific factors, which, as I said, only occur in specific situations, are also familiar. So there's aspiration, something we all know. I aspire. I have a dream of something or another. Resolve. I will. I have resolve. I have memory. I carry memories. I can be concentrated. This is a kind of training we can do. We can become very concentrated and focused. That's a mental factor. And I can intellectualize. Intellection is a factor. But these aren't always happening. Unlike the five universals, those are kind of like depending on what I'm doing, which one of these I'm using. So the main practice... So this is important.

[20:04]

Here's the conditions under which we live. We have this conditioned existence based on the alaya, what we carry around. We have tendencies to act on our own self-interest. We're tuning into this teaching because we want to maybe address our suffering and lessen our suffering and lessen the suffering that we cause others. So we're trying to get involved in what's going on here and not just be automatons. The main practice that the Buddha gives to us is to observe. Clearly observe the workings of your consciousness, of what you're aware of. You can't observe the alaya. You can't observe the manas. But you can observe these six sense consciousnesses. And you can do it kind of tirelessly most of the day. That would be developing your concentration. It's mindfulness. I am clearly aware. I'm clearly aware of what's... passing through my mind and what impulses are being driven by what's passing through my mind.

[21:08]

I am paying attention to where my hands are, to where my eyes are. This is practice. That's what we mean by practice. I'm practicing with being present with what's happening. And that means with me. I'm what's happening. And I want to know it. I want to be aware of it as best I can. We all take time off for it. Various reasons. It's nice to just hang out in the bath. But every now and then, we can come back to work. We have to come back to paying attention to what we're doing. So the main practice is that we observe these arisings into consciousness. We observe them arrive, and they kind of abide, meaning they stay around just a little while, and then they pass away. So this is classic Buddhist observation. Arise, abide, and cease. like waves in the ocean, arise, abide and cease. Rise, abide and cease. That's what's happening with any sensation, any thought, anything you're aware of arises, abides and ceases.

[22:16]

And as a result of watching that carefully, you begin to realize how these realizations, one of the big ones is, that there's no self in the middle of that little pattern. There's no need for one. There's just the arising, the abiding, and the ceasing of sensations, impressions, experience. My experience does not require an entity, a control agent of control. It's just happening. Just happening all on its own. Does not, in fact, if I'd like to get involved and I really can't, you know, there's no job for me. in there for his self. So this is one big realization. There's no self driving the car of this process of impermanent arising, abiding in season. The ocean is just moving along. It's doing what it does. And it's bringing up upwellings from our past, from our conditioning, and then they go down again. So that's our story.

[23:19]

So it's a process. Our life is a process. It's a flow. We're not things. We're not nouns. We're flowing, we're moving from one thing to the next. So when we see that that's happening, that there's no self, separate self, separate from the flow, and that there's nothing permanent in the flow, nothing within the flow lasts, you know, just all arises and passes away. But this kind of scene is the path of liberation. This is the kind of scene the Buddha was doing under the tree. He was very quiet. He was sitting still so he could watch his mind and the products of his imagination. And so he saw this pattern. And that's all. There was just this pattern. And this is called right view. It's the first step on the Eightfold Path. Right view. You're seeing things correctly. Impermanent. No self. And for us humans, one of the...

[24:22]

byproducts of no self and impermanence is that oftentimes it makes us very sad. We suffer because we want to have a big self that's well polished and well thought of and all of that. We spend a lot of time working on that and we want things to last. And neither of those things are true. They're not accurate. They're not the facts of life. The facts of life are impermanence, no self, and suffering. And that's just the way it is. And we can ride those waves. We can actually learn how to ride those waves. Suffering doesn't have to be a state either. That can arise and pass away as well if we don't object to having no self and to impermanence. It's the objections that cause the pain. Second noble truth, I don't want it to be the way it is. That's our suffering. not wanting things to be the way they are.

[25:22]

So when we watch our experience, like I said, we will see how these five universal factors are constantly creating the next moment for us. Some experience, sensory experience, we attend to it, we like it or not, we give it a name, and then we act on it. So that's the basic pattern. I wanted to tell a few stories from both the Zen tradition and from the earlier tradition, the Pali Canon, that talk about the tricks of the mind, how the mind tricks us, and how we are played by our sixth sense consciousnesses, what we think reality is. We're being played. You know, it's a trick. And this is what we need to be, you know, mastering is how this trick works and not be fooled. So this first story is a well-known Zen koan about the very challenge that we humans face in every moment of our experience.

[26:27]

And that is this pivotal moment between what I think is happening and the actual truth of reality. So I think in those of you who've been hanging out on... on whatever day this is, Sundays at five. You know, we talked about the two truths at some length some time ago. So there's these two truths. There's the relative conventional truth of everyday understanding, the kind of talk we do all the time. Nothing we have to do. It's no big deal. It's the way we were taught in school. It's the way we talk to each other. It's the normal, common sensical way that we talk and think. We don't have to learn that. We've already learned it. We're conditioned for that kind of what's called a relative truth based in language. And we just name names. We pointed things and say, oh, that's my car and that's my friend and that's my house and so on and so forth. And no one questions us about that usually. OK, so there is a pivotal moment in a Zen story or Zen con where the teacher will challenge that conventional truth, you know, by doing something very odd.

