Good morning and welcome back. Thus have I heard at one time the Lord was staying in Rajagaha in the mango grove of Jivaka Komarabaka together with a large company of some 1,250 monks. At that time, the king of Magadha, having gone up to the roof of his palace, once the Lord was staying in Rajagaha in the mango grove of Jivaka Komarabaka, together with a large company of some 1,250 monks. At that time, the king of Magadha, having gone up to the roof of his palace, surrounded by his ministers on the full moon night of the fourth month, gave vent to this solemn utterance. Delightful friends, charming and auspicious is this moonlit night. Could we not today visit some ascetic or Brahmin who would bring peace to my heart?

[01:04]

The ministers then named the many Brahmins and ascetics living in Rajagraha until the last, Jivaka, spoke this way. Sire, there is this blessed Lord, an Arhat, a fully enlightened one, staying in my mangal grove, endowed with wisdom and conduct, the knower of worlds, the incomparable trainer of men. teacher of the gods and of humans, enlightened and blessed. He may well bring peace to your heart. Very good, said the king. Then have my riding elephants made ready. And then the king, having placed his wives, each one on one of 500 she elephants, accompanied by torchbearers, proceeded in royal state from Rajagraha towards Jivaka's mango grove. When the king came near the mango grove, he felt fear and terror, and his hair stood up on end. Then he said to Jivaka, Are you fooling me, tricking me, and delivering me up to my enemies?

[02:12]

How is it that from this great number of 1,250 monks not a sneeze, a cough, or a whisper is to be heard? Have no fear, my lord. I did not deceive you, replied Jivaka. There are lights burning in the round pavilion. So the king and Jivaka alighted from their elephants and continued on foot to the pavilion's door. Jivaka said to the king, That is the Lord Buddha, sitting against the middle column with his order of monks sitting in front of him. Then the king stood to one side and observed how the order of monks continued in silence like a clear lake. And he exclaimed, if only my son, the prince, were possessed of such calm as this order of monks. Then the king spoke to the Buddha. Lord Buddha, there are various craftsmen, such as archers, cooks, barbers, potters, weavers, and basket makers, enjoying here and now the visible fruits of their skill, with their families, colleagues, and friends,

[03:25]

while supporting and maintaining the many ascetics and Brahmins of Rajagraha, thus assuring themselves the reward of heaven. Can you, Lord Buddha, point to such a reward visible here and now as a fruit of the homeless life? So I think this question continues to be relevant to us, you know, concerning our intention and our commitment and pursuing the homeless life, you know. I think the question really is, what do we hope we're going to get out of it? And not only today, but in all the days ahead of this practice period. What are you hoping will be the fruit of your efforts here in pursuit of a homeless life? Now, it's pretty clear the Zen Center has created a kind of hybrid situation, you know, like a Prius. We don't have just monks or lay people.

[04:28]

We have both. We have space here for lay people to have children. We have space in our zendos for men and women to practice together. Many different nationalities and different races and so on. We're hoping it continues in that way. In most places in the Buddhist world, you would have to pick... one or the other, either to be a layperson or to be a monk. But thanks to the Emperor of Japan, we have this choice, because our teacher, Shinri Suzuki Roshi, and his friends were all given leeway to marry. In fact, according to the books I was reading about this transition, it wasn't that they told them they had to marry, but they just told them they were no longer forbidden from marrying. So many of them did. And they raised their families in the village temples, as did Suzuki Roshi raise his son, Huizu Suzuki.

[05:32]

And Huizu, in turn, raising his son, Shungo, and Shungo's son, Kanra. There's a whole generation coming up. Kanra, I think, is five now. So a few years ago, Shungo came to Zen Center. This is Suzuki Roshi's grandson. And it was so amazing. And people who knew Suzuki Roshi said, he just looks just like him and sounds like him and dresses like him. It was so wonderful to watch him gazing at his father's temple, the San Francisco Zen Center. I heard once that Suzuki Roshi said as he was dying, he looked at his hand and he said, this little hand has done quite a lot. This little hand. So it is amazing, and I was thinking maybe that the venerable Rahula, you know, the Buddha's son, was also the spitting image of his father, and that perhaps that name was a term of endearment, little fetter.

