This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So first we should find out whether you can hear me. Is everyone here okay? Well, let me know if my voice drops. Sometimes when I'm going to say the most important things, most profound things possible, my voice gets really quiet. So if that happens, then you can raise your hand or something and I'll try to speak up. And I did tell Mary and someone else in the kitchen, Caitlin, that I would wait for them. So I won't start what I was going to do until they come. But we could do something else. Maybe you have a question or something you'd like to ask?

[01:03]

Yes? I should have read the poem on the book better to ask this question, but I understand that you are ordaining two different traditions. Why did you choose to look at another tradition in addition to Soto-Nin? So I... I practiced here for many years and was ordained here as a priest. And then I went to Southeast Asia and was introduced to Vipassana practice there and went into that for a long time and eventually became a Vipassana teacher. So I'm, you know, Dharma transmission, I'm a Zen teacher, at least supposed to be. And then I'm also a Vipassana teacher, which is what I mostly do. And so how did that happen? And there's a number of things to say, different ways of saying it. One way of saying it, it had to do with the needing to get a new visa for Japan.

[02:06]

I was really happy doing Soto Zen. I'm still happy with it and a lot of respect for it. And it wasn't like I left Zen, you know, because I didn't like it or something or thought something else was better. But I needed a new visa. And when I went to Thailand, it was the easiest way to get a new visa. I didn't start without you, but we're doing something else. So the cheapest way to get a new visa for me from Japan was to go to Thailand. And while I was in Thailand, I said, what does a Zen priest do in Thailand? And so I said, well, I'll go visit Buddhist monasteries there. And I had some sense at the time that from taking classes with Reb Anderson on Abhidharma, that Abhidharma was kind of interesting. And I thought it'd be good for me to learn Abhidharma, some more Abhidharma. And I knew that in Thailand they had a living Abhidharma tradition. The Abhidharma tradition that we were studying at Zen Center was kind of like a dead tradition in some ways.

[03:09]

It was ancient texts and they weren't really part of a living tradition so much anymore. But in Thailand it was continuously part of the tradition. And then I thought, well, I'll go around, travel around Thailand, visit lots of different places and learn somehow. And then when I got there, I said, I'll just go to one place and say, here I am, tell me what to do. So I had an address of a monastery outside of Bangkok. It was kind of like a dog patch kind of anarchistical place. I said, I'm here, what do I do? And they gave me a little kuti, a little hut in the edge of the monastery over the swamps and said, this is your schedule. All day long you do sitting meditation and walking meditation, back and forth, and come back and see me tomorrow, the abbot said. And I sat there waiting for my visa to come. And I applied for it. And after 10 weeks, I figured my visa wasn't coming. Something was wrong. So my first Vipassana retreat was 10 weeks long. And it's kind of like a 10-week sashin. Because you sit and walk and sit and walk. And you didn't do anything else. And every day I saw the abbot.

[04:10]

But that was long enough to make an impression on me. But not so much like I was impressed by Vipassana practice or Theravada Buddhism. What became really important for me was the deep state of stillness, of concentration that those 10 weeks brought on. And it became kind of like a dark night of the soul time for me where it became imperative. I had no other choice but to somehow touch that place again. And something happened in that depth of that practice that I had no choice. I had to go and touch it again. Something had to happen to resolve or do something. And so the only way I knew how to do that was to go back because that's what they did in Thailand. Burma is where they had the long opportunities for practice. At Zen Center, you can do sashim for only seven days, rather than 70 days or longer. So then eventually I went to Burma, and first I came back to Zen Center, and Leslie was so supportive of me at that time. It was really marvelous. She was president of Zen Center, and I asked her,

[05:13]

Should I tell her? Should I say this? You don't remember. I'll deny it. You'll deny it. I came back with no money, and I spent a year in Japan, had this little 10 weeks in Thailand, went back to Japan without a visa, finished up in Japan, came back to Zen Center, had no money, and so I went to work at Greene's. By that time, you could get a salary at Greene's. And so I went back to work there before. Before, I got $80 a month. But this time I got this regular salary with minimum wage or something, so it was better. And then I asked Leslie, I'm going to go back to Thailand. Can I live at Zen Center for free, get women bored, until I'm ready to go back, until I earn this money? And I don't know if it was your decision alone or who decided, but you remember? It was so generous. I thought it was such a generous thing to do, and the Zen Center provided that support for me.

[06:14]

I feel like I benefited from that all these years. So it took me about four months to earn the money I needed. And so then I went back to Thailand and Burma, and I spent eight months in Burma on an eight-month sashim. That's all I did, sitting and walking, didn't talk to anyone. And that also made a big impression. because you can't but not, right? And then I came back, and I was Eno at Green Gulch, and I was very happy doing that. But then I went to IMS to do another three months of Vipassana retreat, which was good. And then I came back to Bishu So here, which was good. I was happy doing that. It's all good. And then I decided to... I felt like I had done enough time doing intensive practice and being shusho. It started to become like, you know, people wanted me a little bit to start teaching or something.

[07:16]

I didn't feel ready. So I decided to go and get a Zen center. All the time at Zen center, I didn't actually learn much about Buddhism because there wasn't that much time to study. And so I thought, I need to study and learn about Buddhism more. And so then I went to University of Hawaii to get a master's degree in Buddhist studies. And while I was there, I got a phone call from Jack Kornfield who said, will you come and do teacher training with me? And I thought, well, how could you turn that down? And I thought it was a great thing to be trained by Jack Kornfield. It seemed like a pretty good thing. So when I came back, I started training with him. And Mel Weitzman asked me to train with him. And so I did this dual track thing, double major. So it wasn't like I was choosing one over the other. And I don't feel them as being incompatible or I don't feel like they're opposed to each other. I see it all coming together in a beautiful whole.

[08:19]

Does that answer the question? You asked, right? Or someone asked. I was looking at you, right? Okay. So, should we start the class? Okay. Okay. So it's a common, very common idea here in the West, but not only in the West, but also in much of Asia as well, that the Buddha taught no self, that there is no self. Have you heard this before? And you're probably, someone asks you, tell me about Buddhism, and you say, you know, there's no self. And then if you're, then people ask difficult questions like, if there's no self, then, and there's always, but then what about this? And so it turns out that in the earliest Buddhist records, which is in the Pali canon, the records of the historical Buddha, the most complete records we have from the early time, the Buddha never said that there is no self. And so that's kind of a shock for people.

