Nikola, and Sarah, and Claire, any other new people? Well, welcome to the new people. And so, to warm up, to remember ongoing themes here. The first theme is the story of the Buddha walking along in a group. You could say, in his group, large group, he travels with a large group, and he points to the earth and says, this is a good place to build a sanctuary. And in his group, there's various divine beings, and the leader of the divine beings

[01:19]

takes a blade of grass, and puts the blade of grass in the earth, and says, the sanctuary is built. So as an ongoing practice, from now, and throughout countless lives, I aspire to take a blade of grass and put it in the earth to build a sanctuary, right here, moment by moment. Each moment, to build a new sanctuary. The Buddha told me this is a good place, and Indra, the leader of the divine beings, showed me how to do it. Take something fresh, and say, now, this is the sanctuary.

[02:19]

And for me, a sanctuary is a place where I return to work on what's most important in this life. And so we can talk about what's most important for each of our lives, and what's most important for my life is to do a practice which is beneficial to all beings, or to do a practice which is the benefit of all beings. To do a practice which is the communication of the mind of the great sage of India. And the mind of the great sage of India, it's a mind which is an intimate transmission.

[03:39]

The Chinese character, this expression, the mind of the great sage of India, is the first line of a Chinese poem written by one of our ancestors, a Chinese ancestor, and I believe the character for mind in this case is a character which also means heart. So the heart of the Buddha in India is an intimate transmission, an intimate entrustment. So that poem is often translated as, the mind of the great sage is intimately transmitted, which I agree, it is intimately transmitted, but the way it's intimately transmitted is by intimate transmission. So it's not something in addition to intimate transmission. Intimate transmission intimately transmits.

[04:48]

Does that make sense? Intimate transmission is the process of transmission. So the Buddha is the process, the mind or the heart of the Buddha is the process of intimate transmission, which I would like to devote my life to here in this sanctuary, wherever I am. So this intimate transmission, if you excuse the expression, is a holy communion, it is a communion among all beings. The Buddha, the Buddha mind, is the intimate communication, the intimate communion of all

[06:06]

beings. Now you could say it's the intimate communion of the Buddha with all beings, but when all beings are intimately in communion with each other, that is the Buddha. So the Buddha is the intimate communion of all beings, it is that reality. And if one, like me, wishes to give one's life to such a communion, which is also called our practice, our practice is this mind, our practice, like we sit upright or stand upright in this communion. I'm sitting now in this communion, and I wish to sit in this communion, and I wish for my

[07:06]

life to be this communion. And I feel that I'm wishing for what my life actually is right now. My life is my nature, my nature is my life. It's not like my life is doing my nature a favor, or my favor is doing my life a nature. My nature is that I am in an intimate conversation with all beings, that's my life, that's my nature, I'm already that way and so are you. Sometimes people call this our Buddha nature, our Buddha nature is that we are actually right now in an intimate conversation with all beings. So I just flashed in my mind that about six weeks ago, a little bit more than six weeks

[08:14]

ago, I gave my body to a surgeon and the surgeon's assistants, and they cut me open and they went inside my body, deeply into my body. They had an intimate conversation with me. They weren't necessarily saying my name, but they were talking to each other very intimately, and maybe they were even saying, now we're going to come into your body, now here we come. They went in there and they took body parts out, they took bones out, and they put other things in, and they pulled muscles, stretched them way out. They went into my body and had this really intimate conversation with me. And now I think, when a baby is in the mother's womb, she's having an intimate conversation

[09:22]

with her mother. I guess the baby is like giving waste products into her mother's bloodstream, is that right? No, I don't know what she's doing. Anyway, where do the baby's waste products go? The mother doesn't give the baby her waste products, the mother gives the baby the nutrition from her blood. They have a place where the mother's blood has interface with the baby's blood, right? The mother gives the baby all kinds of nutrition. Where do the baby's waste go? Out through the blood, out of the placenta into the mother's blood. So it goes out of the placenta, so the baby is giving her waste products into the mother's blood, so they're having this intimate conversation. Sometimes the mother maybe speaks English or German to her baby, but the baby can't speak English and German I don't think, but maybe they can, but they're definitely having an intimate conversation, right?

