Good morning. A disciple of Buddha does not disparage the triple treasure. To expound the Dharma with this body is foremost. The virtue returns to the ocean of reality. It is unfathomable. We just accept it with respect and gratitude. To expound the Dharma body with this body is foremost. So I think that's really the heart of practice. Here, all over the world, expounding the Dharma with this body is foremost. You know, this wonderful body, this ungraspable swarm of feelings and sensations and impressions and drives. I've been told for some time that the method of the Zen school is to enact the Buddhist practice.

[01:09]

We're enacting, like theater. And rather than reading the teachings or, you know, reciting them, we act them out. As the third century before the common era, Chinese Confucian philosopher Mencius said, if you wear Yao's clothes, chant Yao's words, and act as Yao acted, then you are simply Yao. So I've been invited, and thank you, to play the part of the abbess, and all of you sincere monks at the temple. And our stage set has the look and feel of the Tang dynasty. monastery, as I was told by a Japanese monk who visited here. He said, this must have been what it was like long, long ago. You know, rustic, simple, primitive, very off in the mountains.

[02:09]

I said, thank you. And we have our play is in three acts each month long. We're in the final aspect of the third act. beginning work on our last scene, form a Buddhist enlightenment celebration and a Dharma inquiry party. So, from my point of view, the rehearsals have been going extremely well, and I think we're ready to reopen the gate. But unfortunately, it's swollen shut. So we either are going to stay here, continue to practice together forever, or until the weather changes. I've heard that's when the doors will open again. Or we'll walk around the gate to say our goodbyes and promise to meet again, lifetime after lifetime, as we have vowed to do.

[03:18]

Because, as you know, the bodhisattva players are riding a circuit that never ends. Not until the entire universe has been saved by us. And then we can turn off the lights and strike the set. So, I think this has been a wonderful adventure. Certainly for me, I hope for all of you as well. This time, this very short time together. And some of you will be leaving, as am I, and others of you are going to be staying on for the next production of the ZMC Theatre Company, a very famous one. It's Five Acts, and it's called Guesses. I've been in that one a few times myself. It's amazing. Lots of walk-ons, extras. And not only that, you have exactly one and a half hours to make the switch.

[04:25]

Granted to you by your production managers. Anyway. Well, my Tisha, who I'm going to thank by not looking at her, is an amazing, wonderful supporter of my life. Said to me the other day, when I managed to change my clothes in under a minute, You're a Tassajara monk now. So there will be a lot of changing of clothes and changing of schedule and lots of new people coming in. And then as it happens every year at a certain appointed hour, the guests will arrive. For you. They're here for you. They are here for you to serve and to honor and to respect as best you possibly can. which is just what we have been training to do all this time, to serve others. Reb once asked Suzuki Roshi, who are your students, Roshi?

[05:32]

And he said, my students are those who are here not for themselves, but to practice for others. So as far as I know, the guests don't think that we're acting. They think this is a real monastery, that we are real monks. I'm not kidding. And they think we're amazing. And although we know better by now that just this is it. No big deal. Nothing special. Everyday mind is the way. Both Ango and Gassizim, the same. Samsara and Nirvana, same. But still, they do love us for what they imagine us to be. And they think much more highly of us than they do of themselves. So your only job this summer as bodhisattvas is to reflect their virtue back to them.

[06:35]

The virtue they imagine to be yours. Send it back. Because it's there, you know, it's always there. In the same way we found that virtue in one another, you will find it if you look at each of them. So I'm going to miss you. And that's been part of the deal for a very long time, missing people who leave. As a newer student, I used to really get kind of mad when people would leave. Where are you going? Stay. Don't go. There'd be millions of us here, everyone would stay. But we get close, you know, like a family. Maybe closer. At this point, closer than my own. And we share secrets and we share our happiness and our sadness with each other. And we care for each other. And yet none of that is enough to stop the way of birth and death.

