was thinking of, but the last time, I'm pretty sure the last time I gave a talk here, I sang... I remember you You're the one who made my dreams come true A few moments ago I remember you. You're the one who said I love you too. I do. Didn't you know? I remember too a distant bell and stars that fell like rain out of the blue. When my life is through and the angels ask me to recall the thrill of them all, well, I shall tell them I remember you.

[01:17]

I'm pretty sure that's the one I did last time. So another dimension of these stories is we remember them. Is there anything anybody wants to bring up? Yes, what is your name? Alessia. Do you want to come up here? I don't remember you. You're the one I met for the first time today. You are, didn't you know? Yeah, and maybe we should turn it on. Alicia. Olesha. Olesha. Is it Russian?

[02:22]

I'll tell you the story. You'll tell me a story. Okay. Yes, you will. The story of Bashar Tov is also my story. And I did some research recently about my heritage, which is Ukrainian, from Western Ukraine. And recently... Does Western Ukraine touch Poland? They're fluid. The borders change rapidly. Back and forth. Back and forth. So... with the recent turmoil in Ukraine and Russia, I was doing some research about my family that fled during World War II to find out really about the neo-Nazis and the anti-Semites that are from my parents' world, because I never had heard about it. So I did some research and found out that one of my family members was in the German army against the Russian forces because Stalin had,

[03:29]

sent my grandparents to the gulag where they died. So they, of course, were not very pro-communist Russian. He was captured at the end of World War II, and the POW in his unit was investigated for any kind of crimes. And they were exonerated that they were strictly a Ukrainian force, part of the German army fighting against the Russians, not to do that some dirty work that was at the atrocities that happened in that area so I was doing this research on that I looked up where my parents are from it's called city stickin which is on the Dniester River and it's very cranes were home the same county that you view is in where that kinda the strong nationalist Ukrainian feel is and its now Ukrainian but it has been part of Poland Ten kilometers from my parents' village is Tov, which Bashar Tov is from.

[04:36]

He is from Ukraine, from near my parents' village. Wow. Amazing. Anything else you'd like to bring up today? Yes, touch come up. My name is Sarah. I remember you. I was thinking about listening to stories and finding yourself in the story that you're listening to. And one of the things that I noticed was that the way I listen to the story, there are some gaps or some kind of why questions.

[05:40]

Like, why did they do that? So in the story about the Baal Shem Tov that you told, I noticed a question about why the student would just do what his teacher had asked him to do. And I noticed a question about why he chose to go to tell the story for someone with money. Because I felt like you implied that that was different than what he'd been doing before. Yeah, that's the way I read it. He was just traveling around telling the stories, but he was going to quit. He thought he'd done it enough. Yeah, and then something motivated him. And the money made him kind of like, well, maybe I'll do a little bit more. For the money, not for the same reason he'd been doing it before, maybe. Well, just the money encouraged him to not retire early.

[06:41]

But there's a gap there. There's a question there. The way I heard the story was the money was part of the reason he decided to go to Italy on his way home. It was kind of a detour. Yeah. We don't know how he'd been living on the road, and we don't know why he wanted the money. And we don't know why he forgot his stories in the face of telling it for someone with money. Well, we don't know why, but... The way the story went was that he had not told that story before. He had never told that story before. But the night before, the first encounter with the guy, he couldn't think of any of the stories that he knew? He couldn't think of any of the stories that he had been telling. He had been telling the stories, you know, the great stories of his teacher. He didn't think of this as a great story. Right, but he couldn't think of any of the stories that he'd been telling. I thought that was an interesting moment. Yeah, that somehow the story he needed to tell, he knew. He didn't know which one it was or what it was.

[07:42]

All the other ones had to be blocked out. Oh, I see. So something was blocking out his usual repertoire. Right. He had this usual stick he did, right? Yeah. And he couldn't do his usual thing. And none of the stuff he usually did would have been appropriate. He could have told the man those other stories, but the other stories were not about that man. Only that one was about the man. And I would say, you might say, the whole trip was for him to go to this man. That was the whole point of this long pilgrimage he went on, was to save this man. So he told these stories, but those stories, they're good stories, but the real story he had to tell was the story of this man. And he would have probably told the other stories, which he had been telling, but the force, the spiritual force of saving this man obliterated his usual stories now that he was really coming to do the job he was really supposed to do.