[06:37]

Always can hope. But no matter how we set things up, how carefully we set things up, it's always the same troubling human mind that we have today that was bothering the king of Magadha. you know, and also bothering his son and his wives. And trying to understand the mind and how it continues to distort the world that it perceives is really the work that we have, the work of our lifetimes. And we can choose whether to do that work or not, you know, whether to wake up. And becoming a Buddha is a vocation, it's a calling. And it takes a lot of effort, even with the occasional day off, such as we're going to have tomorrow. Still, it's hard work. And you have to be quite determined. Because the dream is so powerful. Constantly coming in front of us, in front of what we actually see and what we believe and think we see.

[07:49]

So we have the great fortune that if we do choose to become Buddhas, that we have received this wonderful teaching that's been sent forward from those who went before us, you know, such as the one I'm going to share with you this morning, the fruits of the homeless life. And at the same time, I don't think it's a secret what the problem is. You've heard it many, many times. The problem is the way you think, you know. Suffering is caused by the way you thought yesterday. Your suffering of today comes from your thoughts of yesterday and tomorrow's thoughts are going to be a result of your thinking today. Your life, my life, is the creation of the mind. This is called the inner tangle. And then together we co-create the outer tangle. You know, this kind of dreadfully painful world that we see and hear about and the suffering. that we cause by our confusion.

[08:55]

So it seems as though we're kind of caught in an endless loop of despair and sadness and temporary pleasures and disappointments and regrets and so on and so on, which are all driven by a kind of relentless longing we have to get something out of it, to find the fruit of our labors, self-clinging. And the challenge there is that there isn't a self to cling to. It's an illusion. And at the same time, we are compelled by this illusion to try and get something for ourselves. My grandmother used to tell this horrid poem to me when I was little. There was a man upon the stair, a little man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away She wasn't a particularly happy person.

[09:59]

But, yeah, that's us. That's the self. A little man that isn't there. And he won't go away. So, the Buddha responds to the king and he talks to him about the mind. You know, the king's asking, what is the fruit of this homeless life you all have chosen here? These silent monks. And the Buddha teaches him about the joys of meditation and particularly about the sustained samadhi called the jhanas, the rupajanas. So I'm going to read you a fairly long passage that describes each of the jhanas, these four jhanas, in poetic terms. I hope you enjoy it. I find it to be quite lovely and also inspiring and informative. of a way, kind of metaphor, that you can apply as you're sitting to see if, like, well, does that seem like that image?

[10:59]

You know, each image is quite distinct from the one that precedes it. And they build on each other, as you'll see as I read through the passage. So when the king had told the Buddha about all the conversations he'd already had with various teachers and Brahmins and ascetics and Rajagraha, He said that none of them had promised him lasting peace. Some of them promised him heaven, you know, and told him about these various gods, blue gods and yellow gods. So these are the eternalists. And some of them had offered him theories of hell, you know, the Lord Yama's reign. If you don't behave, that's where you'll go. And then others had given him no hope at all. And those are the nihilists. There's nothing to hope for. You will get nothing out of this life, O king, O monk. So then the Buddha says, Dear king, when a meditator is perfected in morality and in wise restraint with regard to the senses... So this is echoing back to yesterday.

[12:09]

We were talking about the steps of proceeding to concentration. You begin with ethics. You have to clear the mind of all of those regretful... thoughts that are kind of bothering you so that you can settle down. Perfected immorality and wise restraint regarding the senses is mindful and clearly aware during all their waking hours and lives as contented as a bird bearing nothing but its wings. Then when he or she sits down cross-legged holding their body erect, they will free themselves from the five hindrances, from ill will, from lust, from torpor, from excitation, from and from doubt. And then the meditator thinks thus, Before I was ill, imprisoned and in debt, living as a slave, and now I rejoice and I am so glad to be free. So from this point on, as he describes the jhanas, notice the different feelings that he mentions and how each one of them drops off as you proceed to the next chapter.