[07:42]

Our longing will never put an end to transiency. As the Buddha famously said, his last words here on earth, don't weep. It is the nature of all created things to dissolve. And right after that, there was a great earthquake, fearful and hair-raising, and the drums of heaven resounding. That would be a great finale for us, don't you think? Let's try. Drums of heaven resounding. So... The final precept on this, the final day of our final seshing, is not to disparage the triple treasure, which as I wrote that I thought, I hope I haven't done that. I know I said some difficult things, and things which some of you may not agree, and that's okay. I could feel it in my body.

[08:47]

as I was speaking, after I was speaking, and I think it will resonate in my body, many of those things, for the rest of my days. So, I really only hope that we'll continue to talk to each other about what matters most to each of us. You know, I'm beginning to discover what matters most to me. Rediscover, maybe. And then we get to decide in each moment with each other whether we're going to respect each other with some radical candor, or whether we are going to be silent and thereby lie. So no one else is going to ever be able to tell you what to do. And I hope you won't even let them try. You decide. You choose. So Dogen has this to say about this precept of not disparaging the three treasures.

[09:49]

The body is manifested, the dharma is unfolded, and there is a bridge in the world for crossing over. Their virtue returns to the ocean of all-knowing wisdom. They are unfathomable. Receive them with devotion and respect. So when we get to the last of the ten grave precepts, We basically are returning to the first of the three sixteen Bodhisattva precepts, the three refuges. I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dharma, I take refuge in Sangha. And indeed, I do. And right there is a serious problem. The problem of I. Because I think what we've come here to learn and to try to remember is that the precepts are actually doing us. We're not doing them. And they are running to meet us. And they're also running to test us in each and every moment.

[10:57]

To meet us and them. Are we going to kill them? Light them? Steal from them? What are we going to do when we meet? Sometimes they come like a rain-swollen river. Sometimes they come like a broken toe or a sprained ankle or a cup of poisoned tea. Giver, receiver, and gift. All arising together. And for real. But at the same time, not so much. Which is why we chant these words almost every day, self-receiving, self-employing samadhi. One word, self-receiving, self-employing, arising together at the same time. How you need it is who you are. Right now, each month.

[12:00]

So these words, we warm them up in our own bodies. Words are warm air. And we send it back out to where it came, that warm air. to the unborn nature of all being. The Buddha, the awakened one, is the first of the three treasures, and he gave us these words as a gift, the dharmic treasure, and to us, the sangha treasure, giver, receiver, and gift, Buddha Dharma Sangha. From the first time you meet a master without engaging in incense offering, bowing, chanting Buddha's name, repentance, or reading scriptures, you should just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop away body and mind. So that's our script. So what does it mean?

[13:03]

Bodhisattva players? We can say the words, but do we know what they mean? What do they mean to us inside our body? You're the player. It means to drop the act again and again. Which reminded me of Pinocchio, that little wooden boy, little wooden toy, when he finally remembers what it means to love the other, you know, his maker. Dependent core rising, ultimate truth, ultimate reality, our maker. And what it means to turn toward the light of this beautiful world, that conventionalship, what's been made, and to, you know, be in this world with gratitude and wonder, which it deserves, doesn't it?

[14:05]

I mean, it does. And then by magic, truly by magic, the boy, the wooden toy, turns into a real boy, a real girl, just like that. a real Buddha. So one of the ways that I have learned to understand Zen practice and Zazen in particular, as my teacher often says, is that it's a ritual, a celebration, an enactment of Buddha's embodied practice and teaching, which includes both picking up and dropping off body and mind, dropping our act, the act that we call ourself, myself. Me. Me and mine. But we can't drop our act before we've made our best effort to do it. To put it on. I mean really to do it. To show up as the person that we genuinely believe we are.

[15:08]

And in that way we can see for ourselves what's so and what's not so. And also for others to see and to support us in making that discernment. What if this is authentic? How much of this do I need to carry on and how much of it can I let go? And eventually we begin to see in each other and in ourselves a maturing of our practice. Adult humans start to emerge from what was once a very small child. just starting out. I once asked Reb about 30 years ago where the women teachers were at Zen Center. I think I've always been a little feisty because, where are the teachers? And he said, why don't you look under your nose?