[08:50]

That's part of the amazing thing about it. And there's many Zen stories like that where the The student cannot do what they're supposed to do. And then they feel really frustrated. And then they get upset or whatever. And then they do what they're actually, what's really the appropriate thing, after they try all this other stuff. So he actually had to travel all that time until he heard about, if he had heard about this man when he started his tour, then he wouldn't have to do the rest of the tour. Yeah, so that's a very interesting part of the story, is that all the stories they were telling, which were good stories, but those stories, all the other disciples were telling. That's another part of this thing. All the other stories were the stories the other disciples could tell, too. There's only one story that only he could tell, and he hadn't told that one.

[09:52]

So he told his story, which he hadn't told, and which he didn't think was a very good story. which was the other man's story. And all the other stories were not his. They were the stories of the great teacher. So thank you for pointing that out. That's part of the diamond of the self, is that the story that was about him that wasn't very good was the story about the other man, which was liberating. Which is so great, and I was actually making a different point, which is just about how we connect stories to or at least me, how I listen, because I could interpret all of that in another way, which would be my story about the story. You know, that where you... So one of the things that came up in the story for me personally was my relationship with money and inspiration.

[10:56]

And so I started to kind of... It resonated in a certain way for me that it might not for somebody else and so just when when the story gets told there's the things that are said and then there are the gaps that are not filled in because you can't possibly fill in every detail and it's in the gaps that we start to interpret the story or i do and i um And that's where I find myself in the story on one level. I just wanted to make that point. Does that make sense? Yeah. Thank you, Rep. Thank you, Sarah. You remind me of a woman I used to know whose name was also Sarah. She was younger than you.

[11:58]

You remember her too? Yeah. She's the one who made your dreams come true a few moments ago. Anything else? Yes, Elizabeth. I have a story that I don't come up and speak unless I've been truly following the conversation. And so I'm not following that story right now because I was also distracted during the talk because I thought I might come up and make an announcement about ride sharing. But I had heard a version of that story. The story about ride sharing distracted you? Yes, it did. The story about my coming up to do public speaking distracted me.

[13:12]

That story is the one that distracted me. And then I thought, I will just feel so much better for the rest of my life if I get up and speak today. So I came up the way I am rather than the way I thought I ought to be to come up front. And I think from, because I didn't hear, follow all the details, because as I said, my mind would wander. But I wanted to say my story about the story is that I really, and I feel like I've tested it in my life, and I really do feel this is true, is that we can sense what is the right story to tell. And so that the traveling rabbi, you know, in his traveling and telling stories got good, adhering and listening to his intuition about which story would be the story that the listening is ready for and so when he met this man this man was an extraordinary presence and he just none of his stories would come to him and so that it just seems totally humanly what is really happens

[14:20]

is that when he was present to himself and to that man, that this was the story that both of them needed. And I believe that. That is what I believe with my body and mind so far in this life. And I needed to say that and always keep testing it and checking it. But I do think that's how the world works. And I find that comforting to my roots, I think, to have that view of the world still alive. that we really can meet that way. It's possible. And before he met the wealthy former bishop, that story really wasn't particularly relevant to anybody else here. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not very interesting to anybody but him. Because before you hear the punchline, it's kind of like, well, what happened in the room? He didn't know. The young man didn't understand why the bishop came in there.

[15:23]

And then they were in the room together and went out. You didn't know, right? What happened there? Did you? It's intense, yeah. It was an intense story, but it didn't... Yeah, but the circle wasn't completed. So it's kind of like, well... So when he told... the rich man, the rich man explained the rest of what happened in the room. And the story goes round. And you just explained to me, because that's the part I tuned out. That's the part I missed, that step. So you just let me know that's the part of the story that I missed, is that he went in the room and came out and that the traveling rabbi didn't know. Yeah. The teacher didn't say, I just told this bishop to retire and to leave town and give back all the wealth that he had inappropriately acquired. He didn't tell the boy that. The boy found out from the wealthy man later, the rest of the story, and so did I and you.

[16:32]

Well, it had been quite a long time, and also he wasn't wearing his ecclesiastical outfit, and he was speaking Italian, etc., Maybe he never looked at his face. It could have been 10 years later. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else this morning, this afternoon? Yes. Yes. My name's Leon. Leon? Yeah. Hey, Leon. Hey, bud. A friend suggested I come talk to you, a sort of acquaintance along the way.

