You know how stand-up comedians sometimes start their talks by saying, anything happen to me on my way to the club tonight? And they tell what happened. Well, I feel that way too often that on my way up to the hall, oftentimes something happens. And because it happens, and because it happens just at that time, it often seems to be right to the point of, you know, of what's going on in the world at that time. And sometimes when nothing happens, I feel a little sad because I have to give a talk or something, rather just tell you something that happened. If you're walking up to give a talk and something happens in the street, it has the quality of being true,

[01:04]

and also it has the quality of not needing to be true. If some kid says something to you on the street as you're going to give a sermon, it doesn't really matter whether it's true what the kid said. The kid says, I like dogs, because dogs are such and such a way. The kid doesn't worry about it. I wonder if that's true. He just says it. Whereas when you get up in a lecture hall and you say something, you think, now, is that true? And people get really nervous when they give lectures sometimes because they think, gee, I wonder if that's true, or if that's wrong. And then after they give a lecture sometimes they might ask, was that right? Did I make any mistakes? But the things that people say around the coffee-tea area and before and after work meetings here are oftentimes things that they say without worrying about whether they're true, and yet they might be really expressing themselves. And if you listen to what they're saying, it's not so much that what they're saying is true, but in fact it's the truth what they're saying.

[02:07]

Something like that. But I don't know if that's true. So anyway, on the way to the hall tonight, somebody said to me, and also I want to say that any resemblance to living beings in what I say are purely coincidental. So don't assume that there's somebody out there that's actually saying this and you can go talk to them about what they said, okay? They'd get embarrassed. And nobody's saying it to me before I'm coming in here. They know they're going to be called on it later. So anyway, on the way in here, somebody said to me, Zen's kind of a neat religion. I don't like the word religion, but it's a neat tradition or something. It's real relational. In Zen, it's not like these people go off in these caves like these Christians

[03:14]

and have these mystical communications with God and just stay up there forever and bliss out. It's more like what happens really mostly comes down to between people. And this person said, that's really interesting. That's an interesting tradition. And I said, uh-huh. And I thought to myself, well, there it is. I have something to say. And also, I don't have to say whether that's true or not, but I will say that what Buddhism is about is not to exclude going up into caves and have mystical experiences. You can do that. It's okay. I know a lot of you do that on your days off. So you don't have to stop. Just because I'm going to say some things which put that in perspective.

[04:14]

But Buddhism is primarily... I mean, Buddha is primarily, most of all, a compassionate person. And compassion is not just something you do by yourself. It's something you do with another person. And generally speaking, you do it face-to-face. Although you can do it back-to-back too, but it's mostly kind of face-to-face compassion. That's what Buddhas are into. So Buddhism is basically a religion or tradition or a way of life which is about compassion. How to be compassionate, how to live and manifest compassion in this world, in this difficult world where people have a real hard time, and sometimes people are even cruel to each other, as you know.

[05:17]

That's what it's basically about. The one great cause which manifests enlightened beings in the world is suffering beings. Or another way to put that is, the one great cause of enlightened beings is the aspiration to liberate all beings from suffering. That is the one great cause. There's many other causes, but that's the big one. Of course, you also have to have causes like you have to have living beings, you have to have eyes, ears, food, trees, all many other things.

[06:20]

But without this one great cause, you don't make a Buddha. And not only is that characteristic of Buddhas, but it's characteristic of all the great disciples from Buddha down to the present, every generation in the Zen lineage, every Zen teacher in that lineage, every Zen founder, they all shared one thing. That is the vow, complete commitment to put their whole life in the direction of benefiting living beings. So tonight, does anybody have a napkin or a tissue or something in your sleep? That's a good moment, that I could have maybe.

[07:23]

So tonight I'd like to just give you an overview of the course of Buddhism. And if there's time, I'll go into some detail on the different points. So I would just give you the overview. The first seed or cause of the practice of Buddha's way in the world, the first thing is suffering. Or more specifically, that somebody becomes aware of suffering or sensing suffering. That's the first thing. The next thing is that from this awareness

[08:36]

of personal and universal suffering of living beings, there arises an aspiration, a vow, to free people from suffering, including yourself. Next is to receive the precepts of the enlightened and enlightening beings. The Buddha's and Bodhisattva's precepts to receive them. Next is to enter the practice or enter your life, enter your experience.