[27:36]

Seemingly odd, but basically what the teacher is doing is calling the monk, the student, back to the universal truth or the ultimate truth, which is silence and stillness. That you can't find it, inconceivable, the inconceivability of reality itself. Whatever names we throw at it, it's just that. We're just throwing names at reality, and that's okay. We do that. That's the conventional truth. That's how we live. But it's really rare for us to have this opportunity to wake up to that, well, that's just not even much of a truth. That's just something we do, like bees buzz and whatever. And we do this. We think up things, and we make a lot of stories, and we make a lot of trouble, and we also make a lot of good, angel and devil. So this story is from the Blue Cliff Record, it's Case 53, called Baijong's Wild Ducks.

[28:37]

So once when Great Master Ma, he's a very famous Rinzai master, Great Master Matsu, and Baijong, Baijong's another very famous teacher, were walking together, they saw some wild ducks fly by. The Great Master asked, the Great Master asked, what is that? Bai Zhang said, wild ducks. Then the master said, where have they gone? Bai Zhang said, they have flown away. The great master then twisted Bai Zhang's nose. Bai Zhang cried out in pain. The great master said, when have they ever flown away? What are you dreaming? So, you know, it says in the notes to this case that if Matsu hadn't done this to Bai Zhang, if he hadn't grabbed his nose and given it a twist, then only the conventional truth would have prevailed.

[29:45]

You know, the ducks flew away. See you later. Bye, Zen master. Bye, monk. The end. Zen wouldn't have much going for it if it wasn't possible to wake up from this dream of the conventional truth as being the only truth. Where'd the ducks go? Where did the thoughts you were having this morning go? Where does it go? Where are they going now? Where'd they come from? The great mystery is knocking on us from all sides, the great inconceivability. Where did they go? You know, Bai Zhang should have been a little more on guard if he's talking to Matsu, you know, when he says they've flown away. You know, he's just asking for trouble. So this is this pivot between the relative truth. It's fine. He didn't say anything wrong. But he wasn't on guard. You know, later on, Bai Zhang's a pretty famous teacher, too.

[30:51]

He might have did a little bit more of sword play with... with Matsu. They might've had a little more of a tussle there, but this story, he's kind of the dupe, you know, he's letting himself, he's walking into this trap that Matsu has laid for him. So what do we poor humans do in this situation where there's this pivot is always there. I mean, it's always possible for your nose to get grabbed, you know, every moment that you dream on, you know, somebody who loves you very much might just grab your nose. So, What can we do? We can teach ourselves to wait and to look really carefully. Zazen is the practice of patience. Meditation is a patience practice. Can I stay awake and sit here in this spot with nothing to do and just wait and watch what's happening? I tell the newer students sometimes, if you sit there staring at that wall for long enough, you begin to realize that what's going on is not

[31:53]

on the wall. This wall is just a white, blank, flat screen. And whatever you're producing is coming from here. But that's a really hard catch. It's really hard to catch that. That's why the wall's kind of handy. But still, you can spend a lot of years looking at that wall and thinking all that stuff is on the wall somehow, like going to the movies. Anyway, so we wait. We sit patiently. And we watch this impulse to act, you know, fly away, just like those ducks. Where does it go? Where does that impulse to do something? Where does it go if you wait? What happens to that thought of you've been insulted or you really have a crush on that person or whatever? Where does it go if you wait? Just like the ducks. We don't know. We don't know. So we can teach ourselves to doubt what we think and to look more closely and then to think again and again, you know, to be considerate or responsible as opposed to responsive.

[33:03]

So that's one of the big shifts. As you slow yourself down through your practices, you begin to be able to be responsible for what you say and how you behave. You know, the impulses are not always so good. The ones that come right out of the alaya, you know. being shot at you by your self-lover, the one who's going to protect you against all comers. It's not always the best response. In fact, probably is the worst response most times, selfishness. So there's another story. This is a little older. This is from the 7th century, a story told by Chandrakirti. Chandrakirti is a scholar who studied at Nalanda University. I don't know if any of you have looked at the Silk Route Silk Road films, but there's some wonderful pictures of Nalanda University, what's left of it, the ruins there, the Silk Road. It's one of the great Buddhist universities that ever existed many, many hundreds of years ago. In the seventh century, it was quite alive, filled with monks and scholars and all of them studying Buddhist texts.

[34:10]

And so he studied and commented extensively on Nagarjuna. That was Chandrakirti's focus, was the second Buddha, Nagarjuna. So he tells this story. A man, a woman, a person, is told there's a snake in the house. And so they're frightened. And they think, I've got to find the snake. And they look everywhere for the snake. And finally, after a very long time, the person declares, there is no elephant in the house. I can't find an elephant. And forgets all about the snake. Funny story, huh? I thought, I don't get that. And I thought, maybe I do. Maybe I do. We forget we're looking for a snake. The snake is the self. This belief in the self. And we forget about it. And partly because it's an illusion. The self is an illusion. So I look everywhere for it. I can't find it. But there's no elephant.

[35:11]

Things must be fine. There's no elephant. There's no water buffalo. So I forget about the snake. And I act in the world through my subject-object convictions. I'm over here. You're over there. And I'm going to do whatever I can to benefit this one. That's the snake. So the fact that it's a crazy thing doesn't mean we don't believe it. We believe crazy things. This is one of the craziest things. This subject-object. duality that we believe in. So the target of our search is an illusion of a self that doesn't actually exist, that can't actually be found. It's hard to find something that can't be found. But we are directed by the Buddha to do that. Try to find it. See if you can find it. What happens when you search with all of your heart for the self that you believe is there? You have an inborn belief that you have one. Now find it.

