Is there anything you'd like to discuss? Yes. What happened when the brush got bent? Well, the bristles of the brush got bent to the side and a gouge started to form in the paint. And then her Abu said, don't push so hard, you'll hurt the brush. And she lightened up. That's one story of what happened. Another one is, I sat there and watched her press the brush into the thing hard, and I watched her listen to her grandmother, and I watched her lighten up.

[01:14]

I don't know what was going on, what she would say happened, what her story would be. And her grandmother might have another story. So those are some stories. What actually happened is beyond my perceptions, but those are some perceptions I had of what happened. And another perception I had is that we were all together there, quite lovingly. Nobody was being mean to anybody. We were, you know, we were having a happy time together, the three of us. And, yeah, it was really a nice moment. And someone asked me, do I have any sense of why she calls this the worst place at Green Gulch, the Zendo? I said, I think this room has become associated with

[02:20]

disappointment that granddaddy's not coming along on certain adventures. Because she said, when her grandmother said, well, let's go to the beach now, she said, granddaddy's coming too, right? And she was informed, no, he's going to go to the zendo. I think she associates often when I'm coming to zendo, that means I'm not going with her. So she's out one slave, which is not that nice a thing for her. She likes to have at least two, if possible. Yes. Did you have your hand raised? Yeah. If one is remembering, receiving, practicing,

[03:24]

One will act, and the action will come from the practice. If you're remembering stillness, then the action will be sponsored by this practice of the Buddhas. No matter what, there will be action. We're constantly active. The question is, where is the action living? And the answer is, it's living in stillness, but if I forget the stillness, then the action will still come, but it won't go very well. Because it's coming from not receiving the Buddha's teaching. Because this is being given to me, but if I don't receive it somehow, that's not good for me. at which point the agency is to take what's being given and translate it through the words, which are the language of mind, or maybe emotions, the language of thought, that ends with that, which might alter or revert that original problem.

[05:11]

those things you mentioned could be opportunities to get distracted from the gift. But the gift of the precepts does not disturb any of those things you just talked about. It's just that in the worldly, burly world of consciousness where there's words and actions which are words too, we can get disoriented from the practice and then things are stressed, more or less. But somewhat, if we're out of attunement with that, we're either a little or a lot stressed or distressed. But the thing is, to attune, all these things are done with daily life. remember, receive, practice, and transmit in our daily actions. Actions are not necessarily distracting us from the practice.

[06:12]

Matter of fact, it's in them that we're trying to do the practice. So if we forget, we will act in response, and if we remember, we will also act. It's just that in one case we'll act in alignment with the unsurpassed perfect teaching and other cases somehow even though we are in alignment our nature is that if we don't practice alignment it's like we're not in alignment. Strange thing about us. We're always ourselves but if we don't remember to align with ourselves there's some kind of like not caring for things. And then that's like, it creates this illusion of, that's how we create the illusion of stress. The stress isn't real, it's just a figment of our imagination of being someplace other than here. And it hurts.

[07:13]

Not to mention that then we can do things which we really don't want to do. Whereas I cannot think of an example where I was remembering the practice and where I regret what I did. Almost all my regret is about times when I was distracted, out of alignment with the practice. Do you regret not going to the beach with your grandmother? Do I regret it? I do not. And, yeah, the time will come when it will not be possible anymore for me to go to the beach with her. But what I would regret is when I can go to the beach with her, if I forget being still with not being able to go to the beach. Like if my legs don't work or if she's not interested in having me, at some point she might not even want me to go to the beach with her.

[08:18]

she may have more interesting people to invite. And then when I'm no longer invited, I vow to remember to be still with not being invited. Like with her big brother, now I'm not invited anymore. He used to, her big brother, used to reach his hand up like this and suggest various things and then he would say, together. And I would take that hand and go. Sixteen. So now he's not reaching out to me anymore and saying, together. And my practice is to be still with not being invited. and to realize that that's as beautiful as being invited. But the time, I don't regret not being able to... And then he moved to L.A., so I couldn't even see him anymore.