[16:12]

I never thought of that. And I just thought he was being sarcastic. Oh yeah, right. So I say that to you as well. Look under your nose. That's the only place you'll ever find the teacher for you. And what you get when you do that is more acutely and painfully aware of how persistently self-centered you are and how you see the world. That's what you'll see when you look under your nose. As one of the old masters famously said, even after all of these years, I've put my robe on with a flare. But we have no choice, right, except to start from where we are, right there in the middle of where we are, where we find ourselves, the way we see things.

[17:18]

We are the receivers. There is a gift coming to us. And it's coming to us from the awakened ones. Dependent core rising. And you don't get one without the other. You don't get the teaching without the student, without the teacher. They all come up together. Buddha Dharma Sangha. One word. And it's a great fortune for us that the the practices themselves are medicine for self-centeredness. That's what they're designed to do, to help illuminate and also to help us release that unnecessary baggage that we carry around, which is the source of our misery. So these forms of the practice are not my forms, they're not mine, and they're not yours, and they weren't given to me by my parents or my culture. Nobody I ever knew did the form of Zen practice.

[18:21]

No one in my family. And yet at the same time, they're very, very old. You know, they're traditional. And they've been maintained for thousands of years by millions and millions of people who passed them along. So it doesn't really matter. The forms don't really care whether I like them or not. or whether I do my best to do them or not, or whether I even do them at all. They don't care. And they are empty. And they are a gift. And they are a gift of selflessness. Not my forms. Not my way. Give it to me for my use, but not for my use, my use, but or the use that I make in benefiting others. You're a tool.

[19:26]

And meanwhile, the Buddha, just like Geppetto, is waiting for us to remember who we really are and to come home. The wholehearted enactment of ancients and rituals imbues us with a potency that evokes both a selfless and a timeless quality as we perform them. You know, I really have that experience every day when I walk toward that altar, when I bow to my seat, or when I bow to each and every one of you. Selfless and timeless quality informs. Not quite the same at the coffee-tea area. It's nice. Not quite the same feeling. It's more like on time, in time. Personal. Informal. I've often appreciated studying tea ceremony for the distinction between those two things.

[20:26]

Like when I arrived, we're a little formal. We're chatting in the kitchen. How are you? What happened last week at the party? We're all kind of going along. And then we go in the tea room, and it's like we're a whole different person there. There's formality. And it's still very kind and polite and thoughtful, but within the structure of the forms. It's exquisite. Beauty, actually. So the way that this ritual is taken into our bodies as practices has been passed down for 2,000 years in an unbroken line by the Buddha ancestors. And that's the Zen story. Warm hand to warm hand. From the Buddha to us. And yet... None of those practices have ever or will ever make a Buddha out of a human being. Shohaku Ogimura said to us about himself, I will always be five skandhas, a deluded human being.

[21:38]

But my practice is Buddha. When I practice like Buddha, wholeheartedly, fully engaging body and mind, The practice and the deluded person are one thing right now. If you wear Buddha's clothes, chant Buddha's words, and act as Buddha acted, then you are simply Buddha. Roshi also said, I cannot know whether I am doing wholehearted practice or not. Evaluation is not wholehearted practice. Whether you're evaluating yourself or someone else, practicing Buddha's practice is letting go of such thoughts. I think some of you know about the professor from UC Berkeley, Bob Scharf, who's been coming to Greenwald, giving us these wonderful seminars. I mentioned it as well during the practice period.

[22:44]

And we've got another one coming up. We've got to get back on it. We're excited about it. We're going to talk about the akara, which you can Google when you get back in the real world. A-C-A-R-A. Has to do with whether or not we ever really see the color blue. Direct experience. A very important and esoteric point in Buddhism that I'm eager to hear more about. Um... So he said that the sutras that we chant in the morning, he did also a number of articles on Zen ritual. He's written quite a lot of wonderful stuff. Being a practitioner himself, he embodies his scholarship with a lot of genuine regard for the practice. He said that the sutras that we recite in the morning, in particular those which are Japanese transcriptions of classical Chinese and Sanskrit, such as the Makohanya Harimita Shinryo, are basically meaningless to anyone who is not a language specialist.