[13:17]

deeper, more concentrated state. You know, you start really happy, overjoyed that you're free of the debt, of being in prison, of all of these ways that, you know, home leavers perceive those who stayed home as being trapped. So they have escaped the trap of home staying home. So from gladness, So they're happy. So from gladness comes delight. And from delight in his mind, his body is tranquilized. With a tranquil body, she feels joy. And with joy, her mind is concentrated. Being thus detached from sense desire, detached from unwholesome states, the meditator enters and remains in the first jhana, which is with thinking and pondering, born of detachment, filled with delight and joy.

[14:18]

So first jhana, there's thinking. You're thinking, you're pondering, you're... No, it's okay. And you're happy. So that's how it's character. With this delight and joy, born of detachment, she so suffuses, drenches, fills, and irradiates her body that there's no spot in her entire body that is untouched by this delight and joy. So this is one of the reasons the jhanas are very popular. There's not a spot in your body that isn't suffused with joy and delight. Contentment. Just as a skilled bathman or his assistant needing the soap powder which was sprinkled with water forms from it in a metal dish, a soft lump, so that ball of soap powder becomes one allaginous mass. bound with oil so that nothing escapes. Okay, so here's the image. You're making soap from powder, adding water, adding oil, until you make this ball of soap.

[15:24]

Gelatinous mass. Okay, this is the metaphor. So this monk suffuses, drenches, fills, and irradiates her body so that no spot remains untouched. This dear king is the fruit of a homeless life, visible here and now, that is more excellent than than the former ones. Again, a monk with the subsiding of thinking and pondering by gaining inner tranquility and oneness of mind, samadhi, enters and remains in the second jnana. So now we're building. So from happiness and thinking, thinking is now dropping away. You kind of think of a rocket, you know, with these booster stages falling off as it heads into outer space. So first is that great big one. as you blast off. Yahoo! That's joy, thinking. And then that one drops away. And now there's no thinking. It's getting quieter. The second jhana is born of concentration, and it's filled with delight and joy.

[16:28]

And with this delight and joy, so suffuses her body that no spot remains untouched. And just as a lake fed by a spring with no inflow from the east, west, north, or south, where the rain god sends moderate showers from time to time, the water welling up from below, mingling with cool water, would suffuse, fill, and irradiate that cool water so that no part of the pool was untouched by it. So with this delight born of concentration, she suffuses her body so that no spot remains untouched This sire too is the fruit of a homeless life. Again, a monk with fading away of delight remains imperturbed, mindful and clearly aware, and experiences in himself that joy of which the Noble One says, Happy is he who dwells with equanimity and mindfulness, and he enters and remains in the third jhana. And with this joy that's devoid of delight,

[17:32]

He so suffuses his body that no spot remains untouched. So this is getting very quiet now, like this pond he mentions in the deep forest. Very cool, the water's cool, and there's no ripples on the surface. The mind is stilled, and there's delight. It's pleasant, very pleasant. Just as if in a pond of blue, red, or white lotuses in which the flowers born in the water, grown in the water, not growing out of the water, are fed from the water's depths, those blue, red, or white lotuses would be suffused with this cool water so that no spot remains untouched. This too is a fruit of the homeless life. Again, a monk having given up pleasure and pain, and with the disappearance of former gladness and sadness, enters and remains in the fourth jhana, which is beyond pleasure and pain, and purified by equanimity and mindfulness, and she sits suffusing her body with that mental purity and clarification, so that no part of her body is untouched by it.