[36:13]

Find it. Prove it. So even though the illusion will not vanish, that's a good thing to know. This illusion isn't going to vanish other than temporarily, like in these trances or this dreamless sleep, we can come to no longer believe it. We can actually disbelieve in the self as being real. We can doubt it. It's like, I don't think so. And we can act from this So that's the hope that's being held out for us, is we don't have to fall for it. It's kind of a light touch, like, yeah, I hear you, but I don't know. I have my doubts about this noise that's coming from Manas, you know, the little lover in there, just so crazy about myself. I love me. My mom used to sing that. I love me. I love me. I'm wild about myself. Anyway, so this is kind of like, Okay, okay, we get that part, but it's not a helpful thing. It's not a very grown-up thing.

[37:15]

We're trying to get to the next stage, which is a little more sober than that kind of self-love thing. Okay, so here's something. We can cease confusing things that we ourselves make. Here's the distinction between things that we make, such as conscious constructions, stories, narratives, whatever, novels, whatever you said recently that you think is true, we confuse things that we ourselves make, things like that, with what we think we find in the world as though it's just sitting there waiting for us. So we're making up stories, and we just think we just came across this person that is very unlikable, and they've been just waiting for us to show up, and that unlikable person has just been there all this time waiting for me to prove my point. So this is confusion. We were like, I just thought that.

[38:16]

I made that person unlikable. But I don't think that way. I think that, no, no, they've been like that. They're just waiting for me to show up and notice the truth of it. So what Vasubhanda is heading for is the mechanism by which we trick ourselves, which is a very exciting thing. teaching that we're going to get to in the second half of the 30 verses. So once we finish plotting through the clockwork. So the third story I wanted to share about this trick of the mind is actually from the Yogacara tradition itself, from the Sandi Nirmachana Sutra, which is the primary sutra of this mind-only school. And it's called The Magician at the Crossroads, which I may have told you before, but it bears repeating. I think it's a good one. So there's a magician who's standing at the crossroads of two roads that go into town.

[39:17]

And so lots of people are going by, and he's an entertainer. So he takes some pebbles and twigs, and he conjures up a vision of elephants and chariots. So as the people going toward the town see these visions, they see elephants and chariots. And they're like, whoa. It's kind of like the stuff that's on the blank wall when you're doing zazen. Whoa, look at that. Elephants and chariots. Amazing. So they're quite enchanted by this magical trick. The question that the sutra asks is, so the people see elephants and chariots. What does the magician see? That's a little contemplation. What do you think the magician sees? The maker. That's us. We're the makers. We're the makers of the stories. We're of the imputations that we put on the world. I'm the maker.

[40:19]

I'm the creator. What do I see? Well, the answer is the magician sees elephants and chariots. However, the magician knows that they're twigs and pebbles. So that's what we can hope for. That's the break in the system, is that we can know. We can use our intellect, our understanding, our wisdom, the Buddha's wisdom, actually, to know that what we're imagining is just a conjuration. It's just a magic trick. That's how the magician becomes free of their own product, of their own magic show. So in a similar way, when we look for what we all agree is an elephant and we don't find one in the house or in the town, and then we've stopped looking for the snake, you know, this imperceptible mechanism of the clockwork of the mind, we think that the clockwork believes that those elephants and those snakes and ourselves are all separate from one another.

[41:26]

They're all there to be found, just waiting for us. That snake is waiting to be found. And that elephant that isn't there, you know, is really not there. I believe that. I believe in the absence of the elephant. I believe in the presence of the snake, but I can't find it. So this kind of trippy thing that we're doing all the time is what we're needing to study, what we need to look at and how we imagine all of those objects of our awareness are separate somehow from our awareness. There's awareness over here and there's objects of awareness over here. There's no separation. How could there be? How could my awareness of the sound and the sound be separate? They would never touch if they were separate. They could never meet. How could what I see and my visual field be separate? They're totally codependent. They come up together. Everything comes up together with this awareness. The awareness of the world is the world. There's no separate self.

[42:28]

So... Everything that our brains and our minds do is as equally amazing as this magician is doing in creating elephants and chariots. You know, it's just that we forget about the snake. We forget about this self-centered beliefs. And we just fall into our conceit and our self-love so easily. The three poisons of greed, hate, delusion out of which the self is spawned. Selfishness, protection, self-protection. I like it. I don't like it. That's all that matters. You know, that's the poisonous self-centered view that drives our life. So going back to the verses. So he mentions, again, we're in verse 10. The specific factors that I mentioned only arise in certain times. And from that point, we're going to verse 11, if you're reading long. So the next 11 factors... In particular, Vasubandhu has chosen as the most important ones for liberating ourselves from our emotional conditioning.

[43:36]

This is from our feelings. So this is the biggie. Emotionalized conceptions is kind of what drives our life. I think and feel together is pretty much what I act on. Strong feelings, strong impressions, strong ideas. That's my life. That's what I've made my life. That's what jobs I applied for, schooling I went to, classes I chose. Everything had to do with feeling something. I had a big feeling and a thought, and I acted on it. And that's been, you could track my whole life based on those thinking, feeling, thinking, feeling, thinking, feeling, doing. So he's chosen these particular 11 as really wholesome, positive ways to deal with our feelings. The beneficial factors concerning feelings are faith, conscience, humility, a lack of desire, lack of aversions, lack of delusions.