[10:23]

This is our nature, it's the mother and the baby's nature to have this conversation. It's totally, not extreme, it's normal, it's normal, it's not extreme. It's normal that it's like as intimate as intimate can get, and I just don't want to forget to talk to you about this. This is a baby and an interested caregiver, I'll talk to you about this later. I'll talk to you about it now. This is our nature, this is a picture of our nature. This is a picture of a face-to-face conversation. This is a picture of the mind of the sage of India, the great sage of India.

[11:33]

This is a picture of Buddha. You usually think, well, Buddha is having a face-to-face conversation with a student. Well, yes, but really the Buddha is not the Buddha over here meeting the student over there. The Buddha is the conversation between the Buddha and the person. So, our nature is this intimate communication, and the funny thing is, even though we're already involved in it, because it's our nature, we have to practice it, otherwise we don't get it. And when we start to practice it, we notice sometimes we'd rather do something else. Like when you start to have an intimate conversation with somebody, to practice your nature. You might think, well, actually I don't want to talk to this person, or whatever.

[12:44]

This is too hard. Like I just saw this, it's a picture of a family dinner, where you have like parents at the table with their children, and the children are looking at their electronic devices, and some of the parents are saying, could we have a face-to-face conversation? And the children don't want to look at the parents. Or I don't know if they don't want to. They don't want to practice their nature of having an intimate communion with their parents. They want to have intimate communion with their cell phone. But a face-to-face conversation, intimate conversation, is much more intense than cell phones will ever be with creatures like us.

[13:50]

The most intense meetings we have are the face-to-face meetings, from infancy all the way for our life, face-to-face. In order to realize our nature, which is the mind of Buddha, which is peace and freedom and justice, peace and freedom and justice is an intimate conversation. And it takes us being totally generous, totally careful, totally patient, totally diligent, completely calm, in order to open to our nature and have this face-to-face conversation. Face-to-face meeting with everything all day long.

[14:50]

All day long we are in a face-to-face conversation with everything. That's what we are. We are that conversation. And that's also why we're nothing at all, because we're just this conversation. We're nothing in addition to our conversation. It's not like there's me plus my conversation. My body is a conversation, just like my body was the conversation with the surgeons. My body wasn't like one thing and the conversation another. Their skillful interactions with me are not one thing and my body another. Yes, Justin?

[16:20]

Is the intimate communication of all beings the same as collective consciousness? He said, is the intimate communication between all beings the same as collective consciousness? No, but the intimate communication between all beings is connected to the collective unconscious. The intimate communication includes our conscious minds, but it's not just our conscious minds because our conscious minds are intimate communication with our unconscious minds. Part of the title of this book is Affect Recreation and the Origin of the Self. So the baby may not have what we ordinarily call self-consciousness when it's first born.

[17:25]

It's not clear that it does. Like, hi, I'm here and you're over there. It may not have that, but through this intimate conversation with somebody who is really interested in the baby, the baby gradually develops a sense of I'm here, each moment, I'm here in the world, and there's my mom who I own. She's my mom, I own her, and she doesn't belong to my brothers and sisters, she's mine. Like I told you, at a certain point I have this little granddaughter and I mentioned to her that her mother was my daughter, and she said, she's not your daughter, she's my mother. So at that point she had a self, I am here and I own this really cool lady, she's mine,

[18:42]

she's my slave. And I like her a lot, she's like the best possible slave. She'll do anything for me. And she looked at me quite a few times in the past, and when she looked at me she said, I see you. And I kind of got the idea that I was here from her. She was there, she thought she was there before she met me. And then after she met me, she who knew she was there taught me that I was me here. So now I'm here and she's there, and I'm suffering along with everybody else. So the intimate conversation includes me here in the world with you. I'm in this room with you. I've got a world that has you in it. I've got a world that has you in it. You might have a world that has me in it. But even if I'm not

