From my point of view it's been quite a week, how about you? Today we're finishing a seven day retreat and how would you describe the rest of the world? Finishing seven days of what, fear, upset, how's it been out there? Interesting. I thought of a kind of summary of our practice this week and throughout our lives, a Buddhist

[01:06]

practice, suffer or become aware of suffering, aspire or vow, receive Buddhist precepts, enter your life, settle, bloom and meet all beings, become aware of suffering, vow to work to help all beings become free of suffering, before myself, receive Buddhist precepts,

[02:26]

enter into my life, settle with my life, let my life bloom and bring this flower to meet all other beings and thereby bring them the flower of my life, my compassion. Becoming aware of suffering has many layers, but at some point anyway we become aware of our suffering, many different kinds of suffering, but out of that suffering the spirit of compassion is born, out of our awareness of our own suffering and then noticing that others are suffering

[03:32]

too, compassion starts to come up, the seed of compassion starts to come up, and then we may decide to give rise to an aspiration or a vow, and there can be many aspirations and many vows, but the vow of someone who is going to become a Buddha is called the bodhisattva vow or the enlightenment worker vow, the vow of one who works for the enlightenment of all beings, and that vow is simply that I wish to give my whole life, all my life

[04:40]

energy to help others also give their whole life energy to help others become free of suffering, that's the aspiration which bodhisattvas make, bodhisattvas are beings who are helping others but also bodhisattvas are those who are in essence enlightenment itself and are working towards completely realizing enlightenment in themselves for the benefit of all. When we first produce this thought it's a little bit different than it would be after eons of effort, and when we produce this thought it also is easily lost and easily forgotten,

[05:49]

easily perishes in the midst of daily life. This thought has probably been born in all of you many times already. In myself I remember when I was a teenager, thirteen years old, one time it just popped into my head, I just saw quite clearly that all my problems would, I thought anyway, all my problems would evaporate, all my anxiety would drop away if I simply was kind to everyone. So I decided to go to school the next day and just be kind to everyone, and I think I remembered that that was what I was going to do all the way up to the door of the school. And when I opened the door all this stuff started to happen, all these active teenagers met me with all their juice and I never could remember what it was I intended to do there.

[07:01]

So that was that. And then again, sometime later I might remember, but I could never remember to actually bring it into the school more than a few inches. It's so interesting there. It's hard to remember how important it is to focus on benefiting others. As soon as people talk to you or talk to me, I naturally start thinking of myself and forget thinking of them. So a key factor is not just that you want the best for everyone, which logically you can see makes sense, but also to think mostly of others and think lightly of yourself, of your own life, and deeply on other people's, to put their benefit first. Thinking of what benefits me leads to confusion upon confusion, because I can never decide

[08:16]

exactly what's best for me. This is pretty good, but that might be better. So that orientation just causes more and more confusion, whereas trying to help others, somehow the mind gets clearer and clearer the more you think about what's beneficial to them. Buddhas become enlightened by living in the midst of suffering people, thinking about what's beneficial to them, how to help them. Those thoughts make your mind get clearer, so that's why we not just want the best for everyone, but for them first. And sometimes people think, oh, if you put others first, then that might not take care of you. But this is not so. Thinking of benefiting others first benefits you equally. And also, thinking of helping others first benefits everyone equally. That change in orientation removes the main obstacle of our work and also the source of

[09:22]

our suffering. It removes self-cleaning. And I've mentioned this in the past, and then after the talk that I mention it, people usually come up to me and say, well, couldn't you take care of yourself at the same time? And of course you can take care of yourself at the same time, you should take care of yourself at the same time, this is just talking about how you think about what you're doing in order to help yourself become clearer. It's not actually that you help others first, in fact you actually help yourself first by changing the way you're thinking. Even before you see anyone, if no one's around, if you change your way of thinking you are immediately helped, they don't even know yet what you've done. So actually you help yourself instantly as soon as you change your thought. That's the aspiration. There is a lineage from Buddha down to the present, you know, we're disciples of Buddha

[10:32]

and there's been disciples of Buddha now for 2,500 years or so, and we don't know about all the disciples of Buddha or all the students of Buddha, but certainly among all the teachers, among all the great teachers, there's one thing that's the same about all of them, and also they're all different. Every generation, particularly, you know, it seems apparent among Zen teachers, every generation is quite different from the previous one. Each Zen teacher has his or her own unique way of expressing their compassion. Some sing, some dance, some raise up a hand like this, some yell a lot, some cry a lot, some are very funny, some are very serious, some are somewhat chubby, some are skinny. Some die standing up, some die laying down, some die hanging from a tree.