[09:36]

Next is to settle completely into your life. Next is to bloom. Next is to meet. Could you hear me back way over there? Yes? I can hear you too. How is it over there? Hot? It's hot over here too. Do you have any more of that stuff? Thank you. So that's sort of the outline of the course. Sense suffering, aspire, receive,

[10:41]

enter, settle, bloom and meet. I like bloom in some sense better than awaken. But if you say awaken, then it's easy to make an acronym out of it, which is sadesam. Sadesam. But if you make the second last letter B, then it's sort of hard to say SBM. But I like the idea of blooming out of settling into our life. Sensing or becoming awake to suffering is something which most of you, as far as I know, some of you guessed, I don't know,

[11:44]

but among the students here I think all of them have somewhat awakened to their suffering and awakened to the suffering of others. We can all deepen our awareness of our own and other people's difficulties, but I think we all have somewhat awakened to it. This course, by the way, that I just outlined is a circle. It doesn't just like go and stop there. You go back around again and start over. Moment by moment, become aware of suffering, aspire to the Buddha way, to the way of compassion, receive the precepts, enter your life, settle, bloom and meet. You do that over and over again until your job is done. And each time you go around that little loop, it gets deeper. Each one gets deeper.

[12:48]

The awareness of suffering gets deeper. The receiving of the precepts gets deeper. The aspiration gets deeper. The... what's the next one? The entering gets deeper. The settling gets deeper. The blooming gets more, not deeper, it gets more gorgeous and useful and attractive and engaging. And the meeting becomes more complete every time you go around. There is also included in this process slipping and falling in your face every now and then and it's possible to kind of sort of slip backwards and get more shallow. So there's ups and downs in the process and mistakes are rampant. And confession is one of the main forms of grease in the machine. Acknowledging personal shortcomings and weaknesses

[13:51]

are also one of the characteristics of all the ancestors of this tradition. These fantastically enlightened beings also were able to become aware of their own shortcomings and weaknesses in this big project and to acknowledge them. But they did a lot of other stuff besides that, which we notice. So there aren't long, huge books of records of their confessions. I shouldn't say there aren't, but probably because there are some, I guess. Like, for example, Dogen Zenji, the person who composed this vow, which we chanted at the beginning, he wrote this big book of a thousand pages. But he doesn't have a book equal size accounting his daily confessions of his weaknesses. Just a few poems here and there to let us know that he was aware of his weakness. And if we know about his records of his daily practice,

[14:54]

we see that confession was a part of the daily practice and he also wrote in various places saying that it was. But he didn't record all the mistakes he made. But I understand, my understanding is, that his greatness is in direct relationship to his awareness of his weaknesses and shortcomings. And I would even say to you that the one who is most aware of his or her weaknesses and shortcomings is a great one. The more humble, the greater. So studying the precepts helps us develop our humility and therefore become a greater-hearted being. So again, back to the first one, being aware of suffering, aware of your own suffering. That's something which has happened to some extent to all of you

[15:57]

and will continue to happen now and then throughout your life. The next one is the aspiration. And this one I don't know so well to what extent the resident people here or the guests have made the aspiration to dedicate or have fought the thought to dedicate or have opened the heart to dedicate your life entirely to developing compassion and benefiting other people and encouraging other people to also give rise to this vow to the end that they will become enlightened and free of suffering and will help others to become enlightened and free of suffering. I don't know if all of you have given rise to that thought. Some of you I don't know that well. I'm just saying that the Buddha's path has that ingredient in it

[17:05]

that all Buddhas have given rise to that thought. That's sort of the seed of the Buddha mind is that thought to benefit all beings, to liberate all beings. And I say to you and to myself, have you produced that thought? Have you given rise to that spirit of altruistic enlightenment? Of enlightenment for the sake of all beings. Have you produced that thought? Please consider whether you have. And if you have, great. Then we go on to take care of it. And if you haven't, then what do you wait for? Got some kind of problem about it? Please consult your local Bodhisattva and try to ask them, you know, to help you figure out what your resistance is because it isn't going to hurt you to do this. Matter of fact, it's to your benefit to give rise to this thought. And one other thing about this thought that's very important is that you

[18:09]

that you want this benefit for all beings and you want all of them to attain enlightenment before you. That's an important part of it. Sometimes when I say that, afterwards people say to me, well isn't it okay if we do it at the same time? Of course it's okay if you actually are enlightened at the same time with all beings. As a matter of fact, when other beings are enlightened, you are enlightened. And when you are enlightened, other beings are enlightened. In fact, we do do it at the same time. But when you think about it, you have to think about wanting them to do it first. Like a parent, you know. A parent loves the children and thinks about only the children's benefit. A parent doesn't think, can I get out of this? If I feed this kid, what am I going to get? A parent thinks, oh, I want to feed this kid so this kid will grow.

