Good morning. This morning's speaker is Laurie Fandaki, who is a long-time practitioner resident here at BDC and plays so many roles and does so many things inside of the Sangha that it's impossible to recount. So today I wanted to talk about a mundane topic, eye contact. I originally had another topic in mind for this talk, but can you hear me okay? I had this thing on my mind about the eye contact.

[01:02]

I was going to sort of bring it up, say a few sentences about it and maybe kind of start a Sangha conversation perhaps, but then as I was Thinking about my talk and mulling it over, the eye contact part just kept growing and growing and growing. Kind of like what happened when the sun came out in our town a month ago. So then the other talk just gracefully stepped aside. We have a custom in relation to our intensive sitting practice or our sitting practice of, I think we have a custom of not making eye contact. It's actually, I don't think it's, I'm not sure when it's told. I'm not sure when it's imparted to people. I don't think it's in the Sesshin Guidelines, but anyway, we all seem to know that when we're doing our sitting practice, we are not making eye contact. And it's sort of based on or coming from a Japanese Zen monastery style.

[02:08]

And when you're in the monastery, you're not making eye contact, but when you meet each other on the path or in a situation where you normally would be making eye contact, you don't make eye contact, but you both stop and you bow to each other in unison. And that's actually a very connecting and warm experience when you do that. And we don't exactly have anything like that, so we just don't make the eye contact. you know, whatever discomfort that might have for people, we don't have anything in that spot. So I wanted to talk about, maybe explore why we might have that custom. Our usual way of experiencing the world is to posit a fixed self over here and from the point of view of that fixed self we observe, we experience the world, right?

[03:15]

This is our hard wiring, this is normal, this is how our minds work. And we observe the world in relation to this posited fixed self over on this side. You know, so we divide the world into, you know, important to me, not important to me, right? And then we put the not important to the side and we take the important to me and we divide it into good for me and bad for me, right? So, and that's how we've survived. That's normal. That's how, you know, from that, whatever, is it a one-celled amoeba or whatever the first thing that moved? It moved towards nourishment and away from threat, and that's how life was born. So this is a normal thing. But fortunately, as humans, we have other things our minds can do. Our brains have evolved. to do, we have a lot of soft wiring, we have a lot of parts of our brain that are not hardwired.

[04:22]

We can do other things with our minds and one of the things, this is the great, I think the great discovery of the Buddha, you could describe it this way I think, we can turn around and look at ourselves and in the words of our a great Japanese Zen master, Dogen Zenji, learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate the self. And when we do that, when we turn around and look at ourselves, we're dumbfounded to find out that the thing we thought was over here is not over here. And, you know, what's over here are sensations and feelings emotions, thoughts, trains of thought, unconscious beliefs, conscious beliefs, many, many things, right? but we're more like a kaleidoscope or like sand dunes in the wind or like a symphony that never ends.

[05:29]

There isn't any one thing that you point to that's the referent for this activity of sorting your experience. And so that means there isn't a person who is either a winner or a loser. who's either a success or a failure, who's either good or bad, who's either right or wrong, who's loved or unloved, who's seen or not seen. There's nothing that we boil down to, which is an expression that Alan first, I heard first from Alan one time when I had, come upstairs from Doksan. I'd had Doksan and Mel had said something critical, which is his job, you know, the Zen master gives you feedback. That's the correct thing. I don't remember what the content was.

[06:30]

Maybe too loose. That was one of them. I can't remember if that was the particular one. What? So I went upstairs and was fuming and defending myself and talking to, you know, complaining to Alan about it and he said, you know, he's not saying that's what you boil down to. I was like, oh, thank goodness, yes, right. It was just such a great thing to realize. So, you know, we could have a conscious intention not to tell a lie, and then we all do have an unconscious intention to survive, and those two could be in conflict with each other, and they could actually be in contact with each other, or we could just be imagining that they're in contact with each other.

[07:32]

And depending on circumstances, one or the other will sort of influence what we end up doing. And so we don't have to understand, or what I'm telling you, I'm telling you this all in concepts, but what I really want to say is we don't have to understand this conceptually. We just have to turn around and look, and turn around and look. and turn around and look, because our minds will begin to cognize our brain is for taking in information, right? And it takes in the information of whatever we're paying attention to. So if we turn around and look at the looker, you know, listen to the hearer, try to find the one on the other side of this activity, our brains will take in some information about that that I can't even put into words, and it will adjust your life choices.