[09:22]

What do you mean? That's gospel. That's the heart of what Buddhism is about. One of the things is no self, and you're supposed to realize there's no self or pretend you are no self or something. But he never said that. The closest he got to, he didn't say it, but there was one situation in the canon where someone asked him point blank, is there a self? And then he refused to answer. He stayed silent. And then the same guy asked him, is there no self? And you think if no self was an important teaching, he would say yes. But he refused to answer the question. And there's never recorded anywhere else that someone asked him that question. And there's no place where he actually says, you know, that his teaching is no self. There are places where the Buddha indicates that this is not what he teaches, that there is no self.

[10:22]

And I'll read one of them for you. This is from a text called The Middle-length Discourses of the Buddha. It's... So often they're numbered, and so this is number two, the middle-length discourse. And in this section, the Buddha is going to talk about how you attend wisely, unwisely to things, and how you attend wisely, how you consider wisely, how you consider things unwisely, how you pay attention, how you understand what's going on. This is how one attends unwisely. Was I in the past? Was I not in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? Having been what? What did I become in the past? Shall I be in the future? Shall I not be in the future? What shall I be in the future? How shall I be in the future? Having been what? What shall I become in the future?

[11:24]

Or else a person is inwardly perplexed about the present in the following way. Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? Where has this being come from? Where will it go? So all those kinds of questions, the Buddha says, if you ask those questions, try to answer those kinds of questions, you're attending, you're trying to approach your life in an unwise way. It's kind of interesting, especially given how much people do this. When one attends unwisely in this way, one of six views arises. in that person. The view self exists for me arises as true and established. Or the view no self exists for me arises as true and established. Or the view I perceive self with self. Or the view I perceive not self with self arises as true and established. Or the view I perceive self with not self arises. Or else the person has

[12:29]

some such view as this. It is this self of mine that speaks and feels and experiences here and there the results of good and bad actions, but this self of mine is permanent, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, and will not endure as long as eternity, and will endure as long as eternity. So the point I wanted to highlight here was that one of the unwise ways of thinking is that no self exists for you, that you don't have a self, there is no self. So, Why do people think that the Buddha's taught there's no self? One of the reasons is that the Buddha, the word in Pali is anatta. In Sanskrit, somebody might know anatman. And it depends a little bit how you understand the negative prefix. So it's kind of allowed to translate it as no self. But the context of how it's taught, a much better translation is not self. And in later Buddhism, not-self was called a characteristic of phenomena, characteristic of things.

[13:37]

The word is lakana, lakshana in Sanskrit. And there are three characteristics. You probably teach it here at Zen Center too sometimes, the three characteristics. Does someone know what the three characteristics are of all existence? You know. Nothing exists inherently. Nothing is ultimately satisfying. I was getting close. The first characteristic is that... all things are impermanent, all things are suffering, and all things are without self, not self. But the thing is that in later Buddhism, they call these three characteristics.

[14:40]

And a characteristic, you know, when something has a characteristic, it is a thing. Only things are, you know, like the tablecloth is characterized as being read. So it's a thing, right, that's characterized in some way. But in the time of the Buddha, he didn't refer to not-self, anatta, as a characteristic of anything. He referred to it as a perception. And perception has to do with the eye of the beholder, not the characteristic of the thing that you're seeing. And there's a world of difference between saying that this is red versus saying I perceive it as red. you know, the human eye sees wavelengths of color a certain way, so, you know, people, beings, animals who see different wavelengths are not going to see this as red. Or people maybe have color, we call it, you know, what is it called? Color blindness or something? Well, maybe they won't see this as red. The redness depends a little bit on how we perceive.

[15:42]

And in the teachings of the ancient Buddhism, the word, what's translated as perception, um, is a little bit different than I think how we often think of it in English, the word perception, where we think we're innocent perceivers. But perception often involves a very simple conception, conceiving concept that we bring to the experience. So for example, right now we're sitting in a classroom, maybe. But it could be, sometimes it's a dining room. Sometimes I know this room was used as a storage room. It used to be, it was a place where this was the cake, what was the cakes we used to make? Fruit cake. Fruit cake. Well, we go in here and you get drunk. Yeah, you got drunk. You walk in here, whew, and all this. And then the rum, wasn't it rum?

[16:46]

Maybe rum. So I made the acting Tenzo during interim, and had all these carpenters that came down to work. So I had this idea to make a dessert. So I looked in the recipe book, and I found carabine-baked bananas. And so I got all that rum from the fruitcakes, and I poured them into the thing and put bananas in, and you put it in the oven and bake it. You're not supposed to soak in it. And what I didn't know was that I thought that all the alcohol would burn off. And so I served it in the sauce, you know, and those carpenters said, Gil, that dessert was so good. But why did it have to be bananas in it? And I thought I was going to get in really big trouble. But no one said anything. LAUGHTER

[17:48]

So I'm trying to point out this perception that we can perceive something based on our concepts of what it is and those concepts can shift and our perception can be different in different situations. And so the idea in the early tradition is perception is partly something that you contribute to the situation rather than something that is inherent in it. And so there's not self-teaching, was seen as a perception. You have a perception of things as not-self. You can have a perception of things as being self. Now, why this is important is that perception is an action in your own mind. It's an activity that your mind does. And in the early Buddhist tradition, what they're interested in there is understanding the activity of how the mind functions, not understanding the true nature of reality. And so many people come to Buddhism kind of expecting a creed and have a very clear, compact teaching about the true nature of reality, how things are.

[18:58]

And so the teaching that things have no self kind of fits a little bit more like then you have something compact and neat and this is what the teachings are. The early teachings probably shouldn't be called teachings, but rather should be called instructions. And they're instructions in how to... handle or work with the activities of your own mind. And so to understand how the mind operates is a big part of this early tradition. And one of the ways the mind operates is by having the perception, understanding the idea that certain things are self and certain things are not self. Now this is something I think all of us have had plenty of experiences in our life and are aware of how certain things become yours, self, and other times are not yourself. Maybe, I don't know if this is a good example, but the Eno or whoever's up there, the Hedon or someone, assigns a seat to you in the Zendo.