[44:38]

So that's a lack of greed, hate, and delusion. That's a good thing. Energy, tranquility, carefulness, equanimity, and nonviolence. So these are all pretty familiar, you know, in the practice side of what the Buddha taught. Calm down. Let's be peaceful. Let's be nonviolent. Let's not harm each other. This is the angel side of the human we're looking at now. And the most important way to cultivate the beneficial factors is to attend to them when they're present. So when you're doing something good, stay on that horse. Stay on that horse of kindness, of generosity, of tranquility, of energy. Try not to fall off the horse of good behavior, of not being greedy, of not being hateful, of being humble. And that's kind of a tricky one. How to be humble without trying to be humble, acting like you're humble, being careful, and so on.

[45:40]

So when they're present, you do your best to... Energize those. A wholesome mind is a mind that's characterized by these things, by energy and tranquility, by equanimity, by nonviolence. In other words, just being with what is. Just being with what is. There's energy there. There's tranquility. There's nonviolence. There's equanimity. That's what's there. You don't have to find it. It's already what's happening with nothing extra, nothing added. No self-centeredness coming in. So this is mindfulness of mind. The mind itself is tranquil. It's like an ocean or like the sky. Suzuki Roshi said, mind like the sky. It's just spacious and it's got room for everything. It doesn't object to clouds or planes or, you know, rain. It's fine. It's just fine. So the base camp of the mind is silence and stillness.

[46:44]

peaceful abiding, what we enjoy about seated meditation, silence and stillness, just being quiet together and holding our space, being at our seat, being upright, quiet, awake, eyes open, easy breath, content. It's so nice. It's really nice. It's a nice way to remember who you really are. So now he turns in... Verse 12, to the other side, to the devil on the other's shoulder. The afflictions are desire, aversion, delusion, greed, hate, and delusion. Pride, self-love. Wrong view, not understanding how the mind works. And doubt, corrosive doubt. Like, I don't think this is worth my time. You know, not those people, whatever. Just go about my business. So the most effective way to alleviate suffering of afflictions is to attend to them in a very intimate and non-judgmental and compassionate way, you know, from the mind, from the silence and stillness of awareness itself that hears the cries of the world, of the younger self who's in there.

[48:00]

in modern psychological views, there's a self, there's a kind of an undeveloped self in there, the little homunculus is really scared and really doesn't know what to do. And it doesn't necessarily appreciate itself or the world. And, you know, tries to get through it somehow. But so we want to listen to those cries of the world, like Avlokiteshvara listens to the cries of the world and responds, you know, I hear you with compassion. I see you. I hear you. I care for you. That's your own mind. There's some teachings that the mind itself is Buddha. So the mind itself is Buddha hearing the sentient being. That's also the self. My cries are heard by the Buddha mind. Both of those are present together. Suffering and the cessation of suffering. They fit together. One responds to the other.

[49:03]

Buddha responds to the cries of the world. So then there's, not to end, the devil's got a lot, a big team. So we heard the wholesome ones, but there's a few more on the affliction side. So along with secondary afflictions include anger, hatred, hypocrisy, malice, envy, selfishness, Continuing in verse 13, deceitfulness, guile, arrogance, harmfulness, a lack of conscience and humility, sluggishness, restlessness, a lack of faith, laziness, carelessness, forgetfulness, distraction, and unawareness. This is kind of a long list of things. And again, these are all kind of familiar when we fall into these little pits. self-clinging and hating and all of that we're in hell these new descriptions of what it's like for us when we're in hell and these aren't happy places when the devil gets you when the devil drags you down this is not a happy thing for us we don't want to be there they're very motivating when we find ourselves in negative states because we don't want to be there I don't want to be there

[50:24]

I don't want to live there. I want to live in that other place, tranquil and happy and peaceful and all that. You know, I have a longing for that relief from suffering. I think we all do. I'm sure we all do. So these beneficial angel and devil states, afflictive and beneficial states, are called karmic formations. Karma means action. So these are karmic formations. These are the things that are making up our lives by how we behave. emotional and our volitional tendencies, how we tend to roll. And oftentimes it's habits. We have old habits. Like, oh, I get so angry every time somebody cuts me off on the freeway. Every time I do the same thing, you know, start spinning fire. And there's a lot of very sweet people at Green Gulch who do that. They get very angry when they get cut off, you know. So that's kind of part of being aware of that. Oh, gosh, I did that again. I got really angry again. And like... This time I'm ready. I'm ready for it.

[51:25]

I'm just going to pull back, let that guy go in front of me. I'm just going to do a little offensive move here. Get ahead of the game. So at the intersection of karma and intention, it is where we can see how the working of a laya is planting these seeds. And that's where it happens, between our actions, our feelings. All of this stuff I just said is how we're planting. As gardeners, we're planting these seeds for the future by how we behave in relation to our emotions. If we listen to the devil side and we go with that and we just self-justify and we protect and all that, well, we're planting seeds for the future to be just like that too. And if, on the other hand, we are patient, we practice calm abiding, we do all these things that we know are good for us, then we begin to plant seeds like that. which will flower later for us, to our benefit. So Vastu Bandhu is pointing out that to promote well-being, it is essential to focus on and attend to our emotional and volitional state right now.