[08:37]

It will change things. There's a Tibetan expression. It's something like, even a suspicion that objects are empty wrecks the seeds of cyclic existence. So, I mean, that's sort of a big mouthful, but to paraphrase, you know, even an inkling that what's on the other side is not what you think is on the other side can free you from suffering. And that's the funny thing that's somewhat counterintuitive to me is that when you do this activity it's calming. For most people it's a calming activity to do. It kind of seems like it wouldn't be. But the thing is, it's like this activity of imagining this big self over here and experiencing the world. It's like we always know that that's not true.

[09:37]

It's like somewhere inside of us, there's cognitive dissonance. And so we're always trying to establish ourself. And that's what's so anxiety-producing is that we can't establish ourselves. We can't control. And it's true that it's very anxiety-producing that we can't control what's going on out there. But for some reason, when you turn around and see that you can't control what's going on over here, that can be very calming, not for everybody. But a lot of the time, it can be. In fact, I wonder if really that's the only way to deal with, the only real way to deal with anxiety. Because as long as I'm thinking there's a thing over here, I'm always gonna be relating to you in relation to that, and it's always going to be uneasy for me. So when you... I'm knowing that the

[10:44]

flaw or what's the problem with what I'm presenting this morning is it's sort of like the gaining idea, like if you do this, then later you will have this. So I apologize for that. It's really hard to give a talk without introducing a gaining idea. I think I've said that before. I've said that before and I'll say it again and I won't, you know, I haven't succeeded yet or I haven't, I don't know if succeeded, but I haven't even figured out a strategy to try to do that. So let's just say that you could do this right now, not some other time. Turn around and look and when we do that we join We join the river that we're always in anyway, that you're always part of. But we think we're not. And we think we're standing in the river getting buffeted about by everything that's happening. But that's just the way we're thinking about it.

[11:47]

So when we join the river, we're just part of what's happening already. And that's not tomorrow. We could just do that right now. I'm gonna try. I don't know if I can do it well. See, the thing is I'm making eye contact, right? This is very distracting. But I wanted to share with you another Tibetan ... I like these Tibetan phrases. They kind of rattle around in there in a nice way. There's another one that says, again, with the gaining idea, when your mind, when we grok this, the truth of this, it's like water being poured into clear water. I like that. So let's see. Right, so again, it's not that there's not a person here and nothing over here, but it's really that the thing you think is here is not here.

[12:52]

There's a thing that you think you are, or maybe a bunch of things you think you are, but still, and that's why we each have to do this for ourself, because we are the ones who constructed this out of a combination of our hard wiring and our experiences of childhood. We've made up who we are, who we think we are, the subject of our experience. You have to do it yourself. You have to look at that yourself. And I have to look at it myself. And it's not like a thing you do once. You just keep looking and looking. And it's really when you think you have it that's a great opportunity to look, right? So, you know, when your self is activated, that's the time that you leverage on your reactivity and turn around at that moment and look. I read in some Buddhist book somewhere a long time ago.

[14:01]

I have these things that I read, they're just floating around, I have no idea where they were. I can't look up the reference and tell you or anything, but anyway. There's two times when you feel your false self. There's two times you can most easily feel your false self when you're falling and when you're falsely accused. And I don't know about you, but for me, anytime I'm criticized, I basically feel like I'm being falsely accused. Right? Am I right? So that's the time, whenever it is or whatever is happening, you use that the energy of that to turn around and see what you're referring to when you say you're false. What am I referring to? What is being falsely accused? What is that, you know? And again, there's no answer to that. And it's very, it's not something we'll understand conceptually, but the idea is, you know, to just keep turning around and looking, turning around and looking, whenever we remember to, whenever we have a chance.

[15:11]

And again, with the gaining idea here, either today, right now, or some other time, we can start seeing, or we do see, or we always see who we really are peeking out from behind who we think we are. Okay, so who we really are is peeking out from behind who we think we are. And if I can see that, when I can see that, right now or today or sometime, then I can turn back around and look at you and I can see who you really are peeking out from behind who I think you are. I think it's hard to do that first. I might be wrong, I might be wrong, but I think that this is the thing we need to do, this is the thing we really need to do, is turn around and look.