[20:01]

Before you came to Sassahara, you had no identity with it. You didn't own it. It wasn't part of you. It wasn't you. And then they said, this is your seat. And you go there for a few months. It's always there for you. And then... You go in one day and someone's sitting in your seat. But it's your seat. It's consequential. And so now you have the perception of my seat that you're operating with. It's not inherently your seat, but it's a perception you're living with. And you can watch the creation of that. When you finally leave Tassahara after a few months, probably most of you will completely forget and abandon any notion that that is your seat. Now it's no longer your seat. So, you know, you see the not-self, not-mine of the seat. For a while it was yours. It's a fluid concept that you live with for a while and you drop it other times. Certain concepts are useful. You know, if all of us left as endo with different shoes than we came with, our shoes don't care.

[21:08]

But who cares? The idea of my shoe, your shoe, belongs as a perception idea we carry. So the same thing with a lot of our identity issues. You can watch and see how we create a sense of self, ideas about self, and live by them. When I was in seventh grade, I had an art teacher who came over and looked over my shoulder at something I was drawing and said, in a very matter-of-fact way, said, Gil, you have no artistic ability. And I didn't care. It wasn't like a traumatic thing she said. It was, you know, that was okay. But she was the authority figure, so I just assumed that that was true. And I carried that with me until college. And then in college, I had a born-again artist as a roommate. And he kind of pulled me into the fold. And I started drawing and took art classes and painting classes. And I had some ability, actually, and I had a lot of fun doing it.

[22:09]

So that was nice. So I carried this identity with me, this idea, and through grade school, it affected me because this teacher told me this is who I was. So I adopted that for myself. And then my friend tricked me out of it. Until the day came where I decided now I'm an artist. And that was the day I stopped doing art. I just didn't do it again until I came to Tassajara. Because then I had to do art in order to fulfill the identity. And I couldn't do art for that purpose. And so I stopped doing it for many years. So here's an example where I create an identity. I am an artist. And it had a big impact on me. Just as the impact of I'm not artistic had an impact on me before. So there's a whole slew of identities that we pick up. We take on, we take off, we shift and change. One of the interesting discussions I had with Richard Baker, I had some difficulty with my father, and he said to me, oh, your father was a person before he was a father.

[23:22]

You just see your father as a father, but he had a whole life before you and a whole life after you're there, and he's another person. He's not just your father. There's more to him than being a father. And that was like a revelation to me. What? I thought he was just justified. That's all he was, right? So I had a perception that I held him to and that discussion kind of opened my perception to be able to take in that maybe he's more than that. We do that to ourselves. We kind of put ourselves in a certain category. And we hold ourselves to this kind of category. And it seems that what the Buddha said in the early discourses, that any time that you, most of the time, many times when you create a hard category, this is who I am, you limit yourself. And usually the kind of self-concepts that you hold yourself to, the Buddha said, in the form of craving. And so there's one discourse that the Buddha gave where he refers to

[24:27]

something like 18 verbal cravings, mental cravings that you could have that have to do with this notion of self. So this is an interesting list. I am like this. I am here. I am good. I am bad. I might be. I might be there. I might be like this. I might be otherwise. May I be. May I be here. May I be like this. May I be otherwise. I will be. I will be here. I will be like this. I will be otherwise. All of these he characterizes forms of craving to operate in this kind of idea, these kinds of idea. And so how many of you are operating on this, these kinds of ideas? I think what stands out for me in this list is the idea of I am good and I am bad. I mean, how many of us have carried with us a perception of ourselves as being bad at certain times and good at other times?

[25:28]

Do we see it as a perception? Or do we see it as, you know, if we see it as a perception and we see it as a perception activity of our own mind and take responsibility for it, that becomes a whole different, you know, a whole different animal than if we think I'm inherently good or I'm inherently bad. Or, you know, if it's inherent in a sense, then we're stuck that way. But if it's a perception that we make, can we question the perception? Can we change the perception? Can we do other perceptions? Can we say maybe that perception is not needed? Let me put that aside. Can we stop that activity of the mind? Some people, I think, many of us, the perceptions, the concepts which we walk around with and carry about ourselves can seem really deeply rooted inside of us and can feel like this is really the truth of how things are. And what something like meditation practice or mindfulness practice or concentration practices, careful attention practices can do is to begin getting in there and begin loosening up, dissolving a little bit the hard and fast way in which these kinds of concepts operate within inside of ourselves.

[26:43]

So the teachings of not-self, well, the teaching of self and not-self in the early tradition, is to point out not that there is a self or there is no self, but that self and not self are perceptions, activities that the mind creates. Beyond perception, beyond the concept of how the mind conceives of a self and not self, what's self and what's not self, is there a true self beyond that? The early Buddha put a lot of time and effort into saying any answer to that question is just more suffering. Well, then, who are you supposed to be? What are you supposed to do if you can't answer that question? So in this Discourse II I read, he talked about how to consider things unwisely.

[27:46]

And so I read this to you, all these notions of self, from the point of view of self, am I, am I not, and all these things. So then he goes on and says, how do you, and then he goes on to say, if you consider things unwisely in this way, the unwise way, you end up with speculative views, just speculations. And these speculative views are called a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a vacillation of views, a fetter of views. Fettered by the fetter of views, the untaught ordinary person is not freed from birthing, aging, and death, from sorrow, limitation, pain, grief, and despair. The person is not freed from suffering, I say. So then he's going to talk about how one attends wisely. So what is the understanding? What is the approach? What's the activity of the mind that is useful to if it's not useful to think about things from the point of view of self-concept.

[28:49]

And so this is very important, given how deeply entrenched and contagious it is in our society, in human society, to think in terms of self and to build oneself up, to defend oneself, to hide oneself, to be a certain self, to think of oneself that way. What's the alternative? So here's he offering the alternative. one attends wisely by thinking, by paying attention to, this is suffering. One attends wisely, when one attends, this is the origin of suffering. One attends wisely, this is the cessation of suffering. One attends wisely, this is the way leading to the cessation of suffering. So we recognize that? The Four Noble Truths. And I think part of what's important to notice about the Four Noble Truths is that there's no personal pronoun connected to them. They're not couched or presented in the terms of a self or I, but rather suffering is the beginning of it.

[30:01]

And suffering is not a philosophical idea. It's not like, you know, you have to think about, you know, I hope you don't have to just think about, am I suffering? You know, or... suffering is something experiential that you experience here and now, and hopefully you can experience here and now the ending of your suffering. I'm sure all of you have suffered about something in the past, and that suffering no longer is here anymore. You're freed of it. And I don't think it's very helpful to engage in deep philosophical questions about whether suffering really exists or not. I mean, it still hurts, even if you decide it doesn't exist. For the point of view of suffering, and suffering in these Four Noble Truths are also pointing back to the activities of the mind, how the mind is functioning. And so the early tradition keeps coming back and seeing, what's the activities? How is the mind operating?