[19:44]

in your world, you're still in your world. And that's consciousness, it's the world where you're there. And then there's a world, that's consciousness. And that world has, that consciousness has problems. For example, in that consciousness you could think that intimate conversations were optional with some people. Or even the people you'd like to have intimate conversations with, you might think, well maybe not today, I'm not in the mood. And you can be not in the mood, and that can be part of an intimate conversation. But you may not be up for practicing your nature, which is that you're in an intimate conversation with others. You may not be up for it. And if you're not up for it, then you're not going to realize it, even though

[20:51]

you not being up with it is an intimate conversation already. You can't get away from it. But if you try, you can succeed at suffering, etc. etc. means lots of different styles of suffering, due to not being willing to practice intimate, face-to-face conversation with the other, and with others, and the otherness of others. So, if you're not up for it, then you're not going to realize it. And this conversation between conscious beings can't be there with our collective unconscious, and also individual unconscious, and it can't be there with our

[21:52]

bodies. So the bodies, and the collective unconscious, and the individual unconscious, and all the bodies are in intimate communication. And based on all this, there are individual consciousnesses which are in intimate communication with other individual consciousnesses. So is my nature that my body is in intimate communication with your bodies? My unconscious is in intimate communication with your unconscious, cognitive processes. It's like you're watching my unconscious working with my body to work out whether I can walk or not now. You can watch my body and my unconscious cognitive processes figuring out whether I'm allowed to walk, with or without

[22:53]

a limp. But I'm also consciously conversing with this process. It's not under my conscious control, it's not under my body's control, it's not under your body's control, it's not under my unconscious control, it's the intimate conversation of all this. That's what's going on. And I'm trying to practice that. And I'm having a conversation with you now. And I'm trying for this to be intimate, so that I can be in accord with your nature and my nature, which is Buddha nature. And I'm trying to practice that. And I'm trying to... I'm listening to the conversation, and also I'm listening to... She's listening to the conversation. Could you hear that, Ted? Yes. Could you hear her say it?

[23:58]

Yes. I'm also listening to Buddha's nature. Could you just give me one second? Could you go get me that black bag in the closet? Could you go bring it to me, please? So you're listening to... I'm listening to the conversation, and Buddha's nature. And I tend to believe that Buddha's nature, which to me is peace, has no conversation. Did you say Buddha's nature is peace, and no conversation? You think that? Let's talk about that. And actually that's where I get the confusion about the conversation, that trying to be

[25:06]

your nature, no conversation. I'm trying to... Thank you so much for saying this. ...to bring it together, so I don't know how to... Yeah, well, it's coming together in conversation right now. This conversation is bringing the Buddha nature together into Buddha nature. Now, as you know, one of the names for our historical Buddha in India, the great sage of India, one of the names we use is Shakyamuni, which means the silent one. The silent one of the Shakya clan. So one of Buddha's names is the silent one. Because the Buddha lives in silence.

[26:15]

So thank you for reminding us that this conversation is going on in silence. So part of our nature is this conversation, and our nature is living in silence. So part of the practice of intimate, genuine conversation is to live in silence. So the conversation, which liberates us from suffering, the conversation is liberation from suffering. That conversation is going on in silence. So part of the practice is to sit in silence all day long. This is a good place to build a sanctuary for silence.

[27:28]

This. All day long. This. This. This. DMV is a good place to build a sanctuary to remember that you're in silence. And there's a conversation going on in silence. The Buddha is sitting in silence and stillness in conversation. Your nature is that you are sitting in stillness and you're in a deep conversation with all beings. And that is peace. And this conversation is anything that ever happens in our life, which includes war. If there's war, I aspire to remember to build a sanctuary in war, and remember stillness

[28:40]

and silence and genuine conversation in the middle of war. Whatever. Whatever is going on on this earth, the Buddha points to that place and says, let's build a sanctuary here. This is a good place. And the great disciple comes and says, okay, this is it. So I brought this book because I mentioned this book in a class the other night in Berkeley. So I got this book, which I'll probably never finish, because as you can see it's very big and some of it's kind of difficult, but I have read some of it. And particularly I read the part about the baby meeting face-to-face with the mother, or the major caregiver.