[16:16]

Shine the light inwardly. It sounds like a self-centered thing to do, but that's the paradox. The self-centered thing to do is to always experience the world from this imaginary fixed point. So, by the way, I'm trying this new gloss on form and emptiness. Form is what we think is happening and emptiness is what's actually happening, so trying that out. So now, what I really want to talk about was eye contact at BZC, in our life here together. So I'm not saying that every time someone doesn't make eye contact with you, they're doing this practice. And I'm also not saying that it's impossible to do this practice of turning the light inwardly and make eye contact. I think so. I think what I really wanted to bring up all of that that I said was that, you know, in its intention, this practice, this custom of not making eye contact, in its intention, is profoundly not rude.

[17:28]

But, of course, this is not the only thing influencing our ability or habit or custom of making eye contact. We have individual differences about that. So some of us feel safer when we're making eye contact with people. That's one of the ways we make ourselves feel safe. And so some people might not feel so safe here when we're doing this practice. And some of us feel safer when we're not making eye contact. I'm a little like that. I'm a little eye shy. So for me, it's very safe to be somewhere that that's what we're doing, you know? And then we have cultural differences. Some cultures favor or teach you to make eye contact and that that's the polite thing to do. And some cultures It's rude to make eye contact. So all this is kind of like all these different influences are playing out, you know, and in a certain way it comes to a head every Saturday morning.

[18:45]

This is what I've been trying to get through this whole time. I recently was working, I've had this temporary job at the San Francisco Zen Center. And I had a key, so I would go, my job was in a different building, not the main building there, but I had a key to go in to have lunch. And one time I came in, used my key and came into that nice front hall for people who've been there. And there was a couple guys there and they didn't make eye contact with me. And it felt so weird. And I thought, oh, that's weird. And then I thought, oh, I think I've done that to a lot of people. And the feeling was kind of like, who's the host of this party? You know? I mean, I'm coming in, you know? And so I've been thinking that, you know, so we have these moments. I think it really kind of comes down to this issue of host and guest, really. And we have these various junctures on Saturday morning where this comes

[19:46]

up. So we just had breakfast, and breakfast is the super Soto Zen ritual, that most ritualized thing that we do, and it's a very complete experience, and we're not making eye contact. And we're opening up our bowls and spreading them out. And then the servers come and we have a partner and we bow to the servers. And we're not making eye contact, but we're doing this bow that feels very connecting. And then they serve us the food and the steam is coming up from the cereal. And it's very quiet and you just hear gentle sounds of people managing their utensils and things and, you know, then you put the Gamacio on the cereal and the smell of the Gamacio comes up then, you know, and then you

[20:50]

eat your food and then they bring the hot water and again with the steam and everything is very ... you can really experience it. I'm not saying that every single minute all of us are really doing that but it is available, it's being made available to us to do that. And it's turning the light inwardly what is this, you know, what is this? And then, so then we finish the meal and, you know, we're having, let's say, let's just say we are having a kind of Soto Zen moment together and then we get excused and we're leaving and the director has just told us to, you know, maintain silence until after lecture. So we're in a certain zone, you know, and then we go out there And who is out there are most guesty guests, the absolute new people who are coming to instruction, right?

[21:56]

I mean, they may not have come yet, but they could have come. They might be getting here a little early. And so it's like there's a little bit of a clash there, I think. There's a person who is designated to greet those people, and hopefully maybe they're the first person they see, but we're coming out, we're holding the bowls, it just seems very formal. I don't have a solution to this, I'm just bringing this up. There's several junctures on Saturday morning where the guests arrive, right? Some guests, so there's these guests, the most guesty guests, if you don't mind my expression, coming at 8.45 for instruction. But then there's people who arrive at 9.30 for Zazen, which is right after we've had our work period. And we're trying really hard during work period to not talk, not engage. It's really, really hard. It's the hardest time to not do that. So we're making a big effort.

[22:57]

And then the people come up the walk. And so how do we respond? Who is the host there? Who is the host when people are walking up? I don't have an answer for this. I think we can all agree that when we're going to go outside now and have tea and cookies, we are making eye contact unless we really don't want to. It's completely okay and it's really appropriate. So one extreme is Zazen or Sashin, the other extreme is Saturday tea, but then these intervening moments, there's these other moments. I think that what, because then there's another moment when people who are just coming for lecture arrive and we're doing kin-hin and we're walking and looking down and again, we're doing this wonderful practice. We're doing something that's an offering to everybody. We're doing a good thing, you know. But I don't know how it's experienced.