[31:02]

It's always operating some way. It always has some activity of the mind. And then how do we make these activities useful, helpful? The early language is skillful. And how do we avoid treating it unskillfully? What's a skillful way of using our mind, the activity of our mind? And so here the idea is that it's skillful, it's unskillful to measure things from the point of view of a self. It's skillful to measure from the point of view of suffering. So to give you an example, you might have a really good conceited view of yourself occasionally. And you might feel like it's true what, and you go around with a big chest, make sure everyone notices what a great person you are. And if you're all wrapped up in questions around who I am and who I should be, then you might live that way for a long time. But if you...

[32:04]

look at your experience, consider this other way, the Four Noble Truths, then you say, well, where's the suffering? Is there suffering here? Then you might notice, oh, yeah, there's a lot of suffering in this conceit. There's a lot of suffering in being so wrapped up in my sense of self. And then you might be less interested to stay with it because you're kind of getting to something much more interesting than whether your self-concept is true or not. How we hold our self-concept And some of the self-concepts people have might be accurate enough. And maybe it shouldn't be saying that's not true, but it's the activity of how we hold onto those self-concepts is where the suffering resides. And if you only focus on having the concept of self that you have, and if you only focus on building up your self-concept or taking down your self-concept, you might miss this... what the early tradition says is more interesting, you might miss the activity of holding on to the concept to begin with.

[33:10]

So can you free yourself from that? So that's the first section of this. I have another section I want to say about this not self-teaching, but I want to give you a chance to ask some questions. If you want to protest, you're welcome to do that. Yes? Yes. Yes. Are the other two also? In the early tradition, they're also listed as perceptions, not as characteristics. But they became that, and that became, in Theravadan Buddhism, that's became, it's a very central teaching in Theravadan Buddhism, the three characteristics. And I had, you know, it was so frequent when I was in Thailand and Burma to hear teachings about the three characteristics that after a while I started getting troubled by what I was hearing. And so I spent a fair amount of time kind of trying to understand and trying to understand it in my own way. And because it, you know, it just didn't make so much sense that everything is characterized by these three characteristics.

[34:17]

And, you know, it's kind of, you can kind of see that everything's impermanent in a way, but it just kind of didn't, just didn't quite have the oomph that they seem to have, wanted to relate. related to, like, why is it so important they're saying this? And then everything is suffering. You know, is this tablecloth suffering? You know, it didn't make sense. Everything is suffering. I look at things and, like, you know, is this a floor suffering, you know? What do they mean by this? It couldn't make sense. And so after a long consideration, what I came to was the best thing that I could say for myself coming out of my practice was that my experience, is impermanent. My experience of experience, the way I experience things is unsatisfactory. The way I experience things is not self. And this is in line with what the early Buddha said where he talked about the three characteristics as being perceptions. Perception has to do with how we experience something.

[35:19]

A little bit deeper than what I came to because perception is much more you're participating in it. I was still thinking I was an innocent experiencer. But still, So our experience, and so, did I answer your question, or did I go on and on? Yes? I'm just curious how in the kind of exploration of self, and the perception of self, all of this, how that is different than the unskillful way of spending your time pursuing these deep philosophical questions of whether I will be later or before, how was I, or all of this. How is that different? It sounds like the Buddha at least explored that enough to talk to the students about that. He wouldn't talk in great detail about other people's topic questions. If I follow your question, it seems that at the time of the Buddha in India, there was a lot of religious renunciant

[36:29]

traditions that were exploring, debating, having views about the nature of the self. And there were all kinds of views. So people came to the Buddha with these views and he engaged them in their view and they asked him and he asked them and they went back and forth. From the early evidence, it looked like he had a good survey, a good overview of all the different views of self that existed in India at his time. So sometimes he would go through the various kinds of self that people were positing and point out how it was wrong. You know, it didn't really hold up. So on one hand, he did study enough in order to try to help people from getting caught in those views. This should point out that they're not useful. It just adds to more suffering. But he put a lot of emphasis on understanding how the activity of the mind works, because that's where suffering has its origins, is in how the mind functions. Suffering is an activity of the mind.

[37:30]

And so to the degree to which self-concept is an activity, it's useful to go and look at that activity and see how it's functioning. Because sometimes the perception of self that we have is useful, and sometimes it's not useful. And so if we look at that activity and see what's going on inside, we can take more responsibility and be more fluid to pick it up when it's useful and put it down when it's not useful. I enjoy, you know, talking about the subject and thinking about the subject of self and exploring when you're talking about this. And I'm interested, but I'm also interested in what's out before Would I be something in the future? Or how should I be tomorrow? And those things also I find intriguing. But this is not a part of the skillful life, according to the Buddha. And so I was just trying to differentiate between this kind of intellectual pursuit about the self, which seems to be somewhat okay, because the Buddha, you know, went pretty deep in it.

[38:44]

But then this other isn't very skillful. So we don't really explore that's not a part of it. What was the phrase you used? Those things are not a part of a skillful life? Skillful. So the question of skillfulness in the early tradition has to do with the goal, the purpose for which something is done. I think that generally something becomes skillful for the purpose that it fulfills. And so if the purpose, so I think the Buddha's presumption when he gives kind of teaching is that he's teaching a path to the end of suffering. And so for the purposes of ending your suffering, it's a dead end. He calls it a thicket of use to go into the philosophical questions about the true nature of self, is there self, is there no self, and all that. And now, but, you know, if you like philosophy and if you like, you know, if it intrigues you, there's nothing wrong for that.

[39:47]

doing that, maybe, as long as you're not expecting that that's going to help you become free of suffering. Does that make sense? If you want to become free of suffering, then you want to turn around and look, not at answering the questions, but you want to look at where the question is coming from. The way that he is posed in the question from the standpoint of perception of self as opposed to no self is just a viewing point. as opposed to a definition. So, therefore, it wouldn't be the same as asking the other questions and getting into a philosophical thicket, as you said. I think so. I think so. And the second half, what I'm going to do here, I think it'll become a little bit clearer if you can wait and ask again. Someone else? Another hand? Yes? It sounds a bit like in the Heart Sutra, I know I zero years at a time. And I was wondering, you know, in a way that's encouraging because, you know, there's nothing to cling to.