[09:23]

And she may, at some point, go away where I won't be able to see her anymore. So I'm not disappointed in that when I practice stillness. But if I don't practice stillness, then I have lots of disappointment. Basically, I pretty much non-stop disappointment if I don't practice stillness. Things... Not practicing stillness is basically disagreeing with what's going on. It's like trying to be someplace else. Yes? Why do you suggest I don't know why, but part of the conditions for me suggesting this is tradition. And the confession is almost identical to acknowledging.

[10:27]

So, like, you know, I forgot to listen to you yesterday or I forgot to listen to you this morning. I acknowledge it. And that is that I confess it. I confess I was not, you were talking to me and I was not listening. And I might actually also feel, and I'm sorry, I actually do want to listen to you. Actually, I vow to listen to you when you're talking. I want to listen to you. I commit to listening to you when you're talking. I confess that I wasn't paying attention to you. But I've received the precept of paying attention to people. It's one of the precepts I've received. It's called pay attention to everybody. Give everybody your eyes. I receive that precept, I aspire to that precept, and then if I don't pay attention to someone and I notice it, then I want to acknowledge that.

[11:36]

And I may or may not feel sorry. If I don't, then I don't say I'm sorry. But I might feel sorry. I might quite naturally say, you know, you were talking. I aspire to listen to you when you're talking. I got distracted. And I'm sorry. But I might not say it to you. You might not even be around anymore. So when I say it to you, I also say it to my teachers. Even if I can't see them, I invite them to come and witness. And when I acknowledge and, if I am sorry, express my sorrow about what I did, they listen. And sometimes they say, that was pretty good. Sometimes they say, you didn't tell the whole story, or whatever. So we actually have a practice here of going to meet a teacher

[12:38]

professional listener and to say, you know, I want to confess that I wasn't very kind to my granddaughter yesterday and I am or I am not yet sorry. And the teacher listens and that's that practice is what's the word? It's highly valued as the mode of melting away the root of not doing what we want to do. If we want to be compassionate, let's say, we vow to be compassionate, and then we get distracted. There's some root to the distraction. But by this practice of confession and repentance, the root of our distraction from the way we really want to live melts. That's the amazing proposal. And another part of the proposal is, if you look at the lives of the great compassionate beings, they all practiced a lot of confession and repentance.

[13:45]

It isn't like the great ones didn't have to do that. So if the great ones had to do it, maybe we have to do it too. I heard that Martin Luther wore out all the confessors of his monastery. you know, one wasn't enough for him. He was like confessing so much that they had to take turns listening to him. And I don't know, I think he was kind of a great guy. You know, he was like an ordinary human, but he was very aware of his shortcomings and he put him out there. And he was this amazing living being. I suppose he was also quite compassionate. I mean, I imagine he was very compassionate. And he spoke up against what he thought was injustice and what he thought was hurting people's practice of thinking that they could pay money instead of practicing.

[14:55]

whereas actually you can pay money and practice. Yes? Well, I was just going to follow up on that. I think the other question was that the fact that you mentioned Martin Luther, it seems like that kind of confession and repentance is very sort of built into Judeo-Christian sort of traditions. And probably a lot of people that are raised in that have a different meaning, maybe, because of what you're saying. I think it might have a different meaning, but it's also built into the Buddhist tradition. And a lot of people who are attracted to Buddhism are people who, I would say, didn't have very good experiences with that process in their life. They didn't see the benefit of it. But Martin Luther did. He thought it was really good practice. And my... childhood religious training, it was not part of our practice to go to confession.

