morning thank you for coming to our dharma talk today we will begin with our opening chant and please chant the opening verse with me it should show on your screen now you're also welcome at this time to please stop your video and we'll turn our attention to the speaker who will come on shortly Please chant together with me. An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words.

[01:04]

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. I hope that all of you have been able to settle into a routine of sorts during these weeks of prolonged isolation within our homes. I am personally blessed with both a partner and a cat who easily move in and around our shared spaces. And I have the good fortune to live in a community of shared agreements about safety and work. Here at Green Gulch, our skilled sewing teacher, Steph, has made masks for us. Yuki, the head cook, three times a day, turns bushels of vegetables into grains and grains into wholesome meals. Mick, the baker, keeps us and our neighbors supplied with fresh bread. And Timo, the director, Jiria Lutanto, help keep us safe. The Finance Committee of our Board of Directors, along with our Central Abbott, Ed Sattison, President Linda Gallion, and Board Chair Helen Degenhardt, continue finding ways to keep our three temples afloat in the absence of our major income-generating activities.

[02:11]

Toss our guest season, Green Gulch Conference Program, and Green's Restaurant, all of which are, for the time being, closed. So although I and my nearest neighbors seem to be weathering this crisis fairly well so far, I know it's not going well world-round for so many others. There's food rotting in the fields, stores are shuttered, unemployment in record numbers, and a vast network of kinships have been severed by illness and death. None of us knows how or when the world will appear normal again, or even if we ourselves will be there when it does. So this morning, I'm going to talk again about some teachings from the Buddha that address these familiar forms of human suffering, their cause and really and truly their cure. In fact, the Buddha himself was referred to as the great physician. So many of you no doubt are well acquainted with the first sermon given by the Buddha shortly after his awakening.

[03:13]

It's called setting rolling the wheel of the law. The word law in the title of this sermon is a translation. the Sanskrit word dharma, meaning the truth. So setting, rolling the wheel of the truth. In other words, for those of us who study and practice the Buddha's teaching, we are studying the truth as perceived by the mind of an awakened being. So right there is a leap of faith that each of us makes when we decide to enter into the path of practice. Faith in the idea that the human being who was born a prince, became a Buddha, and died a long, long time ago, had found the truth, a truth which was then, like DNA, passed down through his disciples for over 2,500 years to this very day, warm hand to warm hand. And therefore, those of us living now are the inheritors of this inspiring vision of reality. And to our great fortune, along with that responsibility, we have been given a pathway and a roadmap.

[04:18]

for seeing the world and ourselves in a whole new way, what we call the Buddha way. So this pathway was laid out and elaborated in great detail over many centuries, beginning with this initial articulation in the Buddha's first sermon, a sermon given to five ascetics in the Deer Park at Varanasi. In that very brief sermon, the Buddha sets down the foundation for all that will follow, beginning with the teaching of non-duality. he called the middle way, and ending with the teaching of the Four Noble Truths, in which he diagnoses our illness and then prescribes the cure. In fact, it is recorded that the Buddha himself once said, I only teach two things, namely suffering and the cessation of suffering. So before I talk about the actual teachings given by the Buddha on that day in the meadow, It's important to understand the context in which he had discovered this truth for himself.

[05:19]

It's undoubtedly not news to any of you that he was sitting under a tree at the time he came to understand the cause of his own and, by extension, our own suffering, to which we might then ask just what was he doing under the tree that resulted in his finding the truth about our all too fragile human life. Although most of us have also been doing a lot of sitting around these days, maybe even under a tree, I wonder if we've taken the opportunity to explore ourselves and this world in as much exquisite detail as young Prince Siddhartha had done. An opportunity which may still be there for us for many long weeks to come. If we choose to do so, there are a few simple instructions that might be of help. Instructions based on the Buddha's own example. that are given quite often here at Zen Center when people join us to sit together, as many of you are doing right now. The first thing he did was to find a comfortable, upright sitting position.