[18:45]

Just as if a man were to sit wrapped from head to foot in a white garment, so that no part of him was untouched by that garment, so his body is suffused, and this too is the fruit of a homeless life. So this is the fourth jhana. Very still. Very deep. Hardly moving. Hardly perceptible. So the sutta then goes on to say that with this arrival of this jhana there's certain sensibilities which are awakened in the human mind or human consciousness that sound somewhat like kind of magical sensibilities. For example, while abiding in the fourth jhana, one can have knowledge of others' minds, knowledge of previous lives, a knowledge of the workings of karma.

[19:48]

One can have an experience of a divine eye or a divine ear. But the most important... access that one has from the fourth jhana is to the four noble truths, the actual experiencing of the truth of suffering and cessation of suffering. And by that knowledge, the meditator takes the first step onto the eightfold path. So this is true entry into the path, is from this very quieted, tranquil state. And the first fold of the eightfold path is called right view, or Samyak Risti, Right View. So I really appreciated this description of Right View that was given by Gil Fonsdale, who I think some of you have mentioned is a teacher and inspiration, as he is to me. I knew him when he was a young monk here. We worked together at the Tassar Bakery, and he was also a farm apprentice at Green Gulch, too.

[20:51]

And he went on to do some studies at Stanford. He got his doctorate and now is a very well-regarded Vipassana teacher and a Zen-ordained, transmitted priest, both. A hybrid. And he says that for the Buddha's path, right view is the practice of keeping your eye on the relationship to whatever it is that you're experiencing. So at all times, what is it you're experiencing? This is right view. Rather than getting caught up in some speculation about what you're experiencing... Well, maybe it's that, or maybe I know what that look on their face means, you know, but you don't. So rather than speculating about what you think is going on, you just look carefully about how you're feeling, what's coming up for you. And then we can ask ourselves a series of questions. For example, do we feel any discomfort or any stress or any anxiety, any what we call suffering?

[21:54]

and how we're relating to what's happening right now. Or do you? Are you having any stress or anxiety? I have a little, but then that's because I'm up here talking. It's familiar. So what's contributing to this suffering? What is it that I'm clinging to that's contributing to the suffering, to the anxiety? No doubt, some self-clinging. Some self-consciousness. So this is the first and second noble truth. There's some anxiety. And what's the cause? What's bringing about that anxiety? And then right view also includes this encouraging perspective that clinging and its resulting suffering can be brought to an end. It's possible to let go.

[22:56]

So this is the third noble truth. And also, right view orients us to practices of the Eightfold Path. Starting with right view, that you begin to analyze what's happening in your life through this mechanism of what am I holding on to that's causing my anxiety, and so on. Practicing right view does not require that you believe in something that you can't know for yourself. This is all about something that's really accessible to you and to your own experience. It doesn't rely on any supernatural powers or any mystical beliefs. And it doesn't require us to be ahead of where we are. It always is right where we are now. Right view isn't about something later. It has to be about right now. Because we can't step on the path you know, that's going to be ahead of us. We have to step on the path that is right under our feet. The one that's happening today.

[23:57]

It's always today. As Dogen says, you know, here's the place and here is the way it unfolds. So, at this point, I have pretty much covered all of the basics from the classical tradition. And I started with... the meditative trance, the inadvisability of severe austerities or of indulging in luxury, the Buddha's first teachings, including the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Five Hindrances, which block our ability to concentrate, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, and the Four Rubajanas, which I just read to you, concerning the world of form. And for about 500 years, there was great faith in these practices. And as a result, some very real monks and real lay people and real temples were founded throughout what became a very real Buddhist world.

[25:04]

In fact, I think it wasn't just long ago, I can actually remember myself when I was ordained thinking that I was a real monk. And I thought that everything I heard and was being taught was completely true. And I thought my teacher was completely trustworthy. And it was a wonderful feeling all the way down. Buddha Dharma Sangha. So I'm going to finish up with a joke. And it's one I have told at Green Gulch, but some of you haven't heard it yet. And I think it's relevant to what happened next in Buddhist history. But not only Buddhist history, I think it's one of the things that happens to us as serious practitioners of the Buddhist teaching. And it's good to be ready for it.