[19:16]

And I feed the kid before me. That's the way Buddha feels about Buddha's children. Buddha is concerned of the children, of the students, of the friends, of them becoming enlightened first. Thinking that way is the way Buddhists think. If you think, now how will practice help me? Then you get more and more confused the longer you practice. If you think, how will practice benefit others? Then you get more and more clear. And by constantly thinking of how does the practice help others, your mind becomes more and more clear. That's the way Buddhists think. Dogen Zenji says, if you compare the thought, I want to benefit all beings and I want to help all beings become enlightened, if you compare that thought with the mind of an actual Buddha,

[20:17]

then that thought is like a firefly compared to a galactic firestorm. But if the thought is changed from I want to benefit all beings to I want to benefit all beings before me, then they're equal. That one little change makes them equal, because that one little change removes selfishness. The aspiration to benefit all beings is extremely good, but if it's selfless, it's really much, much more effective. Dogen also says that if you haven't had children, it's hard for you to imagine what a parent feels like. Only those who've had children can know how much they love their children. So you need to make your mind so that all beings are like your children.

[21:23]

And remember that all beings have been your children before, and you've also been the child of all beings. All beings have been your kind parents before. Now these days, people sometimes don't think their parents are very kind to them, so if you say that other beings have been your parents before, some people say, well, then I want to get them. But in the old days, parents used to be perfect. That's the way all beings used to be to you. They all used to be totally kind to you, and in fact, giving you everything first for your benefit, and they were extremely loving. That's the way all these people here are. Somebody gave me a big gift anonymously a while ago, and since that time, I've been trying to remember, to think that it could be any of you. Some people say, no, it's not me. But anyway, it's good to think about how all people are your anonymous benefactors. And to always think of helping them first,

[22:30]

to repay their kindness, the way a mother gives milk to the child before she eats herself. And again, I mentioned that none of this stuff should you hold to as truth, and be rigid about, because as they do on the airplanes, they say when you get on the airplane, they say for those oxygen masks, if you're traveling with a child, or some person who needs your assistance, put your own oxygen mask on first. Right? You know what I mean? You do? Do you know what I mean, Kathy? You look like me. I shocked you. And the reason for that is that if you're trying to put the mask on the child or whatever, disabled person, and you are fumbling around and get nervous, because you're primarily concerned with getting this mask on them, as a matter of fact, you really want to get on their face,

[23:32]

because you love them so much. If you get nervous and fumble around, you might pass out while you're trying to put it on them, right? So put it on yourself first, because you don't care about yourself, you only care about them. You can do that quite calmly. And then you've got quite a bit of time and oxygen to put theirs on. So, because you want to help them first, you put your own mask on first so you can go to work. So you don't... What this means is not so clear sometimes. Sometimes a parent might have to eat some food themselves so that they can carry a baby through a snowstorm. But the point is how to take care of this other living being. That's the primary aspiration. Next is to receive Buddhist precepts. And receive means receive. It doesn't mean that after you receive the ethical precepts, precepts about how to behave in the world, it doesn't mean that after you receive them you follow them perfectly.

[24:34]

It just means that you open your heart to them. You say, yeah, I want to practice those precepts. I want to be as ethical as a Buddha. I want to join the club of those who are dedicated to avoiding wrong action, to doing all good and to benefiting all beings. I want to receive those precepts. I want to stop killing. I want to stop stealing. I want to stop lying. I want to stop poisoning myself. I want to stop poisoning others with intoxicants. I want to stop misusing sexuality. I want to stop speaking of the faults of others. I want to stop praising myself and putting others down at the same time, saying I'm better than other people. I want to stop being possessive of things. I want to stop being an angry, snotty person.