[11:37]

Some die of cancer, some die of just deciding to die. There are very different types of teachers, but there's one thing they all share, there's one thing that's in the heart of all of them, and that is this wish, this primary concern for the welfare of others, always thinking about what will help other people, and this makes them happy, and this makes them clear, and this makes them fearless. The next step in fulfilling this aspiration is to receive the precepts. To remember that now that you're making this aspiration, you need to receive something that's been said before, written before, the precepts, which are how to conduct your life.

[12:43]

The first precept is to take refuge in Buddha, and Buddha is, again, the same thing, primarily a person who is compassionate and not attached to self. Second, to take refuge in the teachings of the Buddha, which are the teachings of compassion, and third, the community of practitioners. And then, next, to vow to avoid non-virtuous behavior, to actually stop it, to deep down decide you're not going to do any more, or maybe not decide that you're not going to do any more, but say definitely, for sure, you don't want to, because probably you will. But still, even though you will, probably, you say, I don't want to, and you check

[13:48]

down to the bottom of your heart and see, can I find a place where actually I don't want to? And you find that place, you say, I don't want to. I want to stop. I want to stop hurting people. I want to stop hurting people. I want to stop hurting people. I really do. But probably I will. But anyway, still, even though I will, I'm going to say, yes, I want to stop hurting people. And also, I want to do every positive thing I can for all living beings. I want to do all good things I can possibly do. Like I want to practice giving to people. I want to practice ethics. I want to be patient with people. I want to be enthusiastic in this project. I want to be concentrated on this project of benefiting all beings, and I want to have a clear mind so I can see exactly what's happening so I can do it. I want to do all kinds of good things like that, and I will definitely say,

[14:50]

yes, I want to do all good things. And third, I want to actually help everyone develop completely. And then there's other precepts like I vow not to kill, not to steal, and so on. So you receive these precepts, which are now the gate into yourself, the gate into your life, your whole life, because those precepts are the gate into your life, but already by taking these precepts, they're the gate into your life, which is not just your life, because these precepts, again, remind you that your life is a relationship through all these dimensions of other beings. And then you start the phase of the practice which I call settle, and that's the part that particularly is salient in Zen practice, to settle yourself on yourself,

[16:01]

to settle your body on your body, to settle your mind on your mind. And again, this whole process was started by awareness of suffering, but now as you settle, you deepen your awareness of suffering, you find out that it's more pervasive than you thought. Before, various things happened to you that made you aware of suffering and gave birth to your compassion. Now you find out that every posture you're in, if you simply stay in it long enough, is uncomfortable. You find out that every situation you're in, if you stay in it long enough, is uncomfortable. And when you settle, rather than sitting a

[17:09]

little bit and as soon as you become uncomfortable, try to get away from it, you realize the depth of suffering. Life is not suffering by nature, it's suffering for us, because no matter what we're in, our mind's always actively calculating, and the calculation produces comparisons which lead to discrepancies which cause us to wish the discrepancies to be readjusted, and this starts the process of misery. A moment of it isn't so bad, but if you stay with it for a while, it gets to be ... Again, this grounding, this settling, regrounds the whole process,

[18:09]

and in that awareness of suffering, another vow starts to develop, sort of more inner vow, the vow to drop all this. When you first hear about your suffering and you first make your aspiration, you may hear that in order to actually free yourself and work for the benefit of others, you're going to have to drop your self-clinging. But you may feel that that's more like a requirement, and you might logically understand, you might understand that makes sense. I can see how if I'm clinging to myself, that might get in the way of working for the benefit of others, but you might not yet want to. You might just be like, well, if that's what I have to do, I guess I'll do that at some point. But as you settle more and more, you actually want to drop your clinging, and not because so much it helps other people,