[29:43]

The author's name is Alan Shore. And I would be willing to let you look at this book. You can touch it and you can look at it and you can listen to it. It talks. If you open it up and read the words, you'll hear a voice. And it's a wonderful voice that tells you about this wonderful relationship between an adult person who has a self, who looks at a little baby and thinks the baby is really interesting, and the baby is so interesting that the adult's eyes dilate. And the baby looks at this person and sees these dilated eyes and thinks, gee, that's really cool. And the baby's eyes dilate. And then the caregiver goes, wow! And the baby goes, wow! And they get really, really happy together. And then the baby's nervous system goes, and all these kinds of things happen which need to happen.

[30:52]

And part of what the adult does who has a self is says, I've got a self and you've got a self and you're just like me and you're like the greatest thing that there is. And the baby kind of goes, okay, and you are too. And that's what it takes to ... something like that is necessary for us to develop our sense of self. And now that we're adults and we're here, I'm here in the world, you're here ... are you here in the world? We have somebody who's sort of here? He's sort of here? And now we have a chance to practice intimate conversation face-to-face and realize our nature, which has been going on the whole time, and now we're ready to start to practice it, because

[31:59]

without practicing it we don't fully understand it. And we practice it in stillness. And silence. And we practice all kinds of compassion in order to be here so we can meet somebody. I have to practice generosity with my body and my face so I can give you my face so you can give me your face. Of course we're already doing it, but if I don't do these practices I'm not going to be able to be fully here. And if I'm not trained in these practices of generosity and being careful and so on, I may kind of think I could be someplace else, which of course I know I can't, but I can still try. I can try to be someplace other than here. In other words, I can try to be not generous. I really am generous and

[33:04]

I really do generously give myself to be here and no place else, and I do that because everybody else puts me here generously, and yet I can kind of get distracted from that. So then I remember, oh, I should practice generosity. And then I do, and then I'm lining up with my nature. And then again, ethics and patience and diligence and tranquility. All those practices help me bring my face to the table for the meeting. And in that meeting, with the other, in my mind these things appear, which like, I don't know, I don't know how to put it, overwhelm my mind. So that my mind, my conscious mind can have a conversation with something

[34:13]

that completely overwhelms it. And I can have a conversation which is something totally beyond my comprehension that I can't get a hold of, and yet somehow I'm not afraid of. And I can learn from it. Because of the conversation, and because of giving my face and welcoming the other face, I can actually have a conversation with something which is beyond my thought. My thought can have a conversation with thoughts that transcend or exceed my capacity. I hate to say this, but there's a movie called The Arrivals, and so the star of the movie is somebody who could go meet something that's totally beyond and learn from that. We can

[35:19]

learn from something that's totally beyond our conscious mind. We can have a conversation with it, and it can overwhelm us or exceed our capacity without really shocking us. We can stay present and upright with something inconceivable, which is how we're all supporting each other and being supported by each other, which is going on. We also call this, in Zen we call it a koan, which is like reality made public. And we have these stories, but the overwhelming presence, the inconceivable presence of the story, which

[36:24]

is right there with the story. When people first look at these stories, they go, well, nothing happens, I don't get anything. The presence of the story, this immeasurable, unencompassable presence of the story, comes through having a conversation with something else, a conversation with the story, but also with another human. And then you can have a conversation with the other story, or the otherness of the story. You can have a conversation with the otherwise of everybody. Your nature, that we've been talking about, is otherwise, and you can have a conversation with my nature, which is also otherwise, which is your nature.

[37:28]

You can have a conversation with that. You can learn from it. I can learn from it. We are learning from it. Yes, Karen? You just did it. You just used language for the very purpose that you are interested in. Two-edged is language. Language is how we are lost in the conversation, and language

[38:30]

is how we are going to get free of being lost in the conversation. There is no way to be lost in conversations without language. You can't get lost without language. It's not possible. But with language, as you know, you can get lost in various ways. You can even get lost where you think you are not having a conversation. Actually, I'm saying, we are always having a conversation, we are always in a conversation, and with the friendly assistance of language, we can be lost a lot of the time. But we wouldn't be able to be without language. And in order to get rid of being lost, you need language. And getting rid of being lost is another form of being lost. Anybody who has gotten rid of being lost, I would say, you are really lost. But I just found you. I just found you who told me that you are

[39:34]

not lost, I got you. And I got you with language. And you might even be willing to admit, I got you. Yeah, you got me. You got me saying that I wasn't lost. Fabulous! And now you are right, I'm not lost anymore now that you found me. And we can work that a little bit more and then become free of lost and found. We have used language to get rid of being lost, to get where we are. And to become free of where we are, we must use language. And we are free of where we are. We already are free. Our nature is that we are already free. We are already in this conversation which is totally free. We are already in this intimate conversation with everybody and it cannot ever be imprisoned or confined or hindered.