[16:03]

So I have no negative associations with it. But I think some people maybe have gone to do that practice and did not find it encouraging. But some people did find it encouraging. So it's a mixed history, right? Not all confessors are really good at listening. The confessors sometimes also don't listen. And maybe they go and confess to somebody else to say, you know, I wasn't really listening today when people were talking to me, and I'm sorry, they say to another confessor. And the other confessor might say, you know, I'm glad you're sorry because, you know, you really do want to listen to people, right? Yes. So I want to too. Let's work on this. Let's work on really listening to each other. But sometimes the person who's listening may not be very skillful and may not listen to the person. In other words, not be still.

[17:04]

And then what they say to them may not be beneficial. I think that the word repentance, the English word repentance, the first word that I come to when I look it up is sorrow. But it's not sorrow in general. Like if someone hurts you, or if you hurt yourself, I may feel sorrow over your pain. But the sorrow we're talking about here is sorrow about my action, not yours. And it's not just all types of sorrow about my action. It's the kind of sorrow that makes me more sincere about how I want to live. So it's a subset of the full range of sorrow. So you can feel sorrow about other people's suffering. You can feel sorrow about your own suffering.

[18:08]

But repentance is the part of sorrow where it's about what I did and what I'm sorry about, what I regret, what I'm embarrassed about. what I don't want to do. And I think part of the education in the West is that some people do not get very good education of the pure and simple way of doing confession and repentance that's beneficial, that's compassionate. And so that's part of the reason why I'm mentioning this because I think not too many people have heard of the benefit, the beneficial possibilities of confession and repentance. So I'm talking about it because it's not well known in this culture. And there's lots of things that aren't well known, which we like to make them better known, like the virtue of developing, of using aspiration to generate spiritual energy.

[19:09]

That's another thing that's not well known. which I was going to talk about today, but I'm glad I didn't, because the talk would have been too long. But now I'm mentioning it. I see your hand, but yes? The question was, how do you generate that? I'll come back to that in a minute, okay? Yes? Yeah, go ahead. But when we're speaking today about wine, then I was thinking about it in terms of what not to do, and how is that different from what I was thinking about. Well, one thing that comes to my mind is that saying, the way we write the precepts in this school, we don't say, don't lie.

[20:29]

We say, not lying, or not speaking falsehoods. So it's also fine to say, speak the truth. Okay? And so when you say, not lying, I guess in a negative way you're saying what the truth is. The truth is that we're not lying. And so it brings us to the situation where people think, well actually we do lie. So it deals with the sense of, well we do lie, so what does it mean not to lie? And to say that there's a truth that we do lie, which most people know about, but people do not usually understand that the truth is also that we don't lie. And so we don't say, don't lie, we say, not lying.

[21:34]

In other words, emphasizing the truth more when we say not lying And when we say don't, because don't sounds like you can. Not is more the reality that the Buddhas are not lying. The Buddhas are not killing. So if I say Buddhas don't kill, people might say, well, yeah. But I'm more saying Buddhas are not lying. That's what they are. They're not doing that action, but really what Buddha is, is not lying. Or you could say conventional with ultimate. Because in ultimate truth there is no killing. There really isn't. So they're put that way.

[22:36]

they're not killing is the Buddhas. Don't kill is like for people who think they can kill. So if you think you can kill, don't. If you want to know what Buddha is, Buddha is not killing. That's what Buddha is. If you think you can lie, don't. What's Buddha? Buddha is not lying. Buddha is not stealing, and so on. It's not that Buddha doesn't do those things, but of course Buddha doesn't. So, if I can briefly mention, in terms of your question, The aspiration that I talked about today to remember and receive and practice and transmit stillness, that aspiration needs energy.