[19:18]

it's because you just ... what is it? It's like the awareness of the suffering due to the clinging, it just makes your mind softer and softer, and your mind kind of just wants to be free of all this hardness, this rigidity of holding on to some fixed idea of yourself. So a natural vow, which is connected to our kind of flexible, soft, flower-like nature starts to develop where you actually stop more and more being afraid of letting go of yourself, and start feeling like how that would really be kind of relaxing, and pleasant, and freeing, and necessary, and I don't know what else. Anyway, this vow gets stronger and stronger the more you sit in the midst of your own suffering, and the suffering of others.

[20:20]

The more you don't move, the more you become soft. So the practice is then, after these initial steps, is basically to sit, and just sit still. And if you just sit still, this vow, this wish to drop your body and mind, to drop all clinging, gets stronger and stronger, and also you get more and more soft, and you get more and more tender. You get tenderized, until you're so tender that you don't do anything. You don't do anything, and if you don't do anything, the most important thing you stop doing is you stop holding on to yourself. And then there's just you, and that's called blooming. You, just as you are, is compassion.

[21:30]

Finally you're allowing yourself to be yourself, just as you are, and also this is a bright flower for the world. And in this world, this world can be blessed by you bringing this flower out to meet other people, which you now will see that they are flowers too. Maybe in their seed form, maybe in their bloomed form, but anyway, you go meet the other flowers. The settling process is very difficult. The people who have been sitting this week have had a hard time. They've sat very beautifully. They've bloomed in various ways, but they've had a hard time settling, because the mind does keep thinking, gee, maybe I could be doing something other than this. Maybe I could move and get away from this pain. And in fact,

[22:32]

if you move, in a way you get away from it. And if you move again, maybe you get away from it. Like if you watch somebody sleep, they're moving all the time to get in a more comfortable position. Anyway, in Buddhism we honor the self, we honor the mind, we honor the self, we study the self, we don't demean it. The self is a time-honored tradition. I've told the story before about a young man who sometimes comes to Green Gulch. I think maybe now he's maybe, I don't know how old, but anyway, he's a teenager, and he knows me, and he doesn't know, he doesn't have a self that he can see or find. And he says

[23:41]

to me sometimes, he knows me, he knows my name, he says, Hi, Rev. And I say, Hi. And he says, almost every time he says, Do you know me? And I say, Yeah, I know you. Your name is such-and-such. And he says, and he asks about other people that we both know, and he asks if they know him. And then he asks me if I remember such-and-such a time when he was younger, when he did certain things, and I say, Yes, I remember those things. And sometimes he asks me other things which I don't remember. But you can see that as a primary concern is to find out who he is. He needs a self. You've got to have a self to live in this world. We can't do it without it. It's like you've got to have a heart. It's as necessary as a heart. But we don't tend to cling to our heart. There's something

[24:49]

about the self that we tend to cling to. We need a self, but we don't need to hold on to it. We can forget it. And if we settle, we forget it. And if we forget it, we bloom. There was a TV show that I watched when I was a kid, I think it was called Andy's Gang or something like that, or the Andy Devine Show or something like that, and there was a song in the show which I think of often, and I change the words, so I won't say the way it's usually said. I'll say it the way I hear it now. I got a self, you got a self, everybody's got to have a self, but there's only one self that's for me, good old forgotten self. In the stories of all these people whose primary

[26:06]

concern, who all shared the primary concern of welfare to others and have become founders of the Zen lineage down through time, they all have that same vow, and also in each story of their life they all had the experience, you look at their lives, they all had the experience of settling on their self and then forgetting their self and then understanding their self. So, every Buddha has to go through that. Settling on the self, the limited self that you're clinging to, feeling the misery that arises from attachment to self until finally you drop the self, you forget the self, and then you understand the self. And once you understand the self, what you understand is the self is all people. That's what the self is, and that's why