[25:38]

And I want to stop abusing the Buddha, the Buddha's teaching and the Buddha's practitioners. I want to stop all that. I receive and open my heart to being that way. That's this next step. And then after that, you can enter into your life. You can enter into Buddhist practice. My experience has been that if people try to enter into Buddhist practice without receiving these precepts, they do pretty well for a while, but then they start slipping, and they get to a certain point and they can't go any further. Even though they're very sincere about concentration on their life, developing meditation practice, and maybe even really do want to benefit other people, if they skip the step of receiving the precepts, they keep getting undermined by that,

[26:39]

by skipping that step. So it's a very important step. Entering your life means entering your experience means entering your body, entering your mind, entering your breath. It also means entering your suffering. And another thing about receiving the precepts is that then when you enter your life, you enter your life fully. You don't enter just a little section of your life. You enter your life fully if you receive those precepts. So entering your full life, and then the next stage is to settle. To not just enter your suffering,

[27:42]

but to completely settle with it, all the way to the bottom of your suffering. To enter your body completely to the tip of every hair follicle. To enter your body totally and do nothing but that. To enter your breath completely. And to enter your mind completely. And our main instruction in that is don't move. If you don't move, you will enter your life completely and you will settle. And if you settle,

[28:43]

when you settle in your life, at some point, up out of this ground of experience, this ground of suffering, this ground of physicality, mentality, and breath, a flower will come up and it will blossom. This flower is called compassion, this flower is called wisdom, this flower is called enlightenment. It comes up from someone who has completely settled with their whole life. Who has stopped resisting being who she is. Who has completely accepted who he is. In a moment, just in a moment,

[29:48]

that's it. Not flinching, not moving from what he is in a moment. And in such a moment, that's where awakening occurs. If you settle in part of your life, an awakening will also occur, but it won't be a Buddha awakening. A Buddha awakening is a lotus, big, fat, gorgeous, white lotus with a green stalk and it's fertile and it's got a seed and a fruit in there that is going to make another one. Because it is entering the whole life of the person, which means your whole body, your whole mind, but it also means the life of all beings. And when you settle with that, you produce this lotus. And then,

[30:53]

the next thing is you meet. You go and you meet. You meet another person who is also a flower, but has not yet blossomed. It's probably in a seed form and you go and you meet this person. And then the compassion is actually starting to function in a relationship. Most Zen stories are about most Zen stories are about the settling, instructions and meeting of those two phases. In the stories of Zen teachers, they just usually mention that such and such a monk suffered. They just mention, or they don't even mention maybe, just assume.

[31:53]

It's not a big part of their life story. It's not a big part of Zen teaching to tell people to suffer. But oftentimes it mentions so-and-so lost his mother at a certain age, or so-and-so lost his father at a certain age, or whatever, that they suffered. Anyway, they sometimes don't even mention it. They just say, you became a monk. You can figure out why you became a monk. Becoming a monk means they received the precepts. And also, going to receive the precepts means that they aspired to the Buddha way. So the first three steps are usually just mentioned in the life story of these monks, of these ancestors. They suffered, they aspired to Buddhism, they aspired to become Buddha for the benefit of all beings. They received the precepts. And then the stories start about how teachers help people enter their experience. But there's not very many of those. However, it is in daily life of a Zen practice place. It is a lot of what we tell people.

[32:55]

A lot of what we tell people is please pay attention to your body. Please be on time for work meetings. Please pay attention to your breath. Please pay attention to your clothes. Please pay attention to how you're working. These instructions are quite frequent, but they aren't transmitted too often as stories because... I don't know why. Anyway, they're not. But the stories about how to settle once you enter your experience, there's a lot of stories about those. And the stories of blooming are the most frequent. And the instructions on how to settle and the instructions on blooming often happen in the same story. That often a monk has entered his life but hasn't completely settled yet. He meets a teacher and the teacher says something which causes the monk to settle. And then, sometimes it says then the next thing you're told is and he woke up. Or he was greatly enlightened.

[33:56]

Or she was greatly liberated. Sometimes the space between the settling instruction and the blooming is many years. But they're in the same story. Like, one story of one great ancestry came to another and he said, he came to Bodhidharma and he said, My mind is, you know, totally screwed up. In other words, I'm suffering. Would you please cool it out? Would you please calm this mess? He has become aware of his suffering and he has entered his experience. We're not told, but in fact I do know that he also had made this aspiration and received the precepts before this. I know from this story. But in this story he just says, he mentioned, I'm screwed up, I'm upset, I'm disturbed. Would you please calm my mind? The teacher says,

[34:57]

Please bring me your mind. Bring me your screwed up mind. He goes off and he looks for his mind. We don't know how long he looks, but he looks long enough to be sure that he can't find it. In fact, when you settle into your mind, you'll find out that it's not even there. So he comes back and tells the teacher that. The teacher has given him instruction on how to enter and settle. He has settled and then the teacher says, I have, he comes back and says, I can't find my mind. And the teacher says, Well, I've just calmed your mind. Then he blooms. So many of the stories are

