We will now begin today's Dharma Talk offered by Greengold Chavis, Fu, Nancy Schrader. Please chant the opening verse along with me. The verse should show on your screen now. An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Phu would now like to show a short video offering before the formal talk begins. This past weekend, I spent two days co-leading an online workshop with a group of artists and meditators called the Heart Mind Retreat.

[08:43]

So many inspiring images and stories appeared during our time together that I thought I would share one of them with you this morning. The slideshow I played for you was in response to an invitation that our art teacher, Suiko McCall, from the Art Monastery in Vermont, made to us to go outside. go out into the yard or into the forest and create an altar from the materials that we find there, something you all might want to do as well, an altar to the fragile beauty of this world. I know from talking to people here at Green Gulch and from places literally around the world that shared expressions of beauty and joy, of grief and loss, through intimate relationships such as we had for those two days, is especially important for all of us right now. The possibility of creating those connections to one another is most of what I want to talk about today. Another exercise we did in the retreat was finding a word that represented our current needs and our wishes.

[09:49]

The word community was up high on the list for several people. What came into my mind during this exercise was the word glue, which for me meant pretty much the same thing as community. glue holds things together and how we hold things together in ourselves our families our communities especially in times of crisis like now is at the core of buddha's compassionate teaching so keeping in mind what is particularly relevant these days to my own community and to our circle of friendships the fear about this deadly illness the horror of racial injustice the anger at the inciting of violence by our political leadership, wildfires, flooding, windstorms, heatwaves, and the ever-rising seas. I want to offer what I can from the ancient wisdom teachings to serve as a kind of glue for all of the pieces of our lives which are rapidly falling apart.

[10:55]

For most of us, the way we know that things are falling apart is that we feel afraid. and sad and hopeless or angry, either drawing ourselves further in to protected spaces, our walled cities, or by attacking the mostly unseen forces that seem to be threatening us with annihilation. I think you all know the story of the Buddha's awakening, during which he too was under attack by rage-filled bullies and by dancing nymphs and seders, calling him to abandon his quest. and finally, by the master of illusion, himself, herself, themself, Mara, the evil one. Our practice of sitting upright in the midst of such onslaught, of holding our places, you know, glued down as the Buddha was, as if by a thousand thunderbolts, gives our tradition its backbone and its courage in order that we might turn and face what frightens us, stare right back at it,

[11:59]

and see it for what it truly is. Our own human species likewise acting out of fear, anger, hopelessness, ignorance, and rage. Eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. Generation after generation. World without end. Unless and until somebody calls a timeout. Until somehow we humans are literally stopped in our tracks. Stopped from killing. from stealing, from lying and sexualizing, from intoxicating, slandering, bragging, hoarding, and hating. It sounds pretty hopeless, doesn't it? And yet those of us gathered here this morning as representatives of the living generation are the bearers of this human history with all of its horrors and delights, the awful and the awesome. As great teacher James Baldwin said in a conversation with great teacher Margaret Mead, we have got to be clear-headed about human beings as possible because we are still each other's only hope.

[13:08]

One of the major themes of the conversation we had during the Heart-Mind Retreat was the power of awesomeness and its conjoined twin of awfulness. to transform our lives and potentially move us in a new direction, hopefully the direction that the Buddha called the liberation from suffering. Just as the ocean amongst the Buddha said has one taste, the taste of salt, my teaching has one taste, the taste of liberation. So choosing a direction for our life depends on what we call our conscience, from the Latin to know. The guidance we accept for a journey of conscience is, as always, of our personal choosing, as is the company we keep and the precepts that we follow. The values and virtues that underlie those choices is the glue for both our personal and our communal lives. You know, this digital connection that we are having with each other at this very moment is just such an example of how each of us is making a choice for me to talk, for you

[14:19]

listen and for us to connect in finding common ground worthy as we can only hope of great personal effort and dedication lifelong effort lifelong dedication as buddhists we take our direction from what the buddha had to say to the people who came to him for comfort and moral guidance they too were fearful greedy and angry isolated from one another and alienated within the limitations of prejudice and cultural conditioning and the tyranny of kings. Fortunately, the Buddha said a great many things in his 45 years of ministry, speaking as he did from the clear memories he had of his own journey to liberation, a journey that began in the same narrow space that gives birth to us all, our parents, our soulmates, and the schooling that we are given. in the language and traditions of our ancestors. And from there, he, as we, was more or less left to his own devices.