[06:22]

His spine was straight, his head balanced on his shoulders, his eyes open, gazing softly downward. His breath was moving gently in and out through his nose. He had eaten moderately and set time aside for sitting. which on the occasion of his enlightenment was about a week. For us, anywhere from half an hour to half a day is just fine too. Like many of us, the young prince had great determination to break through the cycle of suffering and therefore assigned himself the task, while sitting silently and still, of bringing his mind into the present by attending fully to the sounds, sights, odors, and textures that seemed to separate his body from the world. This baseline practice is called mindfulness of the body, a body which is always and only in the present. And then, once having established a steady and movable sitting position, the result of a repeated effort at quiet sitting, he turned his awareness to his feelings, mindfulness of feelings, and then to his thoughts, mindfulness of thinking.

[07:34]

And that's where he found the passageway to freedom. mindfulness of the truth. In the Zen school, the shorthand for what he was doing is called Zazen, just sitting, no matter what. And the no matter what that came to visit while he simply sat there was pretty dramatic, as it is for all of us, the stuff of daydreams and nightmares. At first, he believed himself to be under attack from invisible and insidious external forces, personified as an army of malicious haters. And then the exotic dancers endeavoring to seduce him through the irresistible beauty of this world. Through it all, his resolve to remain seated was yet further undermined by corrosive doubt as to his courage to say nothing of his fundamental sanity. And yet, if all that the young prince saw, as he soon came to believe, were products of his own imagination, how had he come to be so mired down in sorrow?

[08:36]

So that question, how does this happen, is what led him to the foundational teaching that I mentioned earlier called the Four Noble Truths, beginning with the first truth. There is suffering. This is the most basic truth to which I think none of us will disagree. He even named the familiar and universal categories of suffering, sickness, aging, death, grief and despair. association with the loathed, dissociation from the loved, all of which he summed up as not getting what one wants. Now, had he stopped there, as many do, he would not have become the great spiritual teacher whose wisdom and compassion resonates, as we say, throughout all space and time. His next statement of truth, called the Second Noble Truth, was that suffering has a cause. This one is not quite as obvious as the first, especially if we imagine, as he had initially done, that his suffering was coming from outside of himself.

[09:43]

The realization that suffering has a cause and that the cause is to be found not outside, but within the workings of the human mind, was a revolutionary insight that came to be called the teaching of causality. In fact, the Four Noble Truths themselves are a simple set of two causal relationships. Truth number one, suffering. Truth number two, the cause of suffering. Truth number three, the cessation of suffering. And truth number four, the cause for the cessation of suffering. In its simplest form, the teaching of causality can be found to this day carved into the stone walls of ancient Buddhist India in a mere four lines. When this is, that is. From the arising of this... comes the arising of that. When this isn't, that isn't. From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that. Again, so simple to say and yet not so easy to understand.

[10:47]

Still, it was the Buddha's profound insight into causality that led him to double down on the exploration of his own mental processes, to turn the light of his awareness onto those repeating patterns in his own mind he called samsara, meaning literally, endless circling. So once those habits of mind have been studied and thoroughly understood, that understanding leads to freedom, freedom from those very habits of mind, endless circling. So here's one version of that moment of freedom recorded in the Pali Canon, said to be the first word spoken by the newly awakened Buddha. Seeking but not finding a house builder, I traveled through the round of countless birth. Oh, how painful is birth ever and ever again. House builder, you have now been seen. You shall not build the house again. Your rafters have been broken down. Your ridge pole is demolished too.

[11:48]

My mind has now attained the unformed nirvana and reached the end of every kind of craving. So craving, as it says in the second noble truth, along with ignorance, is the very source of our suffering. This truth is the one that we all need to explore in full, especially at a time such as this when we can't simply go out and acquire those things that we crave. Recently, when the town tripper for Green Gulch offered each of us the opportunity to purchase six personal items from town, among the most embarrassing things I found myself acquiring was a 38-ounce bag of peanut M&Ms. What's even worse, I am nearly halfway through the bag. So in order to recognize that nothing from outside of ourselves can bring an end to our craving, we must also come to understand the other cause of suffering. that being ignorance.