[23:51]

It functions on a kind of enthusiasm or wish and that energy needs to be refreshed. Otherwise, like today actually I'm talking about this and you're listening to this and when you listen to this talk you're actually exercising perhaps that aspiration just by listening to me. But when I stop talking, if I don't go back to that aspiration, or if you don't go back to that aspiration, we can still remember, but there might not be much enthusiasm for it. And if there is, great. But then a few days later, it's like, I can remember it, but I just don't feel the energy for it. So the root of the energy for your aspiration

[24:55]

the root of the energy to practice what you aspire to comes from the aspiration. So part of the practice is to go back to your aspirations and think about them. And then, as you think about them, see if you feel energy to do the thing which you aspire to. And you can actually remember something you aspire to And then you could ask yourself, or someone else could ask you, do you feel ready to practice this thing you aspire to? And you might say, well, no. I do aspire to it, but I don't feel much energy for it. Like, do you feel, do you aspire to listen to this person, this friend of yours? And you might say, mm-hmm. Do you feel, okay, they're ready for you to listen to now.

[26:00]

Are you ready? And I say, no, I'm not ready to listen to them. I want to, but I actually don't feel the energy to listen to them. Actually, I feel like I want to go take a nap. I'm not ready to listen to them, actually. So then, in that case, for me, I would keep going back to my wish to listen to them, even though right now I don't want to. But I want to listen to them sometime, but not right now. And if I do that over and over, I start to feel... Actually, now I'm starting to feel some energy to listen to them. But not yet. And then I think about it some more. I feel, yeah, now I feel enough energy to listen to them. Okay, bring it on. I'm ready to listen.

[27:01]

By the way, how long are you willing to listen? I'm willing to listen for half an hour. So if this person wants me to listen for more than half an hour, I'm going to have to go back and generate more energy. If it's for an hour, I have to clear the decks for an hour. And then you listen to them, maybe, and you have the energy and a successful listening, and the listening's over, and then they say, could we do this again? And you look and you don't see the energy to do it again, although you have the wish to do it again. And you say, well, I have to do some work on myself to be ready to do this again, and I'll let you know when I'm ready. And maybe they accept and say, yeah, I want you to listen to me, but I actually want you to listen to me, not just agree to it and then not do it. So let me know when you're ready to do it again.

[28:02]

And then you work on yourself, and a couple days later you say, I think I'm ready now. And you go tell them, I'm ready to listen. So I often use the example of... You know, of course I want to practice generosity, right? I do. That's part of stillness, is to be generous. So one day I was with some friends and one of them had a new automatic pencil in his hand, and another friend said, that's really a nice automatic pencil. And he said, oh, you like it? Here, it's yours. And then I don't know if I said that really was a nice automatic pencil, but anyway, I did something to indicate to him that I thought it was nice too. So he pulled out another one and gave it to me. And I had no problem with all that generosity.

[29:09]

And then I came back to Green Gulch. And I don't know exactly if it happened this way, but I might have said, look at the nice automatic pencil that somebody gave me today. Michael gave me this automatic pencil. And she said, oh, that is nice. Can I have it? And I said, no. I did not have the energy to give it to her. She sort of caught me flat-footed. My generosity practice was not energized enough for me to say, Oh, how great to give this pencil away. I wasn't there. And I didn't exactly work on myself through the night. But anyway, in the morning the energy was there to practice giving.

[30:13]

And I said, see this pencil? It's for you. I don't know if I actually said that, but anyway. In the morning, the energy to give was there, and I used that energy to make the gift. So sometimes, always I aspire to be generous. I never don't aspire to be generous. But sometimes I don't have, I haven't exercised the aspiration enough so that I'm full of enthusiasm. By the way, enthusiasm means filled with God. I'm not full of the divine generosity energy. And so sometimes someone might ask for something and I actually do not give it if I don't feel the energy to give it. I don't pretend to give it just to look like a nice guy. Yeah, if I'm clinging, and I don't have the energy to give it away, then I admit I'm clinging to the pencil.

[31:22]

I don't lie and say, I'm not clinging to the pencil. Here it is. If you had given it, you'd still be clinging and they would possess it. Yeah, and also I'd be angry at them for stealing it from me. Because I actually, I didn't honor my own unreadiness and lack of... of energy for giving. So actually it's generous for me to admit I'm not ready. And that's part of people often when talking about generosity they have trouble understanding that one of the things you can give is a sense of boundary. Like, I've been talking to you for half an hour and I'm feeling like for me that's enough and I'd like to stop. Good luck with your new friend coming. I am definitely a babysitter.