[52:35]

Right now. This one. Not that one. This one. Someone was just reading some Gertrude Stein. It was very sweet reading of her material. I don't know if any of you read Gertrude Stein. It's kind of amazing what she was experimenting with, as were many artists in her era. But it's like, if I were there, then I wouldn't be here. And if I'm here, then there's there. And there's no there there when I'm not here. And she's just doing this little dance of kind of, it's kind of a Buddhist thing. You can only be here. As soon as you're there, then it's here. There's no there. There's only here. And so this idea that only place you can practice, the only place you can really know these karmic tendencies is by attending to where you are right now. What's happening right now? That's the sixth sense consciousnesses. So they're listening.

[53:40]

What's being sent to you from number seven, from manas? What's manas transmitting to you right now? Did you hear it? Did you get it? Did you catch it? And do you believe it? That's even more important, right? So seeing and being aware of what is in your mind right now is already planting wholesome seeds. That awareness itself is wholesome. That you're being aware, mindfulness is wholesome. So right off the bat, you've got points. You know, you've got nice, wholesome seeds that are being planted for the future. In the Anguttara Nikaya, the Buddhist teaching of the Pali Canon, he says, actions willed, that you wanted intentional actions, performed, that you did, and accumulated, done them again, will not become extinct as long as their results have not been experienced. This is a really important point.

[54:40]

This is a truth. But those things that you've done, those actions, particularly these are more like the not-so-good ones, until you taste the result of them, they will not be extinct. So you've got to take the delivery on your own past actions, all my ancient twisted karma, from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow I mean, a vow means I accept that I did that. All that stuff I did, I accepted. I welcome the knowledge of my past actions by welcoming and acknowledging and honoring that I did do that. Those actions, the result of those actions become extinct. When I first started practicing a while back now, I had this experience, I was telling people, like in the first couple of years I was at Zen Center, I felt like my garbage disposal had been turned on backwards, you know, and all this junk that I had put in there that I thought was safely hidden away, you know, starting way back when in elementary school and probably before that, it was just spewing out, you know, the more I'd sit, the more this gunk came into my mind.

[55:58]

Myalaya was starting to produce... you know, kind of antibodies to waking up. You know, I don't want you to wake up. I want you to kind of get this stuff. Don't you want to stuff this back in there? You don't want to think about that. But now, I mean, I'm so grateful for these teachings that by doing that, by the bitter taste of your own actions, acknowledging them, you can become free. That's the path of freedom. That should be very encouraging to us, you know. So as long as we have not tasted, The fruit of our unwholesome actions. Envy, anger, spite, sluggishness, arrogance, the list we just read through. We can't overcome the habit of repeating them. We have to taste like, boy, I don't like that taste. I don't like how it feels when I say unkind things. Or when I sneak something in there, little derisive comments. I don't like the taste of that.

[57:00]

I don't like feeling not liking people. If there's someone that's bothering me, I don't like the feeling in me of not liking somebody. It's a horrible feeling. So there's, in the song of the Grass Roof Hermitage, the monk Shito says, let go of a hundred years and relax completely. Let go of those hundred years of your past actions and relax completely. So once you've gone through this process of kind of self-cleansing, really, then you can relax. Then you can rest. Then you can sit peacefully because you're not being plagued by your karmic memories. There's remorse. Remorse means chew it again, chew it again, chew it again. So we want to get through that process, but we can't skip over it. That would be spiritual bypass. We need to go through it. We need to see the truth of it. We need to go, yeah, I did that. I did that. I did that. And then it will pass away. That's wholesome.

[58:01]

That very process is wholesome. Tasting our own afflictions also puts us in touch with their universal nature. These are universal qualities, allowing us to be more compassionate with others who are also suffering in the self-centered way. So all of us are in the same boat. We are in the same boat going through these same processes together. We're born, this is our inheritance as humans of our species, and this is our way to freedom. We're so lucky to have these teachings and this teacher. It's really nice at times when I talk with students, they go, how did I get so lucky? I go, I don't know. I don't know. I feel the same way. How did I get so lucky to find these understandings of our life, which certainly were not given to me? as a young person, you know, took a few little detours to be so lucky, you know.

[59:02]

Okay, verse, we have a few more, oh, one more minute, dear. Okay, now verse 14, Romans to 15, I think that's very exciting. Remorse, sleepiness, initial thought and analysis can be either afflictive or not. So, you know, falling asleep is fine, except if you're driving, and it's not fine. So it's really kind of, these are sort of obvious. Remorse, is a really good thing, like I was just saying, unless you can't stop. It's become kind of a toxic regret that you keep beating yourself up with. And then it's not wholesome. It's become unwholesome. So all of these things, these three, these ones can swing either way. You can be obsessive or you can be modest, moderate and do the work that you need to do. So all of these things help to shed light on patterns that bind us to suffering. And that can help us in the same time to escape from the cage of self-belief and of our unconscious conditioning. That's why we're taking the time with these teachings. So on this next verse, number 15, Vasubhanda is pointing out a notion that what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, is what we believe to be the raw and arguable facts of our existence are in fact deeply conditioned by our karma.