[24:01]

Lost my train of thought there. All right, so I think the ideal is, not that we should be talking about ideals, but anyway, here I go again, making a million mistakes, is to have a lot of flexibility. And actually, I think that the idea is we gain the flexibility by doing this turning inward practice because the non-flexibility is all about the self. I am the host, I am the guest, or I am this, I make eye contact, I don't make eye, you know, like that's, the non-flexibility. So we gain the flexibility by keeping turning, and then we look back, and then we look back, and then we look back. That's how we gain the flexibility. And so I think ideally it would be like, if there's a guest there, there's a host here. If there's a host there, there's a guest here. And so our mind is flexible and our mind and body, our whole being is flexibly responding to the circumstances.

[25:08]

And I don't know how we're doing with that, but I thought it would be an interesting conversation to have together. So I hope there's enough time for conversation. Peter. I thought you were going to suggest some practice to develop change. There's also eye contact when we don't need to. Well, and there's variations, like there's the eye contact with the smile and the eye contact without the smile.

[26:13]

That is weird. And I've been noticing, since I've been thinking about that, there's a lot of other situations where people aren't always making eye contact. Like when I go to the Women's Fitness Center at the Y, there's really two kinds of people. Some people are really warm and friendly. And then it's really hard, if you make eye contact and smile, at a certain point, it's weird if you don't say anything. And so here we're really trying not to talk, except about the ... I think that's probably ... we assume we're making eye contact when we're talking about our work thing, right? It's the gray areas. Yeah. Yeah, like the look away, that's really not good. Make eye contact, they make eye contact and then they look away. That's really, that's uncomfortable. Then there's the smiling without the eye contact. That's sort of like, I think I try to do that, like to halfway, halfway be friendly so they see my smile but we don't make eye contact.

[27:19]

Yes, Ken. I have two questions that may be coming together. One is, it seems like in meeting that there should be a way to engage with someone that preserves no self of yourself and others. And we're trying to cultivate that. And so I wonder if there's something... Another thing that I wonder about our practice of looking away is it can create a dour or a strict or a self-controlled or a closed form that is then hard to loosen and get out of.

[28:22]

And not appealing. That's really important. We want people to be inspired to do this practice. Not like, whoa, I went there, but they were weird, so I never went back. So to cultivate, in our practice, to cultivate lightness of spirit, to cultivate our joyous self, to cultivate our connecting self in a way that doesn't trigger other people, which is harmful, doesn't trigger ourselves, It seems to me is my practice and again I don't have solutions. I know there's some people here who always make eye contact and for me with them I wasn't thinking of you, but yeah, you. Sue Osher, is Sue Osher here? She's so warm. But with those people, to make eye contact, smile, and not say anything, that's kind of the practice.

[29:29]

Maybe that would be a place we could stop. You know, stop it there because it's really kind of hard. Once you've made eye contact and smiled at somebody, that could be like the equivalent of our bow and not say hello. That's hard too. So John, then Gary, then Sue. I was raised to look and say hello and the eye contact thing and so on. But it's an interesting thing that you see people on the street making eye contact, they seem to have a gaining idea. Are you going to look and give me the nod? Okay, now this is definitely what we don't want to practice here. I hear you saying, and I kind of agree, we don't want, I want to look at you and call you out to see me, right? But when I look at you and there's no host and no guest and I make eye contact and I eye contact without a gaining idea. I don't want you to or need you to say, ah John.

[30:32]

That sounded nice though. That might be good. Here we are and when I look at Sojin at the end of, this is where I'm taking my cue, at the end of Se Shin, I look at Sojin and I realize how much of me is left or how much of me is gone. And so in my practice, begging you all pardon, when I look at you I'm hoping to see no one. And be no one, see no one and be no one. Gary, then Sue, then I apologize because I like to ask Sojin, but I'm going to let you guys go first. I keep thinking of, I don't know if it's from Suzuki Roshi or Sojin that said, you know, you put, to clean a potato, you put a whole bunch of potatoes in a bucket and you shake them around and that cleans off all the dirt. And to me it sounds like what you're talking about is this kind of ordeal, how we're kind of trimming the edges on ourselves so that there's nothing there eventually.

[31:38]

Or so that the nothing there that's already there is understood or something, yeah. Just a thought. Uh-huh, yeah. So how does that fit in with whether... You smile or not? Or make eye contact or not? Well, I think we need forms. And then the edges get more down. Because if we don't have one kind of way we're aiming, I think... Uh-huh. And that's the no eye contact? That's the form? Because if we agreed that we were going to do the eye contact and not talk, that would also be a form, right? I don't know. I don't know. It's other people's eyes. There's this Wallace Stegner line in the Wallace Stegner book where he says, there's two things in the world, faces and everything else. Another person's eyes, that is really a different kind of a thing than anything else.