[40:35]

There is no way to hinder it. It is unhinderable. It is the working of kind of a big thing called the earth, but the earth is the sun and it's the total working of the universe in each part of the universe. It's unhindered. And we can find peace with that. If we remember stillness and conversation. And if we are using language, if I'm using language in a way that's making you feel lost or going along with you feeling lost or me feeling lost, we can work with that. And we can work with the linguistic pattern called being lost in order to become liberated from the linguistic pattern, whatever it is, and open to our nature. Which is, all the while that we were having this story of being lost, we were in this intimate

[41:42]

communion with all beings. Our nature was there throughout. And the more thoroughly you engage with the language, I am lost, and there is no being lost without that being a word, there is no real being lost. There is just the talk about it. But that doesn't mean there is no talk about it. It doesn't mean that the talk isn't real. It's that there is real talk of being lost. I mean, there is really talk of being lost and that's what it is. And when you thoroughly engage in conversation with the story of being lost, you will realize that not lost. And that's another conversation. It's the conversation between being lost and not being lost. They're in conversation. So, I welcome you to bring your face. I'm welcoming your face. And you can bring your language

[42:54]

with you, and bring your stories with you. And we'll work with the stories, and we'll work with the stories in such a way that we're not going to try to change the story into another story, unless we do try to change the story into another story. But before we try to change any stories, we're going to just try to fully do the story we've got right now, and we'll realize that that story is not that story. That's how you work with the language, to become free of being lost or not lost. I'm okay with that, but even when you're feeling your language is hindered, that feeling of having hindered language is occurring in silence. There's no hindered language without silence. And if you fully realize hindered language, you realize not hindered language. And hindered

[44:05]

and not hindered are pivoting in silence. Another expression which came to my mind when Homa was talking, which I propose to you, is that you are always listening and speaking. Like just a moment ago, nobody in the room was talking, but a lot of people were listening. But you're always talking, too. And when I'm listening to you, when you're talking to me and I'm listening to you, I'm also speaking. And my speaking is, first and foremost, what you're saying. When you're still and listening,

[45:11]

you understand that everybody else is your speaking, everybody else's speaking is yours. Yes, Brett? How does the internal monologue of monkey mind, how does that work? Well, I guess you have no trouble understanding that that's speaking, right? Yes. If somebody said, hey, you've got a monkey mind that's speaking all the time, you'd say, yeah, right? Yes. But you also understand you're listening all the time. Yes. You do? Great. That's correct. So internally, every moment you're listening and speaking, it's like a self-licking ice cream cone. Yes. And also when you're talking to other people, it's the same. We're always in this

[46:15]

conversation, sort of so-called inside consciousness and between consciousnesses. And everything I... This is, again, difficult to understand. Everything I'm doing here today, from when I first arrived, was a display. I accept that, and I'm up for that. When I came up the stairs, I had a lot of witnesses. I said, can he walk up the stairs? And I said, yes, I can, watch. Look, mom, no cane. But you're using the handrail, yes. Anyway, all day long, you're making these gestures, you're talking, and when you're not talking, you're talking. And what you're doing is you're displaying yourself to other

[47:18]

consciousnesses. And you're calling them with your display. Like when I came up the stairs, I was calling to these people who were watching me. I was calling to them. I wasn't necessarily calling them to watch me, I already kind of saw they were already watching me, but I was calling to them, step-by-step, every step I'm calling to them. I'm calling to them, I'm calling to them, and they're listening to me, and they're responding to me. What am I calling for? I'm calling to them to assert. I'm asserting, I'm here to meet you. I'm calling to them to assert that I'm here to change places with you. And I'm calling them to join the assertion that they're here to change places with me. I'm here to realize that you're me,

[48:25]

you're here to realize that you're me. I'm here to realize that I'm you, and so I'm here to assert. Everything I do is calling as an assertion to assert that to you, and I'm calling you to assert that to me. We can say there's no you and me, and then we can also say there is you and me. They're pivoting on each other. They're pivoting on each other. They're reversible too. There is no you and me is reversible with there is you and me. If you bring it to a conversation level, you have a chance to become free of two and one. You want peace, right? You're into peace.