[60:18]

They are not inarguable facts of our existence. There are no such things. We can argue about all of it, you know. They're all connected to our storehouse, to our conditioning. Therefore, they're not free. So in verse 15, the five sense consciousnesses arise on the root consciousness, on the aliyah, together or separately, depending on conditions like waves arise in the water. So we do not see the world, is what this is saying. We don't see the world. We see a projection of our interactions, of our senses. our mental conditioning, and some ultimately unknowable external conditions. We don't know what the world is. Any names we call are way off, not even close, fingers pointing at the moon. I mean, could we really capture the moon with the word moon? We think so. We do it. We write it. We write poems about it. But boy, when you look up at that glowy thing, it's like, wow.

[61:21]

or the rain, or the trees in a storm, or you name it. We know that we're in the presence of great mystery, great majesty, reality, the universe, you know, the stars, all of that. We know it, we feel it. And then we go back into our little gopher holes, write stories, because it's too much. You know, we got to kind of shut it down. We got to go back to the relative world so we can go shopping, you know, do the stuff we got to do. But you got to open that door, you know. Over and over again, we have to remind ourselves about the mind like the sky. So this is the project of the second half, which we are going to do. I'm grateful I got through 15, where he begins in the second half of the 30 verses to show us how this apparently real level of our experience, this relative reality that we've just been talking about, sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, is deeply conditioned. And at the level of ultimate reality, we do not know what life truly is.

[62:28]

This is the punchline of the 30 verses. Relative reality, yeah, I got all the stories and I got all the books and I can explain everything to you. Ultimate reality, I don't have a clue. The ducks flew away. Where did they go? I don't know. I don't know where they're going. I don't know if they're coming back. It's a great mystery. The pivot between the ducks flying away and getting our nose pinched. That's where we're going to live. That's what this whole teaching is for. Don't forget about your nose. Someone's coming after your nose, and that's really important. So we'll start when we come back. I'm going to not be online the day after. A couple days after Christmas on the 27th. I will not come the next Sunday, but then I will be back the following Sunday. So if you all want to read ahead to the next 15, we're going to go into this incredibly exciting part of these teachings, which are the three... Yeah, totally blank.

[63:38]

The three somethings. It's not the three little bears. It's the three... Yeah, I know it, I know it, I know it. The three, I'm going to look at. The three. Well, stay tuned. Next time I will have it, I will find it, and I'll tell you. But anyway, it was really great. And it's basically how we know the world, how we set the world up to be what we think it is. Those are three characteristics of all phenomena. That's it. The three characteristics. Okay, that's our time. If any of you have a question or would like to stay on for a few minutes and talk, I'm happy to do that with you. And either blue hand or your own hand is fine. If you'd like to. So right now, what's happening right now?

[64:54]

That's our assignment. What is my emotional and conceptual state right now? My partner just said, are you talking to me? Oh, no, no, not you. Don't worry. It's all in my mind. Great. David. I kind of hesitate to open this can of worms, but I'll go for it. So, this idea of self comes up again and again from lots of different directions when we practice and study Dharma, or maybe this notion of non-self, no-self.

[65:55]

I hear some messages that talk about, that say no self, and some people that say not permanent self, constantly in the flow, like you say. So that's kind of part one of this question. Which is it? And maybe non-self is just a shorthand for an impermanent self or help me with that. The other part of that, this question is, we can talk about self. How do we define self? Because I'm having a hard time figuring that out. I'm just going to the APA and trying to get a sense of that. But somehow we can talk about it and understand what we're all talking about. So I have a hard time.

[66:57]

I keep running into these different roadblocks when we run into that. Yeah, you're not alone. You know, I mean, really, this is the big one. It's the biggest inquiry that we have is because it's this one is about this one. You know, the most important thing is my life. You know. I mean, I can say things like, oh, I really care about all of you, and I do. But when a push comes to shove, I am so determined by my own existence and by my own well-being and my own health and my own make sure I have shelter and I don't get the virus. And there's so much self-concern that is familiar. And yet if you try to define it, like they say, well, find it. Try to find that self, this concerning self. And it becomes this kind of really amorphous. Amorphous works for me. But I can also say that, yeah, that question has been posed to me before.

[68:03]

And I'm not sure I can say that I can find a little object or a thing that I can finger point, that I can put my finger on. But I can say that there seems to be a locus of experience. And I experienced this something, and I think that you experienced something else. So that seems like something. You're writing the philosopher's crucible right there, you know? This is the philosophical, I mean, they're all stirring their pot, right? Something, other, self, another. And these are the big inquiries. And I think, you know, I tend to fall back onto the Buddhist explanation. One answer I've heard to that one. I mean, you know, there's a relative truth and the ultimate truth. In terms of the relative truth, no problem.

[69:04]

You know, I can show you my driver's license. I can tell you where I went to school and my family, and I can do all that. But when you say, well, show me, like what the Zen teacher would say, well, show me yourself. You know, give it to me. It's like, what? There's this stumper. It's like getting your notes tweaked. I'm at a loss because the expansiveness of that, where does the self begin and end? Is it my thoughts? Is it my feelings? Is it my relationship to nature? What is it? My love? All of those parts. That's all the self too. So it becomes such an expansive question. There's no boundary. It becomes unbounded. If I look for myself, it becomes unbounded as an identity. And that's more in the direction of the ultimate understanding. It's like, oh, there's no thing. You're not a thing. Would you be willing to say that, and I hear that a little bit, that we're talking about something that doesn't have...