[36:25]

blooming stories. And then after the blooming there's stories of after the monk or the student has bloomed and there's stories of the bloomed monk meeting with the bloomed teacher. So in the stories, you may find the story of where the monk comes, has not yet bloomed, settles with the teacher and then blooms, wakes up. And that's the first time. And then from then on, there's sometimes several years after that where the two flowers talk to each other. They get to know each other. So, one example of this is one time a monk named, his name was Wan Yi. Later he became known as Yao Shan. He's one of the monks in our lineage. He became a Buddhist monk

[37:34]

and he studied Buddhist teachings for a long time and became thoroughly acquainted with them. He also received the precepts and studied them and practiced them very strictly. But he felt that there must be something beyond this. These precepts are wonderful and necessary but they also are not the whole point. The whole point is complete liberation and freedom and effective compassion, not just being careful of rules all the time. You know, he had worked very hard on observing the ethical precepts scrupulously for some long period of time. And he heard about the Zen practice which pointed directly to the human heart and helped people see their nature and become Buddhists. So, he went to see a Zen teacher

[38:36]

named Stonehead Shirto. And he went to see him and he told him about this and he said, Okay, this is my background. Would you please help me? So, he had become aware of suffering. He had made the aspiration. He had received the precepts. He had tried to enter his life. Now he's going for instruction on how to settle completely directly indicating his human heart, seeing his nature and to become Buddha. He wants instruction on how to become Buddha. How can I do that? And now comes the instruction on how to do that. And the teacher says, Being just so won't do.

[39:39]

Not being just so won't do either. Being just so and not being just so won't do at all. How about you? At that moment, the young monk was speechless. The teacher said, The conditions for you are not yet here. I will now send you to the great Zen master, Ma, horse master, the horse patriarch. So the monk left Stonehead and went to see Master Ma. And he said the same thing to Master Ma that he said to Stonehead.

[40:46]

And Master Ma said, Sometimes I make him raise his eyebrows and blink. Sometimes I don't make him raise his eyebrows and blink. Sometimes raising the eyebrows and blinking is all right. Sometimes raising the eyebrows and blinking is not all right. How about you? At that time, the monk bloomed greatly, deeply, awakened. And to express his gratitude for this moment, he formally bowed to the teacher.

[41:50]

And Master Ma said, What truth have you seen that you now bow? And the monk said, When I was with Stonehead, I was like a mosquito trying to mount an iron bull. So Master Ma said, You're just fine. You are just like this. This is the way you really are. However, your teacher, is Stonehead. Stonehead showed him. Matsu helped him understand.

[42:52]

The two teachers together worked to awaken him completely. When he was with Stonehead and Stonehead said, He said, Not being so, being just so, won't do. Not being just so won't do either. Being both won't do at all. How about you? That's it. He showed him, being subtle. He was speechless, but that doesn't mean he didn't see. And Stonehead said, The conditions for you are not yet here. He couldn't understand here. And rather than him explain, he sent him to someone else to explain. Sometimes a teacher has to show it purely and have somebody else explain it. So he was initiated into himself

[43:55]

and understood it with two different teachers. In this story, if you listen to it, you might say, Well, how is that settling? To have someone say, Either being just so won't do, being not just so won't do either, being both is not at all. How about you? What does that have to do with settling right on to your life? Anyway, there it is. That's the instruction about how to settle on to your life. Now, thousands of years later, it is still, in my opinion, a perfect instruction about how to settle in your life. If you have awakened to your suffering, if you have aspired to benefit all beings before yourself, if you've received Buddhist precepts and you're looking at your life, if you listen to this instruction, I think you can settle with it. Not settle the way you might think or I might think about how to settle,

[44:56]

but actually settling on to your true self. Because remember, he said, How about you? How about you? It's at you that the settling happens, but at the real you. Not the limited imagination of you. When you forget who you are, you'll understand who you are. In this story, he forgot who he was and then he understood who he was. When you overcome your self-clinging, you will understand that the world is nothing but yourself. Settling on yourself is forgetting yourself.