[23:49]

And because the words are intoned in a manner quite different from everyday speech or song, there's a sacredness or otherworldliness that arises from these chants. Also reminding me of Gregorian chants and Indian ragas. There's a sacredness that arises from this spiritual music, the way it's done. And when we do it, When we do it in that wholehearted way, where there's no person chanting, but there's all of us, it is quite wonderful. Unfortunately, it comes to an end. We can do it again the next time, the next day. So along with chanting, there are a number of other symbolic acts that we perform, we all perform together, which are basically consecration. Consecration means to intensely make sacred, make something sacred by how you treat it. So this is a role that's been played by priests throughout human history, making, consecrating objects, wafers.

[25:03]

And when I was a Christian child, they consecrated the wine, turning it to the blood of God and of Christ. And the wafer was the body of Christ. And they said that, and you believed it. I mean, I thought I was drinking the blood of Christ. Very potent. I probably did. That's what I thought. So in that priests have played this role, I wanted to reemphasize this word play. They play a role. They enact, act, enact. A role, consecrating. I think it's important we remember that we're enacting. I'm not Buddha. My act is Buddha. And what fun to be Buddha by acting as Buddha. There's no other way. So each of these symbolic acts, such as offering fragrance,

[26:09]

bowing, our style of dress, our style of movement, distinguishes the actor, that's each of us, who's consecrating through this practice from our ordinary daily life, the way we behave at other times, our usual way. Although over time it may be, as I've noticed with the ladies who practice tea, after a while they just act the same way in whatever they're doing. They're the same in the kitchen as they are in the tea room. Very natural, very easy. Most of them have gotten very old, you know, making that distinction less and less. Clear. I once said to my tea teacher, watching this, there was a 95-year-old making tea. It was just fabulous, you know. She just sat there making tea, chatting, making tea. I said, that's like watching my mom make coffee in the morning. Not in a million times. Absolutely beautiful.

[27:13]

No self-consciousness. Dr. Scherf then goes on to say that for many scholars the real work of ritual lies in its ability to mold not the mind so much as the body. Participation in the living ritual tradition reaches beyond the vagaries of the intellect to one's somatic being, meaning the body. Ritual habituation is indelibly inscribes the person with a set of perceptual orientations, emotions, and autonomic responses that are, in effect, precognitive. Like the baby. Before you think, before you're a thinking person, the unborn nature will be precognitive. So it's very early on in our development as a species that we created ritual to evoke a world of great mystery and also of invisible forces that we hoped we could influence by our prayers.

[28:17]

Please bring me. I saw some Navajo. There were 100 Navajo. No, actually, sorry. They were Hopi dancers dressed almost alike, although they each had some distinctive variation. either a feather on an arm or something. They'd been a little different, but mostly they looked alike. They had the same mask, the same clothing, and they were in a circle in the Pueblo. We were up on the roof watching, and they were dancing for rain. They'd been dancing for days. Slowly. And then they'd turn and go the other way. That was extraordinary. And two days later, it rained. It had to. So we do things like that here. We call on the Buddhas and ancestors. We appeal to Kanon. We bow to the Buddha and to the principle of wisdom.

[29:20]

As soon as he drops that sword. We offer food and sweet tea. to long-deceased ancestors, to Manabajakuti, to Dogerun, to Suzukiwoshi. These are the same things humans have always done, consecrating through our bodies and our ritual. So these actions, as we as modern humans may have already come to suspect, are not really done to alter the natural world. Even though I like believing they made it rain, I don't know what the weather forecast was for that week, nor that they did either. So we're kind of a mixture. We love to believe in the magic of the world and of our ability to influence the world. And then we're also a little skeptical about that, scientifically minded.

