Good evening. I told Steve that I would introduce myself, since I probably have more information about me than he does. I started reading Buddhism when I was quite young, I was an undergraduate in college. So, in 1966, when I first was introduced to Suzuki Roshi, I actually was taken to hear him give a talk. I had a quite strong and almost immediate response to him, in the sense of recognizing that here was somebody who was actually living what I had been reading about, which I'd always treated a little bit like I was reading ancient history, so it was very reassuring to see someone who was actually a meditation master who looked like he was aligned with himself, in terms of having his teaching and his behavior.

[01:04]

So, and I've been a practicing Buddhist ever since. My home path is Zen, but I also have studied in the Theravada tradition, and I've done some practices in the Tibetan tradition as well. I was blessed with having stumbled upon a quite remarkable teacher, a Tibetan teacher, who, if he had been teaching how to make shoes, I think I would have studied that with him. I just wanted to hang out with him. I was part of the San Francisco Zen Center for 28 years, and am now practicing in a very, by contrast, very small setting. We've made a meditation space in the property where we And most of our retreats are very small, between 10 and 18 people at the most.

[02:08]

And I like that a lot. I like the smallness of our retreats, and the intimacy of them, and the fact that none of us, including me, can hide very easily in that small a setting. But I also like the low profile, because it means we can try things, and it isn't the end of the world if it doesn't work out. Once you become part of a big institution, it's much harder to do that. There are other advantages, but you lose a certain flexibility in being able to be a little bit experimental. One of the through lines for me since 1971, as an extension of my role as Suzuki Roshi's assistant and secretary, when he became sick with cancer, his wife and I took care of him until he died.

[03:13]

And beginning with that experience, ever since then, as an ongoing practice, I have taken care of people while they die, and have, in more recent years, spent time teaching people some practices that I have found helpful, that they might use in their own work, taking care of friends or family or people who are doing hospice work. So, that miserable subject is very much on my mind this evening, and I think in a few minutes you'll understand why. What I really want to talk about tonight has to do with the whole issue of turning away, and noticing what we turn away from, and to talk with you a little bit about a practice that I have found extremely helpful

[04:14]

in turning towards what part of me wants to turn away from. But I want to tell some stories first before I lay the groundwork. I was asked to be part of a fundraising dinner for a hospice program. I was sort of the bait for the dinner. I think maybe the guests got indigestion when it turned out. So I went to this dinner party, the kind of thing that I actually don't do much anymore, and the hosts were very gracious, kind, nice people. And they and their six friends, we were ten altogether,

[05:15]

gathered for us to have this very elegant dinner, and then I was over-deserved to have some words about one thing or another. And the context of the group was that they are all young, in their late 30s, 37, 38 at the most, and quite good friends, and each couple had three or four children, all about of the same age. And they all have a significant amount of wealth, a group of young people who have inherited a great deal of wealth. So in addition to being well-educated and handsome, they are wealthy, and they clearly have a very good time. And one of the things I began to realize was this is a group of young people

[06:24]

who are actually very committed to having a good time. And the contrast between the world that I live in and this good time world has struck me quite significantly. Not because I have anything against having a good time, that's not at all the situation, but I haven't spent time with people for whom that is their primary purpose. And it's definitely not the group of people with whom I usually talk about death and dying, even though they knew what they were getting into. So they asked me if I would say a little bit about my experiences with Suzuki Roshi, and given the context that we were gathering around with respect to an interest in hospice work. I talked to them a little bit about my experiences with Suzuki Roshi as he was dying,

[07:29]

which was a great teaching for me. It was my first experience being with someone while they died, and he really showed me something about what's possible in terms of dying with a calm and happy mind. The detail of that and how that can happen through the course of some months of sickness. One of the things I described in some detail was what I had learned from sitting with him about the breath. Because of course for all of us who are practicing meditation practices that have the breath as a focal point, the breath in any and all circumstances becomes extremely interesting. And one of the great opportunities in sitting with dying people is that we as meditators have something to offer

[08:31]

from our experience in our meditation practice. But also the dying have something to teach us about the breath and about what happens when we actually are dying. Not what we think is going to happen, but what actually happens. We had some conversation about the breath. One young woman said she didn't know that breathing practices were actually very helpful. And she started talking about her experience being in labor, having her children. She and her husband had gone to labor coaching classes and had learned some breathing practices. And I said, well, were the practices primarily about breathing? And she said, oh yes. And we went to every class.