[12:49]

And what do we ignore? We ignore that we are, in fact, not in any way separate from the world. The other primary teaching from the first sermon, the non-dual nature of reality itself. So here's another version of the Buddha's awakening in which he resolves the suffering caused by ignorance, thereby ending his enchantment with his own imagination, along with his enslavement to its wishes. I found this story years ago in an obscure novel called The Lady and the Lotus, in which the author has re-envisioned Yosudara, the prince's lovely young wife, as a heroine. Although a new mother of a baby boy, she willingly encouraged her melancholy husband to leave home in order to engage with his terrible suffering, suffering that had come upon him when he learned that his seemingly perfect world and perfect body were destined to decay. first noble truth, suffering. In this story, the Buddha-to-be, after six long years, has arrived under the Bodhi tree where he meets face to face with the evil one who has just threatened to kill him if he doesn't get up from his seat.

[14:00]

Mara, the evil one, also known as the master of illusions, had already conjured up the army of haters and the troop of dancing nymphs in hopes of unraveling Siddhartha's resolve to remain seated no matter what. mara says to the buddha now i will kill you buddha says no you won't mara hissing oh yes i will buddha no you won't because i now know who you are mara says oh no you don't buddha says oh yes i do you are myself and with that mara vanishes So Mara the evil one, personified for the Buddha as he does for us, the resistance we have to staying at our seats and thereby allowing the illusion of something outside of ourselves, not only to congeal, but in the light of our steady gaze to melt away, along with that very notion of a self. A self that has somehow been imagined to be separable from joy and sorrow, from darkness and light, from birth and death.

[15:08]

has been imagined to be separable from the grass, grass, earth, trees, walls, tiles and pebbles of the present moment. So what then do we talk about when all of our illusions about ourself and the world have melted away like snowflakes on a hot iron skillet? I remember when I first moved to Green Gulch many years ago. I was in the dining room at the same table as Paul Disco, the builder of our guest house, the Tarsahara Zendo and Entry Gate, along with many other handcrafted Japanese joinery buildings. As I was sitting there eating my lunch, he said, it's not what you're going to get out of this practice, it's what you're going to lose. I remember at the time that what he said gave me a chill. What will be left after all has been lost, lost to impermanence and transiency? to aging, sickness, and death, the most inviolable laws of the universe. When the Buddha added impermanence to no self and suffering, he gave us what might be called the three facts of life, the very facts that we are facing right now, that we are always facing right now, along with some wishful thinking.

[16:19]

Ironically, therein, within those facts of life, also lies the relief of suffering. Just this is it. Just this right now. All of it. This all-inclusive universe as far as the eye of practice can see. Just this beautiful earth with her green grass, her flowering trees, stone walls, blue tiles, and shiny gray pebbles. With her emergency rooms, her empty streets, angry unemployed workers, exhausted nurses, sick and dying elders. It's easy to say, as saying always is. but it's much more difficult to remember. Just this is it. So that said, I will include some more poetry from the early suttas, which describe, as if in the Buddha's own words, the insights that he had during the time of his awakening. This one has to do with his discovery of the self as the key or the pivot between both his bondage and his liberation.

[17:22]

At the end of seven days, when emerging from concentration, The newly awakened Buddha surveyed the world with an eye of an enlightened one. As he did so, he saw beings burning with the many fires and consumed by the fevers born of greed, hatred, and delusion. Knowing the meaning of this, he said, this world is anguished at being exposed to contact with what is conceived as self. What the world calls self is in fact illness. The conceit of self is ever other than that which has been conceived. In the world in which the self is conceived as other is committed to being other. Relish is only being other. That self which is relished brings fear. And what it fears is pain. Now this holy life is lived to abandon the source of such suffering. Sorrow, regret, sadness, despair.