[40:50]

And so you say there's no self as well. Isn't that encouraging as well? I mean, because actually it sounds like what you're talking about is, you know, like we say we're good or bad, but actually we're not either of those things. And, you know, we may have a talent, but we... That doesn't define who we are. It changes. It changes. And so we have to be able to be fluid with those changes. And I think we need to know when it's useful to have a certain sense of self and when it's not useful. Certainly it can be helpful in certain times to have the rug pulled from underneath your concept of self and all that. But there are times when we want you to have a concept of self. You know, if... You know, if I have an itch, I don't scratch you. You know, the itch belongs to me, and here is where the solution is going to be found, not in scratching you.

[41:57]

And if I need to pee, I don't ask one of you to pee for me. There's no self here, so... There's no self and no toilet. You know, and I'll just sit here. I don't think that powers that be here at Tassajara would... If I say, well, there's no pee and there's no floor and no dining room, no guests, I don't think it would go over too well. I think they want me to have certain concepts of self as they operate in certain ways. So there's, you know, I'm trying to say that sometimes it's... There's concepts that are useful. There's useful ideas of there is continuity in my life stream and who I am and what's going on with my life here. And I have to take responsibility of that and understand what that is. And so a certain kind of provisional sense of self is useful. It has a place. And that's not to be denied at all. But some of the sense of self is fluid.

[43:00]

It changes. And so I think one of the nice things about being at Tassahara, I think, is if you stay here long enough, is how quick, how often you change jobs. And when I was here, I used to think that, you know, people change jobs here more in three or four years than they would do their whole career outside of here. Someone who has a job and they spend their whole career doing one thing. And here you get a new career every practice period or something. And you have to learn, not only do you have to learn a whole new skill, But also you learn a different sense of self, different understanding of who you are in the situation. And so the self-concept comes into play. So as I was telling the kitchen people earlier, I went in there. So my concept and sense of self shifted and changed over the year that I was in the kitchen. And one way was that the first day I was assigned to the kitchen, the beginning of the fall practice period, I walked in there. I hadn't really been in the kitchen before much. I walked in there to work in the kitchen, and the kitchen seemed really big, and I felt really small.

[44:06]

And that was a self-concept. I was really small. I worked there for a year in the kitchen. It was Fukuten. It was my whole universe for a year. And then I remember the last day I was going to work in the kitchen, I walked into the kitchen, I looked around, and now the kitchen seemed really small, and I felt really big. So, you know, am I big? Am I small? It's a perception that was based on experience and place and all that, and it's fluid and changes. Was it wrong or right, these different concepts of self? I don't know if it's necessary to see it that way. So what I'm trying to say is that we don't have to deny sense of self. There are useful times to have it, and there's useful times to have the perception of not-self. And I think all of you probably have that at some time in your life where you see something happen and you say, that's not me. Or someone else, that's not them. What comes to mind is a somewhat common phenomena of sometimes when people are dying slowly, sometimes maybe because of the brain chemistry changes or whatever, sometimes they'll get quite angry.

[45:22]

And... and attack verbally the people that they most love. And it's very distressing for the people that they love. I've been with this person for a long, long time, and now we're getting this really mean behavior. But if you have a good hospice nurse or doctor comes to you and says, they're going to tell you sometimes, this might happen. This is a common thing. Don't take it personally. This is not about you. And so you say, oh, it's not about me. This is not self. It's kind of, that's a helpful perception to have. And to take as being all personal, it's about me, is what can make the whole situation much more difficult. That's my hand over here. Yeah, that was me. And you might have already sort of answered this, but I was thinking of this before that one needs to have an established sense of self sort of in a psychological sense before it can be given up.

[46:24]

Buddhist sense and you may have already answered that but I wonder if there's anything else you could speak to about that. There was a first coin by a psychologist named Jack Engler and he regrets that that's all that people remember from his article. Well here one of the interesting issues around this whole concept of self is what people mean by it, how they define it. And even in the West, independent of Buddhism, you find different schools of psychology and philosophy having very different definitions of what self is. And so you have to kind of understand what they're talking about. They're not necessarily talking about the same thing. But to reframe something like that in what I think would be Buddhist terms would be a person... It really helps to follow this path to liberation and freedom if you have a lot of strong qualities inside of yourself, if you have confidence, if you have a good ability to be honest, if you have integrity, if you have patience, if you have wisdom, if you have perseverance and energy.

[47:41]

There's a whole bunch of inner qualities which are useful to have, and Buddhism puts a lot of emphasis on developing those qualities. Some psychologists might say, the sum total of developing those strong qualities means you have a strong sense of self. But that strong sense of self doesn't have to posit a self, a particular definition, this is who I am. Though I can imagine that some psychologists, some people, when they try to develop a strong sense of self, are developing a concept and idea. And one of the tragedies of... in certain circles here in the United States, is the self-esteem movement for kids. And a number of psychologists in that pointed out that in the 70s and the 80s, maybe some of you were victims of this, there was a big emphasis to help kids have a lot of self-esteem. And it led to a sense of entitlement.

[48:43]

And so they felt they deserved everything they got, and they went to college, and things weren't so easy. And they felt it was supposed to be easy. I'm entitled. It's supposed to be easy. I have all this self-esteem. And a lot of suffering has occurred because of it. And so certain kinds of strong sense of self are not useful to have. So like when we were raising my son, when he was young, we tried, for example, to not say words like... So like a good boy or you're great or something like that, the things that defined him. But if he did something that was great or something, we'd say, oh, wow, you had a lot of fun doing that. Or it was really fun watching you do that so that he wouldn't get locked in as being the good boy. Because if you're a good boy, guess what you can be? Then you can be a bad boy. And it's a setup, right? It's a setup. So how do you avoid that setup? And so how we talk to our children can set them up.

[49:44]

Does it make some sense to answer, is that an adequate answer to your question? Yes, I was told to go until 5. Yes, I was told to go to 5. But we'll take a break so people can leave. But let me do the second half. So one way that this not-self-teaching has been taught, I don't know how well it maps with what the early Buddha taught exactly, but is that the not-self-teaching or the not-self-perception... is one that becomes increasingly important the deeper one's meditation practice is.