[49:31]

So we're talking about realizing your nature means realizing peace, and whatever you want to bring to the table, two, one, you get to bring it, and then we can have a conversation about it. And when you're fully responsible for the conversation, when you're doing your part and not asking me to do your part, and you're also holding me and calling me to be my part when we have this conversation, then we're free of one and two and three and four. I wouldn't say you can't have an idea. I'm not saying you can't have an idea, but you can understand that your idea doesn't make it. You can negate it, but before you go around

[50:45]

negating anything, love it. Love it to negation. Sometimes we say love it to death, but I would say love things to negation. Don't negate anything that you haven't wholeheartedly loved. Don't negate something to get rid of it, but if you love something wholeheartedly, you'll realize that it's not that something. That something, love it fully, you'll realize it's not something, which is a kind of negation. But you are not negating me. The people I'm having conversations with are not negating me, and if we get into you negating me, I haven't got to the fullness of the meeting yet. In the fullness of the meeting, there's no negation of me. But in the fullness of the conversation, without negating me, I become not me, which

[51:50]

I always was. I become you. That's realization, yeah. That's realization of the nature of negation. We can have no conversation, yeah. In conversation we can have no conversation. In stillness, where this conversation is going on, no conversation is totally welcome. Like here I am, hi guys, I'm Mr. Conversation, and I welcome the faces of no conversation, these beautiful no conversation faces. It's all welcome. The other is welcome, and particularly the face of the other. And

[52:51]

in that, the other overwhelms my thought, and there I am with thought that is overwhelmed, and I'm having a conversation in a state of overwhelmed, and I can learn. You can learn things when you're not overwhelmed, which you've already learned. But you can learn other things when your mind is overwhelmed by its own thoughts. Without really doing any disturbance to you. And that's why we need this conversation, to support us to have such amazing opening conversations. Because we need just regular faces to uphold our little body, so our body doesn't run away and do something silly. Like I can't stand this anymore, or whatever. Like I mentioned to you, after the operation where I allowed myself to be really intimate with all those people, I was born again, into

[53:55]

a new world. I woke up from the surgery, I told you before, and I said, wow, there was this world, it was like, boom, a world full of all these skillful, kind people. But there was one more thing which I wasn't expecting so much. If you had asked me beforehand, do you know blah blah, I probably would have said yes. But still, what I found out was, I got this new body. I was born into a new world with a new body, and the new body I got was really different from the old body. Even though the old body was broken, the new body was extremely fragile. So I got this new body, which I wasn't really expecting. And it was like a perfectly precious, extremely fragile little baby that I had to take care of now. I wasn't expecting to be like the primary caregiver of this very fragile body.

[54:57]

But in fact, I was assigned that by all of you. Thanks a lot! And I kind of thought, oh, this is a bit much. Kind of like, I don't know about this. I don't know if I want to do this. I wasn't expecting such a fragile little baby body. I've been very impressed by how you've been taking care of it these last few weeks. I got over that. And you know, I told you before, what helped me get over it was I went, or as we say, I go, oh, my little fragile, tiny little baby body that constantly requires such care is just like my country. It's just like this world. Okay, okay. This is my part

[56:04]

You know, it's a lot of trouble. But we've got a lot of trouble to take care of here. So if I can do my part, this is my contribution to what all of us have to do. We all have to be very careful all the time not to get nasty or impatient or put ourselves above somebody or hate somebody or wishing somebody was dead. We've got to be careful about that. Because that kind of stuff can come up. Like when you've got a fragile body, you can wish it was dead. When you have a fragile government, you can wish it was dead. When you have a fragile whatever, you can wish it was dead. So when you have a wish like that, you've got to be careful, right? You have to love it before you can negate it. I learned to get rid of this fragile body. It's so much trouble. I didn't know it was going to be so much trouble. Got to be careful of anything other than, okay, I'll take care