[15:25]

Do I go right or left? Do I vote for them or for the others? Do I live in town or out in the country, marry, have children, ordain, own a car, get a dog or a cat, and so on, down the long winding road that ends with an exhalation? Like many of us, at some point along the way, something about our life's journey leaves us by the end of our childhood with the disease of discontent. All that we have, all that we are, somehow just isn't enough. In the case of the Buddha, the cultural glue that held his royal family together, that gave them privileges of status and safety and wealth, was for him the matrix of a prison. It took him a long time through a process of elimination. Well, it's not this, and it's not that, and it really isn't any of those, until he was able to discern the location of the prison as not outside, but inside of himself, inside of his own mind, and then to find his way out.

[16:36]

In order to do that, first he needed to discover how to concentrate, to focus his attention. This initial step for the study of reality is called shamatha or tranquility practice. I think all of you have had times in your lives when you have been tranquil, peaceful, at ease, perhaps sitting by the ocean or gazing into a fire or maybe for you it's music or running or soaking in the bath. Calming is not only proven good for our health, it's also very good for viewing our life, for considering carefully what's actually happening in any given moment. Are you thinking about the future or the past? Is there anger, sadness, fear, anxiety, stress? Calming, being alive, is about being mortal, what the Buddha called the great matter of birth and death. And how we respond to our mortality, to birth and death, depends entirely on that crack, as Leonard Cohen saying, that runs through everything.

[17:43]

crack of light that illuminates the pathways toward compassion and wisdom and yet it's a light by which we make choices which may or may not lead us to transformation so it really helps if we've already determined somewhere along the way the intention that is guiding those choices as you probably know the intention that the buddha recommends is the bodhisattva vow living for the benefit of others It takes a lot of concentration, patience, and creativity to find new ways to bring that vow out of the cracks and into our everyday life. We all heard by now some of the teachings he gave about that moment when he saw through the walls of his own mind-made prison, made solid by his fear, his self-doubt, and his sensitivities. Teachings that he summarized best in this ancient verse from the Dhammapada. What we are today, comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow.

[18:47]

Our life is a creation of our mind. And he saw the kind of sticky glue the mind uses to produce a sense of self, a self that believes in its own central role in defining and controlling its territory. You know, my partner, my house, my children, my eyes, my ears, my country, my rights, my good or my bad fortune my prison the sticky glue making these types of self-centered connections is not the kind of glue that he wanted us to consider for our own personal well-being and happiness nor for the well-being of our friends or of our precious planet the glue that the buddha recommended for a wholesome and a life of freedom is made inside the human heart is the product of kindness generosity, ethical standards, patience, enthusiasm, concentration, and wisdom, a wisdom that is beyond wisdom. The teachings of wisdom that are grounded in compassion are the kind of glue that has held the Buddhist community together for over 2,500 years, and it's the very opposite of the sticky glue by which the Buddha said we fashion our imaginary selves.

[20:05]

The wisdom teachings, as taught by the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokitesvara, emphasize the aspect of our world that is free and spacious, where nothing lasts forever, where no one exists separately from others, and yet where, I am very sorry to say, there is suffering, discontent, and the never enough of this all-too-human world, the world that we are made from, where our happiness depends on our freedom, and our freedom depends on the happiness of everyone else. The only way out of our suffering is together. So this is literally the other side of our practice, the side on which we find the other. And for this side of our life, our communal life, we turn our hearts and thoughts to the teaching of compassion, the teaching that starts with a vow, a promise, to live for the benefit of others, starting here and starting now. There's a story from the Book of Serenity that speaks to me about the work we need to do in finding our way out together.