[50:48]

And that as meditation practice gets deeper and deeper, that a person sees or perceives more and more their experience as being not-self. So you hear a sound. You say the river outside. And it's kind of obvious that the river is not me. The sound is not me. It's just sound. At some point you might even have a thought, and there's such a strong sense of presence or alertness, awareness is so strong that your thought arises and you don't identify with it. You even see, that's not me in that thought. There might be sensations in the body and you see, this is not me. As meditation gets deeper and deeper, one of the things that can happen is that everything that you look at is clearly seen as something which doesn't qualify as myself. This is not a belief. It's not something that we're supposed to read in a book and then apply to everything.

[51:55]

But rather, in the depth of meditation, things are seen, stand out as being not-self. And at some point, especially in deep vipassana practice, everything that you can look at, anything you can be aware of, it stands out and highlights that this doesn't qualify, this is not self. This is not self. Some people take a leap in saying, because you see that nothing whatsoever in your experience qualifies as self, some people take a leap and say, therefore there is no self. But the Buddha didn't go there. It's enough. You don't have to make that leap. It's enough just to see that it's not self. But not for its own purpose. In this early tradition, the purpose of having this perception of not self is to uproot the very strong tendency we have to cling to things as self. And the purpose of this perception of not self is not so you can see the true nature of reality, but rather is to help you not to cling.

[53:01]

And one of the ways, there's other ways as well, but one of the ways to uproot this very deep tenacious tendency in the mind to cling to things is to have a deep, still, concentrated meditation to not find anything that the mind can settle on as a self. Some people get very afraid. I've had to counsel people on retreat to get really petrified, terrified, because their sense of self is such an important part of who they are, it's how they feel safe in the world, that they get disoriented and they panic when there's no self to be found. So it's not necessarily an easy thing to go through, but then eventually people learn to relax and settle into it and learn that it's quite safe. It's actually safer to let go of clinging to self than it is to cling to self. You're much more fragile if you're clinging to self. And so to let go of this clinging to self, let go of the clinging to self, is one of the stepping stones to becoming free.

[54:07]

So the primary purpose in the early Buddhist tradition of the perception of not-self is in the way that it serves the goal of non-clinging. So that was the second half. In brief. so some people have to go and those of you who would like to stay I'm happy to stay and we can have a discussion as you wish Yes? I once heard the reps say that the eye did not see the eye, like consciousness cannot fully perceive consciousness.

[55:18]

I was wondering if we could speak to that in terms of we're always participating, we're always in participation with the way we see reality, and we're sitting in the Zazan to see how we participate. How far can we go? The... Why is that an important question? Is it a useful question? Is it a useful statement? How is it useful to have a statement that the consciousness cannot be conscious of itself? How is it useful? trying to see things as they are? If you can't see consciousness, then that's hopeless. So find out if we can see consciousness.

[56:25]

So in terms of seeing things as they are, so I don't know what other people teach, but in the early Buddhist tradition, the expression seeing things as they are is not seeing everything. It's not like you're supposed to become omniscient and be able to see everything and know everything. It's rather that the early teaching is to understand the most important thing that is applicable everywhere. And how it's defined in the early tradition is you see things as they are when you see the Four Noble Truths. That's important. That's what's meant for seeing things as they are in the early tradition. And so... Yes? You said that they were actually perceptions, and one of them was this idea that everything is suffering.

[57:26]

And I've had a number of people say that to me about the Poor Noble Truth today, Buddha said, everything is suffering. And my understanding of what Buddha said, suffering exists. Is there a difference between those two statements? Yeah, there's a huge difference. If everything is suffering, there's no hope. Then the best hope is to suffer better. So did that popularization come from a misunderstanding of that? Yes. And is the more correct or accurate reading of what Buddha had to say about suffering that it exists and that we can have a perception of it and that that's what we're addressing here. Right, right. I think that's much more accurate. So I'm really curious about how one identifies suffering and by what faculties you do so, because it kind of seems to me like with this

[58:41]

this path of, I don't want to say self-reliance, but it's this path that's been prescribed to follow, but just cause an effect and seeing like, oh, this hurts, I don't want to do that, so I'll do something else. That sort of path, it seems like it sets up a situation where you just have to suffer a fair amount to know what it's like, and then you can, do something else. So do you think that's the case? You have to sort of experience what's suffering, your own sort of... Yeah, I mean, the four novel truths, there's a task associated with each one. So they're not meant just to be like truths, like propositions that we believe in. but they're meant to be frameworks, reference points for something, for certain tasks.

[59:45]

And the task of the First Noble Truth is to understand the suffering well. And so if you have some suffering, then one of the useful things to do, in this tradition at least, is to turn towards it and get to know it well. Study it. This is how it is for me. And not to overlook it, not to override it, not to bypass it, not to pretend it's not there. but to be willing to say, this is where I'm uncomfortable, this is where I'm stressed, this is where I'm not feeling good about something, and to really take that as important information. It's very easy to have all kinds of values and principles and all kinds of reasons to override and overlook the fact that we're somehow uncomfortable. So even though we don't have much of a precedent, no... Is that what suffering feels like?

[60:49]

Perhaps maybe there's gradation, so there's some things that hurt a lot and some things that are even just off. Correct. So when we're living out our lives and we can't objectively really quantify what suffering is, so we have to feel it for ourselves. Traditionally, is that something that comes about by just... If your suffering is not obvious, just enjoy yourself. Just have you enjoy, and then at some point when it becomes obvious, then stop and look at it. it'll catch up to you sooner or later. But you don't necessarily go looking for it unless you've been around Buddhist practicing for a long time and at some point the teacher comes up to you and says, you know, I think maybe there's something you haven't been paying attention to.

[62:02]

Because some people can overlook their suffering for a lifetime. But generally, you don't have to go looking for it. It'll find you. Yes? But sort of following up on that, one of the things that the fruit of Buddhist practice is the practice of concession. And that's concession to the suffering of others. And sometimes I wonder about that. It's really the identity of suffering question that Edward is asking. So, because... We can't know the suffering of others for just the reason that he was describing and just because you say it, sort of that thing, when you experience it, then you know it, you have it, you perceive it. So how much of, when we have compassion for the suffering of others, is it beyond to the psychological term projection? And how helpful is it for us to have that... Compassion is really essentially a way of saying we're feeling other people's suffering.