[27:14]

you want to help everybody. Everybody, even so-and-so. Even so-and-so who does not appreciate you at all, even though you're working for her benefit, she doesn't trust you, she thinks you're phony, you still want to help her. Why? Not because you're so nice, but because you're her. You're no better than people who don't want to help her. The only difference is you know you're her and them, because you forgot who you were. That happens to all Buddhas. They all forget the self and understand the self. They all say, Oh my God, I'm all people and all things. One of our ancestors said, Oh now I see, there's

[28:30]

no self, and there is nothing in the world that's not the self. That's the self that you realize when you settle the self on the self and forget the self. And everything that happens enlightens you and tells you again who you are. Who are you? You're all beings. So how can you kill yourself? How can you squash yourself? How can you spray insecticide on yourself? It's difficult to do that, because you hurt yourself. How can you steal from yourself? How can you lie to yourself? During the Seshina I had a list of the people's names and every time I saw a person I put a little black dot next to their name. I kind of wanted to have a black dot next to every person's name, but I didn't quite make it. But there was one name up in alphabetical order, there was one name up near the top

[29:33]

of the list. The top of the list of course is Jim Abrams. But then after him comes Reb Anderson. And whenever I looked at the list I always wondered whether I could dot that one. I always wondered, have I met him? And I never really felt like I did, but I'm looking for him. And I'd like to meet him. I really would. I've always wanted an identical twin to watch myself walk around. Anyway, I don't know, I'm still wondering about that part. So at that time that you bloom, that you blossom, after you've just been doing nothing for a while, you blossom. And we say it's like coming to life in the midst of death. You really

[30:36]

finally come completely alive after yourself, that you thought you were, dies. And then everything in the world is your life. In the dark your eyes are illumined. And now it's time to go to work, to meet people, to figure out how to meet people, how to help them. And it's done, again, face to face. Somehow you have to put your face, your self out there to meet another face, another self. It's self to self. Self to self, transmission of this light that you found in the darkness, of the flower that bloomed in the pit of your suffering. Well, now I'd like to just touch upon a little bit about how you work. Once

[31:53]

you're enlightened. But also, the Zen point of view is, we're already enlightened, so you people can go ahead on these things right away. You don't have to wait. These practices are done by enlightened people, but also, you can do them. And when you do them, you're coming from the point of view that you already are the flower. Now, if you don't really believe that you're the flower, then to that extent, you'll probably have some problems doing these practices. But the problems you have doing these practices, then, become ways for you to settle. The limitations you run into trying to do these practices of helping people show you, again, the outline of yourself. And you notice how the frustrations and difficulties of doing these practices help you, again, understand exactly what the problem is. And again, that leads you to drop the clinging, which is impeding these wonderful projects

[32:58]

you'd like to do. So, there's various schemes of beneficial action, or methods of these enlightenment workers, but the one I'd like to bring up today is what's called the four methods of an enlightenment worker. Four. First, is called giving. Second, is called beneficial action. Oh, no. Second, is called kind speech. Third, is called beneficial action. And fourth, is called sometimes identity action or cooperation. So, again, these are like somewhat more practical ways to bring forth this vow.

[34:03]

So the first is giving, and Dogen Zenji says, giving is non-greed. And non-greed means not to covet. So the primary quality of giving is that it's addressing any clinging that we have, or it's expressing that we don't have clinging. Either way. If you don't have clinging, you just give, and there's no obstruction. If you do have clinging, if you do have stinginess, when you try to practice giving, you notice your stinginess. Well, hopefully you notice your stinginess. You might not notice it at first, but if you keep practicing for a while, you notice that you're stingy. One of the main things you might notice is that you give

[35:08]

and try to get something in return. I'll give this to you if you give me something back, or I'll give something to you if you use it in a certain way. So when we're walking down the street, people ask us for money, and we think, well, I'd be happy to give it to them if they're going to use it for food, but if they're going to use it for drugs, I don't give it to them. So it gets complicated, and you shouldn't give people things that are bad for them. But still, in the process of giving, you may notice some clinging, and that shows you, again, the self-clinging. And giving also, we use the word giving rather than generosity or liberality and so on, because those words maybe don't give us a full idea of what you