[18:27]

In other words, the suffering of suffering, as the Buddha called it, is a result of our desire that things be different than they are. It sounds so simple, and yet, as we all know, coming to face our dis-ease, the unsettledness in our minds and our bodies is a long and at times ruling process. I often repeat the story of the Buddhist master whose wife had just died. He's sitting outside of the temple crying and beating a drum. His students gather around and ask, Master, if this is all an illusion, why are you crying? The master replies, yes, it's all an illusion, but at times it's a very sad illusion. So awakening isn't about deadening ourselves to pain, sorrow, and loss, what's been called spiritual bypass. It's about fully expressing ourselves, expressing our grief of all the losses of life, the corals and the polar bears. elephants and tigers and our loved ones. It's also about expressing our joy and gratitude for the incredible beauty of creation, including ourselves, up and to our very last minute.

[19:36]

Which reminds me of a favorite poem by local Marin talent Kay Ryan, the 16th Poet Laureate of the United States. If she only had a minute, what would she put in it? She wouldn't put, she thinks, she would take. suck it up like a deep lake. On her last instant, feast on everything she had released, dismissed, or pushed away. She would make room and room as though her whole life of resistance had been for this one purpose. So on the last minute of the last day, she would drink and have it, ballooning like a gravid salmon for the moon. So it's in that last and only minute that K. Ryan speaks about that the Buddha woke up, the minute in which he saw clearly how the patterns of hate, greed, and confusion in his own mind had come to be projected onto the world around him. Master Dogen centuries later gave us this very same instruction for awakening in and to the present moment, when he said...

[20:45]

Learn the backward step that turns the light inwardly to illuminate yourself. And then with all the passion and intensity of newfound love, study that self and see just what that self is made of. So it might take a few repetitions before we too come to realize that the self truly is none other than earth, trees, grass, tiles, and pebbles, children, cats, fruit trees, toast, and electric automobiles. that the entire universe in the Ten Directions is the true human body. These instructions have been given to us again and again, down through the ages, in the hope that we too might awaken to that simple observable truth that sets us free. As we endeavor to follow these basic instructions, starting with upright sitting, we can take great encouragement in what was perhaps the Buddha's most important insight of them all. And that is the very real possibility that we humans could develop skills, such as concentration and discernment, that would allow the disruption of the cycle of suffering, preordained by a mind lost in confusion.

[21:56]

This, then, is the third of the Four Noble Truths, the truth of the cessation of suffering. And this, I think, is by far our favorite one, the very idea that there is a truth that suffering ceases. In many religious traditions, the imagined end of suffering is a state of eternal bliss, following the death of this fragile human life form. For others, the end of suffering is the termination of the fragile life form itself, with nothing to follow but the silence and stillness of empty space. These two versions were equally well known in the Buddha's day. He called them the two extremes of eternalism and nihilism, a permanent something or a permanent nothing. And then he offered yet another possibility called the middle way that avoids the two extremes. So what is the middle way, he said? It is the noble eightfold path, the fourth of the four noble truths. The cessation of suffering is the path, the pathway to an ever more balanced state of mind, and from there to a healthy and wholesome way of life.

[23:02]

The Buddha also said that enlightenment is the path, the path is enlightenment. relieving us of the notion that the path is going to take us anywhere other than the path itself. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, with a warm greeting for those we meet along the way. I know most of you have heard the Eightfold Path and no doubt given the path some serious thoughts, so I will say only a few things about it before ending my talk today. For one thing, we don't have to wait until the very end of our life of practice for some final exaltation, some arrival, since the path isn't going anywhere. We can celebrate the ultimate fact of our liberation at each and every moment by not getting caught in it, by not abiding in anything, not in ourselves, in our feelings, our thoughts, our inclinations, or in the path of practice itself. Not abiding in heaven or hell. with the demons or the ghosts, the animals or the humans, and yet completely willing to visit each and every realm, to have a cup of tea, and then to pass on through with a mind that is flexible and open to everything.