[32:42]

So that's a factor here too. Sue? in praise of eye contact in a way that it's not just you're out in the world in the hustle and bustle of communicating with other people when you're having eye contact. It's eye contact is so intense and intimate and hardwired in human beings and infants look for the eyes, the face, and you know, these eyes are the windows to the soul and all this. Joko Betts' practice, which I used to do sometimes, she would have these eye gaze accessions, accessioning, where you sit looking into the eyes of the other person, which has the same effect as what you were talking about, where you realize there's nobody here, that you and this other person inhabit the same consciousness, kind of, and it is equally effective in a sense of breaking down barriers, but I'm not suggesting that we It's such an important thing, and it seems like having a demarcated time where we don't speak, which is also an important thing, and where we don't have eye contact, is great, and it's wonderful to have that protected space.

[34:00]

But then, maybe it would be always in the zendo, but then when we're outside. But even, you know, like I experienced, it's awkward when we're leaving after lecture a little bit, because it takes so long. It takes so long for everybody to leave. So you've got the people next to you. Are you still not making eye contact? And if you do make eye contact, it's really hard not to say anything, because I am really trying not to say anything. That I'm committed to, although I don't always do it. But it takes so long. If you're one of the back people, it takes 10 minutes. It's awkward not to look in anybody's eyes at that because we've kind of broken the formality. I don't know. Can the no eye contact go along with the not speaking and those things happen at the same time? As long as the other people feel okay about it, I'm okay. Yeah, I'm okay with it. I'm going to ask Sojin Roshi then, Tony then Judy.

[35:03]

In the Zen-do, you don't usually make eye contact in order to attract an individual other than ourself. Usually we talk about no eye contact during Sesshin because we don't want to lose our concentration by introducing another element. But when you're in work period and people are coming in, And like you said, you respond to the situation, you let go of your so-called concentration and you concentrate on something else, which is the person walking down the path. So you open your eyes and you look at the person and you act like a human being. And does that include saying hello or not saying hello? Say anything you want. Because one time I brought up at practice committee that could we have that time, that 10 minutes, as not a silent period?

[36:13]

You're the host. And then everybody totally didn't want to. As you said, there's no fixed person, right? So when the person comes down the path, you're the hostess. You can say, hey, come in, to have a little bit of instruction. We welcome you here to have instructions. So you don't stick to your idea of eye contact. That's just a device. Don't stick to that. We say, well, don't talk during work period. But everybody does. Everybody looks at you. It doesn't really matter. You should do what's appropriate. That's the main thing. What's really appropriate in the situation? So eye contact is seductive. It's not necessarily seductive, but that's the seductive... Your soul comes through your eyes and meets somebody else and says, well, what do you want?

[37:15]

The question is, what do you want? So... I would say just act naturally. So in Zen, though, we don't want anything from anybody. So we don't look in people's eyes. You know, unless it's appropriate. Sometimes you do look and be precise. It's appropriate to look at each other. And it's akin to bowing when you meet. We don't do that so much. In the monastery we do it all the time. Every time you meet somebody you bow. You don't have to make eye contact, but you can. It's just that what does it mean when you do that? That's the main thing. of what you should be doing. That's where we get caught. Right. You know that, that's what you're talking about. Yeah, I think so, I hope so. Tony, then Judy, then Alan. I left Terry before.

[38:17]

Oh, sorry Terry. I have my hand right here. Go ahead. I worked with kids with autism and I started a long time ago doing that and we were writing goals for these kids to make eye contact And then studies were done about what do ordinary people do? How often do ordinary people make eye contact? And we realized with the studies that in ordinary situations, you make eye contact somewhere between 40 and 60% of the time. So we were really having these high expectations for these kids with autism. And one of the things we found in trying to teach them to make eye contact is they would So we really had to start looking at, you know, what Sojin was talking about. Appropriateness. teaching the kids how to make an appropriate contact and you know we're still fussing around with that here, we don't know, we're like what's appropriate, what's not and what's appropriate and feeling our way kind of, feeling our way in the moment with whatever's happening in the moment so I guess that's what we were trying to teach these children as we were learning it ourselves.