[70:14]

strict definitions and a strong sense of identity yeah yeah no singularity i mean the vocabulary of self is i me and mine yeah they're really short words you know and i i think i know i think i'm referring to when i say i i think i'm referring to this entity nugget yeah it's the nuggetness that we're challenging yeah as i will keep poke on that thing right there watch your language watch how you're using language yeah so the languaging is really under inspection in the in the buddhist teachings like these are just words flying through the air ducks and if you stop languaging if you sit quietly you stop letting the narrative be the dominant experience you know during zazen the great relief is when that's not happening so much it's like then what are you So that experience of yourself in this more open, expansive and non-boundaried state is one of the things about meditation that is so compelling.

[71:24]

You know, those boundaries, all those boundaries of time and place and so on just kind of don't have any place. You don't need them. Just there. You know, that's even going a little far. So I think it's experiential. What you're asking about is really experiential and would come through your sitting or your contemplating during a walk in nature. I mean, people have that kind of expanded sense of themselves various ways. And so and then you have the other one, too. No one's asking you to get rid of that. That would probably lead you to insane asylum, you know. If you couldn't come up with that conventional self, you can't function in the conventional world. And that's not what's being asked of us. But just not to be trapped by it, not to be an imprisonment in it. And so many of us have been and know that, the escape from that, how amazing it is to not be trapped and try to perform, you know, to be something that you think others wish...

[72:37]

you know, would like to have show up. That's not going to happen. So, so then we get, we find some, some leg room, some movement, some ways of, you know, fluid. The parable of the magician is actually quite helpful. Good. Good. Oh, A bunch of blue hands. Wonderful. I'll just go from left to right. So it's either Bill Kelly or Finn. Hi. Hi, Fu. Thank you for this wonderful talk this evening. You're welcome. In relation to David France's question, I was thinking about if Rainbow... had consciousness and it asked itself, what am I?

[73:39]

That's all I wanted to say. Yeah. You know, it's so funny how you say rainbow and I immediately returned to an experience of driving into a rainbow on the freeway. I saw it up ahead. I swear to God, has anyone else driven through a rainbow? You have? Oh, so good. People tell me, oh, no, you never, that's not possible. It is. It was up ahead on the freeway, and I drove into it, and it was just, the car was full of color. It was absolutely amazing. Anyway, rainbow. I don't know what the rainbow said. I didn't hear it say anything, though. Just a miraculous appearance. Sophia, Jeff, did you want to ask something?

[74:48]

One second. Unmute. Okay. So, yeah. So I understand in the relative sense, there is an organism, which is me. And... evolution has trained me to try and protect that and try and stay alive, to feed, fight, fuck, eat, all that. And is it that in the absolute sense, when I try to look at my consciousness, that I can't know the me that is me, absolutely any more than i can know the moon i mean i can see the moon i can point at the moon i can see me i can point at me but i can't fully understand what i am is is that the sense of it yes and and also the sense that i'm the me that is me does not exist alone i can't exist without the air without the partnerships without the food without all that so in a sense

[75:55]

the me that is me that wants to protect itself is dependent upon all the rest exactly and the intuition is to protect and preserve the rest but i can't fully know what that is i can't fully comprehend that all the conditionings that are here i don't have direct control over so when a thought arises you know how do i push it away or let it go the buddha nature maybe there within the mind, within the brain, but how do I get to that if I'm stuck in a papancha? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's the challenge of our practice. It's how to bring some brighter or more focused awareness to our own behavior. There is a definition of a self from the old wisdom teachings, which I like. It's like... It's not like there's a singularity there, but there is a doer of deeds and the recipient of karmic consequences.

[77:00]

Which is more like action. It's not like an action figure. This event space does things. And as a result of doing things, stuff happens to it. So I feel like that's a pretty helpful definition of a self. That... We want to be watching our behavior. It's, you know, really, we call ourselves a Zen training temple. And what are we training people for? It's basically deportment. The Buddha taught etiquette first. He had a bunch of young, wild things that came out of the woods. And they were very young. They were teenagers or even younger, mostly boys. And he said, okay, here's the rules. don't grab food out of your neighbor's bowl. Don't hop into a donor's house. That's a rule. Why? They were kids, you know, and he wanted them to be welcome. If they're going to get fed, they had to behave well.

[78:03]

So we do the same thing at Green Gulch. We ask people to be quiet, not to be yelling. You know, they live together. Please be quiet. Close the doors quietly. Every day there's announcement about deportment. And the more, the longer people stay around, the quieter they are. They can slip through and that's just fine. They don't eat noisily. They don't slam their things around. They're not yelling across the hall. And it's like, oh, we can live together like that. And we can love each other. It's very easy. So I think starting with behavior, and I can't control my mind. It's just like a wild thing. But I can control, not control, but I can invite my body. to be careful with objects, to treat them with respect. And unpeople, other people. So really focusing on behavior is what Zen, that's a specialty. That's what we specialize in.