[21:11]

A monk asks Jingguan, what is the great meaning of Buddhism? Jingguan says, what is the price of rice and luling? This Zen story, like all stories, is open to interpretation. So here's one idea about what's going on here between the monk and his teacher. and in particular what the price of rice in Luling hundreds of years ago has to do with our life together here today, a life in which even every aspect is a co-creation of the entire world, to say nothing of the entire universe, which to my mind is what this teaching story is all about, thinking globally while acting locally. Therefore, I propose that the great meaning of Buddhism is knowing and caring how our neighbors are doing, whether across the ocean or across the street. But even more importantly, whenever possible, to be doing something about it. And sometimes when I'm about to give a talk, I feel inspired and energized by this life and by the loveliness of Zen practice in and of itself.

[22:24]

Green Gulch in the autumn, Tasahar in the spring, wonderful. completely wonderful. And then there are other times, such as lately, when I've been feeling pretty sad about the many sorrows that are erupting throughout our human world. Sorrows with such beautiful names, like Dallas, Memphis, Tulsa, Kenosha, Ferguson, Louisville, Milwaukee, Mel Valley, Muir Beach. Sorrows which are everywhere, everywhere that fear is rising. due to violence, illness, lust, confusion, and rage. Truly everywhere. I have spent many years studying the teaching that these troubles are manifestations of my mind and that my desire for these troubles to be over is the cause of my own suffering. I really don't doubt that, not even a little bit, because I know how easily I can be distracted. And yet wherever I turn, the troubles are there and I am suffering.

[23:29]

from a deep wish that something will happen to change that, change that for the better. Something that we can do or decide or make into a law, you know, laws that are based not in argumentation about who's right and who's wrong, but in the arousing of compassion that comes from a deep willingness to understand the needs and the suffering of others. This seems especially true for the types of suffering for which there are well-known cures. Cures based in respect and kindness toward everyone. Literacy, health care, homeless shelters, meaningful work, non-violence, and zero emissions, to name just a few. Here at the Zen Center, we call devoting oneself to the relief of suffering the Buddha way. At the Interfaith Council, we called ourselves like-hearted, acknowledging the pointlessness of quibbling over anything. particularly over the names given to virtue by the world's religious traditions.

[24:31]

That, too, is the Buddha way. So my response to this question by Jing Wang, what is the price of rice in Luling, is to say, I do not like the price of rice in Luling, nor at Whole Foods. I don't think the price is fair, nor do I like the methods by which much of the rice is being grown, or how we humans have allowed ourselves to distribute it. I also don't like the price of coal or oil or tobacco, pesticides, slaves or weapons of any kind. So what's a girl to do, as my therapist used to say? What am I to do with the suffering that arises in my mind as those horrifying headlines pop up on my computer each and every day? And as you know, I am not just making this stuff up. We are a pretty well-informed group of people gathered here today. So I ask this question to all of us. Has there ever been, will there ever be something that we can do, we and all the other like-hearted people of the world?

[25:38]

And then I also ask myself, is there some way to correctly understand the Buddha's teaching of non-attachment and renunciation without the very real temptation to hide away from the world and all of its sorrows? I did try that at one point, to hide away from the world, only to discover that there is no place to hide. And that's because this world, with all of its beauty and sadness, is precisely what this person, and every person, is designed to witness, to feel, and to be. So no matter where I sit or stand, there I am, born from the very world in which the only true refuge is my own sacred life. the one that's happening right here and right now, the one that is in no way separate from yours. You are my world and I am yours. And therefore, how I respond to what I see and what I think in each and every moment is all I can know of this world and all that this world will ever know of me.

[26:42]

And yet, as choiceless as that may sound, it is right here in these transient encounters between the world and each of her own living systems that an opening appears the tiniest sliver of infinite possibilities the light of awakening of compassion and of wisdom and therefore of choice and even so at times for all of us it's such a blur that it's hard to imagine having the space the time or the energy to make choices or to set an intention for transformation of ourselves or of this world And still here we are together on this old farm. And whether we know it or not, we have come here to witness this suffering world, to worry about it and to pray, not to or for something outside of ourselves, but for the well-being of each other and all others. So let us pray that we together can find some way to be of help to this suffering world, which is exactly why I am sad today, because I don't know what to do to help others.