[30:23]

But what ritual does do for us is to alter our cognitive and emotional relationship to the world It changes us. We're changed. And there grows inside of us a greater capacity for compassion and for wisdom. And that is what will change the world. Transforming beings, human beings, from greed, hate and delusion to kindness, compassion and wisdom. And that's actually the only hope we have. Shila Samadhi Rajneva. That's all we've got to offer. And our actual endowment that we're hoping to send forth into the world is a swarm of bodhisattvas who are really eager to be helpful and who now have some skills that they can offer. You can help. You can do things. You can cook and do dishes and sweep. You have all kinds of skills now.

[31:25]

to serve and to honor and to deeply care for others. This is our practice. I think I said this before in the practice period, this exchange between myself and my teacher. When I went to him, I'm very distressed about the world, about the wars and the toxins that are destroying our atmosphere, our biosphere, as we speak. as we contribute every day in many ways, which in turn are devaluing life itself. So while holding on to my Ogesa, I said to Reb, is this going to save the world? How will this save the world? And he said to me, kindly, maybe it will save it from you. So if you wear Buddha's clothes and chant Buddha's words and act as Buddha acted then you are simply Buddha whether you know it or not.

[32:38]

Do you have any comments or questions? Answers? Last day I'm sorry, who is it? So, I was speaking about not taking life and how there is, and maybe with all of the great precepts, there seems to be these unclear places. So, not taking life, you know, you mentioned, you know, we need to eat. We need shelter and clothing and things that result in taking life.

[33:44]

And, you know, similarly, we have, like, that's why we have laws around self-defense. someone might kill out of self-defense and we think that that is outside of Buddhist teaching we think that that's illegal that's appropriate can be so I'm wondering you know there seems to be a difference between like needless taking up life and need and I'm wondering if you can What do you think? Well, I think what you just said, there's a difference between needlessly taking life and life that we need to take if we're going to live. And self-defense is kind of one of those. A lot of times these examples depend on the example.

[34:47]

Like what's happening. They got you by the throat with the knife and you just basically go like that and break their nose and it goes into their brain and they die. Like that. Or, you know, there's a law now called standard ground, which is shocking to me, because that is called a jury duty for a young man, strong young man, who had stood his ground against his mother, who was mentally ill, who was attacking him. And he basically kind of beat her up. And he was going to be arguing his defense, which was a legal defense, that he stood his ground and that you're allowed to do that now. If someone's attacking you, you do not have to run away, even if you can. You could easily escape from her. So we're kind of up in the alley on what is allowed in terms of self-defense. And it should be scaring all of us how far this has gone and how far it continues to go. The numbers of weapons individuals have and are permitted to carry on their bodies visibly.

[35:55]

Anyway, I don't want to get into that one because it doesn't stop. It's so bad. But that's the problem, right? There are these lines that then become a completely different thing. Yeah, right. I guess we just hope that both are true. Well, they are both true. I wish they were all one true, that people didn't hurt each other. But they do. And all these ways that you know and I know. And so what do we do? The question really is, what are you going to do? Are you going to hold your ground when you could run away? I like what that Tibetan mama said. When the Chinese invaded, what did you do? He said, I was afraid. He said, well, what did you do? He said, I ran. So, you know, we can run away. It's not dishonorable. Goodbye, kitchen.

[37:01]

Thank you so much. I think we get to thank them today, don't we? Oh, good. Formally. Sam. We're so happy that the fact that we've been closing the gap between them Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good question. I think that was, you know, one reason Dogen wrote that, you know, classical about kitchen practice, which is a beautiful thing, because it really does create this saying that, feeling that you're doing consecrated work in the kitchen just as you are here.