[09:32]

And I said, did you practice them? And she said, no. So what she described was her reaction to going through labor, which was that it was awful, that she screamed most of the time, and did everything she could to get away from what was happening to her. She then went on to offer that the only time the breathing practices that she'd been introduced to in the classes helped her at all was when she was first nursing her child, because she had a lot of physical pain with the beginning of nursing. Her breasts were very sore. So she would do, while she'd be nursing. I thought, I wonder what it was like for her child. But she said it helped. Anyway, I, as gently as possible, suggested that maybe the breathing hadn't been so helpful for her,

[10:42]

because those kinds of practices have to be practiced in order to become part of you for those moments when you feel challenged, which was clearly what she was describing. So I was struck by how much good fortune this young woman has in her life. Quite strikingly beautiful, wealthy, well-educated, well-situated, looked-happily-married young woman who doesn't escape the suffering that comes with acute pain and physical discomfort. I think that was a surprise to her from the way she described her experience. I found myself, after the evening, thinking about her description of her reaction to being in labor

[11:44]

and how committed she was to getting away from it at all costs. And not really wanting to know, in the sense of not wanting to explore, at least not yet being open to exploring some ways of being with that discomfort in a way that might ease her suffering. A little later in the evening, one woman who was actually quite interested in the conversation we were having, because she had just recently sat with her own mother while she was dying, she and her husband were quite interested in what we were talking about, and at one point the husband asked me what were my thoughts on reincarnation. And I described the fact that before I ever was exposed much to teachings about past and future lives, most of my thoughts about past and future lives was based on my experience of sitting with people while they die,

[12:51]

and then after they die, sitting with their body for three days. My husband said to me afterwards as we were driving home that there was a palpable chill in my arm when I mentioned sitting with a corpse for three days, and I actually realized once it had kind of slipped out of my mouth that maybe I didn't need to have added that detail, although it was relevant to what we were talking about. So let me just put that little scene to one side. A week ago, a week and a half ago on Friday, I went to see a woman at the request of a friend of mine who was in the very last stages of dying from metastasized breast cancer, and she was strikingly like the young woman at dinner.

[13:52]

She was in an enormous amount of pain, had been for several weeks, and was thrashing and hollering and moving her feet up and down and inhaling and clenching, and just in agony, and the pain medication that she was on didn't do any, didn't dampen. The pain she was experiencing at all. And her daughter and son and friend who were taking care of her were exhausted because she had been like this around the clock for two or three days. So just before I got to the house, they had dissolved some secondol and some orange juice and had succeeded in knocking her out with that. And she was actually resting pretty calmly when I got there, but it was clear from looking at the young people who were taking care of her

[14:55]

that they'd really been through a very difficult time. So they described her breathing to me and her reaction when she'd have these waves of pain, and it was clear she was constricted. She was on the inhalation constrictor. So I talked to them about the possibility of emphasizing the exhalation, and also we talked about playing some music that she had historically found common. It turned out she had a tape of some Tibetan monks chanting a Medicine Buddha meditation, which she liked a lot. So they hauled the sound system into the bedroom and they started playing the tape. I spent a little while, about an hour and a half or so, teaching the three of them how to emphasize the exhalation, make the sound of ah on the exhalation. And to do that, maybe not on every exhalation at first,