[39:50]

Thank you. if at all possible. So when the Buddha, let's say this example of the mythological Buddha or the real Buddha, turned that Dogon-esque, turned the light back inward on itself, the Buddha, I can imagine the eyes being like rivers, that flow that you were referring to. You mean if you were looking at someone who was at the time that they were turning the light, they could look like, is that what you? That and both inside the gates of this form realm here and outside the gates, if that would be at all possible. It's like an ideal poetic vision I had during your talk.

[40:53]

If we could make our eyes like rivers, like without object. It's sort of a seeking or something. Yeah, the fixed self inside of the eyes that's, you know, coming out quite often. It's an ideal state, but I wanted to share that. Thank you. Thanks, Tony. Judy? Yeah, this actually flows from that, which is, you know, we have such beautiful imagery in Luz and Zen, and the one that was coming to me as you used this exquisite phrase that I'd never heard before of soft wiring. You know, you hear hard wire and you hear software that's sort of somehow placed atop or, you know, with soft wiring, that it brought to mind, you know, that image of Kannon as, you know, this goddess of compassion, this feminine quality

[41:56]

which I often hear phrased as the receptive. But actually, my experience of that is that it is flow, that there's a receptivity that flows into that natural response. And so that image of, you know, the thousand arms and hands that are out, and each one has an eye, is, you know, so for me, the edge of that is, you know, that when I'm making eye contact with you, and I feel a tension. It's usually something around, in psychological terms, the distinction between transparency and full disclosure. For a lot of reasons. During sashimi, if it's work period, you know, or any time. It's like, you know, I'm aware that we have five minutes to go, and you know, da-da-da, and you're talking, and I realize, like, but I also have to get this done. And that's just one context. There are a lot more challenging reasons for that.

[42:59]

I don't want to tell you this thing about me because it has repercussions for a lot of other people. Or you don't want to tell me. And I don't actually know a lot of the time what's really going on. I just feel the tension in you not wanting to fully disclose or in me. And so, you know, and also there isn't also sometimes an opportunity to say all that. We say that in our body gestures. And so I was wondering how you might offer, what is that soft watering in such a moment that we could practice with that as a natural response? Let's talk about that outside, and can I have two more people, so I'm going to have Alan and Peter. Well, thank you. I've certainly said a lot of what I was going to say. I've been thinking about the seat that I sit in.

[44:01]

I sit facing out and facing the door. I see everyone who comes through the door. But I'm not looking at everyone who comes to the door in the same way that, as we said, Zazen, our senses, we're seeing without looking. But sometimes, when I'm in this seat, I have to look. Sometimes, someone comes through the door who needs to be greeted by a host. And so the real essence, I mean, this is where I think I'm in complete agreement with Sojin, our ground and has to determine for ourself what's an appropriate response.

[45:07]

Right. You know, so sometimes I sit here and do nothing and sometimes I may have to get up and help somebody and it's also version in a sense it's in the it's based in the physical position that I'm in sitting and facing out whereas other people are facing the wall that's not their responsibility then but as we meet in the path or as people come in. It's parallel to me to Zazen, that every moment in Zazen, we have to again and again find our ground and find our intention and determine what we're going to do at that moment, even though we have a lot of intention in this. It's the same process. Right, and so I don't think that appropriateness is a fixed thing either. Like, this conversation will influence how we feel about what's appropriate.

[46:09]

And not just me, but I mean, so it's fluid, you know. Appropriate is not an absolute. And what we agree on, if we agreed to do something, then that would make that thing more appropriate to do. Maybe not completely and universally, but yeah, Peter. And then we're going to be done. I want to thank you. When you said what you were going to talk about, I thought, wow, that's a real glorious talk. I really got something out of it. Two things. One, I was always curious how you're supposed to engage the server. And some people look at you. So I'm going to change that. I'm not going to look at the server. Contrast that with what Sojin said about the seductiveness of eye contact.

[47:12]

And I was wondering, I didn't know who the speaker was going to be today. And you walked through the door. And my sense was we had some eye contact. And I felt so good. That, giving up that good feeling, I don't know. Right. There's a lot of moments where it's not clear what the practice is, you know. And it's fine to just try. I think the thing, the point would be, try it and then see, turn around and see what that, turn the light around and see how that feels. Can we talk? Okay.

[48:12]

Whatever it is you want. Yeah, right. And so that's kind of more, if there is an absolute, it's more like something like that. Although there isn't an absolute. OK, thank you all so much.

[48:31]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