[36:13]

can give, because you can give things away that don't belong to you. And you can also practice giving without actually giving the thing. For example, you can think of giving your body to somebody for food, or giving your skin to somebody for a coat, but you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't actually give your body under most circumstances. You should always check with a lot of people before you do that. But to think of giving your body in your mind, to imagine giving your body, and then seeing if you can feel joy at that thought, that's practicing giving. That benefits people. If you have a thought of giving your body away and you feel joy, that benefits everybody. You can also give away things that don't belong to you. People say, well, that's easy. It's not necessarily hard. It's okay if it's easy.

[37:13]

You can think of giving away the Golden Gate Bridge. You can think of giving the flowers on the hills. You can think of giving away other people's big houses. You can think of that. You can think of giving away Zen Center to a Christian group. You can think that. And if you think it and you feel joy at the thought, that's beneficial to you and to others. Maybe there's nothing yet of your own that you want to give away. Well, then give away everybody else's things. Get into the swing of it. And as you get into the swing of it, and as you get more and more into it, and you realize how much fun it is to give away other people's stuff, you might try a little of your own. No matter how small the gift is, don't calculate its smallness. Gift is beyond measure. You can give a penny, and

[38:19]

it is immeasurable merit in giving a penny, if you give it with the right attitude. If you really are giving it in order to help all beings, there's no way to limit how helpful that is. So don't worry about how large or small it is. Just give, and your mind and the minds of beings start to be transformed. And especially again, when you give, check to make sure whether or not you're expecting anything back. If you're expecting anything back, then that's beneficial to know, and you've identified against self-clinging. And also if you're expecting anything back, it is not actually giving. It is self-interest, along

[39:21]

with maybe a little fun for somebody else. Giving really means that you really let it go, hoping and maybe even enjoying the thought that letting it go is going to make this world a more happy place for everybody, and everybody is you. In the project of trying to benefit all beings, that means also to transform all beings, to help all beings mature. And it's very difficult to help beings mature. It's very difficult for sentient beings to change their ways. But still, the ancestors say we should keep trying to change and transform the mind of sentient beings, to try to help them transform

[40:27]

their minds. From the first tiny thing you give them, which causes them to feel joy and aspire to Buddhahood themselves, up to the gifts that help them attain perfect enlightenment. This process must, the first step in getting people to start transforming their mind, the first thing that gets them going is giving. I don't mean to make that a hard and fast rule, but that's what the teachings of the Buddhas are. The first wedge you get in to this big thing of getting people to completely transform themselves from our tight, selfish, creepy little people that we are, into a totally open, compassionate being. The first wedge you get in there to transform them, the thing which will get in through the toughest skin

[41:27]

is giving. This is not necessarily a Buddhist or non-Buddhist teaching. This is maybe a universal fact. I don't know. You can think about it. See if you think there's anything that's more penetrating than giving. I saw this movie recently, Le Miserable, and I don't know if you know the story, but anyway it's about a guy, pretty nice guy, that made a mistake. He stole something and got sent to prison for it, stole a loaf of bread and got sent to prison for it, and then he got abused in prison, and he turned in to his selfishness, his self-preservation, made him into a really hardened, angry criminal. And then someone helped him, a priest helped him,

[42:34]

and then he stole from the priest, and he was apprehended by the police. They brought him back to the priest, and the priest told the police that he hadn't stolen these things, that he had given them to him, and the police left. And then the priest said to the man, I know what you did, but actually I do want to give you these things, and here I want to give you some more stuff. So the man had stolen some silver plates, and he gave the man some silver candlesticks too. And the man, he got to him. He penetrated the priest and he penetrated through all the defensiveness, all the hardness, all the self-protection that developed in this person from all the cruelty that had been done to him over the years. So there's good reason why we have this hard coat. People have sometimes not been nice