[26:13]

So a man goes into a bar with a penguin on his head. And he asks the bartender for a drink. And then the penguin says to the bartender, how do I get this man off my feet? That's better. It's okay to laugh. So getting... Getting the man off the penquin's feet, or this mind-made man, and what I'm referring to here is the old wisdom tradition, which was so artfully constructed over centuries, it really had the feel of reality to it. You take it seriously, and you were supposed to take it seriously. There were lots of consequences for not following the letter of the law.

[27:15]

So it was quite a shock to the Buddhist tradition and perhaps a shock that's still going on. In fact, I'm pretty sure it is. Because any time that we let go of a belief or a truth that we've been nurturing for a long time, it's either a terrible loss or it's a great relief. Kind of like when your kid goes off to college, which is both. It's a terrible loss and it's a great relief. So in the Lotus Sutra, there's mention of a large number of very accomplished practitioners, the Arhats, who walk out on the Buddha as he begins to explain a new way of viewing his teaching, his insight about reality. And some who stayed, some of the Arhats who stayed, as it's recorded in the Sutra, were said to have been so shocked with what they heard that they died on the spot.

[28:19]

There's a book called The Heart Attack Sutra, which is really beautifully done. It's a scholar by the name of Karl Runholz. And he uses a lot of humor in his writing, but basically he's telling us these citations from the sutras about these monks who bled from the nose and they dropped dead when they heard these teachings. It's like, what? You know, this can't be true. So the process of trying to liberate some established tradition with some new work, some new view of things, you know, historically has always been very difficult for people. I think of, was it Stravinsky, who his first performance of Rite of Spring where the audience booed and they threw things at him and they stormed the stage, you know? These are people in tuxedos. And they didn't want to hear that stuff. That's not music, that's garbage. And the same thing happened to Cezanne and to all the great artists.

[29:25]

It's like, that's garbage. So it takes us a while to readjust, to change. And then around the first century BCE, there appeared some new literature called the Wisdom Beyond Wisdom, Prajnaparamita. So they're actually writing this stuff down now and passing it around to one another. which claimed to be the word of the Buddha himself. And apparently, this tension within the Buddha's Sangha wasn't new. It had been going on since the very beginnings. Shortly after the Buddha died, there was a tremendous conflict within the Sangha between those who adhere to the letter of the law and those who are more compelled by the spirit of the law. You might call the two loose and the two tights. Or the thinking types and the feeling types. And our sangha, we have the same thing. We get into this ourselves and you begin to notice that sometimes the tension isn't about who's right or who's wrong.

[30:33]

It's where you're coming from. You're coming from ideas or you're coming from feelings. So you have to figure out how to get on the same track so you can have a real conversation together. And yet the claim that this was the true teaching of the Buddha was actually grounded in a citation from the Pali Canon itself. You know, that this Prajnaparamita was something that the Buddha taught. And the claim was based on the sentence that the Buddha spoke just before he died. He said, whatever is well spoken and leads to enlightenment is the teaching of the Buddha. So that left a lot of room for innovation. And maybe he really was enlightened. Very wide, very inclusive way of teaching, of offering us the opportunity to explore for ourselves, to know for ourselves.

[31:33]

At the same time, this new literature, the Tarshini Paramita literature, spent a lot of time declaring the supremacy of the Buddha and his teaching, but also it put an emphasis on this new identity of the Bodhisattva and the Bodhisattva path for anyone who considered themselves to be a serious practitioner of the Buddha way. The promotion of the Bodhisattva path in opposition to the Arhat path is based on a well-known story from the Pali Canon. It's the story of an ascetic by the name of Sumedha. It was a long time that I've been around before I heard about Sumedha. So you're lucky. You're going to hear about it right away. Sumedha was... We're talking eons ago, before the dinosaurs. Sumedha was a young monk who met a Buddha by the name of Deepankara.