[15:57]

because sometimes she was breathing rapidly, but every few breaths. So we practiced doing that for a while. They also wanted my help in knowing what to do with her body after she died. They were very interested in doing that because it was something she had said she wanted, and she wanted them to sit with her body for as much time as they could, and she didn't want her body cremated for three days. She hadn't been exposed to Buddhism very much, but enough to know about those traditional practices. And these three people were very committed to doing what she wanted. We were having a retreat start that evening, so after a little while I left and went home. But I gave them my phone number and I said, don't hesitate to call, even if it's in the middle of the night, if I can be of some help. So at 9.30, the friend called and said,

[16:57]

Betty died five minutes ago. So I did a little practice for her. And the next morning, her daughter called, and I had a chance to ask her what had happened after I left. And she said she was completely at ease. She had no more pain. She was quite calm. And just before she died, she opened her eyes and she looked at each of them, and they each felt like she was saying goodbye to them, and she closed her eyes, and that's it. It was exactly what I had hoped for her, but couldn't imagine that she'd be able to get it together. But she had this loving help, committed to giving her whatever they could think of for calmness and breathing with her.

[18:00]

And that was what she needed, a little encouragement and company on the exhalation, as a way of kind of coaxing her away from what was happening on the inhalation. Because that's, of course, when we're scared or upset or resistant, all that constriction happens on the inhalation. So these two women have been in my mind a lot today. And I've been struck by the woman who died, her good fortune. She tried to find out what kinds of meditation she might do, and she was diagnosed with, I think, at the point at which her cancer metastasized, she suddenly felt the heat turn up, and she got very interested in meditation.

[19:01]

But she didn't know where to go or what to do. She read books, and she kind of poked around in the dark. And some of the tapes that she had, which I looked at the day I was there, looked kind of like made-up, New Age, made-up, transcendental humming and things like that, that I think were completely material that was made with a very good heart, but didn't seem like it was a presentation for meditation in a very organized or coherent way. But I think what was clear was she had, over those months, some intention to meditate. She had some intention to learn something about an inner life that would help her. So even though she didn't get the kind of guidance that might have made some difference in the earlier weeks, her intention, I think, must have been strong.

[20:05]

Because I don't know how else to understand that change that happened to her that evening. And also, what's very important is she was willing. She was receptive to what her son and daughter and friend and the tape box could give her. And I think that also makes a big difference, a kind of willingness, openness to receiving something that might be useful. And I actually think that most of us, when we are challenged by physical or mental pain, or some obstacle that comes up that's not what we expected, our initial reaction is very awkward. I don't think that's so unusual at all. And I think the wanting our suffering to go away is not so unusual.

[21:10]

The problem is it doesn't work. And if we keep ourselves distracted enough, we don't notice that. If we have enough toys and enough places to go and enough things going on, we can keep ourselves from noticing that. Which is, I think, a great misfortune. So, I feel a little bit like this is Kohl's to Newcastle, because the practice I want to teach you comes from a very important sutra that is emphasized in the Theravada tradition, the Anapanasati Sutra, the Sutra on Mindfulness of Breathing In and Breathing Out. But I am also a great believer in non-sectarianism. Just because it's a Theravada sutra doesn't mean I can't study it and benefit from it. Quite the opposite. I actually, the meditation I want to teach you this evening, I've been doing for a number of years,

[22:16]

and it was only fairly recently that I realized that the source for the meditation is that sutra. The practice, as it was first taught to me, was presented as a meditation for working with anger. But it's actually a meditation that's very effective in working with any strong, afflictive emotion. Any emotion that arises where the reaction is, I want to get away from this, I don't want to feel this, I want this to be over as quickly as possible. So what I want to emphasize, actually, is the first step. The meditation is sometimes taught with five steps, but the important step is the first one. And that's where about 97% of what ever shifts or is transformed occurs, in that first step.