[38:04]

And maybe we need one for the coffee tea area. You know, a fascicle. I mean, the Shingi is kind of like that. It's sort of our effort to define all of our life here as a consecrated space. And maybe it is up to each person to embody that as best they can. Like the old lady, like the old tea ladies, you know. They're not behaving so differently inside and outside the tea room. And I think it takes a while to drop the act. Because part of what's going on there is our acts, right? We're people and we want to be attractive or whatever it is. It goes on here a lot. You know, people are really interested in each other and looking good and being light and you're defending themselves. Whatever it is, there's a lot of social movement that's happening when we're being in formal spaces. So here you bow to everyone the same way. You know, you serve everyone the same way.

[39:05]

We're not making those distinctions. So I think that's the lesson for us to notice the difference in our own behavior as we shift where we are in play. Distinctions? I mean differences? Like of that? Enactment? No? Something like this. It keeps us severed. The wrong show of saying it's something to talk about. Anybody remember? Word with an E? Huh? E? E? Is that what you said? The Acura? No. That's an A. I'll find it. When we talk, I'll tell you.

[40:06]

I'll find it. I don't remember. What was it like? I mean, the word had something to do with... Yeah. Yeah. He remembered his love for the other? That's kind of what did it. He remembered. He really loved it. the other more than himself. He loved his maker, his father, the one who made him. Self-interest is what's keeping us separate. It's what's making us act weird. Self-centeredness. That's our act. So when we drop the act and we actually engage with the other as the maker, as the beloved, And that sense of separation, by definition, is dropped away.

[41:09]

That's why we like to love. It kind of feels like we're not separate. Then we get grabby, you know? It's hard to love without attaching. I think you know a lot about disarming. You want to disarm a magistrate. the sword or replace it with something. Manjushri on the lion. There's a manjushri on the lion that's very powerful. I think that's pretty talented too, the rider on the lion. And I was thinking about the sword, it also, you know, maybe it could be a hori-hori for weeding, you know, weeding up delusions or basically all of our tools are substitutes for claws and teeth, but the lion, you know, there's There's this inherent violence to life and to sustaining life.

[42:10]

Choosing who dies and who doesn't. Do you die? Do I die? Does the cat die? You know? Then who chooses? And who chooses? You know, you bring up a lot of times that you have a belt for a sword that you don't wear on your robes. And you also wear it. And I wear it. to disarm myself first. So I guess the question for me is around when I want to disarm somebody else who's asking violently to me without being violent myself. You know, you say run, but or you say, you know, like the The guy that was faced with the samurai that was saying he was going to cut it down and he was like, well, I'm the only one that can kill me. No, he said, don't you know I'm the one. The samurai says, don't you know I can kill you?

[43:13]

With the sword. And the monk says, don't you know I'm the one who can be killed? I'm giving myself to you. Go ahead. You may kill me. You may kill me. Terrible person who's so angry and hurt. And that person, sometimes what happens with that person is that they fall to the ground weeping. Which is what the samurai did. He fell to the ground, threw away his sword and bowed. That is a risk. It's a risk. It's not our most powerful disarming that we have at our disposal. It's to say, hey. I give. Yeah. I give. I give. I give. I give you my peaceful response to your anger. And you may hurt me. It may happen. I've seen it happen.

[44:14]

It's very powerful. I saw a monk get Tassajara, slap another monk very hard. And that monk just stood there looking. So he slapped him again. And he just stood there looking. And the one who did the slapping burst into tears, fell to the ground, sobbing. Amazing. It happens. Tara? What's the difference between that peaceful idea and submission? Submission? What do you think? I'm not sure. Yeah. Submissive is more like maybe not self-respecting. I give. I don't feel like that's not self-respect. I'm not giving up my strength. I'm not giving up my personal authority.

[45:16]

I'm just saying I give to this situation here. All I've got. I'm giving all I've got to this situation. My best shot. I submit? Ah, it feels like that. That word seems like that to me. Like, okay, whatever you want, you know, don't hurt me. You can have whatever you want from me. I don't like that idea. No, you don't. So, you stay upright. Use the practice, the body of Buddha to meet whatever's coming. That's what he did. That's our story. He used his body, upright body, to meet what came. And somehow that was like a magic trick. And it worked. And it didn't kill him. It didn't get him off his seat. And he stood up on his own accord when he was ready. And people respected that way of behaving. They still do. We still do.