[43:39]

to us, and we couldn't cope with it, so we had to protect ourselves lifetime after lifetime. So for us too, what gets us sometimes to transform is somebody giving to us. Somebody, I don't know who, maybe one of you, gave me an anonymous gift recently, which I accepted. Thank you. And usually I don't like anonymous gifts. I feel uncomfortable. But this time I thought, well maybe this is good, I'll just assume that anybody could have given it to me. So everybody I meet, I try to remember, they may be the one that gave it to me. That gift transformed my mind. Now if the person had identified themselves, they also would have transformed my mind, but anyway, that giving made my mind change into thinking of everyone as my benefactor. Of course, as soon as I open the door, I forget. But still, for a

[44:45]

moment anyway, I thought, anyone could be the one who's helping me. The light is buzzing over there, and the microphone went off, right? No? Is the mic still going? Okay. So our mind is beyond measure, and gifts are beyond measure, and also giving transforms the mind. It transforms the mind of the giver, and it transforms the mind of the receiver. Oh, I forgot to finish the story about this guy. He was transformed. And for the rest of his life, he was a good person. Although he was tempted occasionally,

[45:53]

and slipped occasionally, he was basically transformed by that gift. So giving transforms mind, and mind can transform giving. Even a small gift can be incredibly valuable, and also a small gift can transform your mind. The next one is kind speech, and the next one is beneficial action, and the next one is identity action. But it's getting late, so I won't be able to finish the list. Maybe you can study these more later yourself, these four methods. But I will say something about kind speech, and that is, kind speech means that when you

[46:57]

see sentient beings, you arouse the mind of compassion. When you see living beings, humans or animals, you give rise to the mind of compassion, and you offer words of loving care. Like, pleased to meet you. How are you? How's your health today? Now, this practice is contrary to cruel and violent speech. You can probably think of some examples of that yourself. I don't want to say them because I don't want to get deep in my habit in that direction. In the secular world, there is the custom

[47:57]

of asking after someone's health. In Buddhism, we use, there's a phrase, please treasure yourself. And the respectful address to elders, may I ask how you are? It is kind speech to speak to sentient beings as you would to a baby. Also, a nice rule that I try to practice is to think of things, if I'm talking about someone who's not around, to have what I say about them be such that if they heard it back by rumor, they would be happy to hear it. Even if it gets changed to the telephone tree, it would be so nice that it would get back to them and make them happy. Benjamin Franklin was an energetic young man and known for his crudeness and tactlessness.

[49:00]

But after many years of practicing kind speech, he was able to be the United States Ambassador to France. He said he was able to make this transformation by practicing kind speech. He said he never would say anything bad about anybody and he would always say something, only good things about people. It's not easy. What if you're in a position of authority and someone's misbehaving? How can you not say something bad about them? There's a way. Well, can you think of an example? Let's say somebody's stealing. You can say,

[50:07]

they didn't steal everything. Recently my wife went shopping and she came home and she said, I have a problem. I better not say what she said, but anyway, she said, I have a problem and she said what her problem was and I said, it could have been worse. That would have delighted her. It could have been worse. It could have been worse. Really. And she said, oh, you've changed so much over the years. In the old days I would have talked more about the effect that happened as a result of the shopping activity, but I shifted it to seeing the positive side of it and it was only through suffering that I made this transformation. It's not because I'm so nice. I just learned

[51:15]

that the way of peace is the way of saying positive things. By the way, some people, not all people, but some people, maybe a lot of people, if they do something wrong and you don't say anything, they often are harder on themselves than you ever could be. But if you criticize them, they'll say, well, who do you think you are? And they'll never even look at what they did. But if you just quietly appreciate them, they'll probably think, geez, what did I do? Now, let me look at that. So actually, you don't have to go around doing this stuff of pointing out other people's errors. You don't have to be, what is it, the angel of death or the angel of retribution. Everybody's got that in their heart. You can be the angel of kind speech. Tweet, tweet. Pablo Casals, the cellist, he met this young cellist one time and the young cellist played