[32:38]

And he could have become Deepankara's disciple... an arhat, and as a result, followed the path of awakening that would have led to his extinction. And no more Sumedha. But Sumedha decided instead to study this perfection of wisdom. And he chose not to follow the arhat path, but to become a bodhisattva. And to keep coming back again and again, you know, in order to help beings. with the intention of becoming a Buddha, like Dipankhara. That's how Dipankhara became Buddha, following the Bodhisattva path. It's considered such a rare outcome that it's sort of like, well, you might as well be an Arhat because it's going to take you so long to become a Buddha. So you'll get too discouraged. You might as well just leave. So anyway, Sumed is, oh, sorry, I didn't mean it.

[33:43]

He's got to say everything personally. Better than having a heart attack. Perfect timing. Too bad we don't have a video for our audio. The kitchen's leaving. So, Sumedha, by practicing as a bodhisattva, and I think you all maybe know many, well, I don't know if you know, but anyway, there are these Jataka tales, which are also recorded in the Polycanic, which are stories of the bodhisattvas' former lives as various kinds of animals, you know, as a deer, as a monkey, and in each case, the animal leads his troop away from danger. and oftentimes by offering himself or herself as a sacrifice. Shoot me, don't shoot my deer, my troops, my pack, whatever, herd.

[34:49]

So, after many lifetimes in this way, this month, Sumedha, became the Samyaksan Buddha by the name of Shakyamuni. So, you know, the folks who wrote the Prajnaparamita literature didn't just make this all up. They had this amazingly inspirational story of our Buddha having done this bodhisattva practice, determined not to enter final extinction, but to go on until all beings are saved. So this is what inspired, this inspirational ideal of the bodhisattva is what inspired this new birth, of this new understanding of the teaching. Awakening, not just for oneself, but in order to lead others to awakening. The whole purpose of your endeavor, the fruit of your life, is not for yourself. It's to bring everyone else to safety.

[35:54]

And so he did. And so we all have benefited from that decision that Sumedha made to not face extinction. So during the next weeks ahead that we'll be sharing together, I'm going to be doing some classes and I'm going to continue on with the development of the Mahayana, where it came from, and how Zen emerged in the course of a historic sequence that we call the Great Vehicle, the Mahayana. And also the 16 Bodhisattva precepts became an articulation of a much larger body of precepts called the Vinaya. which have hundreds of different rules and regulations, you know, a little bit more like Arshini, lots of different details, but that was distilled down to the 16 bodhisattva precepts by the time it arrived to us here. And then to close for today, I just wanted to offer once again a few practice suggestions to you all.

[36:59]

And I was thinking that... The ones I wanted to bring up today have to do with contact, you know, how we connect with one another. And there are a couple of contact points in our practice, both in this room and outside, that I thought I would just, you know, say something about. The first one is about chanting together. which most of the time I think is just extraordinarily beautiful in this room and with all these voices, the beautiful women's voices and the men's voices, and when we find each other, it's like that ball of soap. It's wonderful, like one voice. In fact, I read an article about people who join choirs, that one reason they love choirs is because they don't, for the first time in their lives, they're not feeling separate. When you're singing, you have this feeling of not being a separate person, but of being this one large body. And I think that's so. When we're chanting together, I have that same feeling of this wonderful body.

[38:01]

So, I wanted to just recommend to you, as you're chanting, maybe you already know that you don't need to chant every word. You can take time to breathe. And sometimes when I'm watching some of you chant, it looks like you're going like, like that, when you breathe, just like quick little gulps. So I would suggest that you might breathe the way you do when you're meditating, you know, really fill your lungs, let the abdomen extend, take in a big, big breath of air, almost like pouring water into a glass, you know, filling from the base, filling up. And meanwhile, everyone else is chanting along, so you don't have to worry. There won't be a gap in the sound. So chant until you run out of air, and then fully inhale, and then continue. I know sometimes we have trouble finding a pitch, so I would just, this is maybe a little bit both for the Kokuyas, but all of us too, like try to find a pitch that we all can join you on.