[27:46]

I'm pretty sure that talking isn't enough. We talk a lot and still there are more weapons, more sickness, more poverty and police violence and more carbon pouring into the air. So here I sit with your permission to share with you my feelings, my fear, my anger and my shame, deeply aware of the privilege I have to be here in safety, or so it seems, on this painfully beautiful planet called Earth. a place to which I and all who live here must be terribly grateful and to which we must be terribly ashamed. There's a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha on the Zendo altar here at Green Gulch depicting the moment in his own spiritual journey when filled with doubts he reached down with his hand to touch this very earth for permission to sit peacefully in order to study his own precious life in hopes of learning for himself the cause and cure for the suffering. of the humankind.

[28:47]

It took a while, but he figured it out. And he told others who spread the news to all parts of the world up until this very day. Basically, what he said is, the world is not what you think. This is the ultimate truth. He then said, we are here in this world to live in harmony with one another. Those who know this do not fight against each other. Hate is not conquered by hate. Hate is conquered by not hating. This is the relative truth, the truth about our relationships to the earth and to one another. So this kind of awesome knowing, the result of an awesome experience, took him beyond language, beyond concepts, and was therefore quite difficult to put into words. Which is why it took many years for the Buddha to articulate the teachings of awakening in a way that would be accessible to the humans that he so dearly loved. Many years trying to talk about the experience of awakening itself, in which our mind is no longer seen as separate from our body.

[29:55]

This place is no longer seen as separate from that place or from any place else. And most importantly, your suffering is no longer seen as separate from mine. And once again, it's so simple and easy, and yet, what is it that happens inside of us that makes such teaching so difficult to practice or even to understand? The answer the Buddha gave has to do with the very things that he had seen inside of himself. Fantasies, stories, narratives, daydreams, projections, mental elaborations, and in the most tragic of cases, the extremes of pathological thinking, greed, hate and delusion the image of the human mind common in the buddhist tradition is of clouds covering the moon the clouds being our delusional thinking and the moon being the clear light of awakening in the scene just the scene in the moon just the moon and in the clouds is the focus of our study

[31:00]

Although directing our attention to the mind itself will not create a world according to our desires or our preferences, it is the only way to create a kinder and safer world for all of us who are living in it together. Wisdom teachings that the Buddha gave to his most senior students, such as the Heart Sutra, left them with an unsettled feeling as they tried to sort out the nature and location of the toxic forces that seemed to be surrounding them and holding them back. And so they sat silently and still, and ordered to attend to those feelings and to the thinking that gave rise to them. And after sitting, they would hit a drum and chant together, as we do today, the Crazy Wisdom Sutra, whose main message appears again and again as the word, no. No, not only to our thoughts and concepts, but also to our perceptions as well. No, to how we see, smell, taste, touch, and feel. about what we consider to be the world around us, the world that we think is real.

[32:04]

No. Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, the Bodhisattva of Compassion itself, while deeply practicing the silence and stillness of the wisdom teachings, the Prajnaparamita, clearly saw that all five aggregates, those are the five sticky, gluey parts with which we make up a world and a self, are empty. meaning that no part of that self is separate from the world around it, the world that is heard and seen, smelled and tasted and felt, and thus meaning right there and then, and in our case, right here and now, relieved all suffering. So this is the familiar first line of the Heart Sutra for those of you who have spent some time at the Zen Center and joined in our morning service. As we chant this text in unison, we can't help been incorporated into ourselves as an invisible glue which connects our lives to this tradition and this tradition to itself as it has for thousands of years.

[33:07]

When the Heart Sutra begins its rhythmic recitation of the things which we are not separate from, it simply adds the word no to each part of our life we could possibly point to or think of as other. No gain without loss. no prison without freedom, no joy without sorrow, no birth without death, without hindrance, no fear. This deep knowing of the inseparability of ourselves from the world is what Avalokiteshvara saw that relieved all suffering, is what Chakyamuni Buddha saw when he gazed at the star on the morning of his awakening, is why Maha-Kashapa smiled when his teacher held up a flower. Such an experience of clear seeing is sometimes called the view from the top of the mountain, in which both our imaginative worlds and the world beyond our imagination are clearly seen for what they are, just as plainly as the nose on our face, which is exactly where it's been all along.

