Your Excellence, Baal Shem Tov wants you to come and see him. And he's in that house right over there. And the bishop doesn't say, what? The bishop says, I hear you. And climbs up the steps and conducts the Easter service. And sometime after the crowd disperses, the bishop comes to the house where the great rabbi is staying and comes into the house and sees the rabbi. And the rabbi says, come with me. And they go into a room together for a few hours. And then the bishop comes out and leaves the house.

[01:09]

And then the rabbi teacher says to his attendant, pack up. We're going back to Poland. And they go back to Poland. And when the young rabbi had finished telling the story, he looked at the rich man. And the rich man's face was covered in tears. And he looked very relaxed and joyful.

[02:12]

And he said, thank you for telling that story. You told me the story of myself. I was that bishop. And before I was bishop, I was a wealthy Jew in that town. But I felt threatened being a Jew in that Christian town. I felt that I would be abused and that they would take away my wealth. So I converted to Christianity. And they were very happy that I converted to Christianity because I was so wealthy. And I rose in the ranks, and they made me bishop. And I was wealthy before I became bishop, but after I became bishop, I became even more wealthy at the expense of the Jews. Baal Shem Tov came to that town to talk to me and tell me that I was

[03:25]

in big, big trouble. It's not clear that I could actually survive what I had done. But he said, there's one possibility, which I would suggest to you. This conversation took a long time, a few hours, but it came out in that conversation that Baal Shem Tov told him, you should leave, you should resign your bishop position, give back all the wealth you gave, that you accumulated while you were bishop, and leave this town and go someplace else and use your wealth to help people and use your wealth to put the word out to the world to invite people to come and tell you stories. And if someone comes to you and tells you a story about yourself, you will be saved.

[04:38]

The rich man said to the rabbi, now you have come here and told me the story about myself, and finally I am saved from my karma. So when people tell us stories about somebody else, and that's about us, when people tell us stories about ourself, who's about others, this is critical in the Buddha way, that there's nobody out there that's got a story that's separate from us. And it's really hard, I propose this as necessary for the healing of the world.

[05:47]

It doesn't mean you don't say to somebody, I want you to stop this. So when the rabbi says to the bishop, I want you to resign, not I want you to, yeah, I want you to resign being bishop because this is what I want you to do in order for you to be saved from your hypocrisy and selfishness. The rabbi maybe knows the person he's talking to, the bishop he's talking to, the rabbi knows, maybe, that the bishop he's talking to is himself. And he's talking to himself and he's telling himself, resign as bishop and do this. And maybe the bishop at that point knows that the rabbi is himself. So he resigns. But there's more work to do. We have to listen to more stories, one after another, until we understand that the stories we're hearing are about us.

[06:54]

To learn how to listen to all the stories so more and more we hear that the person who's talking to us is our Self. I have a story that you have a look on your face like, that sounds hard. It might be hard, but that's just another story. It sounds hard to do this kind of study. And I have a story that I wish to be friendly when that appearance of difficulty arises. I wish to be friendly to that appearance of difficulty. And then when the doubt that this is going to work appears, when that story arises, would this really work?

[08:04]

Is that, was there really ever a Baal Shem Tov who gave this, told this story? Did that actually happen? When that appears, I would like, that's another story which is about me. You know, I just, that story came up in me just now. Is that about me? It's also about you. My doubts are your doubts. Your doubts are my doubts. My impatience is your impatience. Your impatience is my impatience. When I see your impatience, that's my story. And that's my story is me, and so on. This is studying the self. This is studying the Buddha way. Here's another story. There are applications outside the room here where you can sign up for studying yourself.

[09:07]

You can apply to study the Buddha way by studying yourself, by studying your stories, by listening to other people's stories, by telling other people's stories. You can sign up for that. But that story was just a story. There might not actually be any applications like that outside. And if there aren't, that's another story. May our intention...

[09:42]

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