[32:37]

But still, I have to work on my babysitting energy and take care of it. And like with the four-year-old's big brother, when he was little, he really was interested in me and wanted my attention like for hours and hours. And I was happy to give it. But sometimes I was feeling like I was really getting tired. And I would say to him, I really feel like I need a nap. And he would say, no, no, no, no, no. I'd say, I said, if you let me just take a five-minute nap, I'll be better able to play with you afterwards. So just let me take a five... I'm not going to go anyplace. I'm just going to go over there and lie down for five minutes, and then I'll have more energy to play with you. No, no, no, no, no. I said, please. And he said, okay. And then I go rest, like sometimes just for five minutes or ten minutes, and then I come back.

[33:39]

And he learned that... it actually didn't work well for him to let me rest so that I had more energy to be more enthusiastic about taking care of him. I used to, like when I was in the first maybe, I don't know, five or ten years of being a priest, I kind of thought I was Superman and that I should have no boundaries. And no matter how many people wanted to talk to me, I should never say, you know, I'm tired, I have some limit. And so I would just go way beyond my energy. And then I would start becoming quite irritable with them because I pushed myself too hard. And now I don't push myself so hard and I don't get irritable with people who, you know, want to talk to me. Because I don't think I should be able to talk to people endlessly. But I used to push myself too long.

[34:43]

Yes? Yeah, so since you asked me, I'm going to check. And the answer is yes. I was around some spiritual people and there were some comments that were a little mixed here and there. And it was directed at me overtly and in some ways, in ways. And after a while, I noticed that my field had energy, and this is something I never, I wasn't, it's hard for me to explain, I'm just using some words, and it's my way of just trying to explain, I felt the energy of the A1 field, of these things that had been happening around these people, and whether it was practicing partner, or whatever, I wasn't clearing it completely.

[36:02]

Partly, because, I mean, partly I'm also wondering what, why would someone do those things, and I could try to bring it up gently to the person and persons, but in any case, I felt this in my field, and then I ran anyone out with some very open-hearted people. and it completely dissolved, like my energetic field of the fascia or whatever it was, where all the stuff that was in my field disappeared like an instant, and I felt like I sat on an idea of a tree. I guess my question is, how can I protect myself from people And that's a good thing to ask, but I feel like I didn't ask that question. And if those people are from the Dharma world, how can I express that?

[37:05]

I need some help with that. I've seen that type of behavior, and I need to wrap my head around, I knew the OPA would be okay, but it's coming to my head, and I know of some inklings of compassion that I haven't fully gotten yet, in terms of, because it hurts, the things that they're doing at times. And even if they're conscious about it, and they need to know, well, if they're unconscious about it, that's not great. If they're thinking they're going to strengthen me by doing enough, I'm okay, so anyway, there's no suffering out there, right? So I'm curious about your input. One question is, how can I create my own field without, I was fortunate with other people who are open-hearted and loving, and just completely So one story is those people were practicing stillness and they transmitted it to you and you cleared it.

[38:19]

If you had been practicing stillness in the original situation where these excuse the expression, attacks were occurring, you would have cleared, wound by moment, cleared. I remember not being in reaction to it, but I think over time the accumulation of the behavior. Yeah. So you remember not being reactive? And then you said over time? Yeah, right, right. So you weren't, in terms of the word clearing, you weren't repetitively clearing by repetitively remembering stillness and receiving it. That's what it sounds like. And if you're interacting with people, if I'm interacting with people and I forget stillness, then it seems more and more like it's like more and more outrage, [...] outrage.