[17:40]

So I thought I should, though I don't have like... Part of me wants to have something very clear and insightful to ask or to say. But I suppose anything will do. Anything you tell me about yourself will be appropriate. Yeah. Some part of me has had difficulty trusting people and I suppose myself lately. difficulty being open to intimacy. It's been a long time since I've had that openness to intimacy and to touch and things. And when I was younger, I did a lot. I was in very open communities, very loving communities, doing a lot of work with youth and people living in the woods.

[18:48]

Anyway, not so important. But lately, though I have many people that I love very dearly, there's something that hasn't been satisfying me in my friendships, in my work. And I feel I've been in a bit of a dark place where I left a period of my life where I felt it was really important to do meaningful work. And I tried my best to do that and was frustrated to some degree and also felt a need for a change. So I did. I changed. I left some things behind. And now I do very sort of menial work and do my best to be present and enjoy it and be there with people but... and to smile and to give what I can. I feel that something... some wounds that have happened over the years have really affected my ability to trust and be open with people and has affected my patience in a way too, such that

[19:53]

I just want to be here. What did you say? Patience and want to be here? How do those two relate? You said something about patience? Yeah. What about it? I guess I still try to do some things that I did when I was young. I'd go out with friends and drink or dance or what have you. I was out the other night and a friend came by, invited me to come out after work, came by work, invited me to come by after work, and met a bunch of her friends. And there's a lot of sort of people texting on their phones, you know, where's the next thing, what are we going to do, where are we going to go? And it's very hard to just sort of have conversations. So somebody mentioned going off to a cafe. I said, well, I'll go. I'll meet you there. If you show up. They didn't show up. Anyway, so they did. They came a few minutes after me. And it was sort of the same thing, sort of this posing. Part of me wants to be recognized by people.

[20:57]

Part of me is like, oh, there's a beautiful word here. That'd be nice to connect with one of them. And part of me was very tired. I just didn't really feel connected to the situation or the people, but there was lovely music, so I went in and just started dancing, and then they all followed me in and started dancing as well. And for the first time in the night, some people started to show me some warmth, but I felt almost like they were trying to suck that spontaneity out of me. That like, well, I'm just going to dance. I'm just going to be here and be here however I can. Dancing, I can dance. Conversation isn't happening. Feeling a heartfelt connection with somebody isn't happening. Feeling playful with somebody isn't happening. So I'm just going to dance. And when they responded to that, I felt like they wanted something from me. And that really frightened me. Frightened me to be in a situation where maybe I'd be opening myself up

[21:58]

just so that somebody could take from me. I don't know what really I have to lose. I've lost a lot of material things and people and that sort of thing in my life and relationships and life goes on and other things very lovely happen and continue to happen. Life keeps on happening. It's quite wonderful. But I've had that reaction where I find myself meeting people and wanting to see who they are. And then anything that they show me, really, I start to judge and wonder, are they being honest with me? What do they really want? How can I... I guess I have a hard time reading people. You're showing yourself quite well. And I feel like now maybe I should say something. When you said, you told the story and then you said, I think you started at the beginning, you said about trusting people.

[23:01]

I don't know if actually I would encourage you to trust people the way they appear to you. but maybe you could trust a way of practicing with people the way they appear to you. So if you are practicing friendliness, it might be that someone might see you and they might actually think in their mind, I want to get something from Leon. Leon's got something. I want to get it from him. And if you ask them, are you trying to get something from them, they actually might say, yes, I am. I see you. You seem to be alive. And I want to get some of that life. They might say that to you. So in that case, you might say, well, I can't trust this person because they're trying to get something from me.

[24:12]

And I might say, well, yeah, that's kind of right not to trust this person, but what can you trust? You can trust a way of being with your story about this relationship. that this is your story, that they're trying to get something. And how do you relate to the story? They're trying to get something. What way do you trust to be with that story? Maybe they say, yes, I am. How can you be with that story? What's the way you want to be with that story? I suppose I want to give them something.

[25:19]

I do, but... And? But? I don't really want to give them anything. What I want to give them... I don't know how to give. If I give what I feel like I have to give, this will diminish me. What I feel like they're asking for is something that will diminish me. It will take away from what I have. We often feel... What we both want is something that can't be taken away. What we want is something that can't be taken away. What we want is to realize friendship. We want to realize generosity, where nothing can be taken away, really, and nothing can be gotten.