[34:10]

We could say this type of wisdom, wisdom beyond wisdom, is characterized by a way of knowing that does not include the sense of a person who knows. that the I is no longer of much importance, is no longer experienced as separate from what is known. Just as the awakened one, now called the Buddha, saw for himself when he said, I and all beings on earth are enlightened at the same time. I and all beings understood as a single word, no separate self, no separate world, just knowing, just wisdom, just this is it, for real. And we do know But we forget that a time will come for each of us when things will get really loud and really scary, and perhaps by then having opened ourselves to the world, as the Buddha recommends, through the practices of generosity, ethics, patience, enthusiasm, and concentration. When that time comes, we just may know which way to turn, how far to go, and who to ask for help.

[35:17]

Wisdom is the fruit. of this faithful practice. I'm going to end with some of the words the Buddha gave to help guide a monk who, like us, was fearful of his own mortality, desperate for relief, and honorable enough to know the limitations of his own personal effort to plot the course of his life. The monk's name is Bahiya of the Bark Cloth, and his story is one that bears repeating. At one time, Bahia was greatly revered as a teacher in the town where he lived. And then one day a woman of great understanding visited the town and candidly said to him regarding his claim to liberation that he was not. Being an honorable man, Bahia dropped what he was doing and set off to find the Buddha who he had been told was truly liberated and who taught a path leading to liberation. After imploring the Buddha to teach him and being told to wait for the appropriate time, Bahiya says to the Buddha, My blessed one, it is hard to know for sure what dangers there may be for the blessed one's life or what dangers there may be for mine.

[36:26]

Teach me the Dharma, O blessed one, for my long-term welfare and bliss. And so the Buddha then said, Bahiya, you should train yourself thus. In the seeing, there will be just the seeing. In the herd, just the herd. In the imagined, just the imagined, in the cognized, just the cognized. That is how you should train yourself. And when for you there will be just the seen in the seen, just the heard in the heard, just the imagined in the imagined, just the cognized in the cognized, then Bahia, you, in connection with that, will not exist. You will not be found in this world or in another world or someplace in between. this justice bahia is the end of suffering so an homage to the liberation of all beings here's another simple expression of a mind in tune in harmony with all that there is a poem by Ehe Dogenzenji this slowly drifting cloud is pitiful what dream walkers we humans become awakened

[37:46]

I hear the one true thing, black rain on the roof of Fuka Kusa Temple. This slowly drifting cloud is pitiful. What dream walkers we humans become? Awakened, I hear the one true thing, black rain on the roof of Fuka Kusa Temple. Bodhisattva. Thank you very much. We will now chant the closing chant. Please find that on your screen. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless.

[38:46]

I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. We're opening the floor to questions. I'd like to thank everyone for coming. Please know that we do rely on your donations more than ever. If you feel supported by the Dharma offerings of our temples, please consider supporting San Francisco Zen Center with a donation at this time. Any size is greatly appreciated. A link will show in the chat window now. Thank you very much. And as part of the Q&A, if you would like to offer any questions or comments, please click on your participants button in your Zoom control bar at the bottom of your Zoom window.

[39:58]

If you don't see the control bar, point your cursor over the Zoom window and it will appear. After opening your participants window, click the blue raise hand button at the bottom of that window. You may also send your questions or comments or questions through the chat as well. And if you're on a mobile device, press the More button from the bottom control bar and click the Raise Hand button. Did you all get that? I hope so. I see Terry. Hi, Terry. Hi, Fu. Thank you so much for a very beautiful talk. I wrote down several things, and the one that I... think I will really remember is the road that ends with an exhalation. I think that is just wonderful. There was one thing that you said that bothered me. When you talked about the solutions that we all know are possible, you listed one thing on your list was homeless shelters.

[41:13]

And I think that's not something to aim for. In other words, people need homes. And the shelters are, I mean, many live on the streets because they prefer it to the shelters. You know, one homeless man said to me, you know what people do when they're not in jail? They're in the homeless shelters. So he considered that a very... So that bothered me as not a high enough goal. And also, I wondered what you... You mentioned action, choice, but you really... Were you really talking about internal change without action in the world? I mean, it wasn't clear to me whether you were... saying it truly is all inside and this is the place where we practice.