[39:44]

And then you go be with some people who are not necessarily Different from the other people, it's just that they're practicing stillness. They transmit stillness to you, and then you do what clears you. And it can be instant. One time I was in a situation like you're describing, and I was actually sitting quietly, but I felt all this turbulence around me. And I also felt embarrassed at how turbulent my awareness was. Turbulent and toxic. And then I heard the words, clearly observed.

[40:47]

and the whole situation just became calm and beneficent like that. I received the transmission of the stillness. I'm questioning whether I have the kind of environment that I want to be in. You could say distraction or you could say, like I was saying earlier, somebody comes to me and says he wants to practice suchness, he wants to practice stillness, but then things happen with people and he feels overwhelmed and then he feels like he can't practice it. So the feeling of being overwhelmed by hostility or whatever from other people, or insults, or lack of appreciation when these things appear to us in our relationships, we may feel like, I just, I can't remember stillness in those, I can't remember suchness.

[42:04]

Okay? That's confession. And then say, well, I can't remember it, but I'm sorry that I can't remember it. That's repentance. Now are you ready to remember again? No, not yet. Now are you ready? No, not yet. How about now? Yes, I am. Well, I'm not talking about other people practicing. I'm talking about myself. So if someone seems to be expressing ill will towards me, I might feel really uncomfortable about that. Right?

[43:09]

It might be painful. Right? Yeah, so when I'm feeling pain in my relationships with people, I aspire to remember stillness. I have a faith that if I can remember stillness in situations where I'm in pain, whether from other people's offerings to me or because of my own body's, for example, illness. I'm in pain because I have a physical illness. Or I could be in pain because I have mental illness. But I can also have pain because I feel people are being unkind to me or not appreciating me or being unjust to me. So these are painful situations. So my faith is if I can remember stillness in those situations, things will go well.

[44:10]

If I can't remember stillness and receive it and practice it, my faith is things will not go very well. Now if things are going well for me and people are being nice to me and I don't remember stillness, my faith is things will not go well. For example, I may get attached to them being so nice to me and try to control them into continuing to be nice to me. And then they might start rebelling against being nice to me and start being mean to me because I'm trying to make them continue to be nice to me. All that can happen. My faith is that if I can remember stillness with people's, however people are relating to me, and however my body and mind are arising, that things will go well. That doesn't mean I should necessarily go to the situation which is most challenging.

[45:15]

You know, where I think, if I go spend time with those people, I'm pretty sure they will attack me. But I feel up for it, and I think it would be good for me to interact with them. But if I'm not, some situations I might feel are too advanced for me. Like if they treat me like that, I don't think I'll have much of a chance to remember stillness. So I think that's too advanced. But my basic faith, my basic faith is, if I can remember it and receive it and transmit it, that things do go well, will go well. But there's some situations where I feel like, oh, this is like getting to be like really hard to remember stillness. Like about 15 years ago I had abdominal surgery.

[46:18]

And when I was coming out of the anesthetic, a nurse came to me and said, we're going to give you some pain medication to deal with the pain that will come to you now. So the anesthetic's wearing off, and so you'll start to feel uncomfortable at some point, but we're not going to give you the pain medication now. We want to wait until you feel the pain a little bit and then give it to you to see if the pain medication will work. So I waited and the pain started to come. But there was no nurse around to give me the pain medication. And then it started to come some more when there was no nurse around. And I didn't feel like yelling out. I did not feel like yelling out. I was trying to remember to be still.

[47:24]

I was trying to do my practice of remembering stillness and receiving stillness. So the pain which they wanted me to start feeling, I was starting to feel. But I could also feel, somehow I intuited that I was feeling the tip of an ever-increasing pain. And the thought, as the pain increased, the thought was arising, I'm having trouble being still with this pain. And I wonder if I will be able to continue to be still with this pain. I was challenged to be still with it as it started to grow and grow and grow. But I never did get to the place where I couldn't be relaxed and open to it. The nurse came and then they gave me the medication. But after they gave the medication, the pain increased some more.