[57:10]

of you. And then the doctor says, and also you can't do anything for six weeks. You can't put any weight on the leg, which is, we did a good job, we fixed it sort of, it's just that you can't put any weight on it for six weeks. So you can't actually start doing any exercise. You've got to sit there and just be careful for six weeks. If it's just for this body, I don't know if it's worth the trouble. But if taking care of this body is for all bodies, okay. I wanted to say thank you for your dialogue with us. I felt encouraged by you and your having dialogue with us about how you might be feeling discouraged. Yeah, I was feeling discouraged. I was feeling discouraged. And that was encouraging. I was discouraged. I was like not brimming

[58:14]

with courage, like, okay, no problem, I've got this unexpected fragile body to take care of and I'm like, let's do it. I wasn't like that. I was kind of like, ah, no, I don't know about this, maybe I'll just die. Can I just die? Thanks a lot, can I just die? No, because the whole country is like that and you don't want the whole country to die. No, I don't. Just me. I'm the only problem. You guys, you're all great. But no, that's not true, because everybody's feeling like, well, can we just die? But no, we can't, because lots of people we love are going to still have to deal with this. So if you guys have to deal with it, I have to deal with it. So then my courage comes back. Okay, this is

[59:15]

my assignment, and it's not just for this body. It's not just so this body can live a little longer. And that's not the reason. It's to show that we're going to build a sanctuary here. And it's not just for here, it's for everybody else to do their job. And if I don't do mine, I'm not doing my job. I want to do my job, that's all. And it's really hard, but I do want to do it. Yes? I want to confess I feel the same way about my life and my country. And the part I want to confess is that I feel that completely and deeply, and that the tenderest part is the feeling that I'd be alone feeling that way. So that, I wanted to say that publicly,

[60:17]

that for me to hear you say that, and it's a continuing fear that I'm alone feeling that way in some particular, whatever reason. But I do feel that way, and so I feel, that's a great joy to be that clear, that I feel this is it, you know? And that to not feel alone, I just wanted to say that I can continue to feel alone when I hear this, and it's very wonderful. So if I do feel alone, I might feel like, oh, is this too much? Feeling alone is just too much. Forget it. It's not worth the trouble of taking care of somebody who feels alone. Oh, but the whole country feels like this. The people out in the countryside who want more guns, they feel all alone too. The people in the city who feel like, how do we get into this situation, they feel like this too. Everybody

[61:19]

can feel, I'm all alone. You know, like, how could this happen? How could we be in such a world, you know? So when you feel like that, well, everybody feels like that. When you feel like X, everybody feels like X. And when you feel like X, sometimes it's like, this X is too much, I give up, I'm just going to do something stupid. I'm even a little angry about this X. But if you find out everybody else has X, then if you take care of X, you're doing something to help everybody take care of X. So then it's kind of worth the effort. But, you know, X can be anything. It's up to me to say it's too much. But then remember, everybody's got that X. And everybody needs you to take care of that X because then you're taking care of X. This is the hard part to understand. You taking care of X is everybody

[62:23]

taking care of X. Everybody's included in your willingness to deal with your stuff. And unfortunately, when you don't deal with your stuff, everybody's included and you're not dealing with your stuff. Sorry. So you hurt everybody when you don't do your job, and you help everybody when you do. And that's hard to understand, but again, that's our nature. We're in this conversation. If you take care of the conversation, you take care of everybody, and if you don't, everybody's included in your laziness or your lack of courage. Thank you so much. So I love you, I'm going to love you into negation. I'm going to love you into not you. We love you not to also. Ready?

[63:30]

Beings are numberless. I vow to serve them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's ways unsurpassable. I vow to become it. So now we have lunchtime, which as you know is the time for lunch. And then we're going to have a little work period, I guess. Please go ahead and have lunch, if you want.

[64:52]

Kodo? I don't know what you're saying. I have that one. I know, Japanese people. Yeah. But, uh, on this occasion, it comes by me.

[65:21]

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