[26:24]

You receive without getting anything. Like yesterday, when I was coming down to give a talk here yesterday, my attendant said, Do you have anything? Because the Japanese word for attendant is jisha, which means carrying person. So if I was going to bring a book, she would carry it. She said, do you have anything? And I said, I don't have anything. I said, I have nothing. And then this morning we talked about that again. I didn't have anything. And then she said something like, I guess you don't need me. I said, I need you, but I don't have you. I need you, but I don't have you. So I don't have you, but I need you. You don't have me, but I need me. And nobody can take that away. Nobody can take away that we need each other. But anybody can take away that we have each other, because we don't have each other.

[27:31]

I don't have you, and you cannot have me, but I'm giving myself to you all the time, and I don't know how to give myself. The way I'm actually giving, I can't interfere with. I can try, but I'll be unsuccessful at preventing my giving. If I try to prevent myself from giving, that's what I give. If I'm afraid you're going to get something from me, that's what I give. I give my fear. What we really want is that kind of friendship. That's really what it's about. And that includes paying attention to the story that's going on, like, I think this person's trying to get something from me. And they agree or they don't. But that's my story. But that story is studying that story and learning that story is what will give us all what I want, will give us all we want is for us to be aware of our storytelling nature.

[28:34]

Like, again, I want to give something. They want to get something. Or I want to give something. They want to give something. Studying that story will help us realize the actuality of this giving. When we say that we want to give, that story is about reality. We do want to give. But then you added, I don't know how. The I don't know how is actually kind of like, yes, we want to do something that we don't know how to do. And yet we can learn this thing that we don't know how to do. And everybody will help us learn how to practice giving in a way that we don't know how to do it. But it's not exactly that we trust people. We trust actually our friendship with people. I trust friendship. And friendship will help us eventually understand who we are. Namely, understand that you are my story of me.

[29:40]

And I am your story of you. That's what I trust. But it's hard. We get disoriented, and we start thinking about them as though that's not a story about us. So you were doing fine talking about yourself, and then you flipped over to them. When you did it, I thought, you didn't really seem to know that you were talking about yourself at that point. But you were. That was your version of them. That was you as them. They also have a them of them and a you of them. But we get disoriented. We think this person that we're imagining is something other than our imagination. Then we're disoriented. And that happens. So be friendly to that. I got disoriented. That's what I trust. I trust this friendship. which neither one of us is in control of, but is our true relationship.

[30:49]

And if people are having a conversation, that's the story. If they're texting and not paying attention to you, that's the story. In both cases we can trust friendship with texters. And we can trust friendship with dancers. And we can trust friendship with vampires. Do we trust vampires? Do we trust texters? Do we trust grandchildren? Do we trust ourselves? I don't really trust my story. I trust being friendly to my story. I trust studying my story. And I trust studying my story of you. I have a story that you're a great young man, but I don't trust you or that story of you. But I do trust studying that story and learning about that story and seeing, when I study it, do I get distracted from realizing that I'm studying myself?

[32:01]

And then I say, I got distracted. I thought I was talking about you. Sorry. And you say, I forgive you. I know it's hard. Yeah. And then I'm back on track and we're back on track together. We're built to get distracted from our stories and think they're about somebody else. So we have to constantly admit it. and say, go back to work. That's what I trust. And I trust that that is what will develop this ungraspable thing called true friendship, which is all what Buddhism is about. It's this friendship which nobody's in control of, but it's really our relationship right now. It's really the way we are right now. but it's so amazingly rich that it transcends our imagination.

[33:03]

But we still practice kindness and compassion towards our imagination, and that opens us up to the inconceivable dimension of our friendship. And I don't say you have to hang out with texters or vampires. I'm just saying that when you do, that you're hanging out with your story. And that's an opportunity to study yourself. You can always do that because you're always there with your story. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for coming to visit me. To be continued. To be continued, I hope. Until we work it out. Which may take a while. What time is it? Twelve thirty-three. Twelve thirty-three. I was recently in Brooklyn, and every time I asked Eno what time it was, she said, eleven thirty-three.

[34:11]

Every day. It's going on for a while. Eleven thirty-three. And then one day I asked real early, and she said, eleven thirty-three. Anything else? At 12.34. A final song? Before the final song, I want to tell you a story. May I? So, I tell stories, right? Some of you hear them, and some of you remember them. So one day, I have a little folder which has paper in it, and the name of the folder is Stories. And I was going through my notes, talking about stories, and I came to this one piece of paper, and I

[35:18]

I started to read it, and it was a story about this guy who, I don't know, he took his daughter to softball practice or something, and while he was waiting to pick her up, he saw a garage sale, an estate sale, I think. So he went into the estate sale, and he was browsing through books, And he found this notebook. And it was a notebook of a child psychiatrist who he had gone to see when he was a child. And he read the man's notes on his meetings with him.