[24:12]

As the poet William Blake wrote, if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it truly is, infinite. For man has closed himself up till he sees all things through narrow chinks, of his cabin. And yet it's pretty well understood throughout the entire Buddhist tradition that we meditators can't simply open a door and step right on to the Eightfold Path. Instead, we have to navigate what appear to be various obstructions blocking our way, such as old views, habitual behaviors, and those powerful feelings we all have. All that stuff that's going on in our awareness when we just sit. Therefore, much of the Buddha's teaching is concerned not so much with walking the noble eightfold path as with finding it, just as the young prince himself had done in the later stages of his journey to enlightenment, the time at which he said, so I too found an ancient path, an ancient trail, traveled by the fully enlightened ones of the world.

[25:17]

The traditional method for clearing away the appearance of obstacles is through a sincere intention to engage in ethical conduct. meaning to be generous, friendly, and kind, no matter what, no matter what you are feeling, thinking, or believing. And then, as we recite in the Bodhisattva initiation ceremony, in faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha's way. This word faith in the Buddhist tradition, shrada, is akin to the Latin word for heart. So it's with our hearts that we return, again and again, to an awareness of our intention, our posture, and our breath. and most importantly, an awareness of one another, mindfulness of others. Perhaps you all remember the story about the Buddha being asked by a traveler, you know, who are you? The man had been struck by the Buddha's majestic appearance and wondered how he came to look like that. Having asked him if he was a god, a spirit, a brahmin, or a human, to which the Buddha said no, the man asked again, well then, who are you?

[26:20]

And the Buddha said, I am awake. So the next question for us then is what was the Buddha awake to? In the sutras, it says that awakening, true knowledge, is the right understanding of the true nature of reality. Awakening, true knowledge, is the right understanding of the true nature of reality. Also known as right view or right understanding, the first fold of the eightfold path. When the Buddha was then asked, what is it that you understand when you are awake? And he said, you understand the four noble truths. And how you come to this understanding about reality is by virtue of the eighth fold of the eightfold path, right meditation. Full circle. The path is awakening. Awakening is the path. The other six folds of this delineated path are in support of our coming to realize the four noble truths. And as I have said and been talking about this morning, suffering.

[27:22]

cause, cessation, and path. And so here they are, the Eightfold Path in order. Right view, followed by right intention, defined as desirelessness, friendliness, and compassion. Right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, addressing one's actions in the world. Right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation, allowing one to come to an understanding of the intimate relationship. between one's underlying emotions, one's actions in the world, and one's understanding of reality. In other words, the whole works. So perhaps that's enough for now. I will end this morning with a recounting from the old wisdom teachings of the effect the Buddha's first sermon was said to have had on those who were there to listen. Now, while this discourse was being delivered, The spotless, immaculate vision of the Dharma arose in the venerable Kondana. Kondana said, All that is subject to arising is subject to cessation.

[28:28]

And when the wheel of the Dharma had thus been set rolling by the Blessed One, the earth deities cried out, At Varanasi in the deer park at Isipatana, the perfect one, accomplished and fully enlightened, has set rolling the matchless wheel of the Dharma. which cannot be stopped by monk or Brahman or deity or Mara or divinity or anyone in the world. On hearing the earth deities cry out, the deities of the four heavenly kings cried out, as did the deities of the heavens of the contented, the deities of those who have gone to bliss, of those who delight in creating, and of those who wield power over the creation of others. All cried out so that at that moment, in that instant, the news traveled right up to the Brahma world. And this 10,000-fold world element shook and quaked and trembled while a great measureless light, unsurpassing the splendor of the gods, appeared in the world. And then the Buddha, the Blessed One, exclaimed, Kondana knows, Kondana knows.