[39:12]

And sometimes you might have to go higher or lower than your normal voice, but that's one way to help us to chant together. I often think that the makugyo, or the bells, give us something we can key in on. There is a few musicians, there is a note there that we can catch. And then the last thing I wanted to suggest is, and I've asked the Doans and I asked permission of the Tanto as well, is if we could change the All My Ancient Twisted Karma, maybe just for this practice period, but maybe forever, The way I experienced Tasselhart chatting this, the first time I came here a couple summers ago, and I'm sorry, I don't mean to make it cartoony, but it's kind of like, all my ancient twisted car from beginning his greed, hate and delusion. And I just thought, whoa. It sounded very clipped and kind of, I don't know, jarring.

[40:16]

And I thought, this verse is like confession, you know? And again, in the theater of it, you know, all my ancient twisted karma. So if you wouldn't mind just holding out that last note, not terribly long, but just as long enough to make it an actual vow, you know, karma from beginning was greed, hate, and delusion. So, you know, and it's fine with me if you don't do that, but if you're willing. I'd appreciate it. And then the other thing I wanted to mention is passing Damasio, which is really exciting. This dish full of salty seeds and, you know, how to get it to your neighbor's hand in a safe and fun way, you know. So, now...

[41:19]

My neighbor happens to be my student, so he doesn't mind if I say this. So if you would just open your hand and feel the weight of the dish in your hand as it's released, and that's your receiving of the dish, and then the other hand lets go, it's like a dance. So feel it. Feel the transfer. Take your time. Don't grab it. And don't... dump it, you know. So, the same thing with incense. Now, my Jisha and I, together, dropped the incense this morning. We had never done that. It was my fault, I'm sure. It was dark. I don't know where it went, but it went on the ground. So, You know, that's a wonderful time. Also the same, I mean, because you'll break it if you don't let go and grab at this right time.

[42:20]

It'll just snap in half. So incense passing is a wonderful practice. Bowing when meeting on the path. You know, when you meet someone on the path, you know, you can either go like that and that's it. Or you can stop and meet at that low point in your bow. But you have to look and you have to feel. Like, I'm actually greeting this person. One of the things I loved about bowing at Tassajara when I lived here, I was here for three years, was that there were people I didn't like. I'm sorry to say. And so I would like to have just gone like that, you know, let them know. But I decided that it was really important. To not do that, to restrain my expression of preference and to really respect each person by bowing the same way with each person. It was so helpful because I really still feel like that's how I want to be in the world.

[43:24]

I don't want to do that thing of, you know, be kind of mean or whatever. So bowing is a wonderful opportunity. Pouring hot water into your Buddha bowl is another opportunity. So I'd ask the people pouring water to please wait for the Buddha bowl to be presented to you. Sometimes people come after me with the water. You know, I'm down here and they're trying to, and I'm going, oh, no, please. So I've been putting my hand over my bowl to, hopefully they will pour it on. You know, so just wait. Like, again, we're dancing. Just let that bowl come up, and then, you know, it's inviting you, and then pour. We're not in a hurry. Particularly these transactions do not have to be quick. And I think the last one I wanted to say is listen to the sound of your feet on the wooden floor when you walk around in here. You can be pretty inaudible. You know, I'm not a lightweight. I've got some pounds. And I really enjoy trying to be almost, you know, silent when I walk on the floor.

[44:31]

So I would invite you to try that as well. So, again, thank you all for your kind attention. And today's our last day of Sashim. Well, this one. We've got two more coming up. But, yeah, it's wonderful here. It really is. I can't wait to go home and tell everybody. Thank you very much.

[44:56]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.09