[46:17]

precepts and meditation. I keep coming back to this idea that I find comforting, actually, that maybe it's just nice not to kill people, you know, not more complicated than that. Maybe it's just a nice thing to do to not steal. Maybe it's just a nice thing to do to sit here quietly with my friends. It's not what I need to add. And I wonder if in that, question is, am I possibly avoiding intricate complexities, or is there a both-hand where everything you're saying we're saying about precepts and meditation is true, and also it's just kind of a nice way to spend time. I think if you're nice, that's really already taken care of. It's when you're not being nice.

[47:35]

that the precepts are called for. When you're not being patient, that the practice of patience is offered. When you're feeling murderous in a murderous rate, when not killing is the detainment. When you want to take something from somebody else. You see, those impulses to violate the precepts is where they come from. And they are human impulses, as we know. From reading the newspapers every day, that's all we're kind of doing as a species. Breaking precepts. And there's, you know, there is a candidate for the president of the United States who is not nice, incredibly not nice, including violent behavior and extorting other people to violence. I don't know that it's going to be enough for us to just count on that, you know, as a hopeful thing that just want to be nice one of these days. Stop being like that, you know. I'm not quite sure how we get that message out. If we just leave it to... nice people to just go ahead.

[48:40]

I'm not worried about people at all. I'm not. Minor league. I don't care. Very little index. I told you. But how you behave is very kind. And I kept on that. And so far, you've proven me right. You're welcome. Thank you. And I mean, for myself, when these, you know, really just terrible thoughts arise and the impulse arises too, there is a certain sense in which I do feel like, I don't know, like just saying that it's not a nice way to spend your time works for me. I don't know. Okay, well, good. It's good enough. If you got a way, take it. That works for you.

[49:42]

That's, you know, bingo. Anyone who finds a way that works for them, that really results in behavior that is not harming others, is perfect. And so the self-doubt that arises afterwards that maybe I'm just kind of copying out of the complexities. Maybe. keep looking at it we've got probably hopefully a lot of time to do that coming up many years my son so I really appreciate that story of the kindness of the monk and the samurai dropping it and it seemed as though there's this opposite flavor of like yes there's people that want to run the world, in this country, that don't do that. And we can't just sit there and be kind. Because it's not having an effect.

[50:48]

Yeah. It's a problem. I keep wondering about that. What should we be doing right now? What did the Catholics do in Germany? At the beginning of that story, it said that the samurai came to see the monk. He had to ask him, to tell him, teach him about the difference between birth and death. Life and death. He's about to go out. You know, he's got the sword. This is Mushido. The way of the sword. Goes to his Zen master. Teach me not to be afraid of dying, teacher. And the teacher says, I'm not going to teach you, you're too stupid. And the monk pulls his sword, right? How do you knock the guy? Yeah, see, it's hard to distinguish. The samurai pulls the sword. Don't you know I'm the one who can kill you? And that's what the monk says. Don't you know I'm the one who can be killed? And then he drops his sword. It becomes a monk.

[51:50]

That would get two monks. So what do we do when Donald Trump doesn't want to come to the monastery? I don't know. I don't know. My daughter suggested that for... What was her name, the actress who was having so much trouble for a while there? Famous one. She held all of them like this. Really? Yes, Lord. Not Lohan, what's her name? Lohan, what's her name? Yeah, Sabrina said, maybe she should go to Tassa R into practice. I said, honey, that's so nice. Why don't you email it? Facebook her. We'll have a movie star practice. They'll all be here. That'd be so sweet. Okay. All right. Well, thank you again. It's almost done. We'll get up tomorrow or later. Can you believe it? I'd hardly wait.

[52:51]

Why the last day is so hard. Extra 40 hours. Minutes of sleep. Seeming like 40 hours. All right. All right. Thank you so much.

[53:07]

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