[29:36]

And therein the first transmission of the Dharma took place, setting in motion the wheel of the law. Thank you very much. After our closing chant, if you'd like to ask some questions, I'd be happy to answer. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them.

[30:39]

Buddha's way is insurpassable. I vow to become it. If you'd like to ask a question, please feel free to raise your hand. You can do so in the participants window by pressing the raise hand button. This one. Mary. Mary S. Hi. One sentence in your talk stuck out to me, which was, these instructions are given to us again and again. And I wonder, why do we have such terrible short-term memories?

[31:45]

My long-term memory isn't much better. Well, that too. Yeah, that's kind of how we are, isn't it? It really helps repeat, repeat, repeat. We practice as a daily. What we do really matters because we do it each day. It starts to become a new habit, a new way. We're building new habits by repeating. We've got old habits that we've repeated. So we want to kind of move them out and begin to bring some new ways, reconditioning ourselves for new ways of thinking. It takes a while. You know that. I know that. I feel frustrated by that, by my short-term memory about these things. Well, that's why we do this together. We keep reminding each other. Thank you. Terry.

[32:48]

Yes. I would like to No, this is, it seems to me you are not reading anything, right? You're just speaking. Is that true? No. Okay. You are reading something. I prepare my talks because otherwise you wouldn't be very interested in what my, you know, just off the top of my head doesn't seem to come out in any particular order. Uh-huh. So have you memorized it or are you just saying it? I have a trick. I have a trick like they use on TV. Okay. Because it just seems it's so wonderful how it's very different from the way other people talk because it's like more of a lecture that somebody is reading and But I never see you reading, so you have a trick.

[33:54]

Okay. Now you've exposed me, Terry. And I just have to say, when you said the corals and the polar bears, I just started crying. It was such a combination of choices that were unrelated to each other, but yet are just... So that made me feel the loss at that moment. And I also want to thank you for talking about the bag of M&Ms. This is my confession. Yeah, that was really important to me so that I can, you know, not judge myself about my own little... cravings, little and great cravings. M&Ms are good because you can just take a few. I mean, you could try to take a few.

[34:55]

Right. Yeah, forget that. I can't have things like that. You said, I'm embarrassed to have eaten half the bag. Well, if I had that bag, it would have been gone the first day. Thank you, Terry. One needs to know one's limits. So thank you so much for this talk. It was Very precious to me. You're welcome. Really. Tali. Thank you for very inspiring talk. I have a question about the part that you said you just stopped for having tea with the road. And... It feels to me like almost having affairs with things on the way rather than getting married and committing and, you know, attaching. So I wonder if you can comment on that.

[35:57]

Yeah. Well, I think our practice of bowing is exactly that. It's a full body bow. I don't know if you've practiced at Tassajara yet where that's the greeting. You know, when you pass people during the practice periods in particular, you stop. walking and you bow and you touch, you know, there's a little gap there, apparent gap, but the feeling is one of touching, of contact and expression of respect. So rather than have an affair, I think maybe bowing is enough for us at our age. Let's just bow, show our gratitude, be respectful. You can bow to everyone. If to continue to use this metaphor, at some point, some things you want to fully commit to and not just bow and move on. Question mark.

[36:59]

Yeah. Well, that sort of gets into the idea of grasping or holding on to something or attaching. You know, oftentimes I'll say to people, well, just try. Just try to attach to something. How's that going? Yeah. You know, whatever it is you like to do or you feel is important to you, you can only do so much of that. Let's go all of its own, you know. I mean, there's an engagement and then it ends. So everything's impermanent, good things, bad things. So we fully engage in each and everything that we do, you know, and then they end. And then there's another one, kind of like magic. Mm-hmm. So there hasn't been a gap yet in my life that I've been aware of. Thank you. Anne. My question, really cogent talk.