[63:09]

But can we? I didn't hear the question very well, but you probably have a good answer. It seems that we have the ability for empathy. Empathy is to feel others, to imagine others in our shoes, to imagine yourself in their shoes. And it seems that with the calmer, quieter... more mindful focused the mind is, the stronger the empathy. The more confused we are, the more agitated we are, the more we're caught up in ourselves, the less the empathy can work. So people often at practice find that their compassion grows as they practice. And some people say there's these mirror neurons operating, that there's other ways that we pick up, pick up the cues and help with people's facial expressions, how they act, and we kind of mimic them in our own minds. So we're actually in some ways kind of feeling what they're feeling. Some people have this ability much stronger than other people. And so the sense of compassion, you know, feeling the suffering of others is a source of, you know, compassion in some people.

[64:19]

But there's also projection, and there's also foolish compassion. There are some people who, or maybe I shouldn't use the word foolish for what I'm about to say, but I've noticed that there are a lot of people who have deep trauma, deep pain, unresolved psychological suffering of their own, that they haven't really addressed, they haven't really looked at carefully, but it gets projected outwards, towards others. And often in the form of tremendous, they feel distress in other people's suffering. They don't feel compassion. They don't feel empathy. They feel distressed. They feel horrified because it's resonating with their own unresolved suffering and pain. And sometimes those people will get the idea that it's really important to be compassionate. And the compassion becomes a concept, an idea that they overlay on top of the situation without actually really taking in the situation. And sometimes they're being compassionate where it's not needed or not appropriate because compassion

[65:23]

They're seeing so much through a distorted lens of their own suffering. Yes? You were talking about how in deep meditation you start to see things that arise sort of naturally as not self. You kind of lose that association of me or mine with it. rather than applying, is it rather than applying, you can take it from what the Buddha said. What I've understood with those three characteristics is that they can be tools to use when you're in meditation, that when something comes up, you can ask, is this permanent? Or you can even say, this is impermanent, and then you watch it you kind of watch for those characteristics in each phenomenon.

[66:26]

But that's definitely more of a doing, sort of using those things rather than naturally waiting for them to reveal themselves. There are different strategies for different ways different teachers teach, like Vipassana, Theravada, and Buddhism. Some of them will say... You should, at a certain point in practice, you should look for the three characteristics, look for impermanence. And some say, don't go looking for anything. Just wait until it finds you. Wait until it gets revealed in its own time. So it's different styles of doing it. And your kind of instruction is wait, right? Yeah, my emphasis, my way is to wait. Partly because when people go looking for something, it's all too easy to start manufacturing perceptions, imagining in a certain way, looking for something.

[67:26]

As soon as you start looking for something in meditation, you're probably going to mess yourself up. remembering this line from the Pali Canon that I remember reading at some point where the Buddha says, I looked everywhere in this world and couldn't find anything to call a self. So that seems sort of like trying, you know, looking for it, right? Yes, perhaps. Yes? I know you've mentioned several times Vipassana meditation. I was just wondering where you would say It depends on too many things, too many variables.

[68:29]

It depends a little bit on the individual. different minds operate, work differently. I wouldn't want to say that there's one path, one way of experiencing meditation, one way to become free that's going to be the same for everyone. Minds operate different ways, and so we have to be very careful that we're not assuming that we're supposed to behave like other minds. I've known Zen students doing Zen practice. who've gone through very many of the deep kind of stages that you go through when you do classic vipassana practice. They had no idea they were going through these stages because they never taught at Zen Center that they were going through it. And I've known people who've done vipassana practice who have not gone through the deep stages of vipassana practice but have come to something which is much closer to shikantaza and how they practice. It's been very meaningful for them to do that. So it varies. I'd be very careful about comparing and contrasting these different things and how they work for people.

[69:36]

But I'm relatively comfortable to say, as a generic, general thing, that mature vipassana practice is the same as shikantaza, or the same as mature shikantaza. Yes? It seems like he goes a lot to Shikantaza in that he's basically calling up the point of awareness that sees all things arise and sees the nature of those things as well as the reality that it's not self. And it's a pretty advanced plot to possibly back. Yeah, yeah. That's much more of a Vipassana Theravadan take. I think that certainly there are people who do Zaza and Shikantaza who have that kind of experience.

[70:41]

But is that fully the pinnacle of what Shikantaza is? Is that the definition of it? I don't know. I have some doubts about that. I have just one other thing. What I get what you're saying is basically like the suffering thing. I practiced with you first before I started practicing. And for quite a few years I really felt like it was important to find compassion. But I couldn't find that it didn't happen. But I think that spontaneously it kind of happened where I felt like I could be more empathetic with people when I started seeing myself a little more, seeing my own suffering. So is it kind of like that with what you're saying, that it has to be, and not necessarily you have to go out and find your own suffering, but that you sit present with yourself and just be with what comes up and realize it as it is, that it is suffering.

[71:53]

And then whether it be mirror neurons or just a memory of the experience of suffering, you can relate to the other person about it. I think that's how it worked for me, that way. In my early years here at Zen Center, I sat with a lot of suffering, my own suffering. And what I didn't recognize at the time when it was happening, I only recognized in retrospect, was that it kind of softened or tenderized, like you tenderize meat, you know, softened my heart, sitting in my own suffering. And it kind of awoke my sense of compassion. I was compassionate. my early years of Zazen, of being at Zen Center. And a lot of that had to do with just this ongoing presence of my own suffering and being present for my suffering with this kind of Zazen mind, the mind that's just fully there, present for it, experiencing it with a kind of acceptance or kind of embodiment, kind of willing to be fully there for it without making it a problem. And I attribute that to the growth of my compassion.

[72:57]

And partly the logical thing is that if you know it in yourself, it's easier to recognize it in other people. And if you know it in yourself, then when you have compassion, you can see the other person as equal. Compassion is meant to be, you kind of see yourself as the other, the other as yourself. Pity is when you're higher than them, look down, you feel sorry for them. And it's easier to kind of feel the equality if you really know your own suffering and know your humanity that way. Yes. Going back to your first part of the class about the perception and the no-self, I'm wondering if you could sort of say it again in a more... If you could just give an encapsulation of it. So the Buddha did not teach that there is no self.

