When I first came back to City Center in 1991, Mark was already a mainstay, a regular, dependable practitioner and aid to the, you know, and he has been throughout the time I've been here. All the time, while coming and participating in practice periods and sitting here regularly, also maintaining a responsible job downtown, and he has been active in trying to bring

[01:03]

together people who practice here and live and work away from here, and to have discussion groups on how does practice express itself in our everyday life in the workplace. And these were the first kinds of questions that he brought up with me the first time we ever spoke together, and I have seen him working throughout his practice on how to carry this practice into his daily contacts with people and his daily interactions wherever he is. And I have appreciated the depth and sincerity of his practice, and I'm completely delighted that he has accepted the responsibility of SHISO, and I know it's not easy for him to do that with the job he has and with his long-time partner.

[02:07]

I want to thank Nadim for allowing you to get up and come here and ring the wake-up bell every morning. He has to leave home even earlier. I really appreciate your making this effort to lead us in this practice period. Thank you, Mark. So I feel a very unusual mixture of apprehension and curiosity, and I'm very curious about

[03:13]

this experience. I always think I'm preparing myself for something, and then something else happens. It's unsettling. So I found this deeply moving just to be able to sit with the Sangha this way, and to be able to express myself in this way with you, with our sitting practice, and with, as Bhan Chhi mentioned, our attempts to go out into the world and come back here. One of the images I was thinking about this week were the bridges that span difficulties, and one bridge is the bridge from the temple to the world, to the workplace, to the place where we have to venture. So I've been asking myself, where is the true temple gate and the lantern?

[04:20]

Where does that lie? I've been looking at the difficulties that the bridge spans also, some of the problems and how I experience them in my own life. And then I was thinking about the theme of our practice period, which is meeting with our ancestors, and the first piece that Bhan Chhi talked about this weekend of Bodhidharma in Emperor Wu, when he displays all of the good things he's done in the world, Bodhidharma's answer is no merit. So, in the book it's said, if you can pierce this no merit, you'll be face-to-face with the ancestor immediately. So I've been thinking about this kind of eyebrow-to-eyebrow meeting with the ancestors.

[05:22]

And imagining the vitality of that meeting, the kind of liveliness and spontaneity of a meeting like that. And I think the place for me to, I would like the place where I can meet these ancestors to be the place I feel safest at, most comfortable at. But I think that no merit is, because there are no pockets to place the merit in, there's no way to take it away, and it points right back to yourself and this body and mind to practice with. So, it seems like the difficult place is the place where there's a chance to kind of get

[06:32]

some insight. And I think for me the difficult place is, in Buddhism there's a word, aversion. I tend to avert or move away from things. I tend to be easily frightened actually. So, for a friendly person. So for me I think the big thing is to accept whatever is going to come up in this practice period, and to let you see me the way I just appear, just as myself. And hope you'll show me yourself in the same way. And then I think we can develop a kind of intimacy and acceptance, a warm-hearted acceptance of our quality in ourselves. And last I wanted to thank the Abbess and the staff and everyone here for giving me

[07:36]

this opportunity to be so nervous. I think this will probably go on for ten weeks, or nine weeks, I'm not sure. And I also want to thank my Guru, because every morning she also wakes up at four o'clock. I try to be really quiet, but she wakes up at four o'clock. And I get to go somewhere and she gets to try to sleep. So thank you very much. And let's have a very good practice period and enjoy our practice together. Thank you.

[08:11]

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