[37:59]

I really appreciated how you wove sort of like the whole thing together. It was just a great overview and really made a lot of sense to me and had a lot of meaning. My question has to do with turning the light inward and ending things, taking responsibility for the self-creation or the creation of reality. But then there's also the aspect of dialogue and things out in the world that have deep effect on our lives. So I kind of want to believe that if I changed everything, everything out there would change. And maybe that's true. But what do you see as the role of all this work in terms of the world? Like, yeah, like other people, do other people have a responsibility to

[39:07]

to take care of others answered this to me. What do you think? Well, it came to mind while you were asking was this koan about the master who's a farmer, and I don't remember it exactly right, but there's a monk who comes to visit from, I think it's from the south, where they study Buddhism intensely. You know, they read the scriptures, and they have a lot of good answers, and they've done all their homework, and so he goes up to the farmer teacher and says, you know, how are you going to save the world doing that? You know, teacher holds up the hoe and says, what do you call the world? How does this compare to me planting rice and growing food for people to eat? So, you know, each of us is in our Dharma position, so to speak. It's really an us question, not a me question you're asking. How are you going to join with everyone in saving the world? If everyone... commits to saving the world, we've got it made. Right?

[40:08]

We just have yet to come to an agreement about that. So the more we try our best to come to a recent agreement about what it means to save the world, and the more people who join in that effort from their Dharma positions, the better chance we have, which is sort of where I'm placing my bets. You know, there needs to be enough. It's kind of like the virus. Once there's enough of a herd immunity, You know, once there's enough of herd goodness going on, then maybe it'll overwhelm whatever else might be trying to happen out there. But, you know, we just keep going, man. Do the best we can. Like you're doing. You're welcome. Michael. All right. Hi, good morning. Nice to see you. It's a pleasure to see you too. Nice to be in your house. Thank you. It's great to have you and everyone else.

[41:10]

I wonder, I love Kay Ryan's poetry. I wonder if you would indulge me if you wouldn't mind reading the poem again. Yeah, I will. I'm really happy to. I'm just going to have to... Get to my thingy, my script. It's like a peanut M&M. Okay, here we go. What page is she on? It's called If She Only Had a Minute. It's the name of the poem. I almost know it by heart, but I wouldn't dare. I'll leave out several lines. Okay. Everyone can just be patient. This practice of patience. If she only had a minute, what would she put in it?

[42:15]

She wouldn't put, she thinks, she would take. Suck it up like a deep lake. On her last instant, feast on everything she had released, dismissed, or pushed away. She would make room and room as though her whole life of resistance. had been for this one purpose. So on the last minute of the last day, she would drink and have it, ballooning like a gravid salmon for the moon. Pretty great, huh? Yeah. Pretty great. Thank you. Thanks for asking. Sure. See you soon. See you soon. Be well. Yeah, you too. Karen M. Good morning. I was really struck by what you said about trying to attach to something.

[43:17]

Just go ahead and try to attach. And my thought was that the way that I attach to things is usually somewhat provisional. Like I'll attach with the expectation. that you will always be there, that you will never change, that whatever. And it's not really a wholehearted attachment to the fullness of that thing. And I wondered if you could speak more about that. Yeah. Well, that sort of comes to mind is the swing of the pendulum, you know, from not trying hard enough to trying too hard, you know, the fanatics and the complacence. So, you know, we're all at one time or the other on one side or the other, that spectrum. Sometimes I'm overdoing it and sometimes I'm not putting it out. So I think it's, you know, I always feel like when you talk about the path or, you know, right view, right effort and so on, I actually prefer using a verb writing views, writing effort, writing concentration, because it seems to me like just like in sailing, you can't sail with the mass straight up and down.

[44:29]

Yeah. Well, that's not a sailboat. You actually respond to the conditions as you sail and you adjust to them. So when you notice you're leaning too far over into complacency, then you begin to tighten up. If that's your understanding of practice is that I don't wish to be in this usual habit pattern. I don't wish to find myself continuously doing the same thing over and over again. So I'm going to engage and write effort. That's one element of the path. And what does that mean? I don't know. I'm going to have to explore what it means to me, to this body and mine. Probably something a little different than you're used to. So that's what makes it practice. It's exciting. It's exploration. It's curiosity. It's all of those things that we hope children have when they're in the super learning phase of their lives. And I hope we stay in the super learning phase throughout our lives. How are you going to learn what it is that's feeling like, you know, I could do better?