[48:25]

But then the pain, the medication started to come in and the pain subsided. But I did have a feeling like, if this goes on much longer, I think I'm going to start tensing up and not being open and not being relaxed and not being still. I think I might start, you know, what's the expression, writhing? Is there some other position that would be more comfortable than this one? So it's possible to move from stillness and it's possible to not be still and move. And so when pain gets really strong sometimes it's hard for us to remember stillness. Yes. But I'm proposing to you, I'm proposing to me and sharing with you that I believe that I can practice stillness with the pains that are going to come to me, that are going to come to me in this life, that things will be just fine and I will respond just the way I want to if I can remember this stillness.

[49:35]

And if I don't, my faith is I will do not so well or even really badly. But there's some pains which are so great that it's very hard for me just to like just be there and say welcome and be still and say thank you for this life. But that's That's what comes with remembering, receiving, transmitting stillness. But again, as I say one more time, there are some pains which if you give to me, I might say, I can't remember stillness. I have to disagree with this. I've got to get out of here. I can't stand this. This is terrible. This is unfair. I'm going to kill myself. or I'm going to kill whoever's bringing me this pain.

[50:41]

We can get to that. I don't want to get to that. And if I remember stillness, I won't. There will not be killing, and so on. That's my faith. But I'm not saying it's easy when you turn the pain up higher and higher. If I see Dharma people using ill will, what do I do? What do I aspire to? I aspire to remember stillness when I see anybody being apparently unkind. I aspire to be remember stillness, receive it and practice it with the person. Which means I aspire to be generous towards them.

[51:45]

I aspire to not have ill will towards them. I aspire to be patient with the pain. I aspire to be diligent with them and calm with them. That's what I aspire to when I see anybody doing something unkind. including little four-year-old girls, if they would do something unkind, to paint or animals or siblings. I aspire to practice that with them. Whether they're called a dharma practitioner or a little girl, everybody gets the same practice. And it looks different. you know, in each case because it's adapted, the response is adapted to that particular person. That's my vow, okay? And then if I slip up, I have a practice for saying, I wasn't generous with this little girl.

[52:50]

I wasn't patient with this old man. I'm sorry. I want to be patient, but I wasn't. When this person said, I hate you and I want to hurt you and I wish you were sick and unhappy, when they say that to me, I want to be patient and generous with them. And if I forget, I say, I'm sorry. Well, you know, remember the other day when you were trying to hurt me? Uh-huh. I'm sorry I wasn't generous with you. I'm sorry. Yes. Yes. I want to say thank you for mentioning that in the Buddha's time, I think in traditional Buddhism, that there was so much confusion and that the Buddha wasn't practicing in a time when it was easy to practice. No, he wasn't.

[53:53]

And some people were mean to the Buddha. Some people had ill will towards the Buddha, tried to hurt the Buddha. And the Buddha, when the Buddha was a Buddha, she responded to the cruelty which was given to her with stillness. And sometimes she not only responded with stillness, she transmitted the stillness to the person who was trying to hurt her. and the person snapped out of it sometimes. Sometimes he had to apply several doses of the compassion before the person snapped out of their cruelty. But some people were wanting to hurt the Buddha and hated the Buddha. The Buddha met people like that. And from that time till the present, Buddha's disciples have sometimes been treated with hostility

[54:54]

by people in the community and outside the community. A monk in Buddha's community tried to kill the Buddha. One of Buddha's students tried to kill him, and he responded with compassion. So that's been the case the whole history of Buddhism, that the Buddhist practitioners have been on occasion Not necessarily every single day, but many, many, many, many times the Buddhists have been attacking each other. Sometimes Buddhists attack Buddhists. It has happened. But the practice has always been to not come back with ill will to ill will, but to come back with generosity and ethical diligence and patience. summarized by being still.

[55:57]

That includes all of them. Thank you very much.

[56:07]

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