[42:19]

I didn't hear any call. I was confused about whether there was any kind of call to action at this moment. Thanks, Terri. Thank you for that comment about homeless shelters. of the marine community foundation for a number of years and we were constantly trying to find homes and at some point it was the only homes that were left in marin were trailers and and those were not enough of those so um i appreciate that it's really and i said to some folks who were from other countries where they had done better than we've been doing what do we do and they said you have to build more housing so we're short of housing so you're absolutely right what we need is more housing and i appreciate that truth As for the other thing, no inside and outside. They're really the same. I mean, the action I'm taking today is talking. It's an action of speech, of my body and of my mind and my speech.

[43:24]

So whatever we're doing in terms of motivated, intentional action has an effect. And we don't know exactly what that effect is going to be. Some effects seem to be bigger than others, you know. Like big demonstrations, those seem pretty big. But then it seems like the government has learned to wait for those to subside. So I'm not sure what actions. And that's why I brought that up. I don't know what to do. I've done a lot of stuff. You know, I'm getting right toward that exhalation. And I feel like I don't know what to do. That's why I'm asking you. So I think you all have different things you do. I bet you do. And I appreciate every one of them. And any good ideas you have for me, I would love to hear. So I'm available. And I will try my best. So thanks, Terri. Thank you so much. For your presence. Thank you for your words. You're welcome.

[44:26]

Grace Damon. Hello. Where are you? I see your name. I think you're unmuted. Jenny, are you unmuting, Grace? I'm just unmuted. Thank you so much. You knocked it out of the park. Oh, thank you. What I would say to you is trust your heart in the moment. You will know what to do. And it's an ever-changing field because you're a person that knows your own heart. Well, I would say that to you as well. And I know you pretty darn well, don't I? I know you pretty darn well. Yeah. A lot of these people don't know, but we were partners over a very long time. Raised a child is doing great, by the way. Sabrina, our blessed child. And now we live in different places, have new partners, and we still love each other very much.

[45:28]

Thanks, Grace. Thanks for coming. Thanks. Take care. Take care. Bill. Hi, Bill. Are you unmuted? Yeah. Jenny, are you going to do that or shall I not bother? I think I'm unmuted. This is Kelly. Kelly. Hi, Kelly. Hi. So you opened with the video from the art retreat. And well, first, I want to say that I thought your talk was really moving and powerful. So thank you. Thank you. And I'm wondering if there were things that came out of that retreat. in terms of art being something that a way of addressing so many of the ills you spoke about that we're all facing right now. And I'm an artist, so that particularly piqued my interest. Yeah. Well, that's why I shared that, because for me, looking at those so-called dead leaves and seeing the beauty of each and every one of them, you know,

[46:38]

that's overlooked. We overlook the beauty that's all around us. That's easy to do. And I feel like what artists do is kind of like stick fingers in our eyes, like, look, look, you know. I only learned to draw some years ago. Actually, when Grace was in the hospital, I needed something to do with my anxious energy. And I took some art classes, which was great. And the teacher there and I did a workshop at Tasselart called learning to sit, learning to draw, learning to see. And I think what artists and sitters have in common is that visual field or auditory field, you know, it's not always sensory field. They actually are tuned in to the sounds and the sights and the colors of the world. And I think that call to look is a really key to what meditators are asked as well. Look, look, you know, what's here really? You know, when I, when I was a young, monk down at Tassahara the first few years.

[47:41]

I was very fond of dreaming, still am. I spent most of my childhood and my young adulthood dreaming away, reading novels and dreaming. And my mom used to have to snap her fingers and yell to get my attention. You know, I was always off in some cloud. And I said to Mel Weitzman during a public ceremony, dreams are sweet. I love to sleep. What do you have to offer? And he said to me, go wash your face. Wake up. You're missing out. You're going to dream yourself right off the planet, you know. And I was so grateful. He's absolutely right. You know, wake up. Those are just, I call this the imaginarium, you know. We get lost in the imaginarium. We spend so much time in our imagination. So come back to your senses. You know, we say that when somebody's like, woo-woo, delusional. Come back to your senses. And I want to give them a pat on the face. Wake up. So we have so much in common, artists and meditators.