[23:19]

It's particularly effective with anxiety, fear, grief, not just anger, not that hot, you know. But it's also very helpful with other emotional states. And very useful if you aren't quite sure what you're experiencing emotionally. You just know, you feel bad, you feel upset, you don't know the detail. The meditation is actually helpful in moving into what's going on. So, and you can do it either sitting or walking. So the first thing you do, whether you're sitting or walking, is to get yourself settled and grounded with some alignment. I've been relegated to a chair for a month because I have an unhappy hip.

[24:28]

So I'm not as adept at this chair sitting as I guess I will become. So take a few breaths and just let yourself settle in your seat and be aligned, but be comfortable, be at ease. Don't be too, don't have a strict feeling. Maybe as Vipassana practitioners you don't suffer from that hazard, but... Take a nice full inhalation and exhalation so you're really with yourself. Now what I'd like to do is to describe the meditation to you, and then I'll let you think about some situation where you have some little arising. And we can actually do the meditation for a few minutes, and then if you have some questions we can talk about it.

[25:33]

So the gesture that you take is this one of cupping the hands, but with real ease in the hands, at the heart chakra. And you visualize holding the emotion that you're aware of, and whatever physical body sensation or sensations seem to be accompanying the emotional state. Very important that you include both body sensation and the emotion, whatever it is. And you then say to yourself, to the best of your ability, labeling the emotion as accurately as you can, but with a certain amount of tentativeness so that if the emotion changes, the labeling will change with that shifting. And you do the practice of awareness or mindfulness of the emotional state and accompanying body sensations

[26:36]

on the inhalation, breathing in, and breathing out. So if it's a very strong emotion that you feel quite overwhelmed with, you may only stay with that emotion for one breathing in. You might not even do it for a whole breath. So part of what you're doing is giving yourself a way of being with what is hard to be with in a manner that is utterly doable. So, breathing in, I note anger within me, or fear, or whatever it is. And the gesture of holding is described as with the tenderness of a mother with her only newborn child. Breathing out, I note anger within me. Or we might do it with fear. Breathing in, I note fear within me. Breathing out, I note fear within me.

[27:41]

So I just keep doing that on the inhalation and on the exhalation as long as I can without forcing. And if I feel like I'm doing any forcing, then you just stop and just rest for a little bit and then you can come back to me. Okay? So before we do it, do you have any questions about what I just went through? Yes. You said that you might only hold that anger if that was the emotion on the inhalation? On the breathing in. So then, let's say you were only comfortable holding it that long, what would you do? Then you just put your hands down and just relax and open your eyes. You wouldn't keep your hands like this? No. Oh, okay. Because what you're doing is letting yourself have the experience of your actual capacity to be with the emotion that part of you wants to turn away from. In the face of that reaction to what arises, this turning towards feels quite radical.

[28:47]

You're going against all your inclinations, if you will. So if you're willing to do that for a very brief time, you begin to discover, oh, I can go back and do it or discover, oh, I can do it now, breathing in and breathing out. Breathing in and breathing out. And then maybe I'll stop having done it a little longer. So what we begin to discover out of our experience is what happens when we bring our mindfulness of whatever is difficult to be with by doing it with breathing. But without requiring that it even be a whole breath. It can be on breathing in and breathing out. And I think separating breathing in and breathing out in that way has a lot of advantage. Now, what very often happens, especially with anger, is there will be a shift.

[29:56]

You'll be aware of some change in the emotional weather. So it's important that you stay present with what's arising on each breathing in or breathing out. And if you have an expectation about what you probably are feeling, that's the kind of thinking that gets in the way of actually being present with what's going on. Does that make sense? Is it also a physical discomfort? Yes, absolutely. Physical pain. Yes, absolutely. People are going to miss it. Yes. Absolutely. Any kind of pain and suffering, whatever form it manifests in. I did a retreat in September, which was when my hip was giving me quite a lot of trouble. It was a very classical kind of Zen retreat and quite strict.