[74:01]

In fact, he seemed to have taught that the whole idea that there is no self is a philosophical wilderness that you get caught in if you start doing that right. All kinds of problems. And part of the problem with positing there is no self is it becomes a kind of, it's an existential statement about the nature of reality, human reality, there is no self. The Buya in the early tradition was not interested in the nature of reality. He was interested in the nature of a path leading to the end of suffering. And he saw suffering as being something we're responsible for ourselves, as an activity of our own mind. And part of the process of activity we do in our mind is perceive things certain ways, understand, conceive things. And how we perceive and conceive things can be done in a useful way, helpful way and in unhelpful ways. And sometimes the useful way to do things is to see things through the point of view of a self.

[75:05]

Sometimes it's useful to see things as being not-self. And so getting fluid and understanding this, it's our responsibility for when it's useful, when we pick up this role, the role-playing. This is a self, this is not a self. and to hold it lightly in a useful way, I think is part of living a wise life. And generally, the ability to see things as being an activity of the mind is one of the ways in which it helps to loosen up the grip that we have. Because if we think that things are a certain way existentially, like in reality, this is the way it is, then we're less likely to look back at our own mind to see how we're creating it, what the mind's activity is. So early Buddhism keeps going back and looking at your activity, the mind, looking there, what's going on there, what's going on there, taking responsibility for loosening that up, freeing it.

[76:12]

And meditation practice is one of the great, you know, if you're able to get calm in meditation practice, what calm does is it simplifies, calmness is the same thing as settling the activity of the mind, having the mind less active. So, you know, if you are, you know, if you just had a fight before you went to zazen with someone, you probably have a lot of activity of the mind, spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning. And maybe after 40 minutes of zazen, you finally calm down, and so that activity of the leftover from the fight is no longer there. So that's nice. But a lot of activities are still left, and your calm might be just kind of relative to how agitated you were before. If you sit a whole sashin, or do a whole practice period here, your mind can settle deeper and deeper and deeper. And so layers and layers of activity which are invisible to you, how the mind functions, begins to fall away because your mind gets so quiet and calm.

[77:17]

And then one of the advantages of having a very quiet and calm mind is And it's a very important aspect of having a quiet and calm mind, is for you to watch when you come out of that calm, how you recreate a sense of self, how you recreate your clinging, how you recreate the activity, things you're caught up in. And not everyone realizes this. Some people think that the point of practice is to go deep into concentrated states. But I like to think that it's more important not to go deep, but how you come out. and pay attention to how you reconstruct your world as you come out. And the deeper and stiller, more concentrated, more still your mind is, the more you'll see how much is a construct, how much is created when you come out. Ordinary people who have no still, quiet mind will assume that a lot of what goes on in their mind is not their mind's doing, it's just this nature of how things are. Yes? That's fantastic for you.

[78:30]

I'm glad for you. It speaks well for you. It's not that way for everybody. Some people, when they sleep, that's when they kind of lower their guard or their usual coping mechanisms don't operate so well and their deeper anxiety comes to the surface and they actually wake up more afraid than when they went to sleep. The only one that I teach is that if you have a really strong, impactful dream, that rather than analyzing the dream, sit up in bed and, you know, this is the mindfulness tradition, sit up in bed and then bring mindfulness to the feelings and the body sensations, the emotions and body sensations that have been activated by the dream. Not the content. And because I believe that the royal road, you know, if Roy said the royal road to the unconscious is to dreams, I believe the royal road to the unconscious is through the body. So get up and, you know, be present for what's going on.

[79:35]

Yes? Last night you did talk about your practice at Zendo and just... I'm just curious in your experience and that you deep into both realms, how do you appreciate and offer in your own teaching kind of this ? A good question. Thank you. Generally, when I teach, I try to separate these two out. Though I feel like coming here to a class, it's okay to do both, change hats a little bit. I don't want to conflate the two traditions, say they're the same.

[80:39]

They each have their own. I want to respect each of them for their own thing. And I've noticed, both in the Vipassana world and in the Zen world, that some people who haven't been in both traditions, aren't in both traditions, sometimes they're much more willing to conflate them, say they're the same. And because I'm in both, I actually want to respect their differences, that they're different from each other. Let's see what else to say. You would say they're like, you can skillfully engage them when you see their focus, but you feel like they're kind of useful in a different area. Or that with one person you would just totally engage with this kind of teaching and another person might be drawn to this. Yeah, yeah, yes. So there's definitely people for whom

[81:43]

Zen practice works really well. It's really appropriate for them. They thrive in it. It's really good. And I encourage them to do Zen practice. Other people, it's clearly that Vipassana practice is really what suits their minds, suits their hearts, what they're about. And that's really good. And there are some people who actually benefit a lot of doing a little bit of both, or doing some of both, doing one primary one, having some experience of another one. They can complement each other very well. And I'm very reluctant to have some kind of general policy about one or the other that relates to all people, but to appreciate the differences in different circumstances, people at different times in their lives, and different situations people are in, and different things are useful. I think sometimes part of the advantage of maybe being in two traditions, it's easier sometimes to see the strengths and the weaknesses of both. Sometimes it's just in one tradition. Sometimes it's harder to see the weaknesses. And there's weaknesses in the Vipassana tradition.

[82:44]

There's weaknesses in the Zen tradition. And so it's good to be aware of that and know how to negotiate around them as opposed to thinking that, you know, sometimes, you know, we're talking about religion, right? Kind of. Kind of. And I'm sure it doesn't happen here. But we know that in the wide world of religion, there's a lot of absolutism and a lot of wanting to be the right and the true religion and all that. And I think that in that, if the goal of Buddhism is to free us from clinging, let's not cling to our Buddhism. Let's hold it lightly and wisely. Last one. I'm curious if you have anything to say about preparing for death or the ultimate dying goal?

[83:57]

This is a big topic, but... I don't know how it'll be for me when I die. My wish, my hope, is that I die slowly, consciously, because I don't know how that's going to be, right? But I carry with me a very positive attitude, a welcoming attitude to the experience of dying slowly. I'm kind of looking forward to it. It seems like it's really good. And the reason I say that is the reason I've come to that is my assumption is that the process of letting go of the slow death, conscious death, dying, is comparable to the deep letting go of deep meditation.

[84:58]

And that's one of the best things going If it's anything like what happens, the deep letting go, letting go of self, letting go of everything, everything disappears. If that's what happens as I'm dying, I'm all for it. Not anytime soon, I hope, but when the time comes. And I think one of the best preparations for death is practice. Okay. Thank you. Can we chant again, Your Honor? Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please Visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[86:04]

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