[48:47]

It's the same thing. Don't you think? I do. And being an artist and also an art teacher, that's really helpful. It's reminding me because art making can feel narcissistic. And also with my students, helping them to understand the relevance and importance of what we do. And I think that the power of observation is really important. Yeah. I think it's rubbed off on your son. I saw some of the installations you did. They're mind blowing. I think so. There's something that a teacher of mine said, an art teacher, not a Zen teacher, but maybe the same thing in some ways. There was like a, she made an installation in a public park that was in sort of an impoverished neighborhood.

[49:49]

And there was a panel discussion about it. And somebody asked a question kind of asking about like, why not do something that's going to tangibly help these people like create some some like resources or something. And then she said, oh, so like, what do these people not deserve beauty? And I was like a really poignant answer to that. Just that it's the real value of those experiences. Dead leaf on a piece of white paper. It's everywhere. Thank you. Thank you all. Nice to see you. Well, thank you again for coming and I hope you'll come again and help support the Zen Center and we'll support you as best we can as we slog through these days and years of, gosh, what is happening?

[50:59]

But I wish you well, and I hope you all stay safe. Thank you. I've allowed everyone to unmute themselves if you would like to say goodbye. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Goodbye. Thank you. [...] Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you. Stay safe.

[52:05]

Be well, everyone. Thanks, Michael. Got your ropes on. Yeah. All dressed up with no place to go. Yeah, me too. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Be well. all of you hi linda ritter kate and paul you made it deborah west is that the deborah west It is. Hello. Hi, Deborah. Sorry, I don't have my picture on. It's been a long time.

[53:08]

Welcome. Nice to see your name. I'm so glad to see that you stayed and become who you've become. Oh, thanks, Deborah. It's a real gift. Thank you. I hear good things about you, your art. Really? Yeah. Yeah, really. You know, I'm starting to sit with the L.A. Zen Center right now and doing Cohen practice, which is really different. Yeah, yeah. So a new adventure in my retirement. Did you figure out the dog yet? Yes, I passed it. All right. And the whole idea of passing something, attainment, is so contradictory to me that I'm struggling with it. But it's fun. Well, congratulations. Now there's another one, right? Yes. Well, they do this small set. Right now it's How to Stop the Temple Bell. Oh. So it's, you know. Yeah. It's fun, but it all comes down to this is my life. That's it. You know, it's just what you were talking about.

[54:08]

So it's, you know, you just come back to that again and again. Clouds in an empty sky. A lot of clouds. Yeah, that's good. I like clouds, though. Did you paint that? I paint? Oh, yes, that's a small one. I do small cloud studies. Just kind of, you know, I have, anyway. But right now, there's no place to show anything or do anything. So, you know, I'm gardening a lot. Thanks for showing us. Yeah, it's better than my face. I doubt that. It's my real face. That's your real face. That's my real face. But it's really nice to see you. What? I said, I'm your real face. You're my real face. Absolutely. Hey, you guys. Listen, I just want to tell you that this was a most amazing morning.

[55:08]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. And one of the things that you said, I mean, my heart joins your heart in it on just a kind of a notion. I don't even know if I would call it a faith or a knowing notion. that we may know in the future what to do. It's a longing. It's a pain, actually. I would call it a heart pain, unknowing and trusting that our actions, as we can conceive of them these days, that they matter enough to enough is not a good word there. I suffer from that word of not being able to do enough, but of just doing and being and dropping those pebbles in the ocean and laying down on the street sometimes and doing this and doing that and being a certain way.

[56:19]

I mean, it's just, it's a big deal these days in the light of all that's going on. So thank you for the light, for the Cohen light. I've started answering when people ask me how I am. I just say, good enough. Good enough? Enough is okay. That's good. Enough is really fine. Yeah. You know, it's true, isn't it? It has to be. It's got to be. Just this is it. This is it. Nowhere else to go. That's right. Thank you. Okay, y'all. Y'all take care. Much love.

[56:53]

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