[46:00]

This is instructions about how to settle on yourself and forget yourself. But I say instructions on how to forget yourself, but you can't do that. It's a gift. . And now it's getting late, so I don't think I can tell you lots of stories about how Master Ma and... What's his name? What's his name? Hmm? What? Stonehead. Stonehead. Well, they would like to meet each other too, but actually how Master Ma and... What's the boy's name? Yao Shi. But anyway, at some point Master Ma said,

[47:08]

You should go live on a mountain somewhere. You should go away and live on a mountain, which means you should go teach. And he says, How could I presume to teach? And... So anyway, they had to talk about that. He didn't really think he was ready, and the teacher said, Well, you've got to go do it. You've got to go make a boat. He said, Go make a boat. And go live on a mountain somewhere that's... that's fitting. So, you settle on yourself, but then after you're settled, you take that self and you put it out in the forest somewhere, on a mountain, and you settle there. And if you put yourself in some suitable place, some attractive spot, then the beings who you need to help will come to you. Thoreau says that too in Walden.

[48:09]

All you need to do is sit, sit long enough, sit long enough in an attractive spot in the forest or the woods, and all the inhabitants will present themselves to you in turn. So he said, You should leave. So he left, but he still didn't go to live on a mountain. He went back to Stonehead. And he stayed with Stonehead a little longer. And one day he was sitting in meditation, and Stonehead came up to him and said, What are you doing? And he said, I'm not doing anything at all. And Stonehead said, By the way, Yaoshan means medicine mountain. And Stonehead said to Yaoshan,

[49:12]

Well, then you're not, then you're just sitting idly. And medicine mountain said, If I was sitting idly, then I'd be doing something. And then Stonehead said, You said you're not doing anything at all. What is it that you're not doing? And medicine mountain said, Even the 10,000 sages don't know. And Stonehead was very happy. And later he wrote a poem about this. And he said, Although we've been together from the beginning, I didn't know his name. We just go along together,

[50:19]

being just so, letting it all go along with the flow of destiny. Even the 10,000 sages don't know his name. How could careless, hasty people understand? This is flowers, talking to flowers, talking about flowers. This is the Zen students waking up with the aid of their teachers, and their teachers saying, Hey man, you are a flower. And then the flower is talking back and forth. And then, the flowers leave their teacher, and go off and find their own seedlings, and their own baby flowers.

[51:22]

So, first there's the confirmation of the flower between student and teacher, and there's prediction of the flower by the teacher, then the flower goes off, and tries to get other flowers to sprout. After Yaoshan left Stonehead, one day he was reading a scripture, and another Zen teacher came up to him and said, you should stop fooling people. Yaoshan said, you should I guess I'll roll up my scripture. He rolled up the scripture, and looked at the other guy and said, what time is it? And the guy said, it's just noon.

[52:26]

And Yaoshan said, does that pattern still exist? And the other teacher said, I don't even have nothing. And Yaoshan said, you're too brilliant. And the other teacher said, I'm just thus. How about you? And Yaoshan said, me? Oh, well, I limp along ungainly in a hundred ways, clumsy in a thousand. Still, I keep going

[53:28]

like this. I'm just thus. How about you? And also, even though I'm just thus, being just thus won't do. Not being just thus won't do either. Being both won't do at all. How about you? Where are you? Who are you? Have you settled on yourself? Are you waiting for something before you do? I know you're busy. I'm busy too. How about you? We have an opportunity here, ladies and gentlemen, to settle on ourselves.

[54:30]

We don't know how much longer we're going to be living. If we don't do this, we will have wasted our human life, simply wasted it. We have a chance here to understand what the human heart and mind are if we will simply settle. The question is, whether we're sincere enough about doing it. It is absolutely necessary. With the aid of understanding suffering and making a great aspiration and receiving the precepts, we may be able to do it. Without these things, we won't be able to do it. But even if we have made the aspiration and we do know how much suffering is and we have received the precepts, still, it comes down to whether we're willing to completely be ourselves and not move from who we are all day long,

[55:34]

whether we stay at home in our body and mind completely and stop wasting time. The babies are waiting for us to feed them. They're breakfast. Don't eat that much of yourself. Sing a song. If you want to go home early, you can. Somebody else can ring the bell. Okay, well, I don't want to sing songs that you don't know, so I'll do one you already know.

[56:35]

Okay? It's called The Red Red Robin. Unless you know some other one that I know. I don't know you know. When the Red Red Robin comes bop bop bopping along along There'll be no more sobbing when he starts throbbing his old sweet song Wake up Wake up You sleepy head Get up Get up Get up Get in Cheer up Cheer up The sun is red Live Love Laugh and be happy Though I've been blue now I'm walking through fields of flowers Rain may glisten but still I listen

[57:38]

for hours and hours I'm just a kid again doing what I did again singing a song When the Red Red Robin comes bop bop bopping along

[57:57]

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