[52:33]

for him. And after the recital, Pablo Casals said, that was so wonderful what you did. You did that, I don't know the technical terms, but you did that so beautifully. And you did that so well. It was wonderful. Almost, you know, just really effusive praise. The young man listened to this, could hardly believe it because he noticed all the mistakes he had made and how nervous he had been. He felt that Casals was insincere or maybe just an old man too, getting senile. Then maybe ten years later or something, he played for Casals again. And this time, being more confident and mature, he played better from his point of view. No mistakes, no nervousness, right

[53:38]

on the mark. And Casals again just said, that was wonderful. You know, and on and on. And after it was over, he said, excuse me, sir, but do you remember when I played for you ten years ago? And he said, yes, I do. He said, well, you were so effusive, but I made all these mistakes. You know, why didn't you, you know, why did you talk that way about me? And Casals says, didn't you do that part right? Didn't you do that part right? Didn't you do that well? Didn't you approach this accurately? Didn't you do that with feeling? The man said, yes. He said, that's what I said you did. What about my errors? He said, somebody else can point out your errors. That's for fools. I talk about what you do right. So, please, let's talk about what people do right, even though we might be leaving

[54:43]

out something we could say. Perhaps abandoning a very highly developed skill that we have. This is one of, these are two of the methods that enlightened beings use to bring forth the flower of compassion among suffering beings. Please help me practice them. I'll try. Today's song is a song for this week. This week's song, that's not funny. Was that cruel? See, it's very difficult. This is one which some of you have heard before. It's called Trial of Tenderness, or Be a Little Tenderness, or something like that. And I want to tell

[55:47]

you the words. I have trouble getting the tune for part of it right, but it's something like, and the words can be changed by the way, you should know that. Like the way it usually goes is, she may be weary, women do get weary, wearing that same shabby dress. And when she's weary, try a little tenderness. But you could change it to, he may be weary, teachers do get weary, wearing that same shabby robe. And when she's weary, try a little tenderness. You know she's waiting, just anticipating, things he may never, never, never possess. So when she's waiting, try a little tenderness.

[56:49]

This is a part I tune. It's not just sentimental, he has his griefs and cares, but a word that's soft and gentle, makes it easier to bear. You won't regret it, he won't forget it, loves his only happiness. So when she's weary, try a little tenderness. Okay? Now since it's Sasheen, it's kind of a holiday, and I don't want to, and things don't go as usual, so I didn't want to have any announcements

[57:53]

today, just to give you a break from that, okay? But somebody wanted me to tell you what announcements we're not going to have. These are announcements we're not going to have at this not-Zen center. Okay, first of all, I'm not going to tell you that we're having tea on the deck, and question and answer. Not going to announce that. I'm not going to announce that there's no public lunch. Is that a double negative that means there is public lunch? I don't know. There's going to be no request for money. But you notice I mentioned about giving earlier, remember?

[58:55]

So we're not going to ask for money for like the talk, or the morning, not going to ask for money for that. We're also not going to ask for money like to build a new Zen-do. But it says, in parentheses, it says, although it is acceptable. Did you write that? Also, we're not going to announce that help is needed to take the chairs away and stuff, and we're not going to ask who will do it. I don't know what they're going to do next week. Oh, she may be weary. Young girls, they do get weary.

[60:20]

Wearing that same old shaggy dress. But when she gets weary. Try a little tenderness. You know she's waiting. Just anticipating. A thing that she'll never, never, never, never forget. While she's there waiting, without them, try a little tenderness. It's not just sentimental, no, no, no.

[61:38]

She has her greed and care, yeah, yeah, yeah. But a soft word, neon smoke's on future, yeah. It makes it easier, easier to me. You won't regret it, no, no. Young girls, they won't forget it. No, in their whole happiness. But it's all so easy. All you got to do is try, try a little tenderness. All you got to do is try, try a little tenderness.

[62:43]

All you got to do is try, try a little tenderness. It's all so easy. All you got to do is try, try a little tenderness. All you got to do is try, try a little tenderness. Welcome to America, Buddha. Welcome to America, Buddha.

[63:46]

Welcome to America, Buddha. [...]

[65:26]

Welcome to America, Buddha. Welcome to America, Buddha. Welcome to America, Buddha.

[66:00]

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