[79:04]

Sitting straight, walking straight, talking carefully, and so on and so forth. And the mind will follow. It's like a dog, well-trained dog, you know. The mind will follow the dog. Good dog, you know. And then you get a really kind animal that you can live with. A couple more questions before we go. Tim, did you want to ask something? I wanted to... talked about just something that David was asking about this concept of self and not self. And I just wanted to share one of my friends who's a, she's a Thai forest tradition, bhikkhuni, Ayas Santichita, been ordained almost 30 years. And at a student, at a short retreat, I was asked this question, well, if,

[80:11]

if all these things are not self, thoughts, feelings, emotions, all those things that they're not self, then what is self? And I really liked Aya's answer. She said, nothing. Ah, that's good. Nothing is self. I thought that kind of really hit me between the eyes. And I saw that it's an interesting perspective. That's good. I'll bring her sometime and introduce you. You'd like her. Yeah, please. Please do. Yeah, thank you. Please do. Satish? Yeah, hi. It's been interesting listening to your commentary on the verses. If I had read the verses by myself, I wouldn't understand them. So thanks for helping me out. You're welcome. It's just, it's in circles if I just read the language.

[81:17]

Now, this discussion about self has had me thinking too. And then I just stepped back for a minute. Do I even want to define self? In a way, to go back. I was born in a little village in India. I had no comprehension where America was. Today I am here in one of the most progressive cities. And there was no electricity when I was born or roads. And today I am in data analytics or whatever, done financial deals all over the world. And we are talking through internet. So there's no comprehension I would have ever been that this would be me 30 years ago. The self... Again, probably coming back from Alia, our conditioning, we just come about our definition of self is limited by our regressive knowledge. In the sense that once we define self, I'm thinking maybe we are limiting ourselves.

[82:24]

Yes. And one of the Zen stories, I saw it in Charlie Wilson's war. it's like a zen master in the village and the horse that teenage son and you know he gets a horse oh great how lovely he got a horse and he breaks his leg so sad how and you know yeah you know the zen koan i'm talking about so the more i live it seems like more i see we'll see what tomorrow brings and we'll see what i tend to be or anything else like that so In a lot of ways, I just don't know whether I can actually really define self and that definition will hold over decades. Yeah, probably not and probably hasn't and probably won't. And, you know, and why would we want to anyway? You know, if we become solid in that way, definitionally, I think that's the kind of trap that I know we all have friends who've fallen into that.

[83:31]

of being self-identified or self-confident in a certain way that feels tinny. It feels like there's something missing. I want to break that open. I want to kind of get in there and say like, come on out. It's okay. You know, so there's, there's, you know, there's the functionality of it. What are you going to do with it? If you came up with a really good definition anyway, it's like, it's not so useful. And what this teaching is saying is you're much better off without one. Just like you said, This is a non-repeating universe. We don't know what's next. We're just kind of going to. And that means this thing doesn't know what's going to happen now and how it's going to respond. And I can't really rely on what happened yesterday. I mean, that's over. So we're just kind of on the edge of like creativity. We are the creativity itself. And how we meet this challenge that is coming now, whatever it is, in whatever form, That's the self-creation, self and other together.

[84:37]

They're dependently co-arising. So any thought of separating from the world of colors and sounds and so on leaves you with a vacancy. The only way we exist is by our connection to everything around us. The real self is what we're experiencing. That's our actual self. The mountains and the rivers and the trees. That's what the Zen masters say. It's the sound of the valley stream. That's who I am. That inhalation. That's what I am. So getting away from some idea of this one being important. Like get over that. This one is causing you trouble. It's like let this one, the big one, be what's welcomed and what moves through. You know, as a gift. The self is a gift coming to you. Being given to you. Just like when you were born. You didn't do that.

[85:38]

Somebody grabbed you off the table or whatever and held you up and fed you. And it's still happening. We're still being fed and held. So, I don't know. I think learning how to love is probably the most important thing. For us. Well, I want to say goodbye and wish you all a good evening and also a good holiday. If whatever holidays you're celebrating, I hope you're having something joyful right now. Some lights and some friends, contact with friends and so on. And I will see you after the new year. So happy new year as well. Please take care. This is very special for me to be with you all. I want you to know that. Thank you very much.

[86:41]

Thank you. Much love to everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing this time together. Yes, everyone. Thank you so much. Good night. Thank you, Fu. You're welcome. Night, everyone. This was my first time here, and I really enjoyed it. I'll be back. Thank you. Good. Please, please. Excellent. Yeah. We'll go slow. We'll start over. Happy holidays. Take care. Thanks for coming. Thank you, Fu. Have a great new year. Yes, you too. You too. All of you. I know. I know. We just live in Zoom world. Exactly. Ah, there's your partner.

[87:42]

That's the one. Thank you for sharing foo with us for the last time. Well, thank you for sharing yours. He just hit the bathroom. I like your Buddha. It's nice to see you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great sleeping partner. And again, deep love to everyone. Thank you for creating this opportunity for coming together. You're welcome. Welcome back. Yeah. Yeah. Love you much. See you in the new year. Yes. Have a happy new year up there in Mammoth. Is all well? Did you get any snow? Yes. We got a foot. Well, that's... That's better than we all ever get. The ski area has enough snow to operate. Oh, does it? But, you know, there's all of the COVID restrictions and controversy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys are safe, it looks like. Staying that way. Yeah, we stay safe. Yeah, good. Nice seeing you.

[88:43]

Nice to see you, Karina. Bye. Bye. Thank you, Mark. You're welcome. Thank you, Fu. Yeah, you take care. See you soon. See you soon.

[88:56]

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