[31:01]

And I had more physical discomfort than I'm used to having. And I found this way of being with it enormously helpful. And the discomfort changed in the process of being more present with it. And I began to have some insights about very slight adjustments that I could make in my posture that seemed to make a real difference. So I was, out of doing this particular practice, able to take better care of myself. What your intention is in doing the meditation is very important. If the meditation is done in order to get the emotional state, or the state that you want to be with. Any other questions? Okay, so let's just do it for a few minutes. You know, conjure up some singing. And I think it's usually a little easier to do this with your eyes closed.

[32:08]

When you're ready, just do the practice as I've described it. Okay. When you're ready, just sing.

[33:23]

Okay. Now, the last detail I want to mention to you is that, particularly if what you're holding mindfully with breathing in and breathing out is particularly challenging, you'll notice a big difference if your breath, if the inhalation and the exhalation are each long. So if you were to take a count at about the rhythm of the second hand on a watch or clock, the count of five or longer on the inhalation and the count of five or longer on the exhalation. That breath which has that characteristic itself also has an effect on the emotional state that allows you to be with what is hard to be with.

[34:29]

So that's another detail, particularly helpful with physical pain. It's true, I think more broadly, but especially if you're going to use the practice for physical discomfort. Okay. I find getting curious about what I turn away from extremely useful. Not even to start fiddling with what I turn away from, but to just begin to be interested in being in touch with the situations or emotional states or kinds of communication difficulties or getting lost. Wherever aversion arises, to notice if my habit, my tendency, my pattern is this.

[35:32]

Because of course, one of the things that was quite striking to me about the young woman that I described to you who had such a hard time during labor when her children were being born, is that she's not very curious about her mind yet. She's not so curious about something like turning away. So, that's what I'd like to suggest to you. Let me just tell you what the other four steps of the meditation are. You don't want to go from step one to step two until you feel like you've really done step one until it's long dry, yes. Could you, when you do that, quickly review step one again? Yes, yes, absolutely. Because I want to make sure I understand.

[36:36]

Yeah. First, I settle and ground myself, either with sitting or walking. And I then close my eyes and let my hands be cupped gently at the heart chakra. And I visualize holding the emotional state and accompanying physical sensations or whatever is arising by way of reaction within me. Some reaction to intense physical pain might be the case, whatever it is. I hold what arises in terms of state of mind or emotional state and physical body sensation that's accompanying what I'm holding. And with mindfulness of breathing in, note and label whatever it is and do the same thing on the exhalation.

[37:36]

The more specific and particular the labeling, that's also helpful. There's something about getting the right label where you have a kind of felt sense about, ah, that's it. And you may have to fish around for it for a while. You may not get it right. You may not quite know what's up for a while. So you just do that until you either feel ready to stop or feel like you're pushing and then you stop. You don't want to push or force. Step two, breathing in, I know the causes and conditions for this fear or anger are within me. Breathing out, I know the causes and conditions of this fear are within me. It's a way to remind myself that something happens and I have a reaction or a response.

[38:41]

And most of us get caught with what's happening, what the person did or said or what did or didn't happen. And we move away from the part of it that has to do with our reaction, which is the only thing we have any say about. And a lot of our reactive patterning is the consequence of conditioning. All the habit, did I sleep well last night? Did I overreact when somebody said something to me this morning because I had indigestion all night or I didn't sleep well? Or I just had a fight with somebody important to me? I mean, you know, whatever the causes and conditions are. So that's a kind of flagging about making that distinction. You know, how often do we say, it makes me so angry or she made me so angry? And it's not an accurate statement.

[39:45]

What's actually so is something happens or she did or didn't do something and I have some reaction. So step two is about identifying that. Step three and four kind of go together and are somewhat kind of refining what starts in step one. So step three is breathing in, I calm anger. Breathing out, I calm anger. I just keep doing that. And then when I'm ready, move to step four, which is ease. Breathing in, I ease anger. Breathing out, I ease anger. Ease in the sense of that sense of it slipping away, dissolving. And then step five is a more intellectual analysis, thinking about what are the causes and conditions that led to this upwelling.