[45:34]

Maybe you couldn't. I think that the thought is more that if I was less conditional in my attachment, it would be a more wholehearted acceptance of that things keep evolving. So you'd like to be in better control. No, but to be in less control. Well, that's better control. So someone's in control of the lesser, the more. An agent of control that either dials up or dials down. I don't think that's... No, you don't buy that? No. Well, think about that a little bit. That when you say, I want to be in, I want, anytime you start with I, you're presuming an agent of control. Okay. So as soon as you start looking at conditions more as, you know, with a curiosity, the way a scientist would, you know, as opposed to, I'm the doer of these activities.

[46:41]

I'm not sure how this stuff is happening. I don't know what's happening right now. I don't really have a clue. It's pretty much magic, as far as I can tell. Looking at you and nodding and acting as though we're actually in the same room together, it's pretty interesting. So am I willing to set aside the fact that this is getting to be familiar? The magic is starting to wear off. Zooming is now our new way of meeting. I want to keep going into the mystery of this process, including when I go out of the house again, whenever that is. So I think curiosity is a really important element. I think we're kind of saying the same thing in different languages. Well, that would be nice for both of us. Wouldn't it? Always. Thank you.

[47:43]

Fred. Fred. Yes, thank you. I just wanted to say thank you for the reminder of the fundamental teaching. So, two basis. All susceptible to rising is subject to the patient. And the second one, the next will of dharma cannot be stopped. Thank you for reminding us about these two fundamental sentences. You're welcome, Fred. Take care. Chris? Just preceding the last one. Oh, did I just get unmuted?

[48:50]

Yeah, you did. So I was very struck by the conversation you had two questions back. about control, I could completely relate to that, but there was a piece in your talk where you mentioned humans can develop the, and then there was some description of a way of being or a way of experiencing, but I don't remember your words, but it was this concept that there was something I could do, that I could develop something. And I wanted to capture that if you could remember what that was. I think it was concentration and discernment, you know, can develop rather than create it. Or, you know, it's like I can develop my muscle strength, but I can't make muscles. I think there's a little bit like working with what's there. Yeah. And how it works, there's also the saying, the elbow doesn't bend backwards.

[49:54]

So I can't really enforce or bring about something that's not already there to be developed. Skills. And we're born to learn skills and to, you know, we all, most of us can read, most of us walk and do all these things that we've learned from infancy. And now there's more of that we can develop. I think of Kuan Yin as being basically each of us covered with little buds of potential. Each arm, each of those thousand arms is a skill that can be learned. Bread making, farming, zooming. There's all these things that we all have a capacity to learn. I don't know, but I would be hesitant to say that's control. more like discovery oh you know if i do that three times that somehow it goes better the fourth time seems to go a little bit isn't that interesting don't know how that happens yeah so it's more it's more like there's something that's already inherent in me which is a you know a potential and that i'm just um uh focusing on it or allowing it to come forward and

[51:17]

then that's the key to the way of describing. Yeah. You're already Buddha. That's the teaching. So it's really just a matter of acting that way. That's the skill, right? Okay. What would Buddha do? I know people have to say, what would Buddha do? It gives you a pause to consider, to be considerate. I think that's a nice term. us to be considerate of what would buddha do what would one do if one were awake thank you you're welcome nice to meet you nice to meet you okay maybe there are no more blue hands all right well thank all of you for coming to this talk and i appreciate your practice and your kind attention Thank you.

[52:21]

Thank you so much. Thank you. [...] Thank you, Phil. Thank you, everybody, so much for being here. Thank you all.

[52:38]

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