[36:32]

And in this story, which I was reading, he wrote out what the doctor had said about him when he was a young man. And as he started to, as I was reading the story, and this man was reading the story, the notes of the doctor, about what the young man was like in his meetings with the psychiatrist, I realized that the story that the doctor was telling was a story about me going to a child psychiatrist when I was eight years old. that what the psychiatrist said the boy said is what I said to my psychiatrist. And then I realized that this story had been given to me by somebody, you know, a writer, short story writer, that he had given me this story.

[37:38]

But I didn't read it when he gave it to me. But I found this story after he'd given it to me, a few years after he gave it to me. And what the story was, was his rendition of my story about going to see the psychiatrist. If he had given me the story right away and I had read it right away, I would have realized that he had written a story a day after I had told that story. But because it was years later, I was reading it like, what's this in here for? And as I read it, I found out it was about my sessions with Dr. Hansen. And basically, the sessions went like this. From my perspective as the patient, the sessions went like this. I'd go into Dr. Hansen's office and I would sit down and he'd say, is there anything you want to talk about?

[38:43]

And I would say, no. And then he'd say, do you want to build a model airplane? And I would say, yes. And we would build a model airplane, maybe more than one session. Do you want to continue on this model airplane? Yes. And we used to make sometimes out of wood with balsa and paper. And an eight-year-old and an adult doctor can make some pretty nice stuff. So it was very enjoyable to make these things with him. And at the end of the session, he would say, is there anything you want to talk about? And I would say, no. And I would travel all the way across Minneapolis by myself at eight years old to hang out with this guy. I really enjoyed being with Dr. Hansen, which was his name. And I used to go there, and we made all these great things together. We did all this very creative, enjoyable time together. Do you want to talk about anything?

[39:45]

No. Want to talk about anything? No. So I was reading the doctor's notes. So-and-so came in, and I asked him if he wanted to talk about anything, and he said no. And then we built these things together. And then at the end I asked him if he wanted to say anything and he said no. However, the writer who wrote this interpreted my psychological state in a way that I hadn't told in the story, which I accept. So thank you, descendant of Tov. I didn't know that I would have one of Baal Shem Tov's family associates coming to the talk when I told the story. Yeah. You didn't know that you would hear a story about your homeland right when you were researching it. How wonderful. So, I don't have you.

[40:47]

You don't have me, but we need each other. And how we need each other is how we are helping each other. And that's basically inconceivable and unstoppable and unthinkable. And, you know, it's happening and we tell stories about it. And some of the stories are really happy stories and some of the stories are unhappy. But if we practice friendship towards these stories, we will enter the reality of our relationship where we're helping each other all the time and where we don't have anything all the time. And that's actually our life, which is also called the Buddha way. So now you want a song, right, Rebecca? Oh, yeah. When I was in Brooklyn, I asked my other attendant, my Brooklyn attendant, I said, do you want to give me any feedback on my singing?

[41:57]

And she said, well, I generally like it. She said, there's one song that you sing I don't like. She didn't like the Louis Armstrong song. Huh? Yeah, she doesn't like that one. She doesn't like it. Anyway, she said, I like most of your other songs. Particularly, I like that one, that kind of bluesy one. And actually, she told me she liked that one. And that was the one I thought she didn't like. I asked her. for the feedback on my singing because one time I sang that song and I thought she didn't like it because she kind of looked very pained when I sang it. But turns out that's the one she really liked. My story was it was painful for her to hear and maybe it was. She said, but there's one in particular I like.

[43:02]

It's kind of bluesy and it goes kind of like boom, boom, something. I said, oh, yeah. Want to hear that one, Rebecca? Say it louder, please. So here's the song that I think she was referring to. I mean, the way I sing it. I say it goes like, this is the way I sing it. This is not the way anybody else sings it. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

[44:07]

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I can do what I want. I'm in complete control. That's what I tell myself. i got a mind of my own i'll be all right alone don't need anybody else gave myself a good talking to no more being a fool for you but then i see you and i remember how you make me want to surrender Boot away. You're taking myself away. Boot away. You're making me want to stay. Boot away. Boom, boom. Boom, boom, boom. Boom, boom. Boom, boom, boom.

[45:06]

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