[40:53]

And particularly with anger, but sometimes with other emotions as well, I think many of us want to go to step five as quickly as possible, bypassing experiencing the emotional states, especially if that's been our pattern. I recently did a long retreat with someone who most of the time doesn't know what she's feeling. And she's done such a good job up until her 50s of not knowing what she's feeling that now that she's beginning to realize it might be useful to check in, she says, where do I start? What do I do? And for her, what she had to start with was physical body sensation. That's the entry point. And very reliable. And in not very much time, she began to have more access to emotions by starting always with body sensation.

[42:02]

So we don't have to stay with this if there's other things you want to talk about. Yes? Yes, one further question about step five. The intellectual... Contemplating, right. It comes out of the other four steps which are in the meditative state. One stays in the meditative state and gets that intellectual aha. Well, what happens if you really stay with the first four steps and are patient and don't move too quickly from one step to the other, is that you begin to have insights kind of loop up that definitely inform that contemplation and analysis in step five. And sometimes you may do these steps over a course of some days or weeks or longer. I mean, I know people who use the meditation especially for old emotional stuff over some very extended period of time.

[43:16]

And especially if what starts to come up is very strong and hard to sit with, it works very nicely to walk, not too quickly, just slow walking, quite effective. Yes? You touched on this, but I actually didn't have to look real hard for a strong emotion, and I found that I kept getting off track with it. You know, it took me away from the meditation. Any suggestions for how to... I did what you said, I put my hands down and just stopped. Well, it may be more skillful to start with a situation or emotional range that's not got quite so much energy in it. So you begin to get the taste of how the practice works with a little more manageable emotional stuff. You might also explore and see what happens if you do it walking,

[44:21]

because it's much easier to be with a challenging emotional walking. The other suggestion I can make is that if you're really attending with breathing in and breathing out, as long as you don't try to do it for too long, you can usually stay with what's coming up for at least the span of an inhalation. And you begin to kind of nudge yourself, kindly, but a little firm in the nudging, to, okay, let's try the exhalation. And just keep coming back to it. The constancy of the return really makes a big difference. But, you know, don't start with a two-ton weight.

[45:24]

Start with something that's more like, you know, pencils or something. Yes? I have a question sort of on that. It's real hard for me to stay with just the emotion without the story that goes with it. That's why this meditation is so useful, because the story is what keeps us stuck. That's what is sometimes referred to as harboring. And you can keep regenerating some very intense reactive patterning in the mind stream if you keep going to the story. It's one of the reasons why the bare noting practice is so remarkable, where you note something, whatever it is, and immediately shift your attention to a neutral body sensation, and then take a breath in and a breath out. It's a way of getting used to cutting, noticing the reaction, but cutting the story. Because the story is a very stuck place.

[46:29]

And it's a way of continually regenerating ourselves in whatever mode we're used to. So we practice getting away from doing the story over and over. Yes. But, again, that's work, especially if one has come to be fond of one's story and is afraid of... I think what happens much more often is some fear of... And we get distracted away from really attending to the relationship we have with ourselves free of all that baggage. Carol will have to forgive me, but one of my favorite story images comes from the Andalusian Dog, an old, old, old film by Luis Buñuel, where the protagonist has a toe line around his forehead, and he's pulling, he goes through the movie,

[47:31]

pulling this enormous baby grand piano with a dead donkey draped over it, like a kind of Spanish shawl. You know, for some of us, we don't have that image for our stories. We have suitcases or something, but it amounts to the same thing. And practices like this have the effect of the experience of just slipping the toe line off and walking. It's like, oh, my goodness. Cutting our connection with those old stories can be challenging and enormously liberating. And I find the bare noting practice and this particular meditation that I was just describing very, very useful in doing that. And also just in noting, noting a pattern, and then getting into the story, just being able to, oh, story, old story, beloved story.

[48:31]

Yes? Oh, from the Sutra on Mindfulness of Breathing In and Breathing Out, called the Anapanasati Sutra. Breathing in, I note whatever. The second step is breathing in, I know the causes and conditions for this, whatever it is, are within me. Step three is breathing in and breathing out. And step three is calming, step four is easing, and then step five is this. The panel discussion. The panel discussion. Hopefully not with your inner committee. Because, again, this is a meditation that helps us be present without the yapping habitual judge. Which, for those of us who have it, has real consequences and goes back to the story issue again.

[49:43]

To be able to note habitual judging and not get into the content of the habitual judging is one of the ways of shifting my relationship to that patterning. So it may go on, but I don't let it be in the driver's seat. Natalie Goldberg has a great way of talking about this. In her book, Writing Down the Bones, she has a chapter on the editor, which is about two-thirds of a page long. And she talks about the editor, that inner voice that's, you know, there you are writing and then this voice is saying, boring. And she said, you know, if you stop writing, then it means that voice is in the driver's seat. If you keep writing and hear the voice as though it were laundry hung out on the lawn, flapping in the wind, then maybe someday someone else will take it in. It's a great description. So it's really not getting rid of that voice of habitual judgment, but it's changing our relationship to it.

[50:47]

So, again, this meditation that I was just describing is one of the practices that can help do that. That shift in relationship. The getting rid of. There's a remarkable, now unfortunately no longer with us, English monk in the Theravadan tradition who wrote some quite important commentaries on the Abhidharma texts, on Buddhist psychology texts. And he described the impulse to get rid of as a kind of inner violence. I think that's right. So, you wanted to bring something else up? Go for it. Cry. Keep doing it. And be careful. Pay attention to, do you try to close down the breathing?

[51:48]

Do you have some tightness? Do you start constricting, especially on the inhalation, when you're crying? Because often that's what we do without realizing it, and we end up kind of clamping down on crying. I'm a great enthusiast for crying. Bathes the eyes, does all kinds of things. Anybody else have something you want to add? I'm very grateful to the Theravadan tradition, which is a tradition in which there is a lot of unpacking of what is implied in Zen, especially in Japanese schools. Where, ideally, in the old days, and to this day I think this is still the ideal in Japan,

[52:53]

you learn by living with a teacher and watching and getting a lot of your teaching non-verbally. But of course Japanese culture is essentially a body culture, and the Japanese are very used to and very good at getting the teachings that way. Non-verbal communication is something Japanese tend to be extremely skillful with. And I think for us as Americans it doesn't work at all, because we are not a body culture, we're a mind culture. I think most of us do quite a bit better, it certainly is true for me, with some mapping, some description about what we're doing, what the intention is, all of that. And the practices that are articulated in the Theravadan tradition certainly do that quite splendidly. And of course in a country like, well specifically in Vietnam, in Zen temples,

[53:54]

you have Zen practice and Theravadan practice side by side. And I think one of the reasons why Thich Nhat Hanh is so accessible for so many Westerners is because he comes from that tradition where he's really bringing together Zen and particularly Vipassana. So he helps articulate and map what the meditation territory is. Somebody once years ago said, in Zen you're thrown into the ocean and we hope you quickly learn how to dog paddle and eventually learn how to swim. In the Tibetan tradition you stay on the shore and learn every stroke and every way of breathing before you ever set a toe in the water, in quiet countries. So thank you very much for inviting me and I hope you find the practice of some usefulness.

[55:02]

One of my favorite things about His Holiness the Dalai Lama is that at the end of teachings he says, I hope these practices that we've been talking about will be helpful and if not, forget it. So, thank you. Thanks very much Yvonne. I realized that I forgot to visit the Donna Basket and so I want to remind people that this teaching is offered as a gift and nobody should put any funds in there that are uncomfortable for them to do but to the extent that you can help support our guest teacher and this environment. Thank you very much. Good luck with your 501c3. I hope it doesn't get you into trouble. I hope not. Don't get too complicated. Small is beautiful.

[56:05]

Yes